Page 32 of The Vacancy In Room 10

I remember vaguely; it was Memorial Day weekend, and I was supposed to come here with him. Some of the teachers were gonna swim in the pool and grill. I don’t remember why I couldn’t go. I think I had a work trip, but a few weeks later Henry mentioned the studio. So which came first?

I need to find out two things right now. Does anyone know of a woman who doesn’t live at The Sycamores but hangs around a lot? The pool girls like to gossip. That shouldn’t be too hard to find out.

And then I am going to find this Mira Medford, the high school girl Callum told me there were rumors about. I know it’s wrong, he says in his journal. People would never expect us together, he says. Would he really do this to us—to her, to himself—with a student?

I pull my phone from my pocket and poke at it with my finger. Mira Medford Vadnais High School. It’s a unique enough name, and I know her school and town, so images pop right up. The first is of a redheaded girl with pale skin and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She’s thin-framed and delicately pretty. She’s wearing a racing swimsuit and holding up a silver medal. A few more photos show her diving off a swimmer’s block, her body expertly curved to plunge into the water with the least amount of splash and race the breaststroke. That’s her stroke, it looks like. She has other group photos with the swim team who are going to state this year. Mira, the redheaded swimmer. I have a face now. Could this be his obsession?

I leave a twenty on the booth and walk out of the bar, ignoring two gross men saying something like “sweetheart” or “where ya goin’, baby?” before I reach the door and get in my car. I need to go back to The Sycamores and find Callum. Getting him to give me more information about this girl, or an address perhaps, won’t be easy, but I have to try.

When I arrive in the parking lot, the pool area is buzzing with residents setting up for their Friday barbecue. Rosa is waving flies from the potato salad, Babs is pouring vodka into the punch bowl. The kids are running wild and stealing cookies off the food table, avoiding swats on their hands from distracted mothers.

Before I cross to my unit, I see Callum’s mailbox sitting open next to the front office. I go over to see the messenger bag he always has slung over his shoulder, resting on the ground underneath his mailbox. I close the box door and look around. It’s as if he was checking his mail before he got abducted by aliens, or at least that’s the creepy energy I’m picking up on.

I text him first and ask if we can talk. No reply. Maybe he just laid it down there a minute and went into the office for something. I move to the office door and turn the handle. Locked. It’s never locked. In fact, it’s usually wide open and filled with oddball residents hanging around.

“Hello?” I knock a couple of times. “Callum? Cass? You in there?”

I know I hear movement inside. I think I hear a whisper, but nobody answers. There’s a back door, I remember, so I walk to the back of the small building. Something’s going on in there. I can feel it.

14

CASS

After Callum has Eddie’s many driver’s licenses spread out on the office desk and we are searching the names of each one on the office computer, I hear it. A knock on the door. It’s Anna. She calls for both of us, but then after a few moments, I hear her footsteps disappear down the path, and I exhale.

When the back door starts to open, my heart drops to my stomach so quickly that my knees almost buckle and my head buzzes, bursts of lights flash behind my eyes, and I think I’ll faint right there on the floor. And even though I know it’s locked, it’s only a chain, so it smashes open the three inches the chain allows before it catches.

“Hello?” she calls again.

Callum has leaped to his feet but is now frozen in place, his hands cupped over his mouth, his body hovering above the office chair. He looks like a mannequin he’s so still. I’m hiding behind the wall that separates the front area with the couch and coffee table from the small back hall where the back door is. Neither of us move or breathe. How did she even know there was a back door? The back of the building only has a spread of rocks and dirt where I park. You wouldn’t even notice it unless you were lurking around. She doesn’t seem the type.

“Okay then,” Anna says. “Whatever.”

I hear her shuffling around a few more moments. The light of a cell phone turns the crack of light through the door blue, then it goes dark, and her footsteps retreat once more.

Callum’s phone pings, and we still don’t move, but he looks down at the desk as it lights up. I shoot him a what the hell look. Is she texting him? Why? After a couple more minutes pass, I tiptoe over to the desk, and he sits back down in front of the computer and picks up his phone.

“She says, ‘I have your bag and I need to talk to you,’” he whispers, and shrugs.

“Goddammit, Callum, you’re not...” I don’t need to finish the sentence for him to know I’m asking if there’s something between them, and then I instantly feel a stab of regret, remembering how recently he lost his wife.

“Are you kidding?” he asks.

“Sorry. Well, don’t respond to her. Shit. Let’s just... Did you find anything yet?” I ask, focusing back on the search for the names on the IDs.

Callum exhales. He looks at them again. The first name is Randall Mont, age 33, from Bozeman, Montana. Callum types in the name, and it comes right up. The same face on the ID pops up in some news articles from a couple years ago. Deceased. Murdered. My eyes scan the paragraphs in disbelief. Body burned alive in a car out in the desert. Remains identified with dental records.

We don’t speak. I see his hands shake as he types the next name in the pile of IDs.

Kurt Walters, 46, from New Port. The face comes up again. Dead. Foul play. Shot execution-style in his own driveway.

“Jesus, fuck. What? What does this mean?” I hiss, because I can’t scream it.

Callum picks up the next ID and shows it to me. I think my heart stops. I gasp and cover my mouth. It’s a photo of Eddie Bacco. It’s his face, but his name is really...Victor Becerra?

I grab Eddie’s wallet and look at the ID he actually uses, the one that says Eduardo Bacco, and then sit next to Callum, holding it next to the Victor Becerra ID.

“Shit,” he says.

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