Chapter 15: Recollections of American Rust
October 7, 2013
Outside the hospital room where Max Caulfield lie comatose, Ryan and Vanessa Caulfield talked with Joyce and David Madsen. Chloe Price, still shaken from her and Max's brush with death, stood against the wall observing them. She tuned out what they were saying, and instead focused on how they were saying it.
It was an easy task to read her mother: She felt guilty. Guilty about the fact that the daughter of the two people they were talking to might have been dying in the other room for the sake of her own daughter, which just made her feel even guiltier. That her daughter's continued existence could have resulted in another daughter's demise.
Ryan Caulfield was trying his best to keep his head above water. Chloe didn't reckon that having a child clinging to life did anyone any favors, and Chloe couldn't imagine herself handling the situation with a shred of dignity. But Ryan, bless his heart, was trying to function as best he could. He smiled when he saw Joyce, shook David's hand (as this was the first time the Caulfields had ever met him), and even complimented Chloe on her blue hair.
David was… David. His fist was clenched against his lips, his beady eyes hawk-like as he watched everyone's lips move. He occasionally spared Chloe glances that had no emotion behind them. Or at least no emotion that Chloe could detect.
Vanessa Caulfield was in clear shock. Chloe remembered reading that just because a coma patient opened their eyes or blurted out a non-sequitur, it didn't mean that they could see you or knew what was coming out of their own mouths. Chloe figured that that was the state Vanessa was in now: Eyes wide and mouth moving while still in a thick integument that was holding back grief for a daughter who wasn't dead yet.
A quick and brutal image of Max's eyes raising uncomprehendingly, staring at Chloe but not seeing her, flashed in her mind. It took her physically shaking her head to banish it.
"Um…" Chloe said. "I'm gonna go home. I mean if…"
"Do you need me to walk you to your truck?" Joyce asked.
"No," Chloe said. "Thanks Mom, but I'm… I'm fine."
A fresh round of hugs for the four of them. Even David managed to put some stank on his. Chloe made her way down the hallway to the door.
Under the streetlight in the parking lot, she leaned against her truck, puffing away at a Parliament Light. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and regarded it.
These things are supposed to kill you.
Chloe's best friend from when she was a kid made a grand entrance after five years of silence and took a bullet for her, and she was digging her own grave one puff of a smoke at a time.
Eh, she'd quit tomorrow.
Chloe had squished the butt under her boot when her phone started vibrating. She took it out of her jacket and saw that it was Rachel's mom.
"Hello?" Chloe asked.
"Um…" Lucinda Amber said. "Hello, Chloe. I… I saw on the news… are you okay?"
"Yeah," Chloe said. "I'm fine, I'm… everything's fine. It's just been…"
Chloe's words were halted in their tracks by the sound of whimpering on the other line. Rachel's mom was crying.
"What's wrong?" Chloe asked.
"It's Rachel," Lucinda Amber said, crying. "She's gone…"
November 7, 2018
"So what's the new memory?" Max asked as she drove.
Chloe came back from space. "What?"
"You said you had a memory come back to you last night," Max said. "Which one was it?"
Yet another unwholesome twinge within Chloe. Stop that!
"Um… well…" Chloe trailed off.
"It was the kiss, wasn't it?" Max asked.
"What kiss?"
"Oh," Max said. "Never mind."
"Actually," Chloe said, "it was the pool."
A hush fell over the car.
"What specifically is it about the pool that's throwing you off of your game?" Max asked. "I mean, you've been a little off since this morning."
"I… I really don't want to make things weird between us."
"Oh," Max said. Another hush.
"Chloe?"
"Yeah?"
"Make it weird."
Chloe looked at Max. "What?"
"I know," Max said. "I'm sorry. This is a tough time for you. You're having an existential crisis. But I've been wondering about that night for five years."
Chloe wanted to defuse this situation. She looked around for whatever could do it, and she found a box marked "Guilt."
"So the memories we had aren't good enough? You're curious about another Chloe's memories?"
Max was either oblivious to Chloe's attempts to guilt her out, or she maneuvered around them with the grace of a ballerina.
"Chloe, on my deathbed, I will treasure the times we had together in this reality. The prom, the Gum Wall in Seattle, all those times you put your cigarettes in the mouth of the Jimi Hendrix statue? But just because these memories didn't happen to you per se, doesn't mean they didn't happen to me. They're my memories too. Humor me, please, tell me about the pool."
Chloe's mouth opened and closed like an indecisive fish. "I just don't think its appropriate…"
Max stopped her right there. "Remember Halloween 2014? I dressed as Link. You had on this… this black suit and black shirt with, like, a red tie and aviator shades. You were, what, Sexy Jim Sterling?"
