She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  Carl frowned. “Why are you calling him ‘David’ rather than his designation?”

  “His designation?”

  “Subject ‘D.’”

  “Because that sounds cold. He doesn’t like it.”

  “Who gives a shit what he likes?” Carl picked up a pen and nervously began twirling it between his fingers. “Everybody in this place is acting fucking weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Just weird. I ate lunch in the cafeteria earlier, and nobody was talking.”

  “Maybe they have nothing to talk about.”

  “There were at least twenty people. Nobody said a word.”

  “I like silence,” Warren replied.

  The pen spun faster between Carl’s fingers. His eyes landed on something, small and white, sitting on the far corner of the console. “What is that?”

  “Doctor Durgin’s hearing aid.”

  The pen went still in Carl’s hand. “She’s deaf. Why would she have a hearing aid?”

  “Not completely deaf,” Warren said.

  “What do you mean? Isn’t that why she got the job?”

  “She had meningitis when she was a child. She lost more than 99 percent of her auditory range, really everything but the deepest of base frequencies. Technology is always advancing, though, making strides. What was once considered impossible is commonplace.” Warren smiled. “I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid, but I didn’t have the grades. That’s why I took the job here. I figured I could at least be around it, be a part of something bigger. You should talk to the doctor about her life’s journey. She is really a remarkable woman.”

  Carl had gone pale. “She takes the hearing aid out when she goes in there, though, right? That’s why it’s sitting here? She forgot it?”

  Warren said, “She wanted to hear his voice. Just the one time. That’s what she said. He has a beautiful voice. David Pickford is a beautiful man.”

  Subject “D” stood and approached the opposite side of the observation window.

  Carl jammed his finger onto the microphone button. “Step back from the window!”

  “That’s a nice pen, Carl.”

  “How can he see us? That is one-way glass.”

  Warren tilted his head toward the ceiling, closed his own eyes. “He said when the fluorescents are on, when it’s bright, the glass doesn’t work so good.”

  “Get back from the window!”

  Subject “D” smiled broadly. “Hey, Carl, I bet if you shoved that pen into your eye, good and hard, you could reach your brain.”

  “Get the fuck back!”

  “Carl, go ahead and do that for me. Bury that pen to the hilt in your eye.”

  Carl did.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Carl gripped the pen firmly in his right hand and rammed it into his eye socket. His remaining eye went wide with surprise.

  It was then he spotted Warren’s hand still resting on the little red switch next to the recorder and speaker system, the one that enabled the thirty-second delay on all the kid said and did. The switch, normally covered in tape beneath a note that read DO NOT DISABLE in large block letters, was in the OFF position.

  Two things happened in that very instant—Carl dove for the switch, and David told him not to touch it.

  —Charter Observation Team – 309

  5

  I attended the funeral for Detective Faustino Brier, but I did so from a distance, standing on the top of the same hill where he had stood for Auntie Jo’s funeral what seemed a lifetime ago.

  He drew a big crowd.

  There was a twenty-one gun salute at the end.

  His body was laid to rest about three hundred feet east of my parents and Jo.

  Detective Fogel was there. She didn’t see me.

  The sun was bright that day, damn near too bright. It felt like someone took a chisel to my eyes. That pain, though, was nothing like the beating going on in my head. That came courtesy of the bottle of Jameson I drank the night before, provided by my good buddy, Trey, behind the counter of Mike’s Package Liquor. I hadn’t been there in over two months, but he sure perked up when I came through the door, knowing there was a hundred-dollar bonus in his immediate future. The muscle memory of our previous transactions came back to both of us with little trouble, like riding a bike. I put the cash on the counter, he grabbed a bottle for me from the shelf at his back, handed it to me, and I was out the door. Not a word exchanged between us. A quick nod from me, a sly smile from him, and it was over. An event totaling twenty-three seconds, yet capable of derailing my life.

  I didn’t care.

