Bess’s hand snaked into her jeans pocket, fingers curling around the pepper spray. “I want to know what I’m doing here.”
“Okay, now, here’s the thing,” Greg said, grinning. “Now don’t be angry with me, Bess. Promise me you won’t be angry with me?”
The steady thump of Bess’s heart picked up. “There’s no journal, is there?”
“Aw, now, Bess. You guessed. I was going to do a big reveal and you ruined it.” Greg was still smiling at her, his voice light, as if he was building up to a great punch line.
“I’m leaving,” Bess said. Her brain was setting off all the internal alarms. Her vision tunneled as she stepped back toward the door.
“No!” Greg barked. “Now Bess, I needed to hear what’s going on with you. But not there. Not with the old woman hanging around. Tell me what you know. Tell me what you told the police.” He moved toward her.
“Amy’s been contacting me. Through my radio. The one I showed you.”
“Fuck,” Greg muttered.
“I don’t know how she sends them.”
“You know if they find me, you’re caught.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
There was a sudden bang that made Bess jump and cry out. She turned to Greg, at first thinking he must have hit something, then realized he hadn’t made the sound at all. It had come from below them. Somewhere around the middle of the living room floor, something was knocking, rustling.
“I thought you didn’t have a basement,” Bess said.
“I don’t. It’s raccoons in the crawlspace. They get down there and tear shit apart.”
“Amy?” Bess screamed the name as loud as she could.
“What the fuck, Bess? What the fuck are you doing?”
“Amy! I’m here, Amy!”
The rustling below them quieted. Bess tried to run forward into the house, but Greg grabbed her around the waist and slung her easily back toward the door. “You couldn’t wait to run out of here a second ago, now you’re trying to get in,” he said, laughing.
“She’s here, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bess.” He grabbed her wrist. “So which is it? In or out? Because I think we should really talk some things out.”
“Let me go.”
“Are you sure?” Greg leaned down, his face only inches from hers.
“Fuck off, Greg.”
Bess pulled the pepper spray from her jeans pocket. She closed her eyes tight and held her breath as she sprayed blindly toward Greg’s face. As soon as his grip on her wrist loosened she turned and fled from the house. Her eyes were still closed and she tripped immediately on the steps and fell, her knees hitting the ground hard. The breath she’d been holding whooshed out of her in a sharp wail of pain. Forcing herself to ignore the throbbing in her knees, she pushed up to her feet and ran down the street as fast as her legs would take her.
She heard someone behind her, a man shouting her name. She still had the pepper spray held tight in her hand. The man was gaining on her, she felt him behind her, close enough to touch her. Summoning all her courage, she glanced back over her shoulder.
Detective Howland was on her heels. The sight of him startled her so much she tripped again. The pepper spray shot across the street as her fingers spread and she tried to catch herself. Detective Howland rammed into her, whether on purpose or accident Bess couldn’t tell. Her cheek mashed into the loose grit of the sidewalk and Howland’s weight pressed the air out of her body.
Within seconds he was off of her, but Bess couldn’t move. Her lungs were burning, her muscles were jelly.
“Are you okay?” the detective asked. He was on his knees next to her, gingerly brushing her hair back from her face.
“He’s got Amy,” Bess gasped. “He has her in the basement.”
“Shhhh, you’re okay. Don’t try to talk. Can you sit up?”
Bess sat up slowly and turned her head away from him, trying to hide the tears that flowed down her soft brown cheeks. “Where did you come from?”
“Winnie Tate called me after you left the historical society. She was worried. Said you said something about the river.” He was huffing lightly, out of breath.
Bess scampered over and retrieved her pepper spray. “I was with a man named Greg Leeds. He lives right down the street. He’s Amy Eckhardt’s boyfriend.”
“Really?” he said, stunned. “I wasn’t aware Amy Eckhardt had a boyfriend.”
“How could you not know that?” Bess asked.
“Well, how do you know this man?” he asked, avoiding the question.
“We… dated.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly feeling defensive. She stood up and brushed herself off, feeling momentarily superior until Detective Howland also stood up and towered over her. “It was one date.” Her cheeks were burning.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” He smiled at her. “Look, why don’t I drive you home?”
“What about Greg Leeds?”
“We can talk more about it in the car. I’ll radio it in, get someone down here.”
“My car’s right there,” Bess told him, pointing to the parking lot where she’d left it. It was only a few feet away.
Howland looked at the lot and then back down the street. “Well do you want to talk in your car? I can call about Greg Leeds on my cell if you’d like. But we really do need to discuss some things.”
“Don’t you want to look for Amy?” Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.
“Let’s talk first.”
Bess allowed herself to be led toward her car. Detective Howland opened the driver’s side door for her and she got in without a word. There had once been a few stores along Aviary—a tiny grocery, movie rentals, a small curio shop—but all these had been closed for decades now, only their hulled-out shells remained, a reminder of the way life used to be, when communities were closer and lives more connected.
As promised, Howland contacted dispatch and had cars sent to Greg’s house. Bess didn’t know the address, but she described it to Howland and he relayed it to the dispatcher. The two looked through the dash and out toward the river. It was calm and muddy like the rain-filled tread mark of a humongous pickup truck.
“So, what was all this about?” Howland asked. “Winnie Tate thought you were going to throw yourself into the river or something.”
“Why would she think that?”
“You tell me. She said you were raving, not making any sense. And I find you hysterical out there on the street. What were you running from, Bess?”
“Greg Leeds. He attacked me.” Her voice was dull. All the feeling had drained from her, maybe from the adrenaline rush earlier.
Scott Howland sighed and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the car console. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Would you like one?”
“No thanks, I quit.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Do you know who Irene Bolam is?” Bess asked, her eyes far away.
“I don’t believe I do.”
“She was a banker in New York. She died in 1982.”
“Well, that explains why I don’t know her,” he said, exhaling.
“Some people thought she was Amelia Earhart. They thought that she’d been found in a Japanese prison and repatriated back to the United States, but was given a new identity. There are some books about it.”
“Is that what you think? That this banker was really Earhart?”
“Nope. I think Amelia Earhart died on a fucking island. But it’s a neat idea, huh? A whole new life where you can watch and listen to people theorize about you. And only you would know.” Bess blinked rapidly against the sunlight off the river. “You could take the biggest mistake of your life and forget it. Start fresh.”