Follow Me Down

by Sherri Smith

  It was a gloomy, dark evening. Windy and hot. It was just after 6 P.M., and the sky looked like it’d been threatening rain all day, but the storm just stayed up there, taunting, ruining everyone’s summer plans.

  An ambulance was parked in front of the Terrace. The sight of the red lights flashing against the drab brick made my insides wilt. A gurney was being wheeled out the door.

  As I hustled up, I caught a glimpse of Russ, his neck in a brace. His eyes were open, and as the paramedics pushed him past me, I could smell the reek of stale beer. We made eye contact, and a look of wild panic consumed his face. His lips were moving, saying some gibberish, I think about a leak.

  “Don’t try to talk,” one of the paramedics ordered, and Russ’s eyes fluttered closed.

  Bailey was sitting on the front steps, her head buried in her hands.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “My dad.” Her voice bubbled. She slapped at a mosquito on her sandaled foot, wiped her hand on the concrete step. She seemed hesitant to talk.

  “Did something happen between him and Dale Burton?”

  “Dale?” She looked up at me. She rubbed the tears and sweat off her face with her shirt, leaving a streak of cover-up behind on her collar.

  “I saw them arguing the other day.”

  “Oh, that? That’s nothing. Dale’s just mad because he’s getting evicted for not paying his rent.” That didn’t sound right, because Dale had been the one asking for money, but that must have been what Russ told his daughter when clued-in tenants showed up at his door demanding their stuff back. “No. My dad fell. He was drunk, and he fell down the stairs.”

  The ambulance was pulling away. “Do you want a ride to the hospital?”

  She shook her head. “I hate the hospital. It’s where my mom died.” She pinched the loose end of her wiry bracelet and spun it around her wrist.

  I sat down next to her. “Oh, I don’t think your dad is in danger of dying, Bailey. You know what? My mom fell down some steps too, and she’s alive and well.” I didn’t know why I was saying this. I had no idea how extensive Russ’s injuries were.

  “Yeah, but isn’t your mom, like, brain-dead or something?” She looked up, blinked.

  “No, she isn’t. Who told you that?”

  “Mr. Haas talked about it. Wasn’t she in a car accident?”

  “Well, I mean my mother does have a brain injury, but she leads a very good life. She’s a successful artist.” Why did I think it was comforting to tell her about my brain-damaged mother in this moment?

  Bailey made some stuck-in-the-throat sound. “Could I come hang out with you for a little while?”

  I went through a dozen ways I could say no. I was in no shape to console anyone. “Don’t you have any family that can come and be with you?”

  “My aunt’s coming. She’ll be here soon.” Her voice was quiet; her eyes were fading out. I could tell she was under the influence of that water-submerged feeling that was shock.

  Bailey followed me up into Lucas’s suite and plopped down in the middle of his couch, mumbling something about being hungry. There wasn’t much in the way of food in the apartment; the salad kit I had bought was liquefying. I pushed my finger into one of the white powdery donuts. It was still moist feeling, so I offered her some and a bag of chips. “That’s all I’ve got. I haven’t done much grocery shopping.”

  Bailey crinkled her nose but still wrapped her lips around a donut and cracked open the chips. “Do you want to order pizza?” Her voice had veered into something like bubbly. Almost cheerful. It was jarring, but I knew better than to think she should be acting differently in a moment like this. Children of alcoholics have no role model for normalcy.

  So I obliged and ordered a pizza (with the extra toppings Bailey suddenly needed while I was placing the order with a squeaky-voiced kid). Her aunt would be there soon. While we waited for the pizza, Bailey peppered me with questions about living in Chicago. What did my apartment look like, what kind of restaurants did I go to, how many times had I gone to a Blackhawks’ game? I indulged her, giving the “big city” the full mythical treatment. That was what a teen like Bailey wanted to hear, that there was an actual geographical place where it really did get better.

  When the pizza arrived, I set Bailey up with some pop and a napkin and went to shower. When I got out, the TV was on. Bailey was laughing, loud and hard, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I shivered. Dried myself off and dressed in my last somewhat-clean outfit.

  Finally, when it became apparent nearly two hours later that Bailey’s aunt was not coming anytime soon, I told her I needed to go out. Again I offered to take her to the hospital; again she declined.

