“You wouldn’t want to smoke if you’d had your stomach pumped.”
“Probably not. But I’m fairly addicted, so you never know.” He stood up from the bed and walked to the window, looked outside to where a neighbor was putting up Halloween decorations—plastic pumpkins, a store-bought scarecrow. “So I heard you got a tattoo.”
Mary Jane muttered something he couldn’t make out as he rolled up his sleeve and showed her the mess of ink he’d gotten from a cousin with a guitar-string gun.
“What is that?” she said.
“It was supposed to be the logo of this band I loved. Led Zeppelin. For a while it might have looked that way but not anymore. I’m sure yours is better.”
“It’s a woman hiking in the woods.”
“That’s cool. So no regrets?”
She hesitated. “No regrets.”
Harlan rolled his sleeve back down. “Do you mind if I level with you, Mary Jane?”
She shrugged.
He hoped that if he danced around the subject of Lew, she might fill in the gaps, give him something to work with. “I’ve had a tough couple weeks. The previous sheriff got shot, which I’m sure you heard about, and I keep hitting dead ends. See, there were a lot of people mad at Lew when he died. And they all had their reasons, but no one wants to talk about it. And I just want to know why he died. I don’t even care who did it.” Mary Jane faked disinterest but her pupils tightened. “Do you know what I’m talking about? Did you know Lew?”
“No. I mean I heard he was … you know.”
“Yeah, well, I figure maybe if I can’t solve this Lew thing, I can help you. ’Cause I’m worried about you. I see you leaving the dirt track, where I know bad things happen to good people. Then your mother tells me you’ve run off. And now you’ve gotten your stomach pumped. Tell me how I can help.”
“I don’t need help,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in the lie.
Harlan stifled the impulse to reach out and stroke the stray hairs from her sweaty face. She wasn’t much older than Angeline had been when they’d met—just a girl doing her best impression of a woman. Angeline. If she’d lived, she’d be twenty-six and maybe she and Harlan would have made a life together. Pets. Children. Dinner parties. The whole ever-loving bit. And she would have done it all with grace. She did everything with grace. He’d loved watching her navigate the world.
Harlan closed his eyes and pressed his palms against his eyelids. “I’m so tired,” he said. “When you sign up to enforce the law, you’re supposed to do what the books say. When a law is broken, you arrest the person who broke it. But it’s more complicated than that.” He paused, backed into the question he’d wanted to ask all along. “I was at that barbeque when Lew was shot. Do you remember where you were?”
She answered without hesitation. “A movie.” It was a practiced response but she’d been too nervous to play it cool. Her eyes darted around the room, settled on anything but him.
“What movie?”
“That Will Smith one. With the aliens.”
“You like it?”
“It was okay.”
“Was anyone else with you?”
“I went alone.”
“Really?” Harlan said. “Me, I like going to the movies alone. But I’m a loner. That’s a rare quality in someone your age.”
“I guess.”
“Did you do anything else? See any friends?”
“I saw my friend Tara.”
Harlan nodded. “Was this at her house or at work or—?”
“I’m really tired.”
“I know,” Harlan said. “Just humor me a bit longer.”
“At work.”
He nodded. “And no one else was with you? A boyfriend, maybe?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“What about Mark?”
Mary Jane lost a beat, tried to recover. “Mark?”
“Gaines,” Harlan said. She froze, blinked at him, said nothing. He’d hit the magic words. “What did Mark do to you in Lexington?”
“Nothing. We had a fight.”
“Did he hurt you?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Tell me about him.”
“What do you want to know? He’s a jerk.”
“Why?”
“He just is.”
“Was Mark the one who gave you the drugs? Is he the reason they pumped your stomach?”
Mary Jane looked away.
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell.”
“You can talk to me, Mary Jane. I won’t let Mark or your parents or anyone else hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then she said it again, softer. “I don’t know.” She pulled the covers up over her head. “Please, just leave me alone.”
He’d lost her.
Harlan touched her shoulder beneath the sheets, pulled them down slightly, and made her look at him. “I’m gonna leave, Mary Jane, just like you asked, but promise me you’ll call if you need anything.” He placed a card on the bedside table, wrote his home number on the back. “I don’t care what you want to talk about. Could be Mark, could be your parents, could be the weather. It doesn’t matter. I’ll listen.”
She lay there, still as a corpse, so Harlan shut the lights on the way out and let her rest. Then he left the house without a word to Jackson or Lyda.
He felt himself getting closer to solving the case, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe that Mary Jane pulled the trigger. And he didn’t want to trade her life for Lew’s. Lew had been corrupt. A cheat. Mary Jane was confused. Young. Maybe Holly was right and it had become personal for him, maybe he wanted revenge for what Lew had done to Angeline, but it wasn’t that exactly. It was about right and wrong and Harlan’s mistake had been believing the law had something to say about that.
Even if he brought Mary Jane in on suspicion, without stronger evidence, he wouldn’t be able to charge her. And if the gun wasn’t a match, if he was wrong, all hell would break loose. In the end, all he really had was a bag of McDonald’s trash, a Winchester, and a hunch. It wasn’t enough. Not yet.
