The Long and Faraway Gone (13 page)

“Sure,” Wyatt said, “why not?”

A
FTER THE GUNSHOTS
Wyatt remembered nothing. He was deaf. He was blind. He didn't open his eyes until he felt fingers press against his neck and he heard someone yell, as if from a great distance away, “This one's alive!”

Wyatt's left eyelid wouldn't open at first. It was like a window that had been painted shut. His eyelid was painted shut with blood. He heard someone say, as if from an even greater distance away, “Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

The janitor had arrived at seven to clean the theater restrooms. Mr. Bingham hadn't been there to let him in, so the janitor tracked down Disco Otis, the security guard. Disco Otis had peered through the glass doors and noticed the bloody footprints leading away from the projection-­booth stairs. He called the police. The first cops arrived at 7:37
A.M.
, which meant Wyatt had been lying there in the darkness for almost six hours.

Wyatt learned all that later. To him, there in the projection booth, it was as if no time had passed at all. He heard the last gunshot and felt the cop's or paramedic's fingers press against his neck, one beat right after the other. Wyatt had thought at first that the fingers and the voice belonged to one of the robbers. He waited for another, final gunshot. He prayed for it.

He remembered very little of what happened next. Someone must have cut the cord that bound his wrists behind his back. Someone must have led him back down the narrow projection-­booth stairs and across the lobby and out of the mall. The female detective in the black, square-­toed shoes? Maybe her. Wyatt remembered her shoes but not her face. He remembered her voice, gentle but urgent, as they sat on the strip of grass behind the auditoriums and police lights strobed across them.

“Is there anything else you remember, Michael?” she'd said. “About what happened? Try hard, hon. Anything at all?”

Wyatt had told her everything he remembered. He told her everything again. And then the two male homicide detectives took over. The one Wyatt remembered, the one who was obviously in charge, was an older guy with acne scars. Detective Siddell. His voice was less gentle than the female detective's.

“Look at me, Michael,” he said. “Look me in the eye. Are you telling us the truth?”

Wyatt didn't understand. Why did the detective with acne scars think he wasn't telling them the truth? Wyatt, at that point, didn't understand anything.

He described the robbers, as best he could, over and over and over again.
Big nose, I think? A mustache. Red hair. Reddish hair. I think. In their twenties. Or thirties. Darker hair. Big eyebrows. Like a skeleton's face, sort of, bony. The other one was taller.

Wyatt had caught barely a glimpse of the two robbers without their masks on. He'd been too scared to look at them. He hadn't seen the other robber's face at all. Wyatt had been facedown on the floor of the projection booth. All he could see, really, was Theresa's face next to him. Their shoulders touched. Her eyes were closed.

The next thing he remembered, he was in a room in a hospital. And then he was in a different room of the hospital with his father and two different detectives. Or maybe these detectives were Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents. Wyatt remembered realizing that he'd lost his black clip-­on bow tie. Mr. Bingham took five dollars out of your paycheck if you lost your bow tie.

The police, Wyatt learned later, considered him a suspect at first. He supposed they had to. Five ­people dead and Wyatt, miraculously, unharmed. The scene in the projection booth made sense only if Wyatt had been working with the killers. But it made no sense that Wyatt had been working with the killers. He was a fifteen-­year-­old kid with no criminal history. And he was telling the truth. He was telling the police everything he knew. They must have realized that pretty quickly.

But
why
? There had to be some reason the robbers had killed everyone else but left Wyatt alive.

“Do you have any idea, Michael,” Detective Siddell had asked, in his ungentle way, “why you're still here and the others are . . . gone?”

Wyatt had no idea.

Why?

Did he think one of the killers knew him? Did he think that a gun jammed before the killers could . . . finish? Did he think something—­some noise from downstairs, maybe?—­caused them to flee? Did he think they lost track of their victims and mistakenly believed that Wyatt, covered in the blood of the others, was dead? What did the killers say before they left the booth?

Wyatt had no idea. He hadn't heard them say anything before they left the booth. He was deaf and blind. He didn't even know that the three men had left.

In October, all the way across the country in Kingman, Arizona, a woman called police to complain about the loud music coming from the apartment below hers. A county sheriff's deputy responded. He knocked on the door of the apartment and identified himself. A shotgun blast tore through the door. The deputy, before he died from his wounds, managed to crawl to his car and radio for backup.

