His dog barked behind the screen door, everything dingy and shadowed inside the house. It was a husky mix of the lean, wolfish variety and sounded like it wanted to pick a fight. Hands on hips, the man said, “Your next-door neighbor is a suspect.”
Talk about going in rough and dry. This guy had no foreplay talk, and it took a moment to get my bearings. “Suspect of what?”
“You know, that Boone girl.”
I had been all too familiar with that Boone girl. I’d watched her YouTube video so many times, it was already playing out in my mind. Ava’s mischievous smile showcasing her missing front tooth, the flesh soft and swollen as fruit pulp where a new tooth was breaking the skin, her smooth baby face hinting at angular beauty, and her voice, unsettling in both its husky tone and nuanced maturity.
“Which neighbor?” I said, getting to my feet. The afternoon sun was too harsh. I was squinting, wishing I’d brought my sunglasses. The air was burnt and ashy, like someone’s dinner gone awry. “What did they do?”
“The guy to your right.” The old man had cold eyes; two black marbles squeezed tight. “He was flirting with her right before she went missing.”
I cringed. Flirting with a five-year-old? How was this man comfortable saying something so obscene without at least dimming his voice?
I knew the neighbor he was talking about. I’d helped Leland move a dresser up his stairs five or six weeks ago. My creep radar had been gonging, but I’d convinced myself I was being a snob.
“I wanted to tell you the day you moved in, but didn’t… well, I…” he bit the inside of his cheek, “I didn’t want to ruin your day. I’m Lou, by the way.” He nodded, but kept his hands on his hips. His dog’s barking, hoarse and snarly, persisted.
Oh. That’s why he’d started the conversation bluntly. Since the day I’d moved in, Lou had probably been biting the inside of his cheek, sweating into his sweatband, wanting to tell me about Leland Ernest, but didn’t want to ruin our move. Lou had shaken the can so many times, he couldn’t pull the tab slowly to let it fizz; it was bound to explode.
My irritation eased. As rude and peculiar as Lou seemed, I appreciated his directness. No one else had bothered to warn me about Leland.
He said, “I got a wife and daughter. My daughter, Rachel, she’s seventeen.” He sighed, and I couldn’t tell if he sighed because he was almost in the clear, his daughter had almost aged out of kidnapping, or if he felt more weighed down that she’d entered prime rape age.
“Nobody told me,” I said. I sounded weak and grouchy, which matched how I felt. I considered all the people who could have told me: my realtor, the guy who sold me the house, my neighbor Brooke, whom I’d actually met before I bought. She could have warned me. The word community formed in my mind, hard and jagged as shattered glass. Well, maybe they didn’t know. I picked up Wyatt’s bike and walked it to the sidewalk. “How do you know?” I said.
“Secretary at my work, her brother is a cop. Your neighbor Leland was hired to paint the Boone house, but he was, well, too friendly with the girl.” When I said nothing, Lou said, “I’m a screw mechanic.”
His husky’s bark was still loud, but too repetitive; it had lost its angry edge.
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. He was just being friendly? That’s it?” Raising a boy brought out the defender in me. Wyatt was friendly. I didn’t like the idea that he might be suspected of wrongdoing for being simultaneously friendly and male.
Lou worked his jaw, then inhaled so big his chest puffed. His nipples hardened under his thin T-shirt. “He followed my girl while she walked home from the bus stop. Drove his car behind her, asked her if she wanted to go bowling at the mall.” The way he said it, “mall” sounded vulgar. “This was when she was thirteen.”
My stomach twisted. “What did you do?”
“I don’t have money to hire a lawyer, and I know how these things eat up tons of money and never go nowhere.” I believed him. The divorce was still a bitter pill in the back of my throat, tasting of dollar bills marinated in filthy fingers.
It looked like money was tight for Lou. His roof was rotting, his driveway was ridden with potholes, and he had no landscaping, not a single bush. “What we did was, we got a dog, and my wife drove Rachel home instead of her walking.” He bit the inside of his cheek, considered something, then said, “I rang Leland’s doorbell and told him, if he talked to my daughter again, I’d slit his throat.”
