Love in Vein

by Britt Morrow

  I wait until the waitress on duty is finished restocking sticky ketchup bottles before approaching her. “Hey, do you know if Charlie’s around?”

  “She went home a couple of hours ago. She took my breakfast shift this morning, so I could go to an appointment.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, feeling slightly deflated.

  I’m feeling slightly anxious on the drive over to Charlie’s trailer. I know that she’s going to be shocked, and probably not in the elated way that I was hoping for. She’s always made it clear that she doesn’t want me near her place or, more likely, near her father. I don’t know if it’s her reaction that I should be fearful of, or his. I can’t imagine that he’ll be thrilled about some guy showing up to take away his seventeen-year-old daughter. It’s a confrontation that I’m sure we’ll have eventually though, so I’d rather get it over with.

  I park my truck at the end of the street and walk up to the trailer. I’m hoping that the element of surprise will work in my favor and Earl won’t have time to become too angry. A truck is parked on the lawn and, once I make it past the low-hanging foliage, it’s clear that there are lights on in the trailer and someone moving around inside.

  As I walk up the stairs to the front porch, I take stock of the shotgun propped up beside the front door, probably just one of multiple stashed around the doublewide. I hope that it doesn’t end up being leveled at me before the night is through.

  I can hear a low grunting sound emanating from the trailer. At first, I’m not able to distinguish whether it’s animal or human. Then, I realize that it’s human surrendering to animalistic desires. I move towards the sound without really thinking. I tread carefully, instinctively sensing a need for secrecy, and slowly peer into the window where the sound seems to be emitting from. The room is lit by only the shadowy projection of a dirty lamp, but it provides more than enough light for me to take in the scene.

  A man is thrusting on top of a prone woman. Initially, I think that she’s dead, she’s so still and silent, lying facedown on the bed, mostly shielded from my view by his body. I immediately recognize the man as Earl: his distinctive mustache and wiry frame. It isn’t until the woman moves suddenly, as if trying to pull away, and he reaches forward to pull her hair, roughly whipping back her head, that I realize it’s Charlie. There’s no mistaking those dark waves and the high-cheeked profile.

  Instinct propels me back towards the front door - just another human surrendering to animalistic desires. I reach for the shotgun without consciously thinking about it. I’m not just saying that to justify my actions. It truly was instinctual and not from a place of premeditation. If I had thought about it, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to take the shot.

  I’ve only ever held a gun once during a hunting trip with Cody and his dad when we were in middle school. I took a few practice shots at the hay bale targets. I could hit the bales, but wasn’t nearly good enough for a bullseye. I was relegated to the back of the hunting pack and not actually allowed to take a shot at any of the deer we were tracking.

  Now, like then, my footfalls are heavy and clumsy. A branch snaps underneath my feet and Earl looks up abruptly, nervously scanning the darkness outside as if he already knows that he’s about to become prey. The lamp is angled such that his face is suddenly bathed in light. It takes a few seconds, but his brown eyes, turned almost black with brutality, finally meet mine.

  I might not be any better at tracking prey now than I was as a kid, but the intervening years of football must have improved my aim because it only takes one shot. And it’s a good one.

  The ringing in my ears from the shotgun blast is so loud that it takes me a minute to register Charlie’s screaming.

  The blast was enough to take out most of the top of his skull and leave him slumped on top of Charlie, spurting blood all over her back. She contorts her body, eyes wild with fear, as she tries to see what’s happening, and whether she’s in immediate danger.

  “Shhhhh, Charlie, it’s me.”

  She takes a few shuddering breaths before managing a shaky, “Levi?”

  I use the butt of the gun to knock the rest of the glass from the shattered window, before hoisting myself up over the sill. Charlie is silent and motionless, almost catatonic, still pinned beneath her father’s bulk. I gingerly shift the body - there’s no question with the amount of damage done to its head that it’s a body now - trying not to retch at the sticky feel of blood, and god only knows what other substances.

