“No,” Willow said with a straight-backed confidence Tara never could have mustered in this situation. Spinning to see the owner of the voice, she was met with a wiry little man whose head was covered with a yellow bandana. Two inky blue tattoos of teardrops sat at the corner of his left eye. The point of his nose looked sharp enough to cut glass. His eyes resembled those of a rat.
“I gots everything,” he sang, gesturing his hand wildly and then tapping his pocket. “It’s three seconds baby, three seconds to rush.” He yanked up his sleeve and tapped his veins with two fingers.
“No,” Willow repeated and looked utterly unimpressed. “Do you deal here often? The overdose here,” she pointed at the dumpster. “Were you here that night?”
“Which one?” he scoffed, bouncing up and down from his toes then back to his heels as though he could hear some music they couldn’t. “There’s about one a week here.” He snorted a laugh and closed in on them. “You a cop or something?”
“You’re supposed to ask that before you try to sell me drugs, idiot.” Willow shoved him back and flipped something metallic out of her pocket. Tara had never seen a switchblade before except in the movies. But the way Willow was handling it, she was certain it was not her first time.
“I haven’t used this in a while,” Willow admitted as she backed the man up to the brick wall. “I’m out of practice. Which you would think would be a good thing for you. But really all it means is I might only get one shot, and I’ll have to go for the jugular. Do you know how long it takes to bleed out once it’s severed?”
She was not out of practice from Tara’s perspective. The handle was split in the middle and she spun it over he knuckles, back and forth, making it dance before finally snapping it against her palm and pushing the shining metal blade closer to the man.
“What do you want?” he asked, putting a dirty hand up to his neck to protect it. “I don’t know nothing.”
“The girl they found under this dumpster,” Willow said, pointing behind her. “You were here? Did you sell her the heroin?”
“Oh that girl,” the man said, inching his way back. “Yeah, yeah, I remember her. Too bad. She was pretty. But if you’re going to put that much in your arm you want to die. But it wasn’t mine.”
“What do you mean?” Willow asked, closing the gap he’d just created between them, moving until he was forced against the brick wall behind him.
“The needle. It wasn’t one from this hood,” he explained, still holding his neck. “There’s this exchange program they run here, trying to push clean needles. I get mine there. We all do. That dead chick’s needle was huge. Like a hospital needle or something. I don’t know, but it wasn’t something she’d buy here.”
“Dead chick?” Tara asked, not able to stay quiet any longer.
“Yeah, she’s dead right? She must be. She looked it.”
“You saw her?” Willow asked. “Were you the one who made the 911 call?”
“Uh . . .” he stuttered. “My phone was dead. But the cops were already coming. I saw the blue lights coming, and I bailed.”
“Right,” Willow grunted. “What else did you see? Was there a man here?”
“Nah,” he said, shaking the idea off. “Didn’t see anyone. Figured she just came here to kill herself.”
“I didn’t,” Tara cut in, pushing past Willow. “I didn’t want to kill myself.”
“You?” he asked, staring at her like she was a ghost.
“You saw me, and you were just going to leave me there?” she asked, her anger sending her skin into a prickly heat. “You kept walking? Selling this poison to someone else? Don’t you know what you’re doing to people? These people have lives, they have families, and you’re destroying them.”
“I’m not doing shit,” he argued, seemingly emboldened by the barrier Tara had created between him and the shining blade of the knife. “I make people feel better. It’s medicine. You know, girl. It’s a rush.”
Willow yanked her back before she could argue anymore. “Go,” Willow demanded, pointing assertively for the man to leave. “Get out of here.”
Like a rat fleeing a sinking ship his feet skidded against the dirty ground as he sped away. His head spun back toward them, making sure they weren’t following behind.
“I’m going crazy,” Tara said, crashing her back against the brick wall and tangling her hands into her hair. “I can’t take this anymore. I want Wylie.”
“I know,” Willow said, leaning against the wall too, but stopping short of touching Tara. She could use a hug, some kind of comforting touch but it was easy to tell that was not Willow’s style. “I can’t imagine being away from my kids and not knowing when I’d be back with them.”
“You have to believe me, Willow. I can’t say exactly what happened here that night but I would never do anything to hurt Wylie. To think of him in the cold, alone. That’s not me.”
“We’re doing the right thing,” she assured as she gestured for them both to head toward the car. “Finding answers will help. You can get through this.”
“I can’t,” she said, using her sleeve to wipe at her eyes. “I’m not like you. You,” she cast a long stare at Willow, “you are so tough. What you did back there, I couldn’t do.” She stared at the knife as Willow spun it closed and put it back in her pocket.
“I learned a long time ago tough is an act. No one is really tough. We’re all afraid of the same things, we all want to go home at the end of the day. The knife, it’s just a thing I learned that helps get me home.”
“I’m not tough, I can’t even act it.”
“Bull,” Willow said as they hopped back into the car. “The unfortunate thing about having your whole life investigated by a person like me is you can’t lie. I’ve been asking myself over and over again how you’ve managed to do this on your own for almost two years. But then I realized I shouldn’t be asking myself how, but why.”
