The Road to You (22 page)

She started packing up her landlord’s projector. “But they weren’t able to fix the car. The part they needed wasn’t in stock and, with the Bicentennial, they weren’t going to be able to buy it until Tuesday at the earliest. So, they left Gideon’s car at the motel and took Ben’s Oldsmobile into Crescent Cove, driving through the center of town and, finally, getting to Bonner Mill.”

She fiddled with the white leader tape on the Super 8 reel then stared at us both for a long moment. “Look, I got all of this secondhand on a day that was the most awful one of my entire life…but I remember it. I remember exactly what your brothers said. That’s what you asked for, right?” She met Donovan’s eye.

He nodded.

And I said, “I know it’s hard to remember all of this stuff, but it’s helping us to understand. Just tell us what you know.”

“Okay,” she said. “So, when they finally got to the mill, it was getting dark and it was a woodsy area without much light. But they could make out Treak’s car, so they parked behind it, and they noticed there was another vehicle in the lot. They could hear voices coming from inside the mill. At first, they thought it was just Ben and Treak talking really loudly to each other, but they soon realized there was a third man and that he was shouting at the other guys. Gideon and Jeremy hunted for a flashlight so they could see better outside, and tried to decide how serious the argument was. Bad enough for a fist fight to break out? Or bad enough that their friends might needed the help of the authorities?”

She paused. “They finally found a flashlight in Ben’s glove compartment and got out of the car. When they did, they saw that the other vehicle had markings on the sides. It was a police car. They were worried about Ben and Treak getting in trouble for trespassing. Or, maybe, that it was illegal to film home movies in a privately owned building or something. But as they got closer, they heard Ben yelling at someone. And Gideon told me that Treak shouted that he had
notes
on the guy, and that the truth would come out.”

She took several deep and steadying breaths. “The next thing they heard was a series of blasts. And, suddenly, Jeremy said they could see more than they’d wanted to because parts of the mill were on fire, and there were more explosions still happening.”

Donovan put his head against his fist and closed his eyes. “Then what?” he whispered.

“Then they ran back to Ben’s car just as the cop came racing out of the building—setting more bombs off behind him and carrying Ben’s movie camera. Your brothers didn’t get a clear look at the man’s face, and they didn’t think he got much of a look at theirs either. They said everything was in shadows. But he must have recognized immediately that Gideon and Jeremy were live witnesses to his crime. So, he lit a pipe bomb filled with gun powder and flung it at them. It landed just a few feet in front of them, on Treak’s Chevy, and pretty much torched half the car.”

My bottom lip was raw and bleeding from biting it. More dirty cops. I hated them all. “But, obviously, our brothers got away from that crazy policeman and made it here,” I said. “He didn’t try to follow them after that, did he?”

“Actually, he did,” Amy Lynn said. “But they’d had a tiny lead on him and, eventually, were able to lose him. They didn’t dare go back toward Crescent Cove, or even Ashburn Falls, though, because the cop probably got a good enough look at the car’s make and model and very likely caught the numbers on the plates.”

Donovan’s jaw was clenched, but he was nodding. “The cop would run the plates with dispatch and Ben Rainwater’s name and address would turn up. He’d figure out in no time, since he’d just killed Ben, that someone else had to be behind the wheel. Our brothers were so sociable. So open and friendly.” He said it almost like it was an indictment. “In a small town like Crescent Cove, it would take less than ten minutes of talking to people at the bar to figure out that Gideon and Jeremy had been with Ben…to find out their names, what type of car they drove, where they were from.”

“Right,” Amy Lynn said. “So, of course, they were too afraid to go back to get their car or to even think about driving home to Minnesota. With Ben and Treak dead, they didn’t have anyone they could trust in the area. They thought a cop as dirty as that one might keep trying to kill them or, if that didn’t work, he might try to frame
them
for the Bonner Mill explosion. As it was, that cop somehow managed to get police records to show that Treak’s car had been eviscerated in a ‘crash’ that I don’t think ever happened…at least not if your brothers were telling me the truth, and I believe they were.”

She shook her head angrily. “I really think your brothers were right to run. They didn’t stop until they got to Milwaukee. That’s when they called me from a payphone downtown. And where, I later learned, they stole the Illinois plates off a parked car at a motel before they left the city. To make themselves harder to trace that night.”

I let out a long breath I’d been holding. Yeah. My brother and his best friend were clever that way. No one asleep at a motel would notice a missing license plate, at least not until the next morning. It would buy the guys a few hours of driving without worry and, since they were heading into Illinois, it would make Ben’s car as inconspicuous as possible there. How many white Oldsmobiles with Illinois plates were traveling on those very same roads that night? Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

“So, the reason you have the film was because it was in Ben’s car, right?” I said, already visualizing the events as they happened to my brother and Donovan’s and how, with every mile they drove, Gideon and Jeremy must have discovered something new about their circumstances. Their many losses…and, yet, their few unexpected resources.

“Exactly,” she replied. “It was in the trunk, along with one of Treak’s folders. I guess he’d left it there when they were transferring Ben’s film equipment to his car to take to the mill. From what Jeremy told me, Treak had a stack of folders in his trunk, too, which were blown up that night, as well as a bunch of notes that were still in his motel room. And I, of course, knew how many papers he’d kept in files in our Chicago apartment. The police carted out all of them before the holiday weekend was over, so I’d guess that anything Treak may have left at that motel in Ashburn Falls would have been confiscated almost immediately.”

