by Amy Engel
TWO
It’s never the thing you’re expecting that wallops you. It’s always something sneaky, sliding up behind you when your attention’s fixed on something else. How many times had my mama told us that growing up? One tiny tidbit of valuable insight in her otherwise alcohol- and drug-fueled existence. The lesson learned from her own father, who suffered from a bum ticker, his every hiccup or wheeze a sure sign of impending death. Until the day stomach cancer crept up out of nowhere and snuffed him out before his heart knew what was happening. When I was a kid, my mama doled out wisdom so rarely that I clutched onto this nugget like a lifeline. Spent my time trying to foresee every single disaster that might befall us in hopes that nothing could catch us unawares. And when my daughter was born, I had anticipated a million ways my clawing, desperate love for her could go sideways: SIDS or choking on a piece of hot dog when Junie was little; a car accident or childhood leukemia as she grew; some dangerous older boy or her grandmother’s taste for drugs reaching down through the generations now that she was approaching her teenage years. But her throat slit in the park where she’d played as a little girl? No, that was never a horror story I had entertained. Not in this small, middle-of-nowhere town, where if you didn’t know someone you at least knew their kin, who they belonged to, where they came from. All of this was my fault, really. Because if I’d had a little more imagination, stolen the idea before the universe had grabbed on to it, maybe my girl would still be alive.
“Where is she?” I asked, head resting against the passenger window. Outside the daylight was fading fast, leaving a streak of orange sunset burning behind the clouds. Buildings blurred past as we drove down the pitted two-lane highway that served as the center of town: the general store with its uneven pyramid of toilet paper in the window, the whitewashed brick bank building turned a dirty gray over time, the sub shop where no one actually ate unless they wanted to flirt with food poisoning. How was I still here, in this forgotten, dead-end place that couldn’t even boast of nostalgic charm? No quaint town square, no sidewalks to stroll down on spring days, no vintage shops selling handmade treasures, only a random collection of dilapidated buildings spread along the edge of the highway and a tired, dirty sameness to everyone and everything. Why hadn’t I left and taken Junie with me? What had I been waiting for? Something rose up in my throat, vomit or tears, but I swallowed it down. Not now, I told myself. Later.
“She’s at the funeral home,” Cal said, eyes on the road, hands gripping the wheel with white knuckles. He paused, then gave it to me straight, the way he always had. “Waiting for the medical examiner. They both are.”
He’d already told me Izzy was dead, too, and I was working hard to wrap my mind around it. How two twelve-year-old girls could be alive and laughing this morning and not breathing a few hours later. It was a cliché that they’d had their whole lives ahead of them, but it had also been the truth. I didn’t understand how my daughter, whose presence lit up a room, whose life made mine bearable, could be dead. Shouldn’t the world have stopped spinning the moment she left it?
Cal pulled up right in front of the funeral home, in the space usually reserved for the hearse. The entrance was flanked with faux pillars in an attempt to give the place a distinguished air and distract from the fact it was a crappy cinder block building set on a cracked asphalt lot. Not the kind of place anyone would choose to say their final good-byes. Cal turned off the engine, the early evening suddenly bathed in quiet. When he turned to look at me, his face was pale and grim. “Can you do this?” he asked. “Because you don’t have to. Not right now.”
But I was already pushing out of the passenger side. “I can do it,” I said over my shoulder. Truth was, I didn’t know if I could. But moving forward felt like my only option. Sitting still would kill me, would give reality a chance to settle down beside me and sink its teeth in, all the way to the bone. I didn’t want to contemplate, even for a second, my life without Junie in it. How empty it would be from now on. How pointless.
