Chasing China White

by Allan Leverone

  But the help he’d been counting on receiving from the man who’d gotten him into this mess would obviously not be forthcoming, and the police would soon be mobilizing in an intense manhunt for the dirtbag who’d murdered two upstanding citizens up in Boxford.

  And Derek was lost and alone and, oh yeah, craving a syringe full of poison.

  And he had no idea what to do next.

  Part Two

  Brenna and Greg

  1

  Brenna Weaver grimaced as she watched her husband wolf down his eggs and toast. He had a tendency to chew with his mouth open, and the habit that had seemed quirky and endearing in the early years of their relationship now just seemed nasty and disgusting.

  Funny how perspective changes perception.

  The kitchen felt stifling, the silence broken only by the relentless sound of fork scraping plate as Greg shoveled in mouthful after mouthful. Normally he would have been out the door by now but he was running late, and Brenna couldn’t help but track the second hand in anticipation as it swept around the clock hanging on the kitchen wall.

  She couldn’t wait for him to leave for work.

  It wasn’t like she had pressing plans or anything; it just felt impossible to breathe with her husband in the house, and she badly wanted to exhale. To do the dishes, or have a cup or coffee, or check her email, or do any damned thing without feeling the looming awkwardness between husband and wife. Because lately it was always there.

  There had been a time when all she ever wanted was exactly what seemed so damned unsatisfying right now: handsome husband who worked hard and provided for her. Cute little house surrounded by a white picket fence, with a flowerbed in the front yard. Friendly neighbors. Block parties in the summer.

  Greg worked for one of the biggest luxury new car dealerships in Boston, and although still relatively young at thirty-four, had made steady progress climbing the employment ranks, particularly for someone with no formal education beyond high school. A whiz with anything mechanical, he’d started working at the dealership three days after graduation, and before the age of thirty had been made service manager for the entire place.

  It was an impressive accomplishment, and the money was good, and three years ago they’d decided their financial footing was solid enough to allow Brenna to quit her job as a schoolteacher and stay home fulltime. She would get pregnant and they would begin raising a family, and after a few more years of socking away as much cash as possible they would sell the cute little house with the picket fence and the flowerbed and the friendly neighbors, and build their dream home—their “forever home,” Greg called it—out west, somewhere off the Mass Pike.

  That was the plan they’d developed three years ago.

  Since then there had been a string of disappointments each month, as the couple with the intention to start a family seemed unable to do so. A series of treatments offered by a series of different fertility experts had yielded little in the way of progress but plenty in the way of high-priced treatment, and still no baby.

  Then Brenna discovered Greg’s affair. He’d been sleeping with one of the administrative chicks at the dealership, on and off since before Brenna and Greg even met. Greg seemed to believe the fact that he’d known Cindy longer disqualified the relationship as a real affair, or at least that was one of the ridiculous arguments he’d tried to float.

  To Brenna the situation was nothing more than a cliché, a nasty little scenario that was as infuriating as it was humiliating, and after awhile she decided she’d had enough of crying into her pillow. She would turn the tables on Greg with an affair of her own.

  There was a fitness instructor at her gym who Brenna had always thought paid more attention to her than was strictly necessary, and although she was nervous as hell and felt more than a little silly doing it, she came on to him, holding his gaze while he was working with her, squeezing his hand or forearm in appreciation after a strong workout session.

  It was so easy.

  Before long they were seeing each other all the time. The dude was a hipster with a man-bun and a physique that put Greg’s to shame, and he was even pretty damned good in bed.

  For a while Brenna managed to ignore the fact that her life had become a cliché, her situation every bit as nasty—and predictable—as Greg’s. Bored housewife strikes up relationship with handsome stranger to pass the time while philandering workaholic husband remains oblivious.

  But there was one problem, and it was a big one: none of it was what Brenna wanted. She couldn’t care less about the hipster with the great body. She’d only begun sleeping with the guy to force a reaction from Greg, and when a little time went by and he didn’t notice, she intentionally became careless about hiding her indiscretion.

  She would continue to chat on their home phone with the hipster fitness instructor even after Greg arrived home at night, daring her husband to overhear.

  She would leave incriminating texts up on her cell and then forget the damned thing where Greg might find it, daring her husband to check it.

  She would return home long after Greg’s arrival from work, smelling like the hipster’s cologne, daring her husband to notice.

  Eventually, of course, he did. It took much longer than it should have, but eventually he noticed.

  The satisfaction Brenna had longed for didn’t accompany his discovery of her affair. It resulted only in pointed fingers and angry words and more tears, always more tears, as each partner accused the other of trying to sabotage their relationship and torpedo the marriage.

  Suddenly all the things that had seemed so important to Brenna went out the window, and taking their place were awkward silences, accusing stares and sleepless nights, often spent by one or the other on the couch.

  It was exhausting.

