Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “Yeah,” Rochelle said, and just like that, all the magic was gone. “I heard. It’s really upsetting. Poor thing.”

  “Well, a bunch of guys from the sheriff’s department were out at Macho Taco today,” Stacy said. “They were . . . questioning everybody. And I found out that she had my job. I mean, my exact job. She worked the drive-through at Macho Taco. That was probably why there was an opening. And I kept thinking, tonight . . . what if she met the guy there? I kept looking at all the guys coming through the line tonight and . . . wondering. She was only eighteen. Could one of those guys have done that to her? Was I looking right at him? She even looked like me. What if . . . what if he picked her up after her shift, or something? And then . . .”

  That one made Travis’s blood run cold. That girl had worked where Stacy was now? That wasn’t good. Probably somebody the girl was dating, he told himself. Probably nothing to do with it. But still. There Stacy was, working that window, riding her bike home alone. It just didn’t feel . . . safe.

  He saw something flicker across Rochelle’s face. Concern. Alarm. And then she was holding Stacy’s hand, and he could all but see her shoving her own feelings back and focusing on her sister.

  “Not likely,” she said robustly. “How many of them have you gone out with? Thirty seconds to pick up his tacos—not gonna happen. It would have been somebody she met in a bar, something like that, because those uniforms aren’t that flattering. I think it’s the hat.”

  Stacy’s eyes flew up to meet her sister’s, and Rochelle’s hand gripped hers more tightly.

  “Hey,” Rochelle said gently. “It’s going to be OK. They’ll find out who did it. It’s one guy. Probably somebody she was seeing, somebody completely unconnected to where she worked. It won’t turn out to be that complicated.”

  Travis sure hoped she was right.

  THE WORKS OF SATAN

  Stacy had been working the drive-through with half her attention. In between customers, she was listening to Jim Lawson questioning the other girls. The sharp-dressed guy without a uniform was in the manager’s office, and Mark Lawrence, the younger deputy, was in a corner taking notes.

  It was exciting, like a cop show. At first.

  “So did Heather talk to anybody in particular?” Jim was asking. “Any regulars who’d spend a little extra time at the window when she was working it?”

  “We’re supposed to move them through fast.” That was Tammy Armstrong, a thin brunette who always wore her hair scraped painfully tightly into a bun and seemed to have come from a family so religious, she’d probably never broken a rule in her life. Not even ‘no chewing gum.’

  Jim scratched the back of his head and looked around at the rest of the girls. “Well, yeah. But you know, guys might sometimes hang around an extra minute or two and pass the time of day. And if you’re not busy . . . Was she the kind of girl they’d do that with?”

  His gaze landed on Emily Yarborough, who’d been a few years ahead of Stacy in school. “Yeah?” Jim asked her, because he must have seen something on Emily’s round, sweet face. “She was?”

  “I didn’t notice much,” Emily said. “But sometimes . . . Maybe.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Anybody you knew?”

  “Well,” she said, “maybe that’s why I noticed them in particular, because I knew them.”

  “Who did you recognize?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to get them in trouble,” she said. “I mean, nobody did anything. They just talked to her, maybe. Like you said. Just for a minute.”

  “Sure,” he said easily. “We’re just trying to get a picture of her life. Find out who she knew.”

  No, you aren’t, Stacy thought. You’re looking for the guy who murdered her and dumped her body in Cal Jackson’s ditch. That was when it stopped being exciting and became something else.

  “Well,” Emily said. “Maybe Dave Harris. Danny Boyle. Like that. They’re married, I know,” she hastened to say. “It was nothing, just talking. And they didn’t come in that often anyway, because it was summer.”

  Stacy froze. No. It couldn’t be those guys. She knew those guys. No.

  It wouldn’t be them, though. They wouldn’t have had time to see even their families, let alone . . . somebody else. Not during harvest, and the busy weeks leading up to it. Not during the season when anyone working on a farm had the least free time.

  “Anybody else?” Jim asked. Emily hesitated, and Jim asked again, “Who? You’re not accusing them of anything. You’re just giving us a starting point.”

  Like hell, Stacy thought. No.