There was another deputy waiting for us just inside the door, hat held in front of his beer-habit belly. John Miller, who I’d known my whole life, who’d let me sit in the back of his squad car to keep warm when the cops had showed up to search my mama’s trailer for meth. Once a year like clockwork and always drove away empty-handed. My mama may have been ignorant, but she was never, ever stupid. But today Deputy Miller acted like he’d never seen me before, said “Sure am sorry” in a low voice, and kept his gaze somewhere to the left of my shoulder. It didn’t bother me any, even though I could feel Cal stiffening up next to me. I didn’t want to look into Miller’s eyes, either, to see the pity and horror there. Wanted to keep pretending this was a particularly lucid nightmare I’d wake up and tell Junie about, snuggled with her on her narrow bed. I’d hug her too tight and she’d squirm away, telling me not to worry.
“Sheriff’s waiting for you on back in the bereavement room,” Miller said, clapped one hand on Cal’s shoulder as we walked past. I stumbled a little, small enough that no one else would have noticed, but Cal put out a hand, gripped me around the elbow. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “We’re all on the same team now.”
Sheriff Land and I would never be on the same team, not if we both lived for a thousand years. But I couldn’t tell Cal that, couldn’t ever look him in the eye and explain why. If he knew what I’d done, he’d never forgive me. And even worse, he’d never forgive himself. I nodded and followed him toward a closed door at the end of the hall. Cal hesitated with the knob in his hand, my last chance to back out, and then pushed the door open when I motioned him forward. He stood aside so I could go in first. The room was small, overheated, and crowded with too many bodies, even though there were only three already inside. Sheriff Land and Izzy’s parents, Jenny and Zach. I don’t know why their presence surprised me. Maybe the realization that we were going to be a matched, albeit uneven, set from now on. The parents of the dead girls. Forever lumped together. Pitiful cautionary tales.
“Come on in,” Sheriff Land said, oversized gray mustache quivering on his lip. His hair was slicked back, covering the beginning of a bald patch I knew had to be killing him. My stomach cramped and I looked away. “Take a seat.” And a beat too late, “Hate that you have to be here,” as if he was only now remembering why I was in the room. As if the fact that I had a murdered daughter, too, had somehow slipped his mind.
I slid into the empty seat next to Zach, who gave me a quick glance with wide, shocky eyes. His bland dad handsomeness had morphed into something terrible, and I wondered if I was just as altered. If I would no longer recognize myself next time I looked in the mirror. He had the same button-down shirt and khaki pants, straight teeth and premature gray at his temples, that I was used to seeing. But his face was haunted now, the ghost of his daughter’s absence etched across his features. On the other side of him, Jenny wept ceaselessly. All I could see was the top of her sleek, dark hair, her head tilted down and her sobbing muffled behind a clump of sodden Kleenex. From the soft way Sheriff Land looked at her, I could tell that Jenny, at least, had gotten the grieving-mother role exactly right. Not like me, who couldn’t seem to lay a hand on my own tears yet, but felt them bottled up and howling just behind my eyes.
Sheriff Land took the seat across from us, pushing a dusty arrangement of fake flowers to the side to give himself an unimpeded view. Cal took up a position leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. “Well, now,” Sheriff Land said, “I know this is difficult. And I sure do hate to ask you folks questions at a time like this, but the more we know and the earlier we know it, the better our chances of catching this guy.”
“You know it’s a guy?” I asked, hands knotting on the tabletop.
Sheriff Land paused. “We don’t know anything for certain at this point. But this kind of crime, the way they were killed . . .” He shook his head. “Be unusual for a woman, that’s all.”
I thought that was the dumbest thing I’
d ever heard. Women might not act out as often as men, but they were capable of anything, could be as awful and vicious as men when they wanted to be. I knew firsthand the violence that could live inside women. “Were they raped?” I asked. “Is that why you’re sure it was a man?” Land’s face tightened up. He didn’t like my talking, interrupting the picture of how this was going to go that he’d already worked out inside his own head. Sheriff Land loved being in control, making everyone dangle on his string. On the other side of Zach, Jenny sucked in a breath, a low moan escaping on her exhale. Zach reached over and patted Jenny’s arm, shot me a warning look that took me by surprise.
