Shot Girl

by Karen E. Olson

  "Your photographer is already here," he said, putting the gloves back on and waving his hand to indicate he wanted me to follow him.

  I’d parked in the lot next to the Visitor Center, and Shaw had been waiting for me. We walked past the Nature House, which houses a reptile display and tanks that I didn’t want to get too close to—I’m not afraid of too many things, but I really hate snakes—and we went around the Ranger Cottage. As soon as we turned the corner, I could see the raised garden beds, and a group of six kids were up to their elbows in dirt. Wesley Bell—never without his bow tie but because of the heat he’d conceded to a short-sleeved button-down shirt with khakis—circled them, his camera hiding most of his face. He wasn’t kidding—he was going to get as many shots as he could and get the hell out of there to go to his next assignment.

  "These young people are from the projects," Shaw said softly. We were just out of earshot. "They’re all from broken homes; they’re barely making it through school; drugs and guns and sex are part of their lives. I hope through this project that I can show them there’s hope."

  Now, this is where my compassion should’ve kicked in. But with my experience covering the police beat, all I could see when I looked at them was a bunch of deadbeat kids who’d end up like their parents or in my police blotter, either dead or charged with some serious crimes. Even with Shaw’s charisma and example, the odds were stacked against them, and most probably couldn’t pull themselves out of the hole they were born in. But I was stuck with this, so I might as well try to get what I could.

  I made some sort of mmm sound to indicate that I understood, sort of like the smile-and-nod you give people when you’re not really paying attention to what they’re saying.

  Wesley was done by the time we reached the garden beds. He shook Shaw’s hand, thanked him, nodded at me, and went on his way. I wondered if a picture layout and captions could say a thousand words so I wouldn’t have to.

  Shaw introduced me to the kids, who gave me only half their attention. No curiosity on their part—the feeling was mutual. Somehow, that made me feel better. I took out my notebook and started writing down everything Shaw was telling me about starting up the garden project, how he’d gone into the schools to find these kids—apparently they were handpicked by the administration—and what sorts of vegetables and flowers were being tended to.

  One of the most goddamn boring assignments I’d ever had. And that included the planning and zoning meetings I used to attend as a town reporter years ago. At least at those, someone was always ranting about some injustice—a development was being proposed on wet-lands or endangered birds would be driven out if a marina was expanded.

  I pretended to be interested and even peered closely at one boy’s plantings as Shaw helped a girl who broke a nail while weeding. Tough luck.

  One of the plants looked oddly familiar, and I glanced up at the boy, who wore an oversized T-shirt and jeans that hung precariously on his hips with a belt, showing off his boxers. His head was swathed in a do-rag, one of those things that made it look like he was wearing a pair of panty hose, the "legs" wrapped around, tied in the back, creating a tail. He had a smirk on his face, and I knew I was right. I looked around the garden bed and saw a couple more of the same plant.

  Jesus. This kid was growing pot.

  Now, I had to give him credit. It was dispersed enough between legal plants that probably no one would notice. I wondered if it would show up in Wesley’s pictures. That could cause a stir.

  I opened my mouth, but the boy put his fingers to his lips as a smile stretched to his cheeks. He shook his head. "He don’t know," he whispered, cocking his head at Shaw.

  Yeah, right. And pigs fly, too.

  "Bet he does," I whispered back, like we were in third grade.

  "No, he doesn’t. It’s only over here. And every time he gets close, she"—and he indicated the girl with the broken nail, who was now leaning close enough to Shaw so her pert, teenage breast pressed against his arm—"distracts him."

  Shaw’s face was close to the girl’s, and the sun illuminated a slight drop of moisture above his upper lip under his nose.

  "What about the rangers? Don’t they know?"

  The kid chuckled. "Shit, they leave us alone. The Rev, well, he’s got some power."

  I still didn’t believe that Shaw didn’t know about the plants, but I did the smile-and-nod thing—I was getting damn good at it—and with one hand pulled my hair up to let a slight breeze cool the back of my neck.

