by Aric Davis
“Seriously, with the template I have, the ID part is easy.”
“What’s the hard part, then?” June took the camera from him and grinned at the array of images. “You just paste these to a template, print, and we’re golden?”
“Well, I guess the hard part was meeting Betty to begin with,” said Nickel, taking the camera back and busying himself with it. “Walking up to a girl you’ve never met before can always be a little nerve-wracking.”
June smiled and jabbed an elbow in Betty’s side at the remark, and Betty elbowed her back.
“Yeah, like I’m so intimidating,” Betty said. “You didn’t seem so nervous. And you’ve been ridiculously helpful, and you’re supernice.”
His face pretty much on fire, he turned away. “Let me grab my laptop and we’ll get to actually making these. You guys can go sit at the kitchen table, and I’ll be right back, OK?”
Nickel didn’t wait for a response, just turned tail and walked back into the room he’d gone to before.
At the table, Betty gave June a thin smile, trying to communicate that things were going as smoothly as they possibly could, and in response, June whispered, “He just keeps getting cuter. Normally the awkward thing does nothing for me, but this boy is adorkable. I just want to grab him.”
“Well don’t.”
June rolled her eyes. “You’re just trying to hog him. If you’re going to keep stringing Jake along, I can’t see why I can’t at least try and throw myself at this one. Worst that could happen, he says no, but I think—”
“Think what?” Nickel asked as he returned to the room, camera still hanging from his neck and a laptop under his arm.
“You don’t want to know,” said Betty. “Trust me.”
“All right.” Smiling, Nickel grabbed the free chair between Betty and June and flipped the computer open on the table. He plugged the camera into the computer with a USB cord and, with Betty and June leaning in on either side to see the screen, got to work. If he was bothered by being crowded by girls, he didn’t show it.
Betty and June watched as he pulled up a program that looked a great deal like Photoshop, but had a blank form on it that looked just like a Michigan ID.
“Betty first,” said Nickel, and then he began rattling off questions as he filled in the form. “Full name?”
“Elizabeth Anne Martinez.”
“Address real, or fake?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not if you get in enough trouble.”
“Fake.”
“Date of birth?” Nickel asked, and then added, “I want to use the real month and date, so if somebody tries to trip you up by asking your sign or something, you can just spit it right out.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” said Betty. “So, March fifth, 1998.”
“Well, for the intents and purposes of this fake, we’ll go ahead and list you as 1996. Sound good?”
“Oh. Yeah. Duh.”
Nickel grinned and filled in the rest of the information before opening a separate window of the program and cropping her picture down to the right size for the ID template, and then copying and pasting it onto the template itself.
“All done,” he said. “Are you ready, June?”
THIRTY-FOUR
The computer was back in whatever clown car of a room Nickel had gotten it from, and in its place were two still-warm fake ID cards. The difference between these and every other fake that the girls had ever seen was incredible. The IDs Nickel had made for them were printed on what seemed to be the same type of machine the Michigan secretary of state used, and on what appeared to be the exact same stock the state used.
Betty found herself transfixed by the hologram of the bridge and all the other little details designed to make exactly this sort of thing impossible, and when she looked up she could see June doing the same thing.
“I’m not sure how to thank you,” said Betty. “These are incredible. Like, incredible, incredible.”
“They are pretty cool,” Nickel admitted with a grin. “The trick is to have the right plastic, but since I was able to order blanks from the factory that produces them, I was able to do better than just the plastic. These will hold up to pretty much anything until a cop swipes them, and even they’ll need to really look at the picture on the screen in their cruiser to know that your ID doesn’t match the picture in the database. I figure it’s fifty-fifty at that point as to whether or not they hold you or just complain about the computer messing up, so just remember what I told you: be indignant but do it at the right time.”
“I can manage that,” said June, and when the girls started to laugh, Betty saw that Nickel was laughing along with them. “Seriously, though,” said June, “this is amazing. We really appreciate it. I know we probably aren’t going to figure all of this out, at least as far as my aunt is concerned, but we will wind up with an A if Duke actually talks with us.”
“He will,” said Nickel. “He’ll take one look at you and he won’t be able to shut his mouth. Hell, he might think you’re Mandy’s ghost and not just a relative. I know I was shocked when I saw you, but Duke lived with Mandy, and I’ve only seen pictures online. You know, that reminds me, I did have a question for you guys.”
“Ask away,” said Betty.
“As of right now, with all the research you’ve done, who do you think killed her? I don’t mean you necessarily need to have someone else in mind, but do you still see Duke as a possible, or maybe even guilty as charged?”
“I don’t know,” said Betty. “I mean, we’ve been doing our best to find other suspects, but our evidence probably wouldn’t even be good enough to be called circumstantial.”
“Well, maybe talking to Duke can help with that. For instance, maybe he can tell you why he reported seeing a man in a green jacket, but the only person the neighbors saw wearing green that day was Duke himself.”
“So what were the cops thinking?” asked Betty. “That that was somehow part of his confession? Him telling them he’d done it?”
