Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  Was there another girl inside? Joanna’s replacement? Or maybe some feral woman kidnapped as a girl years ago and held captive by Greg and company. The one they’d decided was a “keeper.” I tried to think of other missing posters in the police station, but there was only Joanna’s face.

  I got down, dragged the bucket over to the next room. A bedroom with a black-and-orange Harley-Davidson flag for curtains that only half covered the window. Unmade bed, a massive television, and some gaming console with wires stretched halfway across the dingy carpet. I guessed this was Dylan’s room. Empty.

  Again the whimpering, growing more high-pitched, a panting whine. I checked the yard again for Greg, certain now that that rag sticking out of the back pocket of his coveralls was probably doused with chloroform. I went to the third window at the back of the house. It was higher, and I had to reach to the bottom ledge and pull myself up. My feet barely touched the bucket. The bathroom. Truck-stop dirty. My sight line was between the toilet and the tub; the shower curtain was open. Someone was in the tub. I could see the top of a head. Brown hair. I wasn’t high up enough to see over the lip of the tub. My arm muscles were giving out, and I had to dip back down to the bucket. I berated myself for not going to the gym more often. I pulled myself up again, higher. It moved. There were streaks of blood.

  It took me a second to register what I was really seeing. A very large dog, on her side, giving birth on a nest of blankets in the tub. There was already one fleshy-looking puppy writhing under the dog’s tongue.

  “Looking for somebody?”

  I startled, the bucket skittered, and I fell, my ass catching the edge of the bucket and then the ground so hard I bit the side of my tongue. The screwdriver jabbed into my hip. A grizzly, bearded man in a black T-shirt that stretched tight around his thick gut, smirked. Didn’t offer a hand, which I was happy about. I hauled myself back up. Swallowed down the taste of blood.

  “I’m looking for Dylan?”

  “Yeah? Through the window?”

  “I owe him some money, and I wanted to get it back to him before I spent it.” I did some kind of girlish ditzy giggle. “I’m bad with money.” I surprised myself at how quick I could think on my toes. It made sense, though, that Dylan the drug dealer would get people showing up at odd times, looking in windows.

  “Dylan’s only around during the week. Stays at his mom’s on the weekends. You want me to hold on to it, give it to him on Monday? I won’t spend it, I proooomise!” A Cheshire Cat grin.

  “No, that’s OK. He said I had to pay him today.” I looked down, like I was really worried what was going to happen to me if I didn’t get this money to Dylan. Maybe this guy would tell me something, like, Oh yeah, you better worry because Dylan is violent and unpredictable. You know what happened to that Joanna girl? Well, you get the picture.

  “His mom lives in Sunstone Estates. Try there. But if you want a little something now, I might be able to hook you up.” He invited me over for a beer and a toke as courteously as if for fine wine and cheese.

  “Oh no, really I’m good for now.” I motioned, like I’d had enough to eat.

  “Suit yourself.” He hocked into the grass.

  “Thanks, though. Um, there’s a dog in there, having puppies.”

  “Oh, yeah? Good. I’m taking one outta this litter. Don’t worry, she’s an old hand at it. It’s her fourth.”

  Only when I was back in my car with the door locked did I feel like I could breathe again. The bearded neighbor offered me a limp wave like he was disappointed I wasn’t staying. I turned the AC up high; it puffed a humid breeze at me as I headed toward Dylan’s mom’s.

  8

  Sunstone Estates was Wayoata’s only trailer park. I’d expected worse, but there were enough well-maintained trailers to keep the whole place from sliding into total dump status.

  I had trouble finding the Yateses’ trailer. The lots weren’t consistently numbered, and only some of the narrow gravel roads had names. It had the feeling that a bunch of people had showed up at the same time and just sort of parked. I was on my second loop when I stopped to ask a shirtless, shoeless ten-year-old-looking boy where I could find it. He just pointed in the direction my car was already aimed and mumbled something about pinwheels. Did not elaborate. When I pulled away, he threw a handful of rocks at my back window.