  There had been a fire.

  A bad fire.

  And I needed a drink.

  Need probably isn’t a strong enough word.

  My body would have gladly given up oxygen for a taste of alcohol. Just a little drop to numb things, that’s what I told myself. Some half-assed lie even I didn’t believe anymore.

  When Matteo finally dropped me off at home Monday night, the sun long gone, the air heavy with humidity, I was damn tired. I climbed the steps, fumbled with my keys, let myself in. Willy wasn’t there. His blankets were neatly folded and stacked on the edge of the couch, with his pillow on top. Apparently at home his parents were sticklers for making beds. He felt the need to make the couch. I figured they’d complain about their missing son at some point, but that day never came. I suppose with the cost of college tuition off their list of things to worry about, they weren’t too upset when he basically moved into my apartment.

  I dropped down onto my own bed face-first, clothes still on. I somehow managed to kick off my shoes before the exhaustion carried me over to slumberland. I expected the dream to find me, but it didn’t. There was nothing.

  I woke at a little after five in the morning and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water. I parked myself on the couch to drink it. Still no sign of Willy. The world seemed incredibly quiet, and that made me feel alone. I clicked on the TV in hopes of nothing more than some background noise, and when the screen filled with an image of Stella’s house, I first thought I was watching a rehash of the previous day’s news.

  The large house.

  The smoke.

  A moment passed before my sleepy brain realized the smoke wasn’t just coming from the west end, but the entire house. There were flames now too, flames everywhere—crawling up the walls, reaching for the sky from holes in the roof. When I turned up the sound, someone who wasn’t Pete Lemire of KRWT CBS told me the fire had started in the middle of the night, looked like it had been set deliberately, but little else was known.

  By midday, I was still on the couch, still watching.

  The house was all but gone.

  The bodies of four police officers had been found in the foyer, cause of death yet to be determined. Someone took the time to lay the bodies out next to each other, line them up, nice and neat.

  At one in the afternoon, the soap operas came on, and coverage of Stella’s burning house was reduced to a small box in the corner of the screen. At three, the little box disappeared too. At 3:01, I got up and made my way down to Mike’s.

  Willy found me passed out on the couch a few hours later.

  We had words.

  I left again, wandered, and found myself in the cemetery, watching the funeral of Detective Faustino Brier.

  That was yesterday.

  Today it was Matteo’s turn to yell at me for the second time in a week. For the past hour, he had done just that, with Willy sitting silently at the opposite end of the lawyer’s conference table. He had been scolded, too. Apparently my babysitter shouldn’t have left me alone. Groundings due all around.

  “We need to get you out of here,” Matteo droned on. “Out of this city, away from all this crap you’ve got yourself caught up in.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere. This is my home.”

  Matteo snickered. “Pretty soon your home is going to be an eight-by-eight cell over in New Castle. If the police
don’t find some way to tie you into this mess at the house on Milburn, they’ll lump you in with Bellino and the mess he’s been building around himself. They want you off the streets and tucked away somewhere.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “They don’t care.”

  Matteo slid today’s Post-Gazette across the table to me. A before and after picture of Stella’s house covered most of the front page. “Four dead cops in this fire, twenty-one dead the day before, including a dead detective, one who specifically painted a target on your back. They all think you’re deep in this.”

  And Stella was gone, my mind whispered. Missing. Taken. Dead? Gone.

  “If the police don’t put you in a box somewhere, this bullshit drinking of yours surely will,” Matteo went on. “My gut says they’re building a case, waiting for you to turn eighteen in January, then they’ll pounce. They charge you with something now and they risk you being tried as a minor. Better to take the next four months and build a solid case. That’s what I would do.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” I said again.

  This time, he didn’t reply.

  Willy spoke next. “Penn State,” he said in a low voice.

  Matteo looked up at him. “What?”

  “My parents want me to go to Penn State when I graduate.”

