“I’ve got a story for you.”
Abe sat back, folded his hands on the table, and surveyed the man.
“About one of the missing girls?”
“Yeah, Susie.”
“Did you know her?”
The man shook his head, spotted the waitress and gave her a wave.
“Can I get a coffee, ma’am? One cream, two sugars.”
“Pot’s ‘bout ready to pour. Give me a sec, hon,” Mona told him.
He returned his gaze to Abe.
“Let me get this outta the way first. I ain’t a liar. I don’t take drugs, and I only drink a couple times a month on the weekends, when my wife permits it.” He laughed and Abe joined him. “Lord, that woman is hard on me, but I love her anyway.” He shook his head, but Abe could see real affection for the wife he spoke of.
“I have an open mind,” Abe told him, careful not to lead the man by asking him a question.
“I drive for a livin’. Long-haul truckin’. Wife and kids are in Minnesota.”
The man paused when his coffee arrived.
“Thanks, doll,” he told Mona before taking a long drink and draining half the cup, which Abe imagined was a tad on the hot side. The man didn’t seem to notice.
“Last summer, mid-August I reckon, I was heading up M-22 for Northport. You know the route?”
“Sure, yeah. On the east or west side of the peninsula?”
“West side, by the big lake.”
Abe knew the journey; a beautiful, winding route that took in blowout views of Lake Michigan, towering sand dunes and dense wilderness.
“It was late, real late, after midnight. South of Leland in that dark stretch of forest where the trees crowd in, and you’ve got a hair-pin curve every half a mile; I come around one of those curves, and about bugged my eyes outta my head, ‘cause a little blonde girl stood on the side of the road.”
“A little girl?” Abe scrunched his brow.
“A young woman, you’d call her, but a little bitty thing. She didn’t have a thumb out, but she watched me with eyes as big as saucers in my headlights, and I figured she needed help. I pulled right over and rolled my window down, told her to hop in. She did. I drove on a bit, asked her name. Susie, she told me. I asked what on God’s earth had her wandering that road in the middle of the night, but…“ He paused and leaned in. “She vanished.”
“She vanished?”
The man stared at him hard now, no sign of laughter in his face. Something else had replaced his look - unease, edging towards fear.
“I looked at her seat so long, I about missed my next curve and sent that truck flying into a ravine.”
“I’m sorry,” Abe said. “Mr.…?”
“Name’s Jim.”
“Okay, Jim. I don’t know if you read the story about Susie, but she disappeared three years ago, in August 1972.”
“Oh, I read it, all right. I spilled half a cup of coffee down myself.” Jim held up his arm, where Abe spotted a shiny red welt on his wrist.
“But you believe you picked Susie up in your truck? Are you saying she’s alive and well and hitchhiking the Leelanau Peninsula?”
“Didn’t you listen to my story? She got in my truck and disappeared. She ain’t alive and well.”
Abe tried to erase the skepticism huddling at the back of his mind.
“You think it was her ghost?”
“I ain’t no candy-ass, but I had goosebumps the size of golf balls that night. She had on a yellow t-shirt with a red mouth on it, dark shorts. My wife doesn’t own those clothes, my kids don’t either. If I imagined her, I’d sure as shit like to figure out how I came up with that weird shirt. And another thing, she was only wearing one shoe.”
Abe frowned.
Susan’s parents weren’t sure what she’d been wearing, though Liz had insisted a yellow Rolling Stones t-shirt was missing from a stack of clean laundry she’d put in her room, as well as her white tennis shoes. Missing posters included the possibility of the yellow shirt and shorts, but not the missing shoe. Kids had discovered Susan’s shoe in a wooded area near her home, four months after her disappearance.
“You’ve got a pretty good memory of what she wore.” Abe’s palms grew sweaty. If the man knew about the missing shoe, it implied something very sinister indeed. Some criminals confessed cryptically, and others liked to put themselves in the middle of an investigation. Was this their man?
“My headlights lit her up like a Christmas tree. Sure as eggs is eggs, I remember. I’d been looking at trees for hours and it was a dark night. That’s not the kind of thing you forget. Especially a young girl missing a shoe.”
“Did you tell anyone about the girl that night? Call the police?”
“Hell, no.” Jim shook his head as if he could hardly believe the question. “Not five miles down the road, I pulled off and got a room. I’d been driving eighteen straight hours. I thought maybe…”
“Your mind was playing tricks on you?”
Jim nodded.
“But now, a year later, you’re convinced you saw Susie?”
Jim put his large hands on the table and leaned in.
“I know it. You hear me, kid? It was her. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on her picture in the paper.”
“Jim, can you tell me where you were on the day Susie disappeared, August 27th, 1972?”
Jim drained his coffee, slapped a dollar on the table and stood, not giving Abe a second look as he strode to the parking lot.
Abe studied the large hauler truck parked at the edge of the lot.
When Jim climbed into the cab, Abe hurried out the door, staying out of sight of Jim’s mirrors. He wrote down the license plate number.
Abe listened to his messages, several tips with return call numbers. The fourth call made him stop cold.
“Hello? I’m calling for the reporter - Abraham Whatever. I just want to tell you that Susie girl isn’t dead. I nearly hit her on M-22 - not two weeks ago, in the middle of the night. She was hitchhikin’ like a nitwit. If I’d a known she was causin’ all this grief, I would have picked her up and taken her to the cops.” The woman rattled off her phone number and hung up.
Abe continued to play his messages, but scarcely listened.
He rewound back to the fourth call and played it a second time and then a third.
The woman answered on the third ring.
“Mullers’ residence.”
“Shannon Muller?”
“Yes!” She huffed.
In the background, Abe heard a small child crying.
“I’m sorry, am I calling at a bad time?”
“It’s never a good time around here. Got both my grandkids clawing at each other like pack wolves over some nonsense toy from a cereal box. Who thought putting a toy in there to begin with was a good idea? Timothy,” she barked. “You let go of your sister’s hair this instant, or I’ll paddle your bottom and throw that toy in the trash.”
More crying, followed by a thump, and the line quieted. He waited, wondering if she’d hung up.
“Sorry. Shooed ‘em out the door. My daughter’s raising downright heathens.”
“I’m calling because you left me a message, Mrs. Muller. I’m Abraham Sevett with Up North News.”
“Yes, well, I’m not sure I can add more. Just figured you all should know the girl you’re so worried about is hookin’ her thumb on the peninsula. Probably doesn’t wanna go home and do her chores.”
Abe planted a hand on his table and imagined Liz Miner, her drawn face, the haunted look in her eyes.
“Can you describe the incident for me? The time and date, and what she was wearing?”