Page 1 of Long Way Down

Prologue

There was a pond behind the house. Mud-colored and weed-choked, crowned with wisteria shadows where the vines grew up the skeletal remains of the woodworking shop. It was small; just a puddle, really, Daddy said. The first in a chain of little nothing-special weedy ponds that led deeper and deeper into the woods, a breadcrumb trail of reflective pools brimming with tadpoles, stinking of algae; luring curious children into a treacherous, marshy section of unsettled land the locals called Haley Swamp.

Melissa, age six, wondered if a girl named Haley lived in there, if it was her swamp, and thus named for her.

“Nothing but possums and foxes out there,” Granddad said. “Not any little girls. Least, there shouldn’t be.”

Daddy said, “Mark Wallace said his boys saw a gator in there week before last. They were checking the crawfish traps and it slipped right into the water beside them. Splash!”

“Don’t scare her,” Mama hissed, rapping gravy off her spoon and back into the skillet. To Melissa: “Don’t ever go in there by yourself. You understand?” Her face got that lifted-brow, compressed-lip seriousness usually reserved for don’t-you-dare-shake-those-Christmas-presents-young-lady.

Melissa said, “But I want to.”

“Don’t you dare.”

So she didn’t dare venture beyond the backyard pond…when Mama was around.

Mama worked days, and Daddy worked nights, and Granddad worked on cars in the garage, which faced the street, separated from the back yard, and the pond, and access to the swamp, by a chain-link fenced laced with plastic strips. Melissa had found that, if Granddad was busy talking radiators over three o’clock beers, a wad of chaw stuck in one cheek and the friendly ear of their neighbor, Carl, ready off the other, if she was careful-careful closing the screen door softly so as not to wake Daddy, no one noticed if she stole out by the pond with a box of animal crackers and her rain boots.

She would crouch down at the edge, where the sandy soil turned to mud, and even her small weight pressed dark water up around the soles of her boots. She tossed a cracker in to watch the tadpoles flock to it, nibbling off little bites with their suction cup mouths. With a stick and a string, she fashioned her own fishing line, but nothing ever bit. She watched dragonflies alight on the surface, flicks of their wings sending ripples out in spreading concentric circles.

The cicadas droned, and the crows squabbled in the privet trees. Bull frogs groaned as evening set on, and an adult inevitably appeared at the back door and hollered, “Missy, what did we say about that swamp?” Then she’d go scampering back, with one last glance over her shoulder at the winking of fireflies like fairy lights in the tree shadows, and the faint luminescent glow of the walking path that wound back into the unknown like a fat, basking snake, waiting for the moonglow.

Brickman’s Circle was the name of their road. Roughly paved before she was born, unlined, the pavement buckling and peaking beneath the onslaught of the fat oak roots that grew beneath it. A big loop at the edge of the swamp, and each house had a trail head that led into the marshland, all joining up somewhere within, Daddy said, making one large track that the brickmaker’s who’d first founded this road had used to go in after the clay they needed for their kilns. Mama told him not to share this bit of information, that it would only make the swamp more appealing – and, as in most cases, Mama was right.

That boggy stretch of unexplored acreage was the highlight of her early childhood adventures. She spent hours imagining what it was like. Summers were flavored with cold cheese sandwiches, popsicles, citronella spray, and the stagnant, algae tang of swamp water. She imagined wild scenarios and acted them out all alone in her backyard: she was a swamp princess living in a castle of mud, the frogs and salamanders and bugs her loyal subjects; she was an adventurer, like Indiana Jones, searching for a lost artifact and dodging wild men with spears; she was in prehistoric times, hiding from dinosaurs beneath banana leaves and trying not to breathe too loudly.

The truth, when she finally discovered it, was far less fanciful, but no less thrilling.

Her cousin Ivy, eleven and leggy and worldly, snorted when Melissa started pondering aloud about artifacts and rogue T-Rexes. “You never saw it?” she said. “The witch’s house?”

With Ivy in charge of watching her, Granddad climbed in his truck and ventured into town. “Y’all be good girls, alright? Holler next door to Pastor Keith if you need anything.”

Ivy flipped the pages in her grown-up magazine, popped her gum, and said, “Alright,” without lifting her head. She had that effortless sort of cool that Melissa couldn’t hope to emulate: unflappable and all-knowing, so much wiser than the adults in their life.

When the growl of Granddad’s truck had faded down Brickman’s Circle, Ivy slapped the magazine down on the coffee table and stepped into her jelly shoes. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“The witch’s house, stupid. Unless you’re scared. You just a scared little baby, Missy?”

“No.”

Slathered in Skin So Soft, armed – in Melissa’s case – with a butterfly net and a bucket, they set off down the trail and into the cool dimness of the swamp.

One

“I love hospitals,” Contreras said as they walked through the automatic doors. “You know why?”

Melissa’s transfer paperwork had been stamped a week ago, and so far, she’d learned a lot about her new partner, Roberto Contreras. He was fifty-three, married, a father of three, Jets fan, possessor of his mother’s world-famous tamale recipe, and went by Rob or Robbie with “the boys” at the precinct. He talked with an easy, unbothered friendliness, and didn’t seem to mind that she only responded half of the time, overwhelmed by his welcoming grin and his hearty laugh. He was just so…nice. And she didn’t know what to make of that.

“Why?” she asked, dutifully. Most of their conversations this week had consisted of her one-word responses to his prompts, which launched further anecdotes. She didn’t hate those anecdotes, truthfully; she’d been partnered up as a beat cop with a string of idiots who couldn’t stop bragging about their gym routines or their dating lives. Contreras’s chatter was harmless, at least, and non-confrontational. He wasn’t trying to impress her or prove himself in any way.

“Because,” he said, and paused, turned to face her, hands in his coat pockets. A nurse had to swerve around them and machinery beeped in the background. Someone was crying softly, somewhere, and someone else murmuring in low, soothing tones. “If your victim’s in the hospital, they’re not in the morgue.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

He winked, and walked on.

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