Once You Go This Far

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  In memory of Marie Kelly

  CHAPTER 1

  It happened on the first day that felt like autumn. Overnight the air turned crisp and the trees burnished into orange. It was a relief after another Midwestern summer that, emboldened by climate change, seemed determined to stick around until winter. The long, narrow parking lot behind the nature center at Highbanks was still mostly empty when I pulled in; there was a school bus at one end, a gaggle of kids in Catholic school uniforms in an unruly line beside it.

  I was wearing a new jacket, a plum-colored canvas anorak that I’d been looking forward to wearing for weeks. If not for the coat, I probably would’ve been more pissed off that my brother was standing me up.

  “Andrew Joseph Weary,” I said into his voice mail. “It is nine forty-five in the morning and I am not in my bed right now, because of you. And yet, you’re nowhere to be seen. Giving you five more minutes and then I’m leaving.”

  It wasn’t like either of us to engage in traipsing about in nature. But Andrew was trying to turn over a new leaf. A week in jail will do that to a person, and his particular new leaf involved aspirations of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. After he told me that, and after laughing my head off and asking who in the hell had left a copy of Wild in his apartment, I decided I should probably be supportive. Turning over a new leaf wasn’t such a bad idea, not for anyone. So I’d agreed to join him in some practice hiking. Thus far, we’d actually managed to do it only once before.

  Neither of us were morning people, new leaf or no.

  I waited the five minutes and thought about leaving. But the crisp air convinced me otherwise. I was here already; why not take a walk anyway? I opened the car door just as a silver Chevrolet Equinox whipped into the spot next to me; I barely managed to close the door in time to avoid it getting ripped off.

  The passenger window of the SUV went down. “Sorry, sorry,” Rebecca Newsome said. I didn’t know her as Rebecca Newsome at the time, just as a sixtyish woman with short, ashy-blond hair and a wide, thin-lipped smile. “I hate it when people do that.” She got out of the car and I saw she wore dusty hiking boots and ripstop cargo pants. She opened the back door and a brown dog jumped out, small and fox-like with pointed ears that looked comically large for its head. “It’s just so gosh darn beautiful out today that I couldn’t wait!”

  I waved her off. “No harm done,” I said.

  Still smiling, she tugged at an imaginary lapel. “Great coat. I like that color.”

  I wasn’t prone to small talk with strangers either, but the weather had made me downright friendly.

  I said, “I like the fact that it’s cool enough out to wear it.”

  She grinned. The dog, antsy to get after something in the woods, strained at its woven leash. “Well, have a good one.”

  “You too.” I gestured at my own car door. “And be careful.”

  Rebecca gave me a thumbs-up and set off briskly toward the woods.

  That “be careful” came back to haunt me less than a half an hour later. After wandering through the shrieking middle schoolers in the nature center, I went out onto the observation platform and looked into the trees growing from the steep embankment. Somewhere out there, a shale bluff towered over the Olentangy. But all I could see was sun-dappled gold and orange. The only sounds were foresty rustling noises and birds and the crunch of sneakers on the gravel trails and, somewhere far off, traffic.

  Then I heard something that was distinctly unnatural.

  A dusty scrambling, a startled gasp, followed by a series of snaps and the startled bark of a dog.

  I pushed off the railing and started down the Ripple Rock Trail, calling out, “Hello? Everyone okay?”

  I heard a voice but couldn’t quite make it out.

  I scanned the sloping path for the dog, the woman from the parking lot, or a sign of what had caused the noise.

  “I don’t think doggies are allowed on this trail,” a voice said, lilting. I rounded a corner and finally saw someone, a woman in lime-green running gear farther down the path. She crouched before the fox-like dog, which hunkered just off the trail, tail swishing like a metronome. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”

  “It was with someone,” I said.

  The lady in green spun around to look at me, while the dog growled and let loose a tirade of barks that echoed through the trees around us.

  “Did you see a woman? Silver hair, cargo pants?” I had to raise my voice to be heard over the dog’s barking.

  “No, I just came around the corner and saw this little dude. He seems terrified.”

  Over her shoulder, I saw a strange divot in the surface of the trail, an irregular-shaped hole where it looked like a rock had become dislodged.

  “There,” I said, pointing. I took a few steps closer while the dog continued to snarl.

  The woman in green grabbed ahold of the leash, which had caught on a branch. I headed for the divot. Everything on either side of the path was orange and golden and brown. Off to the right, the ground sloped gently; to the left, a much sharper drop-off to a creek at least fifty feet below.

  The left side was where I saw the bottom of a hiking boot, the hem of ripstop cargo pants, midway between the trail and the ravine below.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “I see her down there.” I stepped off the path and nearly slipped on a pile of dewy leaves.

  “The rangers’ station,” the other woman said. “I’ll go for help.”

  I gingerly stepped over a moss-covered log, bracing myself against a tree trunk studded with mushrooms. “Can you hear me?” I called.

