by Scott Kelly
“Shame about the view,” I say, nodding at the coastline ahead of us.
“It’s like the beach has cancer.”
And she’s right, Port Lavaca is infected. A growth of metal pipes, smokestacks, compressed gas. Pressurized chambers of toxic gas; burners and steel drums. It’s an industrial town, and the only reason people live here are the five refineries. They emerge malignant from the pale, peach coast. Tanks tower hundreds of feet in the air, connected with labyrinthine pipes. The knotted steel is crowned with flare stacks burning ten-foot red flames.
There is no view of the coast that isn’t spoiled by this metallic mutation, this metastasis of steel and plastic. I’m told that from time to time, the refineries explode, as well. So many great things about them, really.
“Turn here,” she says as we reach the other end of the bridge. I hesitate as I make the left turn, starting then stopping again. She glances at me.
“You all drive on the wrong side of the road,” I comment.
“Is this her truck?” Morgan asks.
“Yeah.” And then I notice her favorite albums, the cellophane from her last pack of cigarettes, a hair brush with a rubber grip. Like being in Kayla’s mind.
I shrink away from it all. She could be dead.
We near a refinery where bauxite is turned to aluminum. The entire area is coated in ruddy dust, so it seems every car and building has been meticulously painted reddish brown. Looks like Mars.
“Turn right, before the gate,” she says.
I stop short of the secure, gated entrance to the plant and turn right on a dirt road. I follow this into a cove, sheltered by a wall of mesquite trees.
Windows rolled down, hand extended. Cat tails and sunflowers knock against my open palm. I can smell the salt of the sea; love that smell.
“Turn here.”
Off this road, another, and finally a narrow path whose presence is only betrayed by the two parallel lines of trampled shrubbery.
I drive down the path; the waves lap at the shell-clad beach a few yards off. Straight across the bay sits the dock where I last saw Kayla.
“Get as close as you can. The car was behind these trees.”
When I reach a thicket, I stop the truck and get out. I walk past the line of gnarled trees and bramble bushes. Baited breath.
Please don’t be here. Please don’t let there be a car sitting here, untouched.
I step into the clearing.
Nothing, just sand and weeds.
“All right, then.” I smile. “So she made it this far. She made it to her car.” A lot easier to accept she may just not want to call me, that Jack is right.
We get back in the truck, and head back the direction we came. Feeling like there may be hope for her after all. If she climbed out of the gulf, landed here and drove away—she must be safe, right? The gulf is the dangerous part, the swimming. This, plus the fact the police haven’t found a body, let me think she might be okay.
The causeway passes under us again, rhythmic bumps of the expansion joints bucking the truck like a train over tracks.
“So, how did you get involved in all this?” I ask Morgan.
She’s silent.
We cross back into Port Lavaca; the sun is setting behind us and casts a neon dusk, a fifteen minute span where the blues, oranges and pinks of the sky seem radioactive.
I try again to engage her. “So what’s this ‘shadow’ stuff Jack was going on about? Kayla talked the same crap. What are they talking about?”
My comment doesn’t seem to register on Morgan’s face. “Jack does love to talk crap,” she murmurs.
The car falls to silence again. Then, moments later:
“Sean, are you speeding?” she asks.
I look down at my speedometer. I’m not; I try not to. Never break the law in a foreign country—advice from Dad, before I left.
“There’s a policeman following us,” she says. “Drive carefully.”
I glance in my rear view. Monochrome suburban, rack of lights and black bull bars. “It’s probably nothing,” I say, though suddenly my body feels tight.
“Listen to me, Sean. Turn right, right here.”
“That’s not the way back.”
“Just turn.”
I do. The policeman follows. Now I’m driving slowly into a neighborhood I don’t know.
Morgan’s voice is tense and low. “Sean, I need you to pay attention to me. I think something has gone wrong. We’ve been betrayed. I think he’s going to turn on his lights. This is very important: You cannot talk about me when you talk about Kayla. You have to keep my name out of it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Blue and red lights fill my rear windshield; kaleidoscopic calamity.
“I can help you, but you must trust me. Tell them you picked me up across the bridge, that I’m a hitchhiker. I’m not real, Sean. I’m not a real person.”
“How can a person not be real?”
She doesn’t answer.
I put the truck in park, turn on the hazard lights. There’s a cop standing in front of my open window. He speaks: “Are you Sean Reilly?” he asks.
Getting this question a lot, lately. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s me.”
“We want to ask you some questions. You mind coming with me?”
6. Detective
As a boy, I had trouble sleeping. My dad taught me how to count my breath: each exhale is a number. Up to ten, then you start over again. You’d be surprised how hard it is to count ten breaths without getting distracted. The point is to keep your mind focused, so you don’t worry and wander. Most of the time, people worry themselves into worse trouble than what they were worried about in the first place.
That’s what Dad says, anyway. I’m doing a lot of counting, now. Harder than I ever counted before.
Not under arrest, at least I don’t think. But I am deep in the police station, in a private little room with two chairs, a table, and a camera mounted on the ceiling. I watched them put Morgan in the room next door.
