I let the cool water wash over my face and down my body, gently lathering myself with the hand soap and wash cloth I found on the towel bar, and then rinsed. Gingerly, I touched the sutures on my face where they’d applied the skin grafts. How well would they heal without additional treatment? I didn’t want to remove the stitches myself, which meant finding a doctor at some point. And then there was the fact that I still had part of my ear missing, as well as an abnormally large left nostril. I’d have to deal with the plastic surgery later. Couldn’t go through life looking like this, could I?
If only I’d had more time to recuperate. Maybe I should’ve stayed in the hospital. If I hadn’t pushed Rogan, I might’ve been able to recover fully without anyone catching on to who I was. No, I told myself. That wasn’t true. Rogan was closing in. He’d gotten close. Too close, in fact. The only reason he gave up believing that the amnesia patient he kept chatting up wasn’t me was because I ‘kidnapped’ myself and gave him a phantom to chase instead. Besides, had they finished the reconstruction, I’d have looked like me again. It was only the bandages and scarring that kept them from recognizing me. I couldn’t run that risk.
There was no point in second guessing it now, anyway. Maybe Rogan would never realize how close he came to catching me, but it didn’t matter. I was back to my old self—a little worse for the wear—but me again, nonetheless. And now I had something I hadn’t had before. Something that gave me a leg up on my opponents.
I had allies.
***
I came out of the shower in my underwear with a towel wrapped around my waist. I didn’t really want the girls to see me like this, but I had little other choice, except for slipping on the same borrowed clothes I’d worn before. And now that I was clean, I could tell why they thought I needed to wash up. The clothes reeked like the inside of a shoe.
I opened the door and saw a pair of neatly folded jeans on the floor, along with a clean, button-down shirt and a fresh pair of socks beside some brown loafers. There was also a pair of clean undershorts there, but I left them on the floor. I didn’t relish the thought of going “commando-style,” but I had to draw the line somewhere. As I picked up the clothes, I also learned something else.
The girls and I weren’t alone in the house.
The voice belonged to a man, and though I couldn’t make out what they were saying, I could tell he was in Misty’s room with them, and they were arguing.
Gently, I closed the door and locked it. I didn’t know who that was, but I didn’t want to take the chance it was the girl’s father. I could only imagine what he’d think of my being there. And if I had to face down the wrath of angry Dad, I didn’t want to do so in any state of undress.
I threw the clothes on as quickly as I could, grateful beyond words that the shoes fit better. They were a half size too large, but I made do with a little toilet paper stuffed into the toes. Once dressed, I gargled and spit with the mouthwash on the sink and ran a comb through what was left of my hair.
I couldn’t do anything about my damaged dressings just then, but I figured it was time to go out and face the music. As I stepped into the hall, I heard Melissa say, “Kevin, give me the damn phone!”
Whoever Kevin was, he didn’t sound all that fatherly.
“No way,” Kevin said. “There’s got to be a reward. Don’t you even want to know how much it is?”
I stepped into the room. “What’s going on?”
Kevin spun and faced me. He had stringy blond hair and a thin mustache that he must’ve been proud of, given how recently it had come in. He didn’t look a day over sixteen. In his hand, he gripped a cordless phone.
In a single swipe, I snatched the phone out of his hand. He stumbled back a step, turning pale, as if stunned that I could move that fast. “Calling someone?” I put a hand on his chest and shoved him to the bed. I handed Melissa the phone and said to her, “Explain.”
“This is Kevin Revette.”
“Don’t care who he is. What’s he doing here?”
“It’s my fault,” said Misty. “I invited him.”
“You invited him?”
“B-before I knew you were coming. I forgot. Sorry.”
“So what is he, like your study partner?”
“Just a guy.”
“Just a guy?” said Kevin, rising from the bed. “That’s all I am to you?”
Misty shot him a black look.
“Boyfriend,” I guessed.
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Hardly. He sells her weed.”
“Weed?” I turned and faced Kevin. “You sell drugs to these girls?”
He struck a cocky pose. “That’s right. Primo. Best in town right here. Anything you want. I’m your one stop shop. Weed. Ice. Rock. Whatever you want.”
“You want to know what I think about drug dealers?”
“Not really, no. Look, why don’t you just back off, man?”
I said to Melissa, “You really need to hang out with a better class of people.”
“Says the wanted murderer, arsonist, and all ‘round terrorist.”
I grinned despite myself.
“Look,” said Kevin. “If you’re not buying, then I’m outta here. I got places to be, y’know?” He turned as if to leave, but I put my arm out.
“Uh uh. You’re not going anywhere. You won’t get two feet out that door before you’ll be on the phone to the cops.”
“You think I’d talk to cops? That hurts, man. Really.”
“I think you’d do anything for a reward check. You’re a drug dealer. You already sold your soul to the Devil. You’d sell out your own grandmother for a score. Wouldn’t you?”
I faced the girls. “We’ve got to deal with this.”