“What do you mean?”
“You qualify for state assistance. Welfare. But you don’t receive any. You don’t call a single friend to save you on the days where it’s too much. You work and you mother and you do it completely alone. But why?”
“My parents were supported by the government their whole lives. They probably still are. They were able bodied people who’d rather smoke and grow weed than work. TJ and I were doing fine before the drugs. We had split shifts at our jobs so one of us was always home with Wylie. Things were tight, but we were surviving. After he died, I felt like I had to keep that going. I can work, so I do. I cut coupons and eat leftovers. I can make it work, so I do.”
“Then you’re tougher than I am. Even without a knife.” Willow laughed and even Tara had to crack a smile.
“What happens if I never get him back?” Tara asked, speaking out loud the words that haunted her in every quiet moment. They lurked in the shadows of her mind, coiled like a snake waiting for a moment to strike.
“I’ve been destroyed before,” Willow admitted, focusing on the road ahead as she drove away from the alley. “I’ve been dismantled, yet here I am. Nothing is final but death. You have to surround yourself with people who will remind you that as long as you have a breath in your body nothing is final.”
“I don’t have any people.”
“You have Reid, and you have me.” She twisted one of the bracelets on her wrist and cleared her throat. “I met this woman years ago, before my kids were born. She was a stranger, and now my kids call her grandma. On my darkest days, through some of my hardest cases, I call her. When Josh and I have something to celebrate, I call her. She’s all the way in North Carolina, but we still call.”
“And she helps you? Even from far away? What can she really do?”
“She reminds us we’re all right,” Willow said simply. “Betty doesn’t let us wallow in sadness or get too confident in our successes. Life is always trying to knock you off your center of gravity. Betty is our balance. You need to find more people.”
Chapter 18
Reid hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Tara first called him. Maybe that’s why he was being such an ass lately, sleep deprivation. “So you’re both sitting here, trying to convince me that an insane woman and a drug dealer who will not go on record have given you some pertinent information to the case. I’m supposed to be excited that you had to pull a knife on a guy in an alley to get him to talk? You went out there looking for security camera footage and came back with nonsensical information that does us no good.”
“Are you done?” Willow asked flatly. “Because right now you sound like my son when he doesn’t get ice cream after dinner. And you keep your house here about as nice as he keeps his room, for the record.”
“I . . . uh,” Reid stuttered, not completely disagreeing with her. “I’d like everyone to be moving in the same direction. I want to make a decision about reaching out to the prosecutor and getting the charges bumped down.”
“You heard the part about the needle,” Tara argued, pacing around his living room. There was plenty of room to do so since the furniture was so sparse. “It wasn’t something I’d buy in that area. It was unique. It’s a lead. We need to at least follow and see where that takes us.”
“No, we need to stop wasting time and move on,” Reid argued.
“Move on?” Tara ground out angrily. “Move on from this case that’s annoying you so much? I’m sorry this is inconveniencing you. It’s my life.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Reid sighed, flopping down onto his kitchen barstool and covering his face. “Don’t play that card, Tara, like I’m the one making this hard. I didn’t put you in this position.”
“Neither did I,” she said, drawing out each word for emphasis. “I didn’t do this.”
“Reid,” Willow interrupted, her voice gentler than he’d heard it in a long while. “I have concerns about the validity of the charges.” The statement was broad; it was vague but somehow he knew exactly what she meant. She wasn’t saying his defense wasn’t strong enough or the details weren’t ironed out. Willow was stating she believed Tara.
“The witnesses you spoke to today could not have been credible enough for you to form that opinion,” Reid challenged. “We’ve worked enough cases together. I know you’re a hard sell.”
“The footage,” Willow retorted, not seeming pleased with being challenged. “I had multiple store owners provide me with their security footage. There was nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Reid asked, his stomach tightening.
“There were three walking routes from the store to the alley. I covered all of them for the time period in question. She never walked by.”
“Are you implying some sort of teleportation?” Reid scoffed.
“Forty-three cars,” Willow said, narrowing her eyes. “That’s how many cars took those routes. I think someone took her there in one of those cars.”
“Which proves what?” Reid growled. “So she got in a car with someone. She didn’t walk. A couple days ago you thought she was trying to kill herself. Now what? You think she was kidnapped. I don’t think I know any drug dealers who like to share for free. She wasn’t sexually assaulted. She wasn’t robbed. There’s no motive here for anyone else to have been involved.”
“Could we maybe stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Tara shrieked. Tossing her hands up, she pushed her hair out of her face the way she used to when they were kids and he was making her mad. “I’m tired of this. I can’t take the back and forth and the not knowing. I hate this,” she stammered, her breath catching. For the first time Reid noticed the flush in her cheeks was gone. Her eyes blinked hard as she steadied herself against his desk. The scene felt very familiar, and it scared the hell out of him.
“Tara,” he said, his voice sounding surprisingly frightened.
