Kisscut

by Karin Slaughter

  They fell silent, and Grace Patterson picked at some nonexistent lint on her dress. Obviously, she had more to say.

  “I’m very sick,” she said, her voice low. “My doctors don’t hold out much hope for me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Jeffrey said, and he truly seemed to be.

  “Breast cancer,” Grace said, putting her hand to her chest. Lena noticed for the first time that the woman’s chest was almost completely flat under her blouse. “Lacey will be fine. She always lands on her feet. I don’t like to think what will happen to Mark when I’m gone. For all his posturing, he’s a gentle boy.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Jeffrey assured her, though even to Lena he did not seem confident. Short of a miracle, boys like Mark did not turn themselves around.

  Grace picked up on the deception. She gave a small, knowing chuckle. “Oh, I’m no fool, Chief Tolliver, but I thank you all the same.”

  Teddy Patterson’s footsteps were heavy in the hallway, and the trailer shifted slightly from his weight as he entered the room. His son was behind him, a stark contrast to the father. Patterson grabbed the boy’s arm and pulled him into the room.

  Lena’s first impression of Mark Patterson was that he was incredibly handsome. Last night, she had not taken much notice of him because so much had been going on. In the trailer, she took her time assessing him. Mark’s dark blond hair matched his mother’s, but it was more full, and slightly shorter. His eyelashes were longer than any she had ever seen on a man, and his eyes were a piercing blue. Like most sixteen-year-old boys, he had the beginnings of a goatee on his chin and the semblance of a mustache over his full lips.

  As Lena watched, he tucked his hair behind his ears with his fingers. She could not help but think there was something erotic in the gesture. There was also something about the way he walked and held his shoulders that gave him a certain sensuality. His faded jeans rested a little below his thin hips, and the tight white T-shirt he wore rode up a little, showing off the definition in his abs.

  Despite all of this, there was a sexlessness to him. Mark Patterson was a sixteen-year-old child on the verge of becoming a man. He was boyish in that androgynous way that was now popular with teenagers. When Lena was in high school, boys had done everything possible to make themselves appear more masculine. Today, they were more comfortable with blurring the roles.

  “Here he is,” Patterson barked, pushing Mark farther into the room. The man seemed angry, even more so than before, and his hands were in tight fists like he wanted nothing more than to pummel his son. For some reason, Teddy Patterson reminded Lena of Hank. The gruff way he had pushed Mark and the nasty tone of his voice could have come from Hank twenty years ago.

  “We’ll go for a drive,” Patterson told his wife. “Get your pills from the pharmacy.”

  “Teddy,” Grace said, the word catching in her throat. Lena wondered, too, why a man with Teddy Patterson’s innate distrust of the police would leave his only son alone with them. By law, Teddy could be in on the interview. He was effectively hanging his son out to dry.

  Jeffrey obviously wanted to capitalize on this. “Mr. Patterson,” he began. “Do you mind if we schedule an appointment with Mark tomorrow to get a blood sample from him?”

  Patterson’s eyebrow went up, but he nodded. “Just tell him when and he’ll be there.”

  Grace said, “Teddy.”

  “Let’s go,” Patterson ordered his wife. “The pharmacy closes soon.”

  If Grace Patterson had power over her husband, she had learned when not to use it. She stood, offering her hand first to Jeffrey, then to Lena. Grace had not even talked to Lena the entire time, but the woman kept Lena’s hand in hers for longer than just a polite good-bye.

  “Take care,” she told Lena.

  Grace Patterson stopped in front of her son before she followed her husband out the door, giving him a kiss on the cheek. She was a couple of inches shorter than he was, and she had to rise up on her toes to do this.

  “Good-bye,” Grace told him, patting his shoulder.

  Mark watched her leave, touching his fingers to his cheek where his mother had kissed him. He looked at his fingers, as if he might see the kiss on them.

  “Mark?” Jeffrey asked, getting the boy’s attention.

  “Sir?” he said, drawing out the word. His body was too loose to stand still, and he swayed a bit.