“What?” I said. “Am I not supposed to ask things like that? Are there rules in this situation that I’m not aware of?” Anger simmered inside me, anger I’d been careful with for years. Not wanting to give anyone a reason to look down on my daughter. But now it didn’t matter anymore. Didn’t matter if I was a smart-ass or got in fights or acted a fool. Junie was gone and I could let it all spill out. I couldn’t think of a better place to start than right here in this room.
Land cleared his throat, glanced over his shoulder at Cal.
“No,” Cal said from his spot against the wall. “No rules.” He caught my gaze, held it. “We won’t know anything for certain until the medical examiner gets here. But from what we can tell, it doesn’t look like they were raped. Clothes were intact.”
I nodded, looked at Land, and waited for him to continue.
“We’re wondering if the girls talked about anybody new lately? Someone they’d met? Anything different with their routines? Demeanors? Anything stand out to you folks at all?”
I scrolled through the last few weeks, searching the corridors of my own memory and coming up with nothing. “I can’t think of anything,” I said finally. “Junie seemed like her regular self.”
“Izzy was fine, too,” Zach said, his voice hoarse with tears. “As far as I know.”
We all looked at Jenny, who nodded her agreement. “I don’t understand,” she said, from behind her fistful of tissues. “It was a stranger, wasn’t it? I mean, someone from another place? No one from here would do something like this.”
Spoken like the unofficial ambassador of Barren Springs, I thought. Even now defending the reputation of a town that didn’t deserve it. “Well, now,” Sheriff Land said, “we don’t get a lot of tourists or out-of-towners this time of year. We’re not assuming anything, but we’ve got to take a look at local folks, too.”
Truth be told, we didn’t get many tourists or out-of-towners any time of year, unless you counted people stopping for a tank of gas on their way to greener pastures. Generally someplace closer to one of the lakes that drew people to this part of the world in the first place. And I seriously doubted those people would know how to find the dilapidated town park or be interested in going there in the middle of a snowstorm. Land might not be ready to assume anything, but I sure as hell was. My daughter and Izzy had been killed by someone local, someone whose face they probably recognized. Something ached deep down in my gut, and I wasn’t sure if my daughter knowing the person who’d taken her life made Junie’s last moments better or worse.
“All right,” Land said, leaning back in his chair, hands steepled on the table in front of him. “What about people hanging around the girls? Notice anyone driving by your houses? Maybe the same face showing up when you were out?” He looked from me to Zach and then Jenny. “Nothing like that?”
“This town has less than a thousand people,” I pointed out. “I see a lot of the same people over and over.” I flicked a hand toward Zach and Jenny. “They probably do, too.” I knew my attitude wasn’t helping, wasn’t doing the hunt for Junie’s killer any favors. But I didn’t know how to sit across from Land and act like we were anything less than adversaries. Our roles had been written in stone a long time ago.
Land sighed. “All right, then. What about Jimmy Ray? You seen him lately?”
I stared at Land, our gazes locked. “No,” I said, voice even. “I haven’t seen him.” I paused. “Have you?”
Land’s brow furrowed. “Now, listen—”
“Who’s Jimmy Ray?” Zach asked. “Did he have something do to with this?” This question, more than anything else he could have said, cemented Zach’s status as an outsider. It didn’t matter that he’d lived in Barren Springs for more than a decade, volunteered with the fire department, and had married Jenny Sable. If you were born in this town, if you really belonged, you knew everyone else. Simple as that.
“He’s just a local loser,” Jenny said, nose stuffy. “Jimmy Ray Fulton. You’d know him if you saw him. He’s got the truck with the loud muffler you always complain about.”
“Jimmy Ray’s her ex,” Land said, hooking his thumb at me without bothering to glance my way. “Runs a meth operation her mama’s a part of.”
“Ex-boyfriend, not husband,” Cal supplied, as if that distinction was going to make a damn bit of difference to the Logans.