  The lady from the parking lot didn’t make a sound. She didn’t move, either. I picked my way down the steep embankment. Now I could see signs of her fall—a patch of earth freshly exposed when another log was bumped aside, a swatch of nylon caught on a sharp root.

  I nearly lost my footing twice more before I reached her. She was on her stomach, neck twisted harshly, the side of her face planted in the soft ground. I felt for a pulse at her throat—faint. She was bleeding from a gash at the right temple and her palms were scratched up, mud caked under her fingernails. As I leaned over her, I saw that her eyes were open, staring into the dirt.

  I didn’t know what to do—she was at an angle, meaning the blood was rushing to her head, but I remembered something from a long-ago first-aid class about not moving someone with an injured neck. Fortunately, I heard shoes on the gravel above me. “Where are you?” the woman in green called.

  “Down here. I’m down here. She’s really hurt.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” a new voice said, “please stay on the trail.” I looked up and saw a young woman in a park ranger’s uniform coming down the steep hill. She spoke into a walkie-talkie in urgent tones. Her dark eyes swept across the scene and her expression hardened.

  The beautiful quiet morning suddenly felt anything but.

  *
* *

  They took her to St. Ann’s. I followed in my car, unable to shake the sound of my own voice—be careful—from my head. Was I the last person who’d spoken to her before she fell? It seemed more than possible given how empty the trail had been, and it left me feeling responsible. If not for what had happened, then at least for making sure she wasn’t alone now.

  The woman in green had the same idea. She was waiting outside the emergency room doors, the dog’s leash looped around a wrist while the creature on the other end backed itself into a bush and whined.

  “I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” she said when she saw me. She held up the leash. “That ranger said something about calling animal control and, well, that would be terrible. You fall while hiking and your dog ends up in a shelter? But you can’t take a dog into an emergency room, it turns out.”

  I scratched my wrist and nodded, thinking of Rebecca’s open, blank eyes. I hoped the whereabouts of her dog were not beyond her concern.

  “I’m Stacy,” she added. She went to offer me a hand but found her right one wrapped in the leash. So she settled for a small wave.

  I smiled, or tried to. My face felt weird. “Roxane.”

  “I can’t believe a woman fell off a cliff right in front of me and all I noticed was her dog.” Stacy shook her head. She had dark, ageless skin and hair pulled into a high, tight bun.

  “I saw her in the parking lot earlier,” I said. “That’s the only reason I knew.”

  Before too long, a woman rushed in from the parking lot. Pregnant—very—in a striped maxi dress and a denim jacket. Her face was pale and worried as she went through the sliding doors and up to the nurses’ station.

  Stacy and I stood outside in relative silence, neither of us sure what we were supposed to do next. Would anyone need to know what we hadn’t seen and hadn’t heard? The breeze, which had felt deliciously cool earlier, now just seemed damp and chilly.

  Eventually, the pregnant woman came back out outside and walked over to Stacy and me as if seeing us for the first time. Her face was bloodless, a faint spray of freckles across her nose standing out like a splash of paint. Her hair was corn silk, damp and frizzy at the temples as if she’d just stepped out of a shower. She had a tiny golden cross on a whisper-thin chain around her neck. “They said you two were— Oh, God,” she muttered, noticing the cowering dog. She reached out for the leash; the dog yipped defensively and moved farther back into the bushes. The woman flinched. “What happened? Did you see what happened? Did she trip over him?”

  “I heard it,” I said, gently. “I heard her fall. But I didn’t see anything. I’m sorry.”

  Stacy handed over the leash, which the pregnant woman then clutched so tightly her knuckles went white. “I’m Stacy, and this is Roxane.”

  “Maggie Holmer.” She was looking at something behind us, or at nothing at all.

  “Are you her daughter?”

  A nod, curt.

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Rebecca Newsome,” Maggie said. “I can’t believe this.”

  Stacy glanced at me, then tried a change of topic. “When are you due?”

  Maggie didn’t bite. “They took her for a, what’s it called. A CT scan. I guess I’m just supposed to wait? How is a person just supposed to wait like this?”

  I glanced down at her hands; her left sported a modest wedding set. “Is there someone we can call for you?” I said.

  She pulled a phone out of her handbag and promptly dropped it on the concrete. Blotches of red had appeared now on her ashen cheeks. “My husband is on his way. He’ll know what to do. I can’t believe this.”

  After that, Stacy led her back inside the ER and I took a turn with the dog’s leash. I was on the lookout for Maggie’s husband, James, who was en route from Findlay, where he worked two days per week for some petroleum company. I hoped the dog would like him better than it seemed to like me. While it low-key growled from its place under the bushes, I scrolled through my phone and read a series of apology texts from Andrew about standing me up. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but I wasn’t in the mood to reassure him.

  James Holmer was bookish and flushed, dressed in a brown Carhartt jacket over a burgundy polo shirt and khakis. I knew who he was from the way he rushed past me, then noticed the dog snarling from the bushes and turned back. I said, “James?”