I pictured flesh opening, blood oozing from its center. Goosebumps lit the back of my arms. Chilling. It was chilling that he said that. I wanted to get away from this shark-eyed man, yet it was like I was looking into a mirror. His protectiveness was fierce, borderline repulsive.
“Well, so, that’s what we did,” he said quietly, almost to himself. He brushed his sandal against something in the grass, schoolboy shy, regretting the throat-slitting admission.
“Do my other neighbors know?”
“I told the ones who have kids.”
Assholes.
I started home, trying to keep my greasy fingers splayed and away from Wyatt’s handlebars. The teeth edging Wyatt’s bike pedal tripped my shin, and the biting pain brought my attention forward. The pedal left me with four horizontal indentations, the skin peeled back, a dot of blood welling in each hole.
“Looks like you got yourself a piss-poor bike chain,” Lou said.
“Yes, that I have.” I tried to laugh, but my laugh dribbled. “I’m Grace, by the way,” I said, walking quickly away, panic suddenly on me, harassing me like yappy pooches nipping at my heels, pawing at my shins.
That panic, it’s still there. It hasn’t eased, hasn’t quieted, since I talked to Lou.
Now my fingers glide over the small scabs on my shin and I wonder about Lou. I imagine an old shark, skin cadaverous, wearing a turquoise headband. I picture his jaw working, the mystery bandage on his hand.
I have never seen Lou’s wife or daughter, never. Maybe Lou was diverting attention away from himself for a reason. And maybe the thing between Leland and Lou’s thirteen-year-old was a misunderstanding. Thirteen is an age where fantasy and confused reality collide, like the extraordinary border where saltwater and freshwater meet, yet stay separate.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
I spend another hour on my laptop before I open Ava’s YouTube video, what I consider to be the finale of my websurfing. Ava is the last thing I will see before I close my eyes. Ava is one last potato chip in my ritual of greasy worry-gorging until my stomach feels queasy and bloated.
Every time I pull up her video, I expect it to have been removed, taken down from YouTube for violating some law related to an ongoing crime investigation. A few days ago, I recorded the video on my phone in case this very thing happens.
But no, her video is still here. The family posted this one minute and nineteen second video of their daughter weeks before she went missing, and now the video has over four million views. If her parents posted with aspirations for Ava’s fame, I bet they regret it.
5
A GAME OF HEDGE-CLIPPER TAG
Wyatt, Chloe, and I are outside on the back deck by 9:00am. They are eating from their bowls; I am drinking tea. Morning sun is low and glorious, and a comfortable September breeze twirls the wind spinner we hung in a small crabapple tree. On mornings like these when the kids are outside, sitting still, listening to birds and observing neurotic squirrels jump from tree to tree, I try to toss my mental garbage out to the curb. All my worries, all my bad decisions.
Moments like these—when I get to watch Chloe’s gossamer eyelashes lower and lift as she gazes up into the tree, when I get to witness Wyatt smile at his little sister as if no one is watching him enjoy her—are bliss.
My neighbor will be deemed harmless, but will still move away.
I will not die of rabies.
The children won’t feel abandoned or unloved or guilty because I divorced their father.
I will win a small amount of money, which will allow me to dig my
self out of debt.
I will get this yard under control.
I can fix broken things in a house.
I will catch that nasty chin hair the very morning it sprouts.
“Mom,” Wyatt says, gazing up, “you know how birds fly in a V?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you think they decide who’s the leader?”
“No idea, Wy. Let’s look it up during Chloe’s nap.”
“I’m all done with naps,” Chloe says, pissed off.
“That’s nice,” I say. “Who wants to swing?”
Everybody’s a sucker for the swing set. Ours is two swings and a slide framed by wood that is splintering and stained moss-green, but still sturdy. Chloe swings on my lap, then Wyatt’s lap, then she swings solo on her tummy, her downy, white-blond hair puffing and hanging mid-air before her body pulls it the opposite direction.
