Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  Finally, after fifteen minutes, it looked like the coast was clear. I said this out loud, laughed some strange hyena-like sound. Delirium had set in. I needed sleep. Real sleep.

  * * *

  Back at the apartment, I was about to pull into the lot when I spotted the black monster truck waiting in a parking spot not far from Lucas’s. I circled past, pulled fast into someone’s driveway. Sunk down in the driver’s seat, bit into my lip. Scared he had seen me, but the truck stayed dark.

  I watched it in my rearview mirror, popped two Provigil, a narcolepsy med, to stay awake and alert. Chased it down with a watermelon-flavored lollipop. I was going to outwait this bastard, without a doubt. I was going to follow him home, then call Garrett. Two hours later, the truck turned on. Cab lights burned into the dark like pinholes.

  I trailed behind at a safe distance. Five minutes outside Wayoata, I knew where we were headed.

  The truck pulled into a sprawling brick house with a four-car garage. A sign at the end of the circular driveway said PRIVATE PROPERTY, followed up with WELCOME TO THE WILKES HOME.

  Four abandoned-looking media vans were parked neatly on the side of the road.

  I drove in behind the truck, parked next to three Jet Skis up on jacks. Turned my car off. The driver’s door swung open, and Big Ben slid down out of the driver’s seat. I stuffed Joanna’s file under the floor mat. Got out, hollered under the full influence of fearless rage, “Why the hell are you following me?” My hands went jittery. Side effects of Provigil were nausea, tingling, aggressiveness, and uneven heartbeats, and suddenly I was feeling them all at once.

  “Private property. You’re trespassing,” Ben yelled back, blinking wildly as if surprised at the volume he produced. His arms hung by his sides like a gorilla’s.

  A porch light turned on. Kathy at the door. “Ben? Is that you?” The wind had picked up, gone fierce, and her voice was muted by the swaying branches in the trees lining the driveway.

  “Over here, Mom.” He backed away from me. Nodding, as if to say, Now you’re gonna get it.

  Kathy stepped farther out. She was in a pink fuzzy robe that caught in the wind like a cape. “Who’s with you?”

  “That lady.” His voice went babyish. Simple. That lady? As if he didn’t know who I was. As if he hadn’t been shadowing me since I got here.

  Kathy marched down the steps, barefoot. “What the hell are you doing harassing my son on my property?” she roared, retying her robe. Tight. Double knotted. “Call the cops, Ben. Now.” Ben took out his phone. His chubby face went ghoulish in his phone’s light.

  “Yes, call the cops. Your son almost killed me today. He’s been following me for days, and I want to know why.”

  “You want to know why? She wants to know why?” Her mouth widened into a shocked grin, addressing some audience in the dark front lawn. “Why the hell do you think? We want to find out where your pathetic excuse for a human being brother is and bring him to justice.”

  “I’m here to find out the same thing. Where’s my brother?”

  “’Scuse me?” Kathy came closer, her head snapped side to side on her neck.

  “I know what you’ve done.” My hair whipped across my face.

  “Yeah, what’ve I done?” Hands on hips. Her mouth curled up into this bemused grin. Briefly, she looked past me, at Ben. A flicker of something ran across her face.

  “Justice is just a little bit closer to home, don’t you think, Kathy?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means. It’s just a matter of time before the police put it all together.”

  “What are you talking about? You know what, I don’t even give a shit. You’re psycho. Your whole fucking family is crazy. Everyone in Wayoata knows that much. I bet you’re just like her, your mother. A slut in the big city. You’re all sexual deviants. Stay away from my family. I hope your brother burns in hell.”

  I blinked back the angry tears that were heating up my eyes. My stomach tightened with fury. “Tell me, did you enjoy abusing your daughter? I bet you did.”

  “What did you just say to me?” Kathy said this with eerie calmness. A beat passed. Then she came at me, her shoulder hitting me hard in my stomach and knocking the wind out of me. I slipped on the dewy grass, my legs suddenly gone. Kathy was on top of me, pinning me down at my shoulders. Her robe had come undone, exposing a plunging lace-trimmed nightie underneath. A shadowy glimpse of a butterfly tattoo, deformed by weight gain, its tie-dyed pattern looking too green, like it was moldy. Her hair had loosened and blown upward, porch light casting it into some Medusa-like corona.

