Checkmate: Checkmate, #8

by Finn, Emilia

  “Okay.” I flash a wide grin and open the office door. “Libby Tate. I won’t ever forget, okay? I’ll come find you someday.”

  Her gaze comes up. “Do you promise?”

  “I do. I swear. Gunner and Elizabeth forever, remember?”

  “Spit shake?” Her eyes are large and round, way more innocent than mine ever were, as she holds her hand out and hocks booger-filled spit into her palm. My stomach turns, but my lips pull up into a grin anyway.

  “Okay.” I do the same, then we clasp hands and shake. “This is so gross, by the way.”

  “I know!” She dissolves into silly giggles until her cheeks bounce. “You promised. Don’t break it.”

  “I won’t. Come on.” I release her hand, wipe mine on my jeans, then push her through the door and into calculating silence. The sour-sisters look up from their spot on the floor and watch us with suspicion. I watch them with the same emotion, but I can’t steal Libby, and I refuse to let my mom stay here. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah.” Libby steps past me and digs her hands into the pockets of her coat. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you around, okay? Don’t forget me.”

  “I won’t.” I slowly retreat. One step, then two. I let my eyes drop to the sisters and narrow. “If you touch her again, you’ll have to deal with me. Do you understand?”

  As a united pair, they roll their eyes and continue playing with their dolls.

  “Hey, Libby?” I wait for her gaze. “Hard spot, soft spot.”

  She narrows her eyes in question, so I nod toward the bitches, then I lift my hand and touch my knuckles. “Hard spot.” I touch the soft part of my throat. “Soft spot.” I touch my elbow. “Hard spot.” Then I touch my eye. “Soft spot.” I touch my knee. “Hard spot.” And finally, I point at my crotch. “Soft spot. Got it?”

  Beaming, she nods. “I got it.”

  “Good girl. Be safe, okay? I’ll catch you around.”

  I step out of the room and close the door with a soft snick. Smiling, hopeful I’ll get to see her again someday, I move down the hall toward deep voices and odd noises. I’m eleven years old and not stupid, but in my rush, I approach the door with naiveté, gently push the handle down and inch the door open.

  “Colum! No. Stop.”

  My mom is laid out along the heavy wooden desk I saw earlier, but her panties are on the floor, and tears flood from her eyes. I’m the kid that pretends to be tough, the kid who stole a letter opener like it could be a weapon, and speak to girls smaller and younger than me like I’m a powerful mafioso of some sort, but now I watch the army man do dirty things to my mom on the desk while the cop and the suit guys watch on.

  But she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all.

  “The boy is mine,” he hisses. “He’s mine, and he will stay with me.” He pushes forward into my mom, but where the movies make out that the woman likes it, my mom cries and lets her head loll around like she’s in a daze.

  She turns to the left as though she knows I’m here, but I didn’t make a sound. Her right eye is swollen shut, and the right side of her mouth is cut and bleeding. Her left eye, the only one she can open, stops on me and fills with more tears as my dad does those things to her body.

  “Run.” Her voice is croaky, like she’s had laryngitis for a week. “Doodlebug, run.”

  My heart races so hard that it hurts my chest. I reach back for the letter opener, though I have no clue what I would do with it if I needed it. I shake my head with quick, jerky shakes. I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to go without her.

  “Run!”

  Colum’s eyes swing away from her for the first time since I came in here, but when I’m released from her eyes, I find the gun in his hand. The feral rage in his eyes. We stare for a minute while he… he… he pushes himself into her. His hips don’t stop for one single second, but we stare, and then Mom screams one last time.

  “Run!”

  Colum brings the end of the gun to Mom’s temple as his eyes go to the cop. “Get him.”

  My body refuses to move. My feet refuse to run. But my brain screams and screams until it aches. I take a step into the room to get my mom, but then the cop’s hand snaps down and wraps around my wrist. Without purposely doing it, my right hand whips down so the letter opener pushes through his arm and comes out the other side.

  Screams. So many screams.

