Wednesday, September 17
On the connecting flight between Kansas City, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas, the next day, Amelia studied the map Dan had given her. She decided the order in which she would drive to the abandoned, or nearly deserted, towns of Spale, Bloomberg, Wheaten, McDermott, Flaschoen, Parlance, and Stan. She loved the name of the last one. A town named Stan. It sounded friendly and, well, small-townish. Bemused, she wondered if New York City could ever have become the center of the universe (as she considered it to be) if the founders had named it Stan. On the plane, she laughed to herself.
While she was in an organizing mood, Amelia read over the bits of research she had pulled out of the library as well as from the magazine's files (which were a veritable library themselves) and the Internet. What she found was intriguing and went a long way toward explaining why her worldly-wise editor had considered the topic newsworthy in the first place. It was going to be a story of a changing America, she predicted to herself, of rural residents leaving for the cities, and of the towns they abandoned turning back into prairie dust.
These ghosts wouldn't scare her, she felt sure.
They might be sad, but they wouldn't be frightening, at least not to her personally. And, with any luck, she could do all of her research by daylight and retire every evening to the well-lighted security of her hotel room.
B&B
, she reminded herself as the outskirts of a small city appeared below the plane. Amelia had never stayed at a bed-and-breakfast lodging before. She wondered what they would serve her to eat at an exotic animal farm. Oats? Hay?
It's all cereal to me
. She laughed to herself as they landed.
She was beginning to appreciate just how deliciously bizarre this assignment could turn out to be. Giraffes and ghosts. In Kansas. Oh, my. Why, she could dine out on this story for weeks back home. Her New York friends would laugh till they begged her to stop.
Although she put away her paperwork, Amelia left the reading light on overhead. They were flying through a cloud cover that had darkened the cabin. Amelia wasn't particularly afraid of the storm or of a bumpy landing. She just liked the way the little lamp cast a circle of security around her in the passenger cabin.
* * *
Her first clue that she was nearing her destination was a camel hanging its head over a fence. Behind the camel— dromedary, she corrected herself when she saw only one hump— there were several zebras, including an adorable colt running circles around its elders. In her rental car, Amelia drove past another pasture, where huge ostriches lifted their beautiful wings and fluttered them over their backs. She was tempted to think, like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
that she "wasn't in Kansas anymore." But a large sign spelled out, "Welcome to the Serengeti." Below that: "Bed & Breakfast Inn." And farther down, stating the obvious in graceful script: "Exotic Animals." Visitors were advised: "No Tours without Permission."
Amelia turned onto a gravel lane.
Along a fence line, she stopped to stare back at the ostriches which ambled over to stare at her. As they batted their white eyelids at her, she shocked herself by nearly bursting into tears. Once, at a time that now seemed long ago, she had dreamed of being an animal doctor. And not just for any dogs and cats, either. A large-animal vet was what she'd wanted to be. "You," Amelia told the ostriches in a thick voice, "are certainly big enough, but I didn't quite have you in mind!"
Horses, cows, even sheep.
A practice in upper New York state, where she had spent summers with her grandparents. Farm country. Dairy land.
But it had all come to an ignominious, horrifying end. And she had slunk off to journalism school, not really caring anymore what degree she earned or what job she landed or even what her future held. She had, in fact, lost any grasp of the concept of future. Time became divided into then and now, and there was no tomorrow.
Suddenly impatient with herself (Amelia's grandmother had never tolerated what she called the "pig wallow of self-pity"), Amelia sniffed, blinked, and hurried on toward a white ranch-style house that waited at the end of the drive. She saw an ordinary-looking long, white motel structure to the right and metal pens and gates and a series of connected wooden barns. Nearly everything was painted white with red trim. It looked like a perfectly ordinary, well-maintained ranch. Except for the inn. And the zebras.
In a pasture beyond the barns, Amelia spotted a giraffe.
She wasn't quite sure she was going to approve of this place, this zoo on the prairie, because why weren't these wild creatures back in Africa, where most of them belonged? Still, she couldn't help but grin at the sight of the giraffe, and as she parked her car, she wondered if she ought to keep an eye out for wandering lions.
* * *
At first, it seemed as if the farm itself might be her first ghost town. "Nobody around but us chickens," she observed to a beautiful, glossy brown rooster that had walked up to the front door with her. "Are you the guard bird around here?"
When nobody answered the doorbell or her knock, she obeyed the sign that said, "Come in," and walked into a living room that had been transformed into an office. There were two desks with bulletin boards behind them. The walls were covered with photographs of people posing with animals, tear sheets from newspapers and magazines, and cute letters of appreciation from schoolchildren.
To pass the time until somebody showed up to sign her in, Amelia walked around the room, looking at all of the pictures and reading everything, feeling as if she were searching for the "real story" that Dan had sent her on.
Was
it about the economics of the heartland? Or was it about the traffic in exotic animals? How did these animals get here, anyway? Were they treated decently? Did they include endangered species that were illegal to own? Maybe, instead of researching ghost towns, she should have looked up references on the international wild animal trade—
Of late, Amelia had begun to get the sinking feeling that she was just not cut out to be a journalist. In truth, she didn't enjoy being suspicious of people, and she wasn't even particularly nosy. Curious, yes, in a courteous and scientific kind of way, but not nosy in the way of natural-born gossips. Or, she often thought wryly, journalists. She hated to ask rude questions. She much preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt rather than to suspect them. She'd drifted into feature writing, because investigative reporting was absolutely impossible for her; she always felt bad for the families of people whose lives were exposed. She stared, unseeing, down at one of the desks and thought,
And here I am, looking for a story, and I don't even know what it is!
