The Mercy of the Night

by David Corbett

  I’d put on a dress for him—what’s that tell you?

  I still don’t know how to describe it all. Again, he acted nice to me and I know he liked me, he talked to me and said nice things, but he was impatient this time. No kisses, no touchy-touchy spider hands. He reached up under my dress and I wanted him to, but then I got scared and he pulled away. You like this, you know you do, you said so.

  He sounded mad, didn’t occur to me it might be guilt. And in my family, when people get mad, you do what they want. It’s like the code. Angriest person wins.

  And so I lay back down and let him do what he came for. He was smart enough to put a towel underneath me, probably picked that one up in Penthouse or something. I was so scared I barely felt it, though I knew it hurt and I was grateful it went quick.

  He couldn’t look at me after. Just sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over, back turned. I wasn’t so pretty anymore.

  Then—this is kinda strange—he started to cry. And I went over to him and put my hand on his arm. He flinched like I’d shocked him but didn’t get up, just sat there, one hand covering his face, the other reaching blind for mine. He took it, held it.

  We sat like that for, I dunno, five minutes, ten. Then he let go of my hand and got up off the bed, turning to look at me finally. Way he smiled—all sad but kind, too, and, you know, ashamed—I knew he wouldn’t be coming over anymore.

  He left and I threw the towel out, stuffed it way down at the bottom of the trash, and when Richie came back he was furious. I don’t know what Eastwood said exactly but Richie wanted to strangle me. Not because of what I’d done, or what I’d let happen, but because Eastwood seemed bent out of shape or unhappy or something.

  Richie grabbed my arm and shook me. What the hell did you do? I did what you told me to, I was nice, but I didn’t tell him that. I figured I’d messed everything up but I didn’t know how so I didn’t want to say anything.

  Richie said if I ever told anyone about what went on, Mom especially, he’d tie me up in a sack with stones in it and throw me in the river. And I could tell by his face and his voice he wasn’t just making that up. He’d thought about it.

  I hated going home after that. Mom was always angry, or disappointed, nothing new in that. Now Richie was too, more than before, and even though I kinda hoped Eastwood might come back I thought maybe that wasn’t the best thing in the world. In fact, maybe it was the worst thing.

  I was wrong about that, obviously.

  It wasn’t all that long between Eastwood and the Cope thing, but I don’t remember much about it. That whole period of time is kind of a blur. You know a lot about what happened after that, all the stuff you read, but here’s what you don’t know.

  At one point, when he’s doing what he did to me—Cope, I mean—I could tell he’d figured it out. He wasn’t the first guy I’d had. That was his trip, or part of it, but now I’ve spoiled it for him, and everything stopped. His eyes went steely and I was so damn scared he was going to kill me right there. So I just started talking. Didn’t know what else to do. I told him all about Richie and Eastwood and how I wasn’t worth anything anymore. I thought if I disgusted him, he wouldn’t want me, and he’d let me go.

  I wasn’t all that wrong. He did leave me there. Went off to get what he’d need to kill me and bury me and make sure I stayed buried. Maybe he found out who my dad was, too, caught it off the news, and that just made him want to ditch me quicker. He wasn’t just dealing with an eight-year-old now. He was dealing with a man who could call out a hit from inside, and that meant life on the run. Forever.

  Whatever the reason, he stayed away long enough for me to chew through the leather on my wrist cuffs and pull the ankle chain out of the wall. I didn’t know what time was until that day. Hour after hour after hour, every second feeling like a bomb going off. But I did it. I was free. For a couple hours.

  Ran through the woods to the road and some guy picked me up—I lied about who, nice guy, didn’t want to come forward, I’ll tell you about that later, it’s not important. Except the lying part. Seemed like everybody needed me to lie about something. But I wound up at the hospital, and the nurse is in the middle of the rape kit when two detectives from here show up.

  Older one’s name was Daddeo. Young one, Skellenger. Guy you talked to today. I saw him too. Told me the best thing for everybody would be if I just skipped town.

  I tried. Here I am.