  The cop screams. My mom screams. Colum screams. And then my mom’s screams stop when the gun goes off, and her head slams back against the desk.

  My stomach races up my throat until it comes out as vomit and splashes all over the cop’s shoes, but then Colum turns and points the gun at my face, and my mom’s screamed “Run!” echoes in my brain. Vomit on my shirt, stomach acid burning my nose, and tears in my eyes, I spin and run.

  And run.

  And run.

  I run along the hall and down the stairs. I miss one step, then another, then one more until I’m not running anymore, but falling. I roll forever, then slam to the floor at the bottom until more vomit races up my throat. I slip in my mess, my shoes can’t gain traction, but then the men stop at the top of the stairs and bullets zing past my head.

  “Don’t hit him!” Colum’s voice is booming and demanding. He grabs the cop’s collar and tosses him toward the stairs. “Bring him back. Unharmed!”

  I race toward the final hall that leads to the front door, but before I turn, I catch sight of soft brown hair and loose curls. Libby stands at the top of the stairs and watches with tears in her eyes.

  I want to stop. I want to help her. I want to bring her with me, because she’s not safe with these people, but then another bullet slams into the wall an inch from my head and sends wood and paint chips flying like shrapnel.

  I turn and bolt toward the front doors. Toward freedom and hell. Toward the sunlight, and away from my mom.

  Tears blind me as I burst into the daylight and the cold wind bites at my arms.

  I forgot my sweater. I really wish I’d remembered my sweater this morning.

  Footsteps echo in the club, and pee dribbles along my legs, because I still didn’t go after our drive, but I don’t slow as I hit the parking lot and my feet slip in the loose gravel.

  I run.

  And run.

  And run.

  And when the sun finally goes down hours later, I stop in an alleyway at the back of a restaurant in town and curl up in the tossed cardboard boxes. The letter opener is still in my shaking hand. Vomit is caked on my shirt. I wake at some point when the sky outside is pitch black, and shoo a stray cat away from my dirty shirt.

  And the whole time, I don’t stop crying.

  I want my mom.

  I want Libby.

  I want to go home.

  1

  Libby

  22 Years Later – Police Brutality

  Oscar ‘Oz’ Franks is my friend, my colleague, my trusted superior. But right now, as the end of our twelve-hour shift approaches and he refuses to stop wiggling in his damn seat, I’m about to take him the hell out and call it a workplace accident.

  “Oz!” I swing out and smack his arm. “Quit it already.”

  “I gotta pee.” He squirms so his belt squeaks against the leather of our seats. His legs are thick, his hips wide, so he takes up all of his seat and half of the gap between so the flashlight on his belt scrapes my arm every time I relax. “I told you an hour ago I had to go.” He turns left off of Main and onto a quieter street. “Seriously, Tate, I might just let it go and fill my jocks in a sec. You brought this on yourself.”

  “For fucks sake.” I point toward the end of the street. “Go to the gas station and pee there. I need coffee anyway. There are only so many minutes I can stand sitting in this damn car with you without artificial energy to keep me sharp.”

  He follows my instructions with a sly grin and a black ballcap pulled low over his whiskey-colored eyes. He speeds up a little, then yanks the wheel so we turn into the gas station with a sharp
squeal of the tires. This place is large enough for six cars to be filling up at once, plus a diesel tank for hauler trucks, but right now, it’s half empty, and only three cars and a motorcycle take up space beneath the massive awning.

  Oz leaves the engine running and the radio playing on some weird, soft jazz piece as he unbuckles his seatbelt and throws himself out the door. Hands on his hips, gun on his leg, he runs around the side of the building toward the toilets, and I toss my head back and groan.

  It’s nine in the morning, and I’ve been with this man for twelve hours already. I love him to bits. I consider him family in many respects, and his wife and kids are the sweetest things. But twelve hours with an obnoxious Latino will send even the hardest of minds a little crazy.

  Unbuckling, I reach across the driver’s seat, cursing my short arms, and pull the keys from the ignition. We’ll both be dead meat if I leave them behind and someone steals the car while I’m inside eating coffee beans.

