All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

  “Yeah. I know.”

  They got to their feet when they heard steps. Noah saw it was Raine ’cause her hair was so light against the dark. When she got near she nodded at him, he nodded back and the three made for the Buick.

  They spread out the file on the backseat.

  “Shit, there’s a lot here,” Raine said.

  “That ain’t even half of it. I flipped through the rest but it didn’t have no names in it.”

  A couple of the guys were on parole, a couple had been arrested more than once but never held for long. Noah guessed Black would’ve run them down already.

  When Raine was done she laid out the map and circled fifteen houses, stretching across six towns and three unincorporated communities.

  “We’ll start at the nearest and work our way out,” Raine said.

  They set off slow, heading toward the kinda darkness that made Grace seem light.

  *

  It was getting late when Savannah answered the door and for a minute her face fell. The fear, it was irrational, but she caught it quick and stepped aside.

  Their house was lit, every room warm white, soft throws on the sofas and dark wood pieces her parents had gifted them over the years.

  She led Black into the kitchen.

  “Bobby around?”

  “He’s out searching with the other men. Every night now. Is it important?”

  “It can wait, just wanted to run somethin’ by him. I’ll leave you, you’re eating.”

  She saw him glance at the microwave carton and she felt shame creep into her cheeks.

  “I was at Pinegrove, I volunteer there. I was late getting back and I didn’t know what time Bobby was coming in, but he called and said he was stopping out –”

  “I love mac ’n’ cheese too,” he said.

  “Would you like some? There’s another carton.”

  “Sure.”

  They ate in the den and she poured them wine and Black drank it slow, which she guessed was an ask. She knew about him; there was talk as soon as they moved to Grace.

  They’d already spoke a little about Summer and Ava and Joe, about the worry and the fear that Black was fighting hard to play down.

  “Bobby loves her,” she said. “I mean, he loves having her around, talking to her and listening to her play.”

  “Ava reckons she dotes on the two of you.”

  Savannah laughed. “She follows Bobby around almost as much as Samson. But she’s a sweetheart, Black. I remember when we first met her.”

  “She bring you cookies?”

  “Oatmeal raisin.”

  “She drops a batch at the station every Christmas, has done since she was ten. I don’t get near ’em ’cause Rusty’s desk is nearest the door.”

  She laughed.

  “She’s missin’ her lessons,” he said.

  “I’ll make her catch up.”

  He smiled.

  “I once gave her a composition, by Dvořák. It was difficult and she slipped up like I knew she would, and I realized I’d rushed her, and after I felt awful, because I forgot, Black. I forgot she was fifteen and she hadn’t been playing all that long.” She sipped her wine. “A month or so later she sat down and played it again; I didn’t ask, she just played, and she played it near perfect. And she didn’t say anything after, she just got up and bowed and smiled.”

  He finished his drink and she offered him another and he took it.

  “It’s so dark outside. When Bobby opens the door and leaves each morning, it’s just so dark. He works late too.”

  “Must be hard on you,” he said.

  She shrugged like it was nothing, but truth was Bobby didn’t spend his time home with her, not just since Summer ran but since they got to Grace. It was supposed to be a fresh start for them, they drove the fifty miles in his old Honda because he was proud and she loved that about him. For a while it worked, she dressed nice every day, pearls and an apron, hand on hip and a southern smile. She could project like no other.

  “He looked tired when I saw him,” Black said.

  “He’s been out every night, helping Joe Ryan.”

  “That’s decent of him.”

  “He’s a decent man.” She said it flat.

  “Are you all right, Savannah?”

  She stared awhile, not at him. “We live Bobby’s life.” She cleared her throat. “He needed that, after –”

  “I heard about your boy,” Black said, eyes down on his empty glass. “Sorry.”

  “Thank you.” She said it rote. “It’s tough on Bobby . . . his son, you know.”

  “Same for you.”

  “Yes, same for me. Did you ever want children?”

