Clara Hastings's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Clara left the house before Mildred woke. She drove past the airstrip and paid cash for two nights at a hotel with a broken ice machine in the lobby. Then she called Marsh from the room phone. He gave her the groundskeeper's address and one more thing. A homicide detective from the city was already asking questions about the missing eight. Off duty. Off the books. Marsh had passed him her name. They met at a laundromat that stayed open all night. Clara picked it because nobody watches a woman folding shirts at two in the morning. She took a dryer in the back and waited. A man came in with an empty duffel and no laundry. Gray in the beard. Hooded sweatshirt. He sat two chairs down and read a flyer taped to the wall. "You're the reporter," he said. He did not look at her. "Marsh says you have a sketch." She slid the photocopy across the plastic seat between them. Marcus Chen picked it up, folded it once, and put it in his sweatshirt pocket. "I've been on this three weeks," he said. "My sister's boy lived here. He donated at that drive. Now he doesn't answer his phone." Clara felt her stomach drop. Nine, then. Not eight. "I have the groundskeeper's address," she said. "I can't sit on the street in front of his house. Half this town knows my face by now." "I rented a van this morning." He pulled a key from his pocket and set it on the seat. "Tinted glass in the cargo box. Parked two blocks from the address. I already ran the plates through a friend. Nothing on him. Not even a ticket." "Clean is its own kind of dirty." "That's what I thought." She took the key. "When?" "Tonight. He works a shift at the cemetery until nine. I'll drive. You watch from the back. If he comes home alone, we log it. If he brings someone with him, we call it in and we're done pretending." "Marsh gets pulled if we call it in." "Marsh knows." She folded a shirt she had not washed. "Why me? You could do this alone." He looked at her then. Tired eyes. Not unkind. "Because you've got the names and I've got the badge, and neither one of us has enough on our own." At ten past nine they were parked in the cargo box. Clara sat on a milk crate with her notepad open. Marcus watched the mirror from the driver's seat through a gap in the curtain. The groundskeeper's truck pulled into the driveway at nine forty. He got out alone. He walked to the passenger side and opened the door. He lifted a woman from the seat. She was not moving. He carried her to the house and shut the door with his foot. Clara wrote the time down. Her hand shook. The lead was alive, and so was the woman, maybe, for now.