Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  “You don’t know where my brother is, do you? Where is my brother? How do I know if he’s OK? I need to see him.” I felt an urge to grab on to Pruden like I was suddenly drowning. Pruden’s lips went thin.

  “Like I said, we don’t know where your brother is. We don’t believe Lucas is in Wayoata. On Friday, we asked him to come in for an interview on Monday. He didn’t show. It looks like he left in a hurry. His phone, clothes, and wallet were at his apartment, but his ATM card is missing.” I strained to catch up to what he was telling me, to find a good reason why Lucas would skip out on a police interview and leave with only a bank card. Pruden leaned in even closer to ensure eye contact. “On Friday he called you.”

  My chin dropped toward my chest, my shoulders went so tight it hurt to cross my arms. I was bundling myself in, taking on some form of a seated fetal position, my frantic anger shifting to defense mode. I shook my head. It was almost involuntary, how much I was shaking my head no, like a Parkinson’s tremor. I looked like I was a step away from plugging my ears and going Lalala, I can’t hear you. “Well, maybe with all of these insane accusations swarming around him, he needed a break.” I tried countering, feeling flush with desperation. My tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “Maybe he just went for a drive to clear his head before facing all of this bullshit head-on.”

  Yes. Perfectly reasonable. Just drive away until everyone in this town returned to their senses. But was it reasonable to take a road trip when everyone thought you were guilty? Even Lucas, who didn’t always think things through, had to have considered it would look like he was fleeing.

  “He needed a break? That’s it? Huh. Guess I’d need a break too in his circumstance.” Pruden gave a false chuckle, his lips sputtering on air.

  “I didn’t mean it to sound like that—”

  Pruden cut me off. “Anyway, no, he didn’t go for a drive. His truck was vandalized in the school parking lot a few days ago, someone even set the engine on fire. It’s now sitting in a junkyard. So no, he didn’t take his truck on any vacation.”

  “Who would’ve done that?” I asked this with an almost comical measure of outrage, all things considered. Like a vandalized truck was the most barbaric thing I’d heard so far, but the thought that everyone had turned against my brother was taking hold, and my sisterly protectiveness had kicked in. Everyone in Wayoata loved Lucas. It was just the way it was. Even his students called him Haas, no Mr. required.

  Pruden gave me a weak smile, leaned his chin on his cocked fist. “To narrow the search, I’d likely have to start with who wouldn’t have done it. But right now, we’re focused on actual urgent matters. Now, Miss Haas, I’m going to be asking the questions for a little while, OK? Then you can ask yours.” He paused to make sure I was following. “Aside from this pocket dial”—the way he said it, he might as well have used finger quotations around “pocket dial”—“has Lucas been in touch with you? E-mail, text from another number, a call, in the last seventy-two hours?”

  “No.”

  “So, when was the last time you were in contact with him?” He dropped his hand from his chin, a let’s-get-down-to-business gesture.

  “He called a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t leave a message. I tried calling him back, but it was during the day and he was probably teaching, so I didn’t get ahold of him.” Maybe he hadn’t been teaching. Maybe he’d looked at my name flash on his screen and pressed Ignore. “I’ve been on the night shift at my pharmacy. We’ve been working opposite hours, so it’s been difficult to get in touch. To actually talk.”

  “Yep, I get it,” the trainee piped up. “People are so busy nowadays, it’s hard to stay connected.” He was nodding with so much false enthusiasm that I got the feeling he was playing good cop to Pruden’s bluster. “So you really haven’t talked much lately?”

  “No. We’ve just missed each other over the last little while.”

  “All right. Moving on,” Pruden grumbled. “Could you write out a list of people that Lucas might’ve contacted if he were trying to lay low?” He pushed a pen and pad of paper toward me.

  I ignored it.

  “I mean, is there anyone you’re aware of that your brother might go to if he was in trouble? A family member?” Pruden pushed the pad of paper closer. “A good friend? Someone who would help him out.”

  “No, there isn’t.” Did he really think I was going to start listing names while he cruelly played coy? Was this some kind of test—if I didn’t list names, I was helping Lucas get away?