An Arizona state trooper by chance was less than a minute away. He reached the apartment complex as three men were attempting to flee the scene. A bullet shattered the trooper's right elbow, but he switched his weapon to his left hand and managed to keep the three men pinned down until two more county deputies arrived. In the gunfight that followed, two of the men were killed. The third man shot himself in the head when more cops showed up and he realized he was surrounded.

Investigators found—­discarded on the floor of the apartment in Kingman, beneath the couch—­a key to a motel room in Oklahoma City. The manager of the motel confirmed that three men had rented room number 7 at the Sooner Be Here Inn on the 39th Expressway from June 29 to August 16. When police in Oklahoma City searched the weed-­choked vacant lot next to the motel, they found an empty night-­deposit bag, flecked with dried blood.

Detective Siddell, the one with acne scars, showed Wyatt photos of the three men who had died in Kingman. Mug shots. All three men had done time. They had done time early and often.

“Are these the guys?” Siddell asked. He'd become, after that first night and day, Wyatt's primary law-­enforcement contact. Everything Wyatt said went through him. Everything Wyatt learned came from him.

“Yes,” Wyatt said. He stared at the photos of the faces spread out on the table. He tried to understand.

“Do you know them? Do you know one of them from somewhere? Do you recognize their names?”

Wyatt stared and stared. He felt deaf again, blind. He didn't understand.

“I don't,” he said.

Siddell didn't ask Wyatt if he was sure. Siddell knew it. He gathered up the photos and slid them into a manila file folder.

“I don't understand,” Wyatt said.

Why am I still here and all the others gone?

That was the only question that remained, but now there was no one left alive who could answer it.

“Who knows?” Siddell said.

Ballistics had matched two of the guns in Kingman with the two guns that had been used in the projection booth. The case was closed. Justice had been served.

Why am I still here and all the others gone?

Wyatt sat at the bar in the Marriott, his laptop open. The bartender came back over, and Wyatt ordered a plate of pasta. He glanced at his empty glass of scotch and did a double take, shock and horror.

The bartender, a young guy, laughed. He poured Wyatt another three fingers and tried to sneak a peek at the screen of Wyatt's laptop. Wyatt turned it toward him so he could see.

“I just created a dummy Facebook account,” Wyatt said. “What you have to do, though, you friend your target's friends first, before you friend your target. That way he'll confirm without even thinking twice about it. But will I be able to gather anything useful from Jeff Eddy's Facebook page? I can't say for sure, Andrew. Probably not. But there's an improvisational quality to all this. Like playing jazz.”

The bartender's smile was uncertain.

“I'm a private investigator,” Wyatt said.

“No shit?” the bartender said.

“No shit.”

The bartender had more questions, but a ­couple of businessmen at the other end of the bar were flagging him down. “Sorry,” he said, and headed off.

He did seem sorry to go. Or maybe Wyatt just wanted to think that. Or maybe it was Wyatt who didn't want him to leave, not before his pasta arrived and he could focus his attention on that.

On the way back to the hotel, Wyatt had taken May Avenue instead of the highway, so he could drive past the Pheasant Run again. The Burlington Coat Factory that used to be the Pheasant Run Mall. Wyatt remembered how the interior of the mall had been designed to look like you were outside in Paris or New Orleans, with brick floors and lantern-­top streetlamps and wrought-­iron railings along the second-­floor balcony. Directly across from the movie theater was a brick fountain that never worked.

On her break sometimes Theresa would sit on the edge of the broken fountain and lean her head against the streetlamp and smoke a cigarette. Wyatt would stand at the ticket box and make funny faces at her through the plate-­glass front of the theater. The lobby camera connected to the monitor in Mr. Bingham's office could see only his back. If Wyatt worked hard enough at it, if he made enough funny faces, Theresa might give him the finger and half a smile.

Wyatt thought about his uncle. Was memory like a river that slowed over time to a trickle? Or was it like a house with many rooms that became a house with fewer rooms and then finally just a single room you could never leave?

Was that the worst fate in the world? It depended, Wyatt supposed, on what room you ended up in.

Wyatt's first week at the theater, his first several weeks, Theresa had ignored him completely. O'Malley told him not to take it personally. Theresa took but mild interest in the petty affairs of doormen.

O'Malley and Theresa were a ­couple at the time. They'd been together for almost a year, on and off. Or, as O'Malley put it, waxing and waning, waning and waxing. Wyatt remembered the way during the Saturday-­night rush that Theresa would rest her fingers on O'Malley's shoulder when she reached across him for ice or a popcorn bucket. Wyatt remembered the first time she did that to him.