  "You go to Hillhouse?" I asked.

  The kid nodded.

  "What’s your name?"

  He looked at me sideways for a second. "He already introduced us."

  I suppressed a smile. "I meet a lot of people. Remind me."

  "Jamond."

  "Nice to meet you, Jamond," I said. "So, besides growing plants that get you high, what else are you getting out of this program?"

  A flash of fear crossed his face.

  I shook my head. "I’m not going to out you. I have to write a story, and I have to quote you to make me look good to my boss."

  He digested that a second, then, "It’s summer school. Science credits. So I don’t flunk out." He said it like he didn’t give a shit if he flunked out; this wasn’t his decision.

  "What grade are you in?"

  "Tenth."

  "What would you do if you did flunk out?" I asked, dropping my hand with my notebook to my side. He knew I wasn’t going to write this down.

  "Hang out with my friends."

  "Have they flunked out?"

  "Some."

  "How did you find out about the program? Did you know the Reverend Shaw?"

  Jamond shook his head, gave me a sly smile. "Teacher. She hooked me up." From his expression and the tone of his voice, I wondered just what else this teacher had hooked him up with, but before I could ask anything else, he indicated Shaw. "Better go talk to him again." He wanted me away from his crop, so I nodded and joined Shaw, who had moved away from the cute girl with the rack that was threatening to bounce out of her Wonderbra at any moment.

  Shaw took his gloves off again. "Sorry, but there’s always something to attend to. Did you have a nice chat with Jamond?"

  I nodded. "Nice kid," I said absently.

  "He’s growing pot plants over there." His tone was matter-of-fact.

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "He thinks I don’t know."

  "Why do you let him get away with it?"

  "I told them they could grow anything they wanted."

  "So you’re just keeping your promise?"

  He nodded. "It’s important." He paused. "And this isn’t going in the paper."

  I shook my head. "No."

  He grinned, his eyes twinkling. "Do you want to talk to the other kids?"

  Figured I might as well, and I made the rounds, and even though I carefully inspected the gardens of the other students, Jamond was the only one pushing the limits legally.

  Shaw walked me back to my car about twenty minutes later and shook my hand again. It was surprisingly cool after being confined in the gloves. "Thank you for doing this," he said, and I hated to admit it, but he was growing on me. The kids had nothing but good things to say about him; he was encouraging and not patronizing with them. Jamond might actually stay in school. Well, unless he could cultivate a bigger crop and make a killing. But these gardens weren’t that big.

  "If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to call," Shaw said as I climbed into the Civic and he shut the door for me.

  I pretended to search through my bag for something as I watched him walk around the building. He didn’t look back once, just kept going.

  I started the car and began pulling out, but just as I did, a red Porsche careened into the lot and I slammed on the brakes, feeling the car skid slightly as I caught my breath.

  I looked out the window at the driver, ready to give him the finger.

  He was smiling at me.

  It w
as Jack Hammer.

  Chapter 10

  I climbed out of the car at the same time he got out of his.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded. "You almost fucking hit me."

  Jack didn’t answer, just reached across his front seat and pulled out the gym bag I’d seen him carrying earlier at the Rouge Lounge. He gripped it tightly as he shut the door and sauntered toward me.

  "Hey, there, fancy meeting you here."

  "Could say the same about you," I said, cocking my head at his bag. "Thought that was stuff for your show tonight."

  Jack Hammer looked up at West Rock, the traprock hill that forms the southern tip of the ridge dividing the towns of Hamden and Woodbridge. "Hiking gear," he said.

  He was wearing a Patriots T-shirt, baggy shorts, and Crocs. Something bulky was in the bag, could have been hiking boots that he’d change into, but I wouldn’t count on it. It was too damn hot to hike, and anyway, even though the state tried to lure hikers with the promise of trails and the magnificent vista at the top, West Rock was more for illicit rendezvous and drug deals.

