Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar sight. I turned roughly in Ralphie’s arms. ‘Luna!’ I shouted.
There was something wrong with my vocal cords, all right. Luna didn’t seem to hear me at all.
GRAHAM, THE PRESENT
‘So what do we do?’ Leon asked.
‘This guy’s not in Black Cat,’ Graham said. ‘It’s too small. He knows we’d find him here. I say we go into Codderville—’
‘Not the bowling alley again!’ Leon said.
Graham shuddered. ‘God no! If I never see that place again it’ll be too soon.’
‘Huh?’ Hollister said.
Graham shook his head. ‘Never mind. No, I think we look for low-rent places he could—’
‘Nothin’s lower rent than the bowling alley,’ Tad said.
‘I’m talking for him to stay at. Like sleazebag motels, trailer parks, pay-by-the-week places,’ Graham said.
‘Makes sense,’ Leon said.
‘So how do we find places like that?’ Hollister asked.
Graham took a sheet of folded paper out of his back pocket and shook it open. ‘I Googled them,’ he said.
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
It looked benign enough. There weren’t that many people inside the bowling alley and most of them looked like employees. One group of old people was bowling at the end on the right, but that was it. They certainly didn’t look like bikers. They were making some noise, laughing and cutting up like teenagers – very lame, if you ask me – and there was a jukebox playing oldies really loud, but mostly it was quiet, even if that does sound weird.
There was a little restaurant thing at the front and I thought that would be a good place to sit and watch as people came in. I knew I’d recognize him this time, even if the last time I saw him he was dressed as a girl.
I pointed my head towards the restaurant. ‘Y’all want something to drink?’
Confused faces turned knowing after just a moment. After we’d sat down and all ordered drinks, I asked Lotta, ‘Don’t you have to be at work soon?’
‘I was supposed to be there half an hour ago.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve never not shown up before. It should be OK.’
‘Why don’t you call?’ Megan asked.
‘I don’t want to go to the bathroom here. That’s where I saw the sign for a phone,’ Lotta said.
‘Here, use my cell phone,’ Megan said.
‘Cool!’ Lotta said, taking the phone. ‘Do you all have cell phones? I know Graham always has one.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Our parents want to be able to get hold of us at any time.’
‘Do they have those GPS things in them?’ Alicia asked, eyes huge. ‘I saw that on TV.’
Megan smiled. ‘No. Ours are old. No GPS.’
‘Cool,’ Lotta said, and began dialing the KFC.
E.J., THE PRESENT
‘I swear to God, Luna, you keep ignoring me and I’m going to sic the neighborhood association on you!’ I yelled.
‘Did she just threaten a police officer?’ Velma asked Ralphie.
‘Believe she did,’ Ralphie answered.
Luna sighed and came over. ‘What did she do?’ she asked Ralphie.
‘What didn’t she do is more like it,’ Ralphie answered.
‘I was going after the girls!’ I shouted. ‘They’ve gone after the stalker! Myra’s killer! Four of them out there in a low-rider cruising Codderville looking for trouble! I was following them!’
‘Guess who found trouble first,’ Luna said.
‘I tried to explain to this—’
‘Watch it,’ Luna said.
‘Officer what was going on and to call you but . . .’ I faltered.
Turning to Officer Ralphie, Luna asked, ‘What do you have on her?’
‘Speeding, resisting arrest, leaving the scene, and vehicular menace,’ Ralphie said.
‘Leaving what scene?’ Luna asked.
‘The scene of me giving her a ticket, that’s what scene!’ Ralphie said indignantly.
‘Ralph, there’s no such thing as vehicular menace,’ she said.
Ralphie grumbled, ‘Well there should be.’
‘At what point did she resist arrest?’
‘She just took off in the middle of me giving her a ticket!’ Ralphie said.
Ralphie was getting pissed and I was delighted. Luna had my back!
‘Give her an extra ten on the speeding ticket. That work for you, Ralph?’ Luna asked.
‘Ten what?’ I demanded.
‘Ten miles over,’ Luna said. ‘Ralph?’
‘Make it twenty,’ he countered.
‘I’ll go fifteen,’ Luna said.
‘Hey!’ I said and was generally ignored.
