by Mary Malcolm
“Sorry, nothing.”
He shook his head. “I wish you had at least a little.” His eyes darted to the right, and I followed his gaze to the barista.
“She’s about to burn herself, you know.”
“How do you know that?”
“She set a coffee on to steam, but she’s forgotten. She has another one in her hand.”
We both watched her reach for the espresso machine and dump hot coffee all over herself. “Ouch!” She went over to the sink and thrust her hand under water.
I took a sip of my drink, but he kept his eyes on the barista.
It annoyed me that I sat across from him, and he spent the entire time looking at her. “There were some men, I think they called themselves Stooges, who recently started working there.”
“Uh-huh, tell me more.”
Yeah, he was definitely ogling her.
“Every time they get involved in a project, it goes horribly awry. Also, I’m not sure why the department is keeping them, they keep hitting each other and breaking things.”
“Wait, what?”
“Nothing,” I grumbled. I took a sip from my latte while picking the pumpkin seeds off my muffin.
“These Stooges sound like a motley crew of characters,” he said, finally looking back at me.
So he had listened. A smile tugged at my lips. He looked good today: navy slacks and a white button-up shirt. I hadn’t yet seen him in a uniform so the only thing that let anyone know he was a cop was the badge strapped next to his gun on his belt.
I looked up to see a slight frown on his face. My smile disappeared. “What is it?”
“Probably nothing.”
“That never bodes well,” I said. “Like when your barber or your doctor says oops. So spill.”
He leaned forward and motioned for me to join him. “There’s a car that’s circled the block a few times. I’ve been watching it for a while, but now it seems a little suspicious.”
My heart quickened as I recalled yesterday. My near-death experience. “What color is it?”
“White.”
I won’t lie; I probably would have wet myself if he’d said green. “Okay, so maybe it’s someone who is lost?”
“Maybe.” He leaned back and typed something into his phone. He kept his eyes on the window the rest of the time we sat there. Finishing his coffee, he said, “We do actually have one lead. I can’t give you much, but I can tell you a bit.”
Finally, something. “Okay.”
“Mr. Winters was married but had a relationship going with the receptionist on the sixth floor. Apparently not many people knew about it. She stopped coming to work after he died, and we’ve not been able to find her. She’s not at her home, no known associates.”
“What’s her name?”
“Bonnie Kent.”
I nodded. “Like Clark Kent?”
“But no secret cape.”
“Got it.”
He stared at me, waiting.
Fine. “So see if I can find anything?”
He shrugged. “Not sure you can, but yeah, if you want to look into it, anything you find would be helpful. See if anyone knows her, knows where she might be.”
“Okay.” I stood and tossed my trash.
Gathering our cups, Eli took them to the barista but wouldn’t hand them over at first. Instead, he leaned on the counter and flirted casually. He smiled as she said something, then laughed.
I stood by the door, rolling my eyes, and checked the time on my phone. I had an hour before I needed to be at work, but this was a waste of my time. There was no need for me to stand here and watch this man flirt with some coffee girl who probably never went to college and barely knew how to spell barista much less be a good one.
Truth is, my coffee sucked, anyway. The beans tasted bitter, and the muffin had been slightly burned to boot. “Eli, are you ready?” I called. Not like we have a murder to solve, or anything.
He nodded slightly before saying something else to her. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and laughed, finally taking the cups, though the action did not end their conversation.
Realizing there wasn’t a thing I could do to get Eli to think with his big brain, I stepped outside. The slightly overcast sky made shadows dance through the leaves in the trees. It didn’t feel like fall would ever actually start, though with this being Texas, it just as easily could be snowing by tomorrow. I idly checked my phone again, and when I looked up a white car was coming around the corner.
It wasn’t the green one, and even though I had no reason for it, my heartbeat still sped up. The car slowed, then stopped right in front of me. The window rolled down and I stood stock still. “Are you Lucy Carver?” he asked, sunglasses hiding his eyes.
My lips dried instantly, and my limbs turned to jelly.
“Are you Lucy Carver?” he asked again, this time more insistent.
The door to the coffee shop jangled open. “Hey, who are you?” Eli asked from behind me.
With a squeal of tires, the man shot into traffic and around the corner, narrowly missing a truck. Eli ran a distance behind him, but there was no way he’d be able to catch the license plate. Running back to me, he grabbed my arms, slightly shaking me, trying to break my stupor. “Who was that?”
I was shivering and couldn’t stop. Apparently, Eli felt it too.
“C’mon.” Taking me by the elbow, he led me to his car and had me in and buckled before I could protest or even speak a word. Getting behind the wheel, he turned, giving me a fierce look that sealed me to my seat. “Think, Lucy. Have you seen that man before?”
“Yes.” At that point, I couldn’t hold it in anymore as panic took over. My breathing came quick and shallow.
Eli took my hand and held it on his chest. He took slow, deliberate breaths. “Easy, now,” he said in a voice that sounded calmer than his eyes looked. “Slow and steady. In and out. I’m right here. You’re safe.”
After a few minutes, my panic subsided and my breathing returned to normal. I pulled my hand away, tucking it into my lap.
