Norman Millican had gone camping in a popular campground in California, high up on the craggy cliffs above the sea. No one saw him leave. His belongings were still in his tent.
For over three years, she had worked that case, alongside her others. Sometimes she had to take a break for a time, to exonerate another innocent or find another missing woman, but she always returned to Norman Millican. He began to fill her dreams. It was odd, having a man in her dreams, because honestly it seldom happened, even when she was in a relationship or working a death row case. She usually dreamt of missing women. Or her mother.
In her dreams about Norman, she remembered, there was always caution. Something about his case was wrong. The facts didn’t add up—just like with this one. On the surface, he was a young man, depressed, who disappeared. He could have thrown himself off the ocean cliff. It wouldn’t have been the first suicide there. Or he could have slipped. That happened, too. There were warning signs along that sandy, high cliff, but people still climbed over them, to pose with their arms out like the eagles floating in the distance. Or they went when no one was looking and took their own swan dive, and the sea washed the blood from the rocks.
That was what the police assumed had happened, and Ruby didn’t blame them one bit. Every sign pointed to it. But his sister had dreams, too, and it was enough to keep Ruby going.
Until she found the truth.
Norman Millican had not jumped to his death. He had vanished for a reason. He had done something terrible to a girl in their town, and decided to disappear. That was when Ruby learned that there were other reasons men went missing, and those reasons were usually the opposite of why women went missing. The day she found Norman Millican was the same day she led him into a police station, his face red with road rash from when she had tackled him, his wrists tied with a rope she had found in the back of his stuffy, fetid van. That night, she had stopped dreaming of him, and her mother had reappeared.
Sitting back now, looking at her worthless searches, she tried to remember just how she had found Norman. Was it a truck driver who had stopped to help him change a tire? A pastor who had offered him a meal? An emergency room nurse to whom he unwittingly gave his real name? All of those things and more had occurred in her cases, and they all ran together now: a country as filled with disparate facts as the swamp outside Alonzo Pettibone’s home was filled with trees.
Donny’s Car Repair was not far from the courthouse, in what remained of downtown Pickleweed. Most of the storefronts were empty, dusty. She passed a defunct wedding dress shop, a closed haberdasher, and a laundry that looked to be limping along. About the only industry that still seemed alive, she reflected, was that of incarceration.
She had added a printout of the probate document to her bag. With the copies of the poorhouse ledgers and the VHS tape, along withMitchell’s employee file and witness interviews, it was getting pretty crowded in there.
Donny was expecting her—apparently Willa had called, or stopped by. Ruby knew that by now, the town would be buzzing with gossip. Despite what people might think, this added a layer of safety to her work. People out to kill her were less likely to do so if they knew that others were watching. It also helped with information. Most people, no matter how impassioned they were by a case, were even more curious: They wanted to stand next to the one from the outside and learn more.
Donny was at his counter. Behind him was his shop, with derelict cars hanging on lifts. Another man was hard at work. Donny had a beard, braided into a little tail and tied with a pom-pom, which she found unusual. His ears were dirty, but his eyes were clear. She recognized him instantly as a kindred spirit. She couldn’t even say why. Maybe it was because he seemed close to her age. She could imagine him in downtown Portland when she was a teenager, smoking clove cigarettes and cracking wise outside the Metro Cafe on Broadway, where punk kids littered the streets. A sea of misfits and parentless kids.
“Howdy,” he said, friendly. “Willa said you’d be by. Need a car? I got a few I can rent.”
“The state only pays for budget cars,” she said, pulling an authorization paper from her bag. It was already smudged from long flights.
His stained fingers went down the rates.
“Damn, girl, you don’t get paid much, do you?”
He had caught her hourly wage.
“Indigent pay for indigent defense,” she said.
“I make more than this,” he said. He seemed honestly affronted.
“That’s what the state pays defense investigators,” she said. “Thedefendant may be constitutionally entitled to an attorney, but they are not entitled to an investigator.”
“Then how they going to get an investigation?”
“They expect that from the police.”
“Ha!” He laughed, showing even teeth.
“You don’t think highly of the police here?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You’re in Georgia. Anyone who tells you we don’t got a complicated history with the police is lying.”
“I like your pom-pom,” she said.
“My daughter.” He smiled. “I let her do my beard for me. Got to make it look pretty, she said.”
“Tell her she does good work.” She turned to look at the cars he had parked outside. She wondered which one she would drive away in. She guessed the Honda.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me about your case?” he said.
“Sure. What question should I ask first?”
In the shop, the man dropped a wrench and cursed. Ruby thought of the sheriff.