  Oh, yeah, Jack Hammer had a history of the former. Maybe "a hike" was code. I shrugged. "Okay, sure," I said, like I believed him.

  He started to walk past me, toward the Visitor Center, but I stopped him by grabbing his arm. It was tight, muscled, and not unpleasant feeling. I pulled my hand back before he got the wrong idea.

  The grin told me his head was full of wrong ideas.

  I ignored it. "Can you tell me where Felicia Kowalski is?"

  His eyebrows rose slightly. "Still looking for her? Thought you’d find her at the newspaper."

  Asshole. He knew all along she was an intern at the Herald. "She didn’t show up for a meeting this morning," I said curtly.

  Something crossed his face, an odd mix of concern and amusement. "She’ll turn up."

  "Where?" I asked. "Do you know where she’ll be working tonight?"

  Jack shrugged. "Might want to check Bar. Maybe Alchemy. She could be anywhere; she could hit both in one night." He stared at me a long second, then said, "I have to get going. I’ll see you around."

  "Do you have a number I can reach you at?" I asked, determined not to let him get away that easy again.

  But the lazy smile was back, the twinkle in his eye. "I know how to reach you."

  What the fuck did that mean? I let him walk away from me and watched him shift the black bag from one hand to the other. There was something heavier in there than hiking boots. I could see jagged ridges jutting out on the sides of the fabric. Maybe it was some sort of rappelling shit—not that I knew anything about climbing, but I’ve seen the Discovery Channel.

  When he reached the corner of the Visitor Center, he looked back and waved with his free hand. I climbed reluctantly into my Civic and started it up, all under his watchful eye. He was hesitant about having me see which direction he was headed, because he didn’t move, just stared at me.

  As I pulled into the road that led out of the nature center, I saw in my rearview mirror that he’d started to turn the corner, and the Reverend Shaw came up and shook his hand.

  I wasn’t supposed to see that. Jack Hammer had looked around behind him at me, but I was peeling out of the lot, like I had a fucking ambulance to chase. If I was lucky, he’d think I’d missed Shaw’s greeting. I couldn’t figure out the connection between the male stripper and the preacher, but I doubted Jack Hammer was there to help garden.

  It would be too obvious if I decided to turn around and ask a few more questions of the good reverend and his student gardeners. There was no way to get back into the nature center except the way I’d left, either, and I didn’t want to leave my new car on the side of the road and hoof it back. This wasn’t the best place to do that. I could taste my curiosity, though, and it was driving me crazy.

  I slid the Rolling Stones’ Forty Licks in the CD player and found "Mixed Emotions." It matched my mood as I drove down Wintergreen Avenue toward Southern Connecticut State University. Might as well follow through with my plan to find out if anyone there knew where Felicia might be on a Friday afternoon. Granted, it was the first week of June—school had been over for a few weeks and I wasn’t sure if summer school had started yet—so there might not be too many people around. But it was worth a shot.

  I wasn’t quite sure why I was trying to track down Felicia Kowalski. I could probably just wait her out at the paper—she’d show up eventually. But Tom had said the cops were looking for her, and given Jack Hammer’s comments, I knew she held some sort of key to something.

  I was over in this part of the city anyway, so why not? Maybe Ned Winters—who had called Priscilla, who called me—could lead me in the right direction, Felicia-wise, since he was head of the journalism department. I was pretty sure he’d have a few things to say about Ralph, too, but if seeing him could get me some information, then I could suffer through it.

  Ned had been Ralph’s best friend and roommate. The three of us and Priscilla practically lived together in Farnham Hall, although Priscilla and Ned weren’t a "couple." They’d had one disastrous night together—Priscilla wouldn’t even tell me about it, which made me really wonder what had happened—and decided they’d just be friends.

  The only thing about going to Southern that my mother approved of was that I lived on campus—that was not the norm; Southern has always been more of a commuter college—giving me "the college experience," as she put it. I’m not sure cohabiting with Ralph on a regular basis was what she meant by that, but what she didn’t know didn’t hurt her. And I doubted she’d know what a bong was even if she saw one. It was too bad Jamond hadn’t been born yet; otherwise we would’ve definitely taken advantage of his community-garden crop.