  The trailer was tin-can small, but effort had been put into making it look nice. Too much effort. There was an overkill of lawn ornaments and, yes, a crazed number of pinwheels. A very large, nasty-looking dog barked from a dog run next to the trailer. The likely offspring of litter one or litter two. The door swung open. A woman told the dog to shut up. I guessed it was Dylan’s mother. “Yeah?” She had on a pair of black tights and a bejeweled tank top; everything looked too tight. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. And so the stereotype lived on.

  Three white Chihuahuas with reddish eyes were immediately at her ankles, yapping and baring teeth, trying to get past her, which made the other dog even more frantic, thrusting its muscular body against the gate of the run. She had to engage in some kind of spastic dance to get the Chihuahuas away from the door. Frustrated, she just waved me inside.

  “Dylan, goddammit, your dog is scaring the shit out of my babies, and why the hell is Tia’s diaper off?” Apparently Tia was in heat; she was dripping blood all over their beige carpet. She scooped up the bleeding dog, held her at arm’s length. “So, what do you want?”

  I realized I didn’t have a plan at all. I had no idea what exactly I was going to say, so I gambled that Vanessa hadn’t shown up yet. “I am the reporter who called? From the StarTribune?”

  “You’re early. Dylan … Dyyyyylaaaan!” she screeched again to the back of the trailer.

  I wanted to ask her how early. How much time did I have before Vanessa showed up? The woman, suddenly composed and offering me a polite smile, introduced herself as Serena, then directed me into a dark living room. “Have a seat. I’ll make us some iced tea.”

  I sat down on a padded folding chair angled toward the corduroy blue sofa. All set up for an interview. On the wall over the sofa was a poster of a holographic wolf, howling at the moon when I shifted to the right, snout closed when I shifted to the left.

  A full minute later, Dylan emerged, looking sleepy or stoned. He pulled on a T-shirt as he entered the room and dropped onto the couch. Immediately I could see how Dylan would appeal to a sixteen-year-old girl. He had boy-band looks: the foppish hair, the feminine full mouth, same compact build as his father, all offset by a thick gold chain and a ball cap he grabbed off an end table and placed delicately on his head. The chain and ball cap looked like bad-boy, drug-dealer props. Even his arms were suspiciously hairless, and I wondered if he shaved them to look younger. At nineteen, he likely had only a year or two left before he was considered that washed-up creepy older guy. His pool of potential girlfriends would shift from cute high school girls en route to college to clingy single moms wanting an energetic male role model for their unruly kids. Then again, his interest in freshman high school girls might simply be pragmatic, as in, someone to move his drugs in the high school.

  Close behind Dylan was a girl in pajama pants and a baggy T-shirt. She plopped down next to him and stretched her tree-trunk legs over his lap like they were going to hold him in place. So Dylan already had a new girlfriend. Another very young girlfriend. She had a bland baby face, and her eyes opened too wide like a doll’s that flicked shut when you laid her down. Dylan licked his lips three times before speaking. I could see the girl practically swoon.

  “Hey, so what d’ya want to know?” The smell of marijuana wafted into the living room. I pretended not to notice.

  I introduced myself (as Vanessa Lee of course).

  “You don’t look like a reporter,” the girl piped up. She was right. I didn’t. I had a streak of dirt up my pant leg and backside from falling. I’d sweated off my makeup. It didn’t help either that I was nursing a welt on my cheek from Kathy.r />
  “It’s print. And you are?” I dug around in my bag for a pen and paper, and found a pad with my pharmacy’s logo in bright red at the top. I crossed my legs and rested the pad there, curling the top page over.

  “I’m Skylar. But I prefer just Sky. Sky Cuthbert. You want me to spell it?”

  “Shut up, Sky. She’s not here to see you.” Dylan shifted uncomfortably under her legs, but didn’t push her off.

  Dylan’s mother fluttered back into the room, carrying a tray of drinks and a half-empty box of Abdallah candies. She had reglossed her lips, likely hoping I might at some point pull out a camera, and sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Have some iced tea.” She grabbed her drink off the tray first; it was a different, more amber shade than the others.

