In hindsight, Mackenzie wished she would have stayed in Omaha overnight and come into Morrill County in the light of day. Crossing into the small town of Belton at 12:05 at night was beyond creepy. There were hardly any other cars on the road and the only lights to be seen were the streetlights along Main Street and a few neon signs in the windows of bars and the one place she was actually looking for, the town's one motel.
Belton had a population of just over two thousand. It consisted mostly of farmers and textile plant workers. Small businesses were the heart of the place because no larger businesses dared try their hand in this part of the state. When she was a kid, a McDonald's, an Arby's, and a Wendy's had all tried to make a go of it along Main Street, but each of them had died out within three years.
She checked into a room after getting a not-so-subtle leering stare from the crusty old desk clerk. With her one single bag unpacked and the day having worn her down, she called Ellington before cutting the lights out. Ever dutiful, he answered on the second ring. He sounded about as tired as she felt.
"I made it," she said, not bothering with hello.
"Good," Ellington responded. "How are you?"
"Creeped out. It's a weird place to revisit after dark, I guess."
"You still think this was the right way to handle it?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I don't know. I've had some time to think about it. Maybe I should have come with you. It's more than just the case for you. You're trying to also put some of your past behind you. And if I love you, which I do, I should be there for that."
"But it's a case first," she said. "You have to be a good agent first."
"Yeah. I'll keep telling myself that. You sound beat, Mac. Get some sleep. That is, if you can sleep alone anymore."
She grinned. It had been nearly three months since they'd started sharing a bed on a regular basis. "Speak for yourself," she said. "I just got eye-humped by a particularly elderly desk clerk."
"Use protection," Ellington said with a chuckle. "Good night."
Mackenzie hung up and stripped down to her underwear. She slept above the covers, refusing to take the gamble of pulling back the sheets of a motel in Belton. She thought it would take forever for her to fall asleep, but before the solitude and quiet of the town outside the window had enough time to properly chill her, sleep snared her and pulled her down.
***
Her internal alarm woke her up at 5:45 but she ignored it and closed her eyes again. She had no real agenda pushing her and besides that, she couldn't remember the last time she'd allowed herself to sleep in. She managed to fall back to sleep and when she woke up again, it was 7:28. She rolled out of bed, showered, and got dressed. She was out the door by eight and instantly in search of coffee.
She grabbed a cup along with a sausage biscuit at a small diner that had been standing for as long as she could remember. She'd frequented it with her friends in high school, slurping milkshakes until the place closed down at nine every night. Now the place seemed like a greasy dump, a smear on how she remembered her teen years.
But the coffee was good and dark, the proper sort of fuel to push her down Highway 6 toward a plot of land where she had once lived. As she neared it, she found that she could easily recall the last time she had been out here. She had come in the company of Kirk Peterson, the now-troubled private investigator who had stumbled upon her father's case when Jimmy Scotts had been killed.
So when the house crept into view when she turned down the driveway, she wasn't all that surprised at what she saw. A deteriorating roof looked to be threatening to bring the entire rear wall down. The weeds around the place were rampant and the front porch looked like something out of a horror movie.
The neighbors' house was vacant too. It seemed fitting that there was nothing to either side of the houses but forest. Maybe one day the forest would creep in and swallow the old neglected houses up.
Wouldn't bother me at all, Mackenzie thought.
She parked her car in the ghost of a driveway and stepped out into the morning. With the highway behind her and the woods ahead, the place was still and serene. She could hear birdsong in the trees and the ticking of her car's engine as it cooled. She walked through the silence, right up to the front door. She smiled when she saw that it had been kicked in. She remembered doing it when she had been out here with Peterson. She could also remember the sick sort of satisfaction she had derived from the act.
Inside, it was just as she had seen it a little over a year ago. No furniture, no belongings, not much of anything. Cracks in the walls, mold on the carpet, the smell of age and neglect. There was nothing here for her. Nothing new.
So why the hell am I here?
She knew the answer. She knew it was because she knew it would be the last time she ever saw it. After this trip, she would never allow herself to be bothered by this damned house. Not in her memories, not in her dreams, and sure as hell not in her future.
She walked through the house slowly, taking in every room. The living room, where she and her sister, Stephanie, had watched The Simpsons and had gotten borderline obsessed with The X-Files. The kitchen, where her mother had rarely served up anything worthwhile other than a lasagna that she had found the recipe for on a box of pasta. Her bedroom, where she had kissed a boy for the first time and had let a boy undress her for the first time. There were squares on her wall slightly discolored from the rest of the paint; this had been where her posters of Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, and PJ Harvey had once hung.
