by S. D. Perry
Amanda nodded. It wasn’t really a plan, but it was something she could do, besides resigning herself to the random trauma of her life. “So we should just, like, wander around, trying to see things?”
“Don’t include me,” Devon said. “I’m out of here today.”
Amanda turned to him, feeling unpleasantly startled by his statement, like she’d just heard a loud, ugly noise. “Where are you going?”
“I have a cousin in Portland. She’s been inviting me to come stay with her for a while now. You know, Claire? She can help me get set up.”
“What about Seattle?” Amanda asked. “I mean, we were going to go in October, anyway. You could go early, find us a place…”
“It’s too close,” Devon said. “Look, we can worry about that later. We’re talking about my life here.”
Mine, too. Amanda thought of all the times they’d talked about their apartment together, about how they’d always have wine in the cupboard and cheese in the fridge, parties on Friday nights and a window box of flowers and a kitten they were going to call Snookie, whatever the sex. She thought of all the times when her mother was screaming-puking drunk, when imagining her new life in a real city was all that kept her from falling apart. He was right, of course; it made sense for him to leave, but it still hurt to have her small dream so utterly abandoned.
“Maybe I could go with you,” she said.
“Maybe,” Devon said, his expression saying otherwise. “I mean, I should go right away, since you didn’t see when I’m—when it happens.” He flashed a nervous, insincere smile. “It could happen tonight, right? But you could come down later, once everything’s cool with my cousin. Like in a few weeks. A month or so.”
Amanda couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
Bob’s expression was quite serious. “I think you should stay,” he said, looking at her. “It might mean someone’s life. I have a friend, he’s a psychologist, lives on the same street as Dick Calvin. I’ll talk to him, get him to go see Calvin; if he’s really suicidal, you may have just saved his life.”
Amanda nodded, thinking of what she’d just done, seeing how it was with Devon and his hot, empty sex with Mitchell Jessup…and felt a real stir of power for the first time. She was seeing things, she had made herself see things, and as totally fucking out there and upsetting as her visions had mostly been, she was who was seeing them. Her, Amanda Lynn Young, with her stupid grind in stupid Port Isley, who’d never expected better than to get the fuck out and get a job and have a life. Something was finally happening, to her and to the town, something she had a part in. Like, an important part. It was as if she’d fallen into some kids’ adventure story, only without the dragons or talking animals.
Just murder and rape and very bad dreams, she thought, and wondered what was going to happen next.
Ethan Adcox was initially kind of excited when the cops showed up at the Safeway and asked him to come down to the station. After all, it wasn’t like he was in trouble or anything. He did some super minor shit, stacked cases of beer behind the loading dock every now and then, occasionally swiped a few bucks from Pop’s wallet, but nothing worth getting the cops interested. Nothing they knew about, anyway. They’d walked right into the storeroom while he was talking to the new girl from the deli section, Trina—she was kinda fat but had a nice smile, and he hadn’t gotten laid in, like, months (fourteen of them, to be exact), and his complexion wasn’t so great lately that he could afford to be picky—and been all serious and grim and shit, saying they had some questions. He started to make some noise about losing his job, but they said they’d already talked to Mr. Addison and that it wouldn’t take too long, depending on what he had to say. Trina’s eyes had gone wide—she was local but homeschooled; her mom and dad were Jesus freaks—and his nervousness about marching back through the store with a police escort was counteracted somewhat by the understanding that she would totally put out for a bad boy such as himself, if for no other reason than to piss off her parents. All the other employees and shoppers had looked at him like maybe he was a serial killer, which was also cool. Half an hour of sitting alone in the tiny, windowless room at the police station, however, wondering what they wanted to talk to him about, that wasn’t so cool. He kept thinking about what Todd had been telling him a couple of days before, about what Brian wanted to do…that was just talk, though. Brian was always saying crazy shit. But if it wasn’t that, why did the cops want to talk to him?
