by Lish McBride
I pulled the first aid kit out of the drawer slowly, hissing as the muscles in my back burned from the twisting motion.
“Should have had your mom look at that,” Ramon clucked at me sarcastically.
“Thank you. Help me, okay?”
He didn’t press the issue but tore off the old bandage with little in the way of care.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
Ramon didn’t answer. He prodded a few sore areas, ignoring my complaints.
“It doesn’t look infected,” he said. “Not yet. And it does seem to be healing.” Ramon picked up the antiseptic and poured some onto a gauze pad. He wiped the long scratches carefully with the gauze before smoothing on the ointment. “If it starts to get nasty, I’m calling your mom.”
“Duly noted,” I said through clenched teeth. I’m not a super-wuss, but my whole back felt like one solid bruise, and though the ointment soothed the scratches, it still hurt.
Ramon finished with the salve and taped on some new padding. “We’re going to need to get some more supplies soon, too.”
I grunted in reply and grabbed a mug out of my cabinet. I heated water in a pan on my stove. I popped some ibuprofen and stared at the water while it heated up. I know, watched pot, blah-blah-blah, but staring at the water was soothing. I’d learned a lot since yesterday, but I felt no closer to understanding what I needed to do. I’d run out of ideas. I couldn’t join up with Douglas. Besides being morally sketchy, it was suicide. Running wasn’t much of an option. He’d either find me and kill me, kill someone else if he couldn’t find me, or do some as yet undiscovered, horrible third option. And even though I knew now why my powers were bound, that didn’t change the fact that they were bound.
When the water finally boiled, I made some of my mom’s sleep-aid tea. I handed Ramon his mug and sat carefully in the chair, leaning into the armrest to try and stay off my back. Ramon had turned on the news for Brooke. Sandwiched between a story on the Seahawks and the weather was a thirty-second blurb on Brooke.
“Hey, that’s my house!” she chirped.
The newscaster didn’t reveal her name or picture, stating only that a young girl had been found murdered early that day. Thankfully, they didn’t have any shots of Brooke’s family, and they hadn’t managed to interview them, either. I hoped her parents were getting a little time to mourn.
After it was over, we flipped to the other stations to see what they had to say. Nobody else had information, either. It appeared as though the cops were managing to keep a tight lid on it. The newscasters must have been foaming at the mouth. Seattle wasn’t a mecca for violent crime, and once they saw a prom photo of Brooke, all the TV producers in the state would be kicking up their heels in evil glee.
Ramon and I sat in awkward silence as the news cycled into a story on the salmon population. I think he wanted to comfort Brooke, too, but wasn’t any more sure of what to say than I was.
“I’m sorry, Brooke,” I said. It was lame, but I needed to break the silence.
“I know,” she said with a sniff. “Do you think we can change it now?”
The newscaster was babbling about some missing businessman with the unfortunate name Dave Davidson when Ramon changed it to the cooking channel.
Once my tea was done, I said good night to both of them and went to my room. In my drained state, I wouldn’t be much help to Brooke, so I left her to Ramon. He had better people skills anyway. I pulled my medicine bag out of my pocket and put it back on. It seemed kind of futile now, but it made me feel better.
Even though I was tired, I couldn’t fall asleep right away. I felt like I’d gone through half of my vinyl already, but the music wasn’t helping. My brain wouldn’t turn off, and I kept wondering how Brooke’s family was doing, when the cops were going to question us, and if anyone at the zoo had noticed that one of the pandas wasn’t eating his bamboo. It also took a while to find a comfortable spot where my back wasn’t bugging me. Later, I had a nightmare. I was trying to get to the ferry docks downtown while being chased by man-eating pandas. Some dreams don’t need Freud to figure them out. My next step was going to involve a ferryboat and something I dreaded worse than a panda with a thirst for blood.
For the second day in a row, I was startled out of a deep sleep by knocking. I jerked, rolled, and fell out of bed, trying not to scream while I considered how long it was going to take my back to heal if I kept waking up this way.