  She punched me in the jaw, hard—a white light exploded behind my eyes. My teeth jingled like loose change. I got my left arm free and managed to block her next blow. I twisted loose from under her, did an army crawl away; pain shot through my arms, then Kathy grabbed for my legs. I kicked, hit her somewhere, because she let go and I managed to stand up, but Big Ben was right there and he pushed me back toward his mother. Kathy grabbed me from behind, her arm came up around my throat into a choke hold, and she started to squeeze. Ben stood there watching, expressionless, like this was all perfectly normal for him. All I could hear and feel was her hot wet breath in my ear, repeating, “You fucking bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  I couldn’t breathe. My legs kicked out wildly in all directions. The veins in my neck were blood-thick and throbbing. The black night rippled like I was underwater. The porch light scattered and sparked. I was going to pass out. Flashing blue-red lights, for the second time tonight. Kathy released me. I dropped to the ground, gasping for air. Clawed at the grass.

  Garrett was out of the car, shouting, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  Kathy said something I didn’t catch over my own jagged coughing. Garrett lifted me up by the armpits. “You OK? Do I need to call for an ambulance?” I dipped my head forward so I could take in deep breaths.

  “Oh God, she’s fine. Trust me.” I could hear her now. Kathy was behind me, claiming I just showed up in the middle of the night, knocked on their door, and attacked her. It was all in self-defense.

  “She attacked me!” I sputtered. In the corner of my eye, I could see a cluster of bobbing lights. Cameras. Good. “How much did you get? Did you get all of that?” I called out in a hoarse voice in the direction of the cameras. No response.

  Kathy’s husband, Ian, had come running out of the house and was by her side, looking eyeless behind his glasses that reflected the lights from the cruiser. His arm was around her, and Kathy started to sob. She stooped down so she could bury her head against her husband’s chest. All soft now. Grieving wife and mother. Gone was the woman who had just python gripped my neck and called me a bitch. This was all for the cameras.

  Rage flashed through me, and my fists balled up like a child’s. “She just tried to kill me. Her son tried to kill me. They’re the ones. They killed their own daughter. They have Lucas.”

  “Get her out of here now,” Ian growled. A big voice for a small man.

  Garrett flashed a penlight in my face. “What are you doing here?”

  “He’s the one who’s been following me. It’s Ben Wilkes who almost ran me over today. Look, his truck is right there. It’s the same truck as in the pictures. They’ve been following me.”

  “What’re you on? Your pupils are the size of dimes.”

  “Nothing. Jesus.”

  Garrett glanced at the reporters, back at me.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? My brother is likely here, buried in their basement while you hold their fucking hand. They set him up to look guilty, so they could get away with it.” I started to raise my voice again so the reporters could hear me.

  “Don’t do that.” He grabbed my wrist, firm. I winced. He directed me toward his cruiser.

  “What the fuck, Garrett? Let me go!”

  “You’ll just make this worse for yourself if you don’t settle down.”

  “Get your hands o
ff me. What are you doing?”

  He ignored me. Ordered the reporters—there were four now—to stand back. Stand back? Why wasn’t he telling them to leave? “You’re arresting me?”

  “Just get in.” He opened the back of the cruiser and pushed me inside. His hand on my head. It closed with a dull thud. I tried the door. Locked. The reporters swarmed.

  I smacked the windows with my palms, a frantic drumroll. “She attacked me! Kathy attacked me.” The cameramen (one was a woman) took turns aiming their cameras at me. White lights beamed into the backseat as they baited me like a zoo animal. “Could you repeat that? What happened?”

  I tried to explain through the glass, but the reporters kept talking over one another and were having a hard time hearing me. No one was following what I was saying. They lost interest after a few minutes when their jumbled questions started about Lucas and I refused to answer. Moving like a singular body, they scurried toward Garrett and the Wilkeses talking on the front lawn. It was getting light; the sky had turned purple-pink, the color of an old bruise. Something moved in front of the Wilkeses’ home. Madison. Red hood up over her head, swinging gently back and forth on a porch swing. Unnoticed.