  They told the nurse to take a break and she argued but they wouldn’t leave, so she did. I really wish she hadn’t, but I understand. Daddeo sits down next to me, one-cheeking the examination table, that thin waxy paper crackling under his butt, and he looks at me like I’m the cause of all his headaches but he forgives me. Maybe.

  He says they don’t have much time. If Marina Bacay is still alive, they need to act quick. So start at the beginning, tell us everything. Now.

  I did. And when I got to the part about Cope taking off, what had happened just before, what I told him about Richie and Eastwood, the two of them looked at each other like I’d just pissed on the floor, then Daddeo lifts his hand. Okay, he says, that’s good. That gives us something to go on. If you can backtrack to the house where he had you hid, that’d be good, we’ll send some people up there quick.

  But I want you to do something for us, he said. I want you to wait for your mother to show up before discussing this with anyone else but us. Can you do that? Talk to no one. Not the nurse, not the doctors, nobody. Not till you’ve talked it out with your mom.

  My mom shows up not long after that. She talks with Daddeo and Skellenger first, then comes in to deal with me.

  I said she was mad a lot back then. She was never madder than she was with me in that room. Locked the door. Said: You listen and you listen good. All this nonsense about Richie, about his friend. You forget about it. You say nothing about it ever again. Never. Anything that happened there, it’s nobody’s business but the family’s. And the family will take care of it. But to the police, to the doctors, to anybody else who ever asks, there is only one man who ever touched you and it’s that piece of shit who took you off the street—do I make myself clear? He’s the one who deserves to suffer. And if the police or anyone else ever asks you about Richie or any of his friends, you pretend you made it up. You were confused, you were scared. That sick freak, that animal, he scared you. You were afraid if you told the truth he’d come back and find you and finish what he started.

  And hear me good: You’ll wish he had if you ever bring up your brother’s name again.

  And so I changed my story. There was no Eastwood. There was only Victor Cope. I told that lie at the prelim, told it at trial, told it to the press. Recited it so often I kinda believed it myself. I described in sick, twisted detail just what Cope did to me, except he didn’t, not all of it. He did plenty, don’t get me wrong, and I hope he rots in hell for it. I didn’t lie about that. But the part about him raping me and using a condom so he didn’t leave any stuff behind, my mom coached me on that part. And then everyone said what a brave girl I was, how courageous I was to tell the ugly truth about this horrible man. And I told myself that this is what the world is like. Truth is no match for evil. Only children believe such things.

  And I wasn’t a kid anymore. That part of my life was over.

  Cope sat there during trial staring at me, knowing I was lying—smiling, like he’d get the last laugh. But he didn’t. The DA made sure the public defender couldn’t go into anything outside my direct testimony, and he didn’t have much stomach for even that. No way Cope was gonna take the stand himself. Nobody’d believe him. They believed the brave little girl.

  Cope went away, everyone said justice was done. Secretly, though, I could feel it. Everybody wondering if there wasn’t something else, something I wasn’t saying. I didn’t know Cope wrote the judge till you showed me that letter, but I had this sense the whole time that it’d leaked out
somehow anyway. Or people just made it up. Because when all was said and done it wasn’t supposed to be me who escaped.

  Here comes the worst part.

  Somewhere in all that, Eastwood disappeared. Nobody knew at first, his foster parents just kept pretending he was around so that the county would keep sending money, but finally a teacher spoke up, I guess, and CPS asked some questions but everybody figured he just ran away. Thirteen, he woulda been at that point. Didn’t even make the news, his disappearing.

  I knew he didn’t just leave. Richie wouldn’t talk to me anymore, wouldn’t look at me. But he didn’t bother me, either. I just stopped existing.

  Mom said I should be grateful there were people in my life willing to look after my best interests. And Pete Navarette started spending a lot more time at the house, paying more attention to my mom.

  Burkhead was his last name. Clint Burkhead. I don’t know for a fact they killed him. I don’t know if Richie was involved, if they made him do it or just made him watch or if none of that happened. But I think about it almost every day, even though I try not to. I’m supposed to be grateful but I’m not, I hate them for making me part of it and I want to know what happened to him.