Her eyes rolled up and her body went limp just as Reid got to her. She fell into his arms, and his heart seized with worry in a way it hadn’t in years. Tara looked so small, her head resting in the bend of his arm.
“Is she breathing?” Willow asked, pulling her phone from her pocket just as Tara gasped and her eyes opened again slowly.
“Tara,” Reid whispered, putting his hand to her cheek as she tried to sit up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, waving him off as she got her bearings again. “I’m just tired.”
“You need to see a doctor,” Reid insisted, ushering her over to his chair. “We can call an ambulance.”
“I fainted, Reid, I didn’t fall out the window. I’m fine.”
“Fine, no ambulance but at least let me take you to the hospital,” he said, looking over to Willow for backup.
“No way. I don’t need anything else on record, getting twisted around. I’m not going to the hospital. Can we please just drop this and go back to me yelling at you.”
“Your favorite sport,” Reid said with a half-smile. The words felt like they were from a lifetime ago, an argument between kids about nonsense. But this wasn’t nonsense, and they weren’t kids anymore.
“Josh is coming,” Willow said sheepishly. “He knows me well enough to know I wasn’t coming home until I saw this through. He and the kids are on their way. We were going to make a little vacation out of it. He can come by and check you out.”
“He’s a doctor,” Reid explained.
“If it’ll make you feel better,” Tara sighed, attempting to stand and then thinking better of it as her legs gave out.
“Sit,” Willow ordered maternally. “I just sent Josh a text. I’ll meet him downstairs and then we’ll switch off. I’ll get the kids settled in at the hotel while he looks you over.”
Tara put a tired hand up to her head and focused her eyes. “Willow, thank you so much. I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused. Your help, it means the world to me.”
Reid couldn’t accurately describe the look that passed between the two women. It’s what separated him from the people in his life. This knowing, wordless communication, a language everyone but he seemed fluent in.
“Josh will take good care of you. Just sit tight. I’m going for a walk and making a few phone calls.” Willow backed out of the room quietly, leaving behind a heavy silence.
“I’m sorry for raising my voice,” Reid apologized, trying to focus in on every little twitch and change in her face, making sure she was all right.
“I’m sorry for dragging you into all this,” she said in a whisper, blinking hard again and trying to focus. “You’ve got your life together, your career, and I bring my mess around. Just like I always did.”
“You?” he scoffed, thinking back to every time he climbed in her window and tried to sober up. “I did my share of messing up your life.”
“Is that what you think?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes. “You think you ruined my life? It was a little more complicated than that.”
“I’m not sure it was, Tara. I can see my part in how things happened. I’ve never been able to forget it actually.”
Chapter 19
“Tara,” an unfamiliar voice called through her screen door, and she considered staying hidden in the kitchen. “My name is officer Lincoln Smith and I need to speak with you.”
A police officer at her door should have frightened her considering how much pot her parents kept in the house, but she didn’t care. If they got caught it was their problem. Rounding the corner, she saw a man taking up nearly all of the door with his big shoulders and round protruding stomach. But he wasn’t alone. In tow and looking completely disheveled was Reid. His eyes were fixed on the broken wood planks of her porch floor as she stepped outside.
“I need to ask you about last night,” Office Smith continued, pushing his mirrored sunglasses up his nose. Beads of sweat were forming around his temples and racing down toward his chin.
“What about it?” Tara asked, still partly assuming this had something to do with her parents. Maybe they’d finally been arrested for something. But that didn’t explain why Reid
was with him.
She hadn’t spoken to her best friend in nine days. Not since he’d kissed her and then disappeared. He didn’t answer her calls to his house, and she took the hint. He clearly did not feel the same way about her that she did about him.
“Between the hours of nine and eleven last night, was Reid with you?” He gestured over at Reid with his stubbled chin.
“Yes,” she lied. It came to her so quickly she knew it sounded convincing. “He got here before nine though,” she continued, trying to look pensive about the timing. “There was a music video we wanted to see, and we were waiting for it to come on.”
“And he was here until eleven?” Smith pressed.
She wanted to look over at Reid for some kind of indication of what this was about, or how she should answer but Tara knew better. Lies were in her veins recently. Her whole life was fake, and it had become second nature to say what people wanted to hear. Teachers asking why her parents had missed another teacher’s conference didn’t want to hear about their latest bender or how her mom had wanted to come but she’d begged her to stay home, knowing she was too high. That version of the story was too messy. So Tara would make something up. And the teachers, anxious to move on to the next pressing matter, would drop it. The same logic applied to worried neighbors and even Reid’s parents. They all asked questions, but she’d gotten very used to the look of relief on their faces when she’d lie and let them off the hook. If Tara told them everything was fine, they wouldn’t feel obligated to intervene.
“It was at least eleven. Probably a little later. I don’t remember exactly. Why?” She now finally looked over at Reid who was trying to mask his astonishment. She’d covered for him without a moment of hesitation, even though he’d broken her heart.
“Are your parents home?” Smith asked, leaning over and peering through the screen door. She watched his nostrils flare and assumed the pungent smell of stale marijuana smoke was catching his interest.
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