Chloe threw up her hands. "I was Paul Ellering," Chloe said. "What did they teach you in history class?"
"The point is," Max said, "that when we got home, you took off my Link costume, from my cap to my boots, with your teeth. And now you're gonna sit there and tell me that, when we're in the middle of a murder mystery with time travel and drug lords and explosions, you're gonna be polite? Tell me about the pool, please."
Chloe took a deep breath.
"That night," Chloe said, "was probably the first time I thought of you… that way."
Max nodded. "Like, romantically? Or…"
"If I know myself as well as I think I do, I'd probably thought of you romantically before then. Even if it was hypothetical. Like, 'Oh, that girl's pretty, I wonder what it would be like to date her.' But the pool, I was thinking… other things."
"Oh," Max said. "Those other things… But you didn't act on it."
Chloe looked at Max again.
"Okay," Chloe said. "Your turn. What would you have done if I had?"
Max shrugged. "I don't know. I hadn't even kissed anyone up to that point. But in hindsight, I guess there really was only one way of finding out."
A brief lull. "So why didn't you act on it?" Max asked.
Chloe sighed. "Because I was still holding out hope that Rachel was still alive. And if I made a move on you… then that would have been like admitting that she was gone."
Chloe looked at Max and saw that she blinked a few times.
"Oh," Max said. "I, um… I should really be careful what I ask about… I'm sorry."
Near the highway leading out of Arcadia Bay, an expanse of trees was cleared. In this flat expanse, a square about the size of a city block was fenced in. It was paved and dotted with storage sheds the size of small garages.
Big Bob's Storage.
Chloe and Max made their way down the rows of sheds, the sounds their shoes made their only company.
"Our police department has to store their evidence in a shitty storage shed on the edge of town," Chloe said. "I'd love to live in a place this jank that isn't Arcadia Bay. Just to see what it would be like."
"I dunno," Max said. "The jank lends it an air of charm. It's like the Deadly Premonition of towns."
They found shed 211, and Chloe got out the key that Denise had given her the morning before, and unlocked the heavy door to the shed. She needed Max's help to get it open.
A light came on automatically. On the bare pavement that passed for a floor, there were eight boxes that were lined up in two rows of four. Chloe took the four on the right and Max took the four on the left. They both sat down on the cold pavement and started rooting through the police evidence in the shooting of Arnold Trainor, hoping to find clues to at least one of the many mysteries that Chloe and Max had fallen ass-backwards into.
The first clue didn't take long.
"Wowser," Max said.
Chloe looked at her. "Y'know, for as many clues we find, would it kill you to say 'Jinkies' at least once?"
Max took a clip-on ID badge out of the first box she had gone through and handed it to Chloe.
Chloe found it funny that, for as much mental space that Trainor took up as "The Guy Somebody Hired to Kill Justin," she had had no idea what the man even looked like until now. Arnold Trainor appeared to be in his late thirties, far too young for the comb-over atop his head that fate had cursed him with. His hazel eyes were buggy and his chin came down to a point. He looked like the pre-alpha version of the guy in the slasher movies who warns the desperately horny co-eds to stay away from the abandoned summer camp.
But the interesting part was where Trainor worked.
"Leonard International," Chloe said. "Arnold Trainor worked for Leonard International."
"Don't a lot of people work for Leonard International?" Max asked.
"Yeah, but this ID badge says he was an 'Executive Shipping Coordinator.'"
"Sounds important," Max said.
"Yeah," Chloe said. "Too important. Trevor told me that Trainor had a long list of priors. How the hell does an ex-con get that high up at Leonard International? I'll ask Denise about it the next time I see her."
"When will that be?" Max asked. Only jealous people actively try not to look jealous.
Chloe tilted her head. "One thing at a time, Max."
The second clue was in Chloe's third box. "Boom!"
"What?" Max asked.
Chloe took a coffee cup out of the box and walked it over to Max. But this was no ordinary coffee cup, no, it was one of those one gets at the mall, where one can have a photo screened on the side. Which particular photo was screened on this particular coffee cup was of paramount interest to both Chloe and Max. The photo depicted Arnold Trainor at its center, with his arm around the neck of another man, and yet a third man behind them, giving Trainor bunny-ears and smiling a shit-eating smile.
Chloe informed Max that the guy Trainor had his arm around was The Bull.
And she didn't need to tell Max who the smiling man giving bunny-ears was.
"Logan?" Max damn near yelled.