  * * *

  I was back at Shooting Stars dance studio or, really, in the parking lot across the street. A class was just ending. Girls scattered through the parking lot like pink confetti, disappearing into their idling chariots. Kathy left a few minutes later. Madison lagged behind her, awkwardly carrying a storage bin and looking really unhappy about it. Kathy is my half sister, I thought, and something twisted hard in my chest. I couldn’t decide if I should follow her home. Knock on their front door again and tell her what I knew. I could tell the reporters to follow me. It’d be like a reverse Publishers Clearing House novelty-check moment. Peter Russo owed us something. Some slice of the Harold’s fortune that was estimated at $1.2 billion according to Wikipedia (I’d checked).

  That was what Lucas was after. He owed Tom Geller money, and it must have seemed like the sky had opened up and handed him this whopping reprieve when he figured it all out. But then it wouldn’t have been only about the money with Lucas. It wasn’t for me either. If Lucas had threatened to sue Peter, it was because that was the most tangible way to sling all of his anger and resentment at him. To pry us out into the open, to be acknowledged after a lifetime of being ignored, of being treated like twin bastards. It would force Peter to accept us.

  But of course, money was always nice too.

  And after Kathy killed her daughter, she thought, who better to pin it on than her half brother who might come after some of her rightful inheritance?

  So then, what? She was coming for me next? It was soapy and outlandish and oh so media-friendly, and once this did hit the media, then the Wayoata PD would be forced to investigate Kathy as Joanna’s and Lucas’s murderer. The haze of suspicion hanging over Lucas would finally clear. He would want that, alive or dead. Dead. The word echoed through me; my bones jostled like I was a game of Jenga on the verge of collapse. I slapped my cheeks. Not yet.

  I could test Joanna’s hair against my own.

  I sat in my car for a while longer, not wanting to go back to the apartment. Not wanting to run into Bailey. Not wanting to move at all. It’d been eight hours since I last took something to help keep me awake, and my body was turning to stone. I fell asleep. When I woke up, a light was on in the studio again, the blinds firmly drawn. It was one in the morning.

  I got out of the PT, stiff-limbed, and crossed the street. The parking lot was empty. I tried the front door, locked. I went around to the back of the studio. There the door was unlocked. I slipped inside. A pulsing pop song was cranked up. Heavy padded thumps of feet were hitting the floor. The music paused. I heard the labored breathing of someone working out, then the music started up again. If I hadn’t watched Kathy leave, I would have thought it was her. Maybe she’d come back.

  I climbed a narrow staircase up to the studio. The door was propped open with a small plastic garbage bin. I pressed myself against the wall. A strong sweaty smell emanated from inside the room, overpowering even the fruit juice smell from the bin. I shifted, hugged the doorjamb, and peeked in. And then I saw who it was. I watched him watching himself hold his leg out in the wall of mirrors. Like a hippo in a tutu. Ben. He was wearing a witchy Halloween wig tied up into a bun. Red lipstick burned bright on his face, pink eye shadow circled his eyes making him look like a lab animal. Forehead beaded with sweat. He was i
n full drag. I could see it, clear as anything, the lunch lady. The lunch lady who’d followed Joanna into Dickson Park.

  Sitting on the floor, atop a pile of denim, was a pair of red sneakers. My mouth went dry. They were so much like Lucas’s that I was about to swing open the door and grab them, but thought better of it. I took my phone out, quiet. Waited for Ben to come back into my line of vision. I’d send it to Garrett. Finally, finally, the proof I needed. Ben spun back into view. My finger, poised triggerlike, hit the screen on my phone. The camera flashed. Dammit.

  Ben saw me and screamed. A loud high-pitched siren of a shriek. He charged me. His shoulder crashed into my right breast, and I was thrown back into the wall. The garbage can went skittering down the steps. The studio door snapped closed as Ben busted through the back door.

  I got up slowly, winded, my breast cramping hard with every movement. I called Garrett as I limped down the steps. Thankfully, he answered. I told him where I was and that he should come now. “You found Ben?” was all he said before I pressed End. When I reached the back alley, Ben was squealing out.

