‘No, Berta, we believed you, but there was no proof. Now we have proof!’ I said.
‘Oh!’ Berta said, then smiled. ‘That’s a good thing, right?’
‘Right!’ Ken declared, putting his arm around Berta’s shoulders.
I wanted to say, ‘Oh no you don’t!’ and bitch slap somebody, just for Kerry’s benefit, but I knew she didn’t care anymore and it really wasn’t any of my business. But still!
I sighed and pulled out my cell phone, speed-dialing Luna at the Codderville PD.
‘Luna,’ she said.
‘Don’t hang up!’ I started. Seems like that’s always the way I start a phone conversation with my next-door neighbor and as close to a best friend as I had any more.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she asked.
‘Because I think you forgot to tell me something this morning when we talked about where Berta got hit.’
‘I was very forthcoming,’ Luna said.
‘How about the part regarding the skid marks?’
There was a small silence. Then she said, ‘Skid marks?’
‘You know, the ones that prove that Berta was an intentional murder victim and not just an accident gone wrong?’
‘I’m not sure you can actually say they
prove
anything—’
‘Oh, bullshit!’ I said. ‘They do and you damn well know it! This poor woman has been sitting around waiting to find out what’s happening, and you’re intentionally keeping information back!’
‘Well, here’s some information we’re no longer keeping back. You need to bring your new friend in. We know who she is.’
We were a silent group as we headed to the police station, all three of us again, I’m sure, sharing a fantasy – this one regarding the true identity of Berta Harris. I’m sure Berta was the most anxious. I can hardly imagine what it must be like to have no memory of who you are, and then have someone say they know. What will Luna tell her? Will she let Ken and me in with Berta when she does tell her? Will it be something bad? Something good? Something innocuous?
Ken pulled up in front of the station and parked the car. None of us moved. We just stared ahead to the door that would take us to Berta’s identity. I think I understood why Berta was afraid to find out, but I’m not sure I knew why Ken and I were anxious. Maybe he
was
having feelings for her, and now he’d find out if she was married, had six kids, or was a nun. And me? I’m not sure. Maybe it was the anxiety of it all being over. That my marriage had broken up over nothing. That if Willis had waited one more day, this wouldn’t have happened.
Ken cleared his throat, bringing me out of my reverie. ‘Guess we should go in,’ he said.
I nodded my head, but no one could see me in the back seat. ‘I’m scared,’ Berta said, taking Ken’s hand. I could see him squeeze it.
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘It won’t change anything.’
I’m not sure what he meant by that, but I had a sneaking suspicion. I tried to send Ken a telepathic message:
Too soon, fella, way too soon!
I doubt he got it.
I opened the back door and Ken opened the driver’s door. Slowly Berta opened hers and we headed inside. Luna was waiting for us and took us into a conference room where we all took seats.
‘Ms Harris,’ Luna said, ‘we will be telling you some things you might wish to keep private, so it’s up to you whether Mr Killian and Mrs Pugh stay here.’
‘Oh, please,’ Berta said, grabbing my hand on one side, and Ken’s on the other. ‘Please let them stay.’
Luna took a seat. ‘That’s entirely up to you.’ She cleared her throat and shuffled some pages in a folder. ‘OK,’ she started, ‘we sent your fingerprints out to be examined and it appears you were fingerprinted in high school for a law enforcement program you participated in. That’s how we found out who you are.’
‘OK,’ Berta said.
‘Your true name is Rosalee Bunch. And you’re actually from right here – Codderville. You went to Codderville High School and would have graduated in 1995.’
‘Would have?’ Berta questioned. I felt her fingers tighten on mine.
Luna looked at the table not at Berta. ‘You’re mom’s name was Sharon Bunch, dad unknown. As far as we can tell, your mom moved to Codderville when you were a baby. She had no living relatives that anyone could find.’
Berta looked at me, her grip on my fingers becoming painful. ‘This doesn’t sound good,’ she said in a tiny voice.
‘Just hold on,’ I said, removing my hand from hers and stretching my arm across her shoulders.
‘In June of 1993, the summer after your sophomore year, you and your mother were living in a trailer on the outskirts of town. There was a large propane tank attached to the trailer. It blew up. Your mother’s remains were identified. You were never found.’
