Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  No such luck. Nothing was happening when I got there. How long would it take them to pull this kid in for questioning?

  Again, I didn’t have a plan. I was just there. I needed to be doing something, I needed to feel like I was looking for him. I popped another Adderall, then two more. If I’d ever needed cognitive enhancement, it was now. I needed to put it all together, the phone, the hair, the journal, the players. With nothing to do, my mind galloped along at a frenetic speed. I punched a series of searches into my phone like it was a Magic 8 Ball I was violently shaking for answers. I tried Lucas’s page again as if it’d be reactivated and there’d be a selfie of him in some truck stop bathroom with Just dyed my hair, how’s it look? Heading to Mexico. YOLO. Cody Jackson had a Facebook page. It was exactly what you’d expect—Cody drinking, videos of Cody setting off reworks, Cody playing football and hockey. At the top of his friend’s list was the Joanna Wilkes’s memorial page. I tapped on it.

  There was a proclamation of always remembering, and x’s and o’s, and we miss you’s. The digital hereafter was just as insincere sounding as in life. I wondered how many of these people Joanna had really been friends with; it had sounded like she didn’t have many friends at all. There was video of an earlier prayer vigil, this time in the funeral home’s parking lot. Clearly it was just after Joanna’s service going by how creased and rumpled and sad everyone looked. There were 602 Likes. I pressed Play.

  It was obviously taken with a cell phone camera. The image was jumpy and nauseating, and it looked like it was taken by someone standing a fair distance away. I did catch a glimpse of Kathy, ruddy and tear-streaked, clasping a small white container. The group held hands and prayed. A man’s voice, off camera, announced that it was time to release the butterflies, calling it a flight for hope. Anyone holding a box opened it, and a sparse cloud of monarch butterflies floated upward, ascending like messengers.

  I saw something that seemed off. A face looking down when everyone else was looking up. It was quick, and I couldn’t be sure. I had to watch it three more times. At first I thought he was just stepping on a cigarette butt, pivoting his foot back and forth to be sure it was out, but it didn’t fall to the ground like a cigarette. On my fourth viewing, I was certain it wasn’t a cigarette.

  One of Ben Wilkes’s butterflies didn’t fly up like it was supposed to, so he stepped on it. Ben, the butterfly killer. He ground it into the cement with his foot, then made a heart shape with his hands and aimed it at the sky. How fucked up was that?

  14

  Just after 5 P.M., the front door of the house opened. Cody Jackson came out with a skinny, sleepy-eyed girl in tow and peeled out of the driveway. I started driving behind him. Slow, and far back enough that I wasn’t noticeable, as unnoticeable as you can be in a red PT Cruiser with a broken side mirror. Cody dropped the girl off at her house, his fish lips all over her before she finally got out, then continued on to a fast food restaurant (get rid of the girl, then get some food; what a cheap dick). He went inside.

  I was on full Adderall speed now. The police weren’t fast enough. I knew better. I was faster. I was speedy-fast-speeding. I could do this better than Pruden anyway. I should shake this kid down. Bang, bang, just like that. The song “Shake That Thing” rushed through my head at chipmunk speed. Fuck, I needed an Ativan to counterbalance. A pill to offset a pill to offset a pill. “Shake That Thing” was replaced by “There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.”

  Find Lucas. Find Lucas. Find Lucas.

  I followed Cody Jackson inside.

  He was a big kid, six foot two and over 220 pounds, at least. He’d really fill out a hockey net. Seriously, how had that tiny girl lived through an afternoon nap with him? He ordered a heaping tray of burritos and cheesy fries. Once he was sitting down, I went over.

  “Cody Jackson, right?” I attempted a schoolgirl voice, but my words crashed into one another. Reminded myself to slow down. At least it gave the effect that I was nervous to talk to him, which he seemed to like.

  “Uh, yeah?” A bit of burrito tumbled out of his mouth when he spoke.

  I sat down across from him. “Goalie?”

  He grinned, nodded, wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Yeah, that’s me. What’s your name?”

  “Mia.”