  “I got two; daughters.”

  She looked up. “Oh –”

  “They live with their mother, long way north. She married again.”

  “What happened?” she said, then caught herself. “Sorry.”

  “Life. Sometimes there’s turns you don’t see comin’, you know?”

  “I do.”

  There was something in his face, more than tortured, more than broke.

  “We make our way, heads bowed ’cause that’s the way it is, and by the time we look up ain’t nothin’ the same. I don’t sleep well.”

  “Bobby doesn’t.”

  “We both took roles where good ain’t even in question, or shouldn’t be. We wear masks; what’s under though, it ain’t –” He looked up, met her eye like he forgot he weren’t alone. “It’s just hard.”

  “What is?”

  He smiled. “Being human.”

  She thought of Bobby, of what she had done and how redemption was no longer an offer he could extend. The papers burned hot in the closet. It might ruin him and her but it might not. She couldn’t go on.

  Black finished his drink and he held it like water. He stood and said goodnight.

  When he’d gone she prayed on the flagstones in the kitchen, makeup running lines from her eyes like tears so dark.

  13

  Summer

  Briar girl number three was Lissa Pinson. Lissa was the girl that turned things, the girl that got the state cops down and Briar County cold with fear. Lissa lived in Whiteport, around sixteen miles from where Della Palmer was taken. Lissa’s house was wide but metal, the yard tended but the grass brown and dry. Lissa’s daddy was a deacon at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, which’d been on the news when the Panic began ’cause two of their members were arrested. Peter Falcon and Derry Malcolm—both were seventeen when they broke into their high school and sprayed the word “satin” in big red letters on the gymnasium walls. Satin.

  Lissa was reported missin’ on a Thursday afternoon after she failed to show at school. Her parents spent the mornin’ searchin’ before they called in Ernie Redell, sheriff of Briar County. I saw Ernie on the news that night; he’s got the kinda silver hair that works for him. That’s when Black came into school and we sat and listened as he told us about the Briar girls and how they was just like us. We got letters sent home with us and were told to be inside before the sun dropped and to keep an eye out for each other.

  Ernie couldn’t narrow down where exactly Lissa was taken, but we saw a map of Whiteport with the route she walked marked out in red like a trail of blood. Lisa’s daddy remembered seein’ a white van idling outside the church a couple weeks prior, but when he’d crossed the street the van had driven off quick.

  Lissa had a boyfriend who went to the Maidenville Academy, but he was church good and had it that all they did was catch a movie and grab a milkshake and hold hands. “Yeah, ’cause that’s why he went with a girl from Whiteport,” Raine had said, rollin’ her eyes.

  *

  Daddy bought books for me. I ain’t exactly sure where he got them but he’d come back from the road with a heavy stack and leave them by the stairs. I’d carry them up in batches, real careful, ’cause books are somethin’ precious. They thought it was funny, my parents. They watched me reading like they couldn’t figure
me out, especially when Raine was sat beside me watchin’ a movie.

  Bobby and Savannah had a room in their place with bookshelves on every wall like it was a library.

  Daddy didn’t check they were right for me. I had a couple Encyclopaedia Britannicas and would go on beggin’ for more whenever that commercial ran.

  When I was ten years old I read about Emma Bovary and all that shit she got up to ’cause she was bored of her place in life. I ain’t sure if Flaubert found that precise word he was lookin’ for but it’s a book I’ve read maybe fifty times.

  “What’s this one?” Raine said. She was pullin’ out books from under my bed, her butt in the air.

  I looked down. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”

  “She’s got a set like Anna Nicole,” Raine said, smiling. “And she’s smokin’ a pipe. She’s No Angel. Does Daddy know you got this one? It looks filthy.”

  I laughed.

  “Can I read it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, knowin’ she wouldn’t.

  “Five hundred pages. Did you fold ’em at the good bits?”

  “No.”

  She slid it back, disappointed.

