The Next Time You See Me

by Holly Goddard Jones

  “You’ve got to do better than that, Rocky Balboa,” Wyatt said.

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  He jabbed at Wyatt again, aiming for his face, and Wyatt turned to the side, catching it just barely on the ear. More heat, a bit more pain—the punch was no better than the first, but it landed in a tender spot.

  “Young guy like you, can’t even hit me. You can’t even hit this fat bastard worth a damn.”

  Sam struck again, catching him on the cheekbone. Harder, much more hurtful. An ache splintered out from his sinuses to his eyeball and eyetooth. It was clarifying, even invigorating, and it steadied his nerves to have this part of it over with, to be initiated into suffering, to at last know what he had been worrying about, this worst-case scenario. It wasn’t so bad. He rocketed forward, barely aiming. The worst pain yet was the sensation of his hand connecting with Sam’s nose—worse than anything Sam had subjected him to. There was the unmistakable sound of rupturing flesh, kind of a doughy pop, and the bones in his hand seemed to shift, as though he’d driven a spike between his knuckles.

  Sam shrieked. “Son of a—” he started, and Wyatt hit him again in the mouth to stop his talk, sending another spike up through his hand and arm. Sam backed away from him, head down, hands on his face. A runner of blood was spilling down between his fingers and soaking into the gravel, and Sam stomped, making Wyatt think of that night at Nancy’s, his little thigh-slapping boogie on the dance floor. He mumbled something, but it was muffled, guttural. Probably a curse.

  Wyatt’s hand was shot now. He picked up the shovel again.

  “Hey! Hey, put that down!” The voice was from behind him.

  Sam looked up. His eyes were bright and damp over his red fingertips, and they widened as Wyatt advanced. He held out a hand and shook his head, then turned to run, stumbling, gaining his feet. Wyatt swung the shovel head in a neat arc and clipped Sam right between the shoulder blades, knocking him forward. Sam landed on his palms and rolled over quickly, arms raised in defense.

  “No, man, no! You can’t do that! Shane, call 911!”

  Wyatt brought the shovel down again, and it landed on one of Sam’s knees, ringing cheerfully. The vibration went all the way up to Wyatt’s shoulders. Sam screamed, and he curled up with his chin tucked down and his knees up to his chest, elbows hiding his face and forearms over his ears. Wyatt hadn’t actually come here to kill him. To hurt him, yes, and to scare him, yes, and to make him pay—but not to kill him. But it seemed suddenly, as he pulled the shovel back again to swing, that Sam’s life was worth half as much as Ronnie’s had been, and so what did it matter? He let the shovel fall, and Sam howled. He swung it again. And again.

  He was gasping, heart jackhammering, when he brought the shovel up a last time. He only had the strength for one more, and he wanted it to be a good one.

  A familiar ache raced up his left arm, and his knees buckled. He seemed to fall backward and forward all at once and landed on his side, legs bent somehow beneath him, and he squeezed his eyes shut against a nauseating wave of pain so intense that the world went far away for an instant and a high tone sounded in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. He tried rolling onto his back, was stopped by something, and so only turned his torso. He was able to take one very slow, very thin breath, and then groan the air just as slowly out.

  What happened to him? Is he down? The voice seemed to be coming from across an empty ballroom. It was clear enough, but small, flat.

  Looks like it.

  Wyatt blinked several times but his vision didn’t clear.

  What about him?

  Lord, I don’t know. He beat him to a pulp.

  Was he listening to the radio again? The program had gotten very strange.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. We should have gotten out here sooner.

  What on earth were we supposed to do? The guy’s obviously crazy.

  Oh my God. I think they’re dying.

  They were gray blurs above him.

  He looks familiar.

  4.

  The night he moved the body, he had found a child’s red glove. He tossed it unthinkingly into one of the garbage bags, assuming it had been there all along.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  1.

  On Main Street, Christopher Shelton’s mother is making cocoa and trembling with relief that Emily Houchens has been found alive. There was a moment today, so brief that she can almost convince herself it didn’t happen, when she wondered about her son, doubted him. Thought him capable of horrors. She whisks the chopped slivers of chocolate into the cream vigorously, stomach clenching at the thought of so much sweetness. But what else can she do? What more can she offer him? Chris retreated to the guesthouse as soon as they arrived home from the police station, and Nita doesn’t know how to go to him without some kind of offering in hand. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she thinks, stirring, almost praying. Praying to her son. He is as distant as a star right now. She doesn’t know what it would take to reach him.

