All the Wicked Girls

by Chris Whitaker

  “We were close. She was good, you know that? Not that the others weren’t, but she was so sweet. Why’d he pick her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My momma said it’s the devil’s work. I hate when she talks like that. Makes it like there ain’t no one to blame, just blanket evil, faceless, like that’s somethin’ real, somethin’ we all have to live with. Why’s he choosin’ church girls?”

  “I don’t know.” Black reached up, ran a hand over his badge and felt the shine coming off.

  “But you’re still lookin’ for him?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at the girl. She wore a dress that fell to her ankles.

  “You reckon she’s somewhere out there alive, Chief Black?”

  He thought about lying, but her eyes, they were so wide he just smiled and she read the smile well ’cause she took it and nodded like she was disappointed in him.

  They started toward the church.

  “Me and my friends went over to Grace. We got as far as the dark wall. It’s somethin’ else.”

  “It is.”

  “I went back with my parents ’cause they didn’t believe it. And then they saw it and Momma was cryin’. And I don’t even know why. Daddy was quiet, and he was lookin’ up and he said he didn’t know where the sky began. The sky and the earth, Chief Black. That’s our world. The sun and the stars. I worry that it’s changin’, since I was small it ain’t the same. Are people gettin’ crueler?”

  “People have always been cruel,” Black said.

  “Daddy says we have to fight harder to keep principled. I see kids in my class dressin’ black and listenin’ to hard metal, but that time’s passing us now, they don’t even know what they’re rebelling against.”

  Eliza walked him all the way back to the cruiser.

  “You take care,” she said. “Keep lookin’ for my friend.”

  He got in and started the engine. She motioned for him to roll down the window.

  “God’s darkened Grace, Chief Black. It’s important you realize that and you do somethin’ about it. The clouds pour down their moisture, and abundant showers fall on mankind.”

  “Eliza, will you do somethin’ for me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay away from church for a while. Just till we catch him,” Black said.

  She smiled. “I don’t have a fearful heart, Chief Black. God will come with vengeance and divine retribution. You’ll see. But I will pray for you.”

  “Thank you, Eliza.”

  She gave him a warm smile and was about to wave him off when she looked past him, at the photograph on the seat beside.

  “Is that Della Palmer?” she said.

  He passed it to her.

  “You know that man behind?” he said.

  She stared for a long time before she nodded slowly.

  *

  It didn’t take long to find it. There was a bar on Dallas Court Road, a honky-tonk with sawdust floors, a dead neon sign, and Confederate flags tacked to the siding.

  Raine had gone back to the Maidenville library, spent a couple minutes flirting with Henry, and found out all she could about Walden Lauder, the boy that’d dated Briar girl number three, Lissa Pinson. Walden was the Maidenville Academy’s golden god, smart and good at football and good looking; a total prick was the way Henry told it. Henry told her about the bar too, the Bowery, served kids from Maidenville and Brookdale and Whiteport, didn’t ask for proof so long as they paid over. Maybe Raine had been there once before, with Danny, but she’d been so lit it could just as well’ve been any shithole five towns wide.

  “Sure you don’t want us to come in?” Noah said. “I could flash the badge, watch those rich kids shit it when a lawman rolls –”

  She got out while he was still talking.

  It was hot and crowded; smoke blurred a lone man on a small stage playing bluegrass that just about cut above the talking and laughter. Raine wore cutoffs and boots and drew hungry stares from men her daddy’s age.

  She found him in the corner, a head taller than the group he was with, brown hair and golden skin just like the photo in the Maidenville Herald. There was a long line of empty bottles on the table. She moved slow, watching a couple hard-faced women dancing, asses jutting like bait as burly men gazed on.

  When she was near she stood beneath purple light that fell from spots so low she felt the heat. Took him two songs before he caught her eye and smiled. He gestured her over but she just grinned and turned her back. He came to her a minute later.

  “You’re pretty,” he said, cheeks red and hair matted, tongue thick with booze.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Where you from? I haven’t seen you here before. I’d remember you.”

