Jasmine

by Bene, Jennifer

  “The Age of Friends With Benefits.”

  “Wow.” She gives me a look, and then shakes her head, biting back a smile. “You are an old dude. That is so 1995.”

  I laugh. An actual laugh. Not fake, not forced, but a completely right from the gut real laugh.

  I like this woman.

  “You have no idea, Ms. Tucker.”

  “I kinda do. You wear your cynicism like a suit of armor.”

  I shrug, admiring her for the quick turn of phrase. “Guilty as charged, I suppose.”

  “Journalism major.” She raises a hand, finger pointing to the top of her head, and I smile.

  “So, no porn.”

  “No, Mr. Jones. No porn. She had plenty of formulas she was certain would pay off. And I don’t think becoming the next Riley Reid was one of them.”

  What does it say about me that I know exactly who she’s talking about?

  Clearing my throat, I sit up in my chair again. “Okay, so she takes off on this promo road trip, and it’s going gangbusters, right?”

  “Oh, yeahhh.” She doesn’t even try to mask the sarcasm. “It was a huge hit. Gimme a sec, lemme see if I can remember the numbers…” Trish makes an elaborate pantomime of contemplation, and I’m grinning again. “Hmm. Yes, yes, I remember now. It was… twenty. A whopping grand total of twenty people followed her. And ten of those were our co-workers.”

  “Those are not good numbers.”

  “Really? You think?”

  “You were in contact with her. How was she taking it?”

  Trish holds up her hand. “I know where you’re going to go with this. Same as that other detective did.” She shakes her head with vehemence. “Sloane was not depressed. She didn’t go all emo or suicidal. Just the opposite. She kept telling me that it was going to take time. That you had to let these things build until they gathered traction. That it would be a mistake to panic and abort it too soon. I almost wanted her to go into a funk. If I could’ve just made her recognize how futile this whole thing was… maybe I could have convinced her to turn around and come back here, or just pull the plug on the whole thing and head straight home.”

  She looks at me as if I’m yet another in a string of people who won’t believe what she’s saying. But I’m not. I do believe what Ms. Tucker is telling me about Sloane Finley. The problem is that I just don’t care. Caring about a dead body isn’t something I do, and there are too many of those littering my past to make it happen now. But Ms. Tucker seems to be a good person, so I slap on my best ‘serious agent’ face because she deserves better than my normal go-fuck-yourself disdain.

  Nodding, I tap the file folder in front of me. “You told her to go home, to Indiana.”

  “That was where it was supposed to end anyways. At her parents’ modest suburban home. The humble place where it all began for up and coming rising star Sloane Finley.”

  “That didn’t happen, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t! And you know that, Mr. Jones, if you’ve read the reports from the other detectives, which I’m pretty sure you have. Sloane didn’t give up. She didn’t come back here or go home. She got to…”—she stumbles on the name of the place in the rush of words that spill out of her in an angry torrent—“…that place, wherever the hell it is in Texas. The last place I got anything from her. It stopped there. It stopped there and she disappeared.”

  “Stockdale.”

  “Yes, Stockdale! Whatever!” She waves her hands at me as she says it, her voice rising, and then she holds both fists clenched in front of her face, doing her best to calm herself. “Sorry.”

  “No need to be.” I shrug. I suppose I should be consoling in some manner, but I respect her too much now to fake that. Instead, I manage to simply smile with understanding and wait in silence as she composes herself.

  “Stockdale. That’s where I got her last message, along with a copy of the picture she’d just posted. The one where she tried to mimic that girl from the famous painting.”

  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what that was about until I read the report.”

  The laugh she gives is sharp with both derision and pain. “Yeah. Andrew Wyeth. Christina’s World. Laying there in the grass looking back toward that old house and barn in the background. You want to hear something really rich?”

  I give her a silent look of encouragement.

  “She didn’t even have the picture she was mimicking right. She put it in her post that it was a famous image from a poster for the movie Giant. But she was wrong. Not even fucking close.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard her curse. It’s stark, the word far more brutal than it should be. The pain in her voice is a scalpel, and I wish for a second it affected me at all.

