He circled the house.
Jesus, the place was something else. The entire back of the house was glassed in—you could see inside to the tables of food, a bar, clusters of little chairs and tables that spilled out through where the sliding doors had been pushed open onto a patio where music was booming. There was a pool, also under glass—he bet it was heated—with some kids fooling around in it and a few girls in bikinis sitting on the edge. There were more kids on the patio, and more strings of lights that ran on from there to what Dooley assumed was the back of the property. Different lights glinted way back there in the darkness—more houses, Dooley realized, but much farther off. The property must be huge if the nearest houses were that far away.
A girl who’d been standing with some other girls on the patio glanced at him. She detached herself from the group and walked over to him. She was slim and tanned—either she’d browned herself in one of those tanning beds or she’d had herself spray-painted, which he knew about because Linelle had told him, one hundred percent amused by the way white people paid all kinds of money to make themselves look chocolate. She was pretty, too, in that well-kept rich-girl way, Linelle (again) saying that that she could look like that, too, if she had money to throw away on getting her hair and nails and skin done and the time to work out at the gym seven days a week and, oh yeah, Daddy’s credit card so she could make sure to keep her wardrobe up to date—this was the same Linelle who was in beauty school and wanted to have her own salon one day so she could cash in on the same rich girls she was always making fun of.
“You a friend of Parker’s?” the girl said. The tilt of her head reminded him of Parker. He guessed she was his sister.
Dooley nodded.
She appraised him but didn’t say anything and didn’t let her face give anything away. Maybe Parker had friends who dressed like Dooley, in jeans and sweatshirts that didn’t come decked in someone else’s name. Or maybe she was just polite.
“Is Parker here?” Dooley said.
The girl nodded and pointed across the patio and down the lawn to a group of kids, boys and girls with—Dooley squinted—Parker in the middle. Dooley thanked her and headed toward them. He glanced around to see if there was anyone there he recognized. Three of the girls he’d talked to at Beth’s school were clustered on one corner of the patio—Scrawny and Raccoon Eyes and Platinum. But they didn’t seem to take any notice of him. The girl he thought was Parker’s sister, who, Dooley realized, had neither asked for his name nor volunteered her own, started back to the group she’d been talking to. She was intercepted by someone else Dooley knew—Annicka, the witness. Parker’s sister broke into a delighted smile. She kissed Annicka lightly on both cheeks, one of those stupid girly pretensions that Dooley hated.
He walked down the lawn toward Parker. Everyone in the enormous yard seemed to be in full party mode. Well, almost everyone. He noticed a girl standing by herself, as motionless as an oversized lawn ornament. She was pretty enough but painfully thin, and she was staring sullenly at Parker. He wondered what her story was. She paid Dooley no notice.
A few of the guests he passed glanced at him, but not many. Most of them were wrapped up in whatever they were doing. Even Parker didn’t pay him any attention at first. He had a tight group of friends around him, and was telling what sounded like a ghost story—“And so then the ghost shows up ...”—but in a strange way for a ghost story, not even trying to be scary, acting more like it was one sorry son-of-a-bitch ghost he was talking about. And instead of being all big-eyed and quiet, wondering what was going to happen next, people started to chuckle, like they already knew where the story was going. Most of them were laughing when Nevin showed up on the fringes, struggling to carry four different drinks without a tray. He was doing a poor job of it. Most, if not all, of the drinks had slopped over the rims of the glasses. No wonder Nevin was holding them so far away from himself. One of the girls near Parker reached out and took two of the drinks from Nevin. She passed them to a couple of guys in Parker’s entourage. Nevin gave one of the remaining drinks to Parker and the other to a girl on the other side of Parker. None of them was for himself. The girl who had helped Nevin made her way through the tight little group. She said something to Nevin, but by then Nevin had spotted Dooley up on the lawn.