  Garrett squeezed Kathy’s shoulder. He kept nodding. Ben said something, his palms out in an I-don’t-know pose. Kathy burrowed her head again into her husband.

  Garrett glanced back at the reporters, more than once. His stance was a tad too wide. Hands on hips. He was mugging for the cameras. He’d just arrested an alleged murderer’s twin sister, who attacked the grieving mother. He was going to make every news show there was tomorrow. This here was his big break. This would overshadow Pruden. Put Garrett right at the helm, so at the next press conference, he would be the one standing at the podium taking questions about the other violent Haas twin. I leaned my head back. Tired and wired. The worst combination ever. The Provigil rolling through me like a leashed stampede. A green pine air freshener made the air in the car stuffy and thick. I had to fight off claustrophobia.

  * * *

  Finally, Garrett was back. He dropped down into the driver’s seat.

  I’d managed to pull it somewhat together. With a calm I was surprised I could muster, I stated flatly, “She killed her daughter. She killed Lucas. Or she had her son do it. I don’t know. She said she hopes Lucas burns in hell. Why would she say that, like he’s already dead, if she didn’t know he was dead?”

  He adjusted the rearview mirror to look at me, then readjusted and started backing out.

  “What about my car?”

  “I’ll get an officer to bring it over to the station.”

  “Let me out of here!” I tried the handle again.

  “Mia, you need to calm down.”

  “Calm down? What the fuck! That woman just tried to kill me. Her son has been trying to run me over for the past week. That whole family is obviously very violent.”

  “Their daughter was brutally murdered!” His rising voice was all edges. His rearview eyes were looking at me like I was the abuser here. “They were searching for her for over three weeks, they didn’t eat or sleep, and then you show up and make these terrible accusations. Don’t you think they’ve been through enough? Did you really need to come to Kathy’s home in the middle of the night to accuse her of killing her daughter? What’s wrong with you?”

  “You need to talk to Abby Peters.”

  “The Peterses? I know all about them. They’ve sued about three other people over the last year. They sue so often it’s practically become a saying around here, that I am going to ‘Peters’ you. Hell, why didn’t you call me before you came out here? I could have talked to you about all of this.” He chuckled, but it sounded mean and spiteful.

  “I know you want to write me off as crazy. It makes your job easier. But Kathy was abusing her daughter. She was always hurt.”

  “No, Mia, Kathy wasn’t. I don’t know what Abby Peters told you, but I can imagine. Joanna suffered some dance injuries, minor sprains. Nothing serious, nothing to indicate abuse. And you know what? If someone really did pay to have those pictures of Joanna taken, my first suspects would be the Peterses, not that I really think that.”

  “But Joanna hated her mother, she was afraid of her—” At the last second, I caught myself. I was about to mention the journal, cite Joanna’s comparison between malleable Ben and Lennie Small.

  Garrett shook his head and stared ahead.

  “Did you even look into Tom Geller? Or did you know it was Ben this whole time?” He had to have known it was Ben’s truck from the pictures I took. How could he not? He was at the Wilkeses’ all the time.

  “No. Of course not. He just told me he’d been following you, but said he wasn’t trying to scare you. He thought you could lead him to Lucas. I think that Ben might not have realized how aggressive he was being. He’s … I don’t know, I think he could be on some spectrum.”

  “Riiiight. Well, you saw my arms. I just, what? Threw myself into the pavement? He was trying to run me over.”

  “I spoke to Ben, and you don’t need to worry about him again.” Garrett said this with an annoying amount of confidence in his own authority.

  “So my brother is an official suspect based on your measly ‘eyewitness’ accounts, whereas Ben just tried to turn me into roadkill and he gets off with a stern warning? I have an eyewitness too, you know, if that’s all it takes. Why aren’t you arresting Ben?”