  I stood there a minute, the darkness whirling around me. Short of breath, certain I would never breast-feed from my right breast, I took a mindless step forward and stumbled. I turned and went back up into the studio and picked up Lucas’s shoes. No longer in pristine shape, but scuffed and double knotted. I hugged them tight against me, until my sternum ached. I wanted to swallow down a blister pack of anything that would make this marrow-deep anguish disappear. In the studio mirrors I looked dazed, and washed out, and insignificant. Scared and helpless. I needed to stay angry, I had to stay angry. I had to keep ahead of the snapping jaws of grief because once it got me, I knew that’d be it. I needed to stand up. Steel myself.

  Garrett stepped into the studio and flicked the throbbing music off. Full of vindication, I was on him. “Ben has Lucas’s sneakers. I was right. I was fucking right this whole time, and now he’s gone.” I was breathing too fast, my words were coming out wispy and rushed. “He knows where my brother is. I tried to get a picture. Evidence. He did something to him. He’s going to get away.”

  “No. Mia, just calm down for a second, OK?” Garrett put his hand on my shoulder. “We won’t let him get away. I need those.” He gingerly took the sneakers from me and motioned for me to follow him back outside to his cruiser, where he placed them in an evidence bag. “We’ve been looking for Ben since this afternoon. Never thought he’d be here. The Arkansas ATM withdrawals, those were Ben. A camera on a convenience store caught Ben buying Slim Jims less than a block away a few minutes after the withdrawal. Which way did he go?”

  “So he did do it, didn’t he? He killed Lucas?” My heart was rising and breaking all at the same time. Garrett’s cruiser was still idling. Insects made loops in the headlight beams.

  “We’ll know more once we bring him in. Just focus for a second and answer me, which direction was he headed?”

  “South.” I pointed in the direction Ben had turned out of the lane.

  Garrett did a quick-draw of his radio and rattled off this info. When he was done, he gave me a solemn look. “We’ll find Ben. Don’t worry about that. Go home. I’ll be in touch.”

  I wanted to say, Like you found my brother, but didn’t.

  * * *

  I went to the station, even though Garrett said not to. Waited. Drank several cups of sludge-like coffee that left a silty taste on my tongue and tried to quiet the dread grinding inside me. I wanted to know where my brother’s body was, because that’s what it came down to now. Where Lucas’s body was.

  The police found Ben four hours later in Dickson Park, not far from Joanna’s makeshift memorial. A dejected ballerina leaping around in the woods. A preliminary search of Ben’s truck turned up nothing significant, no muddied shovels or bloodied baseball bats. Garrett texted me this, thinking I was at Lucas’s place.

  A cruiser pulled into the police station. Pruden and Garrett got out. Pruden opened up the back door and protected Ben’s head with his hand as he pulled him up and led him inside the station. There were already a couple of reporters ready to go, who until that point had looked like confused geese who’d migrated too early.

  “What are you doing here? I told you to wait at home,” Garrett said when he saw me standing in the middle of the station’s waiting area.

  But I wasn’t listening to Garrett or Pruden, or Pruden’s reprimand of the receptionist working the night shift that she shouldn’t have let me wait. Ben’s hands were cuffed. Big Ben. My nephew, the man-child who most likely had murdered my brother. His own sister. Makeup was still padded thick on his face. Mascara had muddied his eyes, bandit-like. The scoop neck of the ballerina bodysuit exposed a very freckled chest.

  “Tell me where my brother is.” I had practiced this, in my head. This calmness, and it surprised me that I could manage it. But Ben didn’t look at me, only down at his scathed bare feet tapping out some rhythm only he could hear. “Please Ben, where’s Lucas?”

  He sniffed.

  “I know you loved your sister, just like I love Lucas, so you can understand how I need closure. If you can give me that—” My voice caught. I didn’t want this to be a weepy plea; I always felt weepiness got you less than your desired goal. I wanted to trick him into thinking I would forgive him, all I needed to know was my brother’s whereabouts. “Ben, there’s something you should know. Lucas was your uncle.” I flinched at “was” and “uncle.” “We’re related. I’m your aunt. Your grandpa Peter had an affair with our mother.” I was using that voice that I imagined good mothers used when explaining the bird and the bees.

