by Gail Giles
A lot of nothing from Kyle. Then, “You sound like crap.”
A lot of nothing from me.
“Okay, but only because I'm not done with you yet.” The silver dollar—sized circle of light appeared above me. It hurt my eyes and I turned my head away. It hurt to move. God, it hurt to move.
“Try to get your mouth under here and I'll pour water down the tube. I've got a quart bottle and I'll give you half. That's all.”
I shifted and opened my mouth. Waited. Water trickled down. Onto my nose. I wriggled up, lapping at the spillage, and then opening for the dribbling stream that dropped onto my tongue. I soaked in the water rather than drank it, my tongue taking it in like a reverse sponge, shrinking as it absorbed, then water oozed into my mouth and finally down my throat, wetting it. I only swallowed two or three times before the trickle eased then stopped.
It wouldn't save my body from dehydrating, but I could talk again. Kyle won this skirmish. He won it big.
If I worked it hard enough, I might be able to get more water, but that would cede him even more power. I couldn't afford that. I knew to keep the endgame in mind. No short-term wins. Get out of the box. Get out of this box.
Then kick his ass.
The light flicked away. But not before I caught a glimpse of myself in the dim glow. I'd worried about pee stains? My white pj's were dirt streaked, the knees torn out and bloodied. My guess was that the elbows were in the same shape since I could feel the pain of scrapes there. My fingers and knuckles were in worse shape than I'd imagined from the feel. And the feel was shredded. My right thumb was in good shape. Taped securely to the button of the radio. Stiff, yes, but unbloodied. I wanted out of here with enough strength left to take a swing at this guy, with the radio still taped to my hand.
I had been chasing a thought before. What was it? I couldn't think. I drummed my heels against the wood. Pain. Something wet, slippery. Blood?
The pain brought me back into focus a bit. Kyle. If I was here because I hurt his brother and he was this protector/avenger guy, then why hadn't I ever known about a brother? I had kept tabs on Kyle when I was a freshman. If they were close, I would have seen them together, something.
Why was David such a secret?
Did Kyle treat David like a creeping fungus and now he felt guilty?
But there was Monster Mom.
Did he have to protect David on the sly to keep Monster Mom on his side? To keep her from leaving him the way the dad already had?
And if he was Kyle the protector and he and David were close, the question I wanted answered was why me? If David Kirby was the kind to go suicidal from rejection, why would he ask me for a date? And why would Kyle let him? It's not like I have a rep for taking in strays.
Once at a party I told my date to get me another drink, and he said, “Sure, Your Bitchness.” The place went quiet and people kind of gaped. I didn't miss a beat. “That's your Royal Bitchness, peasant, and bow when you say it.” Sure, there was the head tilt, grin, and twinking to make it golden, but…
What tender heart would lay himself open to me? If David's stupid enough to try, am I supposed to know he's walking around with a noose hanging from his neck looking for a convenient branch?
I might be dying, but I was going to die angry.
THIS.
WASN'T.
MY.
FAULT.
It was time to take Kyle to the table and close the deal.
“You've had your water; can you talk now?”
“I can talk.” I said it soft, but firm, taking back my position. “The question is, are you listening?”
Nothing.
Then, “What's that mean?”
“I'll get back to it. First, I've got the big question for you. Why am I here? Don't give me your shit about David and my note. That's an excuse; that's not a reason. Why did David ask me out? Me. I bet David didn't get to me by himself.”
I pulled down to regretful and sad. I didn't want Kyle on the defensive. “So, do you have the guts to get real and tell the truth before you kill me?”
The silence went on so long, I wondered if he left. If I had pushed the wrong button, pushed it too hard.
“He didn't get to you by himself. I led him.”
I almost didn't hear it. It sounded like something he had just admitted to himself.
I had to close my eyes to concentrate. If I opened them, there were weird dancing things in front of me. Not lights, but sort of muted color, shadowy spots that flicked and flittered.
He had clicked off the radio and I felt him pacing across the ground over me. I sensed he was reaching critical mass. He needed another nudge.
Pulling the walkie close to my mouth and clicking the button felt like it took a year. Things swirled and whirled and I drummed my heels again so the pain would keep me from passing out. “What do you mean?”
He popped the walkie to life, but waited a long time to talk. Or was time going tilty?
“This year Mom started in on David about the gay thing. ‘Why don't you date? You never have a girlfriend. You've never gone on a single date. I think you're queer. That's it. I've got a sissy boy on my hands. My whole life was ruined by a little pervert.’
“David would call asking me what to do. I admit, I was sick of the calls. Couldn't I have a life of my own without David pulling me back into that horror show all the time? I'd tell him to let her blow off steam, to just stay out of her way. Quit making yourself such a target, I told him.
“But he said she followed him around the house, screaming like a maniac, nagging and sniping at him. She was pissed because his grades were bad. She'd spew at him about being gay, not having dates, and ruining her life. Over and over.
“And that's where you came in,” Kyle said.
Something was wrong with me. Really bad wrong. My legs were twitching and Kyle was fading in and out, syncing with the lights behind my eyes that dimmed then glared. The pounding in my head kept the backbeat. No matter how Zen I tried to go, my breath was coming fast, shallow but rapid. On TV hospital dramas, that's never good news.