  “Can you just tell me why exactly my brother is a person of interest in this? Please? I’m worried sick right now, and I want to know where he is. What have you been doing to find him?”

  Pruden bristled. This was not a man who liked to be questioned. “This police department has been doing everything it can, Miss Haas. We have alerts out at every bus station, airport, and border crossing. We’re knocking on doors and talking to everyone in this town. We want to know where your brother is too. He’s in a lot of trouble, and I think you know that. By helping us, you’re helping him.”

  “Listen, whatever you think he’s done, it isn’t true. This is a mistake.”

  “Did Lucas ever mention Joanna Wilkes to you?”

  “You’ve asked me that already. No. I’d never heard of her before today.” Pruden rested back into his chair.

  “Huh, I find that interesting. Since you’ve been reading the papers, then I guess you know that Joanna was a student of Mr. Haas’s. She was only sixteen.” He kept looking at me, expecting a reaction. I had none. “She’d been missing since the end of May. Her body was found Monday morning in Dickson Park. She was murdered. Bludgeoned with a rock and strangled with her own fashion scarf.” Pruden said “fashion scarf” delicately, like it was something normally bought in the feminine hygiene aisle. “You should know, as a prior Wayoatan, that we don’t get a lot of murders around here. You’d think Lucas would have brought it up with you. That one of his students had gone missing.”

  “And you think my brother was involved with her murder. But why? What evidence do you even have? He would never hurt one of his students.” Lucas always spoke about his students with animated interest. He really did care that they did well.

  “Was Lucas seeing anyone lately? Did he have a girlfriend that he talked about?”

  I had to fight the rage jetting up inside of me. I didn’t want to answer any more questions. I wanted to leave, I wanted them searching for my brother so he could straighten this all out. “I get why you’re asking me that, but seriously?” I let out an angry laugh that bounced hard off the wall and died fast. My teeth re-clenched. “If my brother is missing, it isn’t because he ran away. It isn’t because he was involved with this student. The only reason why my brother would be gone, is because someone wants him gone. He could be hurt. You need to be out looking for him, not wasting your time with me, asking me about his dating life like there’s a clue there.”

  Pruden sniffed, played up his restored calmness. “Please just answer the question. It’s in your brother’s best interest.”

  “You’re not listening to me. Maybe Lucas knows something, maybe he knows who did this” My voice was tipping too far toward hopefulness for my own good. I sounded like I was trying to convince them of the existence of unicorns.

  “And you’re not listening to me. Answer the question,” Pruden snapped back.

  I raised my hands, a you-gotta-be-kidding-me gesture. “Fine. Fine. No. Not lately. He wasn’t seeing anyone serious, as far as I know.” He was never seeing anyone serious. Lucas and I were inherently disabled when it came to forming long-term relationships.

  “Did he confide in you at all about his work? Does he like being a teacher?”

  “He does.” He coached hockey and played things like Pictionary in the English classes he taught. What was not to like?

  “What else can you tell me about your brother’s lifestyle?”

  “Lifestyle” was a bad word in Wayoata. It stood for
all kinds of deviancy. Lifestyle was short skirts and promiscuity that made the rape victim partly culpable. What did they think I was going to tell them? That Lucas liked to choke his sexual partners with fashion scarves? This wasn’t happening. I was in the middle of a sweaty, hypervivid nightmare. My stomach lurched. Another nervous guffaw rolled up my throat.

  “You can’t be serious?” I swallowed audibly.

  “You have a real strange sense of humor. I doubt many people would find a dead teenage girl funny.” His eyes narrowed. The air went out of the room. “You keep asking me if this serious? Your brother is a person of interest. You know what that means? We’ll probably have an arrest warrant ready for him within the week, and when we find him—and we will find him—he’ll pay for what he’s done. This, missy, is very serious business.”

  “What proof do you have?” My face was getting hot, my mouth tasted like acid. I promised myself that whatever Pruden said next, I wouldn’t believe him. I would refuse to think for one second that this wasn’t just some big misunderstanding; my twin would show up an hour from now and explain it all away.