  If you help me with that, if you help my brother because he’s the key in all this, you help him with Eastwood and you help me come clean about Cope—because I’m sick of carrying that around, I’m sick of living a lie, being a lie, I’m tired of being angry and scared all the time, and I know he’ll file papers for a new trial and everybody—absolutely everybody—will hate me. I’m going to need you. I’m going to need somebody to be on my side. I need at least one person to believe me.

  You do that, I’ll help with Damarlo. I’ll come forward and tell what I saw and what Teddy Buker told me. I mean, it’s not like D-Lo’s innocent, but I can let them know what I know. Maybe that’ll help. You know better than me.

  But if you want no part of all that, no part of me, I’ll understand. Trust me. I’ll get my clothes, make like a baby and head out.

  What time is it? Jesus, three o’clock. La hora de los fantasmas. My abuela used to call it that. The hour of ghosts. Or dead time—that’s what they called it on Paranormal State. Kinda weird when you think about it.

  69

  Summoned from bed after three hours’ sleep, Skellenger stood outside the fire-gutted house, the air still reeking of smoke and unspent gas tinged faintly with chlorine from so much water. Hoses snaked from the hydrants to the scene, the house a total loss, just a blackened husk, fire crews still checking for reflash as they went in with their axes and rakes and Halligan tools to start the overhaul.

  A handful of news vans had shown up—they were putting in some real work the past eighteen hours—and he could imagine the beguiling simplicity of the angle: a fireman is murdered, followed by a deadly fire. Possible connection? We’ll have the details after these messages.

  Which was good, he supposed. It meant they were no longer hanging out at Nina Garza’s house, but that would change. One of the two charred bodies inside the wreckage belonged to LeQuan Joiner, if their anonymous phone tip proved true.

  A second body, found in back, belonged to a hulk in a nice suit, a guy named Hector Mancinas, one of Pete Navarette’s men—he’d been polite enough to have his wallet in his pocket when someone altered his face with close-range buckshot.

  The third body, found nearby, remained as yet unidentified, but one of the pickups parked on the street belonged to a Theodore Buker, and the address on the registration was back in town, not here. Time would tell what that meant, he supposed.

  As for suspects?

  He’d just spent twenty minutes across the street in the home of Rose Bolander—tartan robe, blue-veined feet tucked into sheepskin slippers, gray hair coiled into wiry pigtails—the mother of Skip Hoskins and Derek Short, Irish twins from different fathers.

  Skip was on parole for sale of stolen car parts—catalytic converters, valued for the platinum: “harvesting cats” it was called. Derek had recently posted bond for possession of piperidine and cyclohexanone, precursor chemicals for the manufacture of phencyclidine: PCP, Angel Dust, Ozone, Hog. Yes, there were those who still made it. Used it. And they had mothers.

  From the corduroy armchair in her knotty pine den, the paneling stained from years of nicotine, Rose had stubbed out her cigarette into a beanbag ashtray and said, “All I heard was smashed glass. That and some shouting—jibber jabber, couldn’t make none of it out, Mex’can, Ebonics, whatever. By the time I got outta bed, found my specs, got myself decent, and went to the front, whole damn house over there was on fire. Pretty quick I heard gunshots and so I killed the lights and hunkered down.”

  “What about the cars parked in the middle of the street,” Skellenger said, “blocking the way in?” There’d been two, both stolen, the interiors getting printed now.

  She lipped a Kent from its crumpled pack and lit up with a flip-top lighter, the flame brightening her face, all pockmarks and crow’s-feet and roughshod flesh.

  “Why not admit that you guys are as much at fault for that fire and whatever else happened over there as anybody? You and the firefighters hadn’t held tight for your pay, city wouldn’ta gone belly-up and the northtown firehouse would still be open. You guys hadn’t decided to trade staffing for your goddamn wage rate, force wouldn’t be cut down to squat. That gave the green light to every asshole this end of the state. Set up here knowing they could do as they goddamn please.”

  She tapped away a crumble of ash. Hand spotted with age, arthritic knuckles.

