alleys. Some are dropped in rivers and lakes, like fish caught, thrown back, not worth keeping. Floaters, they call them, when bodies fill with gases and rise to the surface of the dark water that consumed them. Something inside stirs, expands, causes them to rise.
A parent always knows whether the child is just missing or is truly gone. And I can read it in the lines of their faces, the shadows, those sad, sad shadows in their eyes. But when I met Katy’s momma, I wasn’t so sure. I could see the sorrow of a child gone, but I could also see the life that comes with love, living love, hanging on. Which is another story. She’s from Suck Creek too. You gotta pay attention when you run to the end of the earth to get away from Suck Creek and a little piece of Suck Creek comes drifting up, swirling around your feet. I mean that was the feeling I had when I met Olivia Baines. I kind of recognized the accent and got to asking questions. And when she said she was from Suck Creek, I got this swimmy feeling, like it was pulling me back. So of course I felt the calling, said I’d do everything in my power to find her girl.
I picked the picture for Katy’s flyer, went through all those photos her fiancé had, picked the one of her smiling with this big, happy, tennis-pro kind of smile, thick dark hair unfurling in a breeze. She was looking at her fiancé, who held the camera. She was looking like a woman who had no idea just how beautiful she was. She was looking like a woman in love. And it took me back to my sister, Darly, who had that same kind of smile and wavy long hair. I wanted the whole town to fall in love with Katy Connor, to work to find her. Strangers gathered weekly for the search. Church groups, bikers, even some of the homeless climbed on the bus to help.
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
