Mick knew that he had given Grace room to ditch him once more. Well, hell. He was hurt and mad, but finally, at least, he knew what he was going to do. He wouldn’t leave without JJ.
A tap on his window.
“See your license, registration, proof of insurance?”
His bowels nearly loosened. “Sure.” He was amazed he could speak.
The policeman waited.
Mick fumbled around in the glove compartment. Thank god! The registration. “Uh, I slept in a rest stop last night and a guy mugged me. Took my wallet. My license. I’m just here to pick up my sister and her sick friend, take them back home. Kind of a mercy mission.” Would the lying ever stop?
“Proof of insurance?”
“My dad carries that. He loaned me his car for the trip. Didn’t give it to me. Forgot.”
“Step out of the car please.” The policeman moved back from the door and unbuttoned his holster.
“Everything okay, Mick?” Grace. Walking toward them. Towing JJ.
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Mick said getting out. “This officer’s just checking to make sure I’m not—”
“Bothering anybody,” the policeman finished for him.
“He’s just picking us up,” Grace said. “He’s taking us … home.”
“Which is?” the officer said, glancing at Grace but examining JJ more closely.
Grace looked at Mick.
He nodded his head, hoping she understood that he thought it was okay to tell the officer.
“Montana,” she said. “Above St. Regis.”
The officer looked at Grace. Gave JJ another once-over. Then at Mick, his scar, his clothes still dusty from the construction job. The man’s patrol car radio squawked. He checked the phone on his belt. Then looked back at Grace. “You trust this boy?” he asked her.
Boy.
“Yes, sir,” Grace said, without taking her eyes off the man. “He saved us from some guys. Brought us here.”
The car radio squawked again. “Where you taking them?” He canted his head, directing this question Mick’s way.
“Home,” Mick said. “Just home.” Couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The officer dragged a card out of his shirt pocket. Walked over and handed it to Grace. “You have any trouble again, any, you call me. Davis. Dispatch can reach me.” He looked at her hard to make sure she got it.
She nodded.
He looked at the Pontiac’s Montana plate, wrote the number down on a folded file card, and was out of there before the three of them moved.
Water rimmed Grace’s eyes. And then JJ was crying.
Pretty tense. All Mick felt right then was relief, but he wanted to get moving before the man came back or anything else happened. “Let’s roll.” He was thinking to go back the northern route, fewer cops than the freeway.
JJ started toward the car.
“You two go,” Grace said.
JJ stopped in her tracks.
“You can’t talk me out of it,” Grace said. “There’s nothing for me in Portage. I can’t even hide there anymore.” She fumbled in her jeans pocket and brought out two twenties. Handed it to JJ who was back at her side. “Buy some gas, food, get going. I’ll be okay.”
“No, you won’t!” JJ blurted. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”
Was this JJ? Grace had said the girl was depressed. Mick had never heard her speak so forcefully.
“Hey, Lady Jay, I love you. You’re my girl. But it’s my life.”
Mick began to feel like a spectator at a tennis match. Didn’t he figure into the equation at all? Guess not.
“You know I’m right,” Grace said, nodding her head as if that little extra effort would convince her friend. “Uh oh, he’s back!”
JJ and Mick wheeled to confront the policeman. But nobody was there. When they turned around, Grace was nearly to the front door of the shelter.
“Take care,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t follow me. I’ll get you arrested!” And then she was inside.
JJ and Mick looked at each other. They knew Grace could think up a quick story that would land both of them in more trouble. They knew she’d do it if it suited her.
54
THEY GOT A CHUNK past Sandpoint when JJ asked Mick to stop.
“You need something?” His shoulders were tight. “We could get gas at Bonners Ferry.”
“Turn around.”
Mick’s first thought was that JJ forgot something. Then he got it.
“We can’t,” Mick said. “Grace is better at this than we are. She’ll jam us up and she’ll skate.”
“Pull over! I mean it.” This, the new JJ.
Mick made the next exit and stopped near a vacant storefront.
