Laura Lippman - The Last Place

Ah, but he has a plan to fix his life. The sun will have to save itself.

Carl Dewitt was given to unnervingly long and deep silences. Such a capacity for quiet could be construed as a sign of strength and power- when the person squinting at the horizon was Clint Eastwood or Dewitt’s beloved William Holden.

But in Carl’s case, his inability to make conversation on the long drive to Virginia simply made Tess aware of his crippling shyness. Unless the subject was Lucy Fancher, he was incapable of warming to any topic. Sometimes, even he became so unnerved by the silence between them that he punctuated it by reading the highway signs out loud.

“BEST BISCUITS AROUND,” he said, as they turned south, not far from Hagerstown. Then, a few miles later: “FLYING J TRUCK STOP. CLEAN RESTROOMS, SHOWERS. CRACKER BARREL. VISIT OUR GIFT SHOP.”

His readings, however, were not endorsements. Carl was appalled when Tess asked where he wanted to stop for breakfast. “I brought along a box of Chix ‘n’ Stix,” he said, pulling out a brand of chicken-flavored crackers that Tess thought had ceased to exist years ago. She declined, and they compromised on a drive-through just outside Martinsburg, West Virginia. Tess had liked the bacon biscuit, soaked with grease, more than she cared to admit.

Back in the car, Carl also seemed to find the radio barely tolerable, grunting when Tess punched the buttons to keep the NPR newscast coming in as they passed through one public radio station’s universe after another.

“That’s news?” he asked at one point, after a report on the funding crisis of an Italian opera company.

“Sure, it’s news. You have to think of the broadcast as an entire newspaper. A story like that would be in the arts section.”

Another grunt.

“Let me guess. You read sports, the front page, and nothing else.”

“I glance at the front page. I don’t follow sports anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“I don’t know. Seems pretty trivial. I liked the Philadelphia teams when I was younger, but only because that station came in clearer than the Baltimore one. But, as the Bible says, I’ve put away childish things.”

“Are you religious?”

“Not particularly. I just remember that verse from when my parents dragged me to church.”

“Which was-”

“Methodist.”

“No, I mean where did you grow up?”

“Right in North East, in the house where I live now. I’ve lived my whole life in Cecil County except for college.”

“Which was-”

“University of Delaware.” He allowed himself a small smile. “The Fighting Blue Hens. I didn’t finish.”

There was something almost compulsive in that last tacked-on sentence, as if he didn’t want to be caught embroidering his résumé in any way.

“Why not?”

“My mom got sick. So I came home and took the job with the state. When I found out I would be stationed at the bridge, right outside my hometown, I thought it was the luckiest day in my life. And I guess it was…”

He did not finish the thought. But Tess thought she understood. The murder of Lucy Fancher had cut through this man’s life, separating him from the person he once was as surely as her killer had separated Lucy’s head from her body. She wondered if Carl had daydreamed, in the boredom of his old job, about doing something more exciting than helping stranded motorists or chasing down people who didn’t pay their tolls. It would have been natural for a young man to yearn in such a fashion.

More natural still to regret those yearnings in the wake of what had happened.

“And your mom?”

“Died. Going on eight years this summer. Time flies.”

“So it does. We’re almost to Spartina.”

Spartina was on the long stretch of interstate that cut through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, near the Shenandoah River. A college town, home to one of the state colleges, it looked like any other small city on an interstate. Lots of fast-food restaurants and one mall, which had leached the life from downtown, now a place of empty shops and small diners that closed by early afternoon. Only the landscape and the syrupy-thick southern accents reminded Tess that she had traveled quite a way from Baltimore.

Their first stop was the small motel, an old-fashioned motor court, where Eric Shivers had spent his last untroubled night on this earth. Spartina had several chain motels, but Eric had been a regular at this family-owned place off the beaten path, a U-shaped arrangement of whitewashed stucco, with planters of geraniums outside the office entrance. The place lacked the amenities that most business travelers considered crucial-a twenty-four-hour restaurant, voice mail, and rooms wired for laptops-but it was homey and restful, the Shenandoah visible from the trampled side yard, where rusty spikes stood waiting for a game of horseshoes.

“Eric Shivers?” The man behind the counter was jolly-looking, with a round flushed face. Bald, he had allowed his remaining fringe of hair to grow wild and woolly, so he looked a little clownish, but in a good way. “Oh, Lord, I haven’t thought of that poor boy for years.”

“You remember him, then?” Tess took the lead automatically, although she and Carl had not discussed this beforehand.

“Surely. I think I’d remember Eric even if it weren’t for that awful thing that happened. I still remember those police officers calling here, then coming down from Maryland to break the news. He couldn’t drive, one of them had to take his van back up there. Oh, he was broken up.” The old man shook his head, lost in the memory. “He came here regular-like, at least once a month for six months, when he was on business. I suppose he’d still be coming, if it weren’t for what happened.”

“And what did he do exactly?”

“Salesman?” But the manager-owner’s voice scaled up, unsure. “He paid calls on customers, but I was never clear-something about chemicals?”

“Photographic supplies, perhaps?”

“That was it.” He looked relieved. “Something to do with chemicals for photographs.”

“So did he go to camera shops or local photography studios?”

“I don’t rightly know.”

“Did he have a regular client he always visited?”

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know. I just checked him in, didn’t quiz him much. He’d usually get down here in the evening, so he could be up and out early the next day, making his rounds, stay one more night, then head out the next day. So I guess he had a lot of customers in the area, but I never knew who they were. I was grateful for his business. We’re more of a seasonal operation, though we do get the overflow on the big school weekends. Eric was a small-town boy.”

Even as Tess and the manager spoke, Carl had slid the local yellow pages from the desk, opened it to CAMERA SUPPLIES, and jotted down every store listed. He then found a listing for PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIOS and did the same.

“So what happened to Eric?” the manager asked. “He go home?”

“I’m not sure. His in-laws”-it seemed only polite to refer to the Guntses this way-“said he went back home, somewhere in the South.”

“The South? This is the South. Maryland’s north.”

“It’s all below the Mason-Dixon line,” Tess said. “But I meant his original home.”

“Oh. I just assumed he always lived in Maryland. Now where did I get that idea? Boy, I haven’t thought of him in years. We had some real nice chats that winter, we sure did.”

“About what?”

“He told me all about his plans, even asked one time what kind of diamond I thought girls like best. ”Big ones,“ I said, meaning it as a joke. But he took everything so seriously. His eyes got all big and dark and he said, ”Not my girl, Mr. Schell. If I gave her a piece of chicken wire she’d wear it as if it were the Hope diamond. She loves me, not the things I give her.“ Oh, he was a literal boy in his way. You couldn’t tease him for anything.”