James Renner - True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

FOR KEITH

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

EMILY DICKINSON

Butch Atwood almost made it home. It was dark on the Wild Ammonoosuc, but the lights of Atwoods school bus pushed back the night and reflected off the walls of snow gathered on either side of the two-lane blacktop. It had been a long day, carting kids to the ski slopes in Conway. Almost over.

Around the last curve, he spotted a car stuck in the snowbank on his side of the road, pointing back the way hed come. It was a tight curve, nearly 90 degrees. The people who lived along this stretch were used to crashes in the night, especially in winter, when the pavement buckles with frost heaves. Butch slowed, stopped.

It was a dark Saturn. The front window was cracked, air bags blown, no flashers. Massachusetts plates. A pretty young woman with dark hair was standing outside. She looked about twenty years old. She was shivering.

You okay? he asked. Butch was a big fellow, 350 pounds. Rough-looking, with a stained, blond handlebar mustache.

Im just shook up, she said.

Ill call the police for you, said Butch.

No, the young woman replied. Please dont. I already called Triple-A. Theyre sending a tow truck.

He knew she was lying. Cell phones dont work on the mountain, not that far up. He offered her a ride to his house, next door. She declined, so he left her beside the car and drove the last hundred feet to his cabin. He parked the bus beside his garage so he could watch the young woman from his driveway. Then he went inside, asked his wife to report the accident, and returned to his vehicle to fill out the days paperwork for First School, the outfit he worked for.

Seven minutes later, the police arrived. By then, the young woman had vanished.

It was 7:45 P.M. , February 9, 2004.

It was the last moment of peace for Butch Atwood.

The day my lawsuit against my former newspaper was settled, I drove out to the Lodge, the nudie bar on State Route 14. This was in 2009. For the last six years I had worked as a reporter. Not the sort of reporter you see in movies. I wasnt a beat reporter for some important daily paper. I wrote for the alt-weeklies, those free papers you find in bars and record stores and comic shops. There were two in Northeast Ohio, The Free Times and Cleveland Scene, before they merged in 2008. When I started out, a feature story paid $2,500. When I was fired six years later, the same story paid $300. Desperate times for a gonzo journalist.

The Lodge is tucked into the woods off SR 14, in Edinburg, a sleepy little hamlet south of Kent. Edinburg is 24.5 square miles of farmland, slanted fields of corn and soy, hog wallows, and mink farms. Theres one traffic light in the school district. I fell in love with my wife out there when we played suspects in a high school production of Rehearsal for Murder . If you wanted to go on a date, there was the Dairy Queen. Otherwise, you had to drive twenty minutes into Ravenna. The Lodge didnt open until I was in college, and when it did it divided the town into sinners and saviors, and there was a public vote. In the end, the owner got the zoning variance he needed and the girls set up shop in the old honky-tonk across from the trailer yard. My best friend got drunk there one night and drove himself into the side of a house on his way home. I hadnt been there in a while.

For a tittie bar, the Lodge was kind of a nice place: a big cabin with soft leather couches, the head of a ten-point buck mounted over the fireplace. Against the back wall was a single pole in front of a black velvet curtain. I walked to the bar and ordered a Miller Lite in a bottle.

Its not like I go to strip clubs often. Maybe ten times in my life, mostly for bachelor parties. Id paid three women to spank my buddy onstage the day he turned twenty-one. I wasnt ashamed to be there. I like how strip clubs smell. Like jolly ranchers and scotch.

Want a dance?

I turned to find a young blonde standing beside me. She was dressed in red, lacy lingerie. Her taut skin, covered in glitter, shimmered in the sparse light.

No thank you, I said.

I have a thing for brunettes. And I dont like skinny. Not even athletic, really. I dont usually even buy a lap dance.

This happened a couple more times, that casual proposition. They all had silly names like Desiree, Sammi-with-an-I, or Eden. Really I thought Id just sit at the bar for a couple drinks and watch the stage.

Im Gracie. This woman wore a thin black dress that stretched past her knees. Dark hair. Her body was soft and it curved in a nice way. Not busty, but healthy. I noticed right away that her eyes were different. She wasnt hustling, not like the other women. Or, if she was, she was better at it.

I bought her a drink. Vodka and grapefruit, if I remember right. And we talked for a bit. She was from West Virginia, liked to read. At the time, I was working my way through Stieg Larssons The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This was before Larssons thriller became a publishing phenomenon. Nobody I knew had read it yet. The only reason I even had a copy was my wife bought it for my birthday. Of course, when I browsed the jacket, I was immediately drawn to the similarities between my current predicament and the storyit begins, after all, with a journalist losing his job over a political expos.

Gracie walked me to the Champagne Room and sat me down on a leather couch. It was a private nook with a door that she could close. A bouncer brought me another beer and left us alone. When the next song started, she danced for me. The dress came off. She wore a pair of black panties underneath. She climbed onto my lap and pressed her breasts against my face.

Do you want to see my tattoo?

Sure, I said.

She stood and, gyrating to the music, turned around. The bottom half of her back was covered by a beautiful, inky-black dragon.

Do you like it?

I am no longer surprised by the weird coincidences that occur in my life. After writing about crime for some years, I came to believe that there was a kind of blueprint to the universe, a certain order to the shape of things. Fearful symmetry, Ive called it. Not necessarily intelligent design; more like a natural framework or something. I knew a cop once whod investigated the case of a murdered girl. Found her body on County Road 1181, in Ashland County. At the time, his cruiser number was 1181. Stuff like that. Stuff like this girl with the dragon tattoo.

Gracie took off her panties, turned around, and straddled my leg. She leaned her head back against my shoulder. We were waiting for another song to start.

What do you do? she asked.

I dont know, I said. I used to be a reporter. I wrote about crime. Unsolved murders, mostly. I got fired. Im trying to figure out what to do next.