  At last, Greg finished his breakfast. He dropped his silverware on the plate with a clatter and then rose and carried the dishes to the sink, where he—predictably—dropped them into the basin with another even louder clatter. He stalked across the kitchen, offering a tight-lipped smile at Brenna as he did, and said, “Thanks for breakfast, it was good.”

  Then he grabbed his jacket and draped it over his arm. Showers were in the forecast for later.

  He returned down the hallway and gave Brenna a quick peck on the cheek that was more painful than if he’d done nothing at all.

  Then he walked out the door without saying goodbye.

  The tears started before his car he had even finished backing out of the driveway.

  2

  Derek had fallen into drug use almost by accident. A shy, scrawny, awkward kid with little self-confidence who didn’t feel as though he fit in anywhere, he had eventually gravitated toward the delinquents smoking cigarettes behind the Dumpsters as a high school freshman.

  By the end of ninth grade he was drinking heavily on weekends, and midway through sophomore year he’d begun bringing vodka to school in a water bottle. Weed came next, like night follows day, and when Derek was offered pills at a party during the summer between sophomore and junior years, he accepted without hesitation.

  Also without a clue what he was swallowing.

  By that point he didn’t care. He would have ingested anything. He loved the sensation of getting high, his nerves calming and his awkwardness receding. Not disappearing, it never quite disappeared, but while impaired he was at least able to function in a teenage social setting.

  His dealer was able to secure the pills—prescription meds, opiates, not that Derek much cared what the damned things were called—and for awhile he found himself swallowing them every day, more and more of them.

  But the problem with scoring prescription drugs was the price tag. They were almost prohibitively expensive. Derek compensated for the spiraling cost of his highs by stealing things, making the rounds of local superstores, finding items small enough to smuggle past security cameras while also retaining enough value to be resold for a decent return.

&nbs
p; It was a vicious circle, and a shitty way to make money. It was also, he knew, only a matter of time before he was caught leaving Walmart with a stack of Tshirts stuffed under his hoodie.

  And the guilt? It was constant and nearly overwhelming. He wasn’t raised to be a thief, and no matter how much he tried to tell himself he was taking stuff from a multi-billion-dollar corporation, that they had insurance to protect themselves from this sort of thing, that it was a victimless crime and it was okay because he really needed the money, no matter how much he tried to justify his actions, he knew it was all bullshit.

  Somebody was losing money on the things he stole, and his actions were wrong, and he knew it. But still, he needed that goddamn high.

  Everything changed, and not in a good way, the afternoon he offhandedly mentioned to his dealer how much trouble he was having consistently finding the cash to pay for his pills.

  “There’s an alternative, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Prescription pills cost an arm and a leg. Heroin is cheaper. Much cheaper, in fact. You can get a better high for a fraction of the cost.”

  “Yeah, but, dude. Heroin.”

  “It’s no big deal. It’s the same stuff you swallow in pill form every day, and you’ll be saving a ton of money. Up to you, though. I’m happy to keep taking your scratch.”

  He’d shot up for the first time that night and never looked back.

  Derek had never stolen a car before.

  It was probably a ridiculous notion to say he was a rule-follower rather than a rule-breaker, given that as a teen he’d been a serial shoplifter and had been committing drug felonies for years, but that was how Derek saw himself. A rebel he was not.

  He had never run a red light back when he’d still had enough money to drive.

  He’d always paid his taxes, back when he had a legit job.

  He didn’t jaywalk in the city, and as a homeless junkie only stole what he needed to survive and get high.

  So the notion of stealing a car was anathema. It was as foreign to Derek as…well, as murdering two people in a botched home invasion. But there was no way he’d be able to walk the distance he needed to travel. It would have been impossible even if he weren’t feeling like warmed-over shit, craving heroin and shaking like a man who’d just touched a live electrical wire.

  After escaping Crowder and his goon, Derek had trudged through the city until getting his bearings. He’d spent plenty of time on the streets of Boston and had known he would eventually come to an area he recognized.

  Meanwhile, he desperately needed the time to develop some kind of plan. His thoughts were racing and muddled. Between the adrenaline crash and the dopesickness and the knowledge that over the course of a single day his life had spiraled out of control, going from shitty to, well, whatever was worse than shitty, it was hard to focus on anything besides the one fact he could not ignore: you’re fucked.

  He walked the streets, keeping one eye open for Crowder, knowing that to go back to the abandoned car he’d been using as a home base up until his beating would be signing his own death warrant. If he were going to make that move, he might as well have used one of the remaining bullets in Crowder’s pistol to shoot himself in the head the minute he left the McHugh home.

  And he really wished he could return to the abandoned minivan. Even a homeless drug addict has a few possessions, and Derek’s were all inside that goddamned car. They now might as well be a million miles away, even though in reality they were only a couple of miles across town.

  As the hours passed and the normal people disappeared into the comfort of their homes, the denizens of the night took over the streets. Hookers roamed the sidewalks, junkies and dealers conducted business transactions, and the vagrants searched for private corners in which to bed down and hopefully avoid becoming victims of overnight violence.

