Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  The night was coming violently, clouds screaming with crimson throats. It would get cold and dark soon; if we were going to stay and wait, we would need lanterns, floodlights, blankets. I had no doubt this was Thomas’s plan; it was what I would have done—what I had done when I was observing transition in the wild—not from captivity to sanctuary, but at birth or death.

  “Gideon,” Thomas began, about to issue instructions, when there was a rustle at the tree line.

  I had been surprised hundreds of times by elephants that traveled soundlessly and swiftly in the bush; I should not have been as startled as I was by the appearance of Hester. She moved almost too quickly for an animal of her size, light on her feet and excited by this big, foreign metal object in her enclosure. Thomas had told me that the elephants became animated if a bulldozer was brought in to do excavation or landscape work; they were curious about things bigger than themselves.

  Hester began to cross back and forth in front of the trailer ramp. She rumbled, a hello. This went on for about ten seconds. When she didn’t get a response, it evolved into a short roar.

  From inside the trailer came a rumble.

  I felt Thomas’s hand reach for mine.

  Maura gingerly walked down the ramp, her body in silhouette, pausing halfway. Hester stopped moving back and forth. Her rumbles escalated into a roar, a trumpet, and then a rumble—the same cacophonous joy I’d heard when elephants that had been separated from their herd were reunited.

  Hester lifted her head and flapped her ears rapidly. Maura urinated and began to secrete from her temporal glands. She inched her trunk toward Hester but still would not come fully down that ramp. Both elephants continued to rumble as Hester put her front two feet onto the ramp and turned her head until her torn ear was close enough for Maura to touch. Then Hester lifted her front left foot, presented it to Maura. It was as if she was telling her life story. Look at how I was hurt. Look at how I survived.

  Watching this, I started to cry. I felt Thomas’s arm come around me as Hester finally curled her trunk around Maura’s. She let go, backing off the ramp, as Maura tentatively followed. “Imagine being part of a traveling circus,” Thomas said, his voice tight. “That’s the last time she’ll ever have to walk out of a trailer.”

  The two elephants swayed in tandem, moving toward the tree line. They were so close that they seemed to be one giant mythical creature, and as the night puckered close around them, I struggled to distinguish the elephants from the thicket where they vanished.

  “Well, Maura,” Nevvie murmured. “Welcome to your forever home.”

  There were a lot of explanations I could give for the decision I made at that moment: that the elephants in this sanctuary needed me more than the elephants in the wild did; that I was starting to think the work I had built my scholarship around was not limited by geographic borders; that the man holding my hand, like me, had been brought to tears by the arrival of a rescued elephant. But none of these were the reason.

  When I first went to Botswana, I had been chasing knowledge, fame, a way to contribute to my field. But now, as my circumstances had changed, my reasons for being in that game reserve had, too. Lately my arms hadn’t been outstretched to embrace my work. They’d been pushing away thoughts that scared the hell out of me. I wasn’t running toward my future anymore. I was running away from everything else.

  A forever home. I wanted that. I wanted that for my baby.

  It was so dark now that—like the elephants—I couldn’t see and had to find my way with my other senses. So I framed his face with my hands, breathed in the scent of him, touched my forehead to his. “Thomas,” I whispered. “I have something to tell you.”

  VIRGIL

  What tipped me off was that stupid pebble.

  The minute Thomas Metcalf saw it, he went ballistic. Okay, granted, he wasn’t exactly the gold standard for sanity, but the minute he focused on that necklace there was a clarity in his eyes that had not been there when we first walked into the room.

  Rage often brings out the real person.

  Now, sitting in my office, I pop yet another Tums into my mouth—I think this is my tenth, not that I’m really counting—because I can’t seem to get rid of the fizzy pressure in my chest. I’ve chalked it up to heartburn from that crap we ate for lunch from the hot dog cart. But there’s a tiny, fleeting thought that maybe this isn’t a gastric issue at all. Maybe it’s just pure, unadulterated intuition. A nervous hunch. Which I have not felt in a very, very long time.

  My office is covered with evidence. In front of each box taken from the PD there are several paper bags tipped onto their sides, with the contents carefully arranged in a semicircle beneath them: a flowchart of crime, a felonious family tree. I am careful where I step, making sure that I don’t crush a brittle leaf with a black spot of blood on it or overlook a small paper packet with a fiber inside.

  I’m thankful for my own inefficiency, at that moment. Our evidence room was full of material that could have or should have been returned to its owners but never was—either because the investigating officer never told the property officer the items could be destroyed or returned, or because the property officer wasn’t involved in the investigations and wouldn’t have known that information on his own. After Nevvie Ruehl’s death was ruled accidental, my partner had retired and I had either forgotten or subconsciously decided not to tell Ralph to remove the boxes. Maybe on some level I wondered whether Gideon might file a civil suit against the sanctuary. Or maybe on some level I wondered about Gideon’s role that night. Whatever the reason, I’d known that I’d need to comb through these boxes again.

  It’s true that, if you want to get technical, I’ve been fired from this case. Except that Jenna Metcalf is a thirteen-year-old kid who probably changed her mind six times this morning before she decided on a breakfast cereal. She threw words at me like handfuls of mud, and now that they’ve dried, I can brush them off.

  It’s true, too, that I’m not sure if the death of Nevvie Ruehl was caused by Thomas or his wife, Alice. I suppose Gideon can’t be ruled out, either, now. If he was sleeping with Alice, his mother-in-law might not have been all too happy. I just don’t believe the death was a trampling, even if I signed off on that ten years ago. But if I’m going to figure out who the murderer is, first I need proof that this was a murder.

  Thanks to Tallulah and the lab, I know that Alice Metcalf’s hair was found on the victim. But did she find Nevvie’s body after the trampling and leave that hair behind before she ran? Or was she the reason there was a body in the first place? Could the hair transfer have been innocent, as Jenna wanted to believe—two women who brushed by each other in the office earlier that morning, neither one knowing that by the end of the day one of them would be dead?

  Alice is, of course, the key. If I could find her, I’d have my answers. What I know about her is that she ran away. People who run away either have something they’re trying to reach or something they’re trying to avoid. I’m just not sure, in this case, which one it was. But either way—why not take her daughter with her?

  I hate saying that Serenity might be right about anything, but it would be considerably easier if Nevvie Ruehl were around to tell me what happened that night. “Dead men don’t talk,” I mutter out loud.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Abigail, my landlady, scares the shit out of me. All of a sudden she’s standing in the doorway, frowning at the paraphernalia strewn around the office.

  “Fuck, Abby, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Must you use that word?”

  “Fuck?” I repeat. “I don’t know what you’ve got against it. It can be a verb, an adjective, a noun—it’s very versatile.” I smile broadly at her.

  She sniffs at the detritus on the floor. “I’ll remind you that each tenant is responsible for his own refuse collection.”

  “This isn’t trash. It’s work.”

  Abigail’s eyes narrow. “It looks like a crystal moth lab.