  Sloane Finley isn’t the only one dead inside, Mason.

  “She wanted to be a star, and she didn’t even know the difference between Elizabeth Taylor and Andrew Wyeth.” Her voice is low, and even though I’d been honest and admitted I didn’t know the difference myself, the way she says it makes it obvious just how out-of-her-element she believes Sloane Finley was.

  We sit for a moment in silence. She isn’t looking at me, or at anything in particular, but wherever her mind is I can see it is a place filled with pain. Her pulse beats a rapid tattoo in the hollow of her neck, and the muscles of her throat ripple as she swallows. When she comes back to the room, to the here and now, her eyes find mine.

  “Are you going to find her, Mr. Jones?”

  The question is both plea and resignation, a query and answer all in one. I try to keep my face neutral, to hide my natural inclination to say without words what I already know. Her eyes scan me, flicking from left to right to read what I try to disguise, and the plea fades into a look that hardens, resignation winning out.

  “You aren’t, are you? No one is.”

  “I’m going to do my job, Ms. Tucker. I can’t say if I’ll be able to find her, but I am going to do what I can.”

  She huffs out a grunt that is less recognition of my non-answer than it is confirmation of her own assumptions. Turning away from me, she stares out across the room. “Of course.”

  Trish shakes her head, pushing something away inside her. If we both wear our cynicism like armor, she’s fully girded herself by the time her gaze returns to me.

  “Of course you are.” She scrutinizes me for a moment, head cocked. “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  “It is one possibility in a field of many.”

  “She did not kill herself, Mr. Jones. Okay? So, if she’s dead out there”—Trish waves a hand toward the window—“then it was either an accident, or you have a murder case on your hands.”

  It’s a dramatic statement, but understandable given the situation.

  “All possibilities, as I said.” I look down at the tabletop and muster every bit of sincerity I can dredge up before I turn my face back to hers. “But, in my experience, it’s unnerving how often we find out after the fact what someone is capable of doing given certain circumstances. And we do ourselves a disservice if we try and hide from that fact, pretend it doesn’t exist, and blind ourselves to it.”

  Her face turns to stone, eyes opening wider to let the hatred for what I’ve said slip free. Well, it was nice while it lasted. When she finally speaks it’s with a calm voice, but one barely concealing the bitterness she obviously feels. Faux politeness wrapping a core of rage that is clearly directed at me.

  “Of course I’ll have to defer to your learned expertise, Agent Jones. Far be it from me to say otherwise, given the vast years of experience you have in judging people, and me only having lived with Sloane for the short time I did. But you’ll pardon me if I say I hope to God you’re wrong. I really do. She may be just some dumb kid to you and everyone else, but she was a good, kind, decent human being. And she sure as fuck deserves more than just being forgotten.”

  “As I said, I will do my job, Ms. Tucker,” I say, staring back at this good, decent person trying desperately to shield
herself from pain, and failing.

  “And that’s it? You’re going to do your job? Does that mean you’re going to go and look for her?”

  For a moment I don’t understand what she means. And then it dawns on me. “To Texas?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jones. To Texas. The last place anyone ever saw her alive. All twenty of us.”

  Nice cut. Have to admire it.

  “I suppose that will ultimately be up to my supervisor, but I suspect I will. Or another agent.”

  She stares at me. Through me. If I had a soul I might find it unnerving. But, why would I? Whatever she might see inside me is nothing compared to what I have in all these years.

  “You really don’t want to be doing this, do you?”

  “I do my job, Ms. Tucker.” I don’t have to force the stoicism into my voice.

  “No, you don’t. You mimic it. Walk through the paces, put up a nice façade. But you’re just marking time.”

  It’s another cut. One that might have gone deep if it had been slashed into anyone but me. I give her a bland smile. “May I assume you have nothing further to offer beyond what’s already in those reports I’ve read?”

