‘I’m not that sensitive.’ He smiled. ‘Hey, I put up with that prick all day.’
When Ren got back to the inn that night, the lights were dimmed and the fire was dying. She went in through the main door and lay back on the sofa in the living room. She pulled a cushion to her side. She expected more people to be up, but then she remembered they would be heading to the slopes early. She closed her eyes. The front door banged shut. She opened her eyes. But whoever it was went straight upstairs. She thought of Billy Waites. What was his story? How did he end up where he was? How did any of us?
Her eyes closed again. Her body struggled to keep her awake. But for a while, in the darkness of her mind, she was somewhere she did not want to be; she lay on dried earth. A boot was pressing hard on her jaw. Before her, several faces, swelled by humidity, seemed to change expressions like the images on a one-armed bandit. Their eyes bore into her. She didn’t know what configuration of ugly, haunting looks would take shape. She wanted to wipe the dirt from her lips, but she couldn’t move. Saliva leaked slowly from her mouth, the skin on her neck was tight with heat. Her heart pumped harder.
Ren jerked awake. She breathed in and out slowly, slowly. Through the window, she could see snow falling hard. She forced her feet on to the floor. Everything ached. She checked the time – eleven thirty p.m. She wondered had anyone come in and seen her. She wondered had she cried out.
She wondered if she could ever dream gently.
Ren went into the office the next day and asked Bob for the Mark Allen Wilson file. She could not admit she considered the possibility of a link to both crimes. He would think she was nuts.
‘Indulging Ollie Haggart?’ said Bob.
‘Maybe,’ said Ren. ‘I just want to take a look, at least.’
‘Why?’
‘Look, I understand where you’re coming from about Ollie Haggart’s motivation. But you know when something’s at the back of your mind? It’s bound to put a little pressure on the front. So if I can get rid of it …’ She shrugged. ‘It’ll take me a half-hour.’
‘Don’t waste your time.’
‘I can spare a half-hour,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it out of lunch.’
‘I haven’t seen you eat once since you’ve been here,’ said Bob.
‘Excuse me? I had one of your Jolly Ranchers.’
‘Knock yourself out. Talk to Mike, he’ll get you the file,’ said Bob. ‘You looking to distract yourself from something?’
Ren stood up. ‘Miaow.’
Ren drove to Main Street, parked and walked a few blocks to the Crown. It was one of her favorite places in Breck – a café up a short flight of steps in a strip of red-brick stores. The eighties entrance led into a totally different world – frescoes, chandeliers, antique wall lights and comfortable chairs.
The seat by the fire was free. Ren rushed to the counter to order. It was the same every time: the Cinnamonster, like a Cinnabon. It was cinnamon, it was monstrous, it was a cake covered in something she could never find the words to describe. She grabbed a black coffee, got the waitress to throw two espresso shots in it and made it back to the fireside chair before anyone had taken it.
She opened the Missing Persons file on Mark Wilson:
Case Initiated
At 4 p.m. on February 12th, I, Undersheriff Mike Delaney, received a call from Hal Rautts at Reign on Main reporting that Mark Wilson did not attend a job interview that they had scheduled the previous week. He failed to reach Mark Wilson on his cellphone. On hearing that Mark Wilson had been in an altercation with Terrence Haggart the previous Saturday and had been last seen badly beaten, Rautts called to the Cheapshot Inn on Ridge Street where Wilson had been staying. Wilson had not been seen there since the day before the altercation with Haggart. Rautts then called the Sheriff’s Office to report Mark Wilson as a missing person.
Case Investigation
I interviewed Terrence Haggart who acknowledged the incident, which had happened at the Brockton Filly on Saturday, February 10th at 11 p.m. They had been arguing about money. Haggart said Wilson owed him two thousand dollars. Terrence Haggart said that the last time he saw Mark Wilson, it was in the parking lot of the Brockton Filly. Haggart admitted that Wilson was very badly beaten by him, but was standing when Haggart left him to go back into the bar. It was confirmed by Billy Waites, bar manager at the Brockton Filly, that this was correct. He also confirmed that Mark Wilson had been drinking steadily from 4 p.m. that day.
Terrence Haggart left the Brockton Filly at 1 a.m. to drive home. Mark Wilson had not re-entered the bar since the altercation outside. Wilson had hitch-hiked to the bar that afternoon. He did not have a vehicle to drive back to Breckenridge in.
Ren skimmed through the rest of the file – all the obvious parts, the witness statements that added nothing to the overall picture. Every time Billy Waites’ name appeared, she got a sensation she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
She stopped skimming to get a sense of who Mark Wilson was.
Social History:
On February 14th, I spoke on the telephone with Mark Wilson’s mother, Diane Wilson. She confirmed she had not heard from her son, but stated that she ‘never’ heard from him. He grew up in Iowa and had developed a drug and alcohol problem in his late teens. His family made several attempts to rehabilitate him, all of which failed. He had been estranged from his family since he was twenty-three years old, but had made intermittent contact over the years, according to his mother, ‘looking for money or sympathy’.
Wilson had worked different jobs since he left home, mainly in factories, on farms and in manufacturing. He had moved to Breckenridge one month before his disappearance …
Ren slumped back in her chair. It was amazing what people would commit to in a legal document, what awful words they would allow to be attributed to them. Mark Wilson – a tragic man, a troubled drunk, did not deserve to have his disappearance described, she read, by his family as ‘another pathetic stunt’.
The windscreen wipers did little to help the visibility. Ren drove a thin line between patience and urgency. Adrenaline and a can of Red Bull were pumping through her. Main Street was like the ghost town it had never become. The lights twinkled brief joy before the dark roads ahead. She passed a handful of cars on the way to the Filly. She pulled in behind the green, filthy truck she was hoping she would find there. The reverse-Minotaur guy. She glanced in the window and saw a mess of papers, coffee cups, a box of NoDoz, some hair gel. She moved on.
He wasn’t there when she walked in. But he walked out of the men’s room not long after Jo.
‘Another pitcher, please, Billy,’ Jo called out across the bar. ‘Hey,’ she said, waving to Ren.