  “Whiteport,” she said.

  He smiled. “Whiteport girls are fun.”

  She took his beer from him and drained it. He fetched another bottle from the table, made eyes at his friends like he was onto something good.

  *

  They sat in a shiny SUV in the lot, Raine straddling him, her tongue in his mouth, his hands on her ass. Music thumped heavy from the bar, light spilling as people came and went. He’d already told her shit he thought would impress her, something about his father’s boat in Orange Beach. She’d made him order tequila, matched him till his legs wobbled then led him out.

  She broke the kiss, pulled back a little, and was about to start working him when the door opened. She saw the badge first then sighed.

  “Hands where I can see ’em.”

  “What the fuck . . .” Walden said as Noah and Purv climbed into the backseat.

  Raine moved over to the passenger side.

  “I’m lookin’ for my sister,” Raine said. She pulled the photo outta her bag.

  Walden glanced at it quick. “I haven’t seen her.”

  He made to get out but Raine took the gun from her bag.

  “Jesus Christ,” Walden said, sobering fast.

  “Show him again,” Noah said.

  “She might’ve been lookin’ for you,” Raine said. “She might’ve been lookin’ for Lissa Pinson.”

  Walden reached for the door again. Raine pressed the gun into his side.

  “Fuck,” he said. “You fucking crazy bitch.”

  “Shoot him,” Noah said.

  “All right.”

  “Shit . . . Jesus. I don’t know anything. I took Lissa out a couple times, I already told the police. I don’t know where she is. He took her, the Bird.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “Here.” Walden watched the gun as he spoke. “I met her here.”

  “I need to find the Bird,” Raine said.

  “The cops can’t find him, what chance have you got?”

  “You said Whiteport girls are fun,” Raine said. “What did you mean?”

  He shook his head.

  She slapped him hard across the cheek.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  She aimed the gun high, pressing the barrel into his chest. He was sweating, eyes darting across the lot.

  “Tell me. I’m just tryin’ to find my sister. You tell me everything and I’ll go. I won’t say nothin’ to no one else,” Raine said.

  He stared at her awhile. “Lissa was wild, not like they said in the newspapers. Church girl . . . she dragged me out back . . . against the fence, we did it against the fence. She told her friends, that’s why the cops came to me.” Walden’s hands were shaking, his eyes red and sad. “I couldn’t tell them that. My mother was sitting there. She would’ve found out. My father . . . I’m heading to college. I have a future.”

  “Ain’t a big deal, you fucked some girl,” Raine said. “So what?”

  Walden looked through the windshield, at the heavy moon and the low stars. “Lissa came here, maybe a month later. Showed me the test . . . I wasn’t buying it at first.”

  Noah listened silent.

  “What test?” Purv said.

&
nbsp; Walden just stared out.

  “She was pregnant,” Raine said, gripping the gun tighter. “Lissa Pinson was pregnant.”

  21

  Summer

  I lay awake each night thinkin’ about Bobby. It’s funny how it creeps up on you. Is there a difference between adoration and infatuation? If there is it can’t be much.

  I read Lolita. So Humbert was a monster and you ain’t gotta have noble wings to see that. But it was Lo I dreamed of. Lo and Lola and Dolly, but never Dolores ’cause she was bare of all that was human. I thought about solipsism and the world around, and I wondered if an audience of one was the best I could ever hope for.

  Bobby was a man, and me, I was just a girl.

  I watched my sister work; the way she stood, hand on hip, head cocked, sweet smile and tousled hair. Her skirts were short but never showed too much, her tops were cut low but managed to hide her bra. She stirred feelings in her smile, tightened pants by the way she walked. It was effortless and exhausting.