Dooley had been watching Parker, a real little king there in the midst of his loyal subjects. He had a nice little kingdom, too—both sides of the backyard were surrounded by a high stone wall, discreetly dotted with security warnings—and the lawn seemed to stretch forever. Dooley peered into the darkness, trying to locate its furthest reaches. There was no fence or wall across the rear of the property. It backed onto the ravine.
He glanced at Parker and saw that Nevin was nudging him. Parker raised his glass.
“Well,” he said, “if it isn’t the notorious Ryan Dooley.” He took a long swallow of whatever he was drinking. Everyone around him turned to look. Everyone wanted to check Dooley out.
Dooley approached the group, but kept his eyes on Parker.
“I know what you did,” he said.
Dooley had to hand it to Parker; he didn’t miss a beat. He kept right on smiling, but with a quizzical look on his face, like, shucks, pardner, I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about. Nevin leaned into him and whispered something. Parker didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were locked on Dooley.
“I don’t know what you said to her,” Dooley said. “I don’t know if you slipped her something, maybe a roofie, but I know you did it, and if you don’t fall for it, I’m going to make you wish you had.”
Parker looked amused. He laughed and turned to his friends.
“This guy is right out of a Tarantino movie. Where did Beth find him?” He swung back to Dooley. “Where did Beth find you?” he said, his tone suggesting that he guessed it must have been under a rock.
Jesus, and this was the piece of slime who had touched her. It didn’t matter what the details were or who was lying or who was telling the truth. The one thing that had absolutely happened was that this creep had had sex with Beth and then had told his buddies all about it.
Dooley stepped up close to Parker. Annicka was right. He was tall, but not quite as tall as Dooley.
“You standing behind a fence now, smart guy?” he said. “Because if you are, I don’t see it.”
Dooley took that half step closer, right into Parker territory, and looked deep into Parker’s baby-blue eyes. Again he had to hand it to the guy. He didn’t intimidate easily. He stared back at Dooley for a good fifteen or twenty seconds. Then he looked sideways, trying to locate his friends, who—this time it was Dooley’s turn to be amused—hadn’t moved at all, not even the guys.
Dooley wished Parker would do something—throw a punch, bitch-slap him, he didn’t care what, just something so that he could slam him back and everyone would see it was self-defense.
“Casper told me all about you,” Parker said. Casper? Who the hell was Casper? “He seems to think you’re dangerous, but you don’t look dangerous to me.” He ran his eyes over Dooley. “You look like a loser.”
Dooley had known plenty of guys like Parker. Okay, so maybe they didn’t have even a fraction of the money Parker had, but they were the same in all the ways that counted. They were bullies and they were talkers. Big talkers.
Dooley wasn’t a big talker. He didn’t waste his breath on bullies. When he spoke to them, it was to let them know exactly what he was going to do, and that was it. He stared at Parker, letting his eyes carry everything that was in his head and his heart.
Parker stared right back at him. Then, the trace of a smile playing across his lips, he leaned into Dooley, so close that Dooley felt his breath on his ear.
“She wanted it,” he said in a voice so quiet that only Dooley could hear it. “And I don’t hold it against her, going to the cops the way she did. You want to know the truth? I feel sorry for her. If she doesn’t come to her senses and drop the charge, it’s going to go hard on
her. You know what’s going to happen? I’m going to have to get into the witness box and tell them how it went down, what she said, what she told me she wanted me to do, what she did. Because, believe me, brother, she did want it. She started the whole thing. She came onto me, and she did it in front of witnesses.”
Blood-red washed across Dooley’s field of vision. The prick was goading him. Damned if Parker didn’t want the same thing that Dooley did.
“I know where you live,” he said to Parker. “I know where you go to school. I know where you play tennis. And I know what you are. I hope you have better friends than the ones standing over there because you need someone to watch your back.” He glanced at the kids behind Parker, at Nevin in particular. Then he turned and started back the way he had come, nodding at Parker’s sister as he went by. It didn’t make him feel any better. None of it did. Hitting the guy, now maybe that would have been something. But it also would have jammed him up, canceled out the whole last year and all the work he had done. But, boy, if he was going to throw it all away, Parker Albright would be the one who would at least make it worthwhile.