  “All right.” He forked some fries and twirled them around in the Day-Glo cheese sauce. “Whassup?”

  “I just noticed you sitting here,” I purred, leaning in and letting my breasts rest on the table, “and I had to know, is that Cody Jackson, the Westfield goalie?” Cody nodded, gave me a chubby-cheeked wink. I wanted to punch him.

  “That’s me in the flesh.” He pushed his yellow straw up and down into the plastic lid. A squeaky simulated fucking.

  “Good. Wow, I couldn’t help myself.… I just had to know, am I really in the same restaurant as Cody Jackson, the Westfield goalie and photographer?” At this he scrunched his face. I got my phone ready with one of the least graphic pictures of Joanna and flashed it in front of his face. “And the disgusting pig who assaulted Joanna Wilkes and took pictures of it?”

  “What?” He flinched back, hard, almost as if he’d been Tasered.

  “I found the phone my brother took from you.”

  “Wait, you’re Mr. Haas’s sister?” He squinted, searched my face.

  “That’s right, asshole. Tell me where my brother is, or I’m going straight to the police.”

  “I have no idea where Mr. Haas is. Why would I?” He pushed his tray away.

  “Tell me what happened after you sent the text ‘Haas knows’ to Oz, because you know what? It looks really bad for you. It looks like you and your friends killed Joanna as payback for getting you all kicked off the team. Then suddenly my brother is gone. Did you kill him too?”

  “What are you talking about? Mr. Haas killed Joanna.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “I don’t need to tell you shit.”

  “Fine, OK.” I started to stand up, continued in a loud voice, “The police will get it out of you anyway. I mean, it’s pretty clear that Joanna told my brother what you did to her, and you got really angry and killed her. You tried to set my brother up—”

  “Stop saying that. Stop saying I killed Joanna.” Cody cast nervous glances around the restaurant, and his face went a dark crimson purple, like he was choking. I sunk back down into the booth, watched his bottom lip droop out even farther. He was crying, making soundless airy noises, like a tire deflating. Flecks of ground beef and orange cheese glazed his tongue. He started repeating “Oh my God” over and over. Three tables away, a kid poked his head over the plastic seat and stared, a tiny cardboard sombrero that came with the kids’ meal askew on his head.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have gone along with it. I can’t believe this is happening. I just took the pictures.” His head pitched forward; he covered his face.

  “Gone along with what?”

  He looked up at me, all doe-eyed and snively. “Last year a girl—something like that happened. She got really hammered, and some pics went around with her making out with three dudes at a party. It was bad for her. She had to be homeschooled for the rest of the year. Someone wanted us to do something like that to Joanna. They paid us. But, like, we’re not rapists.”

  “So you what? Lured her somewhere?”

  “No. Not lured.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “And I’ll get my phone back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesse Campbell asked Joanna to his house party. She said yes, because all the chicks say yes to Jesse, and we knew she was off with that douche, Dylan. So he poured her really strong drinks, she got hammered fast. I seriously think that was, like, the first time she’d had alcohol. Which is funny because she was selling weed outta her locker. Anyway, Jesse took her into his little brother’s room. Joanna kind of just flopped down on the bed, totally wasted. She just sort of passed out. I think Jesse might have added something more to her drink, I don’t know,
but she was out. Then that’s when we did what we were paid to do.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “I don’t know. None of us know. Whoever wanted it done sent an e-mail to Jesse. The money was taped under a bench in that park by Wilson Elementary.”

  “How much were you paid?” Lucas and I had both attended Wilson Elementary; it practically shared the backfield with the high school. It was where the lunch lady worked as a night janitor. Had she done this?

  “We each got five hundred bucks, in total. Two fifty before, two fifty after. But we didn’t get the second payment because the next day was Saturday and we had practice. We slept in. Jesse didn’t even get up at all for it and missed the whole practice. So we were gonna e-mail the pics after practice but then Haas found us looking at them in the dressing room, asked if they were the only pics, and took my phone. Couple days later, he kicked us off the team, said if he ever saw or heard anything about the pictures again, he would turn my phone in to the cops and we’d be charged with child porn. He said he was making us a deal. So obviously we didn’t have any pics to e-mail back, and we didn’t get our second payment.”

