Murder Road

While he was still in Iraq, Eddie began to have visual and auditory hallucinations. After he spoke to a doctor, he was discharged, but he couldn’t afford the prescriptions or therapy, so he moved in with his parents and got a job as a mechanic. His PTSD can be unpredictable, but he has learned to live with it.

Eddie’s willingness to share his painful personal history with April inspires her to do the same. She tells him about her father’s abuse, and about the night her mother woke her up in the middle of the night and they drove away forever. She even tells him about moving and changing identities, and how eventually, at the age of 18, she was alone. She doesn’t, however, tell him her original name, saying only “That girl is dead” (182). Eddie understands—he was abandoned by his mother when he was six and adopted soon after. He has only vague memories of his birth mother. After meeting Eddie, April didn’t want to leave her identity as April Delray behind. She felt like they understood each other and were meant to be together.

The next morning, April and Eddie drive to Midland to investigate the Midland High School letter jacket found near the Lost Girl. On the way there, they are relaxed and actually have fun, forgetting for the moment about everything that has happened. Once in Midland, Eddie decides to start at the library, while April casually mentions going to the bank.

At the bank, April tries to withdraw money, but the teller reports that the account has a zero balance. This is not her account with Eddie—it is a secret account, which until recently had $7,000 in it. April takes money out of her normal checking account. She leaves the bank and sees Eddie coming out of the library with a slip of paper.

At the library, Eddie found a classified ad in the local newspaper, dated November 1977. In it, a woman named Carla asks Shannon Haller to come home, indicating that Shannon had gone missing that year. They decide to call the phone number on the ad and are surprised to find that even though it was nearly 20 years ago, the number is still in service. It is now owned by Carla’s daughter, who tells them that Carla works at a local restaurant.

When they meet Carla, she tells them that she now believes Shannon is dead. She and Shannon met in rehab—Carla because she had gotten a DUI, and Shannon because she had a child and wanted to get clean. Neither of them succeeded in getting sober during that time, but they became close friends.

Carla asks what their interest is. April and Eddie explain about the Lost Girl legend and identify themselves as amateur detectives trying to solve the case. Carla tells them that when Shannon disappeared, she was the only one who cared—Shannon’s mother was dead, and she fought with her father, especially after she got pregnant. After Shannon had her baby, she couldn’t maintain her sobriety. She also had a mental health condition and had nearly died by suicide twice before.

The last time Carla spoke to Shannon, her baby was in foster care, but she was determined to get him back. She was sober for three months, and then Carla stopped hearing from her. Carla went to Shannon’s father’s house and found out she was gone. Carla doesn’t believe that Shannon would’ve left her son, which is why she believes Shannon is dead.

April asks Carla if anyone might have wanted to kill Shannon. Carla points out that before she was sober, Shannon had lied and stolen to support her substance use and very likely had enemies. However, Carla still cares deeply about what happened to Shannon—she lived a similar life until she got sober nearly 20 years ago, and it could’ve been her.

After talking to Carla, April and Eddie return to Coldlake Falls. Eddie goes for a run while April calls her boss at the bowling alley. He gives her a hard time about taking extra time off, and she gets angry. When he threatens to fire her, she hangs up on him.

Next, April calls her mother in prison. By the tone of Diane’s voice, April knows that her mother emptied the secret account. The money in the account is the savings from her mother’s various cons over the years and April’s father’s life insurance money. When April was 18, her mother was taken back to California to stand trial for “what she’d done the night [they] left” (199). April came home from work to find her mother gone and has been on the run ever since.

After Diane’s arrest, April spent half of their $20,000 savings trying to get her mother released. Eventually, she gave up and since then has only used the money a bit at a time, when she needed it. However, her mother never touched it until this recent withdrawal.

April finally reveals that her mother killed her father the night they left Los Angeles. She hit him with a baseball bat and then set the house on fire to cover up the crime. April doesn’t regret that her mother did this—they had both lived in a constant state of fear with her father, and April still bore the scars. However, April has told Eddie that her mother is dead.

Now, Diane won’t tell April how or why she took the money, only that it is an emergency. During their conversations, she figures out that April is involved with a man and says, “I taught you better than that” (203). April knows that if Diane found out about Eddie, she would try to destroy their relationship. She’s relieved that her mother doesn’t know her current name, April Delray. Diane shows no remorse for taking the money and tells April that she’s on her own now.

April is shaken after her conversation with her mother. When Eddie comes back, she wants to tell him but is afraid she will lose him if he knows the whole truth. She doesn’t want to walk away when things get hard, as she might have done before.

Later, Eddie tells her that lately he has felt like he’s living in a dream. He can’t remember exactly how or why he left the interstate and drove down Atticus Line. April can’t remember either—before, she thought it was because she was sleeping, but now she wonders if it was something else. They discuss the parallel between Eddie’s history and Shannon’s case—they both involve a mother leaving her child. Eddie points out that he is too old to be Shannon’s baby—in 1976, he was 8 years old.

After they talk, Eddie takes a nap while April talks to Rose. She tells Rose that they were in Midland, trying to identify the Lost Girl. Rose tells April that Robbie had investigated the murders and always believed that they weren’t random—that someone, or something, was behind all of them. April brings up Beatrice and Gracie’s theory that murders are being covered up by the police, but Rose is scornful, telling April that Gracie believes Quentin is the killer. Rose is adamant that the police department, and especially Robbie, never would’ve covered up such a thing.

