I ended up going for a long ride, taking the letter along, tucking it inside my coat so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. It was February and we’d finally gotten a snow storm after a very cold, dry, couple of months. Rumor was that they’d found Molly Taggert’s remains near the overpass where Moses had painted her picture. People were talking again and people were staring at me too, all the while trying to pretend they weren’t staring. The lack of snow had made it possible for the dogs to work, to find her, but I was glad the dry spell was finally broken.
The empty white world was welcome, and when Sackett and I were far away from everything and everyone, I pulled the letter out and carefully opened it, as if I might inadvertently tear away something important. Maybe my own dry spell was finally broken. I pulled out a folded piece of thick drawing paper and carefully opened it, tucking the envelope back inside my coat. With shaking hands I studied the picture in my hands. I didn’t know what to make of it.
It was beautiful, but more abstract than I would have hoped. I wanted concrete. I wanted words. I wanted him to tell me that he was coming back for me. That he couldn’t stand being apart. But I didn’t get concrete. I got a picture. How very Moses.
It was a woman, but she could be any woman. There was a child, and it could almost be any child. The woman was created from swirls and suggestions, breasts, hips, embracing arms and folded legs, all enclosing a small child with a brief sweep of dark hair. I looked at it for a long time, not knowing what to make of it.
Was it symbolic? Was it pointed? Was he making a statement about the loss of his grandmother? Was he trying to tell me he understood what I was going through? I didn’t know how he could. And so I stared at the lovely, confusing bit of correspondence from the boy who had kept me guessing from the beginning. After a while, my hands grew cold and Sackett grew restless, and I headed back for home.
I framed the picture and hung it on my wall, determined to get some sense of peace from it, from the fact Moses had thought of me at all. But mostly I felt afraid and unequipped to tackle the days ahead, still unable to completely give up on Moses Wright. Mom had taken one look at the picture and turned away, and Dad just shook his head and sighed. And I settled in for a long wait.
Moses
IN A SHALLOW GRAVE piled high with rocks and debris, fifty yards from where I’d painted her smiling face, the remains of Molly Taggert were uncovered. Tag said the truck stop nearby was called Circle A. The neon sign that marked the establishment was a red A inside a circle—just like at the top of Molly’s math page. I’d never noticed it at all in my travels back and forth across the ridge between Levan and Nephi. I’d driven by that truck stop a hundred times and never made the connection. Too lost in my own head, definitely not Sherlock Holmes. The back of the truck stop butted up to a stretch of field that led into the little hills that rose into the mountain ridge that stretched along the east part of town and continued south for hundreds of miles. A golf course was wedged between those hills, and every year fireworks were launched from the first tee around the fourth of July. The red A and the fireworks were both easily visible from the overpass where I’d painted Molly’s image, marking her resting place and not even knowing it.
Tag had cried when he told me. Big, wracking sobs that made his shoulders shake and my stomach tighten painfully, the way it had the night Georgia had told me she loved me. “I think you do love me, Moses,” she’d said, tears coating her throat. “And I love you too.” I didn’t do well with tears. I didn’t cry, so I didn’t know why other people did. And Tag cried for his sister the way I imagined I should have cried for Gi. But I didn’t cry, so I just waited until the storm passed, and Tag mopped up the tears on his cheeks and finished telling me the rest.
Tag had told his father about me. And for whatever reason—desperation, despondency, or maybe just a desire to placate his adamant son—David Taggert Sr. hired a man and his dogs to cover the area Tag had described. They’d caught her scent quickly, and they found her remains. Just like that. The police were called in and before too long, the police came to the loony bin, looking for me. I’d been questioned about Molly Taggert before, but now they had a body. A body that was found eerily close to my dramatic display.
Sheriff Dawson came with another man, a round, pasty-faced, red-haired deputy that couldn’t have been much older than me. The younger man sneered at me, clearly playing the part of the nasty sidekick on his favorite cop show. With his powdery complexion and his flaming hair, he reminded me of a scowling jelly donut.
Sheriff Dawson asked me all the same questions and a few new ones. He knew David Taggert was a patient at the institution where I was housed. He also knew what Tag had told his father and what his father had then relayed to the search team. And he knew it had all come from me. But when it was all said and done, Molly Taggert had been missing since July of 2005. In July of 2005, I’d been living in California with my uncle and his unhappy wife and their very spoiled children. In July of 2005, I served the entire month in a juvenile detention facility for gang related activities. And that was indisputable. As far as alibis go, mine was pretty airtight. Sheriff already knew that, from our conversation back in October, when I’d painted Molly’s face on the overpass and got hauled in for questioning. But I had known it wouldn’t stop him, or anyone else in law enforcement, from believing I was guilty of something. I’d told Tag as much.
“You had any further contact with Georgia Shepherd?” Sheriff Dawson asked as he closed his file and prepared to leave. The question felt a little strange at the tail end of all the questions about Molly Taggert.