I breathe out. One.
The door to the interrogation room opens.
“Sean Reilly,” a man says as he enters. “I’m Detective Alvarado. I’m investigating the disappearance of Kayla McPherson.”
He’s about my height, six foot. Face pitted with decades old acne scars, black hair dusted with gray. Mexican, broad shoulders. He’s old, mid-fifties, and his mouth tilts downward in disapproval, although I haven’t said anything yet.
Two.
“You’re from Ireland, aren’t you?”
I nod.
Three.
He pulls a silver pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and places them on his nose. “How long are you here for?”
“Maybe a few years, until after college. Maybe forever, if I find a job here,” I say. My voice is very quiet; quieter than I mean it to be.
Four.
“And you’re a senior? So you’re graduating, then. Okay. And you stay in the same house as Kayla, correct?” As he speaks, he is preoccupied with the portfolio in his lap, arranging the pages within. He only glances up on the last word of each sentence.
“Yes,” I say.
Five.
“Must be strange, for an eighteen year old boy to find himself under the same roof as a nineteen year old girl, someone he isn’t related to, you know? Hormones, and all that?”
“There is some of that,” I admit.
Six.
“Seeing each other half dressed, spending all that alone time together. Is that exciting?”
I nod, and can feel my cheeks turning red.
Now, all his attention is on me. His hands rest on the table, across the halfway mark courtesy would designate as my half. “Did you like her?” he asks, leaning in.
“She’s very dramatic. Very serious. She’ll be pissed at you for a week, and you won’t ever find out why.” Then I admit it: “But yeah, I liked her a little bit.”
Seven.
“How
much is a little bit?” he asks.
“Well, I probably spent more time with Kayla than anyone else here in the States, you know?”
“Did she like you back?” he asks, folding his hands on the white plastic table between us. A gold wedding band, silver watch. It bothers me that they don’t match.
“Not like that,” I say. “But, it’s okay. I’m probably not going to be in this town after I graduate, so I didn’t plan on meeting any girls.”
Eight.
“Did you kill her because she didn’t like you back?” he asks this like everything else, like it’s a normal question.
I lose count.
“Is she dead?” I ask.
Every time I lose count, I have to start over.
Detective Alvarado leans back, grips the sides of his navy blazer and pulls it tight around his shoulders. Then he watches me for several moments, saying nothing. I think he’s waiting for me to confess, to spill my guts. I count all the way to ten again before he asks another question.
“Port Lavaca is a small place,” he says. “I know almost everyone who knows Kayla; I know their parents. I know who’s trouble, and who isn’t. What I don’t know is you, or the girl we found you with. Who is she?”
One.
“I just picked her up,” I say. “She was walking across the causeway, looked like she needed a lift.”
The detective smirks. “Is that right? Just met her? What a coincidence. Tell me the truth, Sean.”
Two.
“I did. Is Kayla dead? I need to know.”
The detective leans back, says nothing.
I continue: “Is that why I’m in here, all of a sudden? Did you find her?”
Three.
He speaks: “My goal here is to be completely transparent with you. I’m going to tell you everything that’s on my mind, and you can be honest with me, or you can dig your hole deeper. I’m going to find the truth, either way. You said you got to the beach around five thirty in the morning. You also said that you didn’t get in the water, only Kayla did. You called her parents around nine. Why did it take you over three hours to call someone?”
Shit. Lost count again.
“I was scared,” I say. “I figured Kayla would come back. What if she was playing a joke? I didn’t want the police looking for her over a joke.”
He pulls a photograph from the file in his lap. It’s a picture of a neon blue life jacket—the life jacket Kayla wore, the one I lied about.
“We found this on the coast. See the writing on the back? That’s from the Emerald Point Marina up in Austin. Pretty unique. Kayla’s parents confirm they own one exactly like it, except theirs is missing. You said Kayla wasn’t wearing a life jacket. I say the odds that’s not their life jacket are a million to one. Wouldn’t you? Now, how did it get from Kayla’s home to being washed up on the beach?”
Damnit. No counting, now. How did that happen? What happened to Kayla?
“I took it,” I say quickly.
“I believe that, but not for the reasons you may think. You said you weren’t going in the water,” he reminds me.
Christ. Panicking, now, so I don’t say anything. He watches me. Can feel him summing me up.
I smooth my hair twice in a row, too fast, too jittery. The detective cracks a grin. It’s obvious I’m freaked.
He withdraws another photograph. I see it, but don’t.
It’s antimatter; I see it, and it sees me, and we cancel each other out. Mind won’t register. Can’t. A tiny whimper betrays me, squeezes through the tension I ratcheted myself up with.
The detective speaks: “You said Kayla got on the jet ski alone, but that was you. You killed Kayla the night before, and spent all morning staging this crime scene. After you tried to sink her body, you went home, took the drain plugs out of the jet ski and brought it to the beach. After it sank, you swam back to shore with the life jacket on. Then you told your story. If we never found her body, we’d assume she drowned. You cut her throat.”
The picture on the table is Kayla. Her face stares up at me, blue and bloated. A deep, pale gash stretches across her throat.