  At the police station, Sergeant Pendleton fills out a report on his typewriter, working with such slow concentration that the point of his tongue peeks from the corner of his mouth. He took a semester of typing back in high school, but he is better off using his index fingers—faster, more accurate. “I RESPONDED TO CALL AT APROXIMATLY 7:10 PM AND WENT DIRECTLY TO PARENTS HOME,” he types, legs restless beneath his desktop. He is starting to feel pangs of nervousness about talking to Johnny Burke earlier—letting slip not just news of the body but also the name Tony had uncovered, Wyatt Powell. It was stupid, stupid (he jabs the return key angrily in time with his thoughts)—stupid!—to fall for Burke’s little routine. How he came by, acting friendly, interested, asking Pendleton when he was going to let Johnny bring him to the country club as his guest, so they could play nine holes together. (It has never once happened. Always the jocular invitation, the phrasing that suggests Pendleton is holding out on him, when in fact Pendleton always said, “You know I’d love to come, Johnny. Just name the date.” And Burke always replied, “Yes, yes. I’ll call you about it. Just got to get your name down with the secretary out there first.”) Then Burke started asking questions, and he didn’t even have to press Pendleton much—Pendleton just started spilling what he knew, loving the way Burke’s eyes brightened with interest, thrilling each time he said something like “You don’t say?” or “I’ll be damned.” It is just that Johnny Burke is such a big, important guy around here, was even interviewed on national TV once a couple of years ago, when CBS News came to town that time the Ku Klux Klan promised to riot at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade. There is talk of his running for district judge next year. To be the friend of such a man—to get invited to the country club, or to Burke’s fancy house on the outskirts of town—well, that would mean something. That could mean a whole lot. Especially if Pendleton hopes to be considered for police chief when Evan Harding finally retires.

  Johnny Burke is, like Pendleton, a man of ambition—but his ambitions transcend small-town politics. Sure, he’d once set his sights on district judge. Had once thought a position like that mattered. But then CBS came down to Roma and put him on television, and he watched himself on the news that night, handsome and ruddy, his prematurely graying hair swept back pleasingly from his forehead, and he thought, That, that is what I’m meant to do. That is the kind of life I ought to be leading. But how?

  Now, rocking gently in his leather office chair, watching through his window the procession of traffic around the square, he smiles a little, thinking of Wyatt Powell. He wasn’t convinced of the man’s guilt when he called—Pendleton isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, and his eagerness to please sometimes moves him to exaggeration—but he is convinced now. The knowledge came to him, fully formed, in that too-long pause between Johnny’s speech and Wyatt’s denial: I—I have no idea what you’re talking about. Scary, really, to think of a man like that living in your community, shopping at the same supermarket as your wife, maybe commuting to wor
k on the road that runs past your daughter’s school. He’d have to be a monster to not consider these facts. But still, every accused man is entitled to a defense, and Johnny Burke has no reservations about providing Wyatt Powell with one. This is the kind of case that comes to Roma once in a decade, maybe even less than that, and if Johnny can’t prosecute it, he’ll defend it. Simple as that.

  While Johnny watches the square, his daughter watches the front door of her house. Her mother stepped out twenty minutes ago for groceries, and so she has perhaps half an hour—max—to make some more phone calls and try to find out the intel on Emily Houchens. She feels infuriatingly out of touch. She tried Christopher first—word had gotten around, even to the ALC trailer, that he’d left school today with a cop, shortly before Mr. Burton announced that Emily was found—but his mother answered his private line and told her, sharply, Leanna thinks, that Christopher was indisposed. “And you know he doesn’t have any phone privileges this week,” she added. Then Leanna tried Maggie and Anita. Maggie is in the same boat as she—friends only with the exclusive crowd that had been hidden away in supply closets all around Roma Middle—and knew nothing. Anita, to Leanna’s constant mystification, has a pretty decent friend outside of their circle, a black girl named Lauren who is with her on the basketball team, but Anita isn’t answering her phone. Could she call Lauren herself? Leanna pages through the phone book to the J’s, chewing her lip. She can’t remember Lauren’s father’s name, and there are, like, a hundred Johnsons. Where would she even start?