“I’m taking you home,” he said, putting the car into gear. It was an unmarked black sedan. Police issue but definitely not a cruiser.
“I have work.”
“You’ll be sick.”
“I was sick last week.”
“Then you’ll be sick again. Stop arguing.” With that, he merged and we headed to my house.
****
When I was fourteen, two men showed up at our farm in a shiny silver truck late one morning. Though I should have been picking green beans from our garden, I’d actually been playing with the kittens under our front porch and saw as they arrived, each wearing blue jeans and polo shirts. My father stepped out of the house to meet them.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a voice not his own. My father was a soft-spoken man who never raised his voice or spoke rudely to anyone. To hear him sound both deep and threatening made me shrink deeper into the shadows. I felt an instinctual sense of fear over the arrival of these men.
From where I sat I could see my father clearly. He’d been working on our tractor all day, his clothes and skin both covered in a shiny film of sweat and grease. His bright blond hair glistened in the sunlight, making him look youthful, maybe playful; yet the deadly serious set of his eyes said he meant nothing but business. He held a wrench in his hand, probably the tool he’d been using on the tractor, though in front of these men it looked more like a weapon.
“We only came to talk, Mr. Carver.”
“I told you to stay away from here, stay away from my family. We come to you. That’s what we agreed to.”
One of the men, the older of the two with more white hair than brown, held up his hands. “No need to get upset. You know why we’re here.”
My father took a step toward them and held the wrench at his side, hand clenching and forearm rippling.
My heart raced, and I clutched one of the kittens tight against my chest. I wanted to cl
ose my eyes like I would during a scary part in a movie, but I found I couldn’t look away.
The younger man took a step back, but instead of leaving, he sat on the porch swing. “You can’t keep the truth hidden forever,” he said. His lighter brown hair reminded me of a horse we’d kept several years earlier. The dimple in his chin might have even made him seem friendly if I weren’t so frightened. The older man followed suit and sat alongside his associate. “Mr. Carver, David. Look, we’re not here to cause trouble. You know the situation. You know the bind we are in and what kind of trouble we’d all be in if the truth ever surfaced.”
“It won’t ever get out,” my father said. “That’s why we’re here.” He sighed and set down the wrench. Pulling a rag from his pocket, he swiped it over his face, then wiped the grease from his hands. His shoulders slumped and every bit of the warrior I’d seen only moments earlier melted into Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “How are Kat and Julie?”
The names clicked for me. My mom told me I used to talk to my imaginary friends, Kat and Julie. Said I had a nightmare one night and never brought them up again. At the mention of their names I let go of the kitten to hug my arms around myself.
The older man looked down at his hands. “Growing,” he said, then paused. “Though nothing in comparison. She was so…” He sounded wistful before he stopped himself. “Haven’t you thought about what we’re missing out on? I mean, what could have been achieved with all three of them together?”
The younger man cut him off. “We have a place to protect her. So different from where she was before. It’s a school, not a lab. No tests, no experiments. Strict learning and growth opportunities. Things don’t have to be the way they were at Voeller, Mr. Carver.”
Were they talking about my mother? She was a teacher. Why did she need protecting? Who were Kat and Julie other than imaginary friends I’d had as a child? Could they be more?
My dad shook his head. “Not in a million years. You saw that place. What they did. If you hadn’t agreed with me, you wouldn’t have helped. Keep that in mind.”
“But someone might find out,” the older man said.
“Are you going to tell, Chuck? You Roger? So far we’ve managed just fine. We’re keeping off the radar, no one knows anything about where we’re from, and that’s the way it needs to stay.” His shoulders straightened and the fierce look returned to his eyes. “Now, if I need to move my family again, hide them from you even, I will. But I don’t want to do that. You know it benefits us both to have some contact. I don’t want to sever all ties, but I will if I have to.”
The younger man, Roger, held up his hand. “The decision is yours. It always has been.”
My father nodded. “Then the answer is no. We won’t be coming in. For now, she’s safe. If that ever changes, we’ll do what we have to, but right now things are fine the way they are.”
Chuck flexed his arms and clenched one fist inside the other. “You’re a damn fool, Carver.”
“Be that as it may.”
Above my head, I heard the glass door sliding open. My mother stepped out onto the porch. “Mr. Ridley, Mr. Phillips, what are you doing here? David, where is Lucy?”
“Doing chores,” my father said, not taking his eyes off the men.
My mother’s head twisted around as she searched for me. Suddenly, the men looked around too. “Someday things might change, Carver, and we might not be able to leave things status quo,” the older one, Chuck, said. “I’d rather the decision be yours.”
“We’re done, Phillips.”
The men nodded and left.
“What are we going to do, David?” my mother asked once they were gone, wringing a dishtowel into a cord. I heard the worry in her voice. I had no idea why these men were looking for her, but it terrified me.
“We’re going to keep protecting her.”
Her? Me? They were looking for me? Why?
Breathing too fast and confused about everything I’d heard, fear drove me from my hiding place.
“Lucy!” my father called as I scrambled from beneath the porch and ran away. “Come back here!”