7. Truth
Holy shit. This can’t be happening—Kayla can’t be dead.
I lean back, and put both hands to my forehead. The world spins, so I close my eyes. I take ten deep breaths, trying to hold back the tears and the panic.
It doesn’t work. In this instant, my world is gone.
I open my eyes to this fresh oblivion. Detective Alvarado leans back and watches me. The picture stays on the table, staring skyward with milky eyes. “Now, tell me what happened,” he says.
I decide that I will. Somewhere, something has gone terribly wrong. Don’t need to keep my promise to a dead girl.
“Kayla tried to fake her own death. She got the idea from someone she knows, a guy named Jack.”
“Jack who?” he asks.
“Jack Vickery.”
“Why would Kayla want to fake her death?”
“Lots of reasons. For one thing, the money. Jack has these fake ID’s, he says he’s made millions on life insurance policies, just scamming the system. Pretending he’s dead, then cashing in a policy on himself and starting over as someone new.”
The detective’s eyes narrow. “That sounds like horse shit. Is that the best you’ve got? Why would a nineteen year old girl with parents who provide for her want to go through all that trouble?”
I start to talk about shadows, but then decide not to. I sound crazy enough already. “Kayla made it sound very romantic. She asked me—who is a person, really? If you destroy your identity, if you cut all ties and fake your death, then what’s left? Something without labels, something with money and freedom. Plus—” I stop. This part is harder to say.
“Yeah?” He’s clearly not buying this.
“She wanted everyone to miss her. She wanted to see her own funeral.”
“This is the stupidest—someone cut her throat, then tried to sink the body. And right now, if someone asked me who did it, I’d point them at you. You want to talk about labels? How about ‘felon,’ how does that suit you? How about ‘death row inmate?’”
My face heats up, molten material in my eyes. Words spill out: “She didn’t even want me to know about this. I found a bag of money under her bed, and I asked her about it. When she told me, it sounded made up—I didn’t think anything would happen. I figured she’d back out.”
“Tell me everything,” he says.
“I just did what she said. I drained the gas from the jet ski, so it would barely run. We timed the whole thing for when the tide went out. Kayla would drive it out into the bay, go in a few circles until it died. Then she’d swim to the beach on the opposite side—a long way, but she wore a life jacket, and she could do a back stroke. Apparently she left a car waiting—it’s gone now, I checked—so she could disappear with the money. I would call someone to help after she let me know she made it. Except, she didn’t call, so I got stuck there. I panicked and called her parents. So, what am I really guilty of? I lied about a life jacket, and waited a while to tell anyone she was missing. I figured she was okay.”
“You’re lying again. You left out the drain plugs,” he says.
“Will someone tell me what a goddamn drain plug is?”
He snorts out half a laugh, dipping into the folder again. The detective glances down and then draws out a picture, flips it on the table. Dealing my hand.
This time, it’s a close-up of the back of the jet ski. There are two black holes, the size of a silver dollar.
“That’s where the drain plugs go. You take those out, then turn the jet ski off in some water? It’ll sink in a couple of minutes.”
“I had no idea,” I tell him. “You have to believe me. I never took apart their jet ski, why would I? It’s not mine.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying! Find Jack Vickery,” I say. “He is the only other person who knew Kayla’s plan, as far as I know. He can te
ll you that I’m telling the truth.”
“Jack Vickery. What does he look like?”
I start to talk, then stumble over my words. “Bald, skinny, shorter than me. He has a tattoo, on the inside of his left arm—says ‘freedom from myself’ in old typewriter font. Look, if you put him in front of me, I can point him out.”
The detective shakes his head, seems exhausted with disbelief. “I’m going to go talk to your friend,” he says. “See if she says anything different. And if she does, guess what? That’s one more in a growing list of reasons I want to put you on trial.”
*
It’s been an hour since the detective left me to go speak with Morgan. Can’t stop thinking about her. What’s she saying?
She could make me seem guilty. Just a little bit of suspicion, and it would be that much worse for me. Maybe she’ll throw me to the wolves, to save herself.
Morgan did say she could help me. What does that mean?
We barely know each other. She’s vulnerable in there, too. All she needs to do is tell a little lie: say I’m in love with Kayla, or say she’s seen me act violent before. I’m teetering on the knife’s edge, here. A little push and I’ll be going to court for sure.
I should have acted first, when I had his ear. Should have told him Morgan is involved, that she lived with Jack. Let her go down with me.
I just want to get back to Ireland. I don’t trust these police, they aren’t like back home. And, I don’t think Morgan killed Kayla. She was so helpful, going to find the car.
Still. Just want to come clean, be done with this whole mess. I didn’t kill anyone. They’ll see. They’ll use forensics, and they’ll see I didn’t do it.
Detective Alvarado opens the door.
“Sean Reilly, stand up,” he says.
I do so.
“You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. The Irish Consulate will be notified of your arrest.”
He drones on, but I can’t hear over the howling distortion in my head. The rush of emotion is deafening: terror, anger and anxiety override me.