This was something new.
“What were you doing on Hastings Pass?” Nic asked. Her tone was harsh. “It’s completely out of the way if you were heading to Schenectady from Manhattan.”
Nic knew every inch of that town.Hastings. She knew every road, every field, every abandoned well her mother might have fallen down as she sought cover from the hurricane.
“I was trying to stop for the night because of the storm. There’s a place there, the Hastings…”
“Hastings Inn.” Nic was sitting up now.
“Yes—the Hastings Inn. I got to the inn around seven, but it was already boarded up. I knew I had to get out of the storm path, so I turned around, back toward Route 7. I was on Hastings Pass and I think I drove right past your mother.”
Now came another voice. The man in her bed who’d overstayed his welcome.Who’s on the phone?
Nobody… you need to go.
Nic waved at him, then toward the door, then to his clothes littered across the carpet of her bedroom. When he looked at her with confusion, she made it clearer.
“Please—just get out.” But then, “I’m sorry.”
She said it again.I’m sorry, I’m sorry,until he started to move.
And she was sorry. For last night and the nights before and the nights to come. She was sorry for so many nights since Annie died.
Back to the woman on the phone.
“Why didn’t you come forward sooner? It’s been two weeks.”
“Like I said, I don’t live in the area. And I don’t really follow the news. But then a few days ago, I was catching up with one of the friends I met in the city and she asked me if I got caught in the storm, and then she mentioned a woman who went missing.”
Nic listened carefully as she watched the man move about the room, grabbing a shirt, pants, underwear. These nights had to stop.
She knew they wouldn’t.
Edith Moore continued, her voice trembling with excitement. “I looked up the story on the Internet and I just knew it was her! I saw her on that road. Hastings Pass—not Route 7. She was about a mile down the road. The rain had begun. She was soaking wet.”
Nic rested her head in one hand as the facts from the case flooded out.
The car abandoned just before the gas station.
Out of gas.
Nothing inside but her cell phone, attached to the charger.
Every field, every home, everywhere searched and searched.
Then, two days later, her credit card used at a nearby casino resort.
And her clothes, still wet, found in the hotel room—along with the note.
The note which explained everything—and nothing.
“And you didn’t stop? You didn’t help her?” Nic asked.
The woman rambled on about how she slowed to a crawl, but then a truck came from the other direction.
“A truck?”
“Yes. It was a pickup truck. Dark color. It stopped and she got in.”
