The Follower

by Koethi Zan

  ‘I deserved to watch him build this room, board by board. To desecrate my house,’ she mumbled, settling her gaze on the window covered in thick planks.

  The girl held her tighter.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s okay.’

  Cora could feel the girl’s heartbeat through the layers of their clothes as she sank slightly into her embrace. So like the steady thud under Reed’s warm skin that night at the dam. How nice it would be to allow herself this comfort.

  But, no, not from her.

  She pushed the girl away. She didn’t need her. She sat up straight, smoothing her clothes.

  ‘Reed would have laughed at all this,’ she muttered. ‘He and the others, if they were still alive.’ She shook her head. ‘If only he’d wanted the child, I could have saved them both.’

  ‘Reed? Who is Reed?’

  ‘Hush. Don’t you dare say his name. You are not worthy.’

  ‘What child?’ the girl whispered. ‘Did you and Reed have a child? What happened to them? You can tell me.’

  Embarrassed to have said so much, Cora grabbed the girl by the shoulders and dug her fingers into the folds of her sweatshirt. Yanking her up to her feet, she held her face in between her hands and squeezed hard. The girl groaned.

  ‘Forget about that. This child is not yours, do you hear me? You are a mere vessel with no claim. It is written that James and I are one. ‘The Wife suffers, but in suffering finds her Great Reward.’ Do you understand me?’

  The girl nodded, the fear flashing onto her face again, restored as if by magic to its proper state.

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ she said, nodding eagerly. ‘I’m learning to accept, just as you say.’

  Cora stood staring at her, panting. She felt calmer now that it was out there between them, now that she could see the girl begin to comply. Everything would be okay if the girl understood, if she would cooperate.

  Cora pushed her roughly onto the bed and sat down next to her. She needed to calm down. She breathed slowly and deliberately, felt her pulse returning to normal. She wrapped her arms around her body and rocked gently back and forth. It was going to be fine. Nothing had happened. James didn’t even know yet. There was time to sort it out.

  She turned slowly to face the girl, studied her shriveled body beside her, the color drained from her face, the shine of her hair dulled. She was watching Cora intently, obviously frightened. Perhaps she was not the threat Cora feared after all.

  At any rate, Cora need not make any decisions yet. She should wait for James to come. He would know what to do. He would make things right. Her mind was unruly, filled with impure thoughts but she must remember her vows, remember her duty. It was easy to forget when she thought of what she might lose. She must confess all to him and throw herself upon his mercy.

  If only James would come home.

  Before she strayed from the Path and killed this girl.

  CHAPTER 29

  Grim Stokes hadn’t been that hard to track down with Deirdre’s help. Turns out he’d stayed in Stillwater to take over the family business, a network of low-level drug operations and run-down strip clubs scattered along Highway 81. The elder Stokes having retired early to a comfortable spot in Cellblock A of the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Faribault, Grim had graduated from high-school weed dealer to local kingpin at a preternaturally young age. By all accounts he’d taken to it well and business was booming.

  His office was in the back of the fanciest topless bar in the tri-state area, the one with an actual standalone building at the intersection of a state and county road about five miles outside of town. The corrugated plastic sign out front was plastered over with red glow-in-the-dark letters that would have said ‘Scooters’ had the ‘c’ not fallen off. It was midday on a Tuesday so Adam hadn’t expected anyone to be in there, but the lot was full of late-model pickup trucks with tinted windows and off-color bumper stickers.

  The transition from the bright light of day into the dark bar blinded him for a few seconds, but when his eyes adjusted he braced himself and approached the bartender, an underfed girl in white cutoffs and a tank top tied suggestively in a knot just between her breasts. She wore a cowboy hat and her hair, brown with inexpertly dyed streaks of blond, was twisted into two giant, loose curls that dripped over her shoulders. Enormous lashes framed her chocolate-brown eyes and her lips glistened with pale pink gloss.

  ‘Hey, there, what can I do for you, mister?’ She winked at him with gross exaggeration.

  Adam forced a smile.