  He stopped and stared at me from behind his frameless glasses. “Where’s Maggie?”

  “She’s inside.”

  He didn’t ask me who I was, just proceeded into the emergency room.

  I sat for a while on a concrete bench. Eventually a Delaware County sheriff’s deputy approached the door and we had a rather perfunctory conversation about what had happened. Then he went inside, and a few beats later James Holmer came back out. “You’re still here.”

  I held up the leash.

  “Thanks for watching him.” He tugged on the leash and the dog came forward skittishly, whining now. “Let me put him in the car. Sorry you got stuck here—hopefully you were on your way out of the hospital, not in.”

  “No worries. I was actually at the park. I talked to your mother-in-law, briefly.”

  “Oh.” He looked up at the grey-white sky over the lenses of his glasses. The dog strained against the leash, trying to retreat to the safety of the bushes, but James ignored it. “Wow. Did she say what happened?”

  “No, this was before.”

  James nodded, his eyes drifting down to the dog. “Did you see what happened?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I hope she didn’t trip over him,” James said, nodding at the dog. “He’s always underfoot. I’ve tripped over him already once this week—she’s been staying with us. Maggie’s due date is tomorrow.” His expression hardened, probably as he realized how the birth of his child would be, one way or another, affected by what had happened this morning. He cleared his throat. “Okay, well, thanks again, for your help.”

  “Of course.” I found a business card in my wallet and gave it to him. “If you need to reach me for anything.”

  “Great. That’s very kind.”

  He went off to one side of the parking lot, and I headed to the other.

  * * *

  I didn’t hear anything else about it. I called the deputy twice, hoping for an update, but he didn’t answer and he didn’t return my messages either. I thought about trying the hospital, but I knew they wouldn’t tell me anything.

  Not knowing was hard for me. It always was. This was part of why I’d bailed on my plan of becoming a psychologist—I was too nosy, too hungry for the why. You can’t act on people’s problems as a psychologist, just talk. And talking had its place, but so did doing.

  This time around, there was nothing to do. Nothing except wait out the deeply unpleasant poison ivy that developed on my hands and arms and try to move on.

  CHAPTER 2

  I never expected to see Rebecca Newsome’s daughter again, but somehow I wasn’t surprised when she reentered my life a month later.

  She was sitting in the fourth-floor waiting area of my new office building, rocking a newborn baby in a carrier on the floor beside her. For a second I didn’t understand that she was there for me, thought instead she must have an appointment with someone else in the building—what a coincidence. Then she said, “Your website says business hours are ten to five.”

  The whole office thing was my own new leaf, an experiment in something allegedly known as work-life balance, but the experiment wasn’t going well. I apparently didn’t like work-life balance. Or at least not if it involved going in to an office. So far the space was turning out to be nothing but an inconvenient location to keep my printer-scanner. I nodded, still not understanding.

  Maggie went on, “I didn’t know you were a detective. You gave my husband a card that day. It didn’t say what you did for a living. I wanted to send you a note. A thank-you note for—for what you did. So I looked for your address online.”


  She had stopped rocking the baby carrier, and its occupant made a disgruntled sound. So she resumed, her face tight and exhausted. I was afraid to ask but I said, “How is your family?”

  “My mother passed away,” she said, and I drew in a sharp breath, involuntary. “She hung on for three days. She got to hold her granddaughter. Well, they said her brain activity—that she wasn’t aware of her surroundings. But I don’t know about that. I put the baby in her arms. Just because. And it was about an hour after that she slipped away.”

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to—I don’t know why I told you that. The reason I came is, well, when I saw your website, what you do. I wondered if I could hire you.”

  The conversation had gone to an unexpected place. “Hire me?”

  Maggie nodded. “Maybe there’s a reason that you were the one in the woods with her. Maybe you can figure out what happened. What really happened.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  * * *

  My office contained a desk, a printer, a chair, and a thrifted vintage love seat in a brown velvet voile that reminded me of a couch my grandmother once had. A large, empty picture frame leaned against one wall, which seemed to be emblematic of something. Maggie glanced at it but said nothing, just set the baby carrier gently on one cushion of the love seat and sat down beside it.

  “This is still a work in progress,” I said, “the office. And the business hours. I might’ve guessed that I wouldn’t like having regular business hours.” I took a seat in the desk chair and took a notebook out of the top drawer, wondering if I could find a pen without looking like I was actively searching for it. Good detectives should always have pens, probably. Ironically, I’d ordered a thousand pens printed with my phone number and address from a former client who owned a print shop, and someone—hard to say if it was Arthur or if it was me—had gotten the address wrong on the order form. So I was in possession of a thousand misprinted pens, but they were all in my apartment or in my Range Rover. I didn’t want to keep them in the office in case a client accidentally picked one up and spread misinformation across the city. “I hope you weren’t waiting for long.”