by Hamel, B. B.
I should be trying to stay neutral. That’s what a good investigator does. I need to watch for clues, follow the leads until the end, not get all wrapped up with the sister of the dead guy. That’s the biggest mistake I could possibly make.
But hell, I’m already wrapped up in this. The dead guy is an old friend, and his sister, well… Cora’s fucking gorgeous. And she’s trouble, sure as anything else.
We follow her phone’s GPS across the town, through a little central lane, past some farms, and soon the town turns even seedier. Ahead, there’s a trailer park, and we’re going straight into it.
I slow down as we slide down the narrow street. Trailers press up close on either side, some of them kept pretty nice, some of them falling apart.
“Which one?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No numbers.”
I groan. “Typical. This is easier in the city.”
“Are you gonna complain the whole time you’re here?” She gives me the side eye.
I grin back at her. “Not my fault you’re a bunch of hicks.”
“You were born and raised here, remember.”
“Oh, I remember. Can’t forget.”
She rolls her eyes as I pull off the side of the road and park the car in an empty lot where a trailer used to be. I kill the engine and Cora look at me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting out,” I say.
“Why?”
“No numbers,” I answer. “So now we do this the old-fashioned way.”
I step out of the car and Cora follows me. I walk down a narrow lane and up to the front door of the first trailer I see.
Cora follows me, uncertainly. I’ve done this a million times, though it never gets easy. I hate randomly knocking on doors, flashing my badge, asking for information. Places like this are particularly difficult. Trailer parks aren’t close-knit communities, but people here typically don’t like cops, not at all. I have my gun on me, and my badge, but I want to avoid using either of them. Still, there are gangs in this area, and lots of blind corners. I can’t help but feel a little exposed.
I glance back at Cora and take a breath. I have to calm down. Cora’s with me, and I can’t risk her safety.
An old woman answers the door. “What?” she croaks.
“Ma’am, I’m looking for a trailer owned by a woman named Nancy. She’s got a daughter named Kristi, you know them?”
“Hell, no,” the lady croaks. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Wyatt,” I say. “That’s Cora.”
“Well, Wyatt and Cora, you two can fuck off.” She slams the door.
I step down and start walking.
“Is that normal?” Cora asks.
“Yep,” I say. “That was actually good. She said she didn’t know.”
“Which means?”
“Means they probably don’t live in this little clump.” I nod ahead. “We’ll try up there.”
Cora frowns. “So this is what it’s like to be a cop?”
“Yep,” I say, grinning at her. “You knock on doors and people tell you to fuck off until finally someone gives you something worthwhile. It’s not fun and it’s not pretty, but it works.”
Cora chews her lip for a second. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“You harden up,” I say. I pull her closer to me, laughing. “You’ll harden up too, you little softie.”
She grins at me and pushes me away. “Whatever. Come on, I’ll knock at this one.”
“Look at you, itching to get your feet wet.” I laugh again as I follow her.
We knock on at least twenty doors before we finally get a hit. It’s a young kid, maybe ten years old with straw yellow hair cut in a bowl around his brow. He blinks and points across the street.
“Nancy lives there,” he says. “Why you wanna know?”
“Thanks, kid.”
We turn away from him and head across the street. The kid lingers in the doorway until someone from the inside, probably his mother, yells for him to shut the damn door.
Cora frowns at me, and I try to smile reassuringly. None of this is new to me, though I haven’t gone door to door like this since I was in a uniform. Now that I’m a detective, I don’t need to knock all day long, but it’s not like I’m above it or some shit like that. You just have to follow certain rules, especially in a place like the police department, where things are very strict and regimented.
The trailer we’re headed to is a little rundown, though not any more than any other trailer in the park. I take a look around the side and back, but I don’t see anything worth noting. Cora hovers around the front, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Are you sure this is right?” she asks me.
I shrug. “Who knows?”
“There aren’t any cars around.”
“Yeah,” I say. “True, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s home. Will you recognize her?”
She nods. “I know Kristi. I’ve met her once or twice.”
“Good. I want you to knock.”
She hesitates. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m worried she’ll just try and run if she sees me.” I grin at her. “Turns out, I look like a cop.”
She laughs softly. “I guess you do.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“I’ll be right here with you.”
I follow Cora’s lead up to the front door. I have my hand on my gun, though I try to be subtle about it. I probably don’t need to be so paranoid, but with Cora here I’m not taking any chances.
Cora knocks, and we wait. There’s no sound from the inside at first, so she knocks again, this time louder.
I hear some movement. Cora glances back at me and knocks again.
“What?” someone yells from the inside, a woman’s voice.
“Ma’am, this is Cora Lewis,” she calls out. “I’m looking for Kristi.”
More silence, but this time I can hear something in there. People whispering to each other, sounding nervous. And then someone says loudly, “Oh, fuck it, just answer the damn door.”
A younger woman pulls open the door and peers out at us through the screen. Cora blinks at her and smiles, but the woman doesn’t smile back.