“I know what she’s doing, where she got that money,” JJ said. “The forty dollars she gave us? There’s a lot more. She’s prossing.”
You don’t say prossing. Hooking, tricking, even whoring would work.
“It was ugly. Gross … I couldn’t watch it,” JJ said. “On the street with her, see her get the guys. The way she talked and acted. It wasn’t her but it was. She was good at it.” JJ’s eyes were wet again. “I didn’t want to imagine the sex but I couldn’t hardly keep from it. Mostly I stayed at the shelter.” JJ closed her eyes, remembering. “She came home at curfew and cleaned up. Washed herself.” JJ shuddered.
God help him. Mick was getting excited. He knew what JJ was saying. Understood how much it creeped her. And he felt bad for Grace doing something so vulnerable. He thought maybe it was different, like, in a way, her choice. She wasn’t being raped. She was in control. Maybe. But imagining Grace doing it, even with someone else, was making him want her. Sick. But true.
“Are you her friend?” JJ asked Mick. “Really?”
Good question. This whole time, had he been Grace’s friend or her dweeb? Eager. Looking for a crumb.
JJ’s expression was changing, growing disgusted.
“I want to be her friend … I think.” Mick knew there was way more to be said. His attraction to Grace. His desire, craving. How that wasn’t the deeper kind of friendship he had with JJ. Weird, because he felt so much closer to JJ. Easy. Connected … and what about that kiss? When he got right down to it, Mick wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about JJ.
“Turn around,” JJ said. “Before something happens to her.”
* * *
Mick had wet his hair and slicked it down, turned his jacket inside out. JJ had on the ball cap, sideways, and wore a tight pair of slacks she had picked up earlier from the bin at the shelter. Had he ever seen her in anything but sweats or a ball uniform?
JJ was on a metro bench across the street from the lakeside luxury hotel, the busiest part of the promenade. Mick was on the same side of the street down two blocks in the doorway of a florist shop that had closed for the evening. They had a good chance to find her, if, god forbid, she hadn’t moved on to Spokane. More street traffic here, full of tourists, party atmosphere. Grace would see it the same way. Money.
Around ten, Grace stepped out of a Seville, right in front of Macaroni’s, waved, watched the car move away before she straightened up and brushed herself off. Could you brush tricking off?
She walked around the wrought-iron fence between the tables and street, talked to a waitress for a moment, then went inside the restaurant.
Mick didn’t have to signal JJ. The girl was already moving.
Timing would be crucial. Mick headed for the car in the public lot at the wharf. He’d bring it to the restaurant, double-park if he had to. Risk a ticket. He knew JJ would need help.
Mick was right but not the way he expected. By the time he stopped the car, JJ and Grace were already in a loud argument outside the restaurant’s front door. He was out and running in time to see JJ smash Grace right in the face with a ferocious roundhouse. What the? Grace grabbed her nose. JJ grabbed Grace under the right arm and Mick got there to catch her under the left.
People outside dining wer
e standing now.
“Don’t worry,” JJ said to the crowd. “Intervention. My sister. Crackhead! Going residential. Show’s over.”
The new JJ.
They moved Grace to the car and JJ pushed her into the backseat. Slid in beside her.
Mick jumped in front and they were gone. Him and JJ. Hookerjackers. North this time. Roundabout. Up 95 past Sandpoint to Highway 2 and then down through Troy to 56 and home. Small roads. Out of the way. Probably less risky.
JJ asked if there were any rags up front. Grace’s nose was bleeding.
Grace was crying and cursing and every so often groaning when a new wave of pain would pass through. “Goddamn it! I’ll kill you!” Paused to get her breath. “Kill you both.”
Mick could hear JJ shushing her gently, not arguing. In the mirror he could see her holding Grace.
After maybe twenty miles, Grace sat up and JJ let go. Mick wondered if they were going to have another fight the next time they got gas.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Grace sounded like she had the flu.
“Couldn’t let you keep doing that,” JJ said. “You don’t have to. We’ll figure something else.”
