The Devil's Wire

by Rogers, Deborah

  "You're bluffing."

  "Try me." Lenise's grip hardens but Jennifer doesn't flinch.

  "Just give me the evidence, Lenise, and we can both walk away and get on with our lives. That's all it takes."

  "He wouldn't believe you."

  "Tell me, Lenise? Where's your missing husband? Oh yes, Cody mentioned that too."

  For a second, Lenise appears taken aback. "That's none of your business."

  "What did you do to him?"

  "Nothing he didn't deserve."

  "You're beginning to develop a bit of a bad habit, don't you think?"

  "Don't push me."

  But she can see that Lenise is shaken.

  "No, don't push me," says Jennifer, opening the car door and getting in. "You're not the only one who can play dirty."

  *

  The next day Jennifer follows Lenise. Last night had hopefully spooked her enough to move the evidence, but when she emerges from her house dressed in that ridiculous cowgirl outfit there doesn't appear to be much hope of that. Jennifer decides to track her to the grocery store anyway, just in case she goes somewhere after her shift.

  Jennifer parks three rows back from the entrance behind a goodwill bin so there's less chance she'll be noticed. Once Lenise goes inside there's nothing to do but wait so Jennifer uses her phone to search the internet to see if she can find anything about the husband. But it was so long ago and she doesn't even have a first name and there's nothing in any newspaper archives, and missing people in South Africa weren't exactly rare.

  For the next four hours, Jennifer watches people come and go. She's dying for the rest room and wishes she hadn't had that third coffee but there's no other choice, she has to hold on and wait.

  It's a relief when Lenise emerges. She's changed into regular clothes and Jennifer watches as she gets in the station wagon and pulls out of the parking lot. But Lenise doesn't take the left onto Benmore Street which would lead home but instead turns right onto Rugget Road. She follows the wagon the short distance to the mall then trails Lenise inside on foot.

  When Lenise disappears into a baby shop to look through several racks of infant clothing, Jennifer hangs back, pretending to check her phone by the escalator. A short while later, Lenise comes out without buying anything and heads for Gloria Jean's where she loiters as if she's waiting for someone.

  Jennifer ducks into a nearby Footwear Buzz, picks up a glitzy stiletto and tells the shop assistant she's only browsing. Then she sees McKenzie appear and join Lenise, her smile widening into a hi.

  *

  It's raining by the time Jennifer pulls into the drive. She stays in the car, shakes a cigarette from the pack and puts it to her lips. A tap on her side window makes her jump. Detective North's face appears through the fogged glass. She lowers the window.

  "Mind if I come in?" he says, stomping his feet to ward off the cold.

  She shrugs and he slides into the passenger seat, rain-soaked and pink-cheeked. She catches him looking at the unlit cigarette between her fingers.

  "Turning over a new leaf," she says.

  His skin glistens and she can smell the wetness, like fresh peat and socks.

  "Quitting's a bitch," he says.

  "It certainly is."

  He scratches the side of his unshaven jaw and stares at her. "You okay?"

  "I'm fine," Then, "I don't know."

  She feels tears well and does her best to hold them back. "I mean sometimes there doesn't seem much point to it all, does there?" she says.

  "To what? Life?"

  "Yeah." She rolls the cigarette through her fingertips.

  "What about your daughter?"

  A vein of rainwater runs down his sleeve, drips off his cuff and splashes on to the toe of his boot.

  "I think I'm losing her."

  "Parenthood's tough."

  "Understatement of the year."

  She takes a breath and lets it out. "I've done things I'm not proud of."

  She feels the weight of his stare.

  "I think we're all guilty of that," he says.

  "Even you?"

  He pauses. "I need you come down to the station."

  She freezes. "Do I need a lawyer?"

  "You tell me."

  "Can't we talk here?"

  "The station's better. There's something I need to show you."