That’s when I heard the hammer cocking back on the revolver. In the mirror behind her desk, I saw Kevin holding a nickel plated revolver at my back. He shook his head. “No way,” he said. “You’re not taking me down. I’m making a citizen’s arrest!”
Both girls looked frightened at the sight of the gun in his hand. This was getting too real for them. I needed to end it before one of them got hurt.
I faced Kevin. “Really? A citizen’s arrest? That’s what you’re going with?”
“That’s right. Now get down and put your hands behind your head.”
“No.”
He looked surprised. “Y-yes!”
“Make me.”
He straightened his gun hand, as if trying to emphasize that he held the weapon. “Do it!”
“D’you know the trouble with guns?” I said. “They only work if you’re willing to use them. A gun don’t mean anything in the hands of someone who’s never had to pull the trigger.”
His eyes grew wide. “Oh, I’ve used it before.”
“Oh yeah? On who?”
“P-people!”
“Which people?”
“Just. Some guys!”
“Really.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So go ahead.”
“What?”
“Shoot me.”
“I could!”
“I’m telling you to.”
His hand started shaking, as I knew it would.
“You either shoot me,” I said, “or I’m gonna take that gun away from you.”
I could see hot tears staining his reddening cheeks as he struggled to find the will. I moved my hand beneath the gun until my fingers closed around it. Gently, I tugged it from his grasp. He sagged in relief and collapsed to the bed, putting his head in his hands, swearing at his own weakness. I lowered the hammer on the gun and slipped it behind my belt, letting the tail of the shirt cover it from view. I crouched down before him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s not a weakness,” I said to him. “Not killing a person. It’s a strength. It means you’ve got standards. There are lines you won’t cross. There are places you won’t go. It means that deep inside, you’re still a decent human being. Don’t ever lose that.”
He met my eyes then
, and I could read in his gaze a mixture of fear and gratitude.
“Once it’s gone,” I finished, “you can never get it back.”
He nodded then, sniffling. I straightened and said to Misty, “Your Dad keep any tie wraps in the house?”
***
We tied up Kevin in the basement, with his arms secured around one of the support braces, and I led the girls outside. “Misty,” I began, “it was very nice meeting you. Thank you very much for the clothes and the beer. And all your help. You’ve been amazing.”
“What about Kevin?” she said.
“Give us about an hour, and then you can let him go. I don’t know if the fight’s out of him or not, but I don’t think he’ll give you any more trouble.”
“Okay.” She shook my hand and gave Melissa a hug, and went back inside. Melissa and I climbed back into the car.
“Nice kid,” I said as we backed out of the driveway.
“You wouldn’t think a DA’s kid would be that cool.”
“Her Dad’s the DA? How’d you two hook up?” I asked when she nodded.
She shrugged. “Think it was an office party. My step-dad used to be a court clerk before he went on disability. Real small fish in the office pool, y’know? Her dad was an assistant district attorney at the time. Anyway, we met at a party. She offered me a joint. We’ve been best friends ever since.”
“Incredible.”
“So where to?” she asked.
“Take me to see your friend Gill. I want to get him started on these ID’s.”
She shifted into gear, and we left the neighborhood behind.
Chapter 26
Gill, I learned, lived in a basement apartment in the heart of the city. On the way back in I had Melissa swing through the drive-thru at the McDonald’s near the park where Rogan was supposed to be eating lunch with my kids. After we picked up our food, I had her pause by the sidewalk looking in on the playground and pointed out my kids to her.
“There,” I said. “See the one in pigtails wearing the pink jumper? That’s Sara. Matt’s the boy playing over by the slide.”
“Huh,” she said.
I stared at them, wishing to God I could rush the park and steal them out of there. Melissa took her foot of the brake and pulled back onto the road. I gave her a quizzical look.
“Five Oh in the brown sedan across the street giving us the eye,” she said. I glanced in the side mirror.
“Think he saw us?”
“Hope not.”
“Hang a left at the next light. Let’s put some turns between us.”
I heard the whup! whup! of the helicopter about the same time she did. She bent forward and peered through the upper part of the windshield. “Eye in the sky,” she muttered.
“They tracking us?”
“Don’t know.”
“Stay casual. Let’s not give them a reason to think we’re anything but hungry.”
I checked my watch as she drove. I still had a half hour before I was due to call Rogan back. After a few minutes, Melissa checked the sky again. “I think we lost them.”
“Good.” I handed her a burger and put the fries beside her in the cup holder. We ate in relative peace, though I kept checking the mirrors and sky for any sign of pursuit.
We parked on a side street away from the heart of downtown, where a set of rundown brick apartments brooded over narrow cul-de-sacs with crumbling sidewalks and cracked pavement. Weeds poked through the breaks in the rubble, threatening to overtake the road and return it to the wild if it remained neglected much longer. I checked Kevin’s gun to make sure it was secure, and stashed the money beneath the back seat of the Civic. No way I was going to walk into that apartment carrying close to ten thousand dollars.
Melissa gave me an odd look and said, “You’re gonna need that.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. Bring the money. Gill don’t do business with people that don’t trust him.”