“You … basket case!” That burst seemed to take a lot out of Grace. She dropped her voice. “You want them to send me home. Back to California?”
“California?” JJ said. “No way.”
Mick thought he’d heard Grace cry before, but he hadn’t. Not like she started to then, sobbing that took her whole body, possessed it.
JJ sat beside her. Not touching. Letting her grieve.
* * *
They stopped on the outskirts of Sandpoint for gas. “We’re not going to make it,” Mick said, across from a Chevron. They’d spent the money Grace gave them in Coeur d’Alene. The food was already gone. Mick held up the remaining cash. “We’ll wind up probably fifty miles short of Portage. And hungry.”
JJ stared at Grace.
Grace took off her shoe. Removed a thin fold. Peeled off two bills and put the leftover in her jeans pocket. Poked the money at JJ and looked away, out her window.
There was a lot in those two twenties. Seemed like she was giving up on her plan to keep running, at least for now.
Mick pulled across the street and put gas in the car while Grace and JJ went in the mini-mart. They weren’t running now. They were going home.
55
MICK PULLED OFF 2 just before Moyie Springs, took a small road south to the Kootenai River. A paved parking area had three or four RVs and a pickup camper. Mick figured it would be a safe place for a quick nap before they crossed into Montana.
“What are we going to do when we get back?” JJ, after Mick shut off the engine.
He’d been batting that same question back and forth. “I’ll drop you guys off and go look for the sheriff, I guess.”
“We should call Gary and see what’s happened,” JJ said. “Have you called him?” This to Grace.
No reply. Bitter look.
“Have you?” JJ asked Mick.
“Don’t know a thing,” he said.
“You trust the sheriff?”
“Dovey does.”
“I like her,” JJ said. “Maybe you should talk to her.”
“Maybe you should. I think I have to go to the sheriff right away. First. If I don’t, and he sees me, he’ll think I’m still scamming.”
“What about Tim Cassel and his dad?”
Mick was really struck by JJ. She hadn’t mentioned the moon lately. She’d stepped up to the plate. Brainstorming, involved in a way he’d never seen before. Grace had told him JJ’d shut down, pulled a Tina, and Mick remembered the slump of JJ’s shoulders earlier when she and Grace were walking toward the Coeur d’Alene policeman. Not now.
Mick wondered if JJ had ever been needed like this before. To keep a friend from self-destruction. But it wasn’t just that. JJ had started thinking ahead, trying to take care of him.
Maybe the only sane response to having your mom die and being stuck with addicts for years in a rancid trailer was to numb out. Living right on top of people? Putting up with Tina and Jon and how he was treated? No options? Who wouldn’t go inside, daydream? That or go crazy. And in Coeur d’Alene, when Grace started hooking, JJ numbed out. Made sense. She’d learned that from both moms in different ways.
Somehow though, JJ had picked up a new way. Like she’d brought her strength and confidence from sports into the rest of her life, and Mick bet she didn’t even realize she was doing it. You could fold or fight. Grace had forced Mick to learn that. Made him be totally on his own. He thought he could do it again, if he had to, if he didn’t have his dad anymore.
“Well?” JJ broke into Mick’s thoughts. “You don’t think the Cassels are a world-class problem?” Annoyed, as if Mick had been avoiding her earlier question.
Maybe he had. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I was thinking about you. You’ve … you’re different.”
“Goddamn it!” She swatted at him from the backseat. “I’m not stupid! Neither of you knows shit about me. And you don’t care. I’m just around. You ask me places because you want Grace to go. I’m convenient. Period.”
Mick hadn’t fooled her. JJ could see right through him.
She wasn’t done. “I’m … too private … or too out of it. But that doesn’t matter now. This is about you. You have to be ready. You can’t just walk in there like a dummy and let things happen.”
Grace wasn’t reacting, turned away from both of them, sullen, hurting.
