“If the tape wasn’t taken into trial, do you know where it might be?”
He paused. She could feel him thinking—she was down to twelve days already and focusing on material that was probably irrelevant. The bar was over an hour away from the crime scene, and the witnesses there had been thoroughly interviewed. None of it had anything to do with Betty Dubois.
“No,” he said.
By the time Ruby got back to the airport, she had learned that the Pickleweed police kept their archives in old limestone vaults outside of town.
Ruby kept everything she needed for quick trips in her bag. There was her laptop, a digital camera, a change of clothes, and her toiletries. The bag was made of old leather, thick and creased. Emptied of belongings, it made a nice pillow, and even now, when she smelled it, she thought of memories both peaceful and sharp.
“Can I help you?” the man at the ticket counter asked.
“Atlanta, your soonest flight,” she said.
“I’ve seen you before,” the man said, smiling. He had on a pale pink shirt and looked like a happy man.
“I’m sure you have,” she said.
9.
At age fourteen, Desirée discovered the edge of the world. It lay not in the graves or the expectation of nothing, or the fat moon in a black dog sky.
It lay with him.
He bent over her, whispering. The whispers didn’t matter. What did was that they came from him and were directed at her: secret messages just for her. Love messages. He stroked her, through her dress, until she squirmed and felt a release, and all of love expanded into a pulsating aura. It was almost painful.
“Desire,” he said, as if that were her name.
“I told you, I can’t.”
They had been playing this game, if that was what it was, since that day in the woods. Bit by bit, glance by moment, week by week, he had gained her trust. He had excited her, until now she was full grown, or so he said, and was sneaking out in the middle of the night to dothiswith him, in the shadows of the woods not far from where her mother lay buried.
He had his own room in the poorhouse. But he knew better than to invite her there—and she would have refused to go, anyway. A room was a house, and a house was a promise: It said,This bed is designed for you.No, she was a poor girl, and poor girls rut in the dark. They are destined to lie on cool grasses and look at the moon, shadowed by mountains too large to consider. She liked it out here. She wanted to be part of the world, not trapped forever in kitchens.
He gave a low, throaty laugh, like he was a wild animal and she was his willing prey. His kisses tasted oddly metallic, like he was promising her this would feel good in the moment but would later be regretted.
“Desire,” he said again, and pressed his pubis against her, so she almost exploded with delight. She felt the damp earth, the torn grass, at her back, and thought, He could tear me like this grass; he can move me like this earth. Spinning round and round.
Without words, he pulled aside the fabric of her dress, pulled aside her underwear, and entered her. She was surprised at the pain, how it brought tears to her eyes. She was shocked at how big he felt inside her, and how wrong it felt.
10.
The limestone vaults outside Pickleweed, Georgia, had once been quarries, deep underground, from which the malleable stone was excavated. At the top was a rickety metal cage, where a very young-looking records officer had Ruby, who had come straight from the airport, sign his clipboard. Soon they were hurtling downward in the old mining elevator, and Ruby was aware of the way the earth tamped light, hundreds of feet belowground.
The young officer looked nervous. He had made sure to record all her information. He was going to do everything by the book, she saw. When the swinging brass pendulum above them read six, he pulled the lever.
With a loud shake and hiss, the elevator door opened.
She stepped into what felt like a giant ice cave, with massive pillars like stalagmites. The vaults went on as far as the eye could see. They were filled with metal shelves, crowded with old boxes and wooden crates. The air was an exhale of time trapped for centuries. A low motor purred: it was the elevator, and it smelled, ominously, of burning rubber. She could see strings of ancient, flickering lights on the stone ceiling. But she saw no sign of stairs. Or sprinklers. What if there were a fire down here?
Ruby put the thought out of her mind. That’s how she faced danger. She didn’t feel it. She was aware that others might say she had turned that primal part of her off—but she felt that the fear had been scared right out of her. There were times she wondered if one day she would wake up and all the fear would be there, wide awake and ready to go.
She focused. Yesterday was twelve days. Today was eleven. Time was falling like that elevator dial.
The records officer turned on a penlight as they began walking, shining the light over the metal shelves. There were faint numbers painted on some of the limestone walls, but she soon lost all sense of direction, following him through the labyrinth of caves. She could feel the memories of the miners who had worked here two hundred years before, pushing their carts full of the white stone, carefully stepping back and shielding their eyes against the blasts. In their wake, they had left boxes crouched like little men in the corners.
Despite the depth, there were spiderwebs on the walls. The combined odors of decaying wood, old paper, and police evidence hung in the air. She had been in enough archives to recognize the distinctive smell of blood rotting on cloth.
The officer was silent. Police were sent to such postings as punishment for misdeeds. She wondered what this young man had done that would merit such a demotion.