  I pull back and catch a flash of my hair in the rearview mirror — tied back in a low bun. It was neat when I left the house, so neat that the bear I was forced to call Miss Abernathy, my school principal, would almost be proud. Almost. But she was never truly satisfied, such was the foundation of our relationship for twelve long years.

  When you go to a private school for girls, surrounded by wealth, and you’re there because your tuition is being paid by someone else, the whole world knows you don’t belong. The world knows you’re a poor girl in a rich girl’s uniform. They know you’re a tomboy in an estrogen-filled academy and wish for nothing more than freedom.

  From kindergarten right through to graduation, I was in that same damn school, with those same snooty bitches, ducking beatings in the bathroom — because while they were petite and didn’t want to break their professionally manicured nails, they hated even more a poser amongst their flock.

  It was offensive to them that I was a poor girl in their space.

  It was disgusting to them that I refused to bend to their ways.

  A princess is only a princess because of the tiara she puts on her own head; I refused to wear a tiara, and I refused to acknowledge the others who wore them.

  Which meant I received my fair share of beatings between the ages of five and ten.

  When I was nine, I met someone who told me not to tolerate that shit anymore. I think of that boy sometimes when I’m alone, or when I’m scared. Or lonely. I think of him when the news is on, or when I’m at work and the topic of dirty cops comes up. I think of him often, especially when I think of my mom. He and I both lost our mothers to the same crime, to the same people. The difference is, it took me longer to figure it out.

  That boy — Gunner, whose last name I didn’t learn until I was long out of school — helped me become stronger. We met one time, and hung out for only an hour, but he made an impact on my life. He promised love and family, and I never forgot.

  But he’s dead now.

  That’s what I heard whispered across dinner tables and around corners. While he was running for his life from the very man whose bed was mere feet from where I slept on the weekends and holidays for eighteen years, I was stuck inside the club and left to wonder if he made it beyond the club parking lot. I was left to wonder, crying myself to sleep five nights a week at school, and sitting awake in my room on weekends, for fear that my father wanted to introduce me to the same end.

  That boy was eleven years old when we met, and he was eleven years old when he died, and it’s rare that a day passes when I don’t think about him. He was just a boy, and they were men with guns. He had a letter opener and no sweater, and they had money and reason to want to shut him up.

  I have access to computer software now that I never could have dreamed about when I was nine, and despite hearing of his fate, I’ve run his name at least a dozen times in hopes of finding him. It was a dreary, windy day twenty-two years ago when he ran out of the Hayes club and just… vanished. I don’t know where he was buried, I don’t know where his mother was buried. I’ve searched for a driver’s license in hopes it was all a lie, I’ve run him for traffic violations, because everyone has at least one of those. Tickets, fines, passports. I’ve searched for a mortgage, employment details, wedding licenses. I’ve run every search using both his mother and his father’s surnames.

  That boy is gone, and a part of me wonders if he ever truly existed.

  But he did. He must’ve.

  Because after that day, I became stronger. It took time, of course. Everything worth doing takes time and patience, but it was because of him that I learned how to fight back. I learned how to block a bitch and fold her wrist before she yanked my hair. I learned how to stand up for myself, even if I was short compared to the others in my grade.

  I was in fight-or-flight mode my entire schooling life, but they learned to give me space. If they left me alone, I left them alone. And though they didn’t like it, they knew they didn’t have a lot of choice; nose jobs were expensive, and though they had the means, they didn’t have the guts to endure a fist to the face and a broken nose.

  I push my car door open when the smell of gas station coffee proves too tempting; the fact that gas station coffee is tempting says a lot about my mental health and the last twelve hours spent with the obnoxious Oz.

  I slam the door shut and pocket the keys. Fixing my belt, I walk through the automatic doors and head straight to the back, toward the sludge machine… err, the coffee machine.

  The cashier stands behind a wide counter on the opposite end of the store, a plastic divider separating him from the rest of us. He listens to weird techno pop music, and bops around while he refills the cigarette stand, and two customers mill around in the chips section.

