At some point I drifted off to sleep, lulled by a quiet car and a sleep debt that had been steadily accumulating since Chloe went missing. The next thing I knew, I was being startled awake by a loud knocking noise.
I woke up to two men hunched over in the black night, peering into my window. When I looked at their shadowed faces, they waved, and I reluctantly rolled my window down.
“Hey there,” one of them said. They were both burly men in their forties, wearing flannel jackets so grubby that dirt had warped the plaid pattern. Both had patchy facial hair (one blond, one dark) and leathery faces, undoubtedly from a lifetime of working outside and disregarding sunscreen.
“Uh, hey,” I said uncertainly. The dark-haired man leaned into my window, and I could smell the sour scent of whiskey on his skin.
“I’m Jerry, and that’s my buddy Roy. What’s your name?” he asked. Jerry smiled, unveiling yellowed and rotten teeth. Roy leaned against my car and lit a cigarette.
“Uh, Taylor. My name’s Taylor,” I said quickly.
“Well, Taylor, we saw you in the bar earlier, and I said to Roy, ‘What’s a hot little piece like that doing here alone?’ So when we came out here and saw you, I knew I had to say hello,” Jerry said. He lifted his bushy eyebrows meaningfully and waited for his compliment to sink in.
“Oh, uh, thanks but I-I’m actually waiting for someone,” I stuttered. It was scary to think that they had watched me in the bar and then found me out here. The parking lot was dark, and I realized how many terrible things could happen here without anyone noticing.
“Well, you might as well wait inside with us. It’s not safe for a girl to be out alone. We’ll take good care of you, won’t we, Roy?” Jerry asked.
“Yep, good care,” Roy said, smiling at me through the windshield. The light of his cigarette distorted his features and made him look like a leering jack-o’-lantern.
“And we’ll get you drinks. You’re probably underage, but Roy and I can keep a secret,” Jerry said, oozing confidence like a salesman on commission. I swallowed hard, my stomach a pit of knots.
“Oh, honestly, that’s okay—” I began, but Jerry interrupted me.
“You ever had Malibu? It’s real sweet. You mix it with Sprite; it’s nice. Any drink you want, I promise.” The way he said it gave me the queasy feeling that he’d said the same words quite a few times. How many girls had taken him up on the offer? And what had happened to them after?
“Really, I can’t. It’s a school night and my dad is probably waiting for me at home,” I said lamely, the word “dad” tripping artificially over my tongue.
“Come on, one drink. We’re fun guys! You’ll have fun with us,” Jerry said more forcefully, his smile dimming.
“Maybe another time,” I said weakly.
“Oh, what? You think you’re too good for us?” Jerry snapped. “Here I am, trying to be friendly, and you’re being a little bitch.”
In that moment, I was very aware of my own fragility. You go through life trying to pretend that girls can do anything, that they’re just as strong as men. But I couldn’t reconcile that Girl Power sentiment with the reality of two large men in the woods just a short walk from where a girl my age had been murdered. In that moment, it seemed as though I had floated through life unmolested only because I hadn’t yet crossed paths with a man who’d decided to hurt me. I felt light-headed as I realized how stupid I’d been, hanging out at a bar like this at night.
“No, I don’t, please—” I began, noticing how Jerry’s hands were curled around my window, the dark hair on his knuckles visible against the strained whiteness of his grip.
“You little sluts are all the same. You act like you’re better than us when you’re all just looking for a lay!” Jerry ranted. I really believed right then that he was about to drag me out of the car and hurt me. I felt like I represented every girl he had ever hated.
“Or they’re little teases,” Roy said gruffly.
“Look, I would hang out, but I came here to find my boyfriend, Alan,” I said desperately, trying to come up with something plausible. “He works here and I thought he was on tonight. But he’s not, so I’d better go, because he gets real jealous.”
“Who’s Alan?” Jerry said to Roy. Roy threw his cigarette on the ground.
