Katy Connor thought she was safe. She was supposed to be safe at three o’clock in the afternoon in the parking lot of a strip mall on one of the busiest streets in town. She did nothing wrong. She bought a bag of clothes and walked to her truck.
It can happen like that.
You think you’re going home. And some picture of your face ends up on a grainy black-and-white flyer tacked to a phone pole. Your image fades in sunlight. The thin paper sign of you tatters, fluttering in the breeze. Strangers pass by, study your face for something familiar, think maybe they’ve seen you somewhere. But they haven’t. You are a stranger. You are lost.
Loved ones can find themselves composing you on a MISSING sign like this:
MISSING
from Wilmington, North Carolina:
Katherine (Katy) Connor.
5’10”, 130 lbs.
Blue eyes. Long brown hair.
Tattoo of a cross on her shoulder.
Last seen on June 22 at the Dollar Daze
store in Briarfield Plaza. Her blue Chevy truck
with Tennessee plates found 50 miles west of
Wilmington in Columbus County.
If you have any information, please . . .
Long ago they tattooed members of nomadic tribes to identify the body in case of death; the missing could be returned to the family for proper burial, to put the soul to rest. The system often worked, depending on time and the ways of weather.
Today they use a more reliable system of dental records.
But people will always go missing and prayers unanswered. Lost souls go wandering. We all know this, and bodies are calling to be found.
You could say this is a ghost story in some way. A crime story. A classic kind of tale. Biblical almost, but not quite.
Katy didn’t know that day would be a story. Katy didn’t know Jesse Hollowfield was watching for his chance. She didn’t know that at any moment the continental plates miles underground can shift, the earth crack apart, an unseen hand reach, grip, throttle the street, sending it all tilting as someone gasps, someone screams, maybe, if there’s time to comprehend the darkness reaching up, maybe to yank a whole world down. No one is ready for it when something snaps, eclipses the sweet blue world. And no one stays the same after a thing like that.
It can happen, I tell you. Like this:
You Believers
Jesse Hollowfield and Mike Carter knew which cars had automatic locks. They sat waiting just behind the strip mall, patient as lions hunkered in the reeds, heads raised to sniff the humid air while watching gazelles herd, looking for the weak, the young, the one alone. The Datsun’s engine was running because when they shut it off, half the time the engine wouldn’t fire again, and it was hell to roll-start a car in the North Carolina flatlands when the sun can break your back with the heat.
Katy didn’t see them—she had a things-to-do list in her purse: gas station, the library to drop off books, the drug store to pick up birth-control pills. She had left a note for her fiancé on the refrigerator door: “Be back when I can.” But driving by the strip mall, she saw the Dollar Daze sign and got the impulse to buy something new for her trip back home. She pulled into the side lot, where the sun wasn’t directly bearing down.
Jesse gave a nod. “Check it out. That chick parked between the Dumpster and the ATM. That truck, what year is that thing? Looks old, but listen to that engine.”
Mike watched the truck. The girl was bobbing her head a little, like she was singing. Mike leaned a little out his window, heard the sounds of a Bob Marley song coming from her truck. She had to be happy listening to that song. He said, “Maybe we don’t want an old truck. We need a good truck.”
Jesse shoved Mike’s shoulder. “Listen to that engine. It’s tuned. Somebody takes care of that thing.” He nodded, whispered, “She’ll ride all right.”
Katy sat in the truck, moving to the beat. Bob Marley’s music always made her think of beaches and beer.
“Come on,” Jesse whispered. “Get out of the fucking truck.”
Katy turned off the engine and stepped out into the sun.
Careless, Jesse thought as she dropped the keys into her unzipped purse, dangling loosely from her arm. He leaned forward, his back straight, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the woman with nothing on her mind but where she thought she was going to go. He guessed her weight: 125-130. Tall but skinny. He’d take her truck and anything she had in that piece-of-shit fake-leather shoulder bag.
Katy walked toward the store, hoping to find something cute in the racks of five-dollar tops and twenty-dollar jeans. She didn’t have much cash, and her card was maxed out. But she wanted to look good for her trip. She wanted her mom to know she was doing something more than tending bar these days. She’d tell her she was learning how to hang wallpaper; she was practically an interior decorator. Her mother would want to talk about wedding plans. She would want to look at Katy’s hand, touch the engagement ring as if she needed to see it was still there, proof that yes, Katy was finally settling down.
Katy stopped, stood still in the heat. She’d be married in a month. To Billy. She was leaving the one she still wanted, Frank, behind. But she didn’t want to settle. And there was the new guy, Randy—Randy, who made her laugh; Randy, who’d get her high for free anytime she wanted. Randy had told her, “Sure, you go on and get married, but you and me both know you’ll never really settle down. You’ll always come running to Randy when you get those little bad-girl needs.” No one knew anything about Randy. Billy thought his only problem was Frank back in Chattanooga. He suspected that when she went back home, it was more about seeing Frank than her mom.
“Let me take this one last trip,” she’d told Billy. She would party with old friends at the marina on Lake Chickamauga, the way they always did when she returned home. Frank would be there. “I need one more trip,” she had said. “One more trip back home, alone. I miss my mom.”
Billy had told her she could go, but he had a bad feeling.
“What?” she’d said. “Tell me your feeling; go on and say it.”
Billy had lit a joint, said, “Frank.” He’d looked straight at her. “I can tell when you’re lying, Katy.” Then he’d left her standing in the kitchen while he’d gone on to work with a joint in his hand. Just another fight, she’d told herself. She’d take a drive, let it go. She’d make lasagna for him when she got home. He liked it when she took the time to make a real meal. He called them good-wife meals, and he’d tease her, say he saw past her wild streak, saw the happy, peaceful, good wife she wanted to be. And he was right. Maybe. She hoped he was right.
She stared at the pavement and knew Billy had a right to be jealous. She knew she hurt him, but she just couldn’t resist the need sometimes to break a rule. To be a little bad. It gave her a rush, like leaping off a high dive. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud. She’d told Billy that a hundred times: “I’m sorry” for something; then she’d go on and keep doing what she wanted to do. She looked to the pavement and saw that her toenail was chipped; she’d get a pedicure before heading to Randy’s house. He noticed things like ragged nails. Billy didn’t give a shit, but Randy—and her mother—did. She looked up, saw the clerk watching her from the window. Katy smiled, gave a little wave, and went in.