The motel was on the outskirts of Lexington, the sort of place you pulled off the interstate to find, but the parking lot was full. Mark wondered what had brought so many people there, wondered where they were headed. He didn’t even know where he was headed. He’d run from the party and escaped but something in his gut told him to circle back. That’s when he saw Mary Jane being loaded into an ambulance with two cops nearby. He’d gone straight to the apartment, packed a bag, and left. Now, he kept watching the local news, as if something would show up and tell him whether or not the coast was clear, but nothing ever did.
If he were a betting man, Mark would double-down on Mary Jane’s ability to keep a secret, but he couldn’t gamble his life on it. He didn’t know where she was or who she was with or what questions they were asking. Besides, if Mark were a betting man, he never would have guessed Mary Jane would cheat on him. After he’d caught her, something changed in him. He’d wanted to hurt her. And when he couldn’t find any other way, he’d hit her. The violence surprised him—probably him more than her. It seemed ridiculous that the day before he’d felt beholden to Mary Jane, that he’d planned on running away with her to Montreal. At least now he was on his own. Free.
Ever since Lew died, he’d been making mistakes. He hadn’t handled the situation with Mary Jane. Or with his father. Or Chance. He thought about going back to his dad and asking for help, but he couldn’t trust him, and he couldn’t exactly come clean about Mary Jane. His dad was a powder keg ready to blow.
The drunken assholes outside his motel room decided they liked a particular song and cranked it up. The gravelly warble of a country singer filled the air. “Shut the fuck up,” Mark muttered before trying to drown their noise with the volume of his television.
He counted the money he had left. He couldn’t afford to keep staying at the Day’s Inn, couldn’t afford to stall out. It was always the same problem—not enough foresight, not enough means. He needed to make a run for it without Mary Jane. Maybe he would head south instead of north. Mexico was a place to start over. Or maybe he’d head west and change his name. In his Intro to American History class, he’d learned that the pioneers were men with checkered pasts, men who’d sought new beginnings.
A beer bottle broke in the parking lot and Mark stood up from the bed. He turned the doorknob and almost stepped out but reconsidered, pulled back the curtain to sneak a look. The men were tossing their empties toward an open Dumpster, arcing the bottles over his Mustang. He wanted so badly to confront them but he returned to the bed and picked up his planner instead. It was a small token of the life he’d left behind. The planner made his life seem so innocent—class, homework, a note to go to French club. He tried to pretend that he’d been the person depicted in those pages, but the beeping of his pager interrupted his reverie. It came from a number he recognized and he called back. Leland Abbot needed pills for Halloween. And Mark Gaines needed gas money.
twelve
As soon as she walked in, Harlan called Holly into his office. He’d been up all night organizing the case, had compiled a folder with the autopsy report, Pedersen’s bounced check, the Deerhorn evidence, and notes from his conversations with Little Joe, the Finleys, and Tara Koehler. “I want everyone on duty tonight,” he said. “I’m going to arrest Mark Gaines and it’s all hands on deck.”
“What’s Mark Gaines have to do with anything?” Holly asked.
Harlan explained how the evidence pointed back to Mary Jane and Mark. He couldn’t arrest the girl without the crime lab’s confirmation, but he’d worked out a deal with Leland to set up Mark.
“And you think this links back to Lew’s murder?”
“I do. Trip was paying Lew’s debts for a reason. And then I find out Mark is dealing drugs.”
“But where’s Lew fit into it?”
“Maybe Trip paid him to turn a blind eye to Mark’s drug dealing. Lord knows Lew needed the money. Or maybe all three of them got caught up in something that spun out of control. If I bring Mark in on a drug charge, he might just fill in the gaps.”
“What about bringing in the girl, too? Don’t forget about her mom’s affair. That’s a strong motive.”
“Once the crime lab confirms we have the murder weapon, I’ll bring in Mary Jane. In the meantime, I don’t want to tip everyone off.” Harlan handed over the folder of evidence. “I don’t know who pulled the trigger, Holly, but I’m pretty damn sure both those kids know something.”
