by Neliza Drew
Chapter forty-six
Sunday, February 12
I took the ferry from Ocracoke to Cedar Island. Watched the seagulls trail us, hoping for tourists with chips or unfinished sandwiches. They swooped in and out of the surf, white against gray. They didn’t look cold or confused.
I thought I should call Tom, realized my phone was dead. Wondered what had become of my little sister, what had changed her.
In the town of Cedar Island, I “borrowed” a car from a waitress who left her keys too visible behind the counter. In Morehead City, I parked it in the lot of a church whose services were audible outside. I left twenty bucks in the ashtray, wiped my prints and walked seven blocks out of my way to get back to my rental car near the waterfront.
At a strip mall, I found a car charger for my phone.
Overall, I felt oddly refreshed. I’d slept more than I had in a week. I suspected Boomer had slipped a sedative in the cocoa, but exhaustion was also a possibility. I was supposed to see Lane in a few hours and I was hoping she would shed sudden light on everything I’d encountered since Wednesday.
I called Tom once the phone was charged enough to make outgoing calls and gave him the barest possible summaries.
“You what?”
I took a deep breath, sighed. “Which what? Tom, I had no choice. And every answer comes with more questions.”
His voice changed to match the dismay in mine. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
I called Lawrence Jacobs next.
When he answered, I asked, “How’d Lane get to Billy’s?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Davis.”
He paused like he was matching my voice to some database in his head. I’d seen Tom do something similar. “Don’t know. Her prints were in Guthrie’s car.”
“But they were friends before.”
“Exactly.”
• • • • •
I pulled into Charley’s to find another rental car parked in the driveway.
The place smelled less like mold and marijuana than usual. Instead, it smelled like oranges and nag champa incense. Nik.
I followed clanging to the kitchen where I found a petite, healthy version of myself opening cans and humming something mournful and bluesy.
I leaned in the doorframe. “Hi, sis.”
She spun, put down the can opener and walked over to slap me. “So, you’re not dead. You look awful.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
She stepped back and crossed her scrawny little arms. “What the hell happened?”
I shut my eyes. She was going to get herself killed and it was going to be all my fault. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I told you I was coming. I got here last night. I missed your call while I was driving from RDU.” She walked to her purple canvas purse and pulled out her phone, pressed a couple of buttons and held it out. “I thought you were dead.” Her phone beeped and played a long minute of labored breathing and teeth chattering before the bookend beep stopped it. “I tried calling you. Over and over. Nothing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Right. And I guess you’re ‘fine,’ too. What was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know where you were. The cops would’ve just told me you butt-dialed me and to quit being hysterical. It’s not like they know about your borderline suicidal tendencies.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
She threw up her hands. “Whatever. The sheriff came by. Said he had no interest in wasting the court’s time on Charley if we’d put her in rehab. So I talked her into Brynn Marr over in Jacksonville. She’s all checked in. Has a roommate who still loves The X-Files. They both think aliens are real.” She dumped in a can of pinto beans, rinsed the can, and set it aside. “Should I ask where you were?”
I ambled closer. “No.” I watched her dump in kidney beans and wash the can. The pot still had a price sticker on it.
“Then lie to me. You were always good at that.” She emptied a can of black beans and stirred the mess with a new-looking wooden spoon.
“I don’t feel like lying.” I rubbed my temples. “This sheriff have a name?”
“Frederick something.”
“He seem all right to you?”
“Better than most maybe.” She described him. “What’s it to you?”
Sounded like the same guy who’d come by about my car. “Things have been weird here.”
“Uh huh.” She sliced open a bag of frozen corn. “You know, I usually use fresh stuff from the farmers’ market.”
I watched her pull a cutting board out of her net shopping bag and wash it before setting to work on a variety of peppers. Red, green, yellow, Anaheim, jalapeño, finger hot. She pulled out an onion and garlic cloves to chop before throwing them into pot.
I watched her open a bag of brown rice and dump a couple of cups in after the spices.
“I keep this in bulk at home.”
“Uh huh.”
“Beans are cheaper than meat.”
“I know.”
“And healthier.” She was avoiding facing me again.
I had my mantra. Nik had hers.
I walked over and took the wooden spoon. “Nik, it’s okay.”
When she looked at me, she had tears in her eyes. “Why?”
I clicked on the burner. I didn’t have any answers. None better than I’d given Craig, anyway. “I’m a liar, a cheat, a thief and a whore. I try to do the right thing, but it isn’t always possible. And sometimes it makes no difference in the end either way.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I stole a car today.” Hardly the worse thing I’d done, but maybe I thought I’d start small. “You know those people who take pens, paperclips, memo pads from the office? They never call themselves thieves. ‘No one’ll miss it. Everyone does it.’ They’re maybe right. They’re still thieves.” I bit my lip and took a deep breath. “Those people would never steal from a store. Never nick a pair of cheap shoes or a jar of peanut butter. They’d even tell you, self-righteously, they could do without shoes or they’d just go hungry.” I let loose a guarded, airy laugh. “They need a box of paperclips?”