“Hey, what's with you?”
“Sorry.” I sounded like a sick frog. I tried to slide my tongue over my lips. Like a nail file over rocks. “How did I get in the picture?”
“If David got a date with someone—not just any someone, but someone Mom would approve of—she would back off. How could she come down on him if he dangled a pretty girl in front of her?”
I heard expelled air in the radio. It hurt my ears and made my head roar. “I told him just what he had to look for, the type. She had to be like Mom. She had to be…it had to be someone that was so much like her that she had to think David finally stepped up. She would give him her approval if he picked her clone for a date. God, I was such a moron.”
It took me a minute. Because my synapses were dying or because no one wants to see their ugly side?
“That's why he picked me,” I whispered. My eyes burned but there were no tears there.
“I'm her. I'm your mother.”
BEN
Ben's first impression of the woman at the door was that she might have been pretty once. Before disappointment hardened her face into angles and points.
She backed away, gesturing them in, and then preceded them into a large room, leaving Scott to close the door. Seating herself in the middle of the couch, she didn't ask the men to sit.
Ben knew a power play when presented with one and sat in a leather club chair and pointed Scott toward another. Mrs. Kirby crossed her legs.
“David's case is closed. It was ruled a suicide.”
“I understand that, Mrs. Kirby. Detective Michaels and I are sorry for your loss and don't intrude on your time lightly. But, there's been a kidnapping, and we need some information from you and we'd like to talk to your son Kyle.”
“Kyle.” She waved dismissively. “Who knows where he is? He's been in and out. Mostly out. I can't keep track. We mourn differently. He does everything alone.”<
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Ben stared down at his notebook. How had the investigating officer characterized her? A piece of work?
“Mrs. Kirby, did David know Cass McBride?”
She laughed. Or barked. Ben wasn't quite sure what it was.
“For pity's sake. If you had known David–Stop, if you even had gotten a good look at him, you'd…well, you'd know how laughable…”
She smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle in her slacks. “I'm quite certain David knew who Cass McBride is. Even I know who she is. Rich, pretty – her picture is in the local newspaper regularly. But would she know David? She wouldn't give him the time of day. No girl like that would.”
Ben's spine stiffened and Scott's mouth gaped slightly open.
“David was – well, what some would call less than desirable,” she continued. She turned to the men and ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair, massaging the temples, then down to the nape of her neck, rubbing. “Bless his heart.”
When she noticed Ben's stiff posture, she pulled her hand away from her neck and looked directly at him. “You're not used to honesty, are you? No one is. Everyone thinks I'm heartless. But I'm simply honest. David was a timid boy, and he wasn't tough enough for this world. He quit everything he started. I'm not surprised he quit his life. I am surprised at the violent way he did it, though.”
Ben thought the tendons in her neck would snap.
“Kyle is off being traumatized somewhere, my husband is just off somewhere, and here I am, holding down the fort alone. As always.”
Ben wished he could tell Scott to close his gaping mouth. Sure, this woman was shocking the squat out of him too. Her son hadn't been dead a week and she was—well, Ben guessed it didn't matter how long the kid had been dead.
“Does Kyle know Cass?”
“That would be more in line,” she said. “But he's never mentioned her.”
“Would you mind if we had a look at Kyle's closet? His shoes?”
Mrs. Kirby's self-pity took a sharp turn. “Seriously? What the hell are you up to?”
KYLE
“I told Cass all about her, you know. My mother.”
The young cop had been pacing, but now he sat down. The big cop was still leading me with silence.
“The first time I saw Cass, I hated her, because I thought she had it all. But when word went around school that her dad divorced her mom and left her without a cent…”
My thumb was bleeding again. I tugged the sleeves back over my hand.
“See, once I met Cass's dad and then heard how he treated her mom, I thought what a bitch she must be to stay and live with him. She either had to be just like him, or she'd sell her soul to stay on his paycheck.”
I looked up at the big cop. “Have you met her father?” The cop didn't give me anything but I kept talking. “I met him once. He sold Mom her car. Shit. I can't believe it. How much my mom and Cass's dad are alike. With Cass's dad it's sales and with my mother it's torture, but it works the same way. Keeping the prize dangling just out of reach. If the sale is too easy, you can walk away.…
“When I walked away from Cass, I told myself that I was through with her. I wanted her to know she was there because of what she did to David. To understand what a bitch she was and to suffer in that box. To go out of her mind with fear. But I ended up spilling my guts. I left because I knew she was getting to me. But now it's like a lightbulb going off in my head. Her dad is a version of my mom. Both snakes, but Mom has venom; he's a constrictor.”
I rubbed my face again. Hmmmm, I wonder if her mother is a doormat like my dad?
“The craziest part of this entire thing is…as much as I still hate her, even if she had all the reason in the world to hate me, Cass, she gave me all the answers.
“I know it sounds weird, but…I kind of liked talking to her.”
