by Moriah Jovan
’Cause it was my job to make her happy.
She stuffed the blanket in a heavy black trash bag, then threw my shoes in there after them.
“Hey, those are almost brand new.”
“Buy another pair.”
“Giselle, are you mad at me?”
“No! I’m not mad at you, Knox. Stand up for a minute.”
I stood up, but when she went to unbutton my fly, I panicked and pushed her away. “Giselle! What are you trying to do? I’m going to the temple in September, remember?”
She stopped, stared at me, eyes wide and mouth open. “Fuck!” Then she pursed her lips and ripped my fly open, had me half naked before I could stop her.
“Giselle—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “Shut the fuck up and drink your juice before you end up in the emergency room. You know you’re not supposed to go that long without eating, you shithead.”
Oh, she really was mad and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.
She put my clothes in the same bag as the blanket and the shoes, and left with it. I just sat there on the toilet, buck naked, shivering, chugging orange juice until she came back, although if she thought she could seduce me, she had another think coming.
But she still had her clothes on. I bet she was plenty warm enough.
“Can you stand up for more than thirty seconds without falling over?”
I looked up at her, all mad and pretty. Pretty mad, anyway.
“Yes, Mother,” I sneered.
“Then get in the shower. Scrub until you don’t have any skin left.”
That took a while because the stupid skin just would not come off. But I did feel better and not cold anymore and besides, there wasn’t any more hot water.
I found Giselle’s yellow bathrobe and put it on— “Oh, fuck you, too,” I said to my smirking reflection. —walked through Giselle’s bedroom to her living room-kitchenette, and stopped short when I saw Sebastian pacing frantically, running his hands through his hair.
Giselle was sitting on the floor in front of the dishwasher, her head back, her eyes closed, her hands limp on either side of her. Her whole body shook with her sobbing.
“Knox!” Sebastian barked. I looked at him, confused. “Do you remember what happened tonight?”
“Yeah, I—” I stopped. Thought about that a minute. No, what had happened tonight? Why was I at Giselle’s? And on a work night. I looked at Sebastian. The room started to turn a bit. “I think—” Shit, now I was dizzy. I really should’ve eaten something. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
* * * * *
I woke up in Giselle’s bed.
I knew that was where I was because of the perfume and because her mattress was softer than mine. I kept begging to buy it from her, but she kept refusing.
I started to get a weird feeling about it all when I saw sunlight on the floor. I never slept past sunrise, even in the summer; it was a habit since I’d started surfing because I needed to be on my board paddling out by sunrise to get the best waves. I jerked over and looked at the clock.
“Shit.”
Nocek was going to tear my head off, and not figuratively, either. It was eleven o’clock in the morning—Thursday morning—and here I was, still sleeping. In River Market, a good twenty-five miles from Chouteau City.
I tried to clear my head, to start from the beginning, to figure out why I was where I was and when—
Empty your mind.
I barely made it to the bathroom before I puked.
I don’t know how long I sat there on the freshly bleached bathroom floor in front of the toilet, just in case, toothbrush in my hand, before Giselle appeared in the doorway. She looked at me, then at the toilet and murmured,
“I guess you remembered.”
I nodded.
“Everything?”
I nodded.
“Nocek’s looking for you.”
I nodded.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to do, Knox. Let you hide out here or make you go back to work like nothing happened. Thing is, if you stay here, people will think you cracked up after the verdict yesterday—not that anybody’d blame you. But if you go back to work, you might actually crack up and say something you shouldn’t.”
I stared at her. “You mean, they’re not looking for me because—”
“As far as I can tell, nobody knows anything except you’re AWOL.”
“My car is still at the courthouse.”
She shook her head. “Sebastian and I went and got it. It’s parked in front of your house like it’s supposed to be.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around it, any of it.
What I’d done.
What I’d have to do.
What would happen to me.
What I’d lost.
“Giselle,” I whispered as the enormity of it all began to drift down on me. “I murdered a man in cold blood.”
Her mouth tightened. “It wasn’t cold.”
“It wasn’t—”
“He needed to die,” she snarled so viciously I shrank away from her, but she followed me, got in my face. “I wanted you to let me do it so you wouldn’t have to go through this, so you could go to the temple and you could be the funny and sweet and warm Knox Hilliard I’ve always known. You’ve changed, Knox. Ever since you caught that case, you’ve been changing and it’s not pretty. I wish you had let me do this.”
I gaped at her, feeling every level of every implication of every word she said—and getting pissed off. “You wanted to protect me?”
“Yes! No! I don’t know! I wanted you back, Knox. I wanted the boy I grew up with. My best friend. I wanted him back.”
“Fuck you, Giselle!” I got to my feet, but I swayed because I still hadn’t eaten. She grasped my wrist to pull me out of the bathroom but I shook her off. “Fuck you, Giselle. You think you’re somehow more of a . . . badass—” Shit, I couldn’t think. Couldn’t find words. “—than I am and you need to protect me? Because I’m weaker than you are? Because you went tagging after St. Sebastian for years and then went to BYU and decided you were some kind of special super-secret ninja shit something? And that it’s your job to protect—everybody—and to hell with your soul because . . . why? Oh, so we can protect poor little Knox from the world? Because he’s just not as tough as you and St. Sebastian are? Because he’s the Dunham tribe’s cute little fuzzy golden retriever puppy? Golden retriever Knox, does exactly what he’s told, never talks back, never gets in trouble, never—”
“That’s enough, Knox.”