  His eyes shot up, his nose scrunched up, like he smelled something bad. He blinked. His eyes stayed open. “Huh?”

  There was something in this, so simple and childlike, and I knew it was Kathy who’d told him to do it, to kill his own sister, my brother; more than anything, I knew it was Kathy. And the calmness I had scattered. “You killed the wrong fucking person! Lucas was just trying to locate our birth father, but I think you know that, don’t you? I think Joanna told you that just before you bashed her head in and strangled her. Now where is my brother?”

  Ben started taking fast shallow breaths, like a terrorized rabbit, and for a second, I went still, and I could feel the stillness come off Pruden and Garrett too. It was like a full confession was stuck on the tip of his tongue and any second it would lift off, easy, like dandelion fluff. Up and out, tumbling over those rapid breaths. It was brimming up, he made a sound in his throat, like he couldn’t find the right word to start with, but then he was looking up, at his reflection in the flat-screen TV, off now, all the distressing stats gone.

  But he wasn’t looking at himself but at Kathy, who was waddling, quick, toward the station, an enormous purse flapping against her thigh. “Please, don’t let her see me like this. She’ll hate me.” He whined into his chest, his face contorted into something ugly and alarming.

  Kathy’s hard voice cut through the air. “Jessssus Chrrrrist, Ben.” It was a snarl of disgust, but not shock. She shook her head, like she was declining this version of her son. Garrett started to lead Ben away toward the interview room. “Ben, don’t say a word. Nothing,” she called after him. Her eyes flitted over me, then back at her son. “Mama’s here, Ben. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Mama, I’m sorry. Sorry,” Ben called back before the door closed.

  I braced myself for another blowout with Kathy, fistfuls of hair and scratched cheeks, but another officer was right there, leading her down the hall away from me. She didn’t look at me, and all I managed to get out was, “Who’s the fucked-up family now, huh?” But it didn’t really have the teeth I wanted it to, because we were all related. Related fuckups.

  I waited in Garrett’s office during Ben’s initial interrogation. Hoping that that moment when it had seemed like Ben was going to tell all would happen again. Hoping that he wouldn’t heed Kathy’s demand not to talk, but I knew when Garrett sho
wed up at the door over an hour later that this hadn’t happened.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head and sat down across from me.

  I sunk forward. A high-pitched sound burrowed into my ear, like a tuning fork had been forced into the back of my skull. Every tendon that had been holding me up in the chair felt sliced by disappointment and frustration.

  “He isn’t talking. Not yet. He won’t say anything about the ATM transactions or how he came to have Lucas’s sneakers. He just keeps repeating that Lucas hurt his sister. But I have every confidence we’ll eventually get him talking.”

  “So you think Lucas is dead?” I don’t know why I even asked this. It was like asking a doctor if you had a sunburn when your skin was blistering red and peeling from the bone.

  “I think we don’t know anything for certain, not yet. But listen, I owe you an apology. You were right about the Wilkeses’ involvement, but we did what we could with the knowledge that we had.”

  It was a nonapology, but I couldn’t even muster up a “Too little, too late.” The letdown that he hadn’t gotten something out of Ben was vise-gripping my stomach. Garrett quickly moved forward. “Was that true, what you said earlier, about you and Lucas being Kathy Wilkes’s half siblings?”

  “Yeah, it is.” I told him everything then. Almost everything. I left out the part about the journal and the swatch of hair because it still sounded weirdly incriminating, but I told him that Lucas had been seen having intense discussions with Joanna, not because he was sleeping with her, but because he was trying to figure out who our father was. And he was right. “I think Ben killed them both on his mother’s orders. Joanna was pulling away from her. She was pregnant, and Kathy couldn’t handle it—maybe she thought Joanna really was having an affair with her uncle? I don’t know. Kathy tried to rein her back in by paying the hockey players to sexually humiliate her own daughter. When that didn’t work, Kathy killed her and saw an opportunity to pin it all on Lucas.”

  Garrett leaned back in his office chair; it squeaked. He rested his hands on top of his head. “Holy shit. OK, well let’s test your DNA against a Wilkes tomorrow. That’d be the first step in building this theory of yours, because as of now, we don’t have any evidence Ben or Kathy killed Joanna.”