“Along with Gideon’s car,” Donovan added.

Amy Lynn nodded. “Probably, yeah.”

Nothing just “probably” about it.

I’d always wondered why there had never been any reports about my brother’s Ford Galaxie being spotted or recovered anywhere. I could only imagine how quickly his car could have been found and, then, made to “disappear.” How much easier and without raising questions it would have been to simply complete Gideon, Jeremy and Treak’s transactions in Ashburn Falls. To clean out their motel rooms, which most likely had already been paid for in cash. To have a duplicate set of keys made and to turn those in instead, dropping them in the outside box before check-out time the next day.

No one would think anything of it.

And if the names or descriptions of three out-of-towners were to come up later, well, sure, these men might have visited, but then they’d left. After all, who stayed around those parts for long if they didn’t have to?

“What did they say they were going to do next, after they left Chicago?” Donovan asked. “Did they tell you?”

“Not in any detail,” she admitted. “They both agreed that they’d wanted to warn me, given what they saw happen to Treak and Ben, and they wanted to get the hell out of Crescent Cove that night. But they were still feeling their way through the next steps. Gideon said they would’ve liked to go straight home, or at least call their parents. But they needed to figure out who was behind the bombings so that they didn’t walk into a trap and get arrested for a crime they didn’t commit, especially since they didn’t have any alibis who were alive. They were afraid it wouldn’t be safe yet—either for them or for their families—to head back to Minnesota. But they said what Treak was investigating had a Missouri connection as well as a Wisconsin one, and I could tell Gideon was curious about that.”

“So they were going to drive there?” I flipped through my brother’s journal. After Chicago, the next page didn’t list a place that I recognized, but on the page after that were the words “Cardinal Town.”

Ah, yes. St. Louis.

I showed the entry to Amy Lynn and Donovan.

“That may have been their next stop,” she said.

Donovan made no comment about that. Instead, he asked, “Did they tell you anything more? Call you later?”

“Nope. They left the film reel and the notes folder with me that afternoon. Said not to share them with anyone else unless they gave the okay or said it was safe. But I didn’t hear from them again until I got that first postcard from Gideon. And that was months later. In September.” She shot Donovan an apologetic looked laced with something else. Longing? Regret? “I never got any notes at all from Jeremy.”

But she desperately wished she had.

I knew this now, finally understanding something important about Amy Lynn. About why she kept looking so searchingly at Donovan’s face. About why she’d commented immediately on his resemblance to his brother.

Yes, when Gideon and Jeremy met with her two summers ago, she’d still been in shock by the news of Treak’s death and wasn’t immediately ready to move on. But, in spite of it all, and in the months then years that followed, she’d thought about our brothers often. About Jeremy specifically. She’d been attracted to him. And—it was so clearly written on her face that I marveled at how I’d missed it before—she’d hoped he’d write to her again. Call her. Visit.

But he hadn’t.

Why
hadn’t he?

Donovan wasn’t asking her about that, though. Either he’d failed to see her signals or he was ignoring them. Neither reason would have surprised me. He did, however, bring up something I should have asked sooner.

“Aren’t Ben Rainwater’s mom and his sister here in Chicago?” Donovan said. “We were told by a few different people that they’d moved here.”

Amy Lynn shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never met them or heard from them. Chicago is a big city, which is why I can still live here. It’s easier to hide out in a cast of millions than it would be to try to blend into a small town. I’ve never run into anyone yet who knew me as Chelsea Carew.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Not that I was famous or anything. And I work behind a desk now, mostly stuffing envelopes and filing papers, so I don’t meet a lot of new people.”

I thought about this. Considering how Ben’s cousin was the one storing the pipe bombs, even if Ronny didn’t actually detonate them, maybe there was some fear on Jeremy and Gideon’s part about ever contacting Ben’s family and explaining to them the details of his death. Whoever was responsible for killing Ben may have been keeping a close eye on the movements of his immediate relatives.

Donovan looked like he had the headache from hell, but I watched him working to keep an open mind about everything he was hearing. What I’d intuitively accepted from the moment I found my brother’s journal—that we’d been lied to by the police, that our brothers were still alive, that there was much, much more to this story than we’d ever imagined—was not as natural for Donovan to wrap his brain around.

So, I admired him for his efforts. For being willing to rethink something so fundamental about what he’d believed. For taking a pure leap of faith, however atypical of him. And for saying to me, “Well, Aurora, I suppose you want to go to St. Louis now, huh?”

A
FTER WE’D
said goodbye to Amy Lynn, thanking her for all she’d done for us—not to mention the kindness and trust she’d shown our brothers—and swapping contact information, we emerged into the dazzling sunlight of a hot summer Sunday and got settled in Donovan’s car.

He pulled out his road atlas and plopped it into my lap. “You get to navigate on this one.”

I flipped it open in surprise. Considering his ingrained aversion to asking anyone for directions, this was a sign of great progress.

He started the engine. “If we get lost, it’s on your head, Nancy Drew.”

I glared at him. “Stop calling me that.”

“Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,” he mocked.

“Oh, you’re real mature,” I said, but he continued with his mockery. I knew he needed an outlet, a little levity, something—especially after all the grave, life-changing information we’d just gotten. I was beginning to learn his patterns. He would need to munch on something, and he wouldn’t be able to discuss anything seriously for a couple of hours at least. Good thing we had snacks in the car and a five-hour drive ahead of us.