“Aw, it’s that Indian who works behind the bar. He was in jail with my brother.”
Jerry looked at me and frowned. I held my breath and slowly inched my hand toward the key in the ignition.
“Guess we better not shit where we eat then,” Jerry finally muttered.
“I like this bar. We’ve already come too close to losing it to a piece of pussy. This one’s not worth doing it again,” Roy said.
“Shut up, Roy,” Jerry said. He slapped the window of my car and walked away. Roy cast one backward glance at me, as if he was considering changing his mind, and then he left.
I exhaled, the tightness in my chest easing as I realized how long I’d been holding my breath. I peeled out of the parking lot as soon as they disappeared back inside the bar. I couldn’t believe that my lie had worked. I still didn’t know if Alan was a murderer, but tonight he had unknowingly saved me.
I drove home with my eyes fixed on the rearview mirror, sure that at any moment those men would appear and run me off the road. My heart didn’t stop racing until I walked in the front door and saw my mom curled up on the couch watching a cooking competition on TV.
“Hi, baby, how’s it going?” she asked, making room on the couch for me.
“Pretty good,” I said, tucking my feet under the blanket she was wrapped in.
“What were you up to tonight?” she asked. I shrugged.
“Just studying in Twiggs, lost track of time,” I said. Twiggs was the local coffee shop, kind of like a Starbucks but with better food and amazing cheesecakes. They were open late and a lot of high-school girls liked to meet up there.
“Mmm, sounds good. I wish I’d known. I would have asked you to pick me up a slice of their Turtles cheesecake,” my mom said with a smile. She wasn’t suspicious at all, and it scared me how good I was getting at lying.
“Next time, I promise,” I said. The TV had switched to a commercial, which gave me an opportunity to jump up and check that the outside door was locked. I did that every time I got up for the rest of the evening.
Lying in bed that night, I thought of Chloe and how her confidence had crumbled like spun sugar after those boys hurt her. I thought of the waitress in the bar and how she dealt with men like Jerry and Roy every day. The inequality in life was clear. Men treated the world like an extension of their living room, a safe place where they could do whatever they pleased. Women spent their entire lives on guard against rape or abduction. We walked home with our house keys cutting indents into our palm because a streetwise cousin told us to. We looked back constantly to make sure that every person and car that passed us at night kept going. And like everything else that bothered me this year, this wasn’t likely to change. Life would always be a playground for men and a survival course for women.
But all of those feelings just made me want revenge even more. I wanted to make sure that the people who hurt Chloe and Helen suffered too. I wanted Helen’s killer stuck behind bars for the rest of his life, and I wanted Devon, Mike and Liam to never forget the pain that they had caused. Thinking of revenge made the weakness and fear that Roy and Jerry produced disappear. When I was finally calm, something Roy had said re-emerged from my memory. He’d said that they had already come too close to losing the bar to a piece of pussy. Could they have been talking about Helen? Roy and Jerry could have been leaving the Trapper that night and spotted her. They clearly weren’t above hitting on a teenage girl. What if Helen had rejected them and they’d snapped? It certainly seemed possible.
The thought that I might have met Helen’s murderers in a dark parking lot and narrowly escaped being their next victim forced me out of bed two more times to check that the front door was locked. It was a l
ong night.
Chapter Twenty–Two
March 20, 2006
It took me a week to get my nerve up to pursue the Jerry and Roy lead. I couldn’t forget how unsafe I had felt in that parking lot. The realities of investigating a murder had become all too clear, and part of me wished that I could abandon the case. But walking away simply didn’t feel like an option. If I gave up now I would have no answers, and I would feel worse than before. I had failed Chloe. I didn’t want to fail Helen too.
But I wasn’t stupid enough to face Jerry and Roy alone. I needed Tom, which meant that I had to tell him about the parking lot incident. He wasn’t going to be happy.
“So, let me get this straight. You went back to the bar we both agreed was the sketchiest place we had ever been in, but this time you went alone?” The volume of his voice through the phone made me wince. I was in my bedroom, pacing the small space as we talked.