‘Fifteen,’ Ralphie agreed.
‘Wait now!’ I said as Ralphie leaned down to undo the handcuffs. ‘That’s like twenty-five over the speed limit! That’s a lot of money!’
‘You know how much resisting arrest is?’ she asked me.
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘It can’t even be counted in money. Actually, it’s counted in months. Sometimes years. Do you still want to bitch?’
I sighed. ‘Not at all. Thank you, Officer Ralphie—’
‘Burgess!’ he all but shouted. ‘Ralph Burgess!’
‘Sorry, Officer Burgess. And Detective Luna, I thank you—’
‘Where’s your purse?’ she asked, grabbing me by the arm.
‘I got it,’ Velma said, handing my purse through the window area of her fence-wall.
Luna grabbed the purse and hauled me away. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To my car. I’m off duty. We’re going to go look for the girls.’
And with that, we were off.
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
Willis and I stood in the small observation room next to the interrogation room. We watched with Luna’s boss while she interviewed Larry Douglas, the man who had gone upstairs after our kids. The man who’d accosted me at the Lesters’ house.
Luna moved so quickly I jumped. She lunged at Douglas, her face only inches from his. ‘Who paid you to off the Lesters? Who paid you to hit the house last night?’ She knocked the cigarette from Douglas’s mouth. ‘Who?’
‘Swear to God I don’t know shit about Lester. Whoever the hell he is. I just come along last night with Clyde, see. Me and Clyde were in the joint together. I seen him at Scooters yesterday and he says he got a job for me. Pay me five hundred bucks to go to this house and rough up some people. He didn’t say nothing about offin’ nobody. I swear to God.’
Luna sat down in the chair opposite Larry Douglas. ‘You know something, Larry?’ she said. ‘I believe you. ’Cause I don’t think even Clyde would be stupid enough to tell you anything important.’
‘Fuck you, bitch!’ he said.
Luna laughed. ‘Jeez, with a vocabulary like that, maybe you should become a jailhouse lawyer, Lare. Whatcha think?’
Luna left the interrogation room and we met her at her desk. The first thing I asked her was, ‘How’s Clyde? Is he going to be able to talk anytime soon?’
Luna snorted. ‘His jaw’s wired shut. He has a concussion, a lacerated left eye, had to have twelve stitches in his forehead, and three in his scalp, his nose is busted, and his left ear had to be partially sewn back on. But other than that . . .’
‘What’s wrong with his jaw?’ Willis asked.
Pointing a thumb my direction, Luna said, ‘She broke it.’
TWELVE
Why would she go in the bowling alley? That’s so dangerous! It’s those other girls! They’re a bad influence on my Bessie! I have to get her away from them! Correction: I have to get them away from her. That I can do. No sweat.
ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT
We sat and watched as people started arriving. Lotta knew a couple of guys who came in. They waved to her, said, ‘Hey, Lotta! Where’s Graham?’
‘He’ll be here in a minute,’ she said smiling.
They m
oved on. Alicia said, ‘Graham’s coming?’
Lotta shook her head. ‘No. But if I didn’t say that, those two would be over here in a flash trying to hit on all of us.’
‘Me too?’ Alicia said, her eyes huge.
Lotta looked at her. ‘Yeah, hon, you too. What? You think guys don’t look at you? They do.’
Alicia shook her head, making her long hair cover her face even more.
Lotta said, ‘Megan, get a brush and a hair fixer out of my purse,’ as she turned Alicia’s chair around and began pulling back her hair.
‘No, that’s all right . . .’ Alicia began.
‘Hush,’ Lotta said, taking the brush from Megan and using it on Alicia’s hair.
‘No, really . . .’Alicia said.
That’s when I saw it. I’d never known it was there. A scar on Alicia’s face that ran from her hairline to the corner of her eye. It was thick and red and ugly.
‘You got some make-up in that purse?’ I asked Lotta.
‘Yeah,’ she said with difficulty, the hair fixer firmly between her teeth. ‘Meg?’
Megan rummaged through Lotta’s large bag until she came up with a smaller bag full of make-up. I opened it, found some concealer and foundation and went to work on the scar. And while I was there, I just kept on going. By the time Lotta and I were through, there was a different girl sitting in the chair. A girl with a pretty face and striking eyes, a strong chin, and a turned-up nose. Who knew?
