Page 42 of What She Saw
“Were you surprised Patty didn’t return to the tent?”
“Pissed mostly. By two a.m., I was tired and running out of food. So I shut the stand down and went looking for her. I thought I’d find her near the toilets or the woods getting high.”
“She used drugs?”
“Everyone that night was. I could see her needing a line or two to keep her energy up.”
“Did she use coke often?”
“No. But that night was hard. I figured she’d gotten a boost and lost track of time.”
Buddy had created this story about Patty to justify his inaction for over two hours. “When did you tell this story to Taggart?”
“After Sara called in her missing person report, he came looking for me.”
“Anyone else I should be talking to about Laurie?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I got nothing for you.”
Taggart had talked to all the band members during his investigation. They had all been busy getting on with the show. In my files and papers, I had a list of the band members and the road crews. No one had noticed her leaving after her set.
The forensic investigators found a set of partial prints on the guitar. But none were linked to anyone in the national fingerprint database. One partial print belonged to a Terrible Tuesdays band member. But video footage showed him touching the guitar onstage as she sang. Taggart had also run fingerprint searches against all the men associated with the case.
“There’s a theory that Rafe Colton was working with someone. What do you think?”
“I didn’t know the guy that well. When he brought his posters in the diner and was hanging them, we shot the shit. He was fun. Had great jokes. But I never saw him with anyone else.”
“Did he flirt with Bailey?”
“Sure. She loved it.”
Buddy returned to his kitchen. I took several bites of the burger. It tasted good, but my stomach quickly filled. I never could eat much when I had a problem I couldn’t solve.
The sun dipped toward the mountains. The light shone into the diner and reflected off mirrors behind the bar. I had maybe two hours of sunlight left. The dark never scared me, and I wanted to see the site of the festival after the sun had set. I wanted to see what the concertgoers had seen. Yes, they’d had some light from the stages and the temporary lights near the first aid trailer, but large pockets of the field had been dark.
I tossed a ten-dollar bill on the bar and left. In my car, I cranked the radio, and I drove the ten miles west toward the Nelson farm, the site of the festival. The old woman who’d leased the land to the festival had died fifteen years ago. Records showed that her grandson had inherited the house and the land. He lived in Washington, DC, and didn’t visit the property often.
I spotted the black, rusted mailbox. Despite its dilapidated state, I recognized it from Taggart’s file, which the old sheriff had shipped to me days before he died. Not hard to figure why he’d picked me to take up the mantle. I’d sat on the files for a few years before I couldn’t ignore them any longer. I’d spent the last two years embedding all the case details into my brain.
A set of headlights crested the hill ahead, so I slowed, wanting the driver to pass me. The driver didn’t pass by until I reached the mailbox. Cursing, I kept driving until I reached the top of the hill and turned my car around.
With no one on the road, I turned left into the long dirt driveway. My headlights skimmed the bumpy road. Several times I had to veerhard to the right or left to avoid getting stuck in ruts carved in the dirt by gushes of rain. Ahead I saw a large oak tree that had appeared in the crime scene photos. Thirty-one years had added at least ten feet to the tree and gnarled and thickened the bark.
I knew the concert field was to the left. I pulled to the side of the road and shut off the car. Without the headlights, the night grew heavy. The quarter moon spit out a little light but not enough. I grabbed a flashlight from the car’s glove box.
In 1994, the field had been freshly cut and the hedges around it trimmed. Now the grass was as tall as my thighs and the hedge thick with thorns.
I walked along the shrubbery until I found a small opening. I slid through, irritated when thorns caught my jeans and scratched my skin. When I stumbled onto the field, I decided that if I returned, I’d bring bolt cutters and carve out an easy path.
The grass brushed my jeans as I moved toward the center. I’d stared at so many pictures of the festival. But thirty-one years of growth and change had thrown off what I expected to see. The trees at the edges of the field were taller, thicker. And the old split rail fence had collapsed.
My gaze trailed the fence north. I rotated until I faced the spot where the stage had been. I opened a playlist on my phone. I hit play, and Laurie’s grainy festival recording of “Better Be Good to Me” echoed in the night. Her voice had a rough edge as she emphasized the wordmeeee.
I shut off the flashlight and allowed the darkness to wrap around me. Laurie’s voice faded in and out as she moved away from the microphone, which caught the crowd’s cheers. A breeze brushed my face. I imagined I was Laurie, standing onstage, staring at the crowd that had swollen to over two thousand. The rush of cheers and clapping must have reverberated in her chest. The high would have been incredible. She’d known,known, singing was going to be her life’s work. I understood that kind of wanting. I chased my articles with a similar intensity.
I turned toward the spot where Patty had sold her burgers. I wondered if her soul and those of the others were chained to the land. I’d seen a movie once about five airmen stranded in the African desert near the ruins of their downed plane. They’d seemed normal. Regular guys frustrated by the crash and trying to get home. And then one by one, the men had vanished. It turned out, they’d died in the crash days earlier. They’d been dead all along. But they couldn’t go to heaven or hell until their bones were found.
I reset the audio, closed my eyes, and listened as the gritty recording replayed. Were those four women swirling around me, begging me to see them?Find me! Find me!