  “Unfortunately I can’t discuss an open investigation with you in any detail.” I let out an exasperated burst of air that Pruden continued to talk over. “What I can tell you is that there is evidence that Lucas was romantically involved with Joanna. We needed to talk to him, he knew that we needed to talk to him, and now, when we find Joanna’s body, he’s suddenly gone.”

  “Lucas wasn’t involved with his student. He wouldn’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Lucas would never kill anyone.” Lucas hated the sight of blood. He’d come out of the bathroom, chalk-faced and in full swoon, if he saw a bloated tampon that didn’t flush. Even on the ice, if a fight produced the slightest spritz of blood, my brother skated in the other direction. People called him a finesse player, but really I knew, it was his aversion to blood that made him avoid the mindless, glove-dropping fights. He’d be too squeamish to bludgeon.

  “You would know if your brother murdered someone? That’s what you’re saying? You think Lucas would just call you up and tell you? Is that what he did in that thirty-two second call? Cause if that’s what you’re saying—”

  “No, I’m not saying anything like that.”

  “Well, then. Me, I think it’s far more revealing that he didn’t say anything to you at all. Joanna Wilkes was missing for over three weeks. One of his students. He was put on an administrative leave last week, and he didn’t tell you about that either, did he? He didn’t call you up and say, ‘I’ve been put on a leave because I’m suspected of having sexual relations with one of my students’? No, he didn’t.”

  I couldn’t take a breath. Pruden had a point. My tongue was stuck to the edge of my teeth; my heart flapped in my chest. The clock on the wall was ticking fast and loud, urgent as a time bomb. I made my face go rigid. Poker-faced. I couldn’t let Pruden see me rattled. “This is fucking ridiculous. Maybe I should get a lawyer.” I said this with much more gumption than I felt.

  Pruden grunted. “You can do whatever you want, Miss Haas, but right there, you wanting a lawyer makes me think you might have some reservations about your brother’s innocence.”

  “You’re wrong. You have the wrong person.” I knew how these things worked. The police got an idea of how something happened; they set their sights on something and stopped looking anywhere else. At anyone else. I knew this firsthand, and while this had worked out for me once, it was like some karmic debt had come due, only Lucas was the one paying it out instead of me.

  Pruden folded his arms and looked at me like he was a human lie detector test. He let out a sniffle of a laugh and cocked his head in a taunting way. “It’s pretty telling that he’s not here.”

  “He didn’t do this.” There was no way. The earth was round, and the sky was blue, and my twin wasn’t a murderer. These were fundamental truths.

  “It’s also telling, in my opinion, that your brother did not partake in any of Joanna’s search parties when all the other able-bodied teachers at Westfield did. What do you make of that? I think maybe it was because he already knew she was dead.”

  I didn’t answer. Just kept shaking my head no. Blood rushed to my ears.

  Pruden sighed, handed me a folded piece of paper and his card. “It is imperative you call us immediately if Lucas contacts you. This is a criminal investigation.” He stood and left. The pneumatic door made a gentle whoosh behind him.

  I unfolded the paper. It was the missing poster for Joanna Wilkes. Same yearbook photo that was in the newspaper. Homecoming-queen pretty, she stared out from her mane of ginger-red spiral curls that cascaded over each shoulder, two dimples, her mouth fixed into a wide, bright smile.

  “Would you like some water?” the younger officer asked. I’d practically forgotten he was there. I really couldn’t stop shaking my head. I needed something to calm down. He took this as a no to his offer and made a quiet exit. Whoosh.

  I turned the missing poster over on the table. I felt like I was in a trance.

  Several minutes passed before I could stand up.

  * * *

  Outside the station it was hot and windy. Parking lot dust gathered in angry little funnels. I’d forgotten how windy it was there. Focused on my jelly legs, I put one foot in front of the other. I just needed to make it to the car. Getting inside the car, feeling hermetically sealed off from the station, would let me think.

  “Mia?” The younger officer had followed me into the parking lot. I ignored him. Unless he was about to tell me that he’d just tracked Lucas down and everything had been cleared up, then I had nothing more to say. Leave me alone, leave me alone. I just wanted to get inside the shitty car and think. Process. I wanted to go back to Lucas’s apartment and find him strolling down the front steps on his way to the police station.