Ramon came running into my room. “Sammy, get off the floor. Now.”
“Can you just tell them we don’t need Jesus, Girl Scout cookies, or whatever the Mormons worship, and let me lie here in peace?”
“It’s the cops.”
An image of Brooke’s head on my armchair flashed in my mind. “Don’t just stand there, help me up,” I said, holding a hand out to him. With Ramon’s help, I quickly pulled on a sweatshirt. “Ramon, Brooke’s head—closet.”
Ramon went running out of the room. He came back in, whispering explanations into Brooke’s bowling bag as he hid her in my closet.
I thought that might be the first place they would look, but for all I knew, the number one place for finding severed heads was under the kitchen sink. I was kind of new at this. Either way, we had no time for anything else.
Detective Dunaway was polite, asking if now was an okay time to talk. He looked large in my doorway, but as I ushered him in, I was surprised to see that he was about average size.
“Can I get you something?” I asked as I waved him to the easy chair.
“If you have coffee made,” he said, “I wouldn’t say no.” Ramon went to fetch some while I sat across from the detective. He looked to be entering his forties in better shape than I ever hoped to be in. His brown hair was short and his jawline clean; he didn’t have to rely on a mustache to intimidate like some cops did. He wasn’t big, and he wasn’t showy, but I wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him. I sat on the couch facing him, hoping my hands weren’t shaking, as Ramon handed me a cup of coffee. The detective took a cup as well and was he-man enough to drink it black. I can do without sugar, but I need cream at least, damn it.
The detective took a sip and thanked Ramon. “You boys know why I’m here?” Dunaway, apparently, was not a word waster. He set down his cup without taking his eyes off of us.
Out of habit, my eyes flicked over toward my skateboard, the usual reason for me to talk to the cops. He followed my gaze, and the hard look on his face lessened.
“Nope,” he said. Then he sighed and leaned back into the recliner, facing both Ramon and me on the couch. “Either of you call in to work today? Stop by? Talk to a coworker?”
Ramon shook his head. “No,” I said. “We don’t really go by work unless we have to, and the only people we ever really see outside of work are Frank and Brooke. Not that we saw them this morning,” I added hastily.
“When’s the last time you saw Brooke?”
A few minutes ago, in my closet, but of course I couldn’t say that. I pretended to think on it, but I already knew the last time I could say I saw Brooke. “Tuesday night at work,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck with my hand. “We saw her to her car, then took off. Not really a place I like to hang around.”
He pulled his notebook out and started writing in it. “Why?” Ramon asked. “Is she in trouble?”
“You could say that,” Dunaway said, eyes still on his notebook. “What happened after she left?”
“We went home,” I said.
Dunaway flipped through a few of his pages. “Does it usually take you half an hour to get home? I talked with a”—he stopped and checked his notebook—“Mrs. Winalski, who says you came home thirty or so minutes after the time I have you clocking out.” He let go of the paper and stared at us. I felt my hands go cold against the coffee mug. “She also said you looked a little roughed up.” His eyes went to my face.
Of course she did. Mrs. W would want to protect me, so she’d tell the nice policemen all about how beat-up young Sam look
ed. It alibied me, sure, but I don’t think she realized that telling them I look roughed up didn’t really help. For all they knew, Brooke could have done this.
“You don’t live that far,” the detective prompted.
“We had a little problem after work,” I said.
“A problem with Brooke?”
“No,” I said, “with some cracked-out dude. He thought I was someone else, and when I tried to correct him, he got a little rough. Brooke was already gone.”
Dunaway tapped his pen against his pad. “He do that to your face?”
The bruises on my face had yellowed a bit, and the scratches were healing. Luckily, they were more like abrasions than anything else, otherwise Dunaway might mistake them for defensive wounds. Brooke had strong nails.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That all he did?”