“Who knows what the cops thought,” said Nickel. “Likely they just figured it was some heroin addict’s delusional rambling and round-filed it. Not that that stopped them from buying his full confession pretty shortly after that, though.
“From what I’ve read about the case, even people who didn’t just write him off as totally drug-addled assumed Duke was grasping at straws with the green jacket stuff. You know, yelling about a one-armed man, that sort of thing. I assume the cops took the confession and the neighbor’s testimony into account, and just assumed Duke was accidentally projecting himself onto this never-seen-again mystery man.”
“But why would Duke do that?” June asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Does it need to?” Nickel answered. “The point is that we have a description of what the killer may have looked like, as long as we don’t ignore Duke’s initial statements to the police.”
“So assuming Duke was telling the truth, then that makes Duke the only known witness to the real killer?” Betty asked, and Nickel nodded.
“Exactly. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t prove anything on its own, but it is something else to look into. Just because the cops thought Duke was a stupid, lying criminal doesn’t mean we have to.”
“He’s still an asshole,” muttered June.
“Maybe so,” said Nickel, “but what if he also happens to be innocent? Asshole or not, the goal is to find the person who actually did it. The cops that worked this case weren’t stupid, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t go for the obvious answer instead of exploring all the evidence.”
“Especially when some of that evidence was only offered up by the man who confessed a few hours later,” said Betty.
“Exactly.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Betty had hugged Nickel before they left, both of them had, but she had felt something when she’d let go of him, and it was a black thing that made her feel even worse for not texting Jake back yet. She didn’t wa
nt to think she wanted to be with Nickel, though there was something there, and she knew the longer she strung Jake along, the worse the breakup was going to be. Still, she had yet to text him, she had no idea what to say, and if they really did go see Duke over the weekend, Jake was going to have to wait for answers until next week. Even worse was that Jake had been waiting dutifully by his phone for her to pay him the simple respect of responding to him, but she’d been at another boy’s house the entire time.
When the girls stopped by their cars in front of the gas station, June smiled at Betty and said, “You sure know how to make friends. I don’t know what that boy’s been up to, and I’m not sure I want to, but that was really cool.”
“Yeah,” said Betty. “Nickel barely even knows us, even me, but he still spent hours putting our IDs together. We’re going to need to do something nice for him.”
“I’m sure you have something in mind,” said June. “If not, then I’m willing to do my part to show just how apprecia—”
“Enough,” said Betty with a grin. June could be so annoying, but at least she was always annoying in the ways that were so her. “I’ll thank Nickel by doing exactly what he asked: as soon as we’re back from talking to Duke, I’m going to let him know what Duke had to say. After that, I’m going to keep him up to date with everything we’re doing, especially locally, and he said he might want to tag along at some point.”
“Yeah, that’ll be a problem,” said June. “Who would want a supercool guy that’s incredibly smart tagging along?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Betty. “Nickel won’t do anything but help us with the rest of the investigation.”
“And he might be able to interpret what Duke says better than we can. I mean, he knows all these little secret details about Mandy’s murder that most people never knew at all, and for all we know Duke could tell us something that Nickel can make sense out of, even if it means nothing to us.”
“I’m glad he’s going to help,” said Betty, “but I’m even happier you liked him so much.”
“Yeah, he’s supercool,” said June, a frown crossing her face. “I thought his house was weird, though. There were no pictures in there, no art or knickknacks at all, and there was no TV. I can excuse the lack of pictures and other crap if it’s just Nickel and his dad living there, but no TV? C’mon, two guys living together are going to have a TV.”
“What do you think he was trying to hide?”
“I don’t know,” said June, “but when we first went there, I was nervous his dad would come home and get us all in trouble, but by the time we left I’d forgotten I was ever even worried about it at all. I forgot I was nervous because Nickel wasn’t nervous about it. He wasn’t worried about it at all. He had two girls in the house—there’s not a boy I’ve ever met that wouldn’t be nervous under those circumstances. He wasn’t nervous, though, he was fiddling away with his computer and flirting a little bit and doing exactly what he told us he could, which if you think about is weird all on its own.”
“How do you mean?”
“You think there’s any boy at our high school that could do even half of what Nickel just did?” June asked. “They’re all bragging losers by comparison. Hell, comparing them seems unfair. Nickel did everything he said he could, and he wasn’t even proud of himself for doing it.” June shot a look at her phone. “Look, I need to go. I have to get home and eat, and I have to do some math homework, too.”
“Crap, me too,” said Betty, her thoughts not just on schoolwork, but also on the limp-wristed text she was going to send Jake when she got home.
On the road, Betty’s mind careened among fake IDs, Duke Barnes, Jake Norton, and a boy who seemed to neither have nor need a last name. Her heart felt as though it were caught between three worlds: Duke and Mandy called to her from the past, Jake from what should have been a normal year in the life of an American teenager, and Nickel from a world of shadow and mystery that seemed to link the other two with mysterious possibilities.