Holly spun the gold band on her ring finger. “It sounds far-fetched.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“And you trust Leland?”
Harlan sighed. Ever since Lew died, he’d been looking for someone he could trust, and what he ended up with was Leland Abbot. Somehow it made sense. “I guess I have to.”
Holly held the folder as if it were live-wired. “If this falls apart, you’re gonna be wading in deep shit.”
Looking at the battered case file, Harlan couldn’t help feeling proud. “And if it solves this murder, I just might win an election.”
“What else do you need from me?” Holly asked.
“Run the dispatch tonight. I’ll take Paige with me to the dirt track, but I don’t want the other deputies to know what’s going on until I have Mark in custody. After that the dominoes will fall and we’ll need help.”
Holly paused at the door on her way out. “Sometimes this job,” she said. “It makes me think the worst about people.”
Harlan didn’t disagree.
* * *
Mary Jane woke up next to her mother, who was fast asleep and snoring. She didn’t remember how she’d ended up back in her room but one touch to her forehead confirmed that she hadn’t dreamt the events leading up to it. There was a knot where she parted her hair.
The window was open and a damp blanket of air settled, and her breath felt shallow as a ghost’s. She slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Lyda, and nudged open the closet, counted the many Mary Janes that dangled there. Belle of the Ball Mary Jane dancing the night away in a champagne gown. Beachcomber Mary Jane lounging by the sea in a swimsuit. Rocker MJ in a ripped T-shirt and jeans. Today, it seemed important to find the right Mary Jane. She started with jeans and a gray V-neck stretched thin from wear. Over that she added a flannel shirt that had been Pappy’s. She’d worn the flannel every day for a month after he died. Even now she touched the fabric and whispered hello. Then she ran a brush through her hair, pulled it behind her ears, spread cover-up over her bruises, and added lip gloss. When she looked in the mirror, the girl that looked back was the truest Mary Jane she knew.
She had a headache, a stomachache, jitters from withdrawal, but she wouldn’t let the pain overcome her. She opened the jewelry box on her desk and pocketed her last hidden Oxy, glanced back to make sure Lyda was still sleeping. She decided to write a note—an explanation. She held a pencil over a piece of paper but struggled to find the right words. The thought that came to her was one countless teachers had written on her report cards. It didn’t matter whether Mary Jane was a grade school chatterbox, a middle school prima donna, or a high-school outcast, her teachers wrote the same seven words over and over. Fails to live up to her potential.
When she finished the note, she placed it somewhere hard to find, and crept down the stairs, gripping the banister with both hands, careful not to make noise, careful not to stumble. On the porch, she took out the Oxy and held it like a gemstone. She wanted to be better than this. She wanted to be stronger, strong enough to flush this pill down with the rest, but she wasn’t that strong. No point in pretending. She crushed it with the base of her mother’s lighter and snorted the dust. It felt right.
She could have turned back, could have walked into the house and slipped beneath the sheets and slept until the sheriff came to get her or her parents sent her away to rehab, but she wanted control over her own destiny. Downtown lay ahead like an apparition, and she followed streets that sloped toward the river. The diner’s fluorescent Mountain Dew si
gn flickered, and through a layer of dust on the window, she watched two men sip coffee. The cook stepped out for a cigarette. Her jet-black hair was tied in a bun and she wore an apron that said, SCREW HOME COOKIN’. Mary Jane nodded hello. A newspaper trapped against a nearby bench flapped in the breeze.
The pavement turned to rubble as she reached the edge of town. In lots where brick row houses had been razed, vacant trailers perched above weedy, rock-strewn ground. When she reached the river’s edge, Mary Jane traced her fingers over the graffiti of the town’s half-built floodwall. She thought about how if you build a wall to protect yourself, you just make it worse for someone downriver, someone without a wall of their own.