Logan Robertson, the one-time pride of the Blackwell Bigfoots (and the one-time baby-daddy of Dana Ward) was in a picture on the side of a coffee mug with a ruthless drug kingpin and the murderer of one of his classmates.
"I guess our next stop is that shitty car wash Logan works at," Chloe said. "But fuck, I guess Trainor and The Bull were tight… which makes a lot of sense."
"How so?" Max asked.
"Well, Denise hired me to see if The Bull hired Trainor to kill Justin, because The Bull is dealing drugs jacked from Leonard International shipments. Being that Trainor works high up at Leonard International…"
"Then Trainor is the one telling The Bull which shipments have drugs on them," Max said. "Or he was. But if Trainor and The Bull were friends, then why did Trainor end up dead after he killed Justin?"
"I don't know," Chloe said. "Let's keep digging."
The next bit of interest was found by Max.
"It's a flip phone," Max said.
Chloe's eyes lit up. "It's the burner phone!" she said. "Give it here!"
Max did so. "What's a burner phone?"
"It's a disposable phone. Trevor said only two calls were made with it. One was to the ABPD to get me arrested when I went into Justin's house. Another was to a number they weren't able to trace."
"And… you think we can trace it?"
"This was before I learned that both The Bull and Denise had a shitload of cops in their pockets. Which means either they weren't able to trace the number, or one of these dirty cops didn't want it traced."
The phone didn't have any battery life left, so Chloe would have to look at the number after she had charged it herself.
The final clue was found by Chloe, at the bottom of the last box of her four.
"Ohhhhh," Chloe said, groaning. "Oh, Jesus."
Max came around, and her face looked like how Chloe felt.
Fourteen photographs. All of Jennifer Healy. Chloe knew that they were taken on consecutive days, because the photos had been dated in red pen on their margins. Each photo was dated after Jennifer was reported missing. In each photo, she was standing in front of a white wall next to a table. In each photo she was dressed in very nice skirts, slacks, blouses, dresses. In each photo, the red digital clock on the table read 11:59 PM. And in each photo she had an absent, glassy stare.
"Look," Max said, and pointed at Jennifer's arm in one of the photographs. It was lined with red dots.
"Track-marks. She's being drugged," Max said, and Chloe saw her suppress a shudder. Chloe thought that there might be a story there, but she didn't want to ask.
"I don't want to think about this right now," Chloe said. "I don't want to do anything right now. Let's just take the stuff we can use and go."
Max took the ID badge and the coffee mug. Chloe took the Jennifer Healy photos and the burner phone. The two slammed the shed door back down to the…
Damp soil.
An ungodly reek.
Desperation.
Horror.
Sunlight dancing of the plastic of a body bag as it's unearthed from the dirt.
"Rachel?"
Chloe fell to her knees.
"Chloe? What's wrong?"
Chloe clawed her glasses off of her face, and a howl of grief and despair tore its way out of her throat. She dropped the photos of Jennifer Healy, and the November wind lightly arrayed them in front of her. Chloe's lips pulled back. Chloe's eyes streamed tears through clenched eyelids. Chloe could feel her face turning red as another wail came.
The world had gone away, replaced with a cold red endlessness. The only thing she could feel were the arms Max wrapped around her.
"It's okay, Chloe! I'm here! I've got you!"
Chloe opened her eyes, and she saw that one of her tears fell on one of the pictures of Jennifer Healy at her knees. And whether her tears distorted her vision or her mind was leaving her, Chloe could have sworn that the face of Jennifer Healy started mixing perfectly with the face of Rachel Amber.
"What kind of a world does this?"
They sat in Max's rental in the silent parking lot. Chloe's face was still red, and Max's eyes were pleading for an order, for any suggestion of a feat she could perform that could take Chloe's pain away.
"It was Rachel, wasn't it?" Max asked. "You got a memory of finding Rachel in the junkyard."
Chloe took her beanie off and nodded. "It happened five years ago, but it felt fresh, and…"
Chloe couldn't find the words, and punched the dashboard instead. Max jumped.
"I know people step on other people to get ahead," Chloe said. "To feel better about themselves. I don't like it, but I've accepted the fact that I can't stop it… But have you ever noticed that the world likes breaking little girls the most? Jennifer Healy is a little girl. Rachel was a little girl."
"Chloe…"
"She was eighteen years old, Max! I couldn't have seen it like this back then, but I see it now. Rachel was a child."
Chloe threw her beanie onto the dashboard. A fresh round of silent tears came.
"She was a good girl," Chloe said, her voice soft. "They killed her for it… And she thought the world was a decent place. She thought everything was gonna be okay…"