  She racks her brain for names—someone, anyone. Chelsea Brodzinski? How many Brodzinskis can there be in this town? Just one, she sees, running her finger along the list of B’s, and she gets ready to dial, then hesitates, thumb poised over the seven. Chelsea Buttinsky, she’d called her when she moved to town four years ago. They’d been at a birthday party together, Chelsea foisted onto the group of girls by a well-meaning parent, and Leanna hadn’t been able to stop herself: Buttinsky, Buttinsky, she chanted, pulling Chelsea’s braid as Chelsea tried to play Super Mario Bros. on Lily Peterson’s brother’s black-and-white TV. Chelsea’s braid was thick and bumpy, because her hair was snarled with natural curls the circumference of a pinky finger, and Leanna was so repulsed by its oily texture that she’d pulled harder, observing with satisfaction how Chelsea only continued to silently play, tears rolling down her cheeks. She’d tired of this only when Lily’s mother yelled “Pizza’s here!” from the kitchen.

  No, she probably shouldn’t call Chelsea Buttinsky.

  Back on Main Street, Christopher Shelton spins the dials on his foosball table. The cocoa his mother brought sits cooling by the door, untouched. Why is she always forcing that shit on him? It makes him sick to his stomach. He pops the ball halfheartedly with one of the players on the right-hand side of the table, stops it from scoring with his left-hand goalie. He likes the sound of the spinning rods, how something in them ticks when he rolls the handles off his palms. There is a hypnotic draw to this: standing, staring at the table, watching the ball move back and forth across the painted field. He lets his eyes blur, and the foos men double, triple. There is an army of foos men. He feels almost sleepy considering them, and so he closes his eyes, and then he opens them again, and then he goes to lie on his bed and closes them again.

  He dreamed last night about that day at the tennis court, and in his dream he had suddenly realized that it was Emily, not Leanna, going down on him, and the feeling accompanying this realization was at first relief, and then fear. He recalls the dream now, punishing himself. What is he afraid of?

  2.

  Susanna drives straight to Harper Hill, but by the time she arrives, the van Dale mentioned—the one marked KSP FORENSIC LABS—is gone. There is a single state police cruiser on the shoulder, and she thinks for a second of stopping, telling him who she is, demanding an answer. But some fear kicks in. Of authority? Perhaps. Or maybe just of getting confirmation. She won’t be able to believe what a stranger on the side of the road tells her, no matter what kind of uniform he is wearing. She will only believe Tony.

  She thinks then of going to her mother. She ought to. If the gossip mill came through for Dale on this one, it is only a matter of time before someone calls Susanna’s mother. Better for Susanna to prepare her—to assure her that nothing yet is certain, no matter what people are whispering. That the police haven’t even reached out to her. You can’t know anything until the police tell you so, can you? If it weren’t for Dale’s nosiness, why, she’d still be in the same position she was in yesterday: wondering, yes, and worrying, certainly—but also hoping. Dale stole her hope, but that doesn’t mean she has to steal her mother’s.

  She brakes suddenly and grips the steering wheel until she can feel the rubber parting beneath her fingernails. The sob seems to come from outside of her—or rather, she feels outside of herself, the sob lodged in the body she left behind. Had she hoped? Really?

  Her thoughts race. She imagines leaning over a casket. Ronnie, her eyes closed, her small hands folded across her rib cage. Susanna wonders how she would dress her, what Ronnie would want. Not a dress—does her sister even own one? Susanna remembers a blouse, oddly prim and old-fashioned: cream-colored satin, a ruffle on the collar, a line of fabric-covered buttons along the cuffs of the sleeves. She wears it to wedding showers. She had worn it to a funeral. Always with trousers, mannish, shapeless black trousers that look almost comical with that exaggeratedly feminine blouse.

  She was a user, Susanna. She used people.