  I’m not short anymore, but at five feet four inches, I’m not particularly tall either, so as soon as I walk amid the shelves, I lose sight of the dancing cashier and the chip fiends.

  I dig a hand into my pockets and search for coins. Two bucks for a cup of mud, but that mud comes packed with caffeine, and if I dump a packet of sugar into it, it becomes palatable.

  I press the coins into the slot at the front, hit my selection, and when the machine grunts and gurgles, I roll onto my aching heels and hum while I wait.

  I’m coming off a week of night shift, which means I’m going home as soon as Oz is done peeing, then I’m throwing myself into bed until tomorrow. If I’m lucky, I’ll sleep sixteen hours straight and beat my body clock so I can get back onto dayshift hours. Monday, I start back on days, and a different unlucky soul gets the nightshift and social hour with the idiots that like to congregate at the basketball court late at night.

  They say we pick on them and their hangout. I say that no one hangs out at the basketball court at two in the morning, whispering amongst themselves and hiding their friends who are OD’ing, unless they’re up to no good.

  “Hands up!” Shouts echo through the store, followed by crashing bags of chips and feminine yelps from the tough guy behind the counter. I spin and unclip my sidearm, but I stay low as things are tossed to the floor — candy bars, phone chargers, bottled water. “Open your register!” His voice is deep. “I want all your cash put into this bag. If you do as you’re told, I’ll leave.”

  I creep well below the top shelf toward the guys by the chips. They wear jeans two sizes too big so their underwear hangs out the top, and shirts so long that they’d be an oversized gown for me. One wears cornrows, the other a hat. But they both shake in their shoes and clutch to the chips like they might stop a bullet.

  I creep closer and lift a finger to my lips.

  Their eyes widen as I move, like they’re screaming for me to stay back. But this is my job. If I cower in the corner, I may as well hand in my badge and revisit the sour-sisters from a lifetime ago to let them beat on me some more.

  Blue eyes and a wicked grin flash in my mind, a boy who told me to be brave and to fight back. The same boy that promised he’d find me someday, but he never did. He never co
uld.

  I lift my finger to my lips again to quieten the chip-lovers, then I point behind me to get them to move.

  The aisles aren’t long — maybe twenty feet from one side of the store to the other — and the shouts and noise at the front counter cover the sound of my boots on the tile floor. I unholster my weapon, but hold it in my left hand. Then I slow at the end of the shelf and peek around.

  One man. Mid to late twenties. Midnight black hair and pasty white skin. He’s at least six-and-a-half feet tall, perhaps more, but he’s skinny as a pole and lacks muscle despite his muscle shirt. His lips are cherry red, but his eyes are hidden by gas-station sunglasses. He has what I consider jailhouse tattoos — as in, random small things, pushed together over time, rather than one thought-out piece with the talent of a real artist. Spider webs on his elbow, stars on his forearm. Script beside that, and a date and ‘MOM’ a little below his elbow. A baby’s footprint, a flower. Roses and guns.

  Why do these guys always have the same drawings? Do they realize the stereotype?

  He waves a black pistol in the cashier’s terrified face and spits as he shouts for the bag to be filled. The cashier, a man I know as Anton, hurriedly yanks the register open. He tosses bills into the black bag, then lifts the entire tray of coins and tosses that in too.

  My coffee continues to sputter at the back of the store. The stench of caffeine permeates my senses and makes me yearn for the mud I won’t get to drink, because I’ll have to take care of this, then the paperwork, then I’ll have to explain to the chief why I took a man down when I should have clocked out already. All because Oz drank too much coffee overnight and had to piss.

  Anton snatches up cartons of cigarettes from beside the half-filled display and tosses those into the bag, then he tosses phones and phone cards on top of that.

  Creeping around the front of the shelves as slowly as I can, knowing my uniform will make my perp panic the second he sees me, I duck lower and thank my gym days for the depth of my squat and the fact I can duck-walk without the burn.