A guy shouldered past Dooley at the side of the house. Dooley turned to look at him. His clothes set him apart. His jeans were frayed at the bottoms and his white T-shirt, taut across his chest, had seen better days. He wasn’t tall, but he was broad in the shoulders and chest and had sturdy thighs. He looked like a wrestler, Dooley decided, one of those smallish squat guys who were easily dismissed but who knew how to do real damage. Dooley was about to move on when he heard a husky voice—the wrestler’s?—say, “Where is he?” Then a girl: “Get out of here, Brad. Get out or I’ll call the cops.”
Dooley strolled back to the yard to get a look. Five girls, two of them Annicka and Parker’s sister, were standing in front of the wrestler, all of them with their arms out in front of them, trying to push the him back.
“Parker!” the wrestler shouted. “Parker, you asshole! You fucking asshole! You think you’re something? Why don’t you come over here and prove it?”
Way down the lawn, Parker turned to look at them. Hey, and what do you know, Dooley saw apprehension on his face. He glanced at his entourage and laughed. But Dooley noticed that he didn’t take so much as a step in the wrestler’s direction. No, he left that to his sister, who had a cell phone in her hand now and was shouting, “I’m doing it. I’m calling 911. If you don’t leave, Brad, you’ll be sorry.”
A couple of girls Dooley didn’t know took the wrestler by the hand. One of them said something into his ear. The wrestler glowered at Parker, looking like he’d give both nuts to get just a piece of him. The girl tugged on his arm again, and the guy backed down. Dooley watched him turn and start back the way he had come. Too bad, he thought. It would have been pleasant to watch Parker get mashed—and to not have to worry about taking any blame for it. It would have been very pleasant.
He probably should have headed home, but he was too stoked for that, too full of what he could have done, what Parker had done, who he had done it to, and how it had all happened in the first place. He had to burn it off somehow, and walking was the safest way. He marched through Parker’s front gate, ignoring the dog that lunged at him, the woman who glowered at him, ignoring the young guy with black hair and brown skin who tried to catch his attention, looking like he wanted to ask him something, maybe how to navigate his way out of this neighborhood with its twisting streets and dead ends, which were all advertised on yellow and black signs as cul de sacs, ignoring the half-dozen other young guys across the street, also with black hair and brown skin, who were watching the first guy; Dooley figured them for friends, people he had no time for, no interest in. He swerved around the guy, strode down the street, cut through an off-leash park, and followed a set of log and gravel steps down into a ravine. He knew it well—it cut deep into the land between two rows of big houses, snaked down through a couple of parks in one direction, up into an enormous cemetery in another, and, further east, alongside but out of sight of a highway, until it arrived in a sprawling public garden where, if you went at the right time of year, you tripped over bridal parties posing for photographers.
This time of night it was quiet in the ravine. It was dark, too. Not the place you’d want to be if you were a girl alone, but not so bad if you were a guy who knew how to handle himself. You just had to look like you could carry it off so that whoever you might run into would think twice about the risk and would pass until someone else came along who didn’t carry himself with the same confidence.
He looked up at all the monster houses as he walked—a lot of them with gazebos overlooking the lip of the ravine, a lot of them not bothering with fences back there because the ravine was steep and the drop into it deep. He moved along quietly between the patches of light that made it down from up above. He rounded a corner in the well-worn ravine path and stopped short. No way. He peered through the gloom. Yeah, it was him all right. What was he doing down here?
Oh.
He wasn’t alone.
Dooley hung back for a minute, then started to follow, careful to keep his footsteps light and silent. He saw a piece of tree branch lying on the side of the path—it had probably come down in one of the wind storms that had battered the city over the winter. Dooley bent and picked it up. It was thick and heavy. He carried it with him, swinging it, creeping closer and closer, until the guy turned suddenly, as if he’d felt Dooley back there. He grinned at Dooley and shooed his companion off ahead. Dooley hefted the tree branch. He imagined what he could do with it.