  *

  She takes her own car, following his unmarked sedan along the treeless route to the station. When they get there, he takes her to a private room and tells her to wait. The room is different from the one McKenzie had been in. This one is more utilitarian, with plain, vinyl-backed chairs, a veneer table, puke-colored cinderblock walls. A poster about a needle exchange program is fixed to a pin-board.

  Detective North returns holding a file and takes a seat.

  "You need to talk to me Jennifer, tell me what's really going on."

  Jennifer's heart pounds in her throat. "I don't know how many times I have to say it – there's nothing to tell."

  "If someone's got a hold on you, I can protect you."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she says.

  "You were going to tell me something the other day at the forest but something held you back."

  "You're mistaken," she says.

  He flips open the folder. "Your neighbor, the woman." Jennifer feels her throat closing in. "She's a strange fish."

  "Lenise? She's okay once you get to know her."

  "How come I don't believe you?"

  "Believe what you like."

  "What can you tell me about her?"

  "She helped that night when he tried to kill us. I'm grateful to her for that but I've already told you all this."

  "And that's it?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you know she's wanted for questioning back in South Africa about the disappearance of her husband?"

  "What's that got to do with me?"

  "That's two vanishing husbands, by my count."

  Jennifer laughs. "You've quite an imagination."

  "Pop always said I could be the next Stephen King."

  "Maybe I should call my lawyer," says Jennifer.

  "You're free to leave at anytime."

  "I'm just saying, you seem to be straying into territory here that I don't understand."

  He looks at her. "What's going on? She help you out with your husband?"

  "No."

  "I mean give you some pointers? Maybe she planned it."

  He stares intently at her.

  "I'm close aren't I?" he thumps the table. "For Christ sake, Jennifer, I can't help you if you don't tell me anything."

  "There's nothing to tell. You're going down the wrong rabbit hole. Hank is gone. He's picked up and he's never coming back and I don't know why you just don't forget about him and move on to something that matters, some other woman's husband who deserves your time and attention."

  He closes the file. "We took a look at his truck. It was wiped clean." He takes a sheet from the file and pushes it across the table. "Except for this."

  It is an image of a fingerprint.

  "It belongs to Lenise Jamieson."

  57

  Jenny is up to something and Lenise doesn't like it. She was growing, Jenny, changing from the weak-kneed person that Lenise first knew. There was a strength to her now, a tenacity that wasn't there before. Lenise couldn't help but admire it.

  Jennifer approaching Cody had unnerved her. It fired a protective instinct she'd rarely, if ever, experienced. She couldn't risk Jenny breaking into the house again. Lenise needed reinforcements, a German Shepherd or some similar breed would be ideal. She had once seen a big dog like that attack a man. The idiot seemed to have forgotten that every white in South Africa owned dogs to patrol their grounds and when he climbed the gates of a compound, he was met with a trio of savage canines. She'd been passing in her car as he clawed his way back over the iron gates and ran around in circles on the road in front of her, screaming and clutching a chunk of
skin that was his own calf.

  Back home there were institutions specializing in breeding and raising canines especially for that purpose. But there was nothing like that here in America as far as Lenise knew, so she was reduced to coming to a place like this, a corner store pet shop, with puppy mill dogs, weak defective animals, bred to sit on your lap or run after frisbees. She'd just have to train one up herself as best she could.

  Near the front of the store, she finds puppies. In particular, there's one tiny pug bitch behind glass shredding newspaper and tossing dried up turds all over the place. Lenise looks at the price – $1000. Expensive and not exactly what Lenise is after but she reaches over to pet it anyway and the cute tyke nudges her hand with its pushed-in face.

  "Princess, aren't you?"

  "She likes you."

  "I was looking for something more robust. Maybe a Rottweiler or pit-bull."

  "I heard they can turn."

  She veers round. Detective North shoots her a smile.

  "More of a cat person myself," he says. "Can you come with me please?"

  "What's this about?"

  "We can go in my car."

