Page 53 of Home Is Where the Bodies Are

I close my eyes for a moment, conjuring up an image of Christie back in 1999. She comes into view, faint on the back of my eyelids, grainy but alive. Her crooked half smile, like she couldn’t decide which emotion to settle on. Her dark hair shiny from grease, not from some incredible product.

My eyes open, and I look to Beth, the figment of Christie disappearing back into the void. “I remember always seeing her walk laps around the Grove, over and over, rain or shine, taking pictures with that old camera looped around her neck.”

Beth nods. “Yeah, she’d show me pictures she’d snapped when I was out for a run. I didn’t even know she was taking photos of me, which was weird.”

“That is weird,” I say.

“I don’t really remember her,” Michael says. “Still, based on what you two can recall, it makes sense she was deemed a runaway. She was a hamster on a wheel going nowhere.” He glances at Beth and then me. “But two girls disappearing within five months of one another, in a town of less than two hundred, is highly suspicious. Mom probably thought the same thing.”

My eyes scan over the newspaper clippings again. So many of them mention the wordrunaway. Maybe Michael’s right. It makes sense, after what Mom had done, she would become paranoid, looking for patterns that didn’t exist. Just because our parents disposed of Emma’s body doesn’t mean they had anything to do with Christie’s disappearance. And we still don’t really know what happened to Emma before that camcorder started recording the night of June 15, 1999. Maybe Dad just stumbled upon Emma’s body. Still, that doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t call the police. I pick up Emma Harper’s case file from the couch cushion and plop it into my lap, flipping it open to where I left off.

“They had a suspect in custody for Emma’s disappearance. He was charged with her murder,” I say, reading from the report.

“Who?” Michael asks.

“Charles Gallagher,” Beth says before I can find the answer myself.

He scrunches up his face. “Who?”

“That creep that lived at the end of our street,” she explains.

“Oh yeah. I forgot about him. How was he even a suspect in the first place?” Michael asks.

“Lots of innocent people are suspects. That’s just how the system works.”

Beth’s right about that. Charles Gallagher was an easy target. He was the town creep. I feel like every small town has one. A person no one else understands. He had poor social skills and no friends. He drank frequently, smoked like a chimney, and wore ill-fitting clothes. He never said much either. He lived in the brick house right across from the park. His mom lived with him, or maybe he lived with her. No one really knew. His property was an eyesore, his home surrounded by old junk cars parked in the driveway and in his yard. People complained, but he said it was his house, and he could do whatever he wanted with it. There were rumors about him before Emma went missing. Some people said he had been in prison. If you asked what he served time for, everyone had a different answer. They also said he was prone to violent outbursts due to a head injury he sustained while serving in the military. I never knew if any of the rumors were true or not, but I avoided him all the same. Most everyone did.

I scan several pages of the case file before recapping my findings to Beth and Michael. “There was an anonymous tip that led the police to zero in on him,” I explain. “Someone saw him talking to Emma at the park on the day she went missing. Then several others came forward to say they witnessed this interaction too. The police discovered shoe prints in his yard that matched a pair of sneakers she owned. Apparently, that was enough evidence to obtain a search warrant. The police found a Barbie playground ball, a pink jump rope, and aPowerpuff Girlszip-up hoodie in his home. They belonged to Emma.”

“If I didn’t know the truth, I’d say that’s all pretty damning,” Michael says.

“Not really.” Beth shakes her head. “It’s all circumstantial. Shoe prints? He lived across from the park. Kids trekked through his yard all the time. And everything found in his house could have been items that were left at the park.”

“That’s exactly what he said, initially,” I say.

“Wait, what do you mean byinitially?” Michael asks.

“Charles changed his story after being interrogated for sixteen hours straight without an attorney present. He ended up confessing to the kidnapping and murder of Emma. Said he disposed of her body in a dumpster behind a store in Janesville.”

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” Michael massages his temples with his pointer and middle fingers.

“Because Mom and Dad kept it hidden from us. Plus, it was 1999 and small-town news wasn’t readily available like it is now. The only reason I knew anything was because Lucas told me everything he knew, but his parents kept a lot from him too,” Beth says.

I flip to another page in the case file. “How could Mom and Dad sit back and watch this man’s life be destroyed?”

“It was either his or theirs,” Michael says.

Beth shoots a glare at him. “Yeah, but he was innocent.”

“He confessed,” he says.

“It’s called a false confession. People do it under great duress,” Beth argues.

“Or maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe his conscience finally got the best of him, and he let out everything in an act of catharsis.” Michael’s clearly playing devil’s advocate. “We don’t know what happened to Emma before that videotape, or after.”

“Yeah, but Mom and Dad found her. That means she wasn’t thrown away in a dumpster behind a store in Janesville and carted off to some landfill like Charles said. If you find a body, you call the police. It’s pretty fucking simple,” I huff.

“Sometimes the simplest things are the most complicated,” Beth says, and I’m not sure what she means by that, but it doesn’t feel like she’s talking about Emma or our parents.

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