  Matteo rolled his eyes. “And like I told you, the trust will cover the cost of your tuition as long as you help get Jack in there, too. You’re doing a bang-up job of that, Mr. Trudeau. Those bloodshot eyes of his scream ‘college material.’ Nothing like a solid arrest record to seal up those entrance applications, too. Bang-up job. So proud of the both of you.”

  Willy continued to stare at his hands. “We don’t have to wait until next fall. We could go now. We both have enough AP credits. We could take the GED and graduate high school early. They’re offering the SAT in Harrisburg next Thursday. I confirmed this morning. It’s tight, but we could be enrolled at Penn by spring. Fall semester already started, but I’m sure we could make spring.”

  Matteo settled back in his chair and mulled this over. “That could work.”

  “New friends, new environment, new challenges,” Willy went on. “He stays here and this gets worse, you know it will.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I said softly.

  “She blew you off, Jack. She played you, and now she’s gone,” Willy said. “Have you shown him the letter?”

  Matteo narrowed his eyes. “What letter?”

  I glared at Willy. He had no business bringing up the letter. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t—

  “Hand it over,” Matteo said, reaching across the table.

  I eyeballed him for a second, then dug the letter out of my pocket.

  The scent of vanilla filled the room as he unfolded it and read aloud.

  Matteo frowned when he finished. “Pip? Like that book, Oliver Twist?”

  “Great Expectations,” I corrected him.

  “Who is Stella?”

  “Just a girl.”

  Willy sighed. “Not just a girl. A girl who seriously mind-fucked him for half his life. She lived in the house on Milburn.”

  He went on to tell him all he knew. It wasn’t everything, not by far, but it was enough.

  “All this bullshit is about a girl?” Matteo asked when Willy had finished. “Have the police seen this?” He waved the letter.

  I shook my head.

  He shoved the letter back at me. “Good. Put it away somewhere safe. If they try to charge you with something, we might be able to use it to muddy the water. I bet I could build an entire defense around that.”

  Matteo nodded at Willy. “Take a walk. Give us a minute.”

  Willy glanced at me, then rose and left the room, closing the conference room door behind him.

  When he was gone, Matteo rolled his chair closer to mine. “I can’t begin to understand everything you’ve been through, so I’m not going to pretend that I do. I know you’re a good kid. Your aunt raved about you. You’re also a smart kid. That’s in your eyes. Bloodshot or not. You know you’re at a crossroads here. You stay in Pittsburgh surrounded by all these bad things, and more bad things are going to happen. You have money. You have friends who care about you. I think Willy is right. Get out of town. Put all of this in your rearview mirror. Forget the girl. Girls will mess with your head your entire life. That’s what they do. They’re fucking good at it. Get it all behind you, and start over someplace fresh. Your aunt busted her hump to make sure you had a better life. Don’t let her wish die with her. Fulfill it. Honor her memory by going to Penn State, getting a degree, making something of your life. You want to come back here at some point, do it later. Put some time and space between it all. You’ll be amazed at how much a little distance will help clear your head.” He paused for a second. “The drinking needs to stop. If it comes down to it, I can put you into a program. The trust gives me the ability, with or without your consent, but I don’t want to. You’re drinking to cope with everything, I get that, I’ve done it myself, but it needs to stop. That’s another rabbit hole you don’t want to venture too far into. Focus on your future—it’s a bright one. Make peace with your past and move on. You’re strong enough, I know you are.”

  “You sound like Gerdy,” I muttered.

  “Who?”

  I just shook my head and leaned forward into my hands.

  Matteo rose and pushed his chair back. “That’s about the closest thing to a pep talk you’ll ever get out of me, kid. As a lawyer, I had to hand over my conscience back when I passed the Bar. Last thing I need is my competition catching wind that I held something back.” He winked awkwardly. “Let’s get Willy and figure out what we need to do to make this happen.”

  Turns out, there wasn’t much to it.

