Page 44 of The Whisper Place
“He liked getting into fights in the comments.” Max paused on what looked like a book-length rant. “This one’s about that missing Malaysian plane; he blamed shoddy maintenance and belittled everyone who chimed in with other theories.” Max kept scrolling. “Really long-winded posts. He starts using all caps on random words—God, I hate that. His last post applauded immigration restrictions. And that’s it. The page is still up, but he basically disappeared from the platform.”
“Maybe in real life too.”
There was no record of Ted Kramer in any active missing persons databases. Then again, no one had reported Kate Campbell missing either.
Ted Kramer’s yard was overgrown with weeds and waving white dandelion heads, which didn’t match the image of the closely-shaved buttoned-up guy on socials. No one answered the front door and there was no sign of life inside, no waft of emotion or energyI could sense. But the mailbox was empty—someone must have been checking it—and the house itself was an imposing two-story brick building with every curtain drawn. I couldn’t sense much beyond the front door in a place this big. Someone could’ve easily sat in the shadows upstairs as we prowled the neglected perimeter.
Max paced the edge of the property twice before moving into the woods. I sighed, fantasized about getting in the car and driving away, before eventually following him in. It was the wrong call. We were still hiking through endless stands of trees an hour later when even the sun started giving up for the day.
“We weren’t hired to find Ted Kramer.”
Max paused the bloodhound search to lift his phone, looking for service. “I know.”
“So what are we doing here?”
He gave up on the signal and climbed over a fallen tree, scanning the ground with his phone flashlight. The buzz of one-track, blinders-on energy radiating off him was as familiar as looking in a mirror.
“I don’t know. I’ll know when I find it.”
“Are you going to find it before we have to sleep here? Did you text Shelley about any of this?”
Max didn’t answer. I wanted to punch him.
Ted Kramer’s property backed up to the Wolf River Bluffs Forest Preserve, an oblong stretch of green on the map that hugged the south side of the Wolf River in a chain of state parks and forests. We could probably walk all night without seeing a single road or building. If Max knew that, he wasn’t thinking about it. He barely registered anything that wasn’t terrain.
Things moved around us—a creak of a branch, the crunch of leaves as something padded just out of sight. I couldn’t sense anyone else in the woods, which would normally be comforting. The farther away from humanity the better, in general, yet the absence didn’t bring relief here. Something kept me on edge and it wasn’t just my idiot partner. I couldn’t stop looking behind us, until I didn’t know whether I was imagining the hushed, rustling noises or not. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
To distract myself, I went over the interview again. Valerie Campbell’s mind had been a complicated shell game, each layer hinting at something hidden beneath. Even when she’d thought about her husband lying facedown in a trough of dirt and dead leaves, it was fractured pieces of a memory. Hands bleeding on a shovel handle. Sweat dripping from her forehead to the corpse. A frantic hug, pulling her daughter close as they both trembled with shock and exhaustion. Darkness and short, heaving breaths.
She didn’t linger long enough on any one thought or memory to give us a location for Ted Kramer’s body. And despite talking for almost two hours, she never thought about his actual murder. It could have been an intentional omission, once she knew what I was, but it didn’t feel like it. Everything about Valerie’s thoughts screamed PTSD and the suppression of traumatic memories.
After another half hour when more shadow than light surrounded us, I asked Max, “Are we here because you want to find something or because you don’t?”
Max switched directions, doubling back on a slightly different path than the way we’d come in. This one was more crowded with trees and underbrush. Branches scraped us on all sides.
“Hard to say.” He was eager to start talking it out. The words instantly relaxed him. “If we find Ted Kramer’s body, we’ve got confirmation of why Kate came to Iowa City in the first place. But then we’d have to notify authorities.” As he scanned the ground with his flashlight, a branch hit him in the face and he swore. I grinned for the first time since we’d walked into the woods.
“Sure, let’s forget our track record on reporting crimes for a minute.” He shot me a look, still rubbing sap off his face. “If you did call the authorities to report a murder, that would put Valerie Campbell in jail and Kate, potentially, under more pressure wherever she is. Making her that much harder to find.”
“What did you make of that bit at the end?” Max asked. “Was she telling the truth?”
Just before we’d left Valerie’s house, Max had asked the question on both our minds. He’d explained how Kate was living under a pseudonym, paying only cash, and working under the table during her time in Iowa City.
“Is that behavior typical of your daughter?”
Valerie admitted it wasn’t.
“Why do you think she was living like that? She did everything possible to conceal her identity. Her closest friends didn’t even know her real name.”
Valerie had already walked us to the door at that point. She gripped the deadbolt as she surveyed the street with careful eyes. “I told her to. I wanted her to start over completely, to get as far away from me as possible. I knew someone would find Ted’s body eventually and come looking for me. Kate doesn’t deserve to go to prison for the crime of being a good daughter.”
Max glanced at me. Valerie didn’t miss it.
“They’d call it something else. Accessory or accomplice, I don’t know. But that’s not what happened. She saved my life, and I would never allow her to pay for that with the rest of hers. I’ve made my peace with what I did and what I’ll have to do when the time comes. I don’t have any regrets besides marrying him in the first place.”
Without warning, she’d reached out to me, holding my arm and my attention in a vise grip of desperation and love.
“Dream about her. Find her, please. You have to make sure she’s okay.”