“Meth?” Zach said, like he’d never heard the word before. “Did he say meth?” His eyes skated around the room looking for an answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Meth. You know, this part of the world’s little cottage industry. Or at least it used to be. I’ve heard Jimmy Ray’s branching out into heroin these days. Going after the serious money. That what you hear, too, Sheriff?” I swung my gaze to Land. From the corner of my eye I could see Cal staring at me, could imagine the look on his face. Who is this smart-mouth woman? Where has she been hiding all these years? I thought she was gone for good. I, for one, was relieved she’d made a reappearance. The Junie’s-mom version of me wasn’t going to make it through this. But maybe the old, hard-edged Eve Taggert had a shot at surviving.
“I don’t understand,” Jenny said. She looked from me to Land. “You think Junie’s father might have had something to do with this?” I could hear the accusation in her voice, and underneath it the total lack of surprise. No one would want to hurt Izzy, no animal who would cut a girl’s throat was part of the Logans’ neat and tidy lives. So it had to be Junie. She’d brought this on their daughter, not the other way around. The worst part was I thought Jenny was probably right.
“Jimmy Ray’s not her father,” I said, voice hard. “And he wasn’t involved. Even he has standards.” Honestly, I had some doubt about Jimmy Ray’s standards, or lack thereof, but I needed to believe he wasn’t capable of something like this.
For a moment no one spoke, the buzz from the fluorescent lights like a jackhammer inside my head. “What about her actual father, then?” Land said finally. “What’s his story? Could he have been involved?”
“No,” I said, nothing more.
“He live around here?” Land pressed.
I sighed, knew he was doing this for the benefit of the Logans. Land was already well aware of my status as a tried-and-true single mother. “Nope,” I said. “It was one time. He was passing through town. A fuck-and-run, I think they call it.” Zach stiffened up next to me, and I felt a cheap thrill at having shocked him.
“Never saw him again?” Land said.
Memories of that single night flashed through my mind: dark, tousled hair and big-city dreams; equal parts wild and sweet and my back scraped raw on the edge of the diner’s countertop; the hand he’d laid on my cheek before he drove away. I pushed the memories back where they belonged. “I haven’t laid eyes on him since that night.”
Land nodded, looked down at the notebook in front of him, but not before I saw the gleam of satisfaction in his gaze. But if he was hoping to humiliate me, he’d have to do a lot better than that. He already has, my mind whispered, and now it was my turn to look away.
“Can you walk me through this morning?” he said, glancing at Jenny. “What time did the girls leave your house?”
Jenny worried her hands together, took a shaky breath. “Um . . . Junie was planning on going
home after lunch. Early afternoon.” She glanced at me. “I made them grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup around one, and then Junie packed up her things. I was going to drive her home, but Izzy begged me to let them walk. They wanted to play in the snow.” She swiped at her wet cheek with one hand. “They were only twelve,” she whispered. “They just wanted to walk in the snow.”
Zach put one arm around her shoulder, and she leaned her head against him. Her voice was slightly muffled as she continued, “Izzy was going to call me as soon as they got to Junie’s, and I would drive over and pick her up. But instead the police showed up at our door.”
“The park’s not on the way to Eve’s apartment,” Cal pointed out.
“No,” Jenny said. “It’s not. I don’t know why they were there.”
Calling it a park was really nothing more than wishful thinking. A couple of swings, a cracked cement tunnel usually filled with dead leaves and cat shit. An old wooden seesaw studded with splinters. The elementary school next door had been torn down before I was born, and all that remained was the neglected playground, surrounded by a rusted chain-link fence. Junie and I went probably once a year, and I always swore to myself we wouldn’t return. It was a sad excuse for a park, one that left you feeling depressed rather than carefree. But if you wanted the chance to push your child on a swing in Barren Springs, it was your only option.
Land pointed one finger at me. “You work a full shift at the diner today?”
I nodded. “Eight thirty to five.”
“What about you, Zach? Were you at work today?”
“Yeah. Left this morning around eight. Spent the whole day at the dealership. I was still there when you all showed up.”
“Take a lunch break or anything?” Land asked, eyes on his notebook.
Zach paused, and his arm jerked next to mine the moment he caught up. “You think one of us might have done this?”
Land gave a small shrug, held up both hands. “Of course I don’t. But I have to dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s. That’s the way these investigations work.”