I hesitated but figured, what the hell? For all I knew, they’d picked up the fight on a mall surveillance camera or something. No, better to be honest now than to be caught in a lie right out of the gate. Especially since I was already hiding something. I showed Dunaway my back.
He didn’t comment or ask if I was okay. I guess as a cop he’d seen worse. “You pick a fight with Freddy Krueger?”
I shook my head and pulled my shirt back down. “I don’t know what he used.”
Dunaway leaned forward in his chair, squinting. “You mind if I take some pictures before I leave?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t come to us?”
I shrugged, a movement I instantly regretted as the pain shot up my back. “With what?” I said. “Some crazy guy jumped us? We didn’t see much,” I lied. “And, no offense, but most of our exposure to cops involves problems with us and our skateboards.” I kept myself from shrugging again. “We just wanted to go home and lock the door, you know?”
To my surprise, it looked as if he did. “Have you seen this guy since then?”
“No.”
“Why?” Ramon asked. “This guy hurt Brooke or something?”
Dunaway suddenly let out a breath that made him look five years older. “Your friend Brooke was murdered sometime late Tuesday night.” He looked at both of us. “We haven’t released her name or anything to the press yet, for the family’s sake among other things, so I want you boys to keep this to yourselves, okay?”
I closed my eyes and leaned into the couch, ignoring my back. Of course, Brooke’s death wasn’t a shock—her head was in my closet—but now that I no longer had to pretend I didn’t know about the murder, it felt like a release of sorts. My muscles let the secret go, and in its place I found a bone-aching sadness. Brooke was gone. Not completely, sure, but a talking head couldn’t fill the girl-sized hole in my life. I would never see her at work. I would never see her change and grow into the devastating woman we all knew she’d be. Ramon and I had both held a secret pride knowing that someday Brooke would be unleashed on the bar scene and that she’d take no prisoners. Our own little heartbreaker. And now that would never happen. Anger burned away the sadness.
“I’m sorry,” Dunaway said, and I could tell from his tone that he meant it.
I nodded with my eyes closed. Weren’t we all?
Dunaway took a few snapshots of my face and back before he left. He also took what was left of Ramon’s skateboard. He told us he’d probably talk to us again. Ramon, Frank, and I held the dubious honor of being the last people to see Brooke intact. They had a few shots of her on a camera at a self-checkout line in a grocery store after that, but that was it. Luckily, Mrs. W could vouch for us coming home. Though we could have followed her home, I think Dunaway suspected that the killer had been waiting for Brooke at her house. I suspected he was right.
Ramon went to class, promising Brooke he’d be back with Frank to keep her company. I called work. Going into Plumpy’s was the last thing I wanted to do right now. Brooke’s death made a pretty good excuse. I didn’t have time to waste at work anyway. Douglas’s deadline ticked away in my brain, and I was nowhere near a solution. But I did have a destination.
16
Papa was a Rolling Stone
I had to drive onto the ferry because I didn’t want to muck about with the bus system, if there was one, on Bainbridge Island. Bainbridge is a fancy place, chock-full of natural beauty and the kind of people who can afford natural beauty. The kind of people who don’t really need bus systems. Besides, I wanted to get in and out and on the next ferry as soon as possible.
I hadn’t talked to my biological father since the divorce, which was fine by me. He got a new wife, and I assumed new kids, and started over without so much as a backward wave in my direction. My mom doesn’t bad-mouth him; she thought I should form my own ideas about people, so she’d stuck to the old “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” routine. The fact that she never had anything to say about him told me that Kevin Hatfield was not a nice man.
I was angry at the abandonment, but it was an old anger—the calcified pain from when my life was broken. An emotional bone spur. I tried not to think about it. The fact was, all I had were hazy memories of him. I was young when they split up. All I really remembered was that Mom cried a lot. Then we got an apartment, just the two of us, which she hated because she hated all apartments. But in the apartment she cried less. Then she met Haden, and she was happy. I was one of the few kids I knew growing up who didn’t want their biological parents to get back together. My childhood could run up a lot of psychologist bills. The whole no-daddy thing is supposed to be a big deal, I guess. I didn’t see it that way. Haden was around to teach me to play catch, to ride a bike, all that Norman Rockwell kind of crap. As far as I was concerned, Haden was my father. Kevin Hatfield could take a long walk off a short pier, preferably into a teeming mass of hungry, rabid sharks, if sharks can get rabies.