CASS
I wanted to scream; I wanted to come out of that box just to slap his stupid, stupid face. But I was too tired to raise my voice above a croak. The disco lights that danced on my eyelids were fading and I was sleepy. My head was as cottony as my mouth, but one thing was clear—I was in here for all the wrong reasons.
Kyle wasn't even mad at me.
“When you figure this out, you're…well, I don't know how you'll feel about it,” I said.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you've got it all wrong. You don't want me in this box. I'm not the problem. If you want to feel better, feel like you've avenged your brother, then torture the person who tortured your brother—go get your mother and put her in this box. That woman shit on your brother every day of his life. She wouldn't even feed her kid. Her own child. Did you really understand that note? If David blamed me, he would have pinned my note to his body too. Right?”
Nothing.
I had to keep talking. The buzz in my head was piercing. A band saw chewing up my skull. I had to get this out now because I knew I didn't have any time left.
“David's note was aimed straight for your mother. Her words are teeth. He wants her to feed on his corpse. He hung himself in your front yard. He wanted people to know, to know what she did to him.”
Still nothing.
“If I die and she lives—how does that make you feel better? She wins even bigger that way.”
More nothing.
And then the radio clicked off. I heard a long, anguished howl. Loud enough to vibrate through the earth.
And then he was gone.
I knew he was gone. I could feel it.
This was all—backward or sideways or…I couldn't think, my head hurt and this fading in and out kept me from focusing. What did I do wrong? I had it all figured out…I knew what I…
Oh shit.
I'd done part of it right. I'd convinced him that burying me was covering up the problem. And covering up the problem, never letting it come to light, was how his mother got away with wounding David with her words until she bled him dry.
But I was supposed to make Kyle see that his mother always made sure someone else paid the price for her shortcomings, for her mistakes. Kyle was supposed to dig me up so I wouldn't die for what his mother had done to David.
I was supposed to convince him that his mother murdered David.
And she couldn't make Kyle responsible for murdering me.
He was supposed to get me out first.
Now he was gone.
I wasn't supposed to…I didn't think he'd self-destruct…I…didn't…
I signed my own death certificate.
My eyes are closed. I own the dark now. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears and it's got a flutter or maybe I mean a stutter. I'm too weak to bang my heels, my breath kind of rattles, and my tongue has gotten thick again. The things that should hurt, my shredded fingers and toes and heels, don't. The places where I've bitten through my lips and where they've cracked and bled, none of that hurts. But I'm cold and I shiver and jerk and that makes my joints feel like they are grinding. And my head. Pounding, buzzing, the whirling lights.
BEN
Ben sat at his desk, fingers laced behind his head, feet on the desk, concentrating on the crime board, staring at the names, the facts, trying to make sense or order, trying to will something to jump out at him.
“First forty-eight are over. I hate to lose and our chances of winning are…” He didn't want to say it.
“We keep looking,” Roger said. He printed NEW DRUG on the board in green ink. “The lab said the sheets did show drug traces, but it's a mix they aren't familiar with. They're talking to people to see what's new out there. If it's new, we have a better chance of seeing who has access.”
“I'm tired.” Ben kneaded the back of his neck and pulled his feet down. “I haven't slept since who-knows-how long and all the pistons aren't firing. I know I'm missing something.” He stared at the board again.
Scott drummed the desktop. “Ben?”
“Scott, stop with the noise. I hate repetitive noises. You know I hate—”
; Roger grinned, thinking of Ben's own finger-drumming habit.
“Ben.” Scott still drummed, seeming not to hear Ben's complaint.
“What, Scott?”
“Who has access to new drugs on the market?”
“I dunno, docs, pharmacists? Roger, do you—oh, that's it!”
Scott rose and headed for the board. “Pharmaceutical reps get the new stuff that's out and they peddle it to the docs. Right? That's what they do?”
“And the Kirby kid's father is a rep,” Roger said. “But David died before Cass was snatched.”
Scott drew a red line from Kyle's name to Cass's.
“The brother,” Ben said. “But we checked his shoes. Right size, no tread match, no glass cuts.”
“We didn't check the ones he was wearing,” Scott said.
“And he's been out more than in,” Ben added. “Let's get back to the Kirby house and shake something loose.”
KYLE
“I got in my truck and floored it all the way home. I grabbed some rope from the back; there's always stuff like that in my truck. I didn't want to bury her. I wanted to hang her from that tree, let the neighbors see her out there. Dad was gone, of course, and I slammed in through the front door and went into the kitchen and grabbed one of the big knives out of the block on the counter.
“Mom was already yelling. Calling out, asking if that was me. Screaming that she had a headache and couldn't I be a little considerate.” I stopped.
I dug my nails into my thumbs again. This time I didn't care if they saw me bleed. “You know what, a real killer would have heard her voice and turned around and run away. He'd figure he couldn't kill something that sounded like that without a silver bullet and a stake to the heart.”
I looked at the big cop. “I know how that sounds. Blame the gene pool.”
“Keep going, Kyle. You're almost done.”
I stormed up the stairs and jerked her out of bed.
“What the hell do you think you're—”
I shoved the tip of the knife under her chin. “Shut your mouth. Just shut up before I kill you or I'll cut your tongue out.”