Tunnel Vision

by Aric Davis

  D. will be back soon, and he’s going to want to get high. That’s OK, I can get high, but when it’s over I’m going to tell him I’m leaving and he needs to come with me. I’m not even sure if I’m going to take this journal with me. I don’t know what good it would ever do me. It might be better here in this house, a ghost destined to just fade into nothing.

  I can hear D. on the stairs, so it’s time to hide this, and then get to the rest of it. If things go well, you and I are never going to speak again.

  Kiss kiss,

  Mandy

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “Oh crap,” said Betty as the words sank in, and then the book tumbled from her hands as if it were on fire. “Oh shit, oh crap. We have to help her, we have to go now.”

  Nickel picked up the diary and tucked it under his arm, and then Betty had his arm and began to shake him. “She’s at her dad’s. She’s at Jack’s right now. She’s going to talk to him about Mandy.”

  Nickel opened his mouth to speak, but Betty pushed past him out the door and across the lawn at a run and then all but threw herself into the driver’s seat. Nickel was in the passenger side just after her, and then Betty had the keys in the ignition, the car in drive, and her foot on the gas.

  They exploded from the broken neighborhood onto a main drag. Betty was dialing her phone while she drove the car, her fingers fumbling but finally managing to pick June out of her contacts list and hit the “Call” button. Finally the phone began to ring and Betty pushed it to the side of her face. After ten rings and no pickup, the phone went to June’s aggravating automated message, and when it was done, Betty said, “June, you need to get a hold of me right away, OK? We made a mistake, so as soon as you get this you need to give me a call, OK?”

  Betty hung up the phone and set it on her knee. She felt sick. There was no way they could possibly get there fast enough. Whatever was going to happen, they were going to be too late. June was there, babysitting the time bomb that was her father. Betty wiped the tears she had just noticed were streaming from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and only then, as she turned to Nickel, did she realize just how screwed they really were.

  “I don’t know where I’m going,” she said. “I’ve never been to her dad’s house. I’m just driving like an idiot! I don’t know what to do!”

  “This way, take a right.” A furious look had taken over Nickel’s face.

  Betty swung the wheel, making the tires screech.

  “Dammit,” said Nickel. “He was my only suspect in this thing. I screwed up, bad. Really bad. He didn’t fit the profile right, and the only things he had going were that he was alive at the time of Mandy’s death, he had a history of violence, and he was related to her by marriage. I was wrong. Take a left. Not there, at the light.”

  “He’s in this end of town?” He lived just outside the city, not even a fifteen-minute drive from their school.

  Betty turned at the light.

  They had the journal, they knew the truth about June’s dad, and nothing was going to stop it from getting out now. They just needed to get June away from him.

  Betty screeched around a corner, then whipped around another at Nickel’s direction. And there, so close to the slum Mandy died in, was June’s car sitting in front of her father’s house, and Betty just missed it as she ripped onto the gravel driveway. She could hear a neighbor yelling at her to slow down as she left the car, and then she and Nickel were sprinting across the lawn.

  Nickel was at the door and rearing back to kick it in. Betty had time to wonder if he shouldn’t have just knocked first, but that thought was tempered by the knowledge of the monster June was alone with. Betty cringed as Nickel’s Chuck Taylor slammed into the door and blew it open, and then the two of them were rushing in.

  The last thing Betty saw as she entered the house was Nickel pulling something from his bag ahead of her, something black and mean-looking.

  FIFTY-SIX

  “What in the fuck?” June’s dad said to no one and everyone. He was seated at a battered Formica table, across from a sobbing June, and between them was a stack of yellowed newspapers.

  Jack stood to face Nickel and Betty, then turned to June. “Your friends are going to pay to fix that door, just so we’re clear,” he said, and then he turned again to stare at his guests.

  The words Jack said made no sense to Betty, nor did June’s tears or the fact that her friend appeared to be in the furthest thing from a life-or-death situation. It looks like they’re just talking about Mandy. When Betty turned to Nickel, she could see by the sheepish look on his face that he was thinking the same thing.

  “I’m serious, you little freaks,” said Jack. “You’re going to be paying to fix that fucking door.” He grinned, a sickening expression made worse by the situation and the way the skin surrounding his over-tanned mouth drew away from his teeth. Jack waved them to the two empty chairs at the table and said, “You must be here for the show. I’ve been telling June all about it.”

  “Let’s go, June,” said Betty. “We can talk about this later.”

  “We’re going to talk about it right now,” said Jack. “Right fucking now.”

  Betty saw Nickel fidgeting with something behind his back, and though she didn’t know exactly what he was doing, she found herself hoping he had some answer. Do something, thought Betty, but instead, Nickel took one of the seats offered by Jack, and she followed suit.

  Jack plopped himself back down in his chair. He was drunk. Betty could see it in the lazy-lizard way his eyes rolled up slightly as he spoke. “We are settling up,” said Jack. “You two retards and this queer think I was up to something, I can see that, but you got it all wrong.” Jack smirked. “Dead wrong, as far as I can tell.”