The bathroom, where she'd cried a bit after getting her first period. The tiny laundry room, where she'd tried getting the smell of spilled beer from her blouse when she'd come in late one night at the age of fifteen.
Then at the end of the hall was her parents' room-the room that had haunted her dreams for far too long. The door was open, the room waiting for her. She didn't even enter the room, though. She stood at the doorway, her arms folded across her chest as she looked in. With morning sun coming in through the cracked and dusty windows, the room had an ethereal quality to it. It was easy to imagine the place as haunted or cursed. But she knew neither was true. A man had died in this room, his blood still on the carpet. But the same was true of countless other rooms in the world. This one was no more special than those other rooms. So why should it hold so much weight over her?
You can think you're tough and stubborn if you want, some wiser part of her spoke up. But if you don't solve this case this time around, this room will always haunt you. You may as well clamp yourself to the floor and throw a prison gate up.
She left that doorway and went outside. She walked around to the back of the house, where the only entry to the cellar was. She found the old door crooked in its frame and easy to open. She stepped inside and nearly screamed at the sight of a green snake slithering into one of the corners. She chuckled at herself and stepped into the dusty space. It reeked of old earth and weird sour things. It was a forgotten place with cobwebs and dust gathered everywhere. Dirt, dust, mildew, rot. It was hard to imagine this was where she had once been excited to venture into when it was time to pull her bike out in the spring and ride it around the yard. It had been where her father had kept the lawn mower and weed eater, where her mother had kept all of the empty Mason jars for making her jams and jellies.
Overcome with the memories and the rancid smell, Mackenzie stepped back outside. She headed for her car but was unable to leave just yet. Like a bored ghost, she once again went inside to haunt the space. She walked to the end of the hall, back to her parents' room.
She stared into the room, slowly starting to understand the route she needed to take. She'd been closer to it last night, driving into Belton and just wanting the ride to be over. This empty old room held nothing for her other than gruesome memories. If she wanted real progress on the case, she was going to have to do some digging.
She was going to have to hit the streets of the town that, as a teenager, she had feared she might never escape.
***
She'd been so removed from Belton once she had managed to land a job on the State Police as a twenty-three-year-old that the years had stripped knowledge from her. She had no idea which businesses would still be open. She also had no idea who had died and who had managed to live to a ripe old age.
Sure, she was less than a dozen years removed from living in Belton, but a single year had a funny way of causing chaos on a small town-be it finances, real estate, or deaths. But she also knew that small towns tended to keep their roots in tradition. And that's why Mackenzie drove to the local farm supply store at the far eastern end of town.
The place was called Atkins Farm and Tractor Supply and at one time, long before Mackenzie had been born, it had been the center of business in town. That's one of the stories her father had told her anyway. Now, though, it was a ghost of its former self. When Mackenzie had been a kid, the place had offered just about any sort of crop a farmer could want (specializing in corn like most places in Nebraska). It had also sold small farming equipment, accessories, and household goods.
When she walked into it fifteen minutes after standing in the doorway of the room her father had died in, Mackenzie almost felt sad for the owners. The entire back of the store, which had once held the crops and gardening supplies, had been gutted. There was now an old scratched up pool table sitting back there. In terms of the store itself, it still offered crops, but the selection was not much to speak of. The largest section of the place, in fact, was a display of flower and plant seeds. A small cooler in the back held fishing bait (minnows and night crawlers, according to the hand-drawn sign) while the front counter stood in front of a very dusty display of fishing rods and tackle boxes.
Two old men stood behind the counter. One was stirring a cup of coffee while the other one flipped through a supply book. She approached the counter, not quite sure which approach to take: the local returning after a long absence or an FBI agent digging up facts on an old case.
She figured she'd play it by ear. Both men looked to her at the same time, when she was just a few steps from the counter. She recognized both men from the years she had lived in Belton but only knew the name of the man flipping through the catalogue.
"Mr. Atkins?" she asked, knowing right away that she might be able to play both roles and get some honest information-if there was any to be had.
The man with the catalogue in his hands looked up at her. Wendell Atkins was twelve years older than the last time Mackenzie had seen him but he looked as if he had aged at least twenty. Mackenzie assumed he had to be at least seventy years old by now.
He smiled at her and cocked his head to the side. "You look familiar, but I don't know if the name is going to come to me," he said. "Might as well tell it to me because I could stand here and guess all day."
"I'm Mackenzie White. I lived in Belton for all of my life up until I was eighteen."
"White…your mom was Patricia?"
"Yes, sir. That's me."