  Jeffrey asked, “You stoned?”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, putting his hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. Lena saw a large gold class ring on his finger. The red stone caught the light, and she guessed there was an initial underneath.

  Mark asked, “You wanna take me to jail?”

  “No,” Jeffrey told him. “I want to talk to you about what happened last night.”

  “What happened last night,” he mimicked, his words slurring together. “I wanna thank you for shooting the right person.”

  Jeffrey took out his notebook, flipping it open to a blank page. As Lena watched, he took out his pen and wrote Mark’s name at the top of the page, asking, “You think I did?”

  Mark smiled lazily. He walked around the chair and sat down, blowing air out between his lips as he did. There was something sexual even in this movement, and rather than being repulsed, as Lena thought she would have been, she was intrigued. She had never met a grown man who seemed so comfortable with himself, let alone a teenage boy.

  Jeffrey started out with a hard question. “Were you the father of that baby last night?”

  Mark raised his eyebrow the same way his father had. “Nope,” he said, his lips smacking on the word.

  Jeffrey tried a different avenue, asking, “Was your sister with you last night?”

  “Naw, man,” Mark answered. “My mom, you know. She’s not doing too well. Lace stayed home with her.” He shrugged. “She don’t ask often, you know? My mom likes to leave us out of the fact that she’s fucking dying.”

  He swallowed visibly, turning his head to the side, looking out the window. He seemed to compose himself, because when he looked back at Jeffrey, the smile was there, teasing at his lips. There was something more to this kid than his looks. A shadow seemed to be hanging over him, and not just because of what happened last night. He had about him the air of being damaged, something Lena could relate to. He seemed fragile, but slightly dangerous at the same time. Not that he was threatening like his father. If anything, Mark Patterson seemed to be a danger only to himself.

  Lena found her voice for the first time since they had gotten to the trailer. “You like your sister?” she asked.

  “She’s a saint,” Mark said, twisting the ring on his finger. “Daddy’s little girl.”

  “Has she been feeling okay lately?” Lena asked. “She hasn’t been sick or anything, right?”

  Mark stared openly at Lena. There was nothing hostile about the stare. He seemed curious about her and nothing more. He said, “She seemed fine this morning. You’d have to ask her.”

  Lena tried, “Why was Jenny Weaver so mad at you?”

  He raised his shoulders, held them there for a while, then let them drop. Lena watched as he lifted up his shirt and absently started to stroke his flat stomach. “You know, lots of girls get mad at me.”

  Jeffrey asked, “Were you involved with her?”

  “What, in a relationship?” He shook his head slowly side to side. “Nah. I mean, I did her a couple of times, but it was nothing serious.” He held up his hand to stop the next question. “This was when I was fifteen, officer.”

  Lena told him, “There has to be at least a five-year age difference for statutory rape.”

  Jeffrey shifted on the couch, obviously not pleased that Lena had given Mark this information. He could have used this threat for leverage. Now he had to find something else.

  Jeffrey asked, “When was the last time you had sex with her?”

  “I dunno,” Mark said, still stroking his belly. There was a small tattoo on the webbing
between his thumb and forefinger. Lena could make out a black heart with an inverted white heart in the center of it. Mark had obviously done this himself, because the symbol looked as rudimentary as his father’s jailhouse ballpoint ink tattoos.

  Lena prompted, “You had sex with her a lot?”

  Mark shrugged. “Often enough,” he said, still stroking his stomach. He started picking at the trail of hair between his navel and his pubis, giving Lena a sly look. She glanced at Jeffrey, wondering what he was making of this. Jeffrey was not looking, though. Instead, he was copying the tattoo into his notebook.

  “Well,” Jeffrey began, blacking in the heart. “Take a guess.”

  “Maybe a year or so ago?” Mark offered. “She wanted it, man. She begged me.”

  Jeffrey finished the drawing, looking up. “This isn’t about nailing you for rape, Mark. I don’t care if you’ve been banging goats in the backyard. You know what this is about.”