  Charlie scrambles away, moving to sit in the corner of the bedroom with her knees tucked up to her chest. She’s silent for a minute, during which I can do nothing except survey the damage in the dim lighting that I’m thankful for. I don’t think I could bear to see it in all its colorful gore.

  “What did we do?” She finally whispers.

  I’m reassured by the use of the word ‘we.’ This was an action I had to take to protect her, and we - together - are going to figure out what needs to be done next.

  “What did he do?”

  It’s imperative to me that she reaffirms the necessity of my attack. She doesn’t say anything, though. I can’t blame her, it’s too awful to vocalize.

  “Did he find out about the baby?” I don’t know how to rationalize this except as some kind of twisted punishment for getting herself pregnant.

  She looks horrified by the prospect. As if anything could be more horrifying than what I just witnessed. “No!”

  “So this…” I’m trying to think of a way to phrase it that won’t make me want to vomit all over the stained orange carpet, but there isn’t one. “Did it happen more than once?”

  She looks at the body as if it’s going to answer for her. When it doesn’t, she replies, “Not always like this. He didn’t usually…enter me. He’s been touching me more frequently lately - with Colt being gone.”

  “Does Colt know?” I don’t know why I feel compelled to ask, but it’s too late to take it back.

  “Not the extent of it.”

  I don’t like this circumspect answer, but I also realize that it’s currently irrelevant to the issue at hand.

  “What are you doing here?” She finally thinks to ask.

  “I came to ask you to move in with me. I got an apartment for us.”

  An apartment that it’s dawning on me that I probably won’t ever live in. I’m going to live in a jail cell. I start laughing. I can’t help it. I should have known better. I can’t believe I actually got lulled into thinking that everything could come together for me, and I could have it all: Charlie, a child, university, football, a job capable of supporting us. Here I thought I was so smart and capable - successfully juggling everything while figuring out how to build a life for Charlie and I. So smart and capable and yet I managed to forget the fundamental fact of my life, the one that’s been proven time and again, without fail: I’m undeserving of anything good and, eventually, it will be stripped from me.

  I’m laughing so hard by this point that I’m nearly hysterical.

  “Levi!”

  The urgency in her voice fails to sober me. Apparently, she’s not seeing the humor in the two of us huddled on the grimy floor, both covered in blood, discussing her pedophilic rapist father and the life we almost had. We couldn’t possibly be a better embodiment of the backwoods teenage stereotype: poor, stupid, impulsive kids with big dreams they’ll end up throwing away. And don’t forget some incest thrown in for good measure.

  I don’ think that explaining my amusement will help anything though, so instead, I take a couple of steadying breaths to calm my giggles before speaking again. “We should call the police,” I state numbly, as if I’m talking about an accident we witnessed - something comparatively mundane, like a car crash.

  “We can’t,” she replies vehemently. “What if they arrest you?”

  “They’re going to arrest me regardless.”

  I don’t know a lot about the law, but I’m pretty sure that finding me covered in the victim’s blood with
my prints all over the murder weapon is the probable cause that they need to arrest me.

  “We could hide the body,” she hisses. “He doesn’t have any friends or family who he’s actually on speaking terms with. It would take a while before anyone started to look.”

  “Employees, clients. It’ll only take a few hours tomorrow morning for someone at the auto shop to realize that something’s wrong,” I reply dully.

  It turns out that we don’t have to waste any more time arguing. I can hear the sirens starting up in the distance and I already know that they’re coming for me. One of the neighbors must have called in the gunshot noise. It took them a while to get here. I’m sure they finished every last crumb from their post-dinner donuts and then thoroughly licked the powdered sugar from their fingers - domestic disputes that end with a discharged gun are at least a semiweekly occurrence. But now they’re here.