  “Thank you.”

  “He’s getting paid for this, right?”

  “I can talk to my boss about payment.” Was boss right? Should I have said editor? I was drawing blanks. I took a glass of iced tea. There was far too much sugar in it. It stuck to my tongue.

  “Well, he ain’t saying nothing until he’s paid.” She folded her arms. I wished she’d go away. It was going to be more difficult posing as a journalist with another adult in the room. Though technically, I reminded myself, Dylan was an adult too.

  “Mom, it’s fine. I don’t want any money,” Dylan snapped at her.

  “Well, isn’t that great that you’re doing this for free. How nice of you when you don’t pay the bills and don’t have a job.”

  Dylan ignored her, didn’t even look at her, stretched out his arms. I caught sight of a homemade tattoo on the back of his hand, between his thumb and index finger. A wobbly JW. Did he tell Joanna the pain and probably skin infections were all for her? That she couldn’t leave him after he’d branded himself with her initials?

  Dylan’s mom was about to say something else, but I cut her off. “I’m wanting to fill in some of the gaps about the weeks before Joanna went missing. There’s been talk of other suspects.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not one of them.” He cocked his head, jutted out his chin. Again with the wannabe gangster posturing.

  I looked at my pad of paper, like I was trying to reorient myself. “So how did you and Joanna meet?” I thought this was a safe place to start.

  “I went back to Westfield for the fall semester. I was a couple credits short. It was important to me that I graduated.” The conviction in his voice was a little overdone. He paused, waiting for praise.

  I murmured a token “Good for you.”

  “So anyway, she had a spare at the same time I did. One day in the cafeteria, she left her binder behind, and I caught up with her, which was easy because she was on crutches.” He smiled. Skylar pouted.

  “How long were you together?”

  “The first time was from September until just before Christmas break, so, like, almost four months.” I noted to myself that this was around the time his high school drug mule was caught with weed in her locker. “Then we got back together end of January, but it was all on the down low.”

  “Down low?”

  “Yeah, no one knew. Joanna wanted to keep it all secret so her mom wouldn’t find out.”

  “Why did you break up?”

  “Both times it was because of her mom. Total bitch. She wouldn’t let Joanna date anyone. Like I said, her mom didn’t approve. She just kept chipping away at her, saying shit like I was too old for her, that I dealt drugs, which I don’t. That weed in Jo’s locker didn’t come from me.” His mom rolled her eyes at him. He was a bad liar. “That I was using her for money. Just a bunch of shit. That whole family is fucked up.”

  “Dylan, language,” his mother scolded him—I knew for my benefit because Dylan looked confused.

  “No, seriously, I’ve been to Jo’s house. Her bedroom, it was like a baby’s room. Bright purple bed with that drapey thing on top, purple walls, white little-girl furniture. Purple was her favorite color at, like, seven, and she was never allowed to change it. There was all this ballerina stuff all over. She still had dolls and stuffed toys on her bed.” His voice softened as he described her room, like he was wistful about squinting through the slats on her closet door, drinking in all that innocent girlishness. Skylar crossed her arms, her bottom lip sagged. A community-theater version of grumpy. I wondered if Dylan had been seeing both of them at the same time. Skylar finally winning out by sheer availability.

  “And then Joanna took out a restraining order on you.” Not a graceful segue, but Vanessa could get there anytime.

  He sat up. “That was total bullshit. Her mom made her do that. I wasn’t stalking her. No way. I don’t need to stalk any girl. Jo invited me over, and when her mom came home, she had to hide me. I had to stay in that fucking closet for hours. After that, I didn’t want anything to do with her.” His mother rubbed his back, lit a smoke, took a drag, passed him the rest.

  “But you were caught a second time. In her car?”

  Something dark passed over Dylan’s face. “What is this? Are you trying to make me look bad in your article? You said you just wanted some backstory.”