  “Yeah, I know. Josh Kolton.” He shook his head in a way that suggested I might as well have said the tooth fairy. “Ben was antagonistic, Mia. I’m not saying he wasn’t. That was wrong. But like I said, he’s a little off, and he thought you’d take him to Lucas.”

  “Too bad, then, that you didn’t tell him sooner that you had it all covered and he didn’t need to tail me. I found the GPS, Garrett,” I added, just to wipe that smug confidence off his face. “Do you have a warrant for that?”

  Garrett craned his head toward me. Spoke through the side of his mouth. “Yeah, I do have a warrant. We’re just trying to locate your brother.”

  “Well, you should put one on Kathy’s car, then. They know where he is.”

  “OK. Let’s just say your crazed theory is true. Why would she involve Lucas? Why would the Wilkeses go to all this trouble to set up your brother? Why not just say she ran away?”

  “Because maybe my brother was sleeping with Joanna, I don’t know? And they wanted to make him pay for that? They thought he was the father of her baby? Maybe Joanna wanted to have the baby and continue seeing Lucas. I know she didn’t want to dance anymore, and maybe that’s all it took for—” My words were crashing into one another. Desperate. This was desperate. The emotional equivalent of gnawing off a limb to set myself free. I had to concede Lucas could have been sleeping with her to make this work.

  Garrett cut me off. “For what? You think Kathy murdered her own daughter because she didn’t want to be a ballerina? You think this was some kind of dance-mom honor killing? Come on, you must know how ridiculous that sounds. It’s like reality is a multiple-choice questionnaire for you.” We stopped hard at a four-way intersection, car jerking; the traffic lights dangling from the wires were all blinking red. He went through the lights, pulled over to the side of the road, and parked. Put his hazards on, though the roads were deserted. Their timed ticking filled the car. He drew an audible calming breath and turned around to face me. “I am glad to hear, though, that you’re finally admitting to yourself that there was a relationship between Lucas and Joanna.”

  “That’s so condescending, Garrett,” I snapped. An angry, sticky sound erupted in the back of my throat. Shook my head. He eyed me, still looking wary of my wide-eyed intensity.

  “I am just saying, that it’s a step in the right direction.” I knew what was coming next. “But I know that Eric Lowe did not tell you Joanna was pregnant.”

  “Well, Eric Lowe isn’t exactly good at keeping secrets—”

  “Don’t bother lying! I know the school guidance couns
elor didn’t tell you because he didn’t know. If he’d known, he would have told Kathy. They were meeting regularly to discuss Joanna. When I told Kathy her daughter was pregnant, I could see it in her face. She had no idea. So how did you know she was pregnant?”

  I couldn’t blame Madison either because I’d be pelted with a when, where, how line of questioning and any remaining credibility would vaporize. “I just figured it out. I saw something scratched out in Lucas’s planner, OK? That’s how I knew. I’ll admit, maybe Lucas was sleeping with Joanna and it was his baby, but don’t you see that that gives the Wilkeses a reason to go after him? Kathy killed her daughter because she was ruined and then went after him.”

  “Let’s stop talking about the Wilkeses for a second, OK? Let’s talk about you. What you know. You knew Joanna was pregnant. We scoured Lucas’s apartment, and yet you found something in his planner we missed, and you’re the one who found the cell phone. You’re the one hiding something, Mia.”

  “It’s not my fault that I’m a better cop than you and Pruden.” I wrapped my arms around myself like a sullen teenager.

  “You’re so full of information, and yet how? There’s only one answer to that: Lucas told you. He’s just waiting somewhere, isn’t he? For his sister to clear his name. He told you where that phone was hidden.”

  “No.”

  “You talked to him the day he took off. Where is he?”

  “That call was a fucking pocket dial. Do you really think I was lying to you this whole time? I told you I don’t know where he is. I wish I did. You have no idea how much I want to talk to my brother right now. And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “This whole time I’ve been thinking you’ve wanted to make a quick arrest and pin this on Lucas because you are that bored small-town cop trying too hard to prove himself, but I know you’re the safety liaison at Westfield. You probably saw Joanna all the time.” I knew I was starting to churn out accusations with the discrepancy of a lawn sprinkler but I couldn’t stop myself.