  ‘I’m looking for Grim Stokes. I was told I could find him here?’

  The woman stood up straight, looking serious all of a sudden.

  ‘He know you’re coming?’ she said, pointedly returning her attention to polishing the brass taps.

  ‘No, no, he doesn’t. Will you tell him I was, um, referred to him by Joy Marcione? An old friend.’

  The woman grudgingly gave up her task and turned to the regular snoozing two spots down from Adam.

  ‘Ray, I’ll be back. Can you mind the front?’ she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

  The long-haired man in the denim vest lifted his head just enough to grunt his assent, then lowered it back down onto his thick, heavily tattooed forearms.

  Two minutes later she returned, shaking her head at Ray, and picked up her bar towel.

  ‘He says he’ll see you,’ she said, eyeing Adam warily as she jabbed her thumb in the direction she’d come from.

  Adam made his way through the maze of chrome-plated chairs and lacquered tables scattered here and there in front of the stage. A few drunk souls had pulled up close to the main catwalk, where a barely legal bottle-blond slid her naked back up and down a pole, looking bored and distracted. Her eyes followed Adam, the youngest male in the bar by a couple of decades, but he kept his own firmly on his destination, a metal door in back painted the same glossy black as the walls.

  Before he got there, however, it swung open as if on its own, revealing an even darker cavern within. He took a step forward but before he could register the space he found a tightly muscled arm around his neck and the cold hard barrel of a revolver jammed up to his temple.

  Defenseless and unarmed, all he could do was yelp before his throat was too constricted for sound. Panicked, he tried to get his bearings. The windowless room was richly furnished with red-and-gold Turkish carpets and an outsized mahogany desk with turned legs and an intricate inlaid design. In an oversized leather chair behind it sat a tall man with gelled-back brown hair and a long beard, a cigarette in his ring-covered fingers. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up to reveal arms covered in tattoos.

  The man pinning Adam’s arms back must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds and was clad entirely in black leather. Another thug, virtually his twin, stood on the other side of the door. They both looked to the giant behind the desk for direction.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ said Grim calmly as he took a puff on his cigarette before stubbing it out in a ceramic ashtray in the shape of a swan.

  ‘Joy Marcione thought you might be able to help me.’

  The bouncer’s grip on Adam’s neck tightened.

  ‘Now why would that bitch tell anyone to do that? Unless she’s trying to get you killed. She trying to get you killed?’

  Adam shook his head no as best he could, given the circumstances.

  ‘Where is that sorry piece of shit these days?’ Grim continued. ‘I hope six feet underground, but she was just the type to squirm her way back to life even then. You can count on her to be the first to arrive at the zombie apocalypse.’ He stood up and walked around to the front of the desk, revealing stick legs swathed in tight super-skinny jeans and feet snug in bright orange low-rise sneakers.

  ‘She’s in prison, actually,’ he choked out.

  Suddenly, Grim smiled so wide it seemed his face might split open.

  ‘Prison. Even better. Best news I’ve had all day.’
He made an elegant gesture with his fingers in the air, as if he were tossing a hat in the air.

  ‘You’re Grim Stokes?’ Adam ventured.

  ‘How’d you guess?’ He nodded to the man to release him, but one guy felt him up for weapons first before the other would let go.

  ‘This dapper fellow doesn’t look like he can do much harm, now does he?’ Grim said to his guys. Adam was suddenly ashamed of his pale blue Oxford button-down and the jeans he’d bought five years ago. ‘Stick around, boys, maybe you’ll learn something.

  ‘What’s your name, kid?’

  ‘Adam Miller.’ The real one slipped out.

  ‘What business you got with Joy? Did she screw you out of a multimillion-dollar deal too? Or was she looking for fast cash?’ He scanned Adam up and down, trying to assess whether he was any kind of source for fast cash.

  ‘Neither. I’ve been trying to get some information about a triple murder, and I thought she could help.’

  The two guys stood up, moving in on him again. Adam had clearly said the wrong thing.