  *

  He drives in silence, glancing occasionally in the rearview to look at her in the back seat. She does her best to remain composed but can feel herself shaking.

  "Will this take long?" He doesn't answer. "Because I start work in an hour."

  They get to the station and he shows her into a cold plain room.

  "I'm thirsty," she says. "I need water or tea."

  He ignores her and sits down.

  "I may not be born here," she says, "but I still have rights."

  "Tell me about your husband."

  So Jenny had talked.

  "What about him."

  "Where is he?"

  "I have no idea."

  "You left South Africa fifteen years ago, just after your husband went missing, is that correct?"

  "That had nothing to do with me."

  "Is he dead?"

  "I hope so."

  He raises an eyebrow.

  "A lot of people wanted him gone," she says. "He was a bastard."

  "Like Jennifer Blake's husband?"

  "I don't know what you're getting at."

  He opens a file and passes over a sheet with a fingerprint on it. "That's yours. Found in Hank Blake's truck."

  "Rubbish."

  "We matched it with your immigration records."

  "It's a mistake."

  He pauses. "Jenny and I spoke yesterday."

  "Good for you."

  "I'd like to hear your version."

  "Whatever she told you is complete and utter bullshit."

  "Is it?"

  She pauses and looks at him and it dawns on her. This is what they did wasn't it? This was how they tricked innocent people into giving false confessions. It was called being led down the garden path. He points to the fingerprint.

  "Explain that."

  "How do I know you didn't put it there," she says.

  "So that's how you're going to play it."

  "You take me for a fool."

  His posture softens and he switches tact. "Look, I understand, things got carried away, went a bit too far. We've all got it in us. No one is immune. I know that. I'm not making judgments about you or taking the moral high ground here, but this has to be resolved, right now, today."

  "I sleep very well at night, thank you."

  "You spend a lot of time with McKenzie."

  "You've been spying," she says.

  "It's my job to know what's going on." Then, "We could arrest you."

  No body, no witness, no time of death.

  "That's a stretch," she says.

  He looks at her for a long time then nods. "Alright," he opens the door. "You're free to go."

  She gets to her feet.

  "Of course I am," she says.

  58

  Jennifer waits at the kitchen window for Lenise to get home. Sometime after six the battered station wagon pulls up and Lenise gets out and disappears inside the house. Jennifer gives it ten minutes then takes the path round to Lenise's backyard and raps twice on the ranch sliders. Lenise appears, her face a study in raw fury. Jennifer experiences a strange sense of satisfaction. The sharks were circling and for once Jennifer wasn't the only one bleeding.

  "You messed up royally," says Jennifer. "You need to fix it."

  Lenise grabs Jennifer and pulls her into the far corner of the patio. "You told him about my ex," she hisses.

  "Let go of me."

  Lenise bangs her back against the wall, gets right in her face. "You're playing a dangerous game, Jenny."

  "He came to me. He already knew. He ran a check after finding your fingerprint."

  "I don't believe you," says Lenise.

  "I don't care what you believe."

  Lenise moves closer. "You could be wired for all I know."

  "Don't be an idiot," says Jennifer.

  "I wouldn't put it past you."

  Lenise yanks at Jennifer's clothes, slaps her down for a listening device.

  Jennifer pushes back.

  "You're being ridiculous."

  "Where is it?"

  "Get off me!" Jennifer breaks free and lifts up her shirt, spins around. "See? Zilch. Satisfied?" she says.

  "No."

  Lenise hunts the yard, batting at the bushes and searching the flower pots for cameras or microphones.

  "Lenise, there's no one else here."

  "Why would I believe anything you say?"

  "You left your fingerprint behind. You did it to yourself. And it implicates me," says Jennifer.

  "They've got nothing."

  "A fingerprint in the truck of a missing man isn't nothing."

  Lenise points a knuckle in Jennifer's face. "Don't even think about turning on me. Your prints are all over that knife and my version is so much more compelling than yours – I only helped with the body after you killed him, I'd be accessory after the fact, but that's all. I'm not going to prison or back to South Africa."

