The Quiet Streets of Winslow (21 page)

“I always check on them just before dark. Everything looked fine to me there.”

“Any chance you can remember the night of April 24? It was a Thursday. Did you see anything unusual at that house? Any vehicles parked nearby?”

“Let me think,” he said. “The house was dark, as I remember. Don't remember any vehicle in the yard or out front on the street.”

“No pickup you recall? A blue Ford F150?”

“Best-selling truck in America,” he said. “I own one. I do remember a Ford F150 around the corner, on Maple, though I don't recall the color.”

“Anything else you noticed about the truck?”

“There were bumper stickers I couldn't read. I remember that.”

“Was anybody in the vehicle?”

“My impression was yes, and I'll tell you why. During my first marriage—my bad one—I used to go sit in my vehicle sometimes to cool off. That's what I figured this fellow was doing. I just remember having that thought and driving on.”

“You could see that it was a male?”

“No. I just assumed.”

“And you're sure of the date you saw it?”

“As sure as I can be,” he said. He was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Now that we're talking about it, I bet that from the rental you couldn't have seen that pickup, but from the pickup, you might have had a view of the rental. Of course I didn't think about it at the time.”

N
ATE
A
SPENALL'S PICKUP
, a 2003 blue Ford F150, had two bumper stickers:
IF YOU CAN READ THIS, I'VE LOST MY TRAILER
and
ARE YOU AS CLOSE TO JESUS AS YOU ARE TO
MY BUMPER
? The lettering on both was small. So unless Sonny Calhoun had been wrong about the date, Nate had returned to Winslow after the night he spent in Flagstaff, and he was still in Winslow that evening, a matter of a few hours before Jody was killed. I fought a losing battle with myself not to take some satisfaction in that. I was irritated with Nate's lies, which had come one after the other since the case began. I was spending too much of my time proving what I had known or at least suspected to start with. He had been there. He knew far more than he was telling me.

As for who would have stolen the keys to the Bowmans' rentals, why Paul Bowman wouldn't have wanted to file a police report, and whether this
K
in question was Kevin Rainey, whom Bowman had denied knowing, those were questions I wrote down for later, when I wasn't as tired as I was then. I had been using my days off working the case, as well as my evenings, and I was more than tired; I wanted my life back, such as it had been.

I
OPENED THE
kitchen door and stepped out to smoke a cigarette before bed. Unlike drinking, I had not been able to quit smoking, although I kept it under half a pack a day.

I could see the back of the house Audrey Birdsong still owned—a one-story bungalow with a detached carport. One summer night, years ago now, I had seen her in her kitchen, in a white top and panties, taking something out of the refrigerator. My wife and I had just divorced, and I had stood there watching her, imagining her life with her husband. If they had been as happy together as I had pictured,
which I thought likely, based on my recent conversation with her, that was a good thing. That was something to be glad about, and the fact that it made me jealous was—what? Natural? I could see that. There was the pressure of trying to live up to a memory. Moreover, my track record wasn't a good one. I had yet to make a woman happy for longer than a year.

I went back to thinking about the investigation. It was easier.

chapter thirty-one

NATE ASPENALL

I
WAS SITTING OUTSIDE
the Airstream when Sam appeared. I didn't expect him any more than I ever expected him. He suggested we go inside to talk, and I said fine and cleared off the mess I had made on the table. I had been trying to fix a model plane Damien and I had put together last year. Somehow it had gotten broken.

The family had gone to Byler's for supper. When I had said no thanks, I wasn't hungry, I didn't feel like it, I could see the relief that Lee and Julie felt. They could go without me; they could get a reprieve from Nate. As for the boys, who knew what they thought. I couldn't tell anymore. Circumstances had gotten between us. That was what I was thinking when Sam drove up.

“Your pickup was seen parked down the street from Jody's house,” he said once we were seated. “This was late afternoon of the night she died, Nate. This was the afternoon you told me you were back in Chino Valley.”

I was nervous and he could see that I was.

“You're good at your job, Sam,” I said. “Better than I knew.”

He shook his head. Dismissing it, I guess.

“So you went back to Winslow,” he said. “Why was that?”

My mouth was dry, and I got myself a Coke from the refrigerator. I didn't ask if he wanted one. Then I tried to speak slowly, wanting to tell my part of the story my own way, that is, what happened and in what order, to the degree that I felt mattered.

“In Flagstaff I checked out of the motel in the morning,” I said. “I had breakfast at a Shoney's across the street, and as I ate I looked at the Arizona map. Maybe I wouldn't go home right away, I thought. Maybe I would drive north, on the Reservation, maybe to the old Hopi villages. I had never been there. Then maybe I would go to Winslow in the afternoon, I thought, or maybe I wouldn't. Anyway after breakfast I started driving east on I-40 instead of west.”

“So you went up on the Reservation first. For how long?”

“From ten or so, I guess it was, until two or maybe three,” I said. “I had lunch up there, did my sightseeing, drove around.”

“Then what?”