  She climbed up on the bed and lay beside me, her head on my shoulder.

  “You nervous about the math test?”

  “I ain’t even thought about it,” I said.

  “I wish we didn’t have to go. We could be like them Deamers, homeschooled. Abby reckons there’s thirty kids on their land, all kin. They even built ’em a classroom so they can learn together.”

  “You want Momma as your teacher?” I said.

  “Fuck, no. I’d get in more shit than I do at school.”

  “I ain’t sure that’s possible.”

  She laughed. She’s got the sweetest laugh, but then Pastor Lumen said the devil takes many forms.

  “I made out with the Tenahaw boy, with the light hair. I don’t remember his name,” she said.

  “Judson?”

  “What kinda name is that?” she said, wrinkling her brow.

  “Why’d you make out with him?”

  “He asked.”

  “Oh.”

  “I saw you after school, carryin’ Mrs. Kindell’s groceries for her,” Raine said.

  “She’s old.”

  “I heard Momma tellin’ her about you the other day, about how good you was at playin’ the cello. She’s so proud, Sum.”

  “She’s proud of you too.”

  Raine shrugged.

  “You reckon I’m smart like you? I was thinkin’ maybe I just ain’t found nothin’ I like to do yet.”

  “You and me are the same,” I said.

  She pressed her face close to mine.

  “Don’t leave me behind, Sum,” she said.

  “Never,” I said.

  She kissed my cheek, and smiled.

  14

  Men Don’t Cry

  They’d struck out at the first three places. Two were empty, no sign of anyone having been there for a long time, and the third was home to a young family who must’ve moved in recent ’cause there were boxes stacked by the garage and a U-Haul parked in the driveway. But this house, on Mullin, it gave Noah the creeps. They’d seen movement half an hour back: a shadow through the drapes. The mailbox had fallen, there was paint cans by the steps, and a wide hole in the roof had been patched with sheet metal.

  “Zeb Joseph Fortner,” Raine said again.

  They’d already run through Zeb’s file. He’d been in and outta jail since he turned nineteen and got charged with petit larceny after he stole cash from his momma, though that was kicked up to a felony grand when Zeb tried to pawn her wedding ring a week later.

  At first glance Zeb weren’t nothing more than a career thief, but he’d been accused of following a local girl named Cassidy Meyers to and from the high school in Colfax a couple times. Sheriff Redell had spoke to him a year back.

  “Stakeout,” Noah said, leaning back. “Cop life, ain’t all glamour.”

  “Should’ve brought coffee and donuts,” Purv said.

  Noah reached under the seat and pulled out a pair of binoculars.

  “Shit, how big are those,” Raine said.

  “They’re my grandfather’s. I found ’em in the attic.”

  “Good sight on ’em I bet,” Purv said.

  Noah held them to his face and his arms started shaking. “I should’ve brought the stand.”

  “I reckon we should go take a look,” Raine said.

  “No,” Purv said.

  “Yeah. Maybe we should,” Noah said. “The guy’s dumb but if he’s got Summer in there I don’t reckon he’s dumb enough to let her up by the window for us to get a look.”

  “You sure we ain’t better waitin’ it out? I mean, he could have a gun or somethin’. Or a knife maybe. Or there could be other bad guys in there,” Purv said.

  “All the more reason to go get her out,” Raine said.

  They left the doors to the Buick open in case they needed to get in quick. The road weren’t more than slivers of tar laid thin and driven on before it’d set. Purv nearly fell, so Noah reached out and held his skinny arm.

  Noah looked up at the sky and realized how much he’d been missing the starlight. The bad dreams he had when he was small, about the blue machine, he’d wake stricken and cry out and his momma would come in, open his drapes wide, and lay beside him. She’d point and tell him the names of the constellations and he’d say he could see them too but couldn’t ever.

  “Let’s go up the side, get a look through the window,” Raine said.

