mile drew closer, a sensation I didn’t understand then, like retrieving a long-missed lover from the airport. I knew I could essentially hide in plain sight around her. She would have no idea who I was, what I looked like, what car I might drive, no sense that any threat was present. I had no nagging duty to truly eliminate her—just the pretend one serving as my purpose for being there—and no nagging partner trying to manage the operation.
When I finally arrived in Lawrenceburg, it seemed clear the government had actually figured a way to deposit Melody directly into the Middle of Nowhere. If there was a welcome sign on the edge of town, I’d missed it. Even the courthouse failed to have the word Lawrenceburg on it, merely the county name. What a perfect place to dump her—in a town with no identity of its own. And as I drifted through the maze of humble streets, Justice’s strategy of relocating witnesses came together as though I’d solved a clever mystery before its end: Every town was the same. If you could take a giant iron and flatten the hills of Mineral Point, you would have Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. There was little to distinguish these villages other than the natural topography of the land; their interiors were almost identical.
I unintentionally slowed as I drove closer to Melody’s address, holding the directions in one hand and alternately steering and downshifting with the other. I wound down a side street of fresh gravel that left a cloud of white smoke in my trail, the only cloud drifting toward an empty sky. Then, with a drop of the directions to the floor of the car, there I was, at my final destination.
Randall Gardner was a dead man.
The building residing at the address he gave me—901 New Frankfort Road—was an aged redbrick building with the words GREENFIELD ELEMENTARY etched into a concrete cornice, green mold outlining the shaded letters, and a fungus-stained roof. I parked my car tightly between two enormous pickup trucks, lit a cigarette, filled my lungs, and cracked the window to let the smoke escape. At first glance the building still appeared to be an elementary school, right down to the basketball courts off to its side and the American flag flying in front. It wasn’t until I watched an older lady carry a full laundry basket back toward the double doors of the main entrance that I realized this place was something other than it appeared. I watched a few minutes more as two other people came and went, concluded the school had been converted into apartments or condos. That being the case, what Randall had failed to give me was an apartment number. Still dead. The place was undeniably depressing, though, residents living in a school, as though having been forced to relive childhood embarrassments and shortcomings, serving a life sentence of detention.
So what choice did I have? I sat and waited and hoped I’d know what Melody might look like now. My glimpses of her had always been fleeting, mere seconds or minutes each time. In my mind, I had burned an indelible image, an amalgam of little bits and pieces I managed to capture over my distant views, no more accurate than a rendering drawn by a sketch artist. But it wouldn’t have taken much to throw me—shorter or longer hair, an extra twenty-five pounds, an excessive tan—and she’d walk right by me, nothing more than the strangers we should have been to each other.
The few people who did come and go were all elderly, and I thought perhaps this place was some form of a residence for seniors, a small-town version of a retirement community for the forgotten, the local elders who arrived at the end of their childless lives. You didn’t have to go any farther than the parking lot to sense that this facility was used to tuck people away until they passed on, a building full of temporary compartments for inconvenient people.
I suppose this place was perfect for Melody.
But when the young woman opened the door and slowly walked out, I knew the picture in my mind was more accurate than I could have imagined. Even from my distance of a hundred feet or so, there was no doubt that I had just found Melody Grace McCartney, no matter what name showed on her mail at this address.
I immediately snuffed my smoke and closed my window.