Everything We Didn't Say(2)

“I’ll be just a minute,” the officer said. He disappeared with her papers and license, and in her rearview mirror Juniper could see him slide back into the cruiser. Tall, youngish, trim beneath his uniform. Unfamiliar. A far cry from Atkins, the round, elderly chief of police who had questioned her reluctantly all those years ago, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had happened on his watch. The officer’s skin had a blue tint from the dashboard light, and as she watched he punched something into the laptop computer she knew was attached to the console.

Juniper had nothing to fear, and yet her palms were suddenly damp in her lap. Knotting her fingers together, she pushed her laced hands out and away, tugging at the kinks in her shoulders and neck from the ten-hour drive. She was jittery, maybe a bit dehydrated, and unprepared for even this seemingly innocuous interaction. What have I done? she thought. Then: Just give me a ticket. Write me up and go away.

But when the officer came back, he only handed her a written warning. No ticket. “You were going a little fast back there, but I’m more concerned that your left taillight is out,” he told her. “Dangerous. Especially in winter.”

“Absolutely,” Juniper agreed. “I’ll call the shop tomorrow.”

“Be sure you do. And welcome back, Ms. Baker.”

Juniper’s cheeks flamed, and she was grateful that the officer was already walking away. She watched the police cruiser drive off, pressing cool hands to her burning face and wishing that she was curled up on her worn corduroy couch in Denver. Or perched on a stool at her favorite bar. Or pulling a late night in the archives. Anywhere but here.



* * *



True to her word, Cora had locked the front door and left the key in the mailbox. It was likely an unnecessary precaution (no one in Jericho locked their doors) and futile anyway, because the mailbox was the most obvious place to look if someone did want to break in. Still, Juniper felt a modicum of control when she reached a hand into the letterbox and came up with an icy key. It slid effortlessly into the front door, and the lock clicked open.

The bungalow looked exactly how she imagined it would: shabby but comfortable. There was a tiny living room with a drab floral sofa and a boxy old television set that had a twist dial for channels and another for volume. The vintage piece paired perfectly with the charming avocado-colored appliances in the galley-style eat-in kitchen.

Juniper toed off her boots and lugged the carton she was holding to the off-white Formica table pushed up against the far kitchen wall. It was the only thing she had carried into the house. Her clothes and toiletries could wait—the contents of the cardboard box could not.

Dropping her cargo onto one of two padded kitchen chairs, Juniper yanked open the bent flaps. She lifted out nine slim Moleskine notebooks, each in a different color. They were labeled in her quick, willowy cursive with black, archival-quality ink. Flipping through them, Juniper confirmed nothing was missing.

Next were the binders crammed with clear sleeves protecting copies of every single blog post, newspaper or magazine article, op-ed, and mention of the murders she could find. Juniper had scoured the internet, unearthing microscopic scraps—from a comment about the Murphy murders on an unrelated case to the Facebook profile picture of the coroner who had performed the autopsies (she never did manage to get a hold of the actual reports). At the very bottom of the box were a few pieces of material evidence. A time-softened folder with a handful of glossy photographs that were just beginning to yellow. A label she had carefully peeled and pressed flat from a jar of the Murphys’ famous raspberry jam. Her high school yearbook.

When everything was laid out on the table, Juniper felt the tension melt from her shoulders. It was all there.

She knew it was an impressive collection. If she had gone into law enforcement instead of library science, her box would have included forensic reports and interview transcripts, too, but this was enough. It would have to be.



* * *



The light was thin as spilled milk when Juniper woke. Without opening the curtains, she could tell that the day was dawning chilly and gray, the sun hidden behind long strips of clouds like cotton batting.

She had crashed on the couch, a musty afghan dragged over her shoulders and a binder open on the coffee table beside her. Thrusting back the blanket as if she had something to prove, Juniper hurried to her car and grabbed the suitcases she had left in the trunk overnight. Early to bed, early to rise, her stepfather had drilled into her, and even at thirty-three years old, seven a.m. felt downright luxurious. She could almost see Law scowl.

A quick shower and ten minutes in front of the mirror were more than enough. Sweeping on her signature dark red lipstick, Juniper tried to see herself as the rest of Jericho would. Like everything else around here, she hadn’t changed much—at least on the outside—since she had last called Iowa home. Her skin was still warm as sunbaked sand, and she often wore her long tangle of hair in a thick braid that curled over her right shoulder. Freckles sprinkled her nose and cheeks, trailing stardust down her neck to where a Milky Way of constellations spread across her chest. A lover had once traced them all, drawing patterns with his fingertips.

It was just before eight when Juniper waffled at the front door. In theory, she knew exactly what she was getting herself into: she was here to help Cora, whose breast cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and lungs. The small college in a Denver suburb where Juniper worked as the Special Collections and College Archives Librarian had given her an open-ended leave of absence, a move so generous Juniper had teared up when the Director of Library Services had made the necessary arrangements. But standing with her hand on the door only a block away from the Jericho Public Library, nothing was theoretical anymore.