Why would they kill Theresa and not Wyatt? Why would they kill O'Malley and not Wyatt? Why would they kill Melody and Karlene and Grubb and Mr. Bingham? And not Wyatt? Why, after killing everyone else, would they leave a witness—­an
eyewitness
—­alive?

It made no sense. Wyatt didn't know the killers. He'd never seen them before in his life.

It was a question that could never be answered, so Wyatt had stopped, long ago, asking it. He had tried his best to stop asking it.

Why am I still here and all the others gone?

The bartender returned with his pasta. Wyatt gave his glass, empty again, a nudge with his elbow.

“Please, Andrew,” he said, “don't let this ever happen again.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
the chirp of Wyatt's phone woke him. He checked the time—­later than he'd thought, almost eight—­and the caller. Candace, of course. Calling for an update.

“I was going to call you first thing,” he said, before she could get a word in. “I have been devoting my life to your cause.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “Shut! Up!”

“What is it?”

“What do you think? Where are you? Get over here!”

 

J
ulianna spent the afternoon at the Nichols Hills Starbucks. Around two, Ben called to see how she was feeling. Julianna thought he might. What was he expecting? To catch her with the sound of a party in the background? The squeals and dance beats of bacchanalia that would allow him to bust her?

“How's the diarrhea?”

“It's still diarrhea, Ben.”

“Electrolytes are your friend.”

“My best friends right now.”

“Okay. Well. Feel better.”

Feel better.
Julianna hated when ­people said it like that, like it was an order. Fuck you. What if I don't want to feel better?

“I will,” she told Ben. “Thanks so much for checking on me, Ben.”

She hung up and logged back onto Facebook. Still no reply to her message. She'd sent it eight days ago now. Julianna tried to think of reasons that the woman who posted the state-­fair photos had not responded. Julianna's message had been deliberately innocuous and lighthearted. She hadn't wanted the woman—­her name was Mary Hilger Hall—­to think Julianna was some obsessive weirdo.

“Hi! Loved your fair photos from 86. Memories! Do you have more? Please let me know!”

Maybe Mary Hilger Hall checked her Facebook messages only infrequently. She could be away on vacation. She could be in the process of scanning more fair photos for Julianna's viewing pleasure.

Julianna clicked over to the woman's Facebook page, to see if she'd been active in the past few days. But Mary Hilger Hall had her privacy settings set to Friends Only. Julianna debated the wisdom of sending a friend request. Why not? What was there to lose? She clicked and sent it.

She logged off Facebook and opened the photo that Mary Hilger Hall had posted. Julianna studied the woman biting into her egg roll, blown out by the flash. The woman had big hair and bigger earrings: oh, the eighties. Was the eater of egg roll Mary Hilger Hall? Was she just, at the time, Mary Hilger? Behind the woman was the Chinese place in Food Alley that Julianna remembered so vividly. At the edge of the frame, standing in line for barbecue and his back to the camera, was the man in the cowboy hat.

“Fair Food 9/20/86!”

Julianna zoomed in on the man in the cowboy hat. The pixels ballooned and ruptured. The man's head was turned slightly to the left, just the rumor of a nose beneath the brim of the caramel-­colored hat. His head was turned slightly
away
from the window of the barbecue place where he was waiting in line. As if, maybe, he were talking to someone standing next to him, someone standing just outside the frame of the photo.

When Julianna won her Pink Panther—­when Genevieve had helped her win the Pink Panther—­there'd been another man at the booth, playing the game with them. Julianna didn't remember if that man had left before or after she won her Pink Panther. She did remember he wore a cowboy hat. Brown. Or black. A brown or black cowboy hat. Genevieve had made a remark about him later, as they strolled toward the midway. Julianna couldn't remember what it was. Genevieve had laughed unkindly.

Julianna's coffee had gone cold. She went to the counter for a refill and then realized she'd cut the line. Lost in her own fog. She apologized to the woman waiting to be served, an attractive, glum blonde. The diamond on the woman's wedding ring was spectacular. Nichols Hills was the wealthiest neighborhood in Oklahoma City.

The woman smiled. It made her look even glummer. “You're fine,” she said.

You're fine.
Julianna hated when ­people said that, too. Fuck you twice. Who are you to say so?

“Sorry,” Julianna said again. “I'm out of it.”

“You're fine.”

