by J. D. Barker
Stella wasn’t listening to me. When I turned around, I realized she was standing in front of the mirror above the sink. She had peeled off her clothes as she went, leaving a trail behind her.
I think my mouth fell open.
Down to only a black lace bra and matching panties, Stella rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen me naked, Pip. No need to be shy. I need a shower. I’ve got his blood in my hair. That doesn’t usually happen.”
With that, she stepped into the small bathroom and pulled the door halfway shut behind her. I heard the water start a moment later.
I picked up my empty bottles and other trash and took it all down to the Dumpster, cleaning the room up as best I could before she finished.
A fourth white car had joined the others, a white Ford Escort. Nobody was inside.
When Stella emerged from the shower wrapped in a white towel and somehow smelling of vanilla again, I hastily shucked off my filthy clothes and showered too. The steaming water felt fantastic, and I stayed in there far longer than I probably should have, scrubbing and scrubbing until my skin was pink and raw, until I saw the last of Leo Signorelli wash down the drain.
By the time I came out, Stella had changed into an oversize tee-shirt. She had washed her black gloves by hand in the sink, and they were now draped over the edge of the cracked formica counter, air-drying.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her slender bare legs crossed beneath her. “I bagged our clothes. We need to get rid of them somewhere. Not here, though.”
I had left my backpack on the floor outside the bathroom, next to Stella’s duffle bag. It was gone now. “Have you seen my—”
“What’s this?” She held up the letter from her parents to mine, my backpack open beside her.
“Go ahead and help yourself.”
“What is it?”
I took a pair of sweatpants out of my pack and slipped them on under my towel, threw the towel in the general direction of the bathroom, and sat down beside her. “My next-door neighbor gave me that right after my aunt died. I think your dad wrote it.”
“Our parents knew each other? Why didn’t you ever show this to me?”
“I tried. I brought the letter with me when I went to see you that year, that was…wow…1993, five years ago. You weren’t there, though, only Latrese Oliver. That was the year she gave me your letter, the one I showed you. I never saw you after that.”
Stella read the letter again, her finger slipping across the paper, following along. “My father wrote this. This is his handwriting.” She considered this, her eyes glistening again. “I’ve never seen his handwriting before. I…I don’t have anything from my parents. He sounds so…paranoid.”
“Do you remember them at all?”
She shook her head. “My earliest memories are of Latrese Oliver, a series of nannies, staff at the house. Nothing about my parents.”
“Did Oliver tell you anything about them?”
“Only that they died when I was a baby, a bad car crash. She said she was close to them and had been appointed my legal guardian.”
“I was told my parents died in a car crash, too.”
“They didn’t, though, did they?”
I shrugged and told her about my father’s grave. What I found. I told her he might still be alive.
Her eyes turned into saucers. “You dug up your father’s grave? Wow, my little Pip isn’t as timid as I thought.” Then her eyes grew even wider. “Do you think my parents might still be alive, too?”
“I wish I knew.”
After a long pause, Stella said, “May I see the books?”
“At least you asked this time.”
I rutted around in my pack and took out the copy of Great Expectations and the Penn State yearbook and handed both to her.
When I handed her the Dickens book, her face lit up. “This is just like mine!”
She found her copy and laid the two side by side. Although my copy appeared new, her copy was clearly worn. Her cover was faded and lined with white, torn in a number of spots. Many of the book’s pages were dog-eared. She kept a highlighter clipped to the cover and made a habit of highlighting her favorite passages. After all these years, I couldn’t imagine she still found new passages to highlight. Every page of her book was probably a solid block of yellow by now.
I flipped through the yearbook and showed her the various circled photographs and explained what I learned about each of the people identified.
“All the ones you’ve found are dead?”
I kept the list I made back at Penn State folded inside the front of the yearbook. I took it out and smoothed the wrinkled paper. “Aside from your parents and mine, Perla Beyham, Garret Dotts, Penelope Maudlin, and Lester Woolford all killed themselves. My neighbor, Elfrieda Leech, she shot herself right in front of me. I haven’t been able to find Cammie Brotherton, Jaquelyn Breece, Jeffery Dalton, or Keith Pickford.”
Stella pursed her lips, her finger hovering over the names. “Do you remember David? He came to the cemetery with me once when we were kids.”
I nodded. “He was there when my neighbor died. I was in her apartment when she shot herself, and somehow he was across the hall in mine. He left a note for me. The note said, ‘Welcome to the party, Jack. He signed it.’” David left a bottle of Jameson too, but I didn’t tell her about that.
“My God, that must have been awful for you.”
Three.
Three what?
Bang!
I shivered.
Stella tapped at the paper. “David told me once his parents names were Jackie and Keith. This must be them.”
“Jaquelyn Breece and Keith Pickford? Do you know what happened to them?”
She fell silent.
“Stella?”
“He said they both died. A murder suicide. His father shot his mother, then turned the gun on himself. It was a long time ago, I think he was around five or six, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Did David live with you?”
She shook her head. “He visited a couple of times when we were young. Later, they took me to see him, mostly. This godawful place.”