  “Maybe . . . Miles Kimberling,” Emily said reluctantly, a fiery blush traveling up her pale skin. She had a crush on him, Stacy realized. Miles wasn’t married, and he wasn’t a hired man like the other two. His dad was one of the big farmers, friends with Cal and Luke Jackson’s dad. Miles had a wild side, though, and a reputation. But Miles was . . . he was nice. And she knew him. Better than the others, because he was younger, between her age and Rochelle’s.

  Dave Harris . . . Miles . . . She saw their faces in her mind, drifting in and out. In . . . in flashes.

  A car pulled up, and she was turning back to the window and taking the order, trying hard to get herself under control, not to shake.

  The pansies. Rochelle’s shower curtain, mildewed now, because Rochelle hadn’t taken it when she’d left Lake.

  The night when she’d woken up in the ER without remembering . . . it had to have been that night.

  Another flash. Somebody had been laughing, saying, “. . . like ’em that way. If they’re not conscious, they can’t bitch about what you do. Good times.”

  That had been Dave Harris. She knew it. At Lake’s.

  Rochelle would kill her.

  All Stacy had to do was not tell that one piece, though, and Rochelle would never know. Stacy would never go out there again. She’d keep out of it.

  The customer pulled away, and she tried not to listen, but she couldn’t help it. “What about her behavior?” Jim was asking. “Anything you noticed? She ever complain about anything? Seem troubled? Call in sick?”

  Emily looked at the other girls, opened her mouth, then closed it again. Stacy hadn’t known Heather, but she’d heard things. She held still, tried to shrink into herself so nobody would notice her, and waited for what the girls would say.

  “You can’t get her in trouble now,” Jim said. “We’re trying to catch her killer. Whatever she did, she didn’t deserve to die for it.”

  Tammy said impatiently, “Well, maybe. But maybe she did things that made her more likely to get killed.”

  Stacy went even more rigid at that, but so did everyone else. That was just . . . mean. That was just wrong.

  Jim didn’t seem surprised, though. He looked at Tammy. “What kinds of things?” he asked her.

  “None of us knew her that well,” Tammy said. “She wasn’t here that long, and she was pretty trashy.”

  Like it had been Heather’s fault. Like nothing bad could happen to Tammy, because she was good. But it didn’t work that way. Stacy might feel like she didn’t know anything half the time, but at least she knew that.

  “All I can tell you is,” Tammy went on, “she took a lot of bathroom breaks. Way more than she was entitled to. And that one day, that last day she worked? When I went in there after her? There was something in the garbage.”

  “How did you find that?” That was Angie Johnson, who was a little older, a lot tougher, and reminded Stacy of Rochelle. “You snooped through the trash? Nice.”

  “Of course I didn’t.” There were two spots of color high up on Tammy’s thin cheeks now. “I was . . . I had to throw something away.” She glanced at Jim, then away again.

  “Just say you had your period,” Angie said with disgust. “All right, you’re pure. We get it.”

  “What did you see?” Jim asked. “And was this . . .” He flipped back through his notebook. “August twenty-second, Saturday?”

  “I
don’t know what day,” Tammy said. “The last day she worked, because I remember afterwards thinking, maybe that was why she didn’t come back. And I never said it was hers. I just said I saw it. We’re required to cooperate, and I’m cooperating. Unlike some people.”

  “What did you see?” Angie said. “A fifth of whisky? A Baggie of white powder labeled ‘Cocaine’? A copy of the Works of Satan? What?”

  Tammy glared at Angie. “A pregnancy test, that’s what. And the line was blue.”

  Long seconds ticked by before Emily said in a small voice, “She said something. That night. When we were closing.”

  “What did she say?” Jim asked. When she hesitated, he added, “As exactly as you can remember it. The exact words can help.”

  “I didn’t know what it meant at the time,” Emily said. “She was leaving. We were walking out.”

  “And what did she say?” Jim asked again.