  Say it’s Ronnie in the woods. Not a body in the hospital, the blood pressure monitor a sudden flat line, the arms snaked with IVs. Not a very old body, in bed, face slack with peace. Not a body behind the steering wheel of a wrecked car, like their father’s body—a body too bruised and battered to display at the funeral but not so bad that they couldn’t look at him privately, say their angry, grudging good-byes. No. Ronnie, in the woods. A found thing, a discarded thing. There is a truth here, a terrible truth that Susanna wants to walk away from, leave buried, and it occurs to her that this is why she left home, left Dale. Not to find a cop and get answers. Not to tell her mother. So that she can hide from this truth awhile longer.

  She can’t go back. She can’t go forward. Where does she go? The car isn’t even in park; she has been holding the brake down with such force that she has to think to unlock her knee.

  3.

  Tony is just driving past Wyatt’s, noting with a sinking stomach the still-empty driveway, when the radio crackles, then beeps: “Available units, we have a call at the Advance Auto on Sweetbriar. Please copy if you’re in the area.”

  Tony waits. He is perhaps two miles from the Advance Auto, could be there in a minute with sirens running, but everything is close in Roma. He trusts that someone else can take it. Anyway, he isn’t even supposed to be on duty right now—or is he? Maybe he has been on duty so long that his next shift has, technically, started.

  “This is Eight oh eight, dispatch. I’m out by Wal-Mart.”

  “Eight oh four, dispatch. I’m at the Pantry on the bypass.”

  “Eight oh four, why don’t you take it. You’ll be meeting an ambulance. Situation appears to be assault and battery, two men involved, both down.”

  “Inside or outside the store?”

  “Out in the parking lot, Eight oh four. Employees noticed the disturbance and came outside.”

  “Copy, dispatch. I’m on my way.”

  “Eight oh eight, stand by for backup.”

  Tony finds himself driving in the direction of Sweetbriar. It is more or less on his way, and his curiosity is piqued. He will take a look, make sure the situation is stable. Then he’ll try Wyatt’s again one more time before giving in and going home, to bed. He is so tired that he has to remind himself to care about all of this: his job, Susanna’s feelings, his essential obligation to do the right thing. He has to remind himself that these things will be just as important to him—even more important—on the other side of
that much-needed night’s sleep.

  4.

  “Are you coming down with something?” Jan asks. “You haven’t been yourself all day. Or yesterday, for that matter.”

  Sarah has been staring at the computer screen, eyes unfocused, and she tries to focus them now. She was about to type something into Mr. Anderson’s file—something about his meds—but she has forgotten what. She pinches her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. “Um. No. I mean, I’m OK.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just tired.”

  Jan points to the clock. “Go on and take off. The girls will be here in a little bit, and I can hold down the fort until then.”

  Sarah nods and picks up her purse. She looks around, confused, feeling as if there’s something she has left behind. “Oh,” she says. She waves her hand, as if beckoning Jan to supply the words that have eluded her, and Jan’s brows draw in confusion. Sarah’s brain is fogged; it is like a morning after too many beers. “You know. Mr. Anderson.”

  “You want me to log in that dose for you?”

  “Yes,” Sarah says, practically sighing with relief.

  “You should go home,” Jan says. “Take some vitamin B and scramble yourself an egg.”

  Sarah manages a wan smile. “You know how I feel about eggs.” Her stomach clenches; she hasn’t been able to stomach more than a bowl of cereal today, and nothing at all since Wyatt’s call.

  “That’s why you’re so peaked.”

  Sarah sketches a halfhearted wave of good-bye, slips into her winter coat, and draws her purse strap over her shoulder. She is the one feeling scrambled, her thoughts disconnected and contradictory, her body so tired and weak it seems mired in quicksand and yet restless, so that she hasn’t been able to stop herself all day from jostling a leg or thumping out a rhythm on the tabletop with her thumb. The worst thing is that she feels short of breath. Her passageways aren’t constricted—the right amount of oxygen is entering and exiting—and yet her chest feels weighted, compressed. When she was in her twenties, she had a tabby cat named Peggy Sue who would climb up on her breasts as she slept. Sarah would be dreaming about drowning, or about being held down in a fight, and she would struggle to wakefulness to realize that the cat was a heavy, tight ball on top of her, ridge of its bony spine tucked against her chin. “The little shit’s trying to kill me,” she complained to her friends, and she had to at last start putting the cat out of her bedroom at night and learn to sleep through its steady, plaintive cries. Eventually, when Peggy Sue died of old age, she had to learn again to sleep without them.