Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  “What is it Mark Twain said? Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Guess if I ask you where you’ve been, you’re not gonna tell me, anyway,” Ralph replies.

  “Nope. And I’d be awfully grateful if you didn’t mention me being here, either. I get itchy when people ask too many questions.” Virgil takes a slightly mashed Twinkie from his pocket and sets this on the counter between us and Ralph.

  “How old is that?” I murmur.

  “These things have enough preservatives in them to keep them on the shelves until 2050,” Virgil whispers. “And besides, Ralph can’t read the tiny print of the expiration date.”

  Sure enough, Ralph’s entire face lights up. His mouth creases in a smile, and it has ripple effects that remind me of a YouTube video I once saw of a building implosion. “You remember my weakness, Virgil,” he says, and he glances at me. “Who’s your sidekick?”

  “My tennis partner.” Virgil leans through the opening in the door. “Look, Ralphie. I need to check out one of my old cases.”

  “You’re not on payroll anymore—”

  “I was barely on payroll when I was on payroll. Come on, bud. It’s not like I’m asking to mess with any active investigation. I’m just freeing up a little space for you.”

  Ralph shrugs. “I guess it can’t hurt, as long as the case is closed …”

  Virgil unlatches the door and pushes past him. “No need to get up. I know the way.”

  I follow him down a long, narrow hallway. Metal shelving lines both walls from floor to ceiling, and there are cardboard boxes neatly jammed into every available space. Virgil’s lips move as he reads the labels of the banker’s boxes, arranged by case number and date. “Next aisle,” he mutters. “This one only goes back to 2006.”

  After a few more minutes he stops, and starts to monkey-climb the shelving. He pulls one of the boxes free and tosses it into my arms. It’s lighter than I was expecting. I set it on the floor so that he can pass down three more boxes.

  “That’s it?” I say. “I thought you told me there was a ton of evidence taken from the sanctuary.”

  “There was. But the case was solved. We only kept the items that were connected to people—things like soil and trampled plants and debris that turned out to not be consequential were destroyed.”

  “If someone’s already gone through it all, why are we going back to it?”

  “Because you can look at a mess twelve times and see nothing. And then you look the thirteenth time, and whatever you were searching for is staring out at you, clear as day.” He opens the lid of the top box. Inside are paper storage bags, sealed with tape. On the tape, and on the bags, it says NO.

  “No?” I read. “What’s in that bag?”

  Virgil shakes his head. “That stands for Nigel O’Neill. He was a cop who was searching for evidence that night. Protocol means that the officer has to put his initials and the date collected on the bag and the tape, to make the chain of evidence hold up in court.” He points to the other markings on the bag: a property number, with a list of items: SHOELACE, RECEIPT. Another: VICTIM’S CLOTHING—SHIRT, SHORTS.

  “Open that one,” I direct.

  “Why?”

  “You know how sometimes a specific item can jog a memory? I want to see if that’s true.”

  “The victim here wasn’t your mother,” Virgil reminds me.

  As far as I’m concerned, that remains to be seen. But he opens the paper bag, snaps on a pair of gloves from a box on the shelf, and pulls out a pair of khaki shorts and a shredded, stiff polo shirt with the New England Elephant Sanctuary logo embroidered on the left breast.

  “Well?” he prompts.

  “Is that blood?” I ask.

  “No, it’s dried Kool-Aid. If you want to be a detective, be a detective,” he says.

  Still, it kind of freaks me out. “It looks like the same uniform everyone wore.”

  Virgil keeps rummaging. “Here we go,” he says, pulling out a bag that is so flat there can’t possibly be anything in it. The evidence tag says #859, LOOSE HAIR INSIDE BODY BAG. He takes the bag and slips it into his pocket. Then he picks up two of the boxes and carries them toward the entrance, glancing over his shoulder. “Make yourself useful.”

  I follow him, the other boxes stacked in my arms. I’m pretty sure he took the lighter ones on purpose. These feel like they’re full of rocks. At the entrance, Ralph glances up from the nap he’s been taking. “Good to catch up, Virgil.”

  Virgil points his finger. “You never saw me.”

  “Saw what?” Ralph says.

  We duck out the same back entrance of the police station and carry the boxes to Virgil’s truck. He manages to stuff them into the backseat, which is already jammed with food wrappers and old CD cases and paper towels and sweatshirts and empty bottles. I climb into the passenger seat. “Now what?”

  “Now we have to go sweet-talk a lab into doing a mitochondrial DNA test.”

  I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like something that would be part of a thorough investigation. I’m impressed. I glance at Virgil, who, I should say, has cleaned up pretty nicely now that he’s not completely drunk. He’s showered and shaved, so he smells like a pine forest instead of stale gin. “Why did you leave?”

  He glances at me. “Because we got what we came for.”

  “I meant the police department. Didn’t you want to be a detective?”

  “Apparently not as much as you do,” Virgil murmurs.

  “I think I deserve to know what I’m getting for my money.”

  He snorts. “A bargain.”

  He backs up too fast, and one of the boxes tumbles over. The storage bags inside spill out, so I unbuckle my seat belt and twist around, trying to right the mess. “It’s hard to tell what’s evidence and what’s your trash,” I say. The tape has peeled off one of the brown paper bags, and the evidence inside has fallen into a nest of McDonald’s fish fillet wrappers. “This is gross. Who eats fifteen fish fillets?”

  “It wasn’t all at once,” Virgil says.

  But I’m barely listening, because my hand has closed around the evidence that was dislodged. I pivot forward, still holding the tiny pink Converse sneaker.

  Then I look down at my feet.

  I’ve had pink Converse high-tops for as long as I can remember. Longer. They’re my one indulgence, the only items of clothing I ever ask my grandmother for.

  I’m wearing them in every photograph of me as an infant: propped up against a clan of teddy bears, sitting on a blanket with a pair of huge sunglasses balanced on my nose; brushing my teeth at the sink, naked except for those shoes. My mother had a pair, too—old, beaten ones that she had kept from her college days. We did not wear identical dresses or have the same haircut; we didn’t practice putting on makeup. But in this one small thing, we matched.

  I still wear my sneakers, practically every day. They’re kind of like a good-luck charm, or maybe a superstition. If I haven’t taken mine off, then maybe … well. You get it.

  The roof of my mouth feels like a desert. “This was mine.”

  Virgil looks at me. “You’re sure?”

  I nod.

  “Did you ever run around barefoot when you were in the sanctuary with your mother?”

  I shake my head. That was a rule; no one went inside without footwear. “It wasn’t like a golf course,” I said. “There were knobs of grass and thicket and bush. You could trip in the holes that the elephants dug.” I turn the tiny shoe over in my hand. “I was there, that night. And I still don’t know what happened.”

  Had I gotten out of bed and wandered into the enclosures? Had my mom been looking for me?

  Am I the reason she’s gone?

  My mother’s research comes thundering into my head. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten.

  Virgil’s face is unreadable. “Your father told us you were asleep,” he says.

  “Well, I didn’t go to sleep wearing shoes