  “We’re the ones who should have got a restraining order against them,” Dylan’s mom piped up. The ice in her drink jingled as she shifted in her seat. She hadn’t put her “iced tea” down once. “That bitch, Kathy, she’d call screaming at my son to stay away from her daughter. Calling my son trash? Really? When her daughter’s the one sleeping with a grown man, her teacher, I think it’s pretty clear who the trash is. Was.”

  Skylar let out a trill of laughter. With a touch of incredulity, she said under her breath, “I was gonna have Mr. Haas next year for homeroom.”

  “Mom! Jesus Christ. She’s dead,” Dylan barked.

  “I don’t care, Dylan. It upsets me if anyone talks about my son that way.” Dylan rolled his eyes while his mom nodded in my direction, making sure I noticed what a good, protective weekend mother she was.

  I wanted to say that technically Dylan was considered a grown man by law. I could see why Kathy wouldn’t have wanted him around her daughter.

  I put my pen down. “I have a source, who of course I can’t reveal, but this source has told me your alibi is being further investigated.”

  “What? Who said that?” Dylan shoved Skylar’s legs off of his lap and leaned forward.

  “Again, I can’t reveal my source.”

  “Well, whatever. Your source is bad.”

  Skylar started biting her bottom lip. I looked at her. I could tell she wanted to say something. “Well, again, according to my source, there’s proof that you weren’t at your dad’s shop.” I flipped through the pages on my notepad.

  Dylan’s mom jumped up. “You know what, this interview is over. I don’t like where this is going.” She took my glass of iced tea away and stood there double-fisted. “You should leave.”

  Skylar started crying. “You could go to jail, even just for lying. It’s perjury.”

  “Shut up, Sky, for Chrissake,” Dylan snapped. “Just fucking shut up.”

  “I would have to say, there could be legal repercussions.” I was trying to think, make quick calculations in my head. If Skylar was going to have my brother for homeroom next year, that meant she was just getting out of eighth grade. She was, at most, only fourteen years old. The age of consent in North Dakota was eighteen, and a class-C felony if the minor was under fifteen years old. So Dylan was five years older and could go to prison for statutory rape. I’d looked this up when I desperately wanted to think that maybe, if Lucas had an inappropriate fling with his student, she was old enough to consent. But Wikipedia had told me what I already knew—Joanna wasn’t of age, and it didn’t matter anyway because Lucas was her teacher.

  “Tell them you were with me. You have the media right here, baby. Just tell them about our love story. There’ll be sympathy for our situation.” Skylar had that dreamy wisp in her voice. She was picturing magazine articles and interviews. I could tell she was the type of girl who relish
ed in her proximity to a tragedy, coyly doling out hints that she was the current girlfriend of the dead girl’s ex-boyfriend, wanting so much to come out with it.

  “Oh my God, Skylar, don’t you know how to shut your mouth?” Dylan dropped his head into his hands. “I’m not saying shit.”

  “Get out!” Serena kicked at the air in front of me. Iced tea splashed all over. Skylar was full-out weeping. Hands up, I retreated. Closing the trailer door behind me with a gentle click.

  * * *

  Outside, the sunlight hit me hard. The dog started up again with his killer barking. I was getting into my car when Dylan jogged up behind me. “This interview, the part about my alibi, I want it to be off the record or whatever. Just don’t print it.”

  “OK. I won’t.”

  “Oh.” He looked surprised. “Good. It doesn’t matter anyway, whether I was with my dad or not. I mean, even if the cops do find out I was with Sky, I might go to jail for that, but not for Joanna. I still have an alibi. Sky’s parents were home all night.”

  “All right, then.” I noticed Skylar peeking out at us through the window.

  “Thanks in there too for not mentioning the money. I mean, I’m still getting paid for this, right? This thing about the alibi doesn’t change anything, does it? You still have a lot of other stuff to use.”

  “Yes, of course. The check will be in the mail.”

  9

  I stopped in at a greasy spoon. One I used to eat at because they had the best waffles—I hadn’t yet found something as good in Chicago. A couple, obviously just passing through, kept pointing their infant son toward me and chirping, “He’s flirting with you, what a ladies’ man. He’s making eyes.” Everyone else in the place glared.