“That’s not what I asked you. And I never judged that part of you.”
“It’s all the same at this point. I’m not the person I used to be. But I haven’t forgotten what she taught me.”
“Don’t you ever want to know why?” A tear dripped off her nose and landed on the empty cutting board she was holding.
I shook my head slowly because I couldn’t be certain of her exact why. I knew most of them I’d stopped questioning. I watched the beans bob as the liquid heated. Inside, I felt empty, drained. “Nik, it is what it is.”
She snorted and tossed the cutting board in the empty sink. “Screw that.”
“What do you want me to say, Nik?”
“That it’s over. That it will be over. That this will end well. That you don’t have to be who you were. That I don’t have to be who I was. That this…” She gestured wildly at the kitchen and hurled the rest of the garlic bulb across the room. “This isn’t who we are.”
I pulled her into a hug. I didn’t want to be who we were either, but it was starting to feel like something I wasn’t going to be allowed to escape.
She left snot on my shirt and pulled away. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I did things I shouldn’t have. Can we just leave it at that?” I walked away, stopped in the doorway and stared at the eggplant walls, the dent I’d left a few days before. “Things I can’t undo.”
“No.” She grabbed my arm and spun me. Her face was set in anger and determination and a kind of motherly resolution I found it hard to argue with. “You think all your little lies held water? You want to think I don’t know where the money came from? You think I haven’t figured out why Charley shot you? I’m not stupid, Davis. Talk to me.”
“If you knew, why didn’t you stop me?” Tea
rs sprung to my eyes and I hated myself for them. I wanted to take the words back, hoped I hadn’t said it out loud.
Her eyes shone back at me. “For the same reason you did it. I didn’t know any other way.”
I backed away from her. “I killed someone.”
She studied my face like a psychic studied tea leaves. “How?”
I stared at her. Her eyes demanded the truth and I was so tired of hiding. “I shot him. In the chest.”
“You had to. I know you. You had to.” She looked at her watch and back at the stove. “I don’t know why I made this. We’re going to be late to visit Lane. You should go shower.”
I stared at her like she’d been abducted by aliens or replaced by a robot or suffered a head injury. “Nik?”
She wiped her eyes. “Go take a shower.”
I nodded and went upstairs.
• • • • •
We took Nik’s rental. She wore a lovely lavender pantsuit of repurposed polyester and cotton hand-sewn by a Phoenix artisan. I wore pants I’d owned in high school. They were black and too light for the chill in the air. Since I had no matching jacket, I’d just thrown my leather on over a tee shirt despite Nik’s insistence that it smelled like a dead mermaid.
“You still handling Charley’s business?”
“Some. I let the car insurance lapse. She lost her license about eight months ago. I swear she must’ve gotten a ticket in every county south of the Mason-Dixon line. Or, I guess Allister Connelly did.”
I rubbed the scar behind my ear and tried to figure out what to say to Lane.
Chapter forty-seven
We left our bags locked in the trunk of the car. Our IDs we stuffed in our otherwise empty pockets. The jail was relatively new, designed of red brick in a boxy office shape. Part of it had been built in the middle of the street separating it from the courthouse and the old ice plant so that the sally port almost shared space with an ice truck loading up to deliver to hotels and local gas stations. We parked on the courthouse side, where we could see the police station if we looked half a block down. Well, I saw it. I wasn’t sure Nik saw much of anything.
She was silent as we passed through the usual metal detectors and were left to wait in a room painted an industrial-hospital beige that may have been filthy looking even in the paint can. “How’s she doing?”
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. “How would I know?”
“You’ve been locked up before. I haven’t. What’s it like.”
I thought about explaining the difference between juvenile and adult lockup. “Boring.”
“That’s the best you can come up with? You think she’s bored?” She glared at me, back in mom-mode.
“I don’t know. I don’t know her. Not anymore.” I stared at the tile. “Maybe not ever.”
We were eventually herded into a room resembling a high school cafeteria, except the cheerleaders and jocks had been replaced by uniformed corrections officers and the furniture was all bolted to the floor.
A burly man of maybe thirty-five gestured at a table near the corner. “Sit here. You pass anything to the prisoner, I will arrest you.”
Other family members were already waiting at other tables, but were spaced far enough apart that I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. Most waited quietly, but a few of the older women cried.
Two girls and four boys, ranging in age from late teens to mid-twenties, came in with the boys spaced further back. All wore ankle and wrist chains and gender-coded jumpsuits. Lane, like the other girl, wore dark blue.
Nik’s breath caught when she saw Lane, but she otherwise maintained her composure.
One of the women at another table burst into hard sobs. A young male officer with a bald brown dome of a head led the tallest boy to her. She reached out for a hug, but the officer motioned for her to sit, untouched.
Lane was the last to be led over. The jumpsuit hung on her like they’d tried to dress a skeleton. Her eyes were shifty and hard, set in dark cavities seen on overly made-up models and old insomniacs. Eyes like an addict. She sat where she was told, metal clanging, and stared at us, mouth twisted in disgust.
