Point for good.
“There’s another reason I’m back,” Michael said. He turned to face her. “Do you know what it is?”
“Your dad?”
Michael frowned. “No, not him.” He shook his head. “Twenty-five years, Janet. I know the date. I saw the paper today. Twenty-five years.”
“I didn’t know if you’d remember,” she said.
“Of course. I was there.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just-we’ve never really talked about it, you and I. But there’s a reporter coming over to interview me after work today. They’re doing another story.”
“How are you doing with all of this, Janet?” he asked. “I thought you might need the support. You shouldn’t have to go through it alone, you know.”
“You should come to the house today,” Janet said. “The reporter asked me if I was in touch with you. We can do the interview together.”
Michael looked away again, but this time he glanced behind her. She turned to follow his gaze and saw Madeline coming out of the back of the building, her hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun.
“There you are,” Madeline said. “I thought you’d run off. The provost’s office is on the phone. They need you.”
“Okay. Just a minute.”
“I think they have a question about the budget.”
Before Madeline went back in, she cast a last, long look at Michael, and Janet knew she’d have more questions to answer about the man in the parking lot.
“I have to go,” Janet said. “But come to the interview. Really. You must be thinking about this a lot. We can talk about it.”
“You must think about it a lot, too,” Michael said. He stared at her, studying her face. “What do you remember from that day, Janet?”
For a long moment, Janet stared at him. Her mouth was dry, and the sounds of the passing cars amplified, like rushing wind. Before she could say anything else, Madeline stuck her head out the door and called her name again.
“You’ll come today, right?” Janet asked. “Two o’clock.”
“We’ll talk,” Michael said.
Janet looked back once before she entered the building, but he was already gone.
Chapter Six
As the nearly empty bus brought the two of them back near their homes, Ashleigh thought about the size of Dove Point, Ohio. Not really big enough to be called a city, and yet not really small enough to be called a town. According to her ninth-grade civics class, about fifty thousand people lived there. Most of them worked at the university or the medical center complex or the handful of factories that dotted the perimeter of Dove Point like beads on a bracelet.
Had she really come that close to the guy from the porch? Had she almost found the needle in the haystack?
Kevin stretched across from her. His long legs spilled off the end of the seat, partially blocking the aisle, and she could tell by the way he chewed his thumbnail that he was anxious.
“They won’t fire you for being late once,” she said.
“I know. I really wasn’t thinking about that.” He straightened up and scooted over to the seat on the aisle, making sure he wouldn’t have to raise his voice to be heard. One old woman rode at the front, her little rolling grocery cart close by her side as if it contained gold. “What are you going to do now?” he asked. “I mean, you didn’t really prove that’s the dude who came to your house in the middle of the night.”
She didn’t hesitate. “It’s him,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really. It’s him.”
They stopped at a light, the engine rumbling in idle. The air-conditioning worked hard to keep them cool, and Ashleigh pinched the fabric of her T-shirt between two fingers and tugged it back and forth, adding to the breeze.
“Do you think this guy might be getting ready to leave town? Not paying rent, not hanging around. Do you think he heard someone was asking about him?” Kevin asked, his voice low. “Maybe the people you asked at his old job told him.”
“What was I supposed to do? Ignore it?”
“No, no.” He held out his hands. He was placating her, which always made her even more angry. “I’m just saying, this guy-if he really knows something-doesn’t want to spill it yet.”
“He showed up at our door.”
Kevin raised an index finger. “In the middle of the night.”
“He said he’d come back.”
“But he hasn’t yet. He could be in trouble with the police. He could be scared. Think about how you would feel if someone came around asking questions about you. You’d freak out. He doesn’t know who you are, does he? Or what you want.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ash, come on-”
“You heard me. Fuck you.”
The old woman at the front of the bus turned, her lips pursed. Ashleigh swallowed hard, felt her anger rise.
“Don’t be like that,” Kevin said. “But if we’d told the police or an adult, maybe they could have…I don’t know…handled it better.”
Ashleigh pulled the bell. “This is your stop,” she said.
The motion of the bus stopping rocked Ashleigh in her seat. She heard Kevin stand up and take two steps up the aisle.
“Hey,” he said. “You coming?”
“You know where I’m going,” she said.
“You want me to come with you?” he asked.
She didn’t respond. Kevin was keeping the bus waiting, but he said one more thing.
“I’m just worried that this guy might be trouble. What if he’s dangerous? What if he wants to hurt you or your mom for some reason?”
Ashleigh heard him. His words registered within her, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing any response. She stared straight ahead and froze him out until he turned and pushed through the side door of the bus, leaving her alone.
Ashleigh knew where her uncle had died. She’d been there many times. The Norbert Rovin Memorial Park sat two blocks north of their house, the house Ashleigh shared with her mother and grandfather, the house her mother had grown up in. Adjacent to the park stood a thick cluster of trees-several acres’ worth. The land for the park had been set aside not long after the town’s founding, and over the years houses and neighborhoods sprung up around its border. Kevin lived with his family on the opposite side of the park from Ashleigh, which made it a convenient meeting place.
Ashleigh walked the two blocks from the bus stop to the park. She knew-seemingly since her birth-that her uncle had been murdered in the woods near their house. Over the years, a process of eavesdropping on adult conversations combined with her own investigations at the local library had allowed Ashleigh to know the facts of her uncle’s death as well as anybody else. Her uncle Justin had gone to the park with her mom on a hot summer day. Eyewitnesses-both adults and children-remembered seeing a young black man in the park talking to some of the children, including Justin. When her uncle disappeared, the police made a sketch of the man and searched for