  “Did my brother know you were paid?”

  “No. No one knows.”

  “It doesn’t exactly look like you’re hurting for money, so why would you agree to do it?”

  “I’m saving for college.” He jutted his chin out, like saying this made him sound good. This kid had a car, brand-name clothes, money for a tray full of burritos; surely there were other corners to cut before he resorted to rapist for hire.

  “So why you guys?”

  “I dunno,” he mumbled. “Like I said, Jesse gets girls.” There could be more to this, but I didn’t think so. Most of the time horrible things happened due to stupid, weak reasoning like this.

  “How were you contacted?”

  “E-mail. Jesse got the e-mail. I probably wouldn’t even have been in on it, but I was there when he got it, and he offered, and I just couldn’t turn down the money.” Cody felt the need to reiterate.

  “Oh, so you’re a victim of circumstance.”

  He shrugged. “I’m telling you, we didn’t have anything to do with Joanna’s murder. Mr. Haas did it. I know he’s your brother, and you don’t want to hear it, but that’s what everyone’s saying. I mean, he really overreacted, kicking us off the team. Like I said, we didn’t, you know, touch her in any way.”

  “But you poured SpaghettiOs on her vagina and took pictures of it.”

  A slight tremor of something on his sticky lips, the start of a smile? Or was he going to cry again? He had one of those faces, the kind that looked on the brink of some kind of strong emotional outburst. “Whoever it was wanted that part in it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know? We didn’t ask. It was harmless. I mean it wasn’t like she was actually raped or anything. The whole thing was weird. I thought it was Dylan, to be honest. He wanted her to go out with another guy and have a bad experience and run back to him.”

  Which she had done. I stood up. I needed to tell Garrett this.

  “Wait, can I have my phone back?”

  “Oh, right.” I fake-rummaged through my bag, pulled out my middle finger. “Oops, I already gave it to the police.”

  As I pushed through the greasy glass door, Cody yelled, “Bitch.”

  * * *

  Garrett’s house was a well-kept Craftsman with a cruiser parked in front of the jutting garage. I rang the doorbell twice, heard a dog bark inside, and was about to leave when he answered in a towel. Rivulets of water still rolled down his broad, sculpted chest. A chocolate lab poked its fleshy nose out at me. Garrett hissed, “Down,” and the dog lowered itself to the floor.

  “I tried calling,” I explained. I had, three times. Each call turned over to voice mail. I’d tried the station, and the receptionist said he’d gone home. Relying on that NoDak need to be helpful, I just asked her where Garrett lived and she told me. I glanced at his towel, made a concentrated effort not to gawk at his action-hero chest, but it was too distracting. A chest like that was a discussion piece. Something to be appreciated. I cleared my throat. “Do you want me to come back?”

  “No, that’s fine. Come on in.” He led me into his living room, quickly gathered up papers off the coffee table, and stuffed them into a file, then dropped the file on a side table. “I’m not usually so messy, but the case…” His voice dropped off, and he took a sharp breath in through his teeth. “Anyway, I’ll be a second. Have a seat.” He motioned toward the couch, then disappeared down the hall.

  Garrett’s house was bigger than it looked from the outside. Vaulted ceilings and a stone fireplace gave it a cottagey feel. The living room was messy. There were newspapers and files all over the place in piles of various heights, a week’s worth of clothes draped over the back of a plaid recliner, and another week’s over the kitchen chairs.

  Garrett returned freshly shaven, in a gray T-shirt and jeans, still barefoot. Extra clean-cut. “Want a Coke? I’d offer you a beer, but y’know, I wouldn’t want you to black out.”

  “No thanks.” He sat down in a chair across from me.

  “So what’s up?”

  “I just talked to Cody Jackson.”

  “You didn’t.” He groaned, leaned back into the chair, looked up to the ceiling. “Goddamn it, Mia. I told you not to do that. I thought you were here because you finally wanted to tell me how you knew about Joanna’s pregnancy.”

  “He told me that they were paid for it.”