“Yeah…I’m sorry, Tom. I really don’t know what I was thinking,” I said meekly, feeling like a total idiot.
“Jenny, you could have been killed! Even if they aren’t killers, those guys sound really dangerous!”
“I know, I know,” I said, trying to sound suitably contrite. I knew it had been a stupid thing to do, but being lectured by Tom was getting old quickly. “But do you think there’s something here?”
Tom was quiet for so long that I thought the call had dropped. I stooped down to pick a loose sock off my floor and was in the process of looking for the match when he finally spoke.
“Yeah, it’s possible. I mean, there’s a lot of sketchy people at that bar, but those two do sound like suspects,” he said grudgingly.
“So we need to find out more,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm as my heartbeat sped up with nerves. “We need to know if these guys had anything to do with Helen’s death.”
“And how exactly do we do that?” Tom asked sarcastically. “Should we just walk up to them in the bar and say, ‘Excuse me, but did you kill any teenage girls this year?’ ”
“No, we follow them,” I said. “We follow them and hope we get lucky.”
So far, this hadn’t exactly been my year. Maybe I was due a bit of luck.
—
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Tom said, starting his truck. “Seriously, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Me too,” I said, watching two familiar figures cross the Trapper parking lot and climb into a dusty old van. We had been sitting here for hours, waiting for our favorite murder suspects to leave. I was better prepared for this stakeout than my last one, bringing a plethora of magazines and snacks. We had also managed to steal a few kisses, our eyes remaining firmly fixed on the bar so as not to miss our chance.
The van turned out of the parking lot, and we waited a beat before following. It was nighttime, which was both a blessing and a curse. Jerry and Roy would be less likely to realize they were being followed, but we would have to be extra careful not to lose them. We also didn’t know how much they had been drinking, so keeping a safe distance was a particularly good idea.
As we headed farther out of town, the streetlights became more and more infrequent. Soon, our only light came from Tom’s headlights as we kept our eyes fixed on the dusty old taillights up the road. Our headlights caught a large deer pausing a few feet ahead on the side of the road, and the sight made me shudder. It was so dark out here that if an animal jumped out in front of us we wouldn’t see it until it was too late to brake.
The road wound around rock cliffs that loomed like the prows of ghost ships and steep inclines where a car coming the opposite way on the horizon could blind you with its high beams and send you veering off the road. The thought of anyone hitchhiking on this highway chilled me. It was such a dark and inhospitable road, so far from the civilizing effect of convenience stores and cop cars, security cameras and pay phones. People can be on their worst behavior when they don’t think anyone is watching, and out here, you could be assured that you were miles from prying eyes. You could disappear so easily, a life wiped out as easily as tearing the last pages from a book.
The van finally turned off the road by a faded yellow sign advertising “Lazy Days Tent, Trailer and RV Park.” We watched the taillights disappear in the trees as we drove past, slowing down as much as we could without looking suspicious.
“Okay, so they probably live there,” Tom said, turning the car around on the shoulder so we could head back into town.
“At least one of them does,” I said, examining the cartoon sun on the trailer park sign and the block letters proclaiming that they accepted rent weekly.
“So, what do we do now?” Tom asked. I patted his leg, my hand lingering on the coarse denim of his jeans.
“We go back tomorrow and try to figure out which trailer belongs to them. And then we hope that they go out long enough for us to find something that connects them with Helen’s murder,” I said. Tomorrow was a school day, but this seemed much more important than Lord of the Flies.
Tom nodded and we lapsed into silence. I stared out at the inky silhouettes of trees against a dark sky, trying to gather my muddled thoughts. The sleepless nights must have finally caught up with me because the next thing I knew, the overhead lights in the truck were on and Tom was leaning over to unbuckle my seatbelt. The stuffy warmth of the car and his presence made me feel safe. I found myself wishing that he would carry me upstairs and tuck me into bed, but I knew that was silly. I wasn’t a kid anymore, and Tom couldn’t protect me.