  Her eyes are tempered iron, and yet I can’t help but see the glossy sheen of her tears. “I’m not gonna beg you, Mr. Jones. But I like sleeping at night, so I will ask. Please. Look for her. Just go and look for her. She’s out there. I know it.” She closes her eyes for a second longer than normal, and when she opens them to pick up where she left off, her voice doesn’t even crack. “And you may be right. Maybe she’s dead. Doesn’t matter. One way or another, she’s out there. Someone just needs to look, and they’ll find her. She deserves at least that.”

  I rise, gathering my things. “We’ll do all that we can.”

  It isn’t a lie. And yet it is. It’s a lie of omission. We’re already doing all that we can, which is almost nothing. But there is no reason she needs to hear that. If I do end up in Texas it’ll be a waste of everyone’s time, resources, and effort. I could bring a hundred cadaver dogs to those West Texas plains and never find her corpse in all the miles of empty land.

  I leave with as much sincerity as I can manage and get back into my shitty car outside. Shoving my phone into the dash holder, I look out at the burnt orange of the evening LA sun, waiting for my GPS to tell me how the hell to get home from here. Calculating… calculating… one hour, thirty-six minutes. Fuck. That’s a long time to sit in bumper to bumper traffic, thinking about Trish Tucker’s goddamn face about to cry because Sloane Finley was too stupid to just go home and give up on her dreams like everyone else.

  Ms. Tucker wants me to try to find her friend so she can sleep better at night. Would I sleep any better than I do right now if I went out there and at least tried? Statistics say the likelihood of even finding a body is slim, and all my instincts tell me she’s buried in a hole somewhere. And even though I sleep decently as it is… I suppose it’s possible.

  It’s also possible aliens abducted Elvis and he’s partying it up with the real JFK somewhere amid the stars.

  Fuck it. I’m going to have to go to Texas no matter what, so I might as well get it scheduled. After that… we can see who gets to sleep better at night.

  Eleven

  Her

  The light outside the basement windows is a thin, darkening orange and I wonder how late it is, how long he’s been gone. No clocks down here, because of course not. Why would a woman doing laundry need a clock? I sneer as I fold another pair of his boxers and thump it down on the stack I’ve created. Women’s work. That’s what laundry is to him. Just another task a good wife is supposed to perform. Did he ever feel like less of a man when he was down here doing laundry before he took me? How long did he have to do it for himself?

  How long since the real Jasmine was down here folding his clothes for him?

  I grimace as I stare at the bare floor, imagining the girl in the yearbook picture pacing it as I have all day. Counting the boards in the ceiling, angling on tiptoe to see the sky and the grass outside. It’s a depressing thought, and I try to distract myself from it by folding the last few items from the fresh laundry. It’s not a complicated task, it’s mindless — which doesn’t help the constant boredom — but it’s easier than cleaning.

  I would have been done long before now if I hadn’t delayed so long this morning fuming, jamming an errant piece of metal into the frame of the door at the top of the stairs to see if today I could figure out a way to pry the latch free. It didn’t work. It never works.

  Nothing does.

  “Shut up,” I grumble at my brain as I pick up the cracked, plastic basket and set it at the base of the stairs before I return to the chair. It’s another thing he wants me to be grateful for, providing a chair that’s probably been down here for thirty years. But I’d happily have no chair, no table, a completely empty room if there were just two more inches of height to the windows near the ceiling. I’d only tried to push through those once, but my ribcage wouldn’t fit. Too narrow — which he probably knows.

  Of course he does. Jasmine probably tried it too.

  Just when I think I might lose it and start screaming, I hear his heavy footsteps on the porch. He walks over my head, thump thump thump, and I follow his path with my eyes because he walks right past the basement door.

  The sound of the water squeaking in the pipes brings back my anger. He’s taking a fucking shower instead of letting me out. My rage carries me up the stairs to the door, and I lift my fist to bang on it, prepared to shout and scream at him — but my knuckles freeze inches from the wood.

  No.

  I back up, down one step and then another. I have to behave right now. I have to fake it, to play the part of his dutiful wife, his ‘Jasmine.’ It’s the only way I’ll get another chance to escape, because if he locks me down here whenever he’s too far from the house… I’m fucked. Literally and figuratively.