Because someone saw me, he kept thinking, and as the minutes slipped past, the thought was getting harder and harder to dismiss. Five times in the last month, Ethan had taken late-night walks, walks that took him past open windows in his neighborhood…bedroom windows, at houses where some nice-looking women lived. He’d watched them sleep, thinking about how easy it would be to slip inside and touch them, or make them touch him, and he’d whacked off, thinking about it, and though he’d only picked houses that had bushes or something near the windows, and none of the women had woken up, maybe someone else had seen him. Someone out walking a dog or jogging or something. By the time the door opened and Chief Vincent walked in, Ethan’s initial excitement had completely fizzled, and he’d sworn to never, ever go for another late-night walk.
Everyone knew Stan Vincent, the town’s police chief; he gave talks at the high school every year about drunk driving and seemed like a decent guy—Ethan wasn’t pro pig or anything, but Vincent’s message was pretty much go ahead and get shit-faced, everyone does it, but getting behind the wheel when you’re plowed is just plain dangerous. He wasn’t all moralistic about it, he didn’t talk down to them, he was just, like, matter-of-fact. Which was kind of cool. Ethan’s friends all talked shit about Vincent, fucking stick-in-the-ass supercop, but Ethan had never had any run-ins with the man personally and figured they were talking out their asses. Seemed to him, nobody got hassled by the man who didn’t deserve it.
Vincent moved to the other side of the crappy metal table and sat down, smiling slightly. It wasn’t an inspiring smile; there was a look in his eyes very much like the one Pop got when he’d been drinking and brooding, a combination that usually meant a couple of punches in the gut for Ethan. Ethan’s fear ratcheted up a notch.
“Thanks for coming in,” Vincent said, sitting back in his chair. He set a little notebook on the table. “You know why you’re here?” He was acting all relaxed and friendly, but his eyes said otherwise.
“No. Ah, sir,” he added.
Vincent grinned, a terrible grin because Ethan could see the disgust in it, like the chief was looking at a slug or a worm. “Mind if I ask what you were doing last night?” Vincent asked. “About, eight, nine o’clock?”
Ethan felt a giant wave of relief. His last visit to a window had been three days before, and way after midnight. “Me and my dad were at a barbecue, watching the fireworks,” Ethan said.
“Where?”
“Some guy he works with, John…” Ethan scrambled for the name. “Liston? Lipton? Something like that.”
Vincent nodded slowly. He picked up his notebook, fished a pen out of his pocket, and jotted a few words down. “If I check that out, I’d find people willing to say you were there?”
“Yes, sir, absolutely.” Ethan couldn’t have been more sincere. “From, like, six till after eleven. I remember, ’cause when we got home, it was almost midnight. I looked at the clock and everything.”
Vincent didn’t say anything for a minute, long enough for Ethan to wonder if the chief believed him. He remembered seeing in a movie somewhere that people being interviewed by the cops often kept talking, desperate to fill up the silence, and he told himself he wouldn’t do that, but as the seconds stretched, he found he couldn’t stop himself. “We could see the fireworks from their back porch. Port Angeles’s fireworks? And we watched the whole show. There were, like, fifteen, twenty people there.”
“And do you know where your buddy Brian Glover was last night?”
Ethan blinked. “Brian? Wha
t’d—why?”
Vincent didn’t answer. “You hang out with Brian fairly often, don’t you? Brian, Todd Clay, and Ryan…” he flipped a page in the notebook, “…Thompson, is that right?”
Oh, shit. “Not that much,” Ethan said, trying to sound casual, not sure if he was pulling it off. This was about Brian, and likely Todd and Ry, too. Holy shit. They did it.
Ethan and Todd had drunk some beers Thursday night, when Ethan had gotten off work. Brian was still grounded for getting shit-faced at the picnic, and Ryan had been off at some cousin’s wedding in Bellingham, so it had just been him and Todd, sitting in Ethan’s car outside Kehoe Park. Drinking and talking.
“So, you’re not friends?” Vincent asked.
“We hang out sometimes,” Ethan said. Supercop obviously knew that much. “But I been pretty busy with work and everything, lately.”
“You know where they were last night?” Vincent asked.