Stella’s hand began shaking. I reached for it, and she yanked away. “You can’t.”
She held her hand with her other, held it still.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
Her voice dropped low, I could barely hear her. “I didn’t finish…I didn’t get enough.”
“With Leo?”
She nodded. When she released her hand, the shaking had stopped. “I just need to rest. I’ll be okay.”
I glanced at the digital clock beside the bed—nearly four in the morning. It would be light in a few hours. We both needed to sleep. I wanted to ask her who they were, these people in white. Latrese Oliver, David, the man in the GTO. We had so much to talk about, but it could wait. It would have to. Her eyes had grown heavy in just the past few minutes, and I felt everything catching up with me, too. The adrenaline was wearing off. My body needed to rest, shut down. “You take the bed,” I told her. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Stella looked down at the green shag carpet. “I feel dirty just walking on this carpet. You can’t sleep down there. We can share the bed.”
I looked at her hand. “What about…what if we touch, by accident, I mean…because I wouldn’t…? What will happen?”
Stella chewed on her lip for a second, thinking. Then she stood, went to the head of the bed, and pulled back the quilt. “We’ll use the sheet. You lay under it, and I’ll lay above it. This way, it will stay between us. That will be okay.”
“You’re sure?”
She climbed in. “I’m sure.”
I switched off the light and took one more look out the window. Another white car had joined the others, a Saturn four-door. Five cars now. There was somebody sitting in this one, but I couldn’t see their face. “We have another white car out there,” I said.
Stella didn’t answer, though, already lost to sleep.
My hand was shaking too, but not from nerves or because of Leo. I had problems of my own. I went to the dresser beside the bed and pulled open the drawer. I had placed a fifth of Maker’s Mark whiskey in there yesterday, a little more than half a bottle. I twisted off the cap, brought it to my lips, and drank. Not a lot, just until the shaking stopped. And it did eventually stop.
Stella’s ragged breaths became even, and she mumbled something in her sleep.
I must have stared at her for another hour before putting that bottle away, certain that if I closed my eyes for even a second, she would be gone when I opened them. She was so incredibly beautiful, so peaceful. She couldn’t possibly be here with me, but here she was, after all these years, with me, her Pip, my Stella.
Things would be all right now. I truly wanted to believe that. As long as we were together, we would be okay. I so wanted to believe that was true.
I went downstairs and let the air out of the tires on each of the white cars, with the exception of the occupied vehicle. I also made a mental note to pick up another knife at my first opportunity.
I finally climbed in beside her at a little before five in the morning, expecting to remain awake, but I was probably out in under a minute.
That was when bad things happened.
The dream.
Chocolate milk everywhere. In my hair, on my clothes, all over my fingers and seat.
Daddy screaming at Mommy, “Katy! You can’t sleep now, Katy! Stay awake!”
The squeal of tires.
Car doors opening.
Loud bangs.
“Got it!” Daddy said.
Loud bangs from Daddy, from the thing in his hand. He shouted at someone behind us. The someone behind us shouted back.
I cried.
I wanted to be a big boy, but I cried. I couldn’t even hear myself, though, not over all the banging.
I closed my eyes for only a second, but when they opened again, Daddy was gone. He had been standing beside Mommy, at her door. I couldn’t see where he went. The belts of my seat held me firm, and I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t see out all the windows.
The bangs stopped.
All at once, so quiet.
“Daddy?”
No response.
So quiet.
All alone.
Mommy wasn’t moving. I could see her hair, her head slumped over in the front seat.
All alone.
I started to cry again, and my door yanked open.
“Hey, buddy, let’s get you out of there. It’s going to be okay, everything will be okay,” Daddy said. But he was crying too, and I knew it wouldn’t be okay.
He carried me from our car to a white SUV parked behind us and laid me across the back seat. All the while, he kept my head buried in his chest, telling me not to look, not to look at anything. I did, though, and I saw people dressed in white lying on the ground, red stains on each of them.
I pulled myself up so I could see.
Daddy got in the driver’s seat, reversed the vehicle, and backed away from our car and the one we had run into, another white SUV like this one. We jolted as we stopped, and he threw it back in park. I nearly fell. “Stay down, Jack.” He was out the door again, running back to our car. He was going to get Mommy, I knew he was. He had to. We couldn’t leave without Mommy. Holding onto the headrest from the front seat, I watched as he went to Mommy in the car. He was crying loud now, louder than I had ever cried, and that made me cry. He leaned in the seat over her, he hugged her, he shook her. He pulled her to his chest and held her, and I didn’t understand why he didn’t just bring her to this car, put her in this front seat, because I wanted to hug her, too.
When Daddy left her door, he staggered back and I thought he might fall over. He didn’t, though. He looked back and saw me watching him. He motioned for me to get down with his hand. I didn’t, though. I kept watching as he dragged one of the people lying on the ground back to our car and put them into the front seat behind the wheel, Daddy’s seat. He always drove. Then he dragged the other two, the ones from this car, to the SUV we had run into, and put them in the back seat.