“Oh, look! It’s St. Sebastian, as I live and breathe.” I tried to make an elaborate bow, but it wasn’t working in the small bathroom.
“Giz, you’ve got a customer here to pick up a special order and Coco can’t find it. I’ll take care of him.”
“Oh, fuck you, you will not. I can take care of myself.”
But I couldn’t because as soon as Giselle turned away, I nearly fell over.
And St. Sebastian caught me.
“C’mon, pal,” he murmured as he wrapped my arm around his shoulder and led me into the kitchen. “You need to eat.”
I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to eat anything ever again.
“I hate to tell you this,” Sebastian said as he rummaged in the refrigerator and pulled out a casserole pan, then eyed me dubiously, “but yellow’s not your color.”
That made me laugh. A little. “So, what, you’re going to lecture me, too? That I should’ve let Giselle do my dirty work, clean up after me? As usual.”
He pursed his mouth and dumped a huge spoonful of a potato casserole into a dish. “Nope.”
That surprised me, but the casserole caught my attention. “You know what they call those in Utah, don’t you?” He looked up at me, surprised, and I gestured to the pan. “Funeral potatoes. That’s what they call ’em in Utah because the Relief Society serves it at all the funeral dinners. Not ‘favorite potatoes’ like we do. You’re feeding
me funeral potatoes. How freaky is that?”
Sebastian just stared at me, clearly unable to figure out how to respond to that. “You know, I don’t give a fuck what they’re called,” he finally said, turning away from me and dumping more into the bowl. “You like ’em and Giselle made ’em for you and you’re gonna eat ’em.” The beeps of the microwave buttons only undercut the tense silence. “As for lecturing you,” Sebastian said low as he busied himself wiping down the countertops. Fucking neat freak. “I can think of several hundred worse things than putting a serial killer in the ground. And you’re right, it wasn’t her job to do. It was yours.”
I started. “You— You don’t—”
“Knox, you saved at least twenty-three lives last night. Extrapolate that twenty-three to the people who loved them and what might have happened to their lives, having to live with that. You gave another nineteen people’s families and friends justice and maybe, closure. You start adding all those numbers up and it’s going to get into the mid three digits. You did the right thing. Not only was it your responsibility, it was your right. Not hers.”
I stared at Sebastian, shocked.
“What she wanted to protect you from,” he continued, “was this, the emotional fallout. Yeah, you are the good kid of the tribe, the perfect child. Okay, the golden retriever puppy. I see your point and it sucks. And now, going from that to . . . this. Yes, I’m proud of you, what you did, that you risked everything to do the right thing, but this is going to be a rough several years for you yet. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you, what the tribe will think, but Giselle and I will stand with you. I’ll hire the best defense lawyers in the country if it comes to that.”
Proud. But . . .
“I was going to go to the temple in September.”
It stabbed me in the chest. I wouldn’t be able to go now.
I’d murdered a man and, granted, while it wasn’t exactly one of the temple recommend questions, it’d fall under “unresolved issues” and how could I explain that?
Well, you see, Bishop Hooper, there was this serial killer who got acquitted . . .
Bishop Hooper, I brought in some photographs for you and a bit of the transcript of the medical examiner’s testimony . . .
I hate to do this to you, Bishop Hooper, but this is a list of his next twenty-three victims. Read all the names very carefully . . .
The microwave beeped and Sebastian turned, mixed up the potatoes into an unrecognizable mess and put it in front of me. Then he poured me a big mug of milk.
I opened my mouth—
“No orange juice.”
—and snapped it shut again.
Sebastian lazed at the table playing solitaire while I ate and listened to the faint noises of commerce going on downstairs.
“What happened to my clothes?”
“Burned,” Sebastian answered shortly.
I nodded. Didn’t know where, didn’t know how or when. It only mattered that it was done.
“Gun?”
“Gone.”
I looked at him, all calm sitting there looking at his cards like he had to think about it. “You do know that you’re just as guilty as I am now, right? I get the needle, so do you and Giselle.”
Sebastian nodded and played a card. “I guess that means you better keep your remorse and any potential confessions to yourself, doesn’t it?”
I stared at him, but he didn’t bother to look back at me.
“The tell-tale heart,” I muttered.
“That’s your life now. Get used to it.”
* * * * *
I finally called Nocek, expecting the worst—
“Good to hear from you, boy!”
—and nearly fell off the bed or dropped the phone or both.
“Sorry about what happened in court yesterday, but I’m sure you’ll be back up on your game in no time, right?”
My game? He hated my game. I almost always won and winning didn’t make Nocek any money. He hated me because of my game.