FIVE
Dooley got up early the next morning. His uncle’s bedroom door was still closed, and there was a purse on the table in the front hall. Jeannie was still there. Good. His uncle always slept a little later when Jeannie was around.
Dooley snuck down to the basement. The clothes he had put into the washing machine the night before were still in there, damp but clean. He left them where they were, added more soap and bleach, and started the washing machine again. Then he crept upstairs to get dressed. He put on some coffee and ate breakfast while he waited for the wash cycle to end. When it did, he popped everything into the dryer. He was sitting in the kitchen again when his uncle showed up, sniffing the air and looking in surprise at the pot of coffee on the warmer plate.
“I saw Jeannie’s purse,” Dooley said. Whenever Jeannie was over, his uncle always came down and got coffee for her. Jeannie needed at least one cup, sometimes two, to get her cylinders firing. Only then did she get out of bed. If it was the weekend, she’d come down to the kitchen, usually in a silky robe and a pair of slippers that looked like sandals, and she’d make a big breakfast for Dooley and his uncle.
Dooley’s uncle hooked a couple of mugs from the cupboard, filled them, added cream and sugar to one of them, and disappeared back upstairs.
Dooley’s cell phone rang.
“It’s me,” a voice said. “Warren. Did I wake you?”
“No. What’s up?”
“I’m at work. They’ve got me working Emerg. I didn’t know if anyone would have called you or what, so I figured I should check and see.”
“Call me? What about?”
“Beth.”
Everything faded—the cup he was holding, the table, the whole kitchen.
“What about her?”
“They brought her in about an hour ago. I would have called sooner, but it’s crazy in here. If they don’t have me running the floor-washing machine, they have me sweeping. If I’m not doing that—”
“Beth’s in Emergency?” Dooley said. “Is she okay? What happened?”
“I don’t know. The paramedics brought her in. I saw them wheel her by.”
Paramedics? That didn’t sound good.
“Was she bleeding or banged up or anything?” Dooley said.
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure. She went by pretty fast, and they had a blanket over her. All I know is, they brought her in and she’s still here.”
“I’ll be t
here as soon as I can.” Dooley flipped his phone shut and ran upstairs to get his wallet.
“Hey!” his uncle thundered through his closed bedroom door. “Keep it down out there, will you?”
Dooley shouted, “Sorry,” on his way back down the stairs. He raced to the closest bus stop. No bus in sight. He checked the schedule inside the bus shelter and glanced at his watch. He’d just missed one bus. The next one wasn’t due for thirty minutes. He half-ran and half-walked the kilometer and a half to the hospital.
A security guard posted at the entrance to the Emergency department stopped him as he went through the sliding doors.
“What’s your business here?” he wanted to know.
“They brought my girlfriend in an hour and a half ago.” He was telling the guard Beth’s name when Warren appeared, pushing a wide, flat broom. The guard nodded and let Dooley pass.
“She’s down that hall,” Warren said. “First door on the right, last bed to the left.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know. I saw them take her in. I haven’t seen her since.”
Dooley’s instinct was to sprint down the hall to her but he forced himself to slow it down. Hospitals don’t like civilians racing all over the place, not even when it’s a matter of life and death. Two nurses turned and looked sternly at him as he entered the large room. There were five beds in it, each separated by curtains from the ones next to it.
“My girlfriend—” he began, and stopped abruptly when he spotted Beth. She was sitting up in the bed on the far left, just like Warren had said. Her face was pale, but that wasn’t what made Dooley’s heart slam to a halt in his chest. No, what made that happen were her lips. They were black like coal. Like night. Like death. They were as black as if someone had painted them that color, and when she opened her mouth to say something to her mother, who was sitting on a chair beside the bed, Dooley saw that her tongue was just as black.
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