"Well goodness," Atkins said. "I haven't seen you in a long time. Last I heard you were working for the State Police or something, right?"
"I was detective out there for a while," she said. "But I ended up in Washington, DC. I work for the FBI now."
She smiled internally because she knew that within an hour of her leaving here, Wendell Atkins would tell everyone he knew about his visit with Mackenzie White, the girl who went off to DC and became a fed. And if word got spread around, she figured some people might start to discuss what happened to her father. In small towns, that's how information was typically passed around.
"Is that so?" Atkins said. Even his friend now looked up from his coffee cup, looking very interested.
"Yes, sir. And that's actually why I'm here. I had to come out to Belton to look into an old case. My father's case, actually."
"Oh no," Atkins said. "That's right…they never did find who did that to him, did they?"
"They did not. And lately, there have been some murders out in Omaha that we think are linked to my father. Now, I'm coming here because, quite frankly, I remember Dad coming in here every now and then when I was a kid. It was the kind of place where men sort of just sat around drinking coffee and shooting the breeze, right?"
"That's right…though it wasn't always coffee we were drinking," Wendell said with a raspy little chuckle.
"I was wondering if you could tell me anything you remember hearing after my dad was killed. Even if you think it was just rumors or gossip, I'd like to know."
"Well, Agent White," he said with good humor, "I hate to say that some of it isn't too pleasant."
"I don't expect it to be."
Atkins made an uncomfortable sound in his throat as he leaned in slightly across the counter. His friend seemed to sense an awkward conversation on the way; he took his cup of coffee and disappeared behind the rows of inventory and fishing gear behind the counter.
"Some say it was your mother," Atkins said. "And I'm only telling you this because you asked. Otherwise, I wouldn't dare comment on such a thing."
"It's okay, Mr. Atkins."
"The story goes that she set it up to look like a murder. The fact that she…well, that she sort of had that breakdown afterwards seemed a little too convenient to some folks."
Mackenzie couldn't even be upset at the accusation. She'd pondered this theory herself, but it just didn't check out. It would mean she was also responsible for the deaths of the vagrants, Gabriel Hambry, and Jimmy Scotts. Her mother was many things, but she was not a serial killer.
"Another story says that your father was tied up with some bad folks from Mexico. A drug cartel of some kind. A deal went bad or your dad stiffed them somehow and that was the end of it."
This was another theory that had long been speculated. The fact that Jimmy Scotts had also allegedly been involved with a drug cartel-his in New Mexico-provided a link, but, as a lengthy investigation had proven, there was no connection. Then again, Mackenzie's father had been on the force and it was public knowledge that he had taken down a few local drug dealers, so the assumption was an easy one to make.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"No. Believe what you want, but I honestly don't pry too much. I hate gossip. I wish I had more to tell you."
"It's okay. Thanks, Mr. Atkins."
"You know," he said, "you might want to talk to Amy Lucas. Do you remember her?"
Mackenzie tried to jog her memory but nothing came to mind. "The name rings a very small bell, but no…I don't remember her."
"She lives out on Dublin Road…the white house with the old Cadillac up on blocks in the driveway. The damn thing has been there forever."
Sadly enough, that was all the reminder Mackenzie needed. While she did not personally know Amy Lucas, she did remember the house. The Cadillac in question was from the '60s. It had been up on blocks for God only knew how long. Mackenzie could remember seeing it from her time in Belton.
"What about her?" Mackenzie asked.
"Her and your mother were as thick as thieves at one point. Amy lost her husband to cancer three years ago. She hasn't really been a fixture in town like she used to be since then. But I remember her and your mother, always hanging out together. They were always out at the bar, or playing cards on Amy's front porch."
As if Mr. Atkins had hit a switch somewhere, Mackenzie suddenly remembered more than she had before. She could just barely see Amy Lucas's face, highlighted by a cigarette poking out from between her lips. She's the friend Mom and Dad got into so many arguments about, Mackenzie thought. On the nights Mom came home drunk or just wasn't around on a Saturday, she was with Amy. I was too young to even think twice about any of it.
"Do you know where she works?" Mackenzie asked.
"Nowhere. I bet you anything she's in her house right now. When her husband died, she got left with a nice little nest egg. She just sits in her house and mopes all day. But please…if you go see her, for the love of all that's holy, don't let her know I sent you that way."
"I won't. Thanks again, Mr. Atkins."
"Sure. I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for."
"Me, too."
She stepped back outside and walked to her car. She looked up and down the quiet stretch of Main Street and started to wonder: What, exactly, am I looking for?
She got into her car and started for Dublin Road, hoping she'd find some semblance of an answer there.