  Eventually Derek did the same. He’d decided on a plan. It was a lousy plan, but it was all he could come up with. To put his plan in motion would require boosting a car, but that would have to wait until morning, so he walked the streets until finding a secluded alley with a covered doorway that seemed uninhabited.

  He hunkered down and tried to sleep, knowing the best he could probably hope for was to drop into the occasional troubled doze.

  The night simultaneously dragged and flew by. The cravings were increasing, as Derek had known they would, and between that and his fear that if he fell into a deep sleep he would be awakened by Crowder shoving a gun into his mouth, he doubted he got more than an hour’s real rest all night.

  It was almost a relief when sunrise came, even though Derek knew this day would consist of a level of hell unimagined even by Dante.

  He struggled to his feet and staggered maybe six feet from the doorway and then pissed against the brick wall. He had no belongings to gather, so he simply zipped up and exited the alley, feeling as crappy as he could ever recall. Or at least as crappy as he could recall since the last time he’d not gotten a fix when he needed one.

  He reached the street corner and paused, trying to decide which direction would yield the best crop of potential vehicles. Early risers were already moving briskly along the sidewalk, and the crowds parted as they approached the dirty, disheveled homeless guy, pedestrians doing their damnedest to ignore Derek while also making sure they didn’t touch him lest they become infected with his disease.

  Derek ignored them. He was accustomed to being treated like a leper.

  Eventually he decided to turn right and move north. For one thing, it should take him farther from Crowder, and for another, he thought there were a few busy parking lots in that direction where an inexperienced car thief might get lucky and score a vehicle without getting arrested or beaten to death by an angry motorist.

  His stomach rumbled from hunger. It was ironic, because he doubted very much he could keep food down right now even if he were able to eat. He needed to smooth things out, and the only way he could do that was with a fix, and the only way he was going to stand a chance of getting one was to follow his plan.

  Which meant he had to get moving.

  He got moving.

  A collection of rundown stores lined the sidewalk a quarter-mile or so to the north, and that was Derek’s goal. It took longer than he would have liked to walk even that short distance because he had to stop every few dozen feet to catch his breath. He was walking hunched over, like an old man, because he just didn’t have the strength to stand erect. His body ached and his stomach cramped and his head pounded.

  Eventually he made it. He would have lost a race with a crippled ninety-year-old pushing a walker, but eventually he made it.

  The row of stores fronted the street, of course, but they weren’t Derek’s destination. There were far too many people around and far too much activity on the sidewalk, even early in the morning, for someone who didn’t know what he was doing to steal a car here.

  He passed the stores, some already open, others with the iron bars still in place over their windows and entrances. At the cross street on the far side he turned right and walked one block. Then he turned right again and began walking in the direction from which he’d just come, except now he found himself behind the cluster of shops.

  A series of parking lots lined the street. Some were for the shops’ use, others for the residents of the apartments above the stores and the tenements across the street. Rickety chain-link fencing surrounded a surprisingly large number of the lots, standing side by side like a battalion of soldiers, critically wounded and helplessly awaiting the kill shot that would put them out of their misery.

  A few of the lots were unprotected. Whether because the property owners hadn’t felt there was anything to gain by spending what it would cost to erect fencing or because it had once been there and had rusted through and fallen down over the decades Derek didn’t know. Didn’t care, either.

  But whether protected or not, one thing all the l
ots had in common was that all were crumbling, pockmarked with potholes, badly in need of maintenance that was not going to come.

  Derek gazed down the street and tried to select the lot that seemed the most secluded and also offered easy access. It wasn’t like he was going to be able to climb one of the fences and vault over the top to the other side; it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. He needed to be able to simply cross the narrow strip of dead brown grass from the sidewalk to the pavement and grab a car.

  There weren’t many lots that fit his needs, and for a few horrible moments he thought he was going to have to trudge another couple of blocks to the next set of shitty mom-and-pops that were awaiting elimination by a franchise and start over.

  But after rejecting almost all the lots, Derek decided to give the second-to-last one a shot. It was accessible, it looked to be more than half filled with cars—most of them a decade or more old—and best of all, nobody seemed to be around. There would be no way to know whether anyone might be looking out a tenement window, but what the hell: he could waste another twelve hours looking and never come up with a better alternative than this.

  He told himself not to draw unnecessary attention by glancing at the tenements behind him but couldn’t help himself. He looked back—just for a second—as he was entering the parking lot and saw nothing that would help him determine whether he was being watched. It was daytime, and every window reflected the steel gray cityscape back at him.

  Then he disappeared—he hoped—from view into the rows of cars. He hadn’t given much thought to which model might be the best to steal, but the first little Toyota he encountered looked like every other goddamned car in the city, so he figured it was as good a place to start as any.

  The car was dented and dinged, and rust peeked through the paint job along rivets and seams, a whole strip of it running along the driver’s side rocker panel like a dull brown, oddly-placed racing stripe. The left front fender had been damaged and reinforced with Bondo—badly—and whoever had done the repair had never found the time to repaint.