  Jennifer pauses. "I've never seen you so scared."

  "Shut up."

  Jennifer begins to laugh. "Like a scared little bitch." Jennifer laughs harder, her breath trumpeting, and God it feels good, like that third glass of wine when your limbs go elastic and there's a flutter in your chest. "All your scheming and there you go, leaving your fingerprint behind like a total dunce. You can't stay in Wisconsin now, can you? At the very least you'll get deported. Maybe you should run off, disappear before they come for you. Go on, run along now, get out of my life."

  Lenise looks at her and seems to deflate. "You're right."

  Jennifer stops laughing. "What do you mean I'm right?"

  "It's no use, we're both finished," says Lenise.

  "You can't just give up."

  "I'm out of ideas."

  "You've got to think of something," insists Jennifer.

  Lenise drops into the garden chair. "There is one thing."

  "What is it?" says Jennifer.

  "Let me take her. You're the one they want. What's the point in both of us going down?"

  "You can't be serious," says Jennifer.

  "I'll look after her. We'll go some place far away where no one can find us, where the authorities can't touch her. I'll keep her safe."

  Jennifer is incredulous. "My God, you're not kidding."

  "She's better off with me. You know that."

  "I'm her mother."

  Lenise looks at her. "She despises you, Jenny."

  Jennifer recoils. "That's not true."

  "I'm sorry. I know that hurts. But she told me."

  Jennifer feels winded.

  "You're making that up."

  Lenise turns away, walks the length of the patio and lifts her face to the sky. "At the end of the day I don't need your permission, do I, Jenny? I can do what I like."

  Jennifer feels a rush of nausea. "You're out of your mind."

  "There's an
easy way and a hard way, Jenny."

  "Stay away from her."

  "The easy way or the hard way?" says Lenise. "It's up to you."

  "You're not taking McKenzie anywhere," says Jennifer.

  Lenise opens the ranch sliders and pauses before going inside. "Thanks for stopping by."

  59

  Once there was a fire in an old weatherboard house on the block where Jennifer used to live. She was small – preschool small – when her mother grasped her hand and hurried her out onto the sidewalk to look at it, this formless, blazing surf the color of tinned Spaghetti-Os, with its furious roar and snapping crackle, and the terror of its heat, which Jennifer thought would boil her blood.

  She yelled at her mother to take her home but her mother firmly shook her head.

  "You need to see this, Jennifer Marie."

  Soon other people gathered along the street, eyes wide with awe, watching the growing inferno. An upstairs window exploded and flames licked the guttering through the broken glass. Everyone gasped and a lady with tea bag eyes yelled, "I think I see someone!"

  In the crowd there was a guy with an afro and he pulled off his t-shirt and bunched it to cover his mouth and ran right into that house. Everyone waited but he never came out. Then a fire truck pulled up and a man in a yellow hardhat stepped down and the kid on the BMX with one bare foot on a pedal and the other planted on the ground pointed at the house.

  "Hey, mister, there's a guy in there."

  The hardhat man put his hands on his hips and made a sucking noise with his cheek.

  "It's fully involved. No way, no how my men are going in."

  Instead the firemen uncurled their hoses and sprayed the blaze with giant fans of water which misted Jennifer's face. Someone said that's a real shame and people began to walk away and the tea bag lady murmured "I thought I saw someone" and finally her mother's hand tightened around hers and they went back up the street toward home.

  "See, Jennifer Marie, that's what you get when you go playing with fire."

  Jennifer stares at the ceiling, and pulls the cover up around her shoulder. Years later when Jennifer talked about the fire, her mother had seemed pleased.

  "You remember that."

  "Sure, I was terrified. And that guy who went in and never came out…"

  Her mother had frowned.

  "What man?"

  And then her mother's face cleared and she nodded in a knowing way.