  “You killed Mandy,” Betty heard herself say, and she could tell from the way June stiffened that she wasn’t alone in her thinking.

  “Now that’s funny,” said Jack. “We were just talking about that very thing. In fact, I was just telling June here about how I seen that idiot the day she died, right before that maniac killed her.”

  “You killed her,” said Betty, less sure of herself than before. He’s lying. Mandy all but stood up and pointed him out in her diary. June’s dad hurt her, and he decided to make her go away so she couldn’t tell anyone.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Jack. “I may have roughed up the girl a couple of times after I saw her selling her ass.” He turned to June. “But that had as much to do with your mother as it did with my own feelings about whores.”

  “Mom would never have asked you to do something like that,” said June. “Never.”

  “Sure, you’re right,” said Jack, “except of course for that time she did. You, your mother, and I were driving somewhere, I can’t remember where to save my life, not that it much matters, and then your mother saw Mandy standing there on Division Avenue. She wasn’t holding no sign saying what she was doing, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. The little junkie was out there peddling her twat, and I know that part’s true, because I saw it myself.”

  “Mom wouldn’t have cared about that,” said June. “She loved Mandy, I know it, and—”

  “You need to slow down and listen up. All three of you do, especially you two that kicked my fucking door in looking to act like Batman or something.” Jack leveled a pointed finger at June. “Your mother asked me to do it, June. She said it made her sick to see family out there doing something like that, and I asked her what she thought we should do about it, figuring she’d tell me to call the police.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Betty asked. “She’d still be alive if you had.”

  “She was a junkie and a whore,” he said, with exaggerated patience. “There’s no telling what might have happened if we had done that. Maybe she’d be alive, but I doubt it. It’s a hell of a lot more likely she just would have found some other way to get herself killed. Not that it matters, because we didn’t call the police. I got out, told my wife to circ
le the block, and then I pulled my hood over my head and I went over there and tarred the hell out of her.”

  “You raped her,” said Betty and out of the corner of her eye saw June flinch at that. Betty shot a glance at Nickel to try to make the now-mute boy speak, but Nickel didn’t say a word. “We found her diary,” Betty said. “It’s all in there. You raped her. You started doing it when she was young, and you couldn’t help yourself when you saw her on the street.”

  That awful smile of Jack’s was back. “You might be a looker without that purple shit in your hair,” he said, “but there ain’t a man on this earth that would ever confuse you with a smart person. You think I raped that whore on the side of the road with my wife and baby and God only knows who else watching? It was dangerous enough just to paste her a couple of times, but I took the risk on that. Rape her? Never. Her line of business, I expect she caught a lot of beatings. Maybe she was charging too much for her ass. No way to know for sure. All I know is my wife said she felt sick and she asked me to put a whooping on that whore, so that’s what I did.”

  “That wasn’t enough, though,” said Betty. “You went back and did it again.”

  “You’re damn right I did. I told her to stop whoring herself out, and when I saw her out there again that was the same as her telling me to fuck off. This wasn’t just about her, this was about her dragging her family’s name through the mud. I was just trying to teach her a lesson, but that crazy bastard they caught killing her was the one that taught her the last lesson. Bad end to bad trash, that’s what I say.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said June. “I don’t believe Mom would ask you to do that.”

  “Shit, you can call and ask her yourself.” Jack pulled a cell phone from his pocket and threw it on the table. “I guarantee you the second you mention that slut’s name, ol’ Claire will tell you exactly what she thinks about what happened to her.” He grinned. “Mom could tell you some stories, you can trust me on that.”

  He rocked back in his chair, locked his arms over his chest, and looked from one to the other of them, grinning that awful grin. “You need to understand something, all of you do, but especially June. We didn’t want you to know about any of this. It’s all deep, dark, nasty family shit, and there isn’t a single person in this family that’s proud of what happened to that poor girl, but that don’t make it anyone’s fault but her own.

  “Mandy was living the way she wanted to, selling herself to get high, and catching a few beatings a week from that psycho she was living with to boot. That’s no way to live, and—”

  “How do you know Duke was beating her?” Nickel asked, the first words he’d said since they’d entered the house.

  Jack turned to him with a smile. “I didn’t think you had the balls to open your mouth, but you fooled me. I’ll answer the question, though. I know he was beating on that bitch because when I saw her the last time she was already covered in bruises. That and the fact that he wound up beating and stabbing her to death. I consider that last part to be pretty important. It does show character, after all.”

  “So you’re saying you were the last person besides Duke to see her alive, is that correct?” Betty asked the question slowly. There was something she was missing, something Jack was skirting around. June could see it, too. Betty could tell by the way her friend was staring at her father.

  “I want to know, too,” said June. “You said earlier you saw her before she died. Do you mean you saw her at their house?”

  “Of course. I went by to check on her to make sure she was staying in, and when I left she was doing just fine.”

  “You raped her again, didn’t you?” Betty asked, and Jack shook his head.

  “Nope, never raped her. You’re going to have to let that one go, little miss. I’m starting to get pissed off as it is. Looking at my door right now does that to me, and you asking questions like that, questions I already answered, is getting to be a bit much.”