  “It’s about her wanting to kill me,” he said. “And why.”

  “Right,” Lena said. “We just want to get to the bottom of this, Mark. This is about Jenny, and why she would do what she did.”

  Mark gave Lena a lazy smile. “Gosh, detective, you sure are pretty.”

  Lena felt embarrassed, and wondered what signals she had given the boy. Certainly, sex was the last thing on her mind, and she wasn’t sure that she thought Mark Patterson was so much attractive as perfect. There was a cinema-idol quality to his appearance. He seemed too good-looking to be true. She was showing the same interest in him as she would a beautiful painting or an exquisite sculpture.

  “You’re pretty handsome yourself, Mark,” she countered, making her words sharp. Teddy Patterson might be able to fuck with her, but she would be damned if his precocious boy would. “Which is why I’m puzzled about Jenny. She wasn’t exactly homecoming queen material. Couldn’t you get any better than that?”

  Her words hit him exactly where she had intended them to, in his ego.

  “Trust me, detective, I’ve had a lot better than that.”

  “Yeah?” she asked. “What, you banged her out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “I let her suck me off sometimes,” he said, his fingers moving lower down his belly, his eyes on Lena as he obviously tried to gauge her reaction to him touching himself. His interest gave Lena some insight into the boy. She imagined that someone so attractive was used to trading on his looks. No wonder his father, a man who had the physical presence of a freight train, was so disgusted by his son.

  Suddenly, she felt sorry for him. Lena shifted on the couch, feeling a bit unsettled. She had spent such a long time feeling sorry for herself that for a moment she did not know what to do with this new emotion.

  Mark said, “She had this thing she did with her tongue, like a lollipop. No teeth. It was great.”

  Lena felt her heart rate accelerate, willing herself not to react to his words. Probably the boy had no idea who she was or what had happened to her.

  She could sense Jeffrey about to step in, so she said the first thing that came to her mind to keep him from interfering. “So, you let her give you blow jobs?” she said, trying to be flippant. Still, she kept her tongue firmly against the back of her teeth as she waited for his answer.

  A smile broke out on his lips, and he stared at her, his piercing blue eyes sparkling with humor. “Yeah.”

  “Here? In this house?”

  Mark gave a light chuckle. “Right down the hall.”

  “With your mama in the house?”

  He stopped, seeming more afraid than angry. “Don’t bring my mama into this.”

  Lena smiled. “We have to, Mark, because that’s where you’ve tripped yourself up. You wouldn’t do that kind of thing in your mother’s house.”

  He twisted his lips to the side, obviously thinking this through. “Maybe we did it in her house. Maybe we did it in the car.”

  “So, you went out with Jenny? Dated her?”

  “Shit no,” he countered. “I took her places with my sister.” He shrugged, and thankfully his hand stopped. “The mall, the movies. Different places.”

  “This is when you let her do you? On these trips?”

  He shrugged, meaning yes.

  “And your sister was where? In the front seat?”

  He paled slightly. Mark seemed to transition back and forth from a child to a teenager to a man. If someone had asked her how old Mark Patterson was, she would have guessed anywhere between ten and twenty.

  Lena cleared her throat, then asked, “Where was Lacey when you were letting Jenny do you, Mark?”

  Mark stared at the flower arrangement on the coffee table. He was very quiet for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he told them, “We met at the church, alright?” He said alright the same way his father did, running the words together.

  “You were having sex with her in church,” Lena said, not a question.

  “The basement,” he told them. “They don’t check the windows. We sneaked out, okay?”

  “That sounds pretty elaborate,” Lena said.

  “What does that mean?”

  Lena thought about how to phrase her answer. “It’s not opportune, Mark. You know what that means?”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Taking her to the mall, maybe running her and your sister to the store,” Lena paused, making sure she had his attention. “Those things sound like opportune times to me. She was there, you were there, it just kind of happened.”

  “Right,” he said. “That’s how it was.”

  “But the church,” Lena countered. “The church seems more deliberate. These were not sudden opportunities. These were planned meetings.”