  The rap at the door makes Charlie jump even though we watched them pull up outside, the alternating blue and red lights eerily illuminating her bloodstained figure. I hand her my jacket to cover up with. It’s probably the last thing she’s concerned about under the circumstances, but I don’t want her to have to sit in the interrogation room under some scratchy, uncomfortable blanket.

  I stand to get the door, but she grabs for my leg, pulling herself up. The knocking has gotten more insistent, but she ignores it. She hugs me with a fierceness born from dread and anguish.

  “You had to do it,” she proclaims. “I’ll tell them that. I’ll tell them everything. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  I square my shoulders and resume my march to the door, where they’ve begun to shout. They’re not very good at their jobs; they still haven’t noticed the broken window a few feet away.

  When I pull back the door, I see that there are two of them: one scrawny and appearing to be barely over the age of twelve, the other block-headed with the hefty body of an ex-athlete gone soft around the middle after years of too many Dunkin Donuts.

  The kid presses his badge up to the screen door. “Police. We’re here to do a welfare check. A neighbor overheard a gunshot and screaming.”

  Charlie pads up to me, clad only in my jacket, bloodstained from having moved the body. Kid lets out an audible gasp. Blockhead is expressionless, seemingly bored by the entire exchange. He probably has at least twenty years on the force. If a near-naked, blood-soaked teenager doesn’t garner any reaction, I wonder what kind of horrors he’s witnessed.

  “Ma’am, are you alright?” Kid demands, his voice shaky with uncertainty.

  “Better than alright. He saved my life.”

  She’s laying it on, her voice breathy and drawl extra thick. She loops her arm through mine for good measure. The jacket gapes as she does, and Kid forgets himself, staring at the exposed portion of her torso. I’m not sure if the slack-jawed expression is because of the amount of blood on her or because he’s never seen a female figure that beautiful before - or any female figure for that matter. Probably the latter.

  “Is - is that your blood?”

  She turns to me uncertainly.

  “Her father’s. I walked in on him assaulting her,” I jump in.

  Kid’s eyes flit back and forth between us, trying to process the situation. Blockhead doesn’t help him. I wonder if this is some kind of training exercise.

  “Where’s your father now?”

  “Like I said. He saved me,” Charlie repeats warily, looking at me instead of Kid.

  Blockhead finally intervenes. “Ma’am, is your father inside?”

  She nods.

  Kid moves back to allow Blockhead to reach for the handle of the screen door. This wasn’t a part of the exercise he was anticipating. Here, gunshots usually mean a drug deal gone awry or an abusive husband shooting out his wife’s tires so she can’t leave. Evasive teens covered in blood probably aren’t addressed in the training material.

  “Can you take us to him?” Blockhead asks slowly, as if he’s addressing a young child.

  Charlie just points to the bedroom.

  Both officers walk inside, and there’s a loud exclamation of “Oh fuck!” I’m sure it’s Kid; Blockhead is playing the part of the grizzled, unflappable officer flawlessly.

  Blockhead is back in the living room with us almost immediately.

  “We’re going to have to take you both down to the station for questioning.”

  Blockhead grabs me roughly by the shoulder and begins to nudge me towards the cruiser parked outside, leaving Kid to deal with Charlie. He seems reluctant to touch her. I’m not sure if it’s because he thinks she might be a murderer or because he’s too shy. He doesn’t need to, though; she immediately follows me.

  “You might want to put some clothes on, we’re going to be there a while,” Blockhead suggests to her, before leading me outside.

  “Do I need to cuff you?” he asks gruffly, pushing my head down so that I don’t hit it on the top of the cruiser.

  “No, sir,” I assure him.

  The ninety seconds during which I’m separated from Charlie while she pulls on an oversized pair of sweats are agonizing. I need to see her. See if she’s scared, relieved, resentful. I exhale a sigh of relief when she joins me in the cruiser, her face and clothing now free of blood. I reach for her hand and she responds by giving mine a tight squeeze. My heart feels like it’s being constricted in the same way; it’s the reassurance I needed.