“Uh—”
“Say, why don’t you go ahead and take tomorrow off, too? Come back Monday. Spend the weekend getting all relaxed and whatnot.”
I actually pulled the phone away from my head to look at it. I thought people only did that in sitcoms for comic effect. “Uh—”
“You ain’t been watching the news, haveya?”
“Uh, no. No, sir.”
“Found Parley dead.” My stomach lurched. “Execution-style murder. The press is all over it. You know, Hilliard,” he said slowly, his voice suddenly dropping half a scale, “everybody loves a vigilante.”
“Um . . . Okay?” I whispered, confused, disoriented, unable to form a coherent sentence that would contribute to the conversation.
“Even the feds love a vigilante.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Yeah, I knew he was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t figure out what right then.
“So why don’t you stay wherever it is you’re stayin’, get laid or sumpin’, come back Monday ready to roll out on another good-sized case, ’cause you know, boy, I always knew you’d come through and do some really good work for me one of these days.”
I was lying awake in bed, looking up at the ceiling, my forearm across my forehead.
Empty your mind.
Yeah, I liked that. It wasn’t too bad, really.
Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Slow, easy.
Maybe there was something to that special super-secret ninja shit.
Concentrate on relaxing one joint at a time, starting in your toes. Keep breathing.
I don’t know how long I laid there like that, but Decadence had closed two hours ago. Maisy and Coco were just leaving. I heard Giselle on the stairs, then coming through the door, locking the door behind her, walking across the living room to the bedroom, across the bedroom to the bathroom—all without saying a word to me.
I wondered if I’d lost my best friend in the world because I didn’t want her to protect me.
The shower began and I listened, but really, I started to remember all the times she’d watched my back, covered for me and taken punishment for things I’d done because no one in the tribe would believe I was that obnoxious—
—or because whatever she did would get blamed on Sebastian and he’d just take it like it was his due.
Perhaps it was just natural for her to think she needed to protect me, and I hated that.
The Dunham tribe’s golden retriever. Fetch, Knox. Carry, Knox. Sit up, Knox. Roll over, Knox. Shake hands, Knox. Good boy, Knox. Here’s your treat.
With the requisite scratch on the head.
The covers whooshed and the bed shifted.
Ah, so she wasn’t mad enough at me to give up a good night’s sleep on her perfect mattress. I almost had to smile.
Empty your mind.
I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close in to me, where she’d been half my life, and she yawned. “It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sorry, Giselle,” I whispered, unable to figure out how I could ever express my gratitude for her help, because I’d surely be dead or behind bars right now without it.
She patted me. “Justice has a very high price,” she whispered. “Some people are just more willing to pay it than others. And whether you get caught or not, you’ll be paying for the rest of your life.”
I sighed. “Eternity.”
She said nothing for a moment. “There is something to that ‘instrument of the Lord’s vengeance’ thing, yanno.”
“That’s your special super-secret ninja shit talking.”
“Kenpo.”
“Whatever.”
“For what it’s worth, I think Porter Rockwell would have been very proud of you.”
I stopped breathing, but my heart continued to pound long after Giselle went to sleep.
* * * * *
I didn’t make it back to Chouteau County Monday.
Or for the next two months, after
Governor Carnahan suspended me with pay.
I don’t know how anyone made the connection between me and the murder, considering my golden retrieverishness. A fiber in the back seat of his car, maybe. A hair or six. A witness to my furtive dash out the back of the courthouse.
Sheriff Raines taking a mad stab in the dark just to be ornery, possibly.
Didn’t matter anyway.
Parley was dead.
Executed.
I spent weeks in and out of federal prosecutor John Riley’s office being, by turns, interrogated, interviewed, and conversed with. I knew what Riley was doing; I’d done it myself a time or two. Make it look good for the bosses. He wanted nothing to do with me.
On the X axis, Riley was caught between his bosses, who wanted to send a message that vigilante justice would not be tolerated, and law enforcement, who needed the hope of vigilante justice and would protect, at all costs, any cop or officer of the court who’d taken a real bite out of crime.
On the Y axis, Riley was caught between a guilt-ridden vigilante and a county full of people that now felt safe because of him.
He knew what I wanted to do: Confess. Stand trial. Go to prison.
Because that was what I deserved. It would take the edge off my guilt a little.
Riley did not want that.
I knew it. He knew I knew it.
If it weren’t for the fact that my family, my best friends, would go down with me, I would’ve anyway. They didn’t seem to have a problem with it and I started to understand the vastness of the emotional, experiential, philosophical chasm between me and them. I’d never known just how cold they could be and they scared me a little, really.
It was a political nightmare for Riley and he would have rather just pretended I didn’t exist. In the end, he let the bumbling cops and careless forensics people do his dirty work for him, though he never phrased it that way—and they were only too happy to take the subtextual blame.
Even if I hadn’t done it, the county would have pinned it on me because, as Giselle had said, I had changed. I didn’t know that. I hadn’t noticed that I’d stopped laughing and entertaining my littlest cousins, stopped hanging out with my generally happy family, stopped doing fun things with my best friends and my other cousins in our general age group.