I looked away from Sam. I didn't know how much he knew. Better for me to tell it my way, I thought, than to get sideswiped by a question that I was going to have to answer anyway.

“Then I took State Highway 87 South, in the direction of I-40 and Winslow,” I said. “And before I got to I-40 I stopped at the overlook for a view of the Painted Desert.”

“The Scenic Overlook Park?” he said. “You saw Jody's car and Mike Early's truck—that's what you're telling me?”

It was clear that he hadn't known, at least not for certain. I went to the door, looking out at the setting sun, feeling tricked, and I had been tricked. I had tricked myself by making the wrong assumption. It was easy to do, and I tried not lose focus by blaming myself.

“You saw what they were doing then,” Sam said.

“I didn't see much of anything. I saw Mike sitting in the truck but not Jody. I didn't know what they were doing.”

“No conclusions you came to? Nothing you wondered about it, her car next to his, only Mike Early you could see?”

“I wondered, but I didn't know.”

I looked down at the model airplane I had put on the side table next to the couch. With one part of my mind I was realizing it was too damaged. I should have seen that. There was no fixing it.

“So you saw their vehicles, and you saw Mike Early,” Sam said. “What did you do?”

“I drove to the other end of the parking lot, backed into a space, and waited for them to leave.”

“Why?”

“I didn't know what else to do,” I said.

“Then you followed them to Winslow?”

I could see on Sam's face what he was thinking and imagining. I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to have people who know you look at you and see a different person. But there was no point in telling him that. He would hear it not from me, but from the person I had become to him. The person I was and always had been was no longer present—not to him.

“I waited before driving to Winslow,” I said. “Jody and Mike left at the same time. I figured Mike would leave town, since he had already . . . since they were where they were, rather than at her house, and since they had driven to the overlook separately.”

“Then you went looking for her?”

“I went to her house and saw that her car wasn't there,” I said. “I waited a while. Then I went in search of her, driving past her mother's
trailer, driving through the parking lot of Bojo's and PT's, then going back to her house. I parked down the street and waited, and darkness came and she didn't come home.”

“You waited how long?”

“I don't know. An hour and a half, maybe two hours. Then I made the same circuit again, adding the hospital, just in case . . . When I went back to her street the house was dark, and her car wasn't there.”

“You must have been angry all this time,” Sam said.

“I was a lot of things,” I said.

We heard the dogs barking, then Lee's Jeep on the gravel, the slamming of doors, the boys' voices. It was as if I were listening to strangers.

“A lot of things like what?” Sam said. “What else were you feeling?”

“I was worried,” I said. “That's the relevant thing. Anything could have been happening to her. I drove back to the overlook, to where I had seen her car last, but it was closed. There was a chain across the road. I went in on foot, and the parking lot was empty. Deserted. I drove back to Winslow and sat in front of her house until eleven.”

“Just sat there, all that time? Never saw her? Never saw anybody?”

“I began to think that she was probably with somebody else now, somebody I didn't know, and here I was worrying about her.”

Sam was watching me. He was overweight but muscular beneath. He had the kind of build I would have liked to have had.

“So you did what?” he said.

“I drove home in the middle of the night. Didn't stop for gas. Didn't stop anywhere. I would have, Sam, if I had known she was going to be murdered and I would be blamed. But I can't see into the future. I never have been able to.”

“Let me tell you something interesting,” he said. “Mike Early got a phone call when he was in Snowflake. Seven thirty in the morning on April 25. From a pay phone in Holbrook.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Said it was from somebody he worked with in Paradise Valley, who happened to be up in Holbrook.”

“Maybe it was,” I said.

“I had somebody check with his co-workers, and it wasn't. This is a pretty big coincidence, isn't it? Jody's dead, her car's left in Holbrook, and here he gets this phone call from Holbrook, and the three of you all know each other so well that you saw the two of them together the afternoon before, which was not too many hours before Jody was killed.”

“I'm not responsible for coincidences.”

Sam looked at me for half a minute or so before he spoke, and I looked directly back at him. I felt like he was daring me to look away, like we were kids in a staring contest. I didn't like eye contact much, unless it was with somebody I trusted, the way I used to trust Sam. That I had trusted him once no longer seemed possible. In fact, I wondered if I were remembering wrong.

“The lying, the keeping information from me, Nate,” he said, “makes it impossible for me to think that you're telling me the truth now, or at least the whole truth.”

“You think I can't see the doubt on your face?”

“You can't understand that?” he said. “It doesn't seem logical to you?”

“I suppose it seems logical.”

“Is there any justification you can give me for the lies?” Sam said. “Anything that would make sense to me?”

I looked out the window at the light in Lee and Julie's kitchen spilling onto the gravel. Whenever I came for a visit, that light was the first thing I would see, and for half a second I was as heartbroken as anybody could be.

“What I think and feel,” I said, “my relationship with Jody—none of that is your business or Lee's or anybody else's. I've told you that. It's my right to tell you what I want and no more than that. It's my duty to myself, even. But I didn't kill Jody, and I've told you both that, too, from the beginning. Even if you can't believe that, Sam, Lee should.”