  “She said . . .” Emily took a deep breath. “Something like, ‘That bastard is going to get me out of this. He can’t afford not to, and I’m going to tell him so.’ I didn’t know she was . . . pregnant. I thought she just meant out of here, you know. Not working here anymore. She told me she was only going to be staying for a while. At first. She was really cheerful at first. Normal. And then, at the end . . . she wasn’t. I thought . . . I thought the same thing as Tammy, afterwards, sort of. That that was why she didn’t come back, that she’d found something better, or it was about that guy.” She looked at Jim, then. “Do you think the guy was . . . do you think he might have been married?”

  CHOICES

  Rochelle sat and listened while Stacy told a halting story. About the girl who’d worked the drive-through. Who might have been pregnant, and who might have been killed for it, and her baby along with her.

  To find out a woman was pregnant with your baby, and to kill both of them? How could a man do that? Rochelle knew how. She knew better. She knew a man could do worse than that, and still, it shook her to the bone.

  “Whoa,” she said when Stacy had finished telling them the story. “That’s . . . that’s terrible.” It was an inadequate response, and she knew it, but she didn’t trust herself to say more.

  “Do you think . . .” Stacy hugged herself, “that’s who killed her? The baby’s father? If she really was pregnant?” It had shaken Stacy as much as Rochelle. At least as much, because she’d heard it. Rochelle put an arm around her little sister and tried to think what to say.

  “Sounds likely,” Travis said.

  “And those guys Emily mentioned,” Stacy said. “Those are . . .”

  “Yeah,” Rochelle said, and took a breath. “They sure are.” She told Travis, “They’re some of my ex’s buddies.”

  “But nobody said his name,” Stacy said. “Lake’s. Nobody said anything about him.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Rochelle said. Get it together. For Stacy. “But not too surprising. He doesn’t like Mexican food. Too many suspicious ingredients.”

  Travis glanced at her in surprise, and she explained, “You know. Cumin. Cilantro. Scary herbs and spices.”

  He smiled at that, and she went on for Stacy’s benefit, “And like I said, somebody flirting a little at the drive-through? What does that prove? Just about nothing. I’m sure that’s what Jim Lawson’s thinking.”

  Still, it was . . . it was awful to think that somebody you’d known—or even somebody you’d barely met—could be a murderer.

  It couldn’t be, though. It had to be somebody else, because she knew those guys.

  They sat another minute while Rochelle tried to think of something else to say, something more comforting, but she hadn’t thought of it yet when Travis said, “You’re cold, Stacy. We should go.”

  He was right. The night was still plenty warm, but Stacy was definitely shivering. Travis signed the receipt, closed the leather envelope over it, and tucked his credit card back into his wallet. “You know that thing about me defending the Marks sisters’ honor?” he said. “I’m also pretty good at putting their bikes in the back of my truck and driving them home. You get almost as many points for that, and it’s so much easier.”

  Which made Stacy smile, and which was nice of him, especially considering that this was the second time his date with Rochelle had ended up including her sister.

  Stacy didn’t say much during the drive, and when Travis had pulled to a stop outside the house and had lifted her bike out of the truck, she shivered, said, “Thanks. I’m going to go take a shower,” and wheeled it around to the back of the house without another word.

  Rochelle stood and looked after her, then said, “I need to talk to her. And this would be a good night to have a talk about birth control, maybe. After that shower.”

  She’d looked in Stacy’s underwear drawer the previous weekend, and her sock drawer and bedside table, too, and hadn’t found anything but underwear and socks. She hadn’t found birth control pills, either. Could that be the reason for Stacy’s moodiness? Oh, no.

  “I’d say you’re right,” Travis said. “And this is where I count myself lucky that my parents took care of all of this . . . well, parenting, for lack of a better word, for my younger sisters. Remind me again why you’re in charge.”

  “You’re wondering if I’ve told my folks I’m worried about her.” She leaned against the side of the truck, and he leaned back beside her, seemingly content to stay there. Standing still, as always. There was no fidget to Travis. “No,” she said. “I haven’t. They know that she’s moved in with me, but I didn’t tell them why. That she . . .” She took a breath, then admitted it, what she hadn’t told anybody. “She overdosed, the night before I met you again. Pills and alcohol. Bad enough for the ER.”

  Silence for a moment, then, “That’s not good.”