I got beat up. Not the first time, of course, but it had been a while and it was pretty bad. Not cool. D. tried to find the guy who did it, the guy who beat me and then hurt me even worse, but he couldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t be able to. I couldn’t even describe him. Guys who get off like that and get away with it are almost always just normal-looking, forgettable guys. Not that I’ll forget what he did to me. I can still see his fists raining down, his boot rearing back and driving toward me. It’s going to be weeks until my face is in good enough condition for me to go back to hooking, unless I run a blue-light special or something.
Being hurt means I don’t leave the house anymore. All I do is sit around and get high and look at my pictures and wish I could just disappear. Not die, that’s too easy. I mean just not exist at all. It would be better for everyone involved, especially my sister and my parents, if I’d just never existed at all. The only people I can even think of that have actually benefitted from my existence are the guys from Old Croix Road. That was the old me, though, the dead me that’s too sad for even me to think about. That me has been rotting for a long time now.
I knew Ben through his father, and then when his dad died, he and his brother, Joe, started coming around the record shop I was working at more and more often. They were always buying rock albums that were a little too cool for their age—Joe was barely even ten. Ben kept going on about being in a band, and I finally convinced my friend Mike to record them. I mean, I thought it would be cute, maybe a little funny. Duke and I picked them up, and that night four twelve-year-old boys recorded one of the best demo tapes I’ve ever heard. They got huge after that, but that isn’t why I never see them anymore. I don’t see them because of me, because of what I am. Ben isn’t even eighteen yet, and I’m still too scared to call him because of what he’d think of me.
The only blessing from being hurt is that Jason isn’t after me for sex. Apparently being as shallow as he is isn’t always a bad thing. Even better than that is that D. hasn’t really been hanging out with Jason anymore, or at least not as much as he used to.
The one good thing to come out of getting beaten and raped—and isn’t it pathetic to find a silver lining in that?—is that I’m pretty sure I had a miscarriage. The baby couldn’t have been D.’s, that’s the really bad part, but since it had to be from Jason or a client, it seems like a blessing. I don’t have a lot of dignity right now, but asking D. to sell his ass so I could get an abortion would be so low it’s hard to even contemplate.
I can hear Jason and at least two other people downstairs, strange and loud voices, but without D. here I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to hide in my little room, avoiding mirrors and trying to imagine the person I used to be and will be again someday. This is just part of my life, I’m sure of it, and someday I’m going to know how to escape it. Still, all I want right now is to get high. It helps with the pain, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Kiss kiss,
Mandy
THIRTY-SIX
Betty drove while June fiddled with the GPS and the iPod hooked to the stereo. It was Saturday afternoon and they were headed to Jackson to meet Duke Barnes.
Betty could tell June was nervous. Not that she blamed her; she was nervous herself, and not just over meeting Duke. Betty and Jake were embroiled in a string of communication, her own short missives inspiring some truly awe-inspiring strings of paragraphs about their new life at some base somewhere, and how all she needed to do was tell him she was ready to take the next step. Ophelia had been right: the best time to dump Jake had come and gone, and now it was just going to be a cruel joke no matter how Betty went about it.
It was hard not to focus all her energy on Jake, but with the wheels bringing them ever closer to Duke and a real-life conversation with one of the people who was actually there when Mandy died—if not the man who killed her—it felt sort of ridiculous to worry about her boyfriend troubles. They were going to give fake IDs to a prison guard, get vetted
by a system built specifically to avoid something like what they were doing, and if all went well they would be rewarded by having a conversation with a convicted felon. There was some insane joy to be found in that—the euphoria of doomed women, as June had suggested while giggling an hour or so earlier—so why was the upcoming encounter with Jake all Betty could think of?
“You may as well just talk about it,” said June as they passed a sign telling them Jackson was seventy-two miles away. When Betty gave her a confused look, June locked eyes with her and said, “Bullshit. Just tell me. I won’t even give you any crap, I promise.”
Even with that guarantee on the table, Betty didn’t want to talk about any of the stuff going on in her head. Not only were her thoughts and worries private, they also seemed incredibly weak, especially considering that June was being driven to meet the man thought to have killed her aunt. But June kept staring at her.
“So much has changed in the last week and a half that nothing feels right,” said Betty after a few moments to collect her thoughts. “First it was that show, and then your aunt, Jake’s proposal, and well, Nickel. I feel like I’m watching a movie about myself, like there’s nothing I can do to control the outcome of anything, except for what we’re doing today. Isn’t that crazy? The only thing I feel in control of is the one thing I’m doing that should be impossible.”
“It’s not impossible,” said June. “Everything is going to be fine at the prison, except maybe Duke. You just need to let the rest of it go. What we’re doing today and everything else that comes afterward is all that matters. The rest of it is just petty teenage bullshit.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“I’m sorry. I think I might have sounded like my mother, too. Do you think you’ll ever have kids? I don’t see how anyone could ever want to burden themselves with something like that.”