Jesse returned to the boy’s bureau and dug through his undergarments. He pulled out the picture he’d found days earlier.
The boy, he assumed was Stephen Kaiser, stood next to a young woman with tangled blonde hair. She held a tall walking stick in her hand. They were at odds, these two, an unlikely friendship, and yet he could see they were friends. They leaned into each other as they stood, a warmth, even an intimacy jumping off the page.
On the back of the photo written in black cursive he read: Stephen and Liv, August 1945.
A leather bag hung over the girl’s shoulder with feathers sticking out. They were not hawk’s feathers, more like a crow’s. They were long and black.
Still, he felt sure the spell contained the writing of these two young people.
A noise from within the closet startled him, and he dropped the photograph. It drifted down, seemed to catch a breeze and slipped beneath the closet door.
He had no reason to retrieve it. No further clues could be discovered in the young faces of Stephen and Liv, but he shuffled forward just the same.
With a deep breath that he hoped might still the turmoil within him, he pulled open the closet door.
The trunk sat unmoving, the lid ajar, revealing only a crevice of darkness. A dry rustling seemed to come from within the chest.
Something pale reached from the dark opening.
“Dear God, no…” he breathed as a slender hand slid from the truck and clutched the edge, as if the person inside intended to push herself up and step from the chest.
Jesse blundered backwards. His legs hit the bed, and he leapt away as if the wood frame might burn him. He started for the door, made it as far as the hallway, and then stopped.
“She’s dead,” he whispered, and the thickness - the stifling warmth that left him struggling for breath — loosened and scattered.
He walked back into the room and stared at the chest exposed in the closet. The lid was closed, and no cadaverous hand reached out. A skeleton lay in the chest, not a flesh-and-blood woman with a solid hand adorned with glittering rings.
He did not know what lay between the realms of God and man, but something existed, something that could conjure a solid hand from the emptiness. Something that wanted him, Jesse Kaminski, to take notice.
Jesse had not intended to take the money, but the woman in the trunk had invaded his brain like a cancer, and it seemed to be spreading fast.
For the first time since his wife and son died, he had a purpose, and if he was going to follow it to its conclusion, he needed wheels. He’d also spent the better part of the night convincing himself that the woman wanted him to take the money. Could it have been sheer chance that it had been left behind? No, he decided, some series of events put the money in that drawer, so that someday justice could be delivered for the dead woman.
He bought a used Chevy for two hundred dollars from a car lot decorated with bright red flags.
Afterward, he pulled into Quarry’s Pub.
Jesse slid onto a barstool and offered a half-wave to the bartender.
“Back for more, eh?” the bartender asked, wiping spilled beer from the counter in front of Jesse.
Jesse nodded.
“Old-fashioned?” the bartender asked.
“Yeah, thanks.”
The same drunk Jesse had encountered days earlier sat two stools away. He offered Jesse a bleary look and a grin.
“Still fixin’ to buy that ol’ house in the woods?” the man asked.
Jesse shrugged, shook the ice cubes in his glass and took a sip.
“Maybe. Course, I’d have to track down the owners first, and that’s working out to be a mighty pain in the backside.”
The bartender refilled Bart’s glass.
“I was asking around about the Kaisers and heard a strange tale about another girl who went missing around the same time. Veronica Medawar?” Jesse asked.
The bartender frowned and shook his head.
“Terrible tragedy right there. She up and disappeared on Halloween night, her senior year of high school. I was a few years graduated by then, but the town was abuzz over that girl’s disappearance.”
“No one knows what happened to her?”
“The family insisted somebody took her, but the police speculated she ended up in the Dead Stream. It’s fast-moving and if you fall in, especially at night, you’re a goner.”
“But they never found her body?”
“She wouldn’t be the first to go into that river and disappear,” Punchie admitted.
The drunk leaned over.
“Lost two cousins to that river ma ’self. Brothers by the names of Charlie and Grady. Went fishin’ one day and never came back. They found Charlie’s body tangled in a tree about three miles from where the boys went in, but never a trace of Grady.”
Jesse thought of the Dead Stream. He hadn’t swam in it, but he found it hard to believe the current could have taken so many lives.
“Why would the girl be near the river on Halloween?” he asked.
The bartender spoke with his back turned.
“Kids followed the river all the time. It was faster than the road. Bonfires in the woods, that kind of thing. She was all dressed up like she was going to a fancy party. Some people suspect she was meeting a boy. That’s just talk, though. Nobody knows.”
“Is it still an open case?” Jesse asked.
Bart spurted beer and guffawed.
“What do you think this is, New York City? We don’t have no detectives in Gaylord. And ain’t no big city hotshots comin’ in here to dig a river for a girl disappeared twenty years ago. No sir, it ain’t an open case.”
The bartender rolled his eyes at the man.
“I’d guess they’ll call it open until that girl’s body shows up. If it ever does.”
“But the Kaiser boy and his friend disappeared then, too?”
The bartender gave him a funny look and shook his head.
“The Kaiser kid was already off to college by then. His little girlfriend probably run off with him. I’ve got to wonder at your interest in all this?”
Jesse smiled and finished his drink.
“I told ya before, I’m a curious guy.”
“How curious is ya?” Bart asked, leaning heavily toward Jesse and giving him a wink. “That right there is the Medawar girl’s big brother.” He hooked a thumb toward a man sitting alone at a small table.
Jesse recognized the cook from The Silver Spoon Diner.
“What’s he drinking?” he asked the bartender.
“Bud,” Punchie told him, “but I don’t advise goin’ over and diggin’ all this up ‘cause you’re curious. That’s a tormented man, right there. He’s liable to give ya a fist in the mouth for your troubles.”
“I’ll take a Bud and another old-fashioned,” Jesse said, standing up.
He took the drinks and ambled over to the man who sat half-watching a baseball game on a television perched in the corner.
“Buy ya a drink?” Jesse asked, offering the beer.
The man looked at it suspiciously, shooting a glance toward Punchie, who nodded at him.
“Sure,” he grumbled and downed the rest of his own beer before accepting the one in Jesse’s hand.
“Mind if I sit?” Jesse asked, pulling back a chair.
The man sighed and shrugged.
“I don’t own the place.”
“I’m Jesse Kaminski,” Jesse told him, offering a hand which the man didn’t shake. “I’m in town on business.”
“I seen you around,” the man told him, continuing to watch the game.
“I noticed the missing poster for your sister, Veronica at your diner.”