Brian says we should find ourselves some pussy, Todd had told him Thursday night after they’d each had a few, and Ethan had laughed and said something about how pussy was hard to come by, lately, and Todd had said that Brian had a plan. He says if we do it somewhere public, like on the Fourth or at the carnival, maybe, no one will hear anything.
“You’re talking about…about raping someone?” Ethan had asked, not laughing anymore.
Todd polished off his fourth beer and let out a tremendous belch. “Jesus, Ethan, it’s not like that. We’re just looking for a little fun, all right? Give some lucky lady the ride of her life.”
Ethan had forced a laugh, played it off cool, but he hadn’t thought it was cool, not at all.
Ethan’s first and only girlfriend, Bonnie, had been molested by her stepfather when she’d been, like, twelve. Not the same thing as rape, but in the same ballpark, and it had surely fucked her up, big-time. Ethan had come away from their brief, tumultuous relationship with a clear understanding that molesters and rapists were the jagbags of the universe. When Todd had called him yesterday, to see if he wanted to go to the fairgrounds with them, Ethan had begged off, vaguely grateful that his dad had insisted he go to the stupid backyard barbecue. Not that he thought they were really going to do anything, but Ethan didn’t want to be around if they did. Todd was an OK guy most of the time, but Brian was kind of psycho and always looking for a chance to prove it. And Ryan was up for anything, anytime.
“No, sir,” Ethan said now, although he couldn’t meet Vincent’s eyes. “Like I said, I don’t see them so much anymore. ’Cause of my job, and everything.”
Vincent’s stare, when he finally looked up, was cold and scrutinizing. Shit, Ethan thought again. They’d done it, they’d grabbed some woman and attacked her. He wondered why they’d dragged his ass in, instead of Brian’s…then realized that he was the only one in the bunch who was eighteen. Brian and Todd and Ry would all have to have their parents involved.
“You know something,” Vincent said. He tapped the end of his pen on the notebook, still leaning back in his chair like he was chatting with an old friend, but his voice had gone dark, matching his gaze now. “You know something, and you’re going to tell me, or I will cut your fucking balls off and feed them to you.”
Ethan stared, shocked. “What?”
“You heard me,” Vincent said. “I’d give you a chance to think it over, but to be honest, I’m not in the mood to wait. I’ve had a long fucking day already, Ethan. I’m tired. So, out with it. Unless you think I’m kidding.”
Ethan swallowed, his mouth too dry, his brain numb like it had just jumped into the bay in December. He didn’t want to test Vincent’s threat, no way, but not ratting on his friends was so deeply ingrained it was practically a character trait. “I’m—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do,” Vincent said. “It’s all over your face. I understand you don’t want to tattle on your shithead buddies, but let me tell you—you break the law in my jurisdiction, and you will pay the price.”
Ethan tried again. “I wasn’t there, man, I don’t know what happened, swear to God—”
Vincent stood up abruptly and took a single, swift step around the table, his expression murderous, his hands clenched into fists. Ethan ducked away, almost falling out of his chair, but Vincent was faster. He punched Ethan in the side of the head, hard, smashing his ear. Ethan let out a scream as the chair tipped over. He threw his hands out to catch himself and watched as one of Vincent’s black boots came down on the fingers of his left hand, and then his fingers were screeching as loud as his ear.
This can’t be happening, he thought, and then that heavy boot drove into his stomach, and he curled himself into a ball, not thinking anything, just trying to breathe.
“You think I don’t know what you say about me?” Vincent asked, and kicked him again, a brand new explosion of pain to contend with. Ethan drew in a shuddering breath and puked, bile and energy drink and bright-orange bits of cheese puff pooling on the floor in front of him. The pain and the smell of his partially digested breakfast made him retch again, a terrible, painful lurch that brought up the rest of what was in his stomach. Vincent stood over him, his face hard, his shoulders high and tight.
“Your balls are next, Ethan,” Vincent said, and pulled a big folding knife out of his front pocket. He flipped out the blade, four inches of shining steel, and knelt next to Ethan, carefully avoiding the puddle of vomit. “Not my choice, you understand, but when you attacked me, I had to defend myself. You might bleed to death before we can get you to the hospital, but them’s the breaks, right?”