“I like the hair color,” Nik offered. “Is that a tiger paw?” She pointed at the tattoo on Lane’s wrist.
Lane didn’t acknowledge her. She slouched as best she could on the attached stool, hands on the metal table. She stared at me and the disgust grew. She tapped a foot and the chains jangled. “What?”
I put a hand on Nik’s to discourage her input. “You do this?” I asked Lane.
She leaned forward. “Wha’d’you care?”
Nik gave her the mom glare. “She’s trying to help.” Hateful ingrate, the tone implied.
“I don’t need that bitch’s help.” She swiveled her gaze to Nik long enough to deliver her point before refocusing her venom toward me. “You through running scared?”
“You’re in too much trouble for this foolishness. You want to think you’re grown, act it. Maybe this seems fun right now, but you’re looking at twenty-five to life, if you’re lucky.”
“What the fuck do you know?” She leaned back again and drummed her fingers. “I’m a juvenile.”
“Crime like this? They’ll direct file, transfer it to the adult system. By the time a verdict and sentencing comes through, you’ll be at least eighteen. Adult crime. Adult time.”
“They can’t do that.” Defiant teenage face.
“They will, Lane. And if you did this, you probably deserve what they give you. But if you didn’t? If you’ve got a different explanation, spit it out before visitation’s over.”
Her features morphed. The teenager slipped away, replaced by a harder woman I knew too well. “They all got what they asked for. We all do, don’t we?” She held my gaze for several seconds, her jaw set to the standard Groves response to fear.
Nik put her hand on mine and let her fingers trace the surgical scars along the back of it.
I pulled away and crossed my arms. “Tell me how Billy Guthrie asked to be shot.”
She doubled down on the hard stare.
“Wha’d’you know? You left.” She leaned forward. “You ran. Charley’s right. You’re dead.”
I ignored her. “Why’d Billy load the gun?”
Lane squinted at me. “Who told you that?”
I cocked my head at her. She suddenly seemed worried, almost afraid, but not of prison this time. “So, it’s true.”
She tried to glance over her shoulder without turning her head. “Coincidence. We were shooting it in the woods last month.”
I nodded like that made sense. “So, last month you were friends and this month you blew his brains all over his mother’s wall.”
Brief sadness crossed her eyes before they hardened again. “What’s it to you?”
Nik backhanded me in the chest, probably because she couldn’t smack Lane. The guard eyed us, but said nothing. She pointed at Lane. “If you don’t let us help you, you’re going to prison.”
I watched her jaw stiffen. “You don’t get to know about me. Not anymore.”
I thought back. “The purses. The old ones. You get those from Vince?”
Her eyes betrayed her, but her face didn’t. I’d asked the wrong question.
“The car. You pimping out those girls alone or someone pulling your strings?”
Lane looked at Nik. “Fuck that bitch.”
Chapter forty-eight
Outside, I looked at Nik and held out my hands for the keys.
She sighed and stared at the car while I retrieved the purses. “She shot that guy, didn’t she?”
“She meant to shoot someone. I haven’t decided if she meant to shoot Billy.” I got in and started the car, adjusted the seat to make room for my legs.
She got in, folded her hands on her lap. “What happened to her?” Her eyes watched things pass out the windshield. She didn’t seem to have noticed we weren’t heading back to Charley’s.
“I don’t know.”
I felt her eyes on me. “I think you do. I think you know damn well what’s wrong with her and you’re hiding it like you always do.”
“You seem to know everything, Nik.” I stopped at the Live Oak Street light.
She shifted in her seat and looked over at the instrument panel behind the steering wheel. “I had a friend in college. We lived across the hall from each other.” She unfolded and refolded her hands. “A guy raped her at a frat party. Her friends scattered. Some said she’d asked for it. Some seemed to lack the words.”
“She wasn’t expecting it. She thought she was safe.” I knew that feeling, more from theory than reality.
“Some days I feel like a floating island in a sea of the damaged.”
I thought about the difference between the stories that made me feel less alone, and the ones that made me feel worse, like it was never-ending. “Your friend. I’m sorry. She should have been safe.”
“You should have been safe, too.”
I shook my head. “Coulda-shoulda-woulda is bullshit, Nik.” The light changed and I turned, drove us toward the waterfront.
“You were raised to be my fucking bodyguard. Do you not realize that?”
“It was my choice. To protect both of you. And I failed.”
“You were a kid, too!”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Nothing we’d agree on, anyway.
“You think someone molested Lane.”
I looked over, watched her face fight the words. I swallowed the fat spit that showed up before tears. I blinked slowly, changing my breathing to a deep, meditative style. I waited.
“You know something.”
“I don’t. Not for certain.” I parked in one of the spots between the inn and the old post office on the empty end of Front Street.
“Then what do you think.” Her tone was angry but her eyes were still sad.
“I think Lane is more of a survivor than we know, maybe too much so. I think she got into something, in over her head.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s all I’ve got for now.” I got out and stood on the cracked sidewalk. Nearby, the few sailboats rocked gently.