April, Eddie, and Rose eat dinner together. Afterward, as April is washing dishes, she feels a hand on her shoulder. She thinks it is Eddie but when she turns, he is across the room. Suddenly she gets a premonition that “[s]omething bad is about to happen” (214). Before she can tell Eddie and Rose, there is a knock at the front door—it is Detective Quentin.

Quentin and Beam tell Eddie and April that they have a record of a call from Rose’s house to an inmate named Diane Cross, in California. The woman killed her husband, set the house on fire, and ran away with her 12-year-old daughter years earlier. April admits that Diane is her mother, though she hates that Eddie is finding out in this way. Quentin lists Diane’s aliases and crimes and then brings up her daughter, Crystal Cross, who is “even more elusive than [Diane] was” (219). April is upset, never wanting to hear that name again, and explains about her father’s abuse. Eddie demands that they stop interrogating April. He is angry, and April knows some of that anger is directed at her.

Quentin turns his attention to Eddie, bringing up his army discharge. He mentions “psychiatric incidents. […] Behavioral problems” (221), and the fact that when he was discharged, an “unauthorized handgun” was found among his things. Eddie protests that the gun was legal, but Quentin moves on. He claims that Eddie was on leave from a nearby army base when Katharine O’Connor was killed, implying that Eddie could’ve killed her.

Finally, Rose interrupts angrily and tells Quentin and Beam to leave. April is surprised when, after a moment, they comply.

After they leave, April apologizes to both Rose and Eddie. She expects Rose to be angry, but Rose is only mad at Quentin. She tells them that he and the rest of the force treated Robbie horribly because he was Black: giving him the worst duties, paying him less, even calling him names to his face. It makes her doubly angry that Robbie was a smart, good detective. Robbie died of a heart attack while they were digging a new garden, and now his death has been turned into local gossip. Quentin does nothing to stop it on the force, even though he knows it’s going on. Because of all this, Rose doesn’t feel obliged to help Quentin.

While she is talking, Eddie goes into their bedroom and shuts the door. April knows that he lied, or withheld some parts of his story from her, but what she lied about was much worse. She decides that she has to “make it right” (228).

Eddie goes for a run without speaking to April. She doesn’t know if he is angry, or even regretting having married her. April goes out to Atticus Line alone to confront the Lost Girl and end this chapter of their lives.

When she gets to Atticus Line, April gets out of the car and walks down the road toward where she saw the light that very first night. She knows that the Lost Girl is aware of her presence. A storm builds and lightning flashes overhead. As she walks, she hears a car slowing and pulling up next to her. She turns and puts out her thumb. A woman rolls down the window and offers April a ride.

In the car, the woman introduces herself as Trish and tells April that she doesn’t usually pick up hitchhikers. April asks Trish if she’s ever seen anything strange on that road, but Trish doesn’t seem to know anything. Trish begins sweating and acting confused. April feels a rush of cold as Trish speeds up.

April looks in the rearview mirror and sees the Lost Girl sitting in the backseat. The Lost Girl offers a terrifying, evil smile, and April realizes that the Lost Girl is going to use Trish to kill her.

Trish stops the car and gets out to get something from the trunk. April realizes that there was no pattern to the murders because the killer was different and used whatever was at their disposal. April tries to get out of the car without getting Trish’s attention. Trish comes around the side of the car and swings a tire iron at her.

April runs down Atticus Line. She hears Trish’s car following her and ducks into the trees. Trish stops the car and gets out, calling for her. April turns and sees the ghost of a young man disappearing into the trees—another past victim. She makes her way back to Trish’s car and calls to Trish, and then to Shannon. She realizes that Shannon brought Eddie there that first night for a reason.

Trish is sitting on the ground, her back against the car. April can see her fighting against whatever is possessing her. She pulls the tire iron from Trish’s hands and puts her into the driver’s seat of the running car. She tells her to drive away as fast as she can, and Trish does it. April turns and runs to Robbie’s car.

When she gets back to Rose’s, Eddie comes out of the house yelling, and she realizes that he thought she left him. She tells him that she went to Atticus Line and that the Lost Girl is responsible for all the murders. She asks Eddie to try to remember driving to Atticus Line. He doesn’t remember anything leading him there, but at the same time, he was sure he was going the right way. April tells Eddie that the Lost Girl just tried to kill her. She theorizes that the ghost led them to Atticus Line deliberately.

April tells Eddie about her encounter with Trish on Atticus Line. They now know why the police can’t catch the killer—it’s a different person every time, who doesn’t even remember doing it. Once again, they realize that solving the Lost Girl’s murder is the key to understanding it all.

They talk about the secrets Quentin revealed, but neither is mad at the other, and they agree to try to leave their pasts behind. While they are talking, Eddie hears something outside. When he opens the front door, no one is there, but they find a copy of Seventeen magazine sticking out of Rose’s mailbox.

They realize that the Snell sisters left it—inside, they find a copy of a missing person’s report, filed by John Haller about his daughter Shannon, nearly a year after her disappearance. On the bottom, they find an address for John Haller and decide to go back to Midland.