“Hi, Kristi,” Cora says to her.
I get a good look at Kristi. She look strung out, with brunette hair streaked by blonde and bags under her eyes like she hasn’t been sleeping much. She’s wearing a gray hoodie with sparkles on the front and she has a cigarette dangling in her fingers.
“What are you doing here?” Kristi asks her.
Cora keeps that smile plastered on her face. “Just wanted to talk to you.”
Kristi shakes her head. “I got nothing to say about him.”
I raise an eyebrow. That’s about the most suspicious thing she could have said.
“Please, Kristi, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it,” Cora answers, not missing a beat. “But you might know something important.”
Kristi glances at me and back to Cora. “I don’t know.”
“Go fucking talk to her!” someone inside shouts.
“Shut the fuck up, Nancy!” Kristi shouts back.
Another woman appears at the door next to Kristi, sucking on a cigarette. She looks just like Kristi, except twenty years older and garishly done-up. Her hair is teased and big like an ‘80s model, but her eyes are vacant. She gives Cora a hard look.
“Kristi’ll be right outside. Right, girl?”
“Okay, fuck, fine, Nancy.” Kristi steps away from the door and it slams shut.
Cora looks back at me, totally bewildered. I just grin and shrug at her, not really sure what’s going on myself. But a minute later, just as Cora’s about to knock again, there’s a sound from the back.
“Around here.”
We step off the little front stoop and follow around to the back of the trailer. Kristi’s standing back there, smoking a cigarette, a little white dog yapping at her heels.
<
br /> “Stop it, Beyoncé,” she says, knocking the dog away. It bounds off and sniffs a corner of their tiny lot.
Kristi stands there, arms crossed, cigarette in her mouth. She looks a lot younger than I first thought. She’s about Cora’s size, maybe a little smaller, and she might even be considered pretty if it weren’t for the hard years she’s been living.
“How are you doing?” Cora asks her.
Kristi shrugs. “Fine. Who the fuck is that?” She indicates me with a jab of her cigarette.
“This is Wyatt,” Cora says. “He’s an old friend of Atticus’s.”
Kristi perks up and looks at me. “You’re that cop, aren’t you?”
I nod. “Atticus talked about me?”
“Sure, sometimes.” She laughs. “He always thought it was funny that his old best friend turned out to be a cop and he turned out to be, well, him.”
I smile at her, not really finding it funny. She laughs again like it’s actually hilarious.
“Kristi, have the cops talked to you yet?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Nancy moves around a lot. This is her third trailer in two years. I bet they don’t even know I’m fucking here, those idiots.” She sneers at me and I just smile back.
“You’re probably right. Still, you should get in touch with them.”
“Fuck that. Cops always just assume you’re guilty, you know? I know a guy that got murdered. I bet they think I did it.”
“Did you?” I ask her softly.
“Fuck no.” She spits on the ground. “But it’s not like he didn’t have it coming.”
“How did he have it coming?” Cora asks her.
She shrugs. “Atticus was a fucking asshole. Always talking a big game, always trying to find some way to make money. But in the end, he was just another little shrimp shooting all his cash down his veins.”
I glance at Cora and I can tell that hurts. She’s doing a good job of keeping a straight face, but the way her hands twitch makes me think she’s holding herself back.
I don’t understand why Kristi is talking shit about Atticus like this, but I have my suspicions. “So he deserved to die?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “Not really, but that’s what happens when you run with the Niners, right?”
“No,” Cora says softly. “He didn’t deserve that.”
Kristi looks at her and realizes her mistake. She sighs. “I’m sorry, kid, okay? Atticus wasn’t all that bad. We had some good times. But I can’t help you.”
“Where were you when he died?” I ask her.
“Here,” Kristi says. “With my mom.”
I make note of that. “Did he ever talk about anything? Maybe he owed someone money? Someone pissed at him for robbing them?”
She laughs again at that. “You’re describing half the town now,” she says. “I thought you were a smart detective or some shit?”
I smile pleasantly at her. I don’t know what Atticus saw in this girl, though. Maybe she was a pair of tits that would put up with his junkie bullshit, but still. “I’m talking someone dangerous, Kristi. Maybe someone in the Niners?”
She shrugs. “Some guys, maybe.” She clearly looks uncomfortable and flicks her cigarette, spilling ash on the ground. The little white dog comes bounding over and she kicks him away again.
“Who exactly?” Cora asks, beating me to it.
“Just some fucking guys, okay?” Kristi glares at me. “Maybe you can figure it out.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” I ask her. “You knew him really well, better than we did.”
She hesitates a second. I can see something in her face, maybe a glint of her humanity from back before she became a junkie, but that quickly vanishes.
“He was an asshole,” she says again. “Dumped me like, three weeks ago. So fuck him, okay? I’m done with this shit.” She flicks her cigarette away, walks over, grabs the dog, and heads back to the house. The dog struggles like it wants to get away.