  “No. She said it was one time, but I doubt it.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “Words to cling to. ‘I’ll pull out,’ and ‘It was just one time.’”

  She smiled in spite of her concern. “So if you say that, I shouldn’t believe you?”

  “Definitely not. Because I’ll be lying for sure. No way I’d be able to do that.”

  “Just . . .” Hold that thought, she didn’t say. “Anyway. She lost her great job, too, and she didn’t seem worried enough about it. Maybe I overreacted, but I don’t think so. She seems awfully shaky. Also, as you know, I hate her boyfriend. Slimy SOB.”

  “Don’t hold back. Let it out.”

  “Thanks. I believe I will.”

  “But,” he said, “you haven’t mentioned any of that to your folks.”

  “No. Because . . .” He was standing so close, both of them turned a bit toward each other, and now, she reached out a hand and drew the backs of her fingers a couple inches down his chest. Just wanting to touch him, to . . . ground herself. She looked at her hand without really seeing it and said, “It’s my dad, mostly. He’ll be so disappointed if she doesn’t make it. And the overdose . . . no. She’s the smart one. She’s the hope.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he said, his voice deep and quiet in the darkness. Despite the lingering heat, there were clouds across the moon tonight, and a heaviness in the air that spoke of rain coming, the kind of cloudburst that would have been a threat during harvest, but was a welcome relief now.

  “Well, thanks,” she said. “But let’s say that college didn’t seem like an option for me.”

  “You said six of you. And I’m trying to talk about this, by the way. Even though you’ve got your hand on me.”

  “Oh.” She took it off, and his own hand shot out and trapped it there.

  “No,” he said. “Leave it. I’m loving it. And tell me. Six of you.”

  Most men wouldn’t have stood outside her house in the dark and asked her to recite her list of siblings, but then, Travis wasn’t most men. She’d already figured that out. So she obliged.

  “One other sister,” she said. “Faye, next oldest to me. The one who’s in town, but that doesn’t help m
uch. She worked to put her husband through school, and now she’s enjoying the benefits. Nice house, nice car, and one son who has way too much of her focus and way too many video games. That boy’s going to be a lawyer or a doctor, or maybe a dope fiend if she pushes him over the edge. She’s not going to look out for Stacy. Not a chance.”

  He didn’t say anything, and she went on. “And then the twins. They joined the Army together after high school. One’s a staff sergeant now.” Her palm was flat on Travis’s chest now, and his own hand lay over hers, holding it there. “That’s Bill. He’s like you. Solid. I missed him like hell when he left. Then there’s Aaron. He joined up because Bill did, because the two of them were tight like that. Aaron . . .” She took a ragged breath. “He was going to go to college, but he didn’t make it home from Afghanistan. The Army was supposed to be his ticket, but it punched it instead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Travis said. His chest was warm, and so was his hand, and she kept going.

  “Bill’s career military,” she said, “and it kills my folks, but they’re so proud of him. And then there’s Mike, just older than Stacy, who’s working on a farm over near Yakima right now. He turned out a bit . . . wild. Hard to control, always. So you see how Stacy’s it. Stacy and Bill.”

  “And you,” he said.

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat. Too much emotion tonight, too much worry. And touching Travis, talking to Travis, was too much comfort. She couldn’t keep it cool. She couldn’t keep her distance. “Oh, well, I’m a little disappointing, too. Divorced, you know. Bill’s married. Got two kids.”

  “Do your folks really think it’s a competition?” he asked. “Because mine wouldn’t.”

  “No,” she said. “No. Of course not. But you don’t know.” No question, the tears were there, now, right behind her eyes. “How hard they worked. How hard they tried. How my dad would change into his church clothes before every single parent-teacher conference for sixsix kids, slick down his hair, go in, and ask all those questions. The doctors and lawyers didn’t always go for their kids, but my parents did. You don’t know how much they wanted us to have a chance to do better, and how proud they were when Stacy graduated from high school with that scholarship. If she doesn’t make it . . .” She had to breathe the thought back. “It’ll break their hearts. Especially my dad’s. I can’t let that happen. And I can’t give them something else to worry about. Not if I can help it.”