I couldn’t. I ran fast, legs pumping, muscles burning as I raced deep into the woods. I’d been all over—knew the place better than my folks, better than anyone, I imagined. Still, I didn’t want to get lost, and it would be dark soon. I ran until I made it to a rock overlooking the valley below. There, I collapsed into a heap of teenage emotion and spent energy, lungs burning and my heart feeling as if it might burst from my chest. “Me. Why are they looking for me?” I cried.
Huddling, I gathered my knees against my chest and propped my chin on them, rocking until the fear ebbed.
I didn’t know what was going on, but my parents would protect me. Like my father said, they’d protected me just fine until then. Whatever was going on, they’d keep protecting me.
Who were those two men?
Truthfully, I didn’t want to know.
That night at dinner, my mother asked if I wanted to talk about it.
“No.”
She stilled for a moment. She and my father exchanged glances and after a nearly imperceptible shake of his head, she turned back to her meal. “Okay.”
We ate our fried eggplant and mashed potatoes in silence and never talked about the visitors again.
****
Eli made it all the way to my aunt’s house before the shock wore off and the blood returned to my face. “Eli. I know who was in the car.”
Chapter Six
Officer Len stopped tapping his pen when I finished talking. “Well?”
“Actually, could I get something to drink?” I asked, licking some moisture back into my lips. “I’m feeling pretty parched.”
Len motioned to someone behind the interrogation glass. “Water okay?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?
“Nope.”
“So we can continue?”
“Yes.”
“Good, so who was the man in the car?”
****
“His name is Roger Ridley, though I don’t have any idea who he is,” I told Eli.
He kept the car idling. Facing me, he waited for more.
“When I was a kid, he showed up at my family’s farm. He was looking for me then too,” I finished, faltering toward the end.
I couldn’t read the stony set of his jaw. “Go on,” he prompted, still not betraying any emotion or thought.
“Honestly, that’s all I know.” I looked out the window to my aunt’s house. Sometime that morning, she’d decorated for Halloween: a ghoulish scene of cobwebs, spiders, zombies, graves, and a couple ghosts and witches. It always struck me as sad that she never had children; she would have been a wonderful mother.
Eli took a deep breath. I turned back to him. With his eyes pinched closed, I could nearly hear wheels turning in his head. He blew out his breath and opened his eyes. In a very deliberate and slow voice he asked, “Why, do you think, was he looking for you as a child? And how, do you think, might he have found you now?”
Even after telling him everything I knew, a large part of me was still that frightened little girl under the porch. I wanted to run, only this time I had no woods to disappear into. Instead I silently willed it all to go away.
“As for how he found me, I don’t know. Ouija Board? Perhaps he knew about my aunt. He knew my name, maybe he tracked me down that way. I’ve had a lot of jobs. I couldn’t be all that hard to find. Who knows? If I knew more about what happened back then, maybe I could tell you, but since I don’t…”
I saw no reason to finish the thought.
My phone rang, and Eli nodded for me to answer. “Hello?”
“Hey, beautiful.”
My stomach tightened and the bitter coffee from earlier rose up the back of my throat. I still hadn’t figured out how to deal with the cold shoulder John gave me the day before. “Hey, John.”
“Listen, I hope you’re ready for work because
I’m about two blocks away. Thought I’d surprise you and take you out for breakfast. I have to talk to you anyway.”
I didn’t even have time to try to dissuade him before a car pulled up behind us. When I glanced back I saw the green car, sun glinting off the windshield. “Ohmygod! Ohmygod!”
“What?” Eli turned to see why I was freaking.
“That car almost hit me yesterday. He’s following me. He knows where I live.” I ducked my head as Eli jumped from the car, gun drawn.
“Police! Put your hands in the air!” I heard him shout from my duck-and-cover position.
“I’m here to see Lucy!”
That made no sense. It sounded like John. The car jolted as a body slammed against the trunk. I looked up to see John’s face squished against the metal, arms twisted painfully behind his back, Eli with his gun holstered now, reaching for cuffs.
Unbuckling my seat belt as fast as possible, I jumped from the car. “Wait! Wait. John, it was you?”
He twisted his head to face me, though Eli did not let go of his arms. “What was me? I just called and told you I was coming.”
Eli tightened his grip, his jaw set. Eyes hard, he looked to me to see if he could let John up.
“He’s fine, Eli. Let him up. Oh, for God’s sake. That’s the car from yesterday—the one that tried to hit me. I swear. It wasn’t you?”
“No. This is my mom’s car. I took mine to the shop last night because my alternator went out. I’m borrowing hers today. And before you go thinking my mom was the one who tried to plow you down, she only drives from the house to the grocery store and back. So unless you were at the grocery store, it wasn’t her.”
“And you acted like a jerk yesterday too.”
His cheeks and neck reddened. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s…well, I did see you yesterday with this guy.” He indicated with his thumb toward Eli. “I saw you and thought maybe you were playing games, and then I thought, naw, this chick is cool, she’d be honest. So I went on to work. I wanted to talk to you there, but people were always around, and then when they weren’t, I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the truth.”