  Ned was the pretty boy who had no ambition. He liked being in school, having few responsibilities. After we graduated, he went on to get his master’s degree at Columbia in New York City and came back to Southern as an adjunct journalism professor. He’d never worked at a newspaper or magazine, or done anything else that could resemble actual journalism. He was everything I loathed: the professor who pretended to know how it was but had never been in the trenches himself. And to think he was molding young journalistic minds. It was fucking frightening.

  When Ralph and I split, Ned called me a few times to "commiserate." By the fourth call, I was tired of replaying the shit and rebuffing Ned’s advances. Despite his denials, I also knew he was reporting back to Ralph about my life. I told him to quit bothering me.

  Just about a year ago, he called me at the paper "officially" and wanted to know if I’d be interested in teaching a basic newswriting class. I asked him if he was on crack and hung up.

  I stopped at the light at Fitch and looked to my right at Connecticut Hall, the dining hall, where the only edible food had been cereal. I was a Froot Loops girl back then. I should’ve just poured the Budweiser on top of them; they were mixed up in my stomach most of the time anyway. Behind the dining hall were the residence halls. The long walkway over Fitch Street connected the West and East sides of campus, and I remembered how damn cold it used to get crossing that bridge to go to class.

  Someone honked a horn behind me. I shook myself out of my memories and turned left onto Fitch.

  The state had been doing a lot of renovation work here in the past few years. The journalism department had moved out of Engleman Hall and into Morrill. I barely recognized either as I pulled into the parking lot adjacent to both. Engleman was more than double the size it had been; a sort of mural carved in beige stone decorated the entranceway to Morrill.

  If it had looked like this when I was here, maybe I’d be like Ned, too, and never want to leave.

  I walked into Morrill Hall, and a dozen emotions embraced me as the air-conditioning hit me in the face and I sighed with relief. I hadn’t realized how comfortable I’d gotten with the heat; it was sort of like wearing a heavy coat I didn’t need but had gotten used to, so I kept it on.

  I pushed the
button on the old elevator, and as the doors opened, Ned Winters and I both did a double take; he stepped out and pulled me into a bear hug before I could say anything.

  "Oh, Annie," he said, his breath causing goose bumps to rise on my neck. "I saw you from my window, so I came down to meet you. It’s just so awful about Ralph, isn’t it? I was worried something like this might happen someday."

  Worried what might happen? That Ralph would get shot? That’s what was in the paper; that’s what everyone thought. Why would Ned think this was how Ralph would end up?

  I gently released myself from his arms and took in his tanned face, hazel eyes, which were blue in one light and green in another, and blond hair that was spiked up in an effort to cover an ever-increasing receding hairline. He’d put on more than a few pounds, and it threw me for a minute. He’d always been pretty vain about his looks and to see that he’d gained so much weight was a shock. He was nattily dressed in blue slacks and a button-down shirt, his feet clad in brown loafers. Very college professorlike.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember we were grown-ups now. Even though those double digits kept getting higher, most of the time I still felt like I had in my twenties. Of course that could have a lot to do with the fact that I was still living my life as I had when I was in my twenties: single and working at the Herald.

  The gap of differences between my life and Ned Winters’ had diminished considerably in just a few seconds of introspection. I felt like Dr. Phil had come around the corner and shouted, "How’s that workin’ out for ya?" I didn’t have an answer for him.

  Time to get off the fucking pity pot.

  "Well, I know a little more about what happened to Ralph," I started, but Ned took my arm and led me outside, back into the natural furnace.

  "Let’s go to the student center and get something to drink," he suggested.

  We didn’t say anything, following the sidewalk. I marveled at the work being done on the library, and as we approached the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, I was struck by how much it had changed here, how time and construction had physically erased what I remembered.