‘My God, Alicia,’ Megan said. ‘You’re hot!’
The skin under the foundation make-up turned red, but you could barely tell with all the goop I had on her.
‘You’re gorgeous!’ Lotta said.
‘You should wear your hair back all the time!’ Megan said.
‘I can’t,’ Alicia said, her voice soft.
‘Oh! You mean that scar?’ Megan said. ‘That’s nothing! Look at these freckles! Some as big as a dime!’
‘No one asks you where you got the freckles,’ Alicia said, head down and voice soft. ‘But everyone asks me where I got the scar. That’s why I wear my hair like this.’
‘Is that why you wear those jumpers and sweaters all the time? Do you have more scars?’ Lotta asked her quietly.
Alicia shook her head. ‘No. They’re just all the clothes I got,’ she said. ‘It’s an outfit that goes together. I know it’s hot out, but it goes together.’
I could feel tears springing to my eyes. I’d known Alicia for months and never knew about the scar, or about the lack of clothes. She didn’t just have a lot of those jumpers and sweaters, she just had the one ‘outfit’. And washed it over and over. I turned away to get myself back together, and said, ‘Well, you need to mix and match. Specially in the summer months,’ I said, trying to find that inner spunk my mother had. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go through my closet and see what goes with that jumper. And maybe add some shorts.’
‘I’ve got a whole bag of clothes that don’t fit me anymore,’ Lotta said, ‘and I don’t have any little sisters or cousins to hand them down to. I’m the only girl. So, we’ll pretend you’re my little sister, OK?’
Alicia smiled. Then we heard a low voice say, ‘Hey, gorgeous.’
We all looked up to see a grown man towering over us, staring straight at Alicia. Her smile faded and she grabbed my hand. Looking around us, we noticed that while we were playing makeover, the bikers had invaded the bowling alley.
‘Wanna go for a ride?’ he said. He was at least as tall as my dad, but a lot bigger. Like maybe twice as big, and he was only wearing a leather vest on his top half. He had a do-rag on his head, a drooping mustache like Hulk Hogan, faded jeans stuck into knee-high black leather boots. He had chains hanging from his waist somehow, a studded belt with a silver skull with ruby eyes for a belt buckle. He was scary as shit, excuse my French.
‘We’re waiting for our boyfriends,’ Lotta said.
‘Good, I can eat ’em for an appetizer,’ he said, then laughed like he was channeling the voice of Optimus Prime
Then a woman came up and grabbed his arm. ‘Jail bait, baby,’ she said, and hauled him away. He blew a kiss at Alicia and let the woman, wearing exactly the same thing he was – including just a leather vest covering her ample breasts – drag him away.
Alicia pulled the hair fixer out of her hair. ‘Can we leave now?’ she asked.
Unfortunately she asked too late. The door to the bowling alley opened and a man walked in. Young, not too tall, fair skinned with light brown hair. Someone I recognized immediately. I barely got out the words ‘It’s him!’ before he lifted an assault rifle and began to fire.
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
Clyde Hayden, the bad guy I’d almost killed, was under guard on the top floor, the locked floor, of the hospital. A cop sat in a chair outside the door and another sat inside. The Codderville Police Department was finally paying some attention to what was going on around them.
Clyde looked terrible. The guilt attack I got just looking at him could have felled a lesser woman. His head was swathed in bandages, as was his nose, his left ear, and his left eye – on which he wore a rather snazzy pirate patch, over the bandages. His jaw was indeed wired shut with a tube stuck in one side for breathing and another in the other side for liquids. An IV was plugged in one arm. His good eye looked at us as we came in, finally settling on me, where it stayed, following me as I moved around the room. It wasn’t the most benevolent of eyes.
‘Hey, Clyde, how you doing?’ Luna greeted, sitting down in the chair next to his good side and patting his arm gently. ‘I’m Detective Luna and these are Mr and Mrs Pugh, the people you tried to kill.’
A sound came out of his mouth – not words, just sounds. Luna handed him a blackboard and some chalk. ‘Here you go, fella. Make life a little easier for you. Can you read and write?’