  They kept low and moved slow, each step measured and light. They pressed themselves close to clapboards that hung loose and splintered. They didn’t speak of fear but knew, dumb or not, if Zeb saw them there weren’t no telling what he’d do.

  “Can you hear anything?”

  Raine shook her head, and then just like that all hell broke out.

  The Bronco swung up through the chain-link fence and into the front yard, engine roaring loud. They barely had a chance to duck into the back before the doors opened and four men piled out. Raine pulled Noah and Purv to the ground and they stopped still, their chins in the dirt, breathing hard.

  The men were big and they ripped the screen from its hinges and began kicking the front door till it split.

  Noah felt Purv trembling beside him. He reached out and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Purv had his eyes closed like he was praying, breath held so long his chest burned.

  The guy with the long beard hollered for Zeb to come outside.

  Noah was the first to see the back door open and a scrawny guy step out, head low like he was about to break for the trees behind.

  Noah stood without thought. “He’s there,” he yelled.

  The guys stopped kicking the door and moved toward Noah, who pointed at Zeb as he broke into a run and stumbled. They caught him quick.

  The big guy with the long beard grabbed hold of Noah’s shoulder and pulled him forward into the moonlight. The guy had thick arms and the kinda stare that held Noah even while Zeb cried out and scrambled behind him.

  “What you doin’ hidin’ out here, boy?”

  The other three looked to him to see what was gonna happen next. He nodded toward Zeb and they rained punches that landed hard and clean, and it weren’t long before Zeb was calling on God like he was the one clenching his fists.

  “I’m lookin’ for someone,” Noah said.

  “Out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I figured maybe this guy knew where she was.”

  The man took a moment. He smelled of whiskey but looked like the kinda man that could handle his liquor.

  “We’re lookin’ for my sister.”

  The man spun, a hand going to the gun on his belt, but maybe for show ’cause he didn’t draw.

  The other guys stopped, caught sight of Raine, and came over while Zeb slumped against the porch.

  “What’ve we got here?” the younger guy said.
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  “My sister’s missin’,” Raine said, glaring at them, not a trace of fear in her.

  “She as pretty as you are?” the young guy said, the other two laughing.

  Raine pulled the hunting knife from her bag and held it loose by her side. “Yeah, she’s as pretty as I am. But I’m better with a knife.”

  There was some laughing but maybe there was an edge to it.

  The big guy put a hand up and they stopped just like that. “You’re Joe Ryan’s girl.”

  Noah saw a flicker, a change as they lost interest.

  “Yeah,” Raine said.

  “I heard about your sister. You reckon Zeb might’ve had somethin’ to do with it?”

  “Maybe,” she said, still holding the knife and glancing at the men.

  “I got a daughter. Zeb’s been following her round. I’d sooner cut off his dick than let him anywhere near her. I guess Joe would feel the same way.”

  Raine nodded.

  “I wanna take a look inside,” Raine said.

  “All right. While you’re in there we’ll find out if he’s got any inkling where your sister might’ve got to.”

  Noah followed Raine up onto the porch, Purv following close behind.

  They entered through the back door. The kitchen was a stinking mess. There were take-out cartons piled high, plates thick with some kinda black, and maybe a dozen empty glass jars. Noah watched his step, angling Raine away from a pile of needles on the carpet. They moved through the house quick, trying not to breathe as they went into the bedroom. There were old magazines on the floor, girls lewd and spreading inside.

  “Summer ain’t been here,” Raine said, her voice firm like she was certain.

  There were only four rooms so they were back outside within minutes, but that was all it took for Zeb’s face to have changed into something Purv had to turn from.

  “He don’t know nothin’ about your sister.”

  The big guy was breathing hard, blood up his shirt and on his hands and arms.

  “You kids all right gettin’ back to Grace?”

  Raine nodded.

  They turned and left the yard, trying not to hear the sound of Zeb whimpering and muttering and blowing blood bubbles from his mouth.