Murder Road

Eddie and April park down the street from John Haller’s house, and Kal parks behind them. They show him the missing persons report and Carla’s classified ad. Kal decides he should talk to Haller first and knocks on the door. Haller answers, and Kal goes inside for about 20 minutes. When he returns, he tells them that Haller placed the ad about a year after his daughter Shannon disappeared. The only way to identify the Lost Girl as Shannon Haller would be through dental records or by matching DNA from Haller.

Kal again asks what they aren’t telling him, but April knows that revealing more will make the Lost Girl angry. Finally, a frustrated Kal tells them he has to get back to Coldlake Falls and leaves. Before April can suggest they do the same, Haller leaves his house and drives away. Eddie, sounding almost robotic, tells April that they’re going to break into the house. He crosses the street and goes behind the house silently—she can barely keep up. Within moments, he pulls the screen off a window, pops the lock, and climbs inside. April goes in behind him.

While Eddie looks for Shannon’s things, April finds a photo album. In it, she finds a picture of two girls—one is a younger Carla, and the other is the Lost Girl, who she now knows is Shannon Haller. She also finds a photo of Shannon holding a young boy. His face is blurry, but he seems to be four or five years old. April realizes that they assumed that Shannon’s child was a baby when she disappeared. She takes the photo and goes to find Eddie.

Upstairs, Eddie finds a box with Shannon’s things, including a camera. He takes the film, and they leave the house. On the way home, April realizes they left evidence in Haller’s house—their fingerprints are everywhere. She panics, remembering when she and her mother would leave a place suddenly. She realizes that by breaking into Haller’s house, Eddie has drawn the police’s attention to her. As if he read her mind, Eddie says he wouldn’t blame her for leaving, but she is angry that he suggests it. He tells her he can hear Shannon’s voice in his head and may have been hearing her from the beginning. April knows she should show the photo of Shannon and her son to Eddie, but he seems too upset at the moment.

When they get back to Coldlake Falls, Eddie looks for a place to develop the photos. He is sure they are important. April sees Beatrice’s car nearby, and they pull alongside. Surprised, Beatrice smiles.

Beatrice, Eddie, and April pick Gracie up from the movies. Gracie points out that the film could be the final clue. They also talk about Trish—April wants to make sure she’s okay, and the Snell sisters offer to find her. Beatrice suggests that they use the high school darkroom to develop the film. School is closed for the summer, but Gracie admits that she has an illegal key. Both she and Beatrice have taken photography classes and are fairly confident they can develop the film.

The high school is deserted when they enter. They go to the darkroom, where Beatrice and Gracie work to develop the film as quickly as possible.

They hear a sound outside the darkroom. Gracie points out that when they turned the light off, a red light outside the darkroom came on. If anyone else is in the building, they will see the light and know the room is occupied. There is no way to lock the darkroom.

As the sisters work, April listens at the door. She hears the classroom door open and footsteps enter, and she knows it is the Lost Girl. There is a scraping noise followed by a loud pop, a strange smell, and the tinkle of glass. The sisters put the negatives in the dryer. April hears the sounds recede and knows that the Lost Girl is leaving. Just then, they hear the classroom door open again and a man asks if anyone is there. They stay quiet until they hear the man, likely the janitor, leave the room. Gracie and Beatrice finish the prints quickly and leave the darkroom. They notice that the red light is broken and realize that Shannon broke it so that the janitor wouldn’t find them.

Beatrice and Gracie are shaken by the reality of the Lost Girl—they had believed April, but it was different seeing paranormal activity in person. They pull into a parking lot to look at the photos. Each person takes one. Gracie’s is just a blur; Beatrice’s is of a young Shannon in front of her father’s house with another girl. Eddie’s photo is of Shannon alone, and he immediately tells them he remembers her—she is his mother. They realize that she led them to Atticus Line, and April points out that every time Shannon appeared, she focused completely on Eddie. When April was alone, Shannon tried to kill her, but she never tried to hurt Eddie.

After a moment, April shows them her photo: Shannon and a few other kids stand in front of the Hunter Beach house. In the background, they see a letter jacket from Midland High School. They realize that if Haller had this film in his house, it means he saw her after she’d been to Hunter Beach and might have even been there when she died.

The next morning, April and Eddie tell Quentin the whole story. Although it sounds impossible, they are tired of “carrying the mysteries of Atticus Line around, letting them weigh us down” (300). The only thing they don’t tell him is about Trish, because they don’t want the other woman to be connected. They even tell him about breaking into Haller’s house and developing the photos. Quentin doesn’t seem to believe them, and he threatens to call the Midland police to find out if Haller reported a break-in.

When they leave the station, Detective Beam is outside smoking. It is clear that he hates Quentin, and they ask why he continues to work with him. Beam tells them, “[H]e closes cases, and that’s all that matters” (306). Beam also tells Eddie that he, too, is a veteran, and knows that no matter what Eddie’s discharge papers say, he knows there is nothing wrong with Eddie.