  Mark nodded, then stopped himself. He said, “So?”

  “So,” Lena picked up again, “if your relationship was casual, why were you arranging these late night meetings?”

  Mark turned his head slightly, looking out the window. He was obviously trying to come up with an answer to the question, but unable to.

  Lena said, “She’s dead, Mark.”

  “I know that,” he whispered, his eyes flickering toward Jeffrey, then back to the floor. “I saw it happen.”

  “Is this how you want to talk about her, like she was a whore?” Lena asked him. “Do you really want to tear her down like that?”

  Mark’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. After a couple of minutes, he mumbled something she could not understand.

  “What?” Lena asked.

  “She wasn’t bad,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. A tear slid down his cheek, and he turned his gaze back toward the window. “Okay?”

  Lena nodded. “Okay.”

  “She listened to me,” he began, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. “She was smart, you know? She read and things, and she helped me with school, some.”

  Lena sat back on the couch, waiting for him to continue.

  “People think things about me,” he said, his tone more childish. “They think I’m a certain way, but maybe I’m not. Maybe there’s more to me than that. Maybe I’m a human being.”

  “Of course you are,” Lena told him, thinking that she probably understood Mark more than he thought. Every time she walked out in public, Lena felt like the person she really was had been erased. All she was now was the girl who had been raped. Sometimes, Lena wondered if she would not have been better off if she had died. At least then people would see her as tragic rather than as some kind of victim.

  Mark rubbed his fingers along his goatee, pulling Lena back into the interview. He said, “There’s things I did, okay? That maybe I didn’t want to do and maybe she didn’t want to do…” He shook his head, his eyes closed tightly. “Things she did…” His voice trailed off. “I know she was fat, okay? But she was more than that.”

  “What was she, Mark?”

  He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. When he spoke, he seemed more sure of himself, back under control. “She listened
to me. You know, about my mom.” He gave a humorless laugh. “Like when my mom told us she didn’t want fucking chemo this time, that she was just gonna let herself die. Jenny understood that.” He found a thread on the arm of the chair and picked at it until it pulled. Mark’s concentration was so focused on the string that Lena wondered if he had forgotten she and Jeffrey were there.

  Lena let herself look at Jeffrey. He was sitting back on the couch, too. Both of them stared at Mark, waiting for him to finish.

  “She tutored me in school, some,” he said, twisting his ring. “She was younger than me, but she knew how to do things. She liked to read.” He smiled, as if a distant memory had come back. He used the back of his hand to wipe under his nose. “She started hanging out with Lacey. I guess they had a lot in common. She was so nice to me.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “I just liked her because she was nice to me.” His lips trembled. “When Mama got sick…” he started. Again he was quiet. “We thought she’d beat it, you know? And then it was back, and she was in and out of the hospital, and sick all the time. So sick she couldn’t even walk sometimes. So sick Daddy had to help her stand up to take a shower, even.” He paused, then, “And then she said she wasn’t gonna do it anymore, couldn’t take the chemo, couldn’t take the being sick. Said we didn’t need to see her like that, but how does she want us to see her, man? Dead?”

  Mark put his hands over his eyes. “Jenny was just there, you know? She was there for me, not anybody else…” He paused. “She was so sweet, and she was interested in me, and talking to me, and she understood what I was going through, right? She wasn’t about being a cheerleader or wearing my damn class ring. She was all about being there for me.” He dropped his hands, staring at Lena. “It wasn’t about Lacey, or about Dad. She thought I was good. She thought I was worth something.” He dropped his head into his hands, obviously crying.

  Lena became conscious of the clock on the wall. Its tick was loud, popping in her ears. Jeffrey was completely still beside her. He had a way of making himself seem part of the scenery, letting her take the lead in things. This was the old Lena and Jeffrey. This was Lena who knew how to do her job, Lena who was in charge of things. She took a deep breath, pulling her shoulders up, letting the air fill her lungs. In this moment, in this room right now, she was herself again. For the first time in months, she was Lena again.