  ‘You a cop?’ Grim asked, his head cocked to one side. ‘’Cause generally speaking, cops identify themselves right off the bat. That’s only playing fair now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not a cop. N-n-no. Not strictly speaking.’ Adam thought he might be safer playing it straight with this guy. ‘I used to be. Got kicked off the force.’

  The goons eased off and Grim visibly relaxed.

  ‘So now what? You’re looking to make some money? Is that it? I have a couple of ex-cops working for me in fact. I happen to like them as a rule. They learn valuable skills in the academy, and then figure out I pay better.’

  The image of such a future flashed through Adam’s mind. Setting up house for good in Stillwater, working for a small-time drug dealer, spending weekends on a stool next to Ray out there, never calling his mother back. No, no, he’d never sink so low.

  ‘No, thanks. I told you. I’m investigating these murders.’

  ‘Even though you’re a civilian? So this is, like, unofficial? For fun? Or are you looking for revenge?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  ‘Okay,’ Grim said, accepting that and then seeming to mentally sort through a list, ‘which one?’

  ‘Reed Lassiter, Lila McIntyre, Johnny—’

  ‘Let me stop you right there,’ Grim said, stepping up to Adam with a finger in his face. ‘Because that one’s personal with me too. You know what I mean? Those were my peeps. Not just business acquaintances. This is serious territory you’re getting into.’

  Adam didn’t know what to say. He stood there, frozen.

  Grim stared at him for a moment, his eyes protruding from his sockets. Then he took a deep breath and slowly walked back to his chair. He motioned for Adam to sit in one of the wing-backs facing his desk.

  ‘Get outta here,’ Grim said abruptly to his tough guys. They cut out fast as lightning.

  Grim settled back into his chair and took out another cigarette but didn’t light it this time. He just held it, apparently forgotten, between his fingers.

  ‘I don’t think I can help you,’ he said finally. ‘I have no idea what happened.’

  ‘Joy thinks she knows who killed them,’ Adam blurted out, almost immediately regretting it.

  Grim’s brows knitted together.

  ‘Joy? Does she now? She tell you it was that Laura girl?’

  Adam hesitated. He didn’t know what kind of waters he was wading into. Somehow he didn’t think he should be providing information to his witnesses, but he’d already stepped in this one.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what she said,’ he admitted.

  ‘Laura. Now she was a special kind of character.’

  ‘How so?’ Finally, Adam might get somewhere.

  ‘Well, I never figured her out. Though you can’t say I didn’t try.’

  ‘You were friends with her?’ ‘Friends’ sounded so childish coming out of his mouth. As if they were in a playgroup together.

  ‘Not exactly. I mean, I knew her. She was in the crowd for a few months. We’d all hang out at Joy’s place sometimes, sometimes at the dam where I kept a little office of sorts, but we weren’t close. I liked to keep dibs on her, though. I had assets to protect.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Look at it this way. I had a little operation going on. It was pretty well known and I don’t deny it. Anyway, here’s this new girl drops in out of nowhere. No one knew where she was from, where she lived, what her deal was. I checked it out with my friend who worked in the school’s front office. No freaking records. Even had some kind of religious exemption for her medical form.

  ‘I never liked mysteries. Even back then, I made it my business to know what was up with people. Especially those my friends were hanging around with. I had this sinking feeling she was a narc and that I was on the verge of getting busted. So I followed her.’

  ‘And?’

  He shook his head, folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back.

  ‘She wasn’t a narc. No way. If she was, that was the deepest cover I’ve ever seen. In fact, funny thing was she was a real goody-two-shoes as far as I could tell. Nice girl, in a way, who got herself mixed up in the wrong crowd.

  ‘You see, I figured out where she lived, out at the RV camp on County Road 67, poked around a little bit. I had a client over there, old hippie lady who needed a steady supply of my – product, if you will, so I gave her some free samples to listen in, keep an eye on things. She moved her trailer right next door. She may or may not have gone through their garbage, looked through their mail.’ He smiled. ‘So I knew they were planning to skip town.’

  Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘I mean, I don’t know if they went there in the end. They’d been packing for a while before those murders, throwing a bunch of shit out. People weren’t as careful with their personal information back then, even people as careful as those two.’

  He sat back, stared off over Adam’s head. ‘Truth is, I always thought Joy had a hand in those killings. We were tight though and I had stupid ideas about trust and loyalty back then. I guess I’d seen River’s Edge too many times.’ He chuckled. ‘So it was convenient when the rumor mill blamed a girl who was about a thousand miles away by then. I kept my mouth shut and let it roll.’

  Adam could barely get the words out, his lips were trembling so with excitement.

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense,’ he said, attempting a joke. ‘Where were they going?’

  Grim leaned back, pulled out a pack of what appeared to be tobacco but probably wasn’t and started rolling a joint.

  ‘Now why should I tell you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? If I’m able to prove she did it, what do you care?’

  ‘That’s not the right question. Question is – what do you get out of it if you aren’t a cop anymore? What’s your angle?’

  ‘Maybe I get back on the force.’ Adam shrugged.

  Grim studied Adam’s face as if pondering some great mystery of life.

  ‘Really? You like putting people in jail that much, do you?’

  Adam blushed a deep crimson, thinking how he would have liked to have done it a little more often.

  ‘I see. Well, here’s the deal. I’ll tell you, but I want us to stay in touch, my friend. I never know when I might need a helping hand from one of our saviors in blue. That is, assuming you make it back into uniform. If you do, I trust you’ll remember the favor.’

  ‘I don’t see how I could help you.’

  ‘You never know, my friend. You never know.’ He seemed pleased with himself.

  Adam sat there for a moment, unsure. Was he willing to make a deal with the devil to keep this search going? He’d never before heard even the slightest hint about where they’d gone after the murders. He had to do it and then trust that Grim would never find him when the chips were down.

  ‘Okay. Deal.’

  Grim smiled for real this time.

 
; ‘Roanoke. That’s where they were off to. I remembered it because I dated a girl from there once. Laura’s dad had some people out there. A sister at least. Like I said, I don’t know if they went there. And whether they did or not, I’m sure they’re long gone now.’

  ‘Do you know the sister’s name?’

  ‘I heard it, I’m sure, but that was twenty years ago. Maybe if you said it I’d recognize it.’

  Adam shook his head. A dead end after all.

  ‘Would that hippie lady remember it?’

  Grim laughed.

  ‘Highly doubtful, given her daily intake of natural herb. You can give it a try though. She’s still there. Old as the hills, but the pot keeps her young. Name’s Jewel something-or-other. Can’t miss her shack, trust me. Be extra nice to her though, she’s still a steady customer.’

  As Adam crossed the parking lot and slid behind the wheel of his car, he berated himself for selling his soul for nothing. Roanoke. That did him no good without a name. He Googled it and found there were about a hundred thousand people in Roanoke. Now his entire case was in the hands of some doped-up old lady who lived in an RV park, who was never going to remember a name she’d pulled out of a garbage can twenty years ago.

  CHAPTER 30

  Cora crossed the creaking boards to the bureau where she’d left the scrap of paper she’d received that morning. A letter from James scribbled out on the back of a Quik-Mart receipt. His messages used to be mystical and mysterious. Now they were simple. He needed money.

  No surprise there, but when she read it in full her heart sank. Her instructions were to raise two hundred and fifty dollars – minimum – in the next two weeks and send it to a Western Union address in Lewiston, Idaho. So he would not be returning soon to lead her back to the Path. He would let her run adrift.

  Never mind. She knew she must do her duty, but where would she get that kind of money? Didn’t she have enough to struggle with already?

  She barely had what she needed to keep the farm functioning as it was, much less to set aside savings for the property taxes due in January. Once winter settled in, they’d have to buy feed for the animals. Plus, she hadn’t been able to cut enough firewood on her own this year, so she’d have to buy a cord at least from the neighbors down the road.