In my entire life, I hadn’t once entertained the thought of going out to visit Kevin Hatfield. I hadn’t needed to. Today, I needed to. I had to find my uncle Nick, and my biological father’s house was the way to start. No one knew where he was. My mom didn’t have his address or his phone number anymore, and she couldn’t remember where the cabin was. She’d only been there once, and that was around twenty years ago. He might not even live there now. But I had to track him down. It was the only way I could think of to get my binding removed.
The ferry ride to Bainbridge is a short one, only about thirty minutes. I spent the time above deck watching the ferry cut through the water. People milled about, and every once in a while, the door would swing open and I’d hear the guy with the acoustic guitar playing for change. Then the door would swing closed again and all I’d hear was the waves as the ferry cut through the water.
I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve never gotten sick of looking at Puget Sound or the Cascades. The day so far was clear and chilly as I leaned against the metal railings. It probably wouldn’t stay clear for long. Washington weather is fickle, spring weather doubly so. By the time the captain gave the five-minute docking warning, I was frosty on the outside and leaden on the inside. I really, really did not want to get off the ferry.
Arriving on Bainbridge Island is the opposite of arriving in Seattle. When you got in your car and waited to unload off the ferry in Seattle, you saw the Space Needle, cars, and a mound of urban construction. Once you exit the ferry terminal on Bainbridge, however, it’s mostly trees. Pine as far as the eye can see. Well, pines, firework and coffee stands, and eventually a casino. You drive through the Port Madison Indian Reservation when you leave the island. I couldn’t help but smile as I went past the casino. I didn’t really get gambling, since I’d never had money to throw away, but as I passed through all the beautiful countryside that I’m sure once belonged to the tribe, I sort of hoped they would rob the white man blind. Perhaps not politically correct, but the feeling was there all the same.
I found the Hatfield residence fairly easily. Online directories are wonderful things. Kevin�
��s house was huge. The stained wood seemed to grow right out of the forest around it. Whatever he did for a living, it paid well.
I knocked before I could talk myself out of it. The woman who greeted me must have been his wife, though she was younger than I expected. Elaine Hatfield couldn’t have been a day over thirty. Hell, I could date her. And if the thought of dating my theoretical stepmother hadn’t made me want to vomit in the bushes, I’d do it, too, just out of spite. Elaine was hot in a soccer-mom kind of way: curly blond hair, body-hugging sweater, and a smile so white it could only have come from the dentist. Mrs. W was right. I needed to get out more if I was finding Kevin’s wife attractive. I usually don’t have a thing for trophy wives.
“Can I help you?”
I had to clear my throat to get the reply out. “Is Mr. Hatfield home?”
“Not at the moment,” she said. She left it sounding like he’d be back in five. Probably in case I was a psycho.
“Actually, you would probably be the one to talk to,” I said, like the idea had just occurred to me. Elaine had been the one I wanted to see. I thought it might be easier to talk my way in if she was the one who answered the door.
She arched a shaped brow at me.
“I’m looking for Nick Hatfield,” I said. “His brother.”
Her blue eyes widened, and she invited me in.
The inside of the house was like the outside: tasteful, natural, expensive. Elaine offered me coffee, but I politely declined. I hoped I wouldn’t be there that long. The homemade cookies were harder to say no to. I’m not made of stone. I nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie while I sat across from her in what she called the breakfast nook and what I would have called a dining room. This house could have eaten my apartment and still been hungry.
“Have you ever met him?” I asked. This would be a lot easier if she knew Kevin had a brother.