  “We tried to contact the owner, fill him in on what was going on, tell him they’d turned the place into a magnet for fuckheads, but he was nowhere to be found. Called the bank that foreclosed, they said it’s not their problem, contact the owner. Round and round. Merry-go-fuck-yourself. Called the sheriff, you guys, anybody else we could think of. Same deal. Jig who answered the door waved a phony lease and that was that. Whole damn situation out here is screwed. So tonight one bunch of monkeys shows up to teach another bunch a lesson. Big surprise. But hear me out: comes time to point the finger at who’s to blame for that fire, don’t forget to check the goddamn mirror.”

  Thank you, Rose, for your candor.

  Yes, Derek and Skip would get a visit, and he could imagine the wisecracks. You telling us a soul brother burned up in the fire? We call that a coonflagration. But that wasn’t what weighed on him at that moment. That privilege belonged to Jacqi Garza.

  The girl had a strange black genius for returning to relevance. A simpleton could connect the dots. Why couldn’t she listen and just leave town? Why couldn’t the mother do what she promised, find the kid and get her the fuck outta Dodge?

  With his luck he suspected they’d find the phone buried somewhere in the ashes, damaged but not destroyed, and for a moment he indulged the fantasy that a fourth body would get found right there along with it. A girl’s.

  Pissy little notion. Cheap and chickenshit and creepily pragmatic.

  Don’t, he thought. Just don’t.

  70

  They finally tucked her up in blankets so she could sofa up and get some sleep. Sister Strict had given way to Sister Nurse again and she said she’d come in after two hours and wake her, make sure she hadn’t blacked out—that was the danger, she said, with concussions—but Jacqi doubted she’d ever drift off. Every time she closed her eyes, five seconds max, they popped back open, her thoughts sparking around inside her brain and this invisible hippo on her chest.

  With all the kicking and flipping under the blankets, she woke the dog. He whimpered and rose and shook, then came over and nosed her hand, so she scruffed his spiky ears and smiled into the hazed white eyes, shrinking from the hot stench of his panting breath but thinking: Let’s run away, Noble.

  But he was exactly where he belonged. Old dog. Lucky dog.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.
>
  The dog stopped panting for a second, rested his chin on the edge of the couch. His tail wagged once, just once, and slow.

  “I’m scared but it’s different. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know who I am.”

  She ran the backs of her fingers across the stiff bristly fur of his jowls, scratched a spot between his ear and the hinge of his jaw. How wonderful, she thought, to be old and stinky and lucky and blind and loved.

  In the dim glow cast by the light over the sink, Tierney attacked the clutter on the kitchen table, collecting the dusty papers and magazines, delivering them in piles to the floor. It was just before dawn.

  Cass said, “You’re not really going to make her testify, are you?”

  Barefoot, robe cinched tight, she stood framed by the cabinets with their frosted glass panels, one arm folded across her midriff, the other hoisting her mug of tea.

  He squeezed out a wet sponge at the sink, then went back to the table, wiped away the cup rings, the sprinklings of pepper and salt, the hardened beads of spilled jam. “You should try to catch some sleep.”

  “Maybe later. Answer my question.”

  He toweled the tabletop dry. “I’m trying to think of a way for her not to. Testify, I mean.” Reaching into the travel case, he hefted the yearbooks out and plopped them down on the table, organizing them by school.

  “She’s been through enough. Make her testify, she has to go through it all over again. And more.”

  “I get that.” He offered a grateful smile. “I appreciate this. What you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Looking out. For her.”

  “It’s you I’m concerned about.”

  “Liar.”

  “Oh go to hell.”

  He chuckled. “I stand by what I said. I appreciate what you’re doing.”

  She pushed off from the corner and padded across the linoleum floor, flipped on the overhead light, then pulled out a chair and dropped down into it, terrycloth tush connecting to the tapered wood with a muffled thump. “You told me what I needed to hear. Showed me what I needed to see. And I’ve had my chance to see her up close and personal, more so than I bargained for. I’m not scared of her anymore.”