I glance at Cora.
“Wait, Kristi,” Cora says. “Please, can you give us anything?”
She pauses at the back door. “Yeah, okay, fucking fine. Be careful of the Niners and leave me the fuck alone.” She opens the back door and slams it behind her as she disappears inside.
Cora groans and turns back to me. I give her a tight smile and we head back around to the front of the house.
“What do you think?” she asks me finally as we walk away from the trailer.
“I think she’s hiding something,” I say. “I couldn’t shake that feeling the whole time.”
“I felt it too,” Cora admits.
“Why is she staying with her mom right now instead of in town, in her own place?”
Cora shakes her head. “It’s strange.”
“And the cops haven’t talked to her yet?” I glance back over my shoulder. “I think she’s hiding her. I don’t think she expected us to find her so soon.”
“Think she’ll run?” Cora asks.
“I don’t know. But I think she knows more than she’s letting on.”
We walk in silence for a second, and when we finally make it back to the car, Cora looks at me. “She was afraid,” she says.
I nod slowly. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”
“Really afraid.”
I meet her gaze. “Who did this…”
“Dangerous,” Cora finishes for me.
We look at each other for a second before climbing into the car. I pull away, my mind still trying to work out how Kristi is involved in all of this.
7
Cora
Atticus looks down at me. His eyes are glowing red, two pinprick dots in the otherwise black room. I’m stuck to the bed and shaking, trembling, terrified, but I don’t know why.
“Go ahead,” I say to him. “Go ahead. Go ahead.”
He grins a wicked grin and slams the knife down into me over and over again.
I wake up with a start. I’m sweating, practically shaking. I get out of bed and stumble into the bathroom where I palm some water into my mouth straight from the tap. It’s lukewarm, but I feel like I might get sick.
I used to have nightmares when I was younger. My mom called them night terrors. Atticus was the only person in the world that could calm me down when they hit. He’d get into bed with me and sing softly until I’d fall asleep again. We were really young back then, and I haven’t had a night terror since I was a kid.
My pulse slowly comes down. I walk out into my living room and get a cold glass of water. I sip it, staring at the back wall, trying to make sense of the dream.
When I hear something outside. It sounds like the trash. At first, I think it’s a cat, but I hear it again.
I walk to the window and peek through the blinds. I peer down the side of the house and I can just barely make out a dark figure, rooting through my trash.
I jump back, eyes wide, the terror from my dream striking back into my chest again. I nearly drop my water as I turn and run back into my bedroom.
I dial without thinking. The phone rings and I’m shaking with horror. Someone’s out there, right now, going through my trash. Maybe it’s a fucking homeless guy, or maybe it’s the people that had Kristi so afraid.
I’m about to give up when he finally answers. “Yeah?” he grumbles, voice heavy with sleep.
“Someone’s going through my trash,” I hiss into the receiver.
He pauses a second. “Cora?”
“Someone’s going through my trash,” I hiss again. “Right now.”
“There’s a person outside of your apartment?”
“Yes!”
He sounds more awake now. “Lock your doors. Stay where you are. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Please hurry.”
“Call 911 if they try to come inside. Can you do that?”
“Yes, just hurry.”
Wyatt hangs up the phone. I stare at my bedroo
m door before shutting it and locking the handle.
I’ve never been this afraid in my entire life. Sitting in my bed like that, listening to every single little sound from outside, I keep imagining how it must have been when Atticus was killed. I bet he was terrified, so beyond afraid. He probably didn’t understand what was happening as people brutally murdered him. And now that might happen to me.
Time slips past. I don’t know how long I’m sitting there, horrified, when suddenly someone’s knocking at my door. The bell rings again and again, and then my phone starts to ring.
It’s Wyatt. I answer right away.
“It’s me. Let me inside.”
I slowly come out of my bedroom door. I creep up to the front door and peer out the top glass. Wyatt’s standing there, looking grim. I throw open the door and he comes inside.
I hug him without thinking. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me tight. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay.”
“He was out there,” I tell him. “I swear. I saw him.”
“I know,” he says. He shuts the door and locks it before fully letting me go.
“Did you see him?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “But your trashcan was open.”
I stare at him. “He must have run when he saw you pull up.”
“That’s my guess.” He sighs and we move further into my living room. He puts me down on the couch and refills my water from the refrigerator.
“What the hell was that?” I ask him. “Why would someone go through my trash?”
“Hard to say,” he answers, sitting next to me. His big body is reassuring in the dark night. He looks tired but alert, wearing the same clothes as earlier. “But I doubt that it’s a coincidence.”
“That what is?”
He looks grim. “That this happens right after we visited with Kristi.”
My eyes go wide. “You think she…?”
“I don’t know,” he says before I can finish. “Could be that they were watching her, too. Saw us show up there and talk to her.”
“Or she told them.”
“Maybe.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.”
“Shit,” I say softly.
He watches me for a second. “Are you okay?”