Page 5 of Murder Road

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The hospital was small, a four-story brown brick building lit with fluorescents beneath a concrete overhang. I ran inside and begged the person at the emergency desk to send someone out as Eddie pulled Rhonda Jean’s unconscious body from the car. He picked her up beneath the shoulders and the knees, like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. When the EMTs took Rhonda Jean from him and put her on a stretcher, the front of his T-shirt was smeared with gore.

I was bloody, too. The hand that had gripped Rhonda Jean’s was covered in blood, and in my haste I’d smeared it on my olive green shorts and my white tee. The bloody handprints looked like I’d wrestled someone to the ground. I had blood darkening and drying under my fingernails. My flip-flops were still on the floor of the front passenger seat somewhere, and my feet were bare.

Through the glass doors we could see a nurse behind the emergency desk, staring at us. She picked up the large brown handset of her desk phone and started to dial, her gaze never leaving us.

That was when I realized: Eddie and I looked like murderers.

“Shit,” Eddie said, looking down at himself. He glanced at the car, which was still running, then looked at me. “April, should we run?”

“What?” The shock must have shown on my face. Not because of what he’d said, but because I was thinking the same thing.

We could get into the Pontiac and drive away as fast as we could. We could floor it. Who would come after us, and how long would it take before they started? How far away could we be by then?

“Forget it,” Eddie said, misreading my expression. “Forget I said anything.”

“It’s fine,” I said, but my mind was ticking over. We could drive farther up the peninsula, then double back down to Ann Arbor. We could be home by the time the sun was up. No one here knew our names. We’d have to clean the car, or better yet, get rid of it altogether.

That would be wrong, I told myself. Because someone had killed that girl, Rhonda Jean. The person in the truck had killed her. I was sure of it.

But all my panicked body knew was that the killer wasn’t me.

I looked at Eddie again. He was watching me, his gaze intent, and I had no idea what he was thinking. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what I was going to say.

It didn’t matter, because it was already too late. The police were pulling in.

CHAPTER THREE

I never thought I’d get married. My childhood was a 1970s nightmare, filled with dark, garish colors and deep shadows, like Rosemary’s Baby. Once I got out of that childhood, I never looked back. By twelve, I was basically an adult, looking out for my mother and me. At fifteen I learned to wear the same hairstyles and the same makeup that all the other girls wore. I blended in, except for the fact that I knew how to pack everything I owned in a single bag within forty-five minutes, knew how to get to the bus station in the middle of the night if I had to, knew how to introduce myself under a new name.

At eighteen, I was alone.

Even without Mom, I still moved around, never staying long enough in one place to be too noticeable. South Carolina, Illinois, Michigan. I got jobs waiting tables and answering phones. Restaurant managers had no problem putting me at the hostess stand, because I had the kind of face that was perfect for it. Pretty, pleasant, mostly forgettable. I dated—a pretty girl my age was expected to date or she would attract attention—but I never let anyone get too close. I wasn’t the clingy girlfriend, asking whether we were serious, asking whether he wanted me to move in. There were a million of me in America. I doubted even the boys I dated remembered me after a while.

All I wanted was to survive. I certainly never dreamed of finding a husband or children, of settling down in a house somewhere. I wanted to be left alone, expected it.

In Ann Arbor, I got a job at a bowling alley, serving half-cold hamburgers and stale chips at the snack bar. I moved in with roommates I found in the classifieds, in an old house that was renting for next to nothing. The place smelled like pot smoke, Doritos, and beer, and the local pizza place knew our order by heart. Roommates rotated through, accompanied by various boyfriends, girlfriends, and other hangers-on. The TV was almost always on, with someone sitting in front of it. Late-night movies, Sesame Street, reruns of The Rockford Files, reruns of Knight Rider, Baywatch, The X-Files, and more recently, the O. J. Simpson trial in all of its endless droning—whatever was on, someone was watching, half paying attention. The house had a dissociated lack of caring, a complete ennui, that suited me perfectly. No one ever asked me questions or wanted to hang out.

One Saturday in February, my roommates were gone and I had the house to myself. Dressing in my bedroom, I realized I’d left my favorite T-shirt in the dryer, two stories down in the basement. Wearing only jeans and a navy blue lace bra, I walked out of my bedroom into the hallway.

There was a man standing there—young, muscled, fit enough to tackle me. I was too startled to notice that instead of attacking he stood frozen, staring as I came out in my bra, horrified. I screamed. The strange man cried out: “Sorry!” and ran down the stairs.

That was how I met Eddie Carter.

When I had recovered and put on a sweatshirt, I found him in the kitchen, looking miserable. He was a friend of one of my roommates—Greg, or maybe Gary. Eddie had just come back from Iraq, and Greg or Gary told him to come over, to just walk in, because Greg or Gary would be home. Instead, there was no one home but me in my bra, and Eddie was really, really sorry about it.

We talked for half an hour, standing there in the kitchen. When it was clear he wasn’t a creep, he asked me out. I said yes, but I thought: He’s way too nice. There’s no way I’ll sleep with him.

That was February. Now it was July, and we were married.

I looked at my husband’s face in the lights of the solo police car that pulled into the parking lot, the red and blue flickering over Eddie’s features. By Eddie’s own admission, he’d never had much luck with women, which amazed me. He had a nice jaw and great cheekbones and gray-blue eyes with dark lashes. His hair was brown and usually tousled, he had to shave every morning or get scruff on his cheeks, and the army had given him a body I never, ever got tired of. He didn’t talk much, an attribute I came to realize was because he was painfully shy. The longer I’d dated him, the more I’d realized that Eddie was the world’s best-kept secret, manwise. I never had to fight anyone for him. It was inexplicable, refreshing, and terrifying.

His expression had gone carefully blank as a uniformed policeman got out of the car. Eddie glanced down at his T-shirt, then at me.

“April,” he said.

“I know,” I replied. “What can we do?”

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