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The branches of the towering pines bend with their snowy load and the sky is heavy, a fierce gunmetal gray. That’s one of the things he hates about the Northeast, the gray ceiling that seems to descend in late autumn and stay until spring. The heat in the restored car is struggling, and he finds himself longing for his South Beach condo with its expansive views of that violent blue sky, jewel-green ocean, and sugary sand beach. He never minds the blazing heat, even in the dead of summer. He’ll take that any day over the desolation of winter. Yesterday was the winter solstice. In the cycle of things, it’s a moment of death and dying, the rebirth of spring so far in the distance as to not exist at all.
He presses the button on his phone, which rests in the center console, listening to the recording he made of his own voice earlier in his makeshift studio at the Wallace house:
Little Valley was one of those places. The town where nothing bad ever happens. Before Evan Handy arrived, there hadn’t been a murder since 1965 when a woman killed her abusive husband by burning their house down. In 1970, there was a drunk driving accident where three teenagers lost their lives. In the following years there had been some car theft, petty stealing, teens vandalizing buildings, a spate of break-ins, school pranks, missing pets. One Halloween a young boy went missing, only to be found sleeping in his own bed, still wearing his Darth Vader costume. No violent crime at all.
In 2014, the year Stephanie Cramer was murdered, Ainsley and Sam Wallace went missing, and Madeline Martin was found near death on the banks of the Black River. The Little Valley Police Department had twenty full-time officers covering all shifts. And at the head of the department was Sheriff James Martin, who had served for nearly twenty years, running uncontested for five terms.
In a bigger department, maybe Sheriff Martin would have been taken off the case. His daughter Madeline was very nearly murdered. If it weren’t for the icy temperatures that night, the young woman might not have survived her wounds, including a disfiguring cut to her face. But the sheriff did not recuse himself, nor was he asked to do so. Instead, he led the investigation, the manhunt for Evan Handy, and the search for Sam and Ainsley Wallace.
He reaches over to turn it off.
He hates the sound of his own voice, but that’s not going to change. He’s tried to modulate it, so that it sounds deeper, more—he’s not even sure what—NPR-worthy? That particular smoothness that exudes intelligence, knowing, something that his natural voice doesn’t have. To his ears, no matter what he does, his voice sounds high, nasal. But his fans feel differently.I could listen to you talk about your grocery list, Harley. You lull me to sleep at night. Your voice is so soothing.
We’re never a good judge of our own qualities and flaws. Harley knows that. As long as people are listening, that’s what matters. Of course, it’s only the insults, bad reviews, the troll comments that stick with him. That nasty article inNew York Magazinelast year made him out to be a villain, a failed fiction writer, a non-journalist with no ethics who exploited the dead and hurt the living in the process. They called his work “mediocre at best.” That really stuck, because it was his father’s complaint of Harley, that he coasted, took the easy way out, used his charm and bullshit to navigate life. Sometimes, when he looks at himself in the mirror, the word echoes unbidden in his head.Mediocre.
The house that Evan Handy and his mother rented back in 2014 was just on the outskirts of Little Valley, nothing short of a mansion set behind a stone wall, down a long drive off a winding rural road.
“The destination is on your right in point-five miles,” says the navigation computer.
“Thank you,” he answers pointlessly. Lately, he’s taken to talking to Siri.
“Hey, Siri,” he asked recently. “What’s the meaning of life?”
“Maybe it’s about doing things that allow you to stop wondering about the meaning of life and allow you to enjoy life for what it is,” she answered, typically know-it-all. He’d been turning that around in his head ever since. Someone in programming had a sense of humor.
The trees give way to a long stone wall, and finally he arrives at a closed wrought iron gate. He pulls up and idles, waiting.
The house has stood empty for ten years, owned by an heiress who apparently has multiple homes that sit in various states of disrepair. It took him weeks of digging to ascertain ownership, then multiple emails, finally getting an answer with the name and number of the local caretaker. Turned out to be Chester Blacksmith, known as Chet.
Harley had to call Chet three times before the kid called him back, sounding stoned out of his mind, voice husky, long pauses in the call where Harley thought he’d hung up.
“I wouldn’t say I’m the caretaker exactly,” he told Harley when they finally connected. “I let the landscapers in once a month, do repairs when needed, turn on the water in the winter so the pipes don’t burst.”
“Sounds like a caretaker to me.”
“Well, Miss Harlowe said I can let you in if you want to look around.”
They arranged a time to meet.
Harley looks at his watch now, his dad’s old Timex. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Just like Harley. Harley is always right on time.
There’s a buzzer and a lock pad; he reaches out of his car window and presses the call button. Once, twice. No one responds. The wall is high. Maybe if he were ten years younger, he’d try to climb it. Harley gets out, pulls on the gate. It’s locked tight.
He calls Chet. No answer.
The kid’s a stoner. He’s likely not going to show. Harley takes out his phone and starts snapping pictures, of the road, the gate, the high wall. He gets the detail of the street number etched on a stone plaque.
Harley’s surprised when an old Honda rattles up and parks along the wall. A tall, well-built young guy climbs out and lopes along across the road. He wears an affable smile, sticks out his hand.
“I’m Chet,” he says. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No worries.”
He’s one of those guys, too pretty for his own good. Coasted through life on his looks, now stuck in a nowhere town. But that’s just Harley making assumptions. He doesn’t know that much about Chet, brother to Badger, friend of Madeline.
The kid digs through his pockets, comes out with a sheet of paper with some numbers scrawled on it. He does a bad job of hiding it, if he was trying to, and Harley, who is very smart if he does say so himself, easily commits the numbers to memory. The gate unlatches and it opens with a horror-movie squeal. Harley’s glad he kept the video running, catching the gate opening, the patches of gray sky through the tree cover, Chet’s black-clad frame. It will make good B-roll for the website. Mirabelle is a wizard with video editing. He can give her a bunch of files and she can splice, add audio, make it look amazing.
“Follow you up,” says Chet, heading back to his car.