* * *
After the sheriff left, Mary Jane heard her mother climbing the stairs to her room. Her hands clenched into fists. She’d tricked the cops in Lexington but this one knew something, and he wasn’t visiting because she’d gotten her stomach pumped. He’d known about Mark. But how? And he talked about Lew, but what was he hinting? If he knew something, why didn’t he just arrest her? Lyda looked in and said her name softly, but Mary Jane played dead. When the door closed, her fingers relaxed. There were four pink grooves on each palm where her nails had burrowed into the skin.
Lyda continued up the stairs to the third floor office. If ever there was a time to run, it had come, but as she rolled out of bed, the world around Mary Jane swirled and in the hallway she had to drop to her knees. She heard voices and thought she was hallucinating, but they kept on—became familiar—until gradually she made sense of them. Her parents. Arguing. She crawled to a vent along the floor and a memory clicked. As a child, she’d listened to her parents argue through the same heating vent.
Jackson was complaining about the sheriff. He said that it was all Lyda’s fault, which didn’t make sense to Mary Jane. The sheriff had been there to see her. But her mother kept apologizing, as if it were true. “For twenty years you’ve made me look like a fool,” Jackson said. “And now he knows. And who knows how many other people will find out.” Something slammed and her father’s voice started to rasp as it rose. “And for what? For fat Lew Mattock?”
Mary Jane craned closer, unsure of whether or not to believe what she’d heard. Her father knew about the affair, and her mother kept apologizing in starts and stops as she sobbed, a language more utterance than word.
“It’s my fault for marrying you,” Jackson said. “I knew better
. But Dad wouldn’t allow it. What would people say if I left my pregnant girlfriend to fend for herself?” His voice weakened. He was trying not to cry himself. “And I wanted to believe, Lyda. Really, I wanted to believe that it was over with him. That you loved me. That she was mine. But she isn’t. She isn’t mine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. It’s written on her face. Every time I look at her, I see him looking back at me. It’s easy to delude yourself when they’re young. Babies look like babies. Little girls aren’t much different. But she’s older now. And I see it.”
It took a moment for Mary Jane to realize they were talking about her. She was the reason her father had proposed to her mother. She caused their terrible sham of a marriage. Her heart dropped into her stomach and she opened her mouth to vomit but all that came out was a dying noise. She curled into a ball and plugged her ears because she couldn’t bear another word, rocked back and forth and choked on her tears. Suddenly, the great sadness of her life seemed to have reason. She’d never been wanted.
Her father—no, Jackson Finley—was telling the truth. It was written on the wall in his office. Generations of Finleys. None of them like her. All her failures, her blemishes, her heavy skin, her inability to fit in, all of it had been there from the moment she was born. All of it had been fated. She was the daughter of a bastard, a man she’d hated so much that she’d … Mary Jane tried to shut the memory out—the trigger, her breath, him standing in the crosshairs—all the images running together to make a muddy world.
She stood on shaky legs and banged against the wall, reached the stairs and clutched onto the banister for support. She scrambled down but her legs couldn’t carry her, not all the way, and the base of the stairs came careening toward her before it all went black.
* * *
Harlan got word from the proprietor of the McDonald’s on Highway 68 that the security tape he needed had been recorded over. The guy, who lived an hour away in Covington, blamed the manager and said it was his policy to keep the tapes for a month before reusing them, but he had a hard time making employees follow rules, and if there was anything else he could do to help, just let him know. Harlan slammed the phone back on its cradle and asked Holly to bug the crime lab to hurry the fuck up.
Then he drove out to Leland Abbot’s to see what he could dig up on Mark Gaines. Leland denied drugs were sold at the track, but that was an act performed for the benefit of the authorities. He just needed motivation to talk, a carrot or stick.
Something bad had happened between Mary Jane and Mark, that much was certain. There was the bruise along her cheek, the panic in her eyes when Harlan said his name. There were the drugs pumped from her stomach and the pill dust from Deerhorn. And then there was Trip Gaines, looming above it all. The doctor.
Harlan found Leland outside his trailer holding a drill and building a mess of a deck with untreated two-by-fours. “That looks like shit,” Harlan said, crouching to examine the shoddy craftsmanship. “Bob Vila you’re not.”
“Fuck that guy. He’s a know-it-all.”
Harlan jostled a loose board. “You think about our chat the other day?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t remember you giving me much to think on. The way I remember it you made some threats and then took off.”
“After you tried to bribe me.”
“That was a misunderstanding.”
Harlan put out his hand for the drill and secured a loose board. “I’ve reconsidered,” he said. “You can buy me off. But not with cash.”
“What do you want? Stock options?”
“Information on drug dealers.”
“I don’t know any.”
Harlan drove another screw home and put the drill down. “Then expect to see a deputy camped outside your place tonight.”
“How long can you keep that up?”
“I’ll do it myself if I have to. I love getting overtime.”
Leland scratched at the back of his neck. “Why do you have a hard-on for me?”
“Why don’t you listen to me the same way you listened to Lew?”