Luna put down the folder and finally looked up at Berta. I mean, Rosalee. No, Berta. ‘My mother’s name was Sharon?’ Berta asked.
‘Yes,’ Luna answered.
‘Did they think I hurt her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God!’ Berta said, covering her face with her hands. Ken and I held onto her from either side.
‘How could she have hurt her?’ I asked.
‘According to the arson investigator the propane tank had a leak, and there were a bunch of stick matches around the area. Like someone was playing with it – an even stupider Russian roulette,’ Luna said.
‘And they just assumed it was Berta?’ I demanded, already getting my defenses up.
Luna shrugged. ‘Her trailer blows up with her mother in it and the next day she’s gone. It was the logical assumption from a law enforcement perspective.’
I was unsure whether Berta was getting any of this. Her hands were still over her face and she wasn’t responding. Ken still had his hands on her arm, whispering things in her ear, like ‘hold on,’ and ‘it’s OK,’ and ‘just breathe.’
It was my turn to take one of her arms. ‘Berta, look at me,’ I said, shaking her gently.
She finally looked up. ‘I killed my own mother!’ she wailed, her face wet and red.
‘No!’ I said sternly. ‘We don’t know that! That was just the assumption the police made because you weren’t around. We don’t know the truth yet, but we’ll find out. Maybe you saw someone else do it and ran away because you were afraid. Maybe someone kidnapped you and set the trailer on fire as he left with you! We have no idea what really happened, but we’ll find out.’
‘Unfortunately, though,’ Luna said, ‘we already got a judge to sign off on an arrest warrant, so we’ll have to take you into custody, Ms Bunch.’
I called Trisha who promised to call her husband immediately. I hoped Tom planned on doing this pro bono; I certainly couldn’t afford to pay him. Which got me to thinking what I could pay. My writing career affords me lump sums of money throughout the year. Largish lump sums when they’re advances on a new book, smallish lump sums when it’s royalties. Come tax time it looks like a lot of money, but I’ve never tried to live off it. That would mean spreading it out, even knowing when it was coming. Which I don’t. Ever. I have a vague idea when my main publisher does their yearly royalty statements, and an even vaguer idea when different parts of the advance will show up. But then there’s what we in the biz call ‘mailbox money.’ Those unexplained little checks from foreign rights, audio rights, film (don’t I wish) rights, etc. I know it sounds like a lot of money, and sometimes it is. But it’s hard to pay the mortgage with mailbox money. Those pesky mortgage people, and the electric people, the bank who carries the car loans, the AmEx people, and Visa and Master Card, all want their money on a monthly basis. How can you do that when one month you get a check for $2,580, and two months later you get a check for $1.86?
In other words, to keep the house and the lifestyle our children were used to, I’d need some of Willis’s money. No child support for Graham, he having just turned eighteen. Did that mean Willis could forego our son’s college education? Surely not. Graham’s college fund was intact, but then there would be all those incidentals that weren’t budgeted into his college fund. We did OK on our two incomes and one house. But what was going to happen when we went to two incomes and two houses? How were we going to afford that? Was it going to go that far? Was he really leaving me? Was there another woman? Or was it really just about my strange dead-body-finding ability?
We needed to talk, Willis and I, but did I want to push it just yet? Would a premature ‘talk’ lead to rushed judgments? Or do I let him wallow in his anger and his mother’s country cooking until he realized that he could do quite well without me? And what about me? Did I want
him
back? I was the one who originally threw him out. But I’d already worked through that. Albeit weakly. Did I let him keep the excuses I made up for him saying what he said? That he basically didn’t want our two extra girls. There was no denying that I’d thrust Alicia on him. I’d just assumed that he’d think what I thought: what’s one extra mouth with all we’ve got? But I guess he didn’t think that. I guess he thought another college education, another girl who could get pregnant, take drugs, wind up selling her body on the streets, etc. I don’t know what men think. Do they think like that? Pregnancy, yes. My father had four daughters and every time we came home from a date, he’d say, ‘Did you get pregnant?’ It didn’t matter if it was a first date or the night before our weddings, he’d ask the same question. And, when each of us announced our first pregnancies, Daddy would say, ‘Well, it’s about time.’
