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Eddie scratched his chin. “So let me get this straight. April and I got married in Ann Arbor—which you can also verify—and made reservations for our honeymoon. We did all of this with the purpose of coming to a deserted road in the middle of the night, where we somehow knew a young lady would be, and killed her. Then, instead of driving off and getting away with it—because no one would ever know it was us—we drove her to the hospital. That was our plan?”
“We’re close to the interstate now,” was Quentin’s only reply.
I was looking out the window, trying to recognize the landscape. I thought it looked familiar in daylight, but I couldn’t be sure. It had all been so strange last night—the light we’d seen in the trees, the dark road. The scratchy country music. The leaves stirring behind Rhonda Jean when I’d rolled down the window to talk to her. The fact that Eddie hadn’t wanted me to get out of the car. Had we really been going the wrong way?
Detective Beam made a turn, and then we were on the interstate, which was nearly deserted at this time of morning on a weekday. The sun was all the way up now, heating the blacktop. Beam picked up speed.
The detectives were silent, the tension thick in the car. Eddie and I had stopped for a hamburger, I remembered. But that must have been much earlier. Wasn’t it?
“Up here,” Eddie said, his voice calm, his expression flat behind his sunglasses. “We made the turnoff up here.”
“There’s no sign,” Detective Beam pointed out.
“We didn’t have the map out. I thought this was the right direction.”
“And yet,” Quentin said, “we found an unfolded map on the floor of your car.”
“That was after we realized we were lost,” Eddie said. “April took out the map.”
Beam made the turnoff, and the noise of the interstate vanished quickly behind us. We were on a two-lane road lined with trees, and everything clicked into place. I remembered this.
Detective Beam slowed the car as Detective Quentin said, “Please point out where you found the young woman last night.”
Eddie was silent. We cruised slowly down the road, the harsh sunlight dappling between the leaves overhead. I remembered how dark it had been, except for that one strange light that we couldn’t explain. It should have been a less frightening place in daylight, but it wasn’t. There were no other cars, no wind, no houses, no sign of life. I had the sudden urge to tell Beam to go faster.
Eddie squeezed my hand briefly—a signal. I looked out the window and saw the stand of trees where we’d seen the light last night.
“It was somewhere up here,” Eddie said. “Right, April?”
My voice was rough from being silent so long. “Yes, I think so. Right along here.”
Beam slowed the car. “Was she on the right shoulder or the left?”
“Right,” Eddie said.
“Did she have her thumb out?”
“No. She was just walking, real slow and not very steady. We thought she might be drunk. We also thought she was a boy at first.”
Beam pulled over, and we all got out of the car. The cruiser pulled up behind us, and Officer Syed and his partner got out. “Were there any landmarks that you recall?” Quentin asked.
My sneakers crunched on the gravel of the shoulder as I turned in place, looking around. “It was so dark,” I said, answering Quentin.
They asked more questions—did we get out of the car? What exactly did Rhonda Jean say?—as we walked along the shoulder of the road. Quentin made a brief gesture to the uniformed cops, and they spread out ahead of us, scanning the ground for blood or any other clues.
The emptiness on Atticus Line was so complete it was like a deafening noise. I’d never seen a road like this—so empty of people, so empty of anything, that it felt like a void. What was this place? Where had Rhonda Jean come from, standing here in the middle of the night in the silence? How far had she walked? Where had she been going?
Who was she? Where was home?
And who had been out on this road last night, trying to run us down?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beam, sweating in his suit, spread his map on the hood of the Cutlass again, making marks with a ballpoint pen. The young, blond, uniformed cop crossed to the other side of Atticus Line, scanning the other shoulder. Eddie stood with his hands in his jeans pockets, staring down the empty road, lost in thought. I kept picturing Rhonda Jean in that oversize coat, holding it closed over the blood covering her body. I left the road and started walking into the trees.
“Mrs.Carter,” I heard Quentin call behind me. Then I heard footsteps jogging through the grass, and Officer Syed was walking next to me.
“Best not to piss him off,” he said in a low voice, though we were too far away for Quentin to hear.