Julianna sat back down and opened a Word file. The timeline. Abigail Goad, the rancher's wife from Okeene, had positively identified Genevieve at 9:00
P.M.
in Food Alley. The last time Genevieve had been seen on earth. She'd been talking to a man in a cowboy hat. Genevieve
might
have been talking to a man in a cowboy hat.

Julianna needed to know when, precisely, Mary Hilger Hall's photo had been taken. She needed to know if there were other photos. She needed to know if there was a photo that showed the man in the cowboy hat talking to a beautiful brown-­eyed girl wearing her favorite
B
ORN IN THE USA
T-­shirt. If there was a photo that showed the man's face.

The sun had set on September 20 in 1986 at 7:30
P.M.
It would have been completely dark by 8:00. The fair closed at 11:00. Food Alley emptied out well before then.

It all came down to Crowley. Julianna was sure of it. At 8:50
P.M.
, ten minutes before the rancher's wife saw Genevieve in Food Alley, Christopher Wayne Crowley had been arrested at a 7-­Eleven store a block from the fairgrounds. But Genevieve had headed toward the midway an hour earlier. It had been around 7:45
P.M.
that Genevieve gave Julianna a ten-­dollar bill and told her she'd be back in a flash.

The walk from the south parking lot at the fairgrounds, where the carnies parked their trucks and their trailers, to the 7-­Eleven on May Avenue took approximately ten minutes. The 7-­Eleven was gone now, but Julianna had walked the route when she was in high school. She'd timed it. So that left almost an hour that Genevieve might have been with Crowley in his trailer.

There was no question that Genevieve had been on her way to see Crowley. Genevieve's friend Lacey had seen her. The corn-­dog vendor had seen her. And Julianna, at the time, had known exactly where Genevieve was going, and why. Of course she'd known it. Genevieve was going to get high with the skeezy carny dude.

If she'd made it to Crowley's trailer, if Crowley had lied to the police about that, he had to know something. Maybe he knew the name of the man in the cowboy hat.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. If, if, if.

Julianna could hear DeMars's voice.
Juli. You squeezing it too hard, trying to make the pieces fit when they don't.

And she could hear Genevieve's voice. She could really hear Genevieve's voice as if her sister were right there behind her, looking over Julianna's shoulder at her laptop and making that face she made. Genevieve could roll her eyes without rolling her eyes. Julianna had watched that face drop guys dead in their tracks when they tried to hit on Genevieve without what Genevieve considered sufficient creativity.

You dork! I'm gone! I'm dead! Don't you have anything better to do with your life?

Guess not,
Julianna thought.

Don't be mad at me, Juli.

Why in the world would I be mad at you, Genni? Except for . . . you know, everything?

Julianna closed her laptop. Outside Starbucks dusk was falling. She looked at her watch. Where did the time go?

Julianna had pretended to be oblivious, but she'd known about the coke for a long time. There were days and nights when Genevieve came home so high, so flying, so manic and glittering, that Julianna didn't even recognize her.

“Let's dance!” Genevieve said one time. She put a cassette in her boom box and turned the volume up. Sheila E. She dragged Julianna up onto the bed with her. Julianna wrenched her wrists free and turned the music off so their mother wouldn't come down to the basement and see Genevieve like this. It was after midnight.

Genevieve danced and bounced without the music and then flopped onto her back, cracking up. She flung an arm out toward Julianna, a hand, fingers wriggling, searching for Julianna in the space between them.

“I love you,” she said. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Julianna went upstairs to her room and shut her door.

When Genevieve was high, the part of her that made her Genevieve—­mean and funny and curious and generous and stubborn and selfish and ferociously loyal—­disappeared. Cocaine was magical, but it was like the worst kind of magic trick.

For a long time, Julianna had known that Genevieve liked coke better than she liked her. But she hadn't realized that Genevieve
loved
coke more than she loved Julianna. Not until that day at the fair, that dusk, when Genevieve—­without thinking twice about it, without a single glance backward—­left Julianna alone and terrified so she could go get high.

Genevieve knew how dangerous the fair could be. Everyone knew it. How could she leave her little sister behind on that curb, the sky turning from blood orange to black? Genevieve knew what could have happened to her. What happened to Genevieve could have happened to Julianna.

Julianna had selected pink cotton candy, not blue, because pink matched her new Pink Panther. Genevieve should have realized this and gone for the kill. She should have made fun of Julianna until Julianna could stand no more. Genevieve should have helped herself to a giant handful of cotton candy without asking and warned Julianna that if she got her grubby paws all over the upholstery of her Cutlass on the way home, there would be hell to pay.

