Animal Remains

Ronnie Mercer was thirty-four years old and still bought his mother’s cigarettes.

The packs collected in the glove compartment beside expired insurance cards and fast-food napkins gone stiff with grease. Marlboro Lights. Diane said she was quitting every couple months, usually while smoking one.

“You think they got lost?” she asked.

“No.”

“You checked the email?”

“Yeah.”

Diane sat staring through the windshield toward the county access gate. Gray February sky. Mud pooled beside the gravel road from last week’s rain. Beyond the fence, the old Hadley property stretched flat and brown toward a collapsed horse barn at the far end of the field.

She lit another cigarette.

Ronnie cracked the window automatically.

Cold air rushed into the truck carrying the smell of wet dirt and manure from somewhere nearby.

After a minute Diane said, “I should’ve worn the black coat.”

“You’re fine.”

“It makes me look less washed out.”

Ronnie looked over at her.

The coat she had on was dark green wool with cigarette burns near one pocket. Her jeans bunched at the knees when she sat. She’d buzzed her hair two nights earlier standing over the bathroom sink while Ronnie clipped the back for her.

“You missed a spot,” she’d said afterward, rubbing the base of her neck.

Now she checked herself again in the passenger mirror, pulling the visor down farther.

“You think I look okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t even look.”

“I did.”

Diane kept staring into the mirror another second before snapping it shut.

At the gas station twenty minutes earlier, she had bought a pack of gum and two scratch-off lottery tickets she left untouched in her coat pocket. Ronnie could still smell the burned coffee from inside the station on her clothes.

“You think they’ll use makeup on me?” she asked.

“What?”

“On TV. Sometimes they powder people.”

“I dunno.”

Diane nodded like she already had an opinion about it.

“They better not make me look shiny.”

“You’re not gonna look shiny.”

“I always look shiny on camera.”

Ronnie rubbed his thumb against the steering wheel.

Three local news stations had interviewed Diane over the years. Once outside the courthouse. Once in front of the property itself. Once at a diner off Route 41 where Diane spent half the interview correcting the reporter’s timeline.

Afterward she’d called the station six times because they cut out her theory about the truck stop.

“You remember that woman from Channel 8?” Diane asked suddenly.

“The blonde one?”

“She twisted everything I said.”

Ronnie nodded.

“She made me sound emotional.”

Diane flicked ash through the cracked window.

“Like I’m some grieving daughter hallucinating things.”

She said grieving with visible irritation.

A black SUV finally appeared at the end of the road.

“That’s them.”

Two more vehicles followed behind it pulling equipment trailers. Young people climbed out carrying hard plastic cases and insulated coffee tumblers. Everybody moved quickly through the cold wearing knit caps and clean boots already sinking into Indiana mud.

The podcast host stepped out last.

Claire Dodd.

Ronnie recognized her immediately from clips online. Long dark braid. Gold hoops. White thermal shirt beneath a denim jacket.

Diane dropped her cigarette into the gravel and crushed it beneath her shoe before Claire reached them.

“Diane?” Claire said warmly.

“It’s really good to finally meet you.”

Diane straightened slightly.

“Well,” she said, “I appreciate somebody taking this seriously for once.”

Claire nodded in a way that made it sound true.

“We’ve been going through your timeline all week.”

Ronnie watched Diane’s face settle into its camera expression. Serious. Certain.

As Claire turned toward him, he caught the smell of her shampoo. Clean. Maybe flowers. It surprised him.

“And you’re Ronnie.”

He nodded.

“Your mom says you remember all the details better than she does.”

Diane laughed softly.

“He remembers everything.”

Ronnie shrugged.

Claire smiled at him another second before one of the producers called her toward the equipment trailer.

The field filled gradually with movement after that. Folding tables. Cables dragged through wet grass. Drone equipment unpacked from black cases. County deputies arriving in marked SUVs.

One of them nodded at Diane like they’d met before.

“Morning, Diane.”

“Morning, Scott.”

Ronnie wondered if the deputy remembered the thick envelope of handwritten notes Diane mailed to his house after he stopped returning her calls.

Probably.

Diane talked almost continuously while the crew unloaded equipment.

“Our father hauled freight through Indianapolis twice a month in seventy-nine.”

“The body near Terre Haute was found three miles from the old route.”

“If you compare the timelines—”

Ronnie carried banker boxes from the truck bed and lined them beside the folding table. Plastic folders bulging with maps and photocopies and photographs of missing girls with feathered hair and fixed smiles.

The boxes smelled faintly like cigarettes and basement mildew.

When Ronnie was little, they sat stacked along the dining room wall. After the divorce, they spread into the spare bedroom too. Ronnie’s father lived outside Evansville now with a woman named Carol who sold candles at church craft fairs.

The last Thanksgiving Ronnie spent there, Carol served turkey on plates decorated with little painted pumpkins. Nobody mentioned Diane once.

Claire interviewed Diane beside the fence line while a production assistant adjusted sound levels.

“Women know things,” Diane said. “That’s what people don’t understand.”

Claire nodded carefully.

Ronnie stood near the equipment cases drinking burnt coffee from a paper cup.

“You’ve been helping her long?” one of the sound guys asked him.

“Pretty much.”

“That’s wild.”

Ronnie shrugged again.