  “How did you know where she lived?” Nickel asked.

  “It was easy to find,” said Jack. “I followed her home once, and—”

  “Dad, first you said you beat her twice,” said June. “You never mentioned anything about following her or knowing where she lived. You never said any of that, but now you admit you followed her? How many times did you see Mandy without Mom?”

  “Everything I did was done because your mother asked it of me.” He was less sure of himself now, and more pumped up and indignant to cover it. “You can think what you want of me, but don’t for one second think I did any of this without your mother knowing about it, June. If you’re going to blame me, you have to blame her, too.”

  “Did you own a green jacket back then?” Betty asked.

  He just sneered and said, “I sure did. Is that it? Anything else?” Jack stood and flipped the table over, sending silverware and cell phones flying. Betty leapt to her feet, but not as fast as Nickel. June still sat in her chair, an enraged look on her face, but Jack was rushing away from all of them into the next room.

  “You guys need to go now,” said Nickel. Betty could see the thing in his hand now. It was black with two metal prongs at the top and a buzzing bolt of blue electricity humming between them. “Now,” said Nickel.

  From the back of the house came the sounds of a shotgun being racked, and then a growing, animal bellowing that became Jack yelling, “Get on the ground and cover your ears, June!”

  Nickel had run toward the doorway Jack had gone through and stepped behind the opened door just as Jack filled the door frame. Betty was frozen next to the upended table with June, who hadn’t followed her father’s order to get on the floor.

  “Accuse me of this shit in my house,” Jack seethed as he stepped into the room, lowering the shotgun at Betty as he came. Betty watched Nickel move quickly and silently from behind the door and plunge the Taser into the center of Jack’s back. The shotgun roared in his hands, sending metal hurtling into the ceiling above him, and then Jack fell flopping like a fish and Nickel dropped with him. The Taser was probably still buzzing, but Betty couldn’t hear it. She was deafened by the shotgun blast and only knew that Nickel was still shocking June’s father because of the crackling blue light coming from the weapon. Jack was writhing on the floor with Nickel next to him, the Taser the only thing keeping him on the ground. Betty had June in her arms then, and though she could feel her friend saying something against her chest, it was impossible to know what it was.

  Nickel left Jack on the floor, and then the three of them were in Betty’s car and driving away.

  Muffled sirens could be heard in the air, but there was no one outside wondering about the disturbance at Jack Derricks’s house. June was bawling in the backseat, and Nickel said, “Just drive. We need to get me home, and then you need to call the police so you can tell them you were here.” Betty nodded, pushed the gas pedal down, and blasted out of the suburbs.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It was three days later before the police finally caught up with Jack Derricks. He was holed up in a friend’s hunting cabin, and he surrendered like a meek kitten when the Department of Natural Resources and State Police finally came knocking.

  All Jack wanted to do was talk about the teenagers who had screwed him over, but he could never find a cop that cared all that much. Betty and June learned about everything through the slow filters of the television and the Internet, and the slower filter of what Andrea was willing to share with them after work.

  In the days after the arrest Betty and June worked nonstop to bind together all of the loose ends in their project, telling the truth not only about what had really happened to Mandy, but also—mostly—about their own investigation. The cops knew there had been a boy in Jack’s house with them, or at least they suspected it after hearing Jack’s description of what had gone down there and interviewing the neighbors. That was unavoidable, but Betty and June remained mute on the subject. Both girls were insistent to the police that despite what Jack and the neighbor
s may have had to say, they had been there alone. Eventually, the questions stopped, even the ones about the small burn on Jack’s back.

  Duke would have been released from Jackson with the new revelations of the true nature of Mandy’s death, but he died before the case against Jack Derricks could be finalized and the process to release him could be completed. A combination of liver damage from substance abuse, hepatitis C, and AIDS saw to his end in prison.

  With his impending release the concert was delayed, and then canceled altogether after his passing. The girls couldn’t have cared less. A concert seemed boring by comparison, a useless endeavor, especially to June. Instead, they enjoyed their time at school, heroes in a way that none of them had ever imagined, but with a sheen of guilt for the lie at the center of it all that was Nickel.

  Betty checked her e-mail obsessively in the hopes that he might get hold of her, but for two weeks, no message came. She also found herself regularly accompanying Andrea to Rhino’s to work out, at first just thinking she might see Nickel again, and then just because it felt good to train. She felt her body transforming swiftly. She’d already been fit, but as she pounded mitts and rolled with her mother and other students, she felt like she was coming into her own, and she liked the feeling.

  The question of whether or not Nickel would ever contact her was answered finally by a typically terse request to meet at his bench in Riverside Park: “I have a job if you want to help. N.”

  Betty nearly screamed with excitement when she read the message, but managed to keep her joy inside. Nickel was her secret, the only part of her that wasn’t in the public eye, and she wanted it to stay that way. And she wanted to know what other mysteries he might be hiding. Betty deleted the mail, closed the browser, and then headed downstairs.