  *

  There was a funeral at St. Luke’s during the fall of 1994. I thought of the Briar girls ’cause by then there weren’t no one not thinkin’ of them. We sat down every night and saw Briar County on the news; reporters filling with rumor, interviewing kids who probably hadn’t never spoke to the girls, talkin’ to neighbors in blue overalls with slick hair standin’ in front of single-wides. They cut to a man wearin’ wire-rimmed glasses and he reckoned the Bird was a loner, maybe religious and maybe worked with his hands and maybe socially awkward. Daddy said maybe that man was full of shit.

  The coffin was small, some old lady, maybe she weighed less than a child ’cause the bearers didn’t break a sweat.

  I watched them lower her, then I scattered petals like they wouldn’t age and die too. I was a fixture; no one questioned why I showed at these things. Maybe I was lonely, that’s what I heard when they spoke to me, some kinda soft pity I bathed in.

  After it was done we sat by the cast-iron heater.

  “You okay?”

  “Thinkin’ about the girls,” I said.

  “The paper you’re writing?”

  I hadn’t written nothin’ down. Savannah kept on askin’.

  “I’m scared about it all.”

  “Be careful, Summer.”

  He took my hand and held it tight, fingers interlinked in that intimate way. Funerals looked like they robbed something from Bobby.

  “I think about that first girl most of all. Della. She’s got the same birthday as me. Where do you reckon she is?”

  “In heaven.”

  “That’s all right, if she is. She’s safe up there.”

  He brought my hand to his lips and breathed it warm.

  “How come there’s a man like the Bird out there? You reckon it’s somethin’ to do with the devil.”

  “We are each our own devil and we make this world our hell.”

  “He might’ve been lit when he wrote that.”

  Bobby smiled.

  “I was reading that book, Michelle Remembers,” I said.

  “I’m not sure any of that is true.”

  “She believed it was.”

  “Or maybe she believed she could make a fast buck. Didn’t she write it with her psychiatrist, and then marry him?”

  “What those people did to her, evil is a spiritual being. I think about Della and what she might’ve gone through, at the end, if the end has come.”

  “Try not to think about that, Summer.”

  He pulled me close and hugged me tight. I wore a white hat, fluffy and pulled down over my ears.

  When he touched me my heart beat too fast. I worried it’d break out my chest and drench him in my blood.

  “Grace is beautiful in the fall,” he said.

  I wanted to climb on top of him, bite off his tongue and keep it for me so no one else could ever hear the sound of his voice again.

  “What would you do if I got taken away like those Briar girls?” I said.

  “I’d save you.”

  22

  To Live Perfect

  They got Tommy early, when Joe had run home to wash up and check in with Ava.

  The men watched Milk as he strolled over, calm and slow, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  Tommy was sitting on the middle bench, lacing his boots, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips.

  Each day brought the tension a little closer to the surface, the men a little more eager to act. Some hadn’t worked steady in years. They were skilled in dying practice, a lifetime wasted watching their fathers haul timber and working up a proud sweat.

  Now they picked up odd jobs in towns far from Grace. They’d ride a hundred miles to spend a day laboring, back breaking, but worth it for the feel on the drive back. They were focused on Summer, on helping Joe and holding a line against the cops, and maybe against the church ’cause their wives’ prayers had gone unanswered for so long. That dead feeling that came when their purpose was snuffed out by faceless outfits with smiling shareholders was turning to something like anger. So they didn’t grouse about sitting in darkness night and day, they were doing something, they were ready to move and fight.

  “Mornin’,” Milk said.

  “Is it?” Tommy said.

  “A couple miles out maybe.”

  He finished lacing his boots and stood. He was tall, not as broad as Joe but he had the height to look big and scary to a kid seeking monsters in Hell’s Gate.

  “Black wants a word.”

  “Joe’s gone home for an hour. I’ll send him over when he gets back.”

  “With you, not Joe.”

  Tommy glanced around, nodded at one of his boys, then took the cigarette from his mouth and slipped it behind his ear.