We pick wild raspberries off prickly brambles behind the shed and pop them into our mouths without worrying about dirt or microscopic worms.
Don’t look at his house. Not a single glance.
The kids migrate to the sun-faded, hole-ridden sandbox under the slide, and I discreetly slip away to unlock the shed. It is a circular combination lock, and the motion of my fingers rotating past the numbers brings back an angst associated with the memory of rushing my high-school locker open.
The heat and odors pouring out are both suffocating and nostalgic. Hot grass, thick oil, and decay. There is a faint buzzing in the dark, cluttered back corner. I imagine a small cluster of carpenter bees working on a home. They haven’t bothered me yet, and the kids don’t go in the shed because it’s always locked. Coaxing bees to relocate is a concern for another day.
I grab hedge clippers, gardening gloves, a big shovel for me or Wyatt, and a plastic hand trowel in case Chloe insists on helping.
I hack weeds that have grown too solid, too tree-like to pull. My shiny clippers gnaw at their thin trunks. Mosquitoes aren’t too bad, but the heat and humidity are relentless. Plus, I’m wearing a turtleneck; I didn’t want the kids to come in contact with my scratches.
I peek at the kids every few minutes. Still in the sandbox. Wyatt still patient even though his sister ruins every damn thing he builds. Nevertheless, his bucket of patience is small and will soon be empty.
My yard-work timer is short. I have fifteen minutes, tops.
I swear I weeded here a week ago. Look away, and things spiral out of control. Gnats buzz the corners of my eyes.
Inside the house, the landline rings.
I feel obliged to answer the landline because the answering machine is set too loud and I hate hearing my recorded voice at such an irritating volume. I have been meaning to change the volume on that thing since we moved in. I glance at the kids, drop the clippers in the grass, and peel off my gloves.
Inside, air-conditioned coolness blasts my skin and feels amazing, like a cold beer slipping down my throat felt a decade ago. “Hello?”
“Hi, Grace. This is Chuck. Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. I’m catching up on phone calls this morning from home.”
At the sound of his voice, my skin prickles and my throat quivers.
Chuck is the representative for Whisper County State’s Attorney’s Office. We have become strangely familiar these past five days. During our previous two conversations, I drilled him with questions about Ava Boone’s case, driving my raw emotion across telephone wires.
He has not enjoyed talking to me. I am a mosquito buzzing his ear, but he empathizes and that’s why he hasn’t blown me off. I haven’t asked him, but I’m guessing he has kids. He is also Liz’s neighbor. He knows I work with Liz so it’s just as possible that he doesn’t have kids, but doesn’t want to be a dick to his neighbor’s pesky friend.
I stand at the screen, watching the kids. Still in the sandbox, still getting along. A small lottery.
“I’m sorry to keep bugging you,” I say, not sorry at all, “but I need more details about Ava’s case.” It’s difficult to even say her name. It feels indulgent or shameful or careless or maybe all of these.
Don’t consider what she’s like, that she’s a girl with an easy joy in her eyes, generous with her candy, mortified of bees, and will stand her ground when it comes to brussels sprouts and hairbrushes. That she has a bad habit of picking at the dry edges of scabs on her knees. That she dances and twirls even when there’s no music. That she loves cats and horses and anything you can sniff: markers, lip gloss, lotions. Don’t dare contemplate what she might have gone through. What she might still be going through.
“Well,” I say, “not about the case, but why Leland Ernest is a suspect.”
“Listen, Grace. Like I said before, my hands are tied in what I can tell you because the investigation is ongoing.”
We have gone through boring, rehearsed generalities before. I need more. I need gossipy details that will give me a feel for my neighbor’s state of mind and why the police consider him possibly dangerous.
Don’t let him off the phone until you get at least one detail.
“Chuck, I need to gauge how dangerous this guy is. I mean, my kids are outside. They’re in the sandbox right now. Should I let them outside?”