  Willy spent the afternoon on the phone in my apartment filling a notepad he had swiped from Matteo’s office with information. I spent that same afternoon lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. It was a nice ceiling. I tried drawing in my sketchpad, but my hand kept shaking. I could draw while drunk and I could draw while sober, but there was this unpleasant not-so-sweet spot somewhere in between where I wasn’t much good at anything other than eat, sleep, and various bodily functions. That was where the headaches, chills, and sweats preferred to live, and I didn’t like it much. I knew a drink would fix me right up. I also knew that wasn’t really the answer. A drink sounded good, though.

  At one point, Willy ducked his head into the room and told me according to the woman he just spoke to at the testing center, high school graduates weren’t eligible to take the GED exam. He seemed to think this was immensely funny. It took me a moment to realize why, then I got it. Lucky for us, we weren’t high school graduates, so we’d have no trouble complying with that particular rule. Other rules proved to be a little more difficult. For example, the minimum age requirement was eighteen years. Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds could take the exam, but certain restrictions applied. He called Matteo’s office on that one, and Tess told him she’d relay the message. Matteo was busy with matters of his own.

  Matteo called back a few hours later and told us since I was an orphan, an aspiring felon, and wealthy, I was a shoo-in for the GED. He’d make some calls.

  I think I preferred him without a conscience or sense of humor.

  It took the better part of a week to obtain those approvals.

  The following Thursday, Willy and I took a cab down to the testing center on Seventh, paid the fee of sixty dollars each, and walked out the squat brick building high school graduates. I scored 196 out of 200, Willy got 173. I made him buy lunch.

  The following day, I bought a car. A black 1990 Honda Prelude, with twenty-three thousand miles on the odometer. Willy taught me to drive in a Giant Eagle parking lot. The week after, I got my Pennsylvania driver’s license.

  I was told to forget her.

  And I told them I would try.

  It wouldn’t be that easy, though.

  Ma
tteo pulled some strings with Penn State, and by the first week of November we were enrolled in the spring semester set to begin classes in late January. I spoke to Teddy Carruth at Brentwood Groceries, and he agreed to make weekly deliveries to Ms. Leech in apartment 304. She wasn’t happy to hear I was leaving. She was even less thrilled to hear about the new grocery arrangements.

  On November 16, Duncan Bellino was arrested on multiple drug trafficking charges. He was out three hours later. The charges wouldn’t stick. He smiled at the news cameras before two large men helped him out of his wheelchair and into the back of a black Dodge Durango.

  On November 18, Willy and I hit the road with my Honda Prelude loaded to the roof and Stella’s note burning in my pocket. I instructed Matteo to continue paying rent on Auntie Jo’s apartment. I would be keeping it.

  As we turned down Brownsville, I waved at Detective Joy Fogel. She was parked across the street from my building in a green late model Toyota with a man I didn’t recognize in the passenger seat. She had parked there a lot lately, the both of them. They didn’t wave back.

  Twenty minutes later, I thought I saw a white SUV following us, but it remained on US-22 when we took the exit to I-99 North. I didn’t notice the one that picked us up two miles later. They were far more careful than the first.

  PART 4

  “We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”

  ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  March 12, 1994

  Eighteen Years Old

  Log 03/12/1994—

  Subject “D” —

  Audio/video recording.

  DISABLED

  —Charter Observation Team – 309

  1

  Matteo rented us an apartment a few blocks from campus, on Mifflin Road. A two-bedroom walkup in a converted three-story Victorian. My allowance from the trust was deposited on the first of each month into an account with Brentwood Federal Savings and Loan. I accessed the funds with an ATM card from anywhere for a small fee. That first month, Matteo deposited an extra two thousand dollars, more than enough to furnish the apartment, purchase dishes, a microwave, and the other essentials of college life. I tried to find a recliner as comfortable as Auntie Jo’s, but that search proved to be fruitless. I settled for a beanbag chair.