She scrambled along the banks of the Ohio. It had rained overnight and debris dredged up by the floods floated by. Tree branches crested like snakes and runs of yellow mud from the bottoms surfaced as foamy crests of smogwater circled in the swells. Mary Jane tossed a stone into the riffling current and made her way along a sand shoal to the base of the bridge that crossed into Ohio. A dead bluegill—a tiny, ugly thing—had washed up along shore and been gnawed at by turtles. She grabbed the rusted iron rungs bolted into the bridge support and climbed. It was a game they’d played as kids: Who could climb the highest? And when heights no longer frightened them, they’d tossed rocks at the climber. And when those rocks became too small, they’d found larger ones.
Ochre flakes broke off the rungs and fluttered to the ground like dying moths. Mary Jane’s feet slipped along the wet and gusts of wind broke across her face and whipped her hair. She paused to rest, put the flat of her hand against the cool concrete. When she looked down, she was not afraid.
When she reached the top, she grabbed the cool wet metal of the bridge’s railing and pulled herself onto the asphalt. She was surrounded by the sounds of a world without people. The wind moved in circles and she put her arms out as if they were wings. The river rushed and a pair of waterbirds called out to each other. Mary Jane watched them wheel in the swirling winds, their bodies going whichever way the breeze took them, their necks craning down in search of fish.
She sat atop the railing as the fog lifted. The sun played hide-and-seek with heavy gray clouds and a soft rain started to fall. She licked her lips and tasted the wet. Before her was the river, cutting farther west than she’d ever make it. They’d misunderstand her no matter what she did, but she hoped this might save them from the truth; she hoped that once she was gone, the story of what she’d done would disappear with her. She’d been so wrong. She’d done terrible things and pretended there weren’t consequences. She’d done terrible things because she was afraid of being alone.
A waterbird came up from the river with a fish in its beak, and Mary Jane imagined a world of every action’s opposite. In that world, the bird would miss the fish, or perhaps the fish would get the bird. In that world, she never would have run to Mark in Lexington. She never would have run because the bullet that killed Lew would get swallowed back in its chamber. The gun would be in someone else’s hands, some hunter who missed his shot, and the bullet would lodge into an ancient tree, which would scar over and bury the guilt inside. Mary Jane pictured that tree, deep in some woods she didn’t know and had never seen. She went on like this, into a world where she hadn’t become just another face in the crowd, a world where the best hadn’t been first and the worst hadn’t been last. There were better worlds out there. She just didn’t know how to reach them.
She didn’t say goodbye, didn’t offer a prayer, but she kept her eyes open and paid witness. She tilted forward and let go. The sky became a blur until the snap of hard water ripped through her and she gasped and choked as the cold worked back from her fingers. Then her arms went weightless and her heartbeat slowed. And slowed. The current took her.
* * *
Every landmark Mark passed, every mile that brought him closer to Marathon, made him sicker. When he reached the county line, he looked away from the sign that spelled out Mary Jane’s last name in all caps. He’d been forced to check out of the Day’s Inn by three and reached Leland’s early. It was eerily quiet as he parked, so he hiked into the woods to collect his thoughts and waited for the sun to set. In the branches of a nearby shrub a spider spun its web. He watched it climb up and down a seemingly invisible thread of silk, watched it pivot and turn as if in thin air. He counted the pill bottles in his bag and squeezed them in his hand. He didn’t want to keep dealing drugs but he had no choice. Leland offered him a lifeline, and after he sold his stash, Mark would become like that spider. He would travel invisible roads. He would look out for himself and no one else. And for that reason he’d survive.
Where he’d go, he didn’t know. What he’d do, the same. He’d repent. Or try. It wouldn’t do much good. It took a lot for a person to realize the evils they were capable of, but Mark knew. If his father had sought to create a monster, he’d succeeded. Monster born of monster. Mark would never not feel shame. Maybe after he settled someplace no one had ever heard of, he’d call the newspaper and rat his dad out, write a note to Mary Jane and apologize for letting things get so broken, do his best to make amends. But none of it would wash the blood from his hands.