  I tried to unlock the car using the keyless remote but accidentally set off the alarm. Of course. The trainee was suddenly next to me. The car bleated. “A rental,” I explained. I pushed Lock, Unlock, the red button, repeated the sequence. Hands shaking, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t even turn off the alarm. I cursed, hot tears leaked from my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I fumbled the keys, picked them up. Tried again to turn off the earsplitting alarm.

  “Here, let me.” The officer took the keys from my hands, a careful extraction, pressed something, and the car went silent.

  I gained some composure and muttered, “Thanks.”

  He opened the driver’s door, leaned in, and handed me a tissue from the complimentary box of Kleenex that came with the car. “You don’t remember me, do you? It’s Garrett. Garrett Burke.” The moment he said his name, I immediately recognized him.

  “Skinny G?” I knew Skinny G very well; he’d been in the grade below me. We were both the only lasting members of computer club in middle school, where we spent lunch hours mastering The Oregon Trail and splitting bags of Doritos, hard-core breaking the no-food-or-drink policy. We shared one Cool Ranch–infused kiss in the stairwell before I moved up to high school. I hadn’t thought about him in years.

  “No one calls me that anymore.” He squinted into the sun. He still had the same mouth, lips that looked like they were always leaning toward a smile.

  “What are you doing here?” It was a stupid question. I didn’t know why I was so surprised that the other officer had to be a middle school crush. The past was crammed down your throat everywhere you turned here; you could never escape it.

  “I work here.” With a gentle lift of an eyebrow, he nodded in the direction of the station. “Look, I’m sorry about Pruden in there. He was coming at you pretty hard. It was insensitive.”

  I made a pfffsh sound. “Like you were doing anything to stop him.”

  “Well, he is the police chief.” He gave me a palms-up shrug. “He’s a little old school, I know, but, Mia, I’m working this case too, so if you need anything, have any questions, or just want someone to talk to other than Pruden, you can give me a sh
out. Anytime. I mean that.” He wrote down his number on the box of Kleenex.

  “I do have a question.”

  Garrett nodded, his posture hunched, and I flashed to when we were equal heights.

  “Can I go there? Is Lucas’s apartment free to go into?” I had to go back there, get inside and see it. See that he was there. See that he wasn’t there. I kept picturing yellow police tape and some part-time cop sky-high on self-importance gleefully pushing me out.

  “We finished up there last night. So yes, you can go there.”

  I nodded, took back my Kleenex box, and drove off.

  2

  Back at Lucas’s apartment, I buzzed the caretaker again and again. No answer. I stood there, waited for someone to come out or go in, but no one did. I walked around to the back door, passed the dingy-looking pool enclosed by a chain-link fence. Two boys, in clear defiance of the no-horseplay rule, were hitting each other with Styrofoam noodles as their mother yelled at them from one of the plastic patio chairs to stop. A girl, early teens, was the only one in the pool. She floated on an air mattress, perky breasts pointed skyward, her blond hair splayed around her head in waves, wearing a white bikini and oversized sunglasses. She lifted up the strap of her bikini bottoms to check her tan. A man old enough to know better, definitely in his thirties, with a substantial enough chin-puff that I could see it from there, shamelessly leered from his balcony. The boys stopped running to peek. Their mother yelled at them again. The girl smiled.

  Through the glass door I could see a woman vacuuming a grimy paisley carpet peppered with cigarette burns. I knocked, loud. She didn’t hear. I kept knocking, but it wasn’t until she turned around to suction up something next to the staircase that she noticed me, turned off the vacuum, pulled one earbud out, and opened the door.

  “I’m looking for the caretaker?”

  “My dad’s not in right now.” Music pulsed just above one of her heavy breasts. Her dad. I could see now that she was one of those unfortunate girls who looked middle-aged until seen close up. She was exceptionally tall, almost six feet, with broad rounded shoulders and a very bad Blondissima dye job that was almost blue, making her dark inky eyebrows pop like a punch line.