  *

  They sat on East Pine Road and watched the clinic. It was built into the trees, one story, and painted a shade like moss that saw it blend nice. The Dayette Women’s Clinic. There weren’t no signs, they’d had trouble since the day it opened. Raine remembered the news reports, the placards: WOMEN DO REGRET ABORTION; AMERICA’S SHAME; CHOOSE LIFE. The center was run by a lady name Cara Delaney. A few years back the news was hot with her ’cause she was prosecuted for helping desperate young girls the state said she had no business helping.

  Raine rolled the window down. It was early but there were cars in the lot beside.

  “So this is where he sent her,” Noah said.

  Raine nodded, her mind running to Lissa Pinson. Walden spilled all of it. He’d given Lissa five hundred bucks and driven her to Dayette himself. He said it cold and flat and she almost slapped his pretty face again.

  “Wait here,” Raine said.

  “You want me to come in? We could pretend it’s mine,” Noah said.

  “I ain’t sure they’d believe that.”

  She opened the door and crossed the street, squinting against the morning light ’cause she weren’t used to it no more. She carried her pack with her gun and her maps and she felt Noah’s eyes on her as she walked up to the glass doors.

  Inside it was cool with central air that pricked her skin. There was a line of plastic chairs facing an old television that rolled CNN without sound; just a talking head and a background of O. J. looking on as doctors and lawyers clashed.

  Raine saw a girl sitting opposite. She was young and she kept her head down so her hair fell, eyes locked tight on a magazine. She shuffled her feet, rolling toe to heel and back like she was anxious, which weren’t all that surprising.

  An old lady came out and she was carrying a file. “Amber King?”

  The nervous girl nodded and stood and followed her back.

  “Can I help you?”

  Raine turned and there was a lady with fire-red hair wearing a kind smile.

  “I’m pregnant,” Raine said.

  *

  “Raine said you’re close with her and Summer. She said there ain’t nothin’ you wouldn’t do for ’em,” Black said.

  Tommy softened at that, sank back a little
in his seat, and finally took a sip of the coffee Trix had brought in.

  “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

  “You’re closer with Raine though?”

  “Not always, just when she started gettin’ in shit. Summer’s got a head on her, she can take care of herself.”

  “You see yourself in Raine?”

  “She’s got that Ryan fire, you know? And she’s more into the woods, the huntin’ and trackin’; she’s got talent for it. But that don’t mean I play favorites. Summer’s a kid to be proud of. If I knew she was comin’ to stay with Raine then I’d go the extra . . . maybe rent a movie she’d like or somethin’.”

  “You stepped up when Joe went to Holman.”

  Tommy shrugged like it weren’t nothing but Black remembered well. Tommy taking the girls to Mae’s every Sunday after church. They’d sit by the window, the girls sharing a sundae while Tommy watched them, a smile on his face.

  Black heard Milk out front, on the telephone, maybe another call about the storm cloud.

  “You ever met a lady named Peach Palmer?”

  Something flickered in Tommy’s eyes, some kinda realization, like he could see the snare.

  “Could’ve.”

  Black slid the photograph over.

  Tommy picked it up.

  “That the Briar girl?”

  Black nodded.

  “You tryin’ to blindside me, Black?” He stood quick, the chair fell back and clattered to the floor.

  “I’m tryin’ to find your niece. Bring her back safe. If I gotta upset you to do that then I ain’t got no problem with that.”

  Tommy eyeballed him awhile.

  “I can make this formal if you want, Tommy. Start recording. Lock you down while you wait on your lawyer to get over from Maidenville, charge you a couple hundred bucks just for the miles. I don’t care either way.”

  Tommy picked up his chair and sat down again. “You gone tough again, Black?”

  “It’s what y’all want. I gave Joe my word, and Raine.”

  Tommy watched him awhile, maybe looking for a change but there weren’t none, not outside. “You figure me for this? This shit with the Briar girls. Hell, Black, what the fuck would I be doin’ sittin’ outside a police station if I had shit to hide?”

  “Peach Palmer?” Black showed him a photo of Peach, a file shot from a few years back when she’d got charged with possession.