Instead, though, she left Julianna behind and went off to find the carny. Because she thought he was sexy, because she thought he would have drugs.

Don't be mad, Juli. Don't stay mad.

Julianna's phone rang. DeMars. She sent the call to voice mail and tucked her phone back into her purse. She took out her car keys.

C
ROWLEY'S HOUSE WAS
dark. Julianna, parked down at the other end of the block, couldn't be sure if the lights were off inside or if the light inside was just blocked by the bedsheets covering the windows. She thought about pulling closer or getting out of her car and strolling past. But she'd made up her mind—­if she was going to be here, if she was going to do this, she had to be careful.

If she was going to do
what,
exactly? Julianna wasn't sure, not really. Now, before she could decide, the door to the house opened: a wink of bluish light as Crowley stepped out and onto the porch.

She watched him. He moved heavily as he walked to the pickup truck in the driveway—­each step an effort, like a man climbing a hill. But also heavily in the way a boulder rumbles down a hill. Out of my way or else.

He heaved himself up into the cab of the pickup. His old Ford was a total piece of shit. The driver's door was just primer, no paint, and the tailgate was missing completely. The truck shuddered when Crowley started it up. Julianna could hear the near-­death rattle from a block away.

She ducked beneath her dash. The truck rattled and roared past. Julianna dug for her keys. Stupidly, she'd put them back in her purse. Finally she found them and started her car and made a hard U in the middle of the street. She managed to spot the flare of Crowley's taillights just before they disappeared. Left on Robinson.

Julianna followed, staying as far back as she could without losing him. Crowley drove fast, cutting between lanes, shooting through intersections when the yellow light turned red. Julianna got trapped behind one red light, but Crowley stayed on Robinson, flat and straight, so she was able to catch up.

They passed blocks of run-­down buildings, taquerias and liquor stores and pawnshops. Crowley turned onto Reno, and Julianna followed. After a few miles, he stopped at a bar, a big wooden barn of a place, lots of cars and motorcycles in the parking lot.
THE DOUBLE R RANCH.
Julianna circled the block twice, to give Crowley time, and then parked.

She waited. She wanted to go inside and sit invisibly in a dark corner and observe Crowley. See what he ordered, how he ordered it. Did he sit at the bar or at a table? If he sat at the bar, he would be watching the door in the mirror behind it. He would see her the instant she stepped inside.

Maybe that was fine. Slide onto the stool next to him and say, again,
I just want to talk to you.
Say to him,
I'm going to talk to you if it kills me.

Julianna could hear DeMars's voice. She ignored it.

She waited until the next group of ­people entered the bar, three bearded biker dudes and a woman too old for the tight leather miniskirt she was wearing. Julianna slipped in behind them.

Inside, the place was dim and crowded and the smoke hung heavy, struggling to rise all the way to the wooden rafters. Music pounded: Led Zeppelin, maybe? Julianna looked for Crowley. He was sitting at the end of the bar. Not watching the mirror behind the bar but instead the shot glass in front of him. He turned it, lifted it, tipped back his head, let the booze roll down his throat. Not rushing anything, a committed drinker. He tapped the glass on the bar. The bartender brought the bottle over and poured Crowley another shot. Crowley watched the glass fill.

Julianna moved away from the bar. A few tables were empty, but she'd be too conspicuous by herself. Toward the back was a table with two women in their forties or fifties. Or maybe just their hard late thirties. Their faces were leathery and collapsed, like they were dragging deep on Marlboro Reds even though they weren't smoking.

One of the women, the redhead, glanced up. Julianna was wearing jeans and a V-­neck sweater. She looked out of place in this place, but not too terribly.

“Let me sit here a minute and I'll buy you a round,” she said.

One of the women, the redhead, swept a hand at the empty chair. The other woman just stared at Julianna, drunk, her eyes glassy. Julianna motioned for the waitress.

“Another round here,” she said. “And a beer for me.”

“What kind?”

“I don't care.”

The waitress left.

“You got a cigarette?” the drunk woman asked Julianna.

“No.”

Julianna watched Crowley pour down another shot. He was too far away, too many tables and ­people and smoke between her and him, for Julianna to make out his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She couldn't make out the blurred blue tattoo of a snake on his forearm or the diamond stud in his ear.