  We don’t speak on the ride over to the police station. There’s really nothing to say. At least not in front of Kid and Blockhead. Blockhead drives silently, his jaw tense with concentration. I’m sure he’s working out how he’s going to grill me. Kid, meanwhile, can’t stop glancing back at us, attempting to be surreptitious, but failing. I’m sure that this is the most exciting day of his career, if not his entire life, so far. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in his interrogation with Charlie. I’m sure he’ll take Charlie; she’s female and therefore easier to handle - little do they know. He’s already sweating profusely, and he’s not even alone with her yet.

  We pull up to the station. It’s a squat brick building that houses a handful of desks and a couple of cinderblock rooms used for questioning.Blockhead approaches a gum-snapping woman whose red hair is reminiscent of Ronald McDonald’s.

  “Did you take down the details from the caller about the gunshot?”

  She nods unenthusiastically. She’s probably taken hundreds of gunshot calls. Most of them probably involving a petty neighbor and lawn ornaments. I doubt that more than a handful have ended in murder.

  “We’re gonna have to send out the crime lab folks, we have a body.”

  She actually pauses her gum-chewing. Maybe this is the first.

  Blockhead leads me past the heavy metal desks, mostly devoid of any personal belongings, and into the second of the two rooms. I force myself to turn back and look at Charlie despite his unyielding grip on my shoulder and, even though I know that her terror-stricken expression will haunt me, I force myself to memorize it. I have no idea when I’ll see her again.

  Chapter 22

  The interrogation room is small, with dirty beige cinderblock walls and a buzzing fluorescent light overhead. The chairs are the same small metal ones that are in the high school. I wonder if the discomfort is by design or just the result of pitiful funding.

  I take a seat in one of the chairs and try not to laugh as Blockhead awkwardly perches his bulk across from me. He pushes a button on a device that I assume is a recorder.

  He reads me my Miranda rights and asks if I want to contact a public defender. I don’t. My only defense is that I reacted to a threat to Charlie. I don’t need some silver-tongued lawyer to explain it in eloquent words far beyond Blockhead’s ninth-grade reading ability.

  “Do you want water or a coffee?”

  I’m surprised by the offer. I thought they were supposed to deprive me of any food or water until I cracked and told them all of the details. I don’t drink coffee; it always st
ruck me as a drink for serious adults. I can’t think of anything more serious or adult than killing another human being though, so now is probably as good a time as any to start.

  “A coffee would be great.” I really just want something warm. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, I’m freezing.

  Blockhead comes back with two black coffees. I want to ask for cream just to see his reaction. But I don’t think I should push my luck.

  “So you want to tell me what that was back there?

  In all of the cop shows, they usually make small talk first and try to establish a rapport. I’m unsurprised by Blockhead diving right in, though; I can’t imagine us exchanging pleasantries.

  “He was raping her.”

  He strikes me as the good ol’ boy type. Someone who would understand the drive to kill a man who’s harming the woman you love.

  “You think that’s a good reason to shoot someone?”

  I do. But I don’t think that this is a good answer for someone who’s charged with upholding the law. “I didn’t think about it at all.”

  He eyes me skeptically. “But you shot him through the window? Seems to me like you planned to sneak up and attack him.”

  “No, I planned to show up at his house to surprise Charlie. I looked in the window because I heard noises.”

  “So, you walked up to the trailer and just happened to catch him the act of raping…Charlie?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you find out that he was raping her?”

  “Ten seconds before I shot him.”

  “What’s your relationship with Charlie?”

  I wonder if abruptly changing the line of questioning is a technique they taught him training. I also wonder if Kid is using these same techniques in the room next door. Something tells me he isn’t nearly as smooth. I’d like to see Kid stumble through an interrogation; it’ll probably be a long time before I’m provided with any other form of entertainment. Maybe Blockhead and Kid will switch rooms in some kind of good-cop, bad-cop routine. I can only hope.