He ignores this question. Of course he does. He maneuvered around most of my questions during our previous conversations, maneuvered himself off the phone, which is why I left him another message, which is why we are talking again.
“If the detectives had evidence that Leland abducted a child, they would have charged him,” he says. “But there is no case against him. Ava Boone is, well, it’s not a court case; it is a police investigation. All I know has come from talk around the office. The police department is your best bet for information.”
“I have called the police department. Many times. They won’t tell me anything.” He knows this.
I check the sandbox. Two heads? Affirmative.
“Chuck, I have a little girl outside. I don’t have a fence. My door is, I don’t know, twenty, thirty feet from his, nothing between our doors but grass and trees.” I gaze at Leland’s backyard. There’s a cluster of saplings at the end of his lawn, his own little forest. “If Leland is, was, a suspect, doesn’t that mean there is some concerning evidence on him?”
This is another question that will get a vague answer, but I need to keep the conversation rolling. I need to wear him out, I need him to feel bad for shutting me down over and over. I need to nudge him into an emotionally charged state of mind where his sympathy outweighs routine and protocol.
“Someone can be considered a suspect without physical evidence. If they had a motive or opportunity.” His coolness raises my pulse. My forehead feels tight.
“So, they have nothing on him? Leland is this innocent guy, and his neighbor, me, is going out of her mind for no reason?”
“That could be the case.” He sighs. Condescending.
The next time you call, he’s not going to call you back.
The helplessness I feel ignites my nerve endings, and sparks sizzle and race across bundles of neurons heading for my brainstem.
“Huh. I just realized something,” I say, my voice clipped and cynical. “You don’t know anything about this case. Not a thing. Detectives haven’t shared information with you. The guy down my street knows more than you. He said Leland was flirting with her.” I shove the word flirting off my tongue like Lou did, head high, shoulders back, but inside I’m quivering. “Why didn’t you just tell me straight you knew nothing? Why waste your time, my time?”
I cringe at my poor manners and cruel accusations, and hold my breath. I am crossing my fingers that he’s embarrassed for me and he won’t mention to Liz that her friend is a douche.
He sighs again. Not condescending, but annoyed. “Off the record. This is off the record. Ava’s dad told detectives Leland took an interest in the girl. They hired him to paint interior walls, the kitchen and bathrooms, I think. He was there, painting, for a week and he talked to Ava a bunc
h of times. He was trying to teach her to whistle.”
My breath catches. His casual tone is like steel wool rubbing against my tender eardrum. He was trying to teach her to whistle. It sounds innocent, yet it sounds lewd. I gnaw at wet, rubbery skin along my thumb, biting tiny pieces off, willing myself to not interrupt.
“He asked her what she wanted for her birthday. Asked her what color her room was painted. One day he gave her a Happy Meal toy. A Shopkin character.”
Chuck definitely has a kid. No other reason to know about Shopkins: plastic, thumb-size figures which personify food items or accessories. A happy, wide-eyed root beer float. A winking, long-eyelashed ice cream sundae. A coquettish handbag. Chloe has about thirty of them.
“Ava’s dad let her keep the toy, but he didn’t like the gesture. She goes missing a week later,” Chuck says. “They interviewed Leland once and didn’t get anywhere. That is all I heard.”
Dang, Chuck. You didn’t even make me work that hard.
Maybe because it’s the weekend and he’s working from home. Maybe he’s barefoot, sitting on his deck, sipping coffee. Maybe he’s in his boxer shorts. Maybe he’s hungover. But I’m pretty sure it’s because I called him an out-of-the-loop loser, and it got to him.
I open my mouth, ready to probe into what else Ava’s dad might have told detectives, but I glance at the sandbox.
Empty.
Wyatt is on the swing, gazing into the tree canopy. The other swing is bare.
“Thanks, Chuck. I’ve got to go.” I try to open the screen, but it jams. I fixed the damn thing last week. I knock the screen door off track and, as I run into the grass scanning for a pink T-shirt, the screen crashes onto the deck behind me.
She Lies Close Page 3