Mick was pinned by JJ’s words. He wanted to reassure her. Wanted to deny the charges. But she was right. He’d gone off on Grace for using him but he’d done the same thing to JJ. Gotten to know her so maybe she could help find a place to live if his dad took off again. Invited her places so Grace would go. Was it true? Did he really not care?
Mick clicked the car’s electrics on for a moment and lowered the windows. A breeze came in off the water, the river moving so massively it was barely audible.
Mick did care. He could feel it but he couldn’t explain it. Just as well. If he tried right now, JJ’d think he was lying. And, JJ was right. He couldn’t just walk into the sheriff’s office and expect things to go well. He had been wanted for questioning and he ran. Fugitive. Wrong and illegal. Now he’d have to prove he didn’t kill the girl.
Before Portage, Mick needed to learn what Grace and JJ knew, but right now neither one was in any mood to talk to him. They’d get over it. He started the car and headed back to the highway. He’d stop again when they got closer to home, when their anger had passed, when they could pool information.
* * *
They made it about a half hour into Montana before JJ asked Mick to pull over for a bathroom break. Mick thought there’d be something in Troy but it was close to dawn and the town was completely buttoned up. Ten or fifteen minutes later they hit a rest area at the intersection of Bull Lake Road.
JJ was out of the car immediately, heading for the Women’s. Grace was asleep. Mick’s head ached and his eyes burned from straining to watch for animals crossing the dark two-lane. A good-sized buck could wreck a car. He rested his chin on his chest and shut down for a minute.
JJ opening the car door jerked him awake.
“Where’s Grace?” JJ asked, sounding tired herself. “She go in the bushes?”
Mick spun around. Gone. Grace was gone. They both jumped out of the car and scanned the parking area. There were two other cars. They checked those first. Single men, asleep. JJ went back to the toilets, searched them. Nothing. Could she have gotten in a car that had already pulled out? Mick had been so wiped he hadn’t noticed other cars when they arrived. It was possible.
JJ hustled back to the Bonnie, leaned on it. “Hang on,” she said, catching her breath. “I don’t think she trusts men enough to hitch a ride in the dark or even wake those sleeping guys. I watched her. She only goes with guys she chooses. She’s out here somewhere, gonna wait till light to find somebody to take her bac
k to Coeur d’Alene. That’s her best bet.”
They calmed down and looked the rest area over more carefully. The truck parking area was empty save for a Forest Service pickup with a man in the driver’s seat eating a sandwich. Neither Mick nor JJ thought Grace would hitch with a government person. They’d ask him later if they needed to. Moved to a different vantage point and saw behind them, across the parking lot from the toilets, a metal enclosure for the dumpster. JJ motioned Mick to follow and sneaked over.
It was too tall to see inside, but when JJ opened the gate, Grace was sitting on the far side on a pile of balloony orange plastic trash bags. She rose without speaking and walked directly to the women’s bathroom. JJ went with her and Mick started the car.
56
WHEN GRACE got in the front seat Mick could smell onions, probably fast food remains from the garbage area. She looked beat, hopeless.
JJ got in beside her. Crowded but workable for a short distance. “We need to get off the highway and talk.”
Mick wheeled the car out of the rest area and onto Bull Lake Road. A mile down, took a right on a dirt road and pulled off shortly at the entrance to a range gate. Parked and left the car to stretch for a minute. He came back to JJ and Grace standing beside the car, talking. Interrupted.
“Me making the 911 wrecked it,” Mick said, voicing what he’d been thinking. He looked at Grace to get a read.
Her hands were clasped in front of her, her eyes on the ground. “You should’ve let me alone,” she said. “I can’t go back, now.”
“What do you mean?” Mick asked.
“I was working with them before. Now they’re going to be suspicious.”
“Them who?” JJ.
“Hammond and all his guys.”
“Doing what?” Mick asked, but while his stomach churned, something else slid into place. “Do Hammond and his guys have these, wear these V-rings?”
Grace nodded. Said, “I think so.”
“Like who?” Mick asked.
“Cookie told me Sam Hammond started it back in high school after the school football and basketball teams won their league.”
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