“Lew’s price was cheaper.” Harlan shrugged and Leland cursed under his breath as he took a seat atop the toolbox. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll hear you out, but be quick.”
Harlan rolled a cigarette and handed it over to Leland, took his time and rolled one for himself as well. “Some of what you said the other day is true. It’s not necessarily in my best interest to break up your pleasure park. It keeps the riffraff localized and all, but I need to do some police work out here every now and again—bust drunk drivers, pocket some drugs. Just enough to keep people honest. That’s in your long-term interest, too. You’re one fuckup away from another jail stint.”
“What other people do isn’t my business.”
“They do it on your property, it becomes your business. Now, I don’t care to get you in trouble, Leland. I figure we can work together. I give you a heads-up before I do any policing out here and you make yourself scarce.”
“And what do you get in return?”
“Information about a kid up to no good.”
“Who’s that?”
“You ever hear of Mark Gaines?”
Leland laughed. “The doctor’s boy.”
“I know it seems far-fetched—”
“It’s not.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re asking a lot, Harlan.”
“I’m offering a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Leland stood up and paced a circle, stretched his limbs. “That little motherfucker deals out here from time to time. He and the other druggies hide out in my woods—they call it the enchanted forest or some shit. My pops called it tick heaven. I’m not saying I have a part in this. It’s just that running them off my land is more hassle than turning a blind eye.”
Harlan nodded but he didn’t buy the bullshit. If there were drugs being sold, Leland would make sure he got a piece. “How often does Mark deal?”
“Shit, I don’t know. There’s not a schedule. But Halloween’s coming up. You don’t need me to tell you that’s a big-time holiday for druggies.”
“So he might be out here soon?”
“Might be.”
“Quit playing coy, Leland. Help me catch this kid and you and I can live in relative peace.”
Leland threw his smoke to the ground and picked up the drill. “I’ll see what I can do, but I need a favor first.”
“What’s that?”
“That ratty girl who claims to be your friend got all fucked up last night and damned if she isn’t sleeping it off in my place as we speak.”
“Mattie?”
“Is that her name?” Leland grinned. “All I know is she puked in my bathroom.”
“You didn’t?”
Leland drilled another screw. “Didn’t what?”
“Take advantage?”
“Jesus, Harlan. She’s just a kid. What kind of guy do you take me for?” Leland spat on the ground. “Kids come out here uninvited and when they get messed up, I end up taking care of them like some goddamn babysitter, so you finish the nanny job and take her the fuck home.”
Harlan stepped past Leland into the trailer. Mattie was curled up beneath a blanket on the couch. He shook her awake. “Let’s go,” he said. She didn’t make a fuss or seem surprised to see him, and when she pushed back the blanket, he was glad to see that her clothes—even her shoes—were on. She folded the blanket and put it back on the couch before following him outside.
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” Leland said as she passed by. “Next time try not to vomit in my house.”
Mattie mumbled an apology.
Harlan opened the door for her and looked to Leland. “I’ll hold you to your end of the deal.”
“Expect a call, Sheriff.”
The silence inside the cruiser turned awkward as they drove away. “He didn’t touch you, did he?” Harlan fina
lly asked.
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb, Mattie. Leland.”
“I’m not playing dumb, Harlan. Leland isn’t like that.”
“You know him well then?”
She picked at a fraying spot on her jeans. “Well enough.”
“I don’t like the life you lead,” Harlan said.
Mattie ignored the insult and asked him to take her to his place, but he refused, and when he pulled into the Spanish Manor, she jumped out while the car was still moving. Harlan hit the gas, caught up, and told her to stop. He had to end whatever kinship was growing between him and the girl. It could only bring trouble, and he couldn’t go saving every hopped-up kid with an ounce of potential.
“You’re sixteen years old,” he said. Mattie nodded, her bone-white skin translucent and fragile. “Whatever you feel for me has to stop.”
She lowered her eyes.
“It’s not right.”
“You think too much about right and wrong,” she said.
“We’re not friends, Matilda.” There was a sting to the words because they weren’t true. In some strange way, Harlan felt he and this girl needed each other, but he couldn’t admit that to Mattie and least of all to himself. “Clean yourself up and leave me alone.”
She pawed the ground with one foot as if she’d dropped something and was hoping to catch glint of it. “I knew we wasn’t ever gonna fall in love, Harlan,” she said, her voice trembling. “I just liked imagining that if things were different … if I were older and not such a fuckup or you weren’t the law, we might be friends. You could have let me hold on to that. You don’t know how hard it is to find a friend.” She peered down the gravel road that led her home. “I gotta go,” she said.
* * *
Mark turned on the television and ate pizza cross-legged atop the scratchy comforter of his Day’s Inn bed. In the parking lot the neighbors, a couple of guys who were in town on a construction job, sat on the tailgate of their truck and drank. They were getting rowdy on malt liquor and cheap cigars, and at some point, they turned on the truck’s stereo. Mark considered telling them to knock it off, but he knew that no matter what he said, they wouldn’t stop. He called the front desk but no one answered.
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