  “Well, that’s great! Now that’s he talked to you, he’s gonna start thinking up something to make himself look better. He now has time to talk to his friends, and they’ll cover each other’s asses. We talked to Cody’s mom, and she’s bringing Cody in tomorrow morning. I told you that we would handle this. Fuck.” A vein throbbed in the middle of his forehead. “You think you’re helping your brother, but you’re making things worse.”

  “I’ll be a witness if they try to change their story.” My eyes were starting to throb. The Adderall swimming around in my blood was starting to feel like a school of piranhas, and I was trying not to go all hot and fidgety. I did feel chastened. Having come down a few notches from the Adderall high, I realized I’d done a very stupid thing, and maybe Cody would try to cover his ass, but the kid seemed so dim I wasn’t too worried he’d do a good job of it.

  “Right, because you’d be considered unbiased? It doesn’t work that way. Tell me what exactly he said.”

  “They were each paid two hundred fifty dollars to put Joanna in a humiliating position. Cody thought it was Dylan.” I explained about the e-mail. “It requested the SpaghettiOs.”

  “That’s a lot of money for someone like Dylan, especially paid out to three people. The SpaghettiOs—I mean, I don’t even know what to say about that other than it’s completely fucked up. But I guess that was the point.”

  “Dylan deals drugs. He’d have the money, and he was obsessed with Joanna. I know he stalked her. When she first broke it off with him, he shamed her into coming back to him, then when she dumped him again, he tried stalking. When stalking didn’t work, he killed her.”

  “First, Dylan isn’t much of drug dealer. I doubt he’d have that kind of money, but let’s say he had something to do with this. It still doesn’t change the fact that he has an alibi for the night of Joanna’s murder. These pictures of Joanna might not have anything to do with her murder.”

  “Maybe his dad helped him out. Maybe Greg Yates killed Joanna for his son.”

  “Mia.” Garrett sighed.

  “Or what if Dylan and Greg Yates hired someone to kill Joanna because she dumped Dylan? Or maybe over some drug deal gone bad? And when they saw it looked like Lucas was being considered as a suspect, they just killed him. Made him disappear, so it looks like he’s on the run.”

  “I think that’s a highly convoluted and unlikely theory. I can check their phone records, e-mails, see if anything aligns with these hockey players. We c
an question Dylan about these pictures. We will look into it, and by ‘we,’ I mean the WPD. Either way, Mia, this doesn’t undo the evidence against Lucas. I think you know that.”

  I sat there, quiet. The lab came and put his head in my lap. I stroked his velvety ear, not minding the streaks of drool left on my pants.

  “Now can you tell me how you found out Joanna was pregnant? I need to know.”

  I was about to tell him the lie I came up with: Eric told me. That Joanna had confided in the school counselor and I didn’t want to jeopardize Eric’s job (we’ve become close the last few days, y’know) and so on, but Garrett’s phone rang.

  He dug it out of his pants, swore under his breath. “Just a sec. OK?” He stood and walked out of the room.

  I could leave, right now. Avoid lying. I could overhear Garrett talking in a low drone somewhere down the hall.

  I eyed the file Garrett had left on the end table. I moved to the end of the couch and lifted the file’s tab. It fell open to the photograph of Joanna Wilkes lying on a metal slab in the morgue. Her face a puffy, swollen mess. Waterlogged. Broken blood vessels spidered all over her face, and her neck was a pulpy purple-black. Her hair, what was left of it, looked like it had been hacked at with a hunting knife. Its long-short patchiness reminded me of a cherished Barbie doll that Lucas had once cut the hair off of when we were kids. It came out of nowhere, this memory. He’d propped the half-sheared doll in the middle of my bed and waited in my closet until I found her. Watched me as I wailed. Snickering.

  Garrett came back into the room and snatched the folder from me. “You can’t look at that.”

  “I’m sorry. It was just there. I shouldn’t have looked.” My voice went weedy, my legs soft and boneless. I had to tell myself to breathe. I really shouldn’t have looked. “Why the hair? Why do you think whoever did this cut off her hair?”