Sighing, I lifted the seat back up and retrieved the envelope. This went against my better judgment, but what choice did I have? Money in hand, I followed her to the building. She led me downstairs to the front entrance and banged on the door with her fist. After a moment, the door slid open a crack, bound by a chain.
“Whassup?” said the mouth on the other side of the door. I couldn’t clearly see who it belonged to.
“Hey Grease,” Melissa said. “Gill home?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe my ass. Tell him Mel’s here.”
The door closed. A moment later, it opened again. The man standing there looked like a linebacker, with shoulder length blond strands and a few days’ growth of beard. The muscles on his arms and neck bulged beneath his shirt.
“Melissa,” he purred. “What an unexpected surprise.”
“Hey Gill. You got time for me?”
“Always got time for you, baby. But as I said, this is… unexpected.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and leaned back against his door, smiling coyly up at him. “You’re not entertaining, are you?”
“You know I’m always entertaining.”
“You stepping out on me?”
“Didn’t know we was an item.”
“Didn’t say we were.”
He took her hand and grazed it with his lips. “You just give the word, baby and I’m all yours.”
She winked at him in return.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked.
“He’s why I come to see ya. This is business, I’m afraid. Not pleasure.”
“Such a pity. We’ll have to remedy that soon.”
“Just not today.”
He made a clucking noise with his tongue, and finally turned to offer me his hand. “I’m Gill.”
“Gerrold.” I shook his hand, feeling the strength in his grip.
“Any friend of Mel’s is a friend. So what she see in you? It ain’t your looks if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Must be my winsome personality,” I deadpanned.
He grinned and nodded with his head. “Come on inside.”
***
Gill took us to a back room which must’ve been intended to be a bedroom, but he’d converted it into an office, if it could be called that. A broad, black desk sat near the back wall, with a red velvet chair behind it. Various other chairs of indiscriminate origins hugged the walls, which were covered in bizarre posters of rock bands, motorcycles, and airbrushed centerfolds in contorted poses. A lava lamp meditated in one corner, its gelatinous pseudopods moving aimlessly in languid stretches of red goo. A trio of equally languid twenty-something’s ignored us as we came in, preferring to give their attention to thin stretches of white powder laid out on a low coffee table.
Gill didn’t give them a passing glance as he crossed to his desk, but he did bark the word, “Bail,” as he sat down. I listened as they rose without a word and shuffled out the door, and then gave the man in front of me my full attention.
“So,” Gill said. “What can I do for you?”
A thousand thoughts fluttered through my mind—most of them centered on why a man like Gill seemed so hell-bent on capturing the attentions of a seventeen year old kid, and passing thought given to the nature and legality of the chemical lines on the table behind me—as well as one overriding question: what kind of world had I stumbled into, and what sort of life did Melissa have that she found herself so comfortable in a place like this? She was the white rabbit, and I’d followed her straight down the hole into an underworld where it seemed like the only way to make sense of it was to nibble on dubious mushrooms. I wondered if I could climb back out into the daylight instead.
“Need you to hook us up with some ID,” Melissa said.
He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands across his chest. “Something tells me you ain’t talking about clubbing. You leaving me, darling?”
“Naw. He is.”
He nodded. “‘Kay. What sort of papers you lookin’ to purchase?”
/> “I need everything,” I said. “License, passport, birth certificate, social. The whole shooting match. I need to disappear.”
He swallowed, the only tell that I’d asked for something larger than he’d ever managed. “You’re talking like witness protection. That’s gonna be expensive.”
“How much?”
“Ten grand, at least.”
“I can get you half that.”
“Half ain’t gonna cut it, babe.”
“And I have something else to trade. Something that might be of value to you or your associates.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And what would that be?”
I grabbed one of the folding chairs by the wall and put it in front of the desk, sinking into it.
“Please,” he said. “Have a seat.”
Melissa remained standing. I reached into my back pocket and drew out the false passport and driver’s license from the judge. “You ever come up against Judge Rawles?”
“Maybe. Not that it matters anymore. Ding, dong, the witch is dead.”
“Believe me. It matters to anybody who’s ever had a case litigated in front of her. Rawles was dirty.”
“And you know this how?”
I slid the passport and license over to him. He studied them both, a sly grin twisting the corner of his mouth.
“You sure this is her?” he said.
“Beyond doubt.”
“How?”
“‘Cause I took them from her safe. After I put a bullet through her.”
He dropped the papers as if he’d been burnt. His face clouded. He swore and said, “Thought I recognized you.” To Melissa he said, “What the hell, Mel? You bring America’s Most Wanted in here? To my domain?”
“Gill, I—”
“Shut up!”
I slid the revolver out of my pants and held it in my lap. “Sit down, Mr. Gill. We’re not done.”
“The hell we ain’t. Get out of my house!”
I lunged over the table, grabbed him by the shirt collar and stuck the revolver under his chin. “I leave when I’m damn good and ready, you miserable piece of filth!”
Spilled Milk, no. 1 Page 15