He ran about halfway back to me and screamed again for me to get down. This time I did, but not before I saw him light a match and drop it into a puddle on the ground. I didn’t get down because he told me to or because I wanted to. I got down because the explosion knocked me off my feet.
I woke to the crash of thunder, my body covered in sweat.
The sun had risen but was dim, hidden behind churning desert storm clouds and the rat, tat, tat, of rainfall.
On the bed beside me, Stella was gone.
The sheets on her side of the bed were pulled back. The spot where she had lain was cold.
“Stella?”
No answer.
I checked the bathroom first, but she wasn’t there. Her gloves were no longer beside the sink. Her duffle bag was gone, too.
The phone rang. A shrill, harsh sound. I stared at it for a good, long while before finally scooping up the receiver. I didn’t say anything, but I could hear someone breathing on the other end of the line, then a male voice. “Jack?”
Dunk.
“Yeah?”
“You all right? You sound funny.”
Not all right.
Not at all.
“I can’t talk. What do you need?”
“Oh, shit! Does that mean you found her? Is she there right now? Did you finally get to—”
I cut him off. “What is it, Dunk?”
He blew out a breath. “My man. Pulling all kinds of triggers this week. Good for you.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Hold up. My guy found one of your names.”
“Which one?”
“Cammie Brotherton. Although, she’s not Cammie Brotherton anymore. She’s Faye Mauck now. She changed her name a half dozen times over the years, moved all over the country.”
I pressed the receiver tighter against my ear. “Wait, she’s still alive?”
“Shouldn’t she be? Why else would you have me look for her?”
The list I made of the Penn State names was sitting next to the phone, on top of the yearbook. My copy of Great Expectations was gone. Stella must have taken the book with her. “Do you have an address?”
He read it off to me. I found a pen and scribbled the address down on the pad of motel stationery.
Carmel, California.
“Got something else, too. Have you ever heard of something called Charter?”
“No, why?”
“People are asking about you around town, trying to find you. My guys picked one of ’em up and talked to him. At first he said he was an old friend, but once they all got to know each other a little better, he opened up, got chatty. He told them he was with an outfit called Charter. Said it was real important that he found you.”
“Talked to him, huh?”
“Yeah. Talked to him, nice and neat. My guys said he was packing, a Colt Anaconda six-shot revolver. That’s no joke. He didn’t make much of an effort to hide it, either. They said he wore it right on his belt under his coat, Old West style.”
I perked up. “Coat? What kind of coat?”
“How the hell should I know? Think I’m some kind of fashion guru?”
“What color was his coat?”
“Dunno. If it’s important, I’ll ask when I see Reid.”
“It’s important.”
“Okay.” Dunk’s voice dropped low. “Hey, Jack? She still sleeping? How ’bout giving Stella a poke for me? From what I’ve heard, she’s a—”
I hung up and tore off the sheet of stationery and shoved it in my pocket.
If Cammie was still alive, the others might be, too.
The hotel room door burst open and Stella came in, her clothing soaked through, her dark hair dripping, her skin deathly pale. “We need to go.”
I let out a breath.
She closed the door quickly behind her, went to the window, and pulled back th
e curtain slightly. Her hand was trembling again. I looked out the window over her shoulder.
The rain fell in thick sheets, bouncing off the cracked pavement.
Six white cars now. One blocked the parking lot exit. Another was parked directly behind my Jeep. Three more across the lot and a white Cadillac Escalade parked in the center of the lot, two of the doors open. A man I didn’t recognize stood on the driver’s side, a cell phone pressed to his ear, oblivious to the rain. His long, white trench coat buttoned tight.
“I put my things in the Jeep. The Escalade pulled up when I was coming back up the stairs. I don’t think they saw me.”
“Did you see any other people?”
She shook her head. “Only the two guys in the Cadillac, but somebody moved those other cars.”
My knife was at the bottom of Hermon Reservoir. We had no other weapons.
I looked around the room, then went to the dresser beside the bed and pulled open the drawer, took out the bottle of Maker’s Mark. About a third left. I twisted off the cap and threw it aside, then tore a strip of cloth from one of the pillowcases, rolled it, and shoved it into the mouth of the bottle. “I need matches,” I said, pulling open the other drawer and looking inside; only an old Bible.
“I saw some over here.” Stella went to the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, grabbed a matchbook from beside a filthy ashtray, and tossed them to me. “Will that work in the rain?”
“I have no idea.”
I put the yearbook in my backpack and slung the bag over my shoulder. “Do you have the other book?”
She nodded. “In my bag.”
The motel room door burst open, and Stella let out a sharp scream.
Two men came in, both moving low and fast. The first had a 9mm in his hand. The second man had a shotgun. Both were dressed entirely in white. Without a thought, I dropped the bottle of whiskey and charged the man with the semiautomatic, my shoulder plowing into his gut and sending him flailing backward into the other man. All three of us tumbled out the door onto the concrete walkway and fell into a pile. I brought my elbow down hard into the jaw of the man with the handgun, and his eyes rolled back into his head. I scooped up the gun and rolled to the side as the man with the shotgun pushed the limp body away and began to stand.