He gave her the look he’d been giving me and scratched out ‘eat shit and die’ on the blackboard.
Luna smiled broadly at us. ‘Well, see now, I told you old Clyde wasn’t an illiterate.’ Turning back to Hayden, she said, ‘Now, Clyde, honey, I want you to write down on that blackboard the name of the person who paid you and old Larry to off this nice family.’ She patted his arm again. ‘You gonna do that for me, darlin’?’
‘Fuck you’ was scratched on the board.
‘Tsk, tsk,’ Luna said. ‘Such language. Well, I guess I’ll tell the prosecutor to go ahead with the death penalty he’s talking ’bout for you two.’
Clyde’s eye got wide and pointed at Willis and me. ‘Their alive!’ he scratched.
Luna laughed. ‘You’re right, they sure are.’ Pointing at the blackboard, she said, ‘And that should be t-h-e-y apostrophe r-e. It’s a contraction, as in “they are.” But a lot of people get those mixed up – they’re, their, and there. It’s a common mistake. Doesn’t make you stupid. Well, that doesn’t, anyway.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not talking about the death penalty for these two,’ she said, indicating Willis and me. ‘They are pretty obviously alive, like you tried to say. I’m talking about the Lester family. You remember? The mama and papa and the little boy you got on the stairs and that pretty little teenaged girl?’
Clyde shook his head so hard one of the bandages loosened. Luna reached up and stuck it, not so gently, back to Clyde’s skin. ‘There you go. Now don’t you go thrashing around like that. We want you nice and healthy for when the State sticks you with that old needle, now don’t we?’
Frantically Clyde scratched out ‘don’t know no Lesters!!!!’
‘You don’t? Well, maybe you didn’t catch their names when you were doing them. It happens.’
Luna looked at Willis and me. ‘Well, you know, whoever hired the hit on you may have hired a separate team to hit the Lesters. But the bad thing is, whoever did, Clyde and Larry are going to go down for it.’ She shrugged and held up her hands in a helpless gesture.
‘We don’t have any other names . . .’ she started.
The scratching sound of chalk on
blackboard stopped Luna. She looked toward the board outstretched in Clyde’s hands. ‘Billy Dave Petrie – Birdsong Road – outside of Brenham.’
Luna smiled and took the blackboard out of Clyde’s hands. ‘Thanks, Clyde. We’ll go talk to Billy Dave. You get well now, you hear?’
As we walked out, I turned toward Clyde. ‘Sorry,’ I said and shrugged. He didn’t look pleased.
GRAHAM, THE PRESENT
I got Hollister, Tad and Leon into the car, Leon having yelled ‘shotgun’ first, sitting in the front seat with me.
‘Where we going first?’ Leon asked, rubbing his hands together like this was some sort of high adventure. He hadn’t been there last time – none of them had. I could tell them for sure this wasn’t high adventure.
‘I’m gonna call Lotta at work, see if she can get off,’ I said.
I saw Leon roll his eyes and heard groans from the back seat. ‘Shit, OK? I’ll just say hi. Damn, y’all.’
I hit the speed dial on my phone for the KFC. Lotta usually picks it up, but this time Tamara, the manager, answered.
‘Hey, Tamara,’ I said, ‘it’s Graham. Lotta there?’
‘No she not. And I’m telling you right now that girl better get her butt in here tomorrow or her ass is grass, you know what I mean?’
‘She’s sick?’ I asked.
‘So she say,’ Tamara said. ‘But I ain’t buying it. That girl don’t sound sick, you know what I mean?’
‘OK, thanks, Tamara.’
‘You tell her—’ she started but I hung up and used speed dial to Lotta’s home number, hoping like hell neither of her parents answered. They didn’t like me.
‘Hello.’ It was Manny, my friend and Lotta’s cousin who lived with her family in Black Cat Ridge so he could go to our high school. He’d gotten in a little trouble at the Codderville High School and the principal, counselors, teachers and his parents all decided it was in the boy’s best interest to go to school elsewhere.
‘Hey, Manny!’ I said. ‘Lotta home? She sick?’
‘What? No, man, she’s at work!’ Manny said.
‘Hey, don’t talk so loud. Don’t let her parents hear. She’s not at work,’ I said.
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