  As much as it grates me, I grab onto the railing and head back down the stairs. I even scan the basement, with all of its scant furnishings, just to make sure everything looks right. I need him happy; I need him to trust me.

  Then I’ll get the chance to run again.

  Even after I’ve made the decision, it’s not easy to sit in the chair and listen to the patter of the downstairs shower. My fists clench as I listen to the pipes squeak as they shut off, forced to listen to him walk out of the bathroom and up the stairs, the sound of his movements fading farther and farther away until I know he’s getting dressed.

  “Just fake it. You can fake this.” Empty reassurances to myself, but I try to imagine they help. I can do it tonight because he won’t want to fuck me, or he’ll ruin his sheets.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  The sound of him returning downstairs brings me to my feet, staring at the basement door, and I quickly tuck my hair behind my ears, tugging at my clothes to straighten them.

  You wanted to be a fucking actress, well, time to perform, Sloane.

  Just as he arrives outside the door, I jump forward and scoop up the basket of clothes, holding them in front of me like an offering. Like a good wife.

  Trust me. Jesus Christ, just trust me for a few days.

  I barely hear him removing the lock, but the light spilling down the stairs brings my head up again and then his shadow is blocking most of it. His bulk practically fills the whole doorway, an eclipse of monster, and I have to fight the urge to back away as he starts down.

  “Jasmine.”

  “Yes?” I answer him for the first time, hating myself for responding to a dead girl’s name. He pauses for a second, five stairs up, and my palms start to sweat against the cheap plastic. “I finished the laundry.”

  “Good. That is good.” He nods once and scans me, then the basement, his eyes lingering on the dress shirt he’d been wearing when I’d stabbed him. I’m almost tempted to fill the silence, to explain I got the blood out, mostly, but my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Frozen. Eventually his gaze swings
back to me. “Take the laundry upstairs and put it away. It’s too late to cook dinner, but I will make us sandwiches.”

  I nod, tongue still stiff, and he steps off the end of the stairs toward the bucket. I breathe a silent sigh of relief that he doesn’t expect me to empty it and scramble up the stairs, doing exactly as he said. It doesn’t take me long to put away the clothes and use the bathroom, and by the time I meet him in the kitchen, he’s already laying meat on the bread.

  “I can help you,” I offer, hovering near the doorway, and he looks over his shoulder at me before he shakes his head once.

  “Not tonight, Jasmine. Sit at the table.” His monotone voice seems more weary today, and I can tell by the drooping angle of his broad shoulders that he’s tired. Whatever he did outside today seems to have exhausted him, and I feel a little tremor of hope as I sit in ‘my’ chair.

  Will he actually leave me alone tonight?

  I fidget in my seat, watching him finish the sandwiches before he returns the various items to the fridge. When he turns to bring the plates to the table I attempt a smile, but I don’t think I pull it off. The muscles in my face feel stiff and my skin pulls awkwardly, so I try for politeness. “Thank you for making dinner.”

  “You’re welcome, Jasmine.” He grabs a napkin from the center of the table and puts it in his lap before clasping his hands and bowing his head. I follow suit, napkin then folded hands, and he nods at me. “Heavenly Father, we thank you today for the food you provide, and for the grace and love you show us every day. Amen.”

  “Amen,” I echo, surprised by the brevity of his prayer, but when he instantly takes a bite out of the sandwich I understand. He’s tired, hungry, and that tiny, nagging edge of hope grows a little.

  Please leave me alone tonight. If there is a God listening, please give me that. Please let me get out of here. Let me survive this.

  “Eat, Jasmine,” he commands and I pick up the sandwich and take a bite. Mechanical, even though my stomach growls in agreement to his order.

  Daniel is quiet for the rest of the meal, and as soon as he’s done, I stand first, scooping up his plate before he can comment and walking to the sink to deposit both of them. It barely takes a rinse for them to be clean of the crumbs, but I can feel his gaze on my back as I set them in the drying rack.