We teased about Megan getting pregnant at fifteen when she was a newborn, about taking the car keys away from her if she didn’t settle down in her bassinet, but we really hadn’t talked about that sort of thing since. But did he think it?
Ken Killian brought me back to the present. ‘Are you getting in the car?’ he asked.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ he said, a worried look on his face. Under the circumstances, not an unexpected look. ‘I have something you need to know. I’m not sure it means anything, but—’
‘Ken, what?’ I said, slightly irritated.
‘Lieutenant Luna said Berta – or Rosalee, I guess – would have graduated in 1995, right?’
‘Yes, that’s what she said.’
‘That’s when Kerry graduated.’
I sighed. ‘A lot of people graduated in 1995, Ken.’
‘Actually, no – there were only one hundred and twelve in the 1995 graduating class of Codderville High School.’
‘Codder—’ I turned to look at Ken, my eyes bugging out. ‘Kerry went to Codderville High?’
He nodded his head, his eyes never having left the road.
‘So—’ I started.
‘Yeah,’ he said, his lips tight. ‘Chances are real good Kerry knew Berta. Or rather, Rosalee.’
‘Before the hospital,’ I said, stating the obvious.
‘Yeah, and Kerry never told Berta that,’ Ken said.
I stared ahead myself. ‘Ken, I think we should keep this information under wraps for now. Do you agree?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I agree. We tell no one.’
I had a vague notion that I turned into an idea. I do that sometimes. It tends to get me into trouble. ‘Ken, you up for a little road trip?’ I asked.
He glanced at me. We hadn’t gotten on the highway yet to take us over the bridge and into Black Cat Ridge. ‘Tell me what you want to do,’ he said.
He pulled over at a gas station while I called Luna. ‘Hey,’ I said, when she picked up. ‘Where precisely was Rosalee’s mother’s trailer located?’
‘Why would you want to know that?’ she asked.
‘Just curious,’ I said.
‘No, you’re never just curious. You want to go by there, don’t you? What in the hell do you think you’ll find there after fifteen years?’ she said.
‘I need to get a feel for the place,’ I told her.
‘You’re out of your mind,’ she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d uttered those words.
‘Be that as it may,’ I said, ‘address, please.’
She laughed – not exactly in a humorous way – and read off directions to the old trailer.
I read them to Ken and we turned around and headed back toward Codderville.
The directions took us to the extreme eastern part of the county, down a farm to market road, then to a county road, and finally to a dirt road. We got to the end of the dirt road and found an abandoned metal building with nothing but weeds around it. We turned around and headed back down the dirt road, going much slower this time. Through the trees on the left I saw the relentless sun shining on a tiny bit of chrome. The trailer. Ken pulled his car in as far as possible on what used to be a driveway, and we got out. The entire place was grossly over grown with cedar.
This whole section of Texas has a problem with what are erroneously called cedar trees. They are a cedar-ish type of tree, but of another genus entirely. They were brought over from Japan, I think, to help with erosion back in the day. Now people have to clear the land constantly of the damn things. I won’t even get into the cedar fever problem – a Christmas-time allergy that can fell an entire city.
Ken went to the back of his car and opened the trunk. Inside was a set of golf clubs. He pulled out two, handed me one, took the other and led the way, using the club to move limbs and weeds. We circled around the cedar trees as best we could, and Ken made a lot of noise whacking at the bushes and making honking sounds.
‘What are you doing?’ I finally asked.
‘Snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them,’ he said. ‘They hear a lot of noise, they hide.’
Great. I hadn’t thought of snakes. Now that’s all I would think of. I stared at the ground and walked carefully, hitting trees with my club and making raspberries with my mouth.
We finally made it to the trailer. Even after fifteen years it was still there. No one had cleared it away. It was a single wide that may have been yellow at one time. There were indications of that color in spots. Half the roof and wall were caved in at the back and the front door was swinging wide open.
‘You don’t want to go in, do you?’ Ken asked dubiously.
I stared at it. Did I want to go in? What would I learn if I did? Anything germane to the problems at hand? Maybe just a peek, I told myself.
I moved closer to the trailer and looked inside the opened front door. Half of a rotten sofa, a floor lamp with no shade and a busted bulb, ashes and items so burnt they were unrecognizable, a stainless-steel kitchen sink and faucet still intact, although the cabinets around it were half burned away.