The guy waited like maybe more was coming.

Nothing did.

A little before noon, Claire walked over holding two coffees.

“You want one?”

Ronnie looked down at the paper cup already in his hand.

“Oh. Sorry.” Claire laughed softly. “I didn’t see that.”

“It’s fine.”

“You freezing?”

“Nah.”

“You from around here?”

Ronnie nodded toward the field.

“About twenty minutes over.”

Claire followed his gesture.

“It’s pretty out here.”

Ronnie looked at the mud and dead grass.

“Not really.”

Claire smiled a little.

“You guys always think wherever you grew up is ugly.”

Before Ronnie could answer, Diane called from across the field.

“Ronnie!”

He turned automatically.

“What?”

“Did you grab my other lighter?”

“It’s in your purse.”

Diane kept patting her coat pockets anyway.

Claire watched quietly while Ronnie walked over and opened Diane’s purse for her. Cigarettes. Loose receipts. Crumpled tissues. A yellow legal pad folded in half.

“Found it,” he said.

Diane took the lighter without thanking him.

Claire had already turned away by the time Ronnie looked back.

By noon the cadaver dogs arrived.

Everything sped up after that.

Deputies talking in tighter circles. Producers carrying cameras uphill toward the barn. Claire pulling her braid through the back of a baseball cap.

Diane smoked faster now.

“This is it,” she said quietly.

One of the dogs stopped near the remains of the old barn foundation. The handler raised a hand.

People started moving immediately.

Crew members grabbed equipment. Deputies headed uphill. Claire followed behind them with headphones hanging around her neck.

Nobody said anything to Diane.

“They started?” she said.

“Mom.”

“They started without me?”

She began walking uphill too quickly for the mud. Ronnie grabbed her purse from the fence post and followed behind her.

The hill sloped more than it looked from below. Diane’s boots slipped once in the wet grass.

Halfway up, her breathing changed.

Sharper now.

Cold air and cigarettes catching in her chest.

“Mom.”

“I’m fine.”

She kept walking.

Her coat had come open completely. The old men’s T-shirt underneath clung damply beneath her arms. Ronnie slowed automatically so she wouldn’t have to tell him to.

Near the barn, the podcast crew moved around easily carrying tripods and cases through the mud.

Diane stopped once beside a fence post with one hand pressed flat against her stomach.

“You want me to carry your coat?” Ronnie asked.

“I said I’m fine.”

Her face had gone pink from exertion.

For a second Ronnie thought she might turn around and go back downhill.

Instead she took another cigarette from the pack tucked into her coat pocket and held it unlit between her fingers while she caught her breath.

Above them, Claire stepped easily over a patch of broken concrete near the barn foundation without even looking down.

Diane watched her for a second.

Then she started uphill again.

By the time they reached the barn, the cigarette in Diane’s hand was bent slightly in the middle from where she’d been gripping it too hard.

The disturbed patch of dirt was small. Smaller than Ronnie expected after hearing about this place most of his life.

A dark rectangle surrounded by orange flags.

Claire stood nearby recording narration while one of the producers filmed the dog handler.

“Excuse me,” Diane said sharply.

Nobody answered right away.

Claire finally turned.

“We’re just getting some ambient audio before they begin digging.”

Diane stared at her.

Ronnie could smell cigarettes and wet dirt and Diane’s peppermint gum all at once.

Claire stepped carefully around a patch of mud, one hand pressing headphones against her ear. Her jeans were damp at the knees from kneeling in the grass.

Behind her, Diane lit another cigarette.

Ronnie turned at the sound of the lighter.

Her coat had fallen open. The old men’s T-shirt underneath had gone soft and thin with years of washing, stretched across her stomach and caught beneath the waistband of her jeans. Smoke drifted around her crew cut in pale ribbons. One hand rested against the fence post while she squinted toward the disturbed earth.

For a second, she looked strange to him.

Big. Solid. Older than she had that morning.

Then Diane caught him looking.

“You know,” she said suddenly, too loud, “Ted Bundy had girlfriends and everything.”

The field went quiet around her.

One of the sound guys bent over an equipment case without touching anything.

Claire’s face stayed careful.

“Nobody believes people till it’s too late,” Diane continued.

A deputy crouched near the disturbed soil.

“Probably animal remains,” he said.

The cameras kept rolling anyway.

One of the producers motioned for Claire to continue talking.

Diane lit another cigarette before she’d even finished the first one. The lighter shook slightly in her hand.

Nobody looked at the dirt anymore.

Claire lowered her headphones.

“Can we get Diane over here for one more question?”

Diane moved immediately.

Ronnie watched her straighten her shoulders before stepping toward the cameras. She dropped the cigarette into the mud but kept the lighter in her hand.

“Can you walk us through what first made you suspicious of your father?” Claire asked.

Diane rubbed her thumb hard against the lighter wheel.

“There was a woman on television talking about her missing daughter.”

The crew stayed quiet.

“She mentioned a truck stop outside Terre Haute. I knew my father drove through there.”

The drone buzzed overhead.

“And once you start noticing certain things?” Claire asked softly.

Diane looked past the cameras toward the dark rectangle in the ground.

“You can’t stop,” she said.

The wind moved across the field.

Behind Diane, rainwater had already begun gathering slowly at the bottom of the hole.