He thought of Chance’s last words: I do nothing upon myself and yet I am my own executioner. They seemed to suggest a world full of innocents. And perhaps they were all innocent—himself, Mary Jane, Lew, the elderly people selling their prescriptions to keep the heat on, the kids popping pills to get high, even his father—but it seemed more true to say the opposite, to say, Because of what I do upon myself, I am my own executioner.
* * *
Harlan and Paige drove her rusty Datsun up the switchback into Leland’s property. He was wearing a flannel and jeans and Paige had on a short skirt over black tights and a suggestive top, but still Harlan worried they’d be pegged for cops. The idea of going undercover in a town as small as Marathon was ridiculous.
“Remember this place?” he asked.
“Looks better during the day,” Paige replied.
The parking lot’s ruts had muddied from rain and the Datsun’s wheels spun and the steering wheel jangled. “This thing’s almost as bad as my truck,” Harlan said.
“Almost.”
A steady stream of cars followed them in. The racetrack had turned into a soupy mess lit up by floodlamps like the ones rich boys put atop their jeeps. A couple of ATVs cruised at low speeds, and spectators tossed their empties onto the track, which the drivers took aim for and crunched into flat pieces of aluminum that refracted the light. An attempt at a PA strung along slanted poles crackled out a country song.
Girls in midriff shirts stalked the grounds, their heavy makeup turning them into little Lolitas. The older women dressed the same but their bodies had become skeletal from hard living, their faces carved with deep tracks and sunken cheeks. The worst had thin, tattered hair that had been dyed so often it looked burnt. Half the men looked like farm boys while the other half wore jerseys and fake diamond jewelry, the latter’s high-pitched voices spouting a language foreign to Finley County, a language learned from television and rap videos. Harlan looked at Paige and felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t told her the real reason for their visit, had lied and said they were just out there to get a feel of the place. Eventually, Paige might come to understand why he’d cut a deal with Leland, but she’d never fully agree with the decision.
A group of kids caked in white makeup and boasting safety pin piercings pushed through the crowd and congregated on the gate of a pickup beside the Datsun. People heckled them and the kids seemed to feed off the anger, but when they spoke to one another “Oh my Gods” and “likes” peppered their speech—just like any other group of teens. Three country toughs in ripped shirts, one sporting a Confederate flag on his cap, walked by and gawked at them. One of the ghosts—a girl with straight black hair—screamed, “What the fuck are you looking at, hillbilly?” The redneck didn’t take the bait, so she turned her gaze to Harlan, and said, “You too, asshole
.”
“Come on,” Harlan said to Paige. “Let’s go.”
Paige hesitated, so Harlan pulled her toward the dirt track. “I don’t like those vampire freaks,” she said.
“They’re just kids. Doesn’t matter if they whistle Dixie or paint their face. They’re just trying to fit in.”
He bummed a couple of beers from a guy with a cooler full of them and handed one to Paige.
The smell of dope drifted toward them, and he followed it to a group of women passing a joint. One of them made eye contact and beckoned him with her slouch. He drained his beer and stomped it into the ground as she came over. From afar she’d had the outline of a beauty but up close it disappeared. Spray-on tan, blue-veined arms, loose skin on a skinny frame. She offered him the last of a blunt. “Toke?”
Harlan shook his head.
“Boring,” the woman said and walked away.
“You gonna let people smoke dope night in front of you?” Paige asked.
Harlan realized he needed to come clean or else Paige would blow their cover. “Our goal,” he said, “is to not draw attention. In a minute we’ll make our way up to Leland’s trailer, and a little after seven, I’m going to bust a kid that’s dealing drugs. You’re going to stay outside unless something goes wrong.”
“How do you know the guy you’re looking for will be there?”
“A little birdie told me.”
“And what about Leland?”
“Who do you think the birdie was?”
Faces floated by, all with a hint of familiarity but none with names Harlan could have called out. “If people recognize you, say you’re off duty,” Harlan said. “And keep a beer in your hand. It’ll help you fit in.”
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