Ethan shook his head, tried to speak, and retched again. Long strings of viscous spittle hung from his lips and chin, sticking to the floor.
“Tired of you goddamn people,” Vincent muttered, grabbing the waistband of Ethan’s jeans. He pulled him closer, dragging Ethan’s head through the pool of puke. “You sit there with your mouth shut when all I’m asking is for you to do the right thing. You don’t care about the law, you don’t give a shit about this town, making me look bad, and all I do is run around cleaning up your selfish goddamn messes…and does anyone say thank you? No, you all think I’m some incompetent asshole, that I can’t get the job done. But things are changing, you better goddamn believe it—”
“Todd told me,” Ethan gasped. “He told me that Brian said they were gonna get some pussy, them and Ryan. I didn’t have nothing to do with it, swear to Christ!”
Vincent hesitated, the knife still in hand, his other hand jammed into the front of Ethan’s jeans. Ethan actually felt the cop’s fingertips brush against his shriveled cock, and for just a second, Ethan thought he was going to keep going anyway, but the strange light in Vincent’s eyes seemed to fade slightly, and he sat back on his heels, carefully folding the knife back up before sticking it in his pocket.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Vincent said, and smiled at him. “Let’s get you cleaned up, son. You all right?”
Ethan didn’t answer, too busy thanking God for letting him keep his balls, crazy, Supercop’s gone totally fucking nuts!
“You’re all right,” Vincent answered himself, pulling Ethan into a sitting position. “I’ll kill you if you tell anyone about this. You know that, right?”
Ethan nodded, wiping at the tears on his face. He had no doubt whatsoever. “Yeah,” he said, and Vincent clapped him on the back.
“I’m just trying to protect my town, you understand. There’s a greater good here to consider; it’s nothing personal. And no one would believe you, anyway.”
Ethan nodded again, holding his throbbing ear with one hand, his stomach with the other. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good boy,” Vincent said, beaming at him like a proud father off some TV show. “Good boy.”
John had stayed at the hospital for several hours. He’d talked to Karen, who’d still been in shock, whose battered face had made him want to weep, and he’d talked to the doctor—besides the black eyes and swollen jaw, she had a cracked
rib, a sprained wrist, and multiple contusions and abrasions on and inside her vagina and rectum—and he’d talked to Sarah, Karen’s sister, and held her as she’d cried. Then he’d gone home, slept poorly for a few hours…and found himself heading back to the hospital after a shower and a cup of coffee, feeling like he hadn’t done nearly enough. Feeling more involved, perhaps, than was safe…but what did that even mean, if he truly wanted to help? The open look of relief, of gratitude on Sarah’s face, when he stepped into Karen’s room, told him that he’d made the right decision.
Sarah said she had managed to catch a few hours’ sleep of her own, curled in a hospital chair; John urged her home, to change clothes and pack a bag for Karen, promising to keep vigil while she was gone. Stan Vincent had been back, Sarah said, at the crack of dawn, with a handful of photos he wanted Karen to look at, but Karen had been sleeping; the doctor had finally sedated her in the early morning hours. Sarah said that Vincent had actually suggested they wake Karen up to look at the pictures; she’d only been able to get rid of him by swearing that she’d call the very second Karen opened her eyes.
John assured her he’d fend off any overzealous policemen, and they’d talked for a few minutes about what she needed to do; she’d already decided to send Karen’s guests away and cancel those scheduled to arrive for the next few weeks, and she wanted to get it done as soon as possible. John supported the decision, which seemed to make her feel better about it. She discussed the matter frankly with him, treating him as if they were old friends…which again affirmed for him that he wasn’t intruding on a private tragedy, that he was actually being helpful. Not that his motives were entirely altruistic; it was the first day of his weekend, and he didn’t want to sit home alone, drifting on Ativan, waiting for work to start up again and save him from himself and his thoughts of Annie.