Page 44 of Haven't Killed in Years
“We can get a hotel tonight…so we don’t have to drive all the way back.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I muttered, not really considering it.
“I just need a name,” he said unprompted. “Whatever Marin is going by now. That would be game changing.”
“Sure would,” I said, knowing that if he had his way, we would be spending the next five hours talking about Marin Haggerty. I leaned my head against the window, closed my eyes, and welcomed the nap I desperately needed.
- - - - -
It worked. Dominic’s planworked. I could have called ahead when we stopped for gas, warned the place they were getting scammed, but if there was something about my identity in there, better Dominic find it than the police. At least this way I had a chance to find it first.
The old man in the shoebox office handed over the keys without hesitation. He barely looked at the ID as he griped about the pitfalls of digital recordkeeping. All John’s hard work for nothing.
Dominic hoisted open the door to the first unit, the rattling of the chains echoing across the cracked parking lot. There they were—stacks of aging bankers boxes. The door motion triggered a light inside, but the glow seemed almost imaginary, like an aha moment Indiana Jones might experience. Dominic ran his finger down the boxes in the first row, scanning the labels; they were arranged by birth year, too recent for me.
He moved to the second unit and lifted the door, the sound and the light less symbolic this time. Older boxes ran along the bottom.He glanced over and raised his eyebrows, overjoyed with the possibility of getting something right.
I took a deep breath. Was this it? Was this dingy storage unit about to expose me? What was I even going to do about it? Knock Dominic over the head? Drag his body into the unit and lock it up? He’s flaky. Who would even notice he was gone?
“Help me,” he said as he started to pull boxes out and onto the pavement. “We need 1996.”
A part of me was flattered that he knew such a specific personal detail, as if he had absorbed something I shared with him on a first date, not because he was obsessively trying to hunt me down.
Three layers in, there they were—the 1996 files. He pulled down the box labeledA–H, the one thatHaggertywould be in.
“Grab one,” he said. “Her name could be anything.”
I skipped two boxes in favor ofS–Z, the one whereTannerwould be. Maybe, just maybe, while he was distracted, I could take the file out, slip it under my shirt.
We both started crawling our fingers through the files. I recognized some of the names. Eddie Slocum, we called him EddieScrotum—hilarious. Something bad had happened to him; something bad had happened to all of us. Some of the other kids were really mean to him—cruel, cutting insults. There was no room for sympathy when we were all just trying to survive.
Jillian Simmons—we’d shared a therapy group and she could scream like nobody’s business. She had a really screwed-up ear. Her mother’s boyfriend had cut her with a broken bottle. I think that was her.
I looked for my old roommate, Natalie Shea, but she must have been 1997, because I didn’t see her file. She reminded me of this boy Declan, who was such a dick to her. He was a dick to everyone,really—the worst kind of insecure bully. I had such admiration for my father’s cognitive restraint that impulsive dumbass boys had always tested my resolve.
My fingers reached the spot where Gwen Tanner’s file should be, but there was nothing. It went fromStanleytoThompson. I kept going, but I reached the end of the box with no sign ofTanner. I should have been relieved, but now I was worried it was misfiled in one of Dominic’s boxes.
Dominic’s hands paused. “I don’t see anything,” he said, sighing. “No one that looks like her. You find anything?” He leaned back onto his heels.
I shook my head. He was so trusting. Even if my file had been there, would he have just taken my word for it? “Maybe she was never here,” I tried. “Maybe James Calhoun was having an affair.”
“Let’s double-check each other.” He shoved his box in my direction before reaching for mine. So much for trust.
- - - - -
We looked through atrillion boxes…twice. He wanted it so badly that he convinced himself I could have been lying about my age and we had to go through years of boxes. When I moved into that place, I wasn’t much removed from the school pictures Dominic had access to, and he knew that none of those little girls in the files were me. Despite his desperation, he finally accepted defeat. Only it didn’t feel like the miracle I was hoping for; its absence was illogical. Instead, it was much more likely that someone had beaten us to it. Someone had purposefully removed my file.
Twenty-Four
Before we got backto the car, I pretended to have to pee and raced back into the office. I needed to know who had been in that unit. I’d thought this trip might expose me; instead it could be what I needed to expose my stalker.
“Everything all right?” the man asked when I flung open the door and stomped in.
“Can you tell me who else has been in those units recently? Maybe in the last couple of years?”
“Those units? No one. I don’t think anyone has been here since they first moved in. You all are the best customers I have.”
“I know someone has been in there. Please, I don’t care what happened.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, uncrumpling whatever bills I had. “Here’s forty-seven bucks; it’s all I have.”