Back at Rose’s house, April begins packing their things while Eddie tries to pay Rose for their stay. Finally, they agree that Eddie will mail her a check and help her clear some backyard debris before they leave. It feels strange to leave before everything is resolved, but April reflects that sometimes that’s just how life is.

As she is packing, April turns and sees a ghost—a man in a plaid shirt. He mouths the words “Get down” at her. When she doesn’t immediately respond, she feels two hands pushing her shoulders down, and the words repeat louder. She is pushed to the floor as a bullet shatters the window. More bullets hit and Eddie runs into the house. Together, they crouch on the kitchen floor, and they realize that Haller is yelling outside. Eddie realizes that soon the man will come into the house and decides to confront Haller when he comes in. April finds a nearby kitchen knife.

As Haller comes in through the broken window, April stabs his leg with the knife. He turns and points the rifle at her. Eddie comes up behind him and takes it, but Haller takes a handgun from his holster. Eddie and Haller point the guns at each other.

Eddie asks why Haller killed Shannon, and the man says it was an accident. She called him asking for money to take a bus. He drove to Coldlake Falls and found her walking along Atticus Line. Angry, he got out of the car and pinned her down, his hands around her throat. When she’d died, he’d taken her things, ripped the tags out of her clothing, and left.

Eddie threatens to shoot Haller, and Haller says that he has terminal cancer and is dying anyway. As they face each other, Kal breaks through the front door, gun drawn. Haller pulls the trigger.

Three months later, April drives back to Coldlake Falls. As she approaches the town, she wakes Eddie, who is in the backseat. Since the shooting, he has been recovering from a broken arm, the result of John Haller’s bullet. After Haller shot Eddie, Kal shot Haller, killing him. With Haller’s death, they lost the chance to get more answers, including why he’d filed the missing persons report. After he died, the autopsy showed that he spoke the truth about the cancer—he had a rare brain cancer that would have soon killed him.

Over the past three months, April has been busy taking care of Eddie and working at her new job as a receptionist for an accountant. In addition, she returned to school, studying bookkeeping. Because of his injuries, Eddie has been working as a manager at the mechanic’s shop, and the owner is considering letting Eddie take over the business when he retired. Although Eddie doesn’t have nightmares anymore, he is still grappling with the new knowledge about his mother and the evil she committed as the Lost Girl.

Now, April and Eddie meet Gracie and Beatrice at the Coldlake Falls cemetery. The Snell sisters have located Trish in a nearby town, but she appears to have no memory of the events on Atticus Line. Gracie also tells them that she volunteered at the local hospital to get information about Max Shandler. He has the same rare brain cancer as John Haller and has been moved to a private facility. Suddenly Beatrice and Gracie stop walking. The four of them are in front of a gravestone that formerly read “Jane Doe,” and now reads “Shannon Haller.” When Eddie asks who paid for the stone, they say that a new foundation called the Officer Robbie Jones Memorial Foundation paid for it—a foundation run by Rose.

Eddie and April drive to visit Rose. Although her house has been repaired, April notices that Princess Diana’s photo is missing. Rose tells her that a bullet hit it, and after taking it down, she realized that she needed to update her décor. The three of them rake Rose’s leaves, and April tells Rose about how Robbie saved her life that day. Rose confesses that she’s seen him, too, and that she knows he will be there until she dies, which she likes.

Eddie drives them into a nice neighborhood, and they park in front of a house where a man is watering his lawn. April recognizes him as Quentin. He waves them to the curb and steps forward to talk to them. He admits that he knew they would return, as they have “unfinished business.”

April asks if he is ever going to tell them the full truth about his investigation. Quentin tells them a story about a man he met who was dying of brain cancer. At the moment of his death, the man remembered everything about the murder he’d committed on Atticus Line, which he'd never remembered before. However, he also had memories that weren’t his own—of being pregnant and having a son. Quentin moved to Coldlake Falls to investigate and began to realize that something much larger was happening that he didn’t understand. April and Eddie were the first and only witnesses to speak to a victim before she died, and eventually, he realized that the Lost Girl had purposefully revealed herself to them.

April asks why he then released them and told them to leave town. He says that he had other sources and mentions the Snell sisters. As it turns out, he knows everything they’ve done and tells April and Eddie that he is seriously considering sending them to join the FBI. He also says that he is the one keeping Max Shandler in a private facility. When Shandler is close to death, Quentin will get a call. He hopes that, as with the man so many years ago, Shandler’s memory will return, and he will be able to contact Shannon and ask her some questions. He asks if there is anything Eddie wants to know. Eddie says only to tell Shannon to leave Trish alone, but when Quentin asks who Trish is, he won’t say.

Quentin tells them to drive down Atticus Line before they leave town. He believes that Shannon’s presence is gone now, but also wants them to see the new development on the road. A new mall is going to be built, and with the construction, Quentin anticipates they will discover more victims to be identified.

April and Eddie drive out to Atticus Line and get out of the car. They no longer feel the strange atmosphere. They do, however, see a sign for the new mall being built, and realize that Quentin has now expanded his mission to find out who all the victims are and put them to rest.