Chapter Twenty–Three
March 21, 2006
Tom and I left school at lunch on Tuesday, picking up Subway sandwiches and a bag of cookies for the mission. The day was bright and blue, and the highway seemed mundane in the sunlight.
At the faded yellow sign, Tom pulled the truck off the highway. Soon, we were bouncing along a rutted road with cracked asphalt and deep puddles filled with equal parts ice and mud. Tree branches brushed against the windows of the truck; the road was so narrow it felt like we were tunneling through the forest. There was no room to pass, and it was only luck that kept us from meeting another car coming the opposite way.
Fifteen minutes of slow, ponderous driving later, we emerged into the open. Lazy Days was a bigger park than I expected, with trails to campgrounds and lake beaches jutting off like spokes from the hub of the central offices. Some of the camping was seasonal, but there were a surprising number of trailers and RVs visible through the trees. Lazy Days seemed like a town, hidden away from prying eyes, and I could only hope that people kept to themselves and didn’t worry about outsiders prowling around. Things could get dangerous if Jerry and Roy found out we had followed them.
“I’ll walk around and see if I can spot their van. You get down,” Tom said, pointing at the foot space of the passenger seat. “I don’t want them to see you.”
“Really?” I asked. “Don’t you think hiding is a bit dramatic?”
“Hiding from two potential murderers who you’ve already pissed off? No, I don’t think that’s dramatic,” Tom said, arching his eyebrow.
“Fine,” I grumbled, pushing my seat back and sliding down onto the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest. “If you insist.”
Tom got out and shut the door, leaving me alone in the truck. I put my face down on my knees and shut my eyes, trying to ignore the silence that engulfed the car. Hiding somehow made me feel more afraid, and I couldn’t stop imagining looking up and seeing Jerry’s face in the window of the truck, just like at the Trapper. Jerry would glance down at me and then I’d feel a gush of air as I was pulled from the truck. The image seemed so real that I promised myself I wouldn’t look up, because I just might lose it if he was really there.
After what felt like ages, Tom returned and started the car.
“I found the van. It’s parked outside a trailer down the road a bit,” he said. I braced myself as the truck lurched down the trail.
“So now we just have to wait for them
to leave,” I said. Tom nodded and parked the truck between some snow-covered vehicles half shaded by the tree line. He slipped off his black hoodie and pulled an old baseball cap out of the glove compartment, bumping my head in the process.
“Here, wear this in case they spot us. They shouldn’t recognize you from far away,” Tom said, as I heaved myself up. I slid the large hoodie on, marveling at how warm it was from his body heat alone. Then I tucked my hair under the hat and glanced in the mirror. I looked like a freckled boy, plain and unremarkable. I tried not to regret the fact that I looked even less attractive than usual. Why couldn’t my disguise be an evening gown and hair extensions?
“Where’s the van?” I said, stretching my arms and grabbing a cookie from the bag.
Tom pointed at a large trailer a few houses down. The van was parked behind it, giving us a clear view of the trailer door. It was an old model that looked like it had seen better days, but it was surprisingly large, with additions built on the back and side. This trailer clearly wasn’t moving anywhere. I smiled and considered the permanent trailers on the site. It was almost a philosophical question: At what point is a mobile home rendered so immobile that it just becomes a house?
“Now we wait,” Tom said, shoving a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth. I nodded and methodically began to pick the M&M’s out of the cookie I was holding. Chloe and I used to complain about being bored on a regular basis, as if that was the most insufferable condition known to humankind. Lately, though, I seemed to be getting a lot of practice waiting. I’d have given anything to spend one more boring day with Chloe.
An hour later, Tom shook me awake. “They’re leaving!” he whispered, his hand still on my shoulder. I rubbed my eyes, surprised that I’d fallen asleep in the middle of the day.
The Lives of Desperate Girls Page 14