She had lost track of what she was reading and now discovered it wasn't about wild animals at all.
What?
she asked herself, confused by what she was seeing. Having worked her way around the room, she was now standing behind one of the desks, looking at the newspaper clippings tacked up there.
The word
murder
was in the headlines.
It was a set of clippings from local newspapers, dating back almost seventeen years. They were all about a long-ago murder. Of a girl named Brenda Rogers. Seventeen years old. A senior at Spale High School. Honor student. Valedictorian. Homecoming queen. Voted Most Likely to Succeed. Winner of a full scholarship to the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Oldest child of a couple who farmed outside town. The photos showed a smiling, pretty blond girl who appeared to enjoy having her picture taken.
A terrible crime and loss revealed itself to Amelia, and she felt sadness for the girl, the families, the town where, it was reported, "nothing so heinous has ever occurred before."
The killer's name was Thomas Rogers.
"Same as hers," Amelia murmured, transfixed by what she was reading. Also seventeen. Her brother? "My God, her
husband?
" Not only that but the father of—
"Her
child?
"
To Amelia, it seemed an unlikely combination of facts for a small town in the Midwest around 1980. But what was it that was so improbable, really? An early pregnancy? Or the fact that the boy married her? No. It was the continued high achievements of the young mother, and the scholarship, the full four-year scholarship going to a seventeen-year-old with a baby. To Amelia's mind, it all suggested an extraordinary young woman, a generous-hearted high school, a forgiving town, a trusting scholarship committee, and— more than likely— a wonderful, supportive family. Her glance passed quickly over the obituary that named the survivors.
My Lord
, she thought sadly,
what an awful blow to all of them
.
And the boy? The husband/killer?
Also a senior. Also a straight-A student. A football, basketball, baseball star. Almost as outstanding as she was, and honorable to boot, in marrying her. Honorable, that is, except for the appalling fact that he killed her. Amelia read how her body was found in an old tunnel under the town, that it was discovered she had been strangled and dumped there. She read of Thomas's confession, conviction as an adult, sentencing to a federal penitentiary, the town's stunned grief over the fate of these young people.
He never said why he did it, she read, only that he did.
She realized that Spale was one of the ghost towns circled in red on her map, which meant that the town had emptied in the time between the murder and now.
And then she turned over one more clipping and saw, to her regret, that this was the story she was looking for and that she was going to have to go after it. The final clipping, and the most current, reported that Thomas Rogers, having served his time for the murder of his wife, Brenda, was getting out of prison at last. This week. He was quoted as saying that he would return home to live in Spale, "because there's nobody left to hate me."
Amelia knew what to do now: call Dan Hale in New York and get his approval. He would tell her to locate the released killer, alone in his ghost town, and interview him.
So tell me, Tom, how does it feel, coming back to the scene of the crime? Did you love her? Why did you kill her? Our millions of subscribers want to know!
Amelia felt frightened and sick at the idea of what she was going to have to do. Track down the girl's remaining family, her high school friends, some teachers, get them to relive a horrible time in their lives.
I don't want to,
Amelia thought, but her practical brain inquired:
Do you prefer to be unemployed?
No, she did not. She'd do it. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, maybe she was making too much of the whole thing. Maybe Dan wouldn't even like the story idea. That thought cheered her up, and she smiled to herself.
The front door opened, admitting a breeze and a tall man.
"You always find murder amusing?"
"What? No, I—"
"That's my desk you're—"
"I was reading all of your—"
"Yeah. Are you checking in?"
She was tempted to say, "No way," and stomp out. But giving him her usual benefit of the doubt, Amelia realized that his first sight of her could have annoyed anybody. She softened her voice and said, "I'm sorry. I've been looking at all of your photographs and mementos, and it led me around back here. When you came in, I was thinking of something else. Not the murder of that poor child. And yes, my name is Amelia Blaney, and I think there's a reservation in my name."
He stared at her for a moment, giving her enough time to realize that he was an extremely attractive man. Possibly near thirty. Tanned face with wonderful dark eyes, thick dark brown hair that curled down around the top of his shirt collar. The wide shoulders of a man who had tossed a good many hay bales. He wore dirt-streaked blue jeans over cowboy boots and a red and white plaid wool jacket over a denim work shirt. He was a big presence in the room. Amelia stepped quickly around to the front of his desk and then stood off to the side of it.
"I'm the sorry one," he said, shaking his head. "No excuses. Jim Kopecki. Welcome to our zoo. I'm the head jackass."
They both grinned, and suddenly the air was cleared between them.
"Dr. Kopecki?"
she inquired.
"Yeah. The locals call me Dr. Doolittle behind my back."
"I'll bet they do. How'd you end up in the Wild Kingdom?"
"I've always been here," he said easily. "Inherited the farm. And the animals, too, in a way. First, it was just a few llamas out of a local rancher's estate. Nobody else wanted them; they weren't a cash crop at the time." His tone was wry. Somewhat to her dismay, Amelia felt herself being attracted not only to the story but also to the man. "Then it was a couple of abandoned ostriches from a wild animal show, and then people took to bringing me orphaned mule deers, that sort of thing. Then I read about a mistreated giraffe, and I went and got him." The young vet grinned. "You should have seen that, driving down the interstate with a hole cut in the top of an eighteen-wheeler and a half-grown giraffe sticking out of the top."
Amelia laughed. She was delighted with the story, and she was feeling warmed by Jim Kopecki's obvious feeling for animals.