Cold Woods

by Karen Katchur

  “What’s your name?” he asked, pinning his ice-blue eyes on her.

  “Trisha,” she said and shivered, mistaking his cold gaze for excitement.

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Just Trisha.”

  “Well, Just Trisha. Stick around.”

  The two blondes faded into the background. Trisha took her place by his side. He started winning and winning and winning. Many drinks later, deep into the night, she found herself in his suite standing next to a king-size bed.

  He came up behind her, pushed her hair to the side, murmured into her ear, “My very own Lady Luck in a green dress.”

  She looked up at the mirror on the ceiling, her head dizzy, thinking she’d made it. Thanks to her father, she’d reached paradise.

  “Where are your shoes?” he asked, noticing her bare feet, the bottoms black from the casino floor. He stepped away from her, picked up the bag with her old clothes and sneakers, and looked inside. “What’s this?”

  She shrugged. What did it matter? She was here, wasn’t she? He wouldn’t send her away. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a runaway?” He seemed amused.

  “I’m eighteen,” she said. “My father is Frank Ciccerone. He sent me.”

  He laughed. She didn’t understand why. Maybe he was laughing at some private joke between him and her father.

  “He pays off his debt by giving me his daughter.” He laughed some more, then tossed the bag with her clothes in the trash. “We’ll get you new ones tomorrow,” he said and scooped her up, threw her onto the bed. She was surprised by the forcefulness of it, the way he tore at her dress, his urgency to get to her, to touch her skin, as though he couldn’t stand to have even the slightest material between them. He inhaled her scent under her arms, between her legs. It wasn’t until he was on top of her, pushing himself inside of her, that he said he was the man she’d been searching for.

  Sid Whitehouse.

  She stared at herself in the ceiling mirror, watched him move on top of her. His hands were in her hair, pulling her head to the side as he pounded away between her legs. He slapped her across the face, flipped her over, pushed her head into the pillow. She couldn’t breathe. Next came the punch to the ribs, the spreading of her cheeks, and the hammering from behind. She was shocked, felt betrayed. Even her own father believed she wasn’t worthy of love, believed she deserved this. It must be so. He was her last hope. She lay there, took it willingly. After a while, she found freedom in the pain, a release from what was rotten inside of her.

  Later through the years, it would feel as though it were happening to someone else, as though she were a spectator in what Sid had convinced himself, convinced her, was nothing more than a business arrangement.

  She became his Lady Luck, his four-leaf clover in the shape of a green dress, a charm he owned, possessed, a thing to be abused.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Parker brought Sharon Haines a cup of coffee. She’d sat in the interview room for the last ten minutes, ever since he’d called and asked that she come in to see him. Her short gray hair was stuck to her head with grease. She leaned to one side, unable to sit up straight. Parker thought it had something to do with a bad hip. She’d limped into the station. He’d forgotten she was in her seventies and how old this case was.

  “Black okay?” he asked and set the cup in front of her.

  “Perfect,” she said. She had a smoker’s voice, rough and scratchy.

  Parker smelled the sourness of her skin. He leaned back. “Thanks for coming in this morning,” he said. “I have some additional questions about your husband.” He let her know he considered this a formal interview and read her her rights, explained she was being recorded.

  “Uh huh,” she said and sipped the coffee.

  He slid the photo of the woods and the Kilroy tree in front of her. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

  She picked it up, looked it over. He noted it was more than Trisha had done when he’d shown it to her.

  “No,” she said and set it back down on the table. “It doesn’t look familiar to me. I told you, I’m not much of an outdoors type of person.”

  “Right, the bears,” he said, recalling their previous conversation when he’d first met her. “Could you take another look? Does this look familiar? Have you ever seen this before?” He pointed to the carving in the oak tree.

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  He nodded, put the photo aside. He pulled out the picture of the softball bat. “What about this?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “It’s a baseball bat,” she said. “Are you going to show me a picture of a cat next and ask me if I know what that is too?”

  He smiled. “No,” he said. “Does this bat look familiar to you? Have you ever seen it before?”

  She picked up the photo, studied it. “I might have. I can’t say for sure. I’ve never had any use for sports.” She put it down, looked around the small room.

  “What about this?” He pointed to the engraving. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  She looked at the photo again. “No,” she said.

  “Okay, well, Mrs. Haines, the letters stand for the friendship club your daughter was in when she was a kid.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. And your daughter confirmed the bat belonged to her.”

  “Uh huh,” she said again and looked around the room, fidgeting in the chair.

  “Would you like a cigarette?” he asked, searched his jacket pockets for the pink lighter and pack of smokes.

  “Thanks, but I got my own,” she said and pulled her own pack from her coat pocket.

  “Let me find you an ashtray. I’ll be right back.” He left in search of an ashtray. He wanted to get a look at the lighter she used. He couldn’t find anything and ended up filling a cup with water. He leaned over Geena’s shoulder. “What’s she doing in there?”

  “Nothing. I was hoping she’d take another look at the photos, but she hasn’t even glanced at them since you left.”

  “Do you think she’s lying?”

  “Definitely,” Geena said.

  Parker returned to room one, where Sharon sat waiting with a cigarette in her hand. He put the cup of water in front of her. “This is the best I could come up with.”

  “Thank you,” she said and pulled a pink lighter from her pocket and lit up.

  “Pink, huh?” Parker asked.

  “What, this?” She held up the lighter, then shoved it back inside her pocket. “I’ve been using a pink lighter since before you were born.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, they’re cute. I kind of have a thing for them. Some women like knickknacks and figurines. I like little pink lighters. It probably sounds silly, but there it is.”

  “It’s not silly at all. We all have certain things we gravitate toward.”

  “Yeah, I suppose we do. What do you gravitate toward?”

  “Fishing,” he said. “Let’s go over again the last time you saw your husband.”

  She blew smoke into the air. “I saw him the morning before he was supposed to go to work. You said it was early December or something. I don’t remember the exact date. It’s been too damn long, and I’m too damn old.”

  “You worked at a bar called Foxy’s?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she said.

  “And Lester was supposed to be at Cal’s Carpets and Flooring working in the warehouse. You slept much of the day because you worked the night shift the night before. And then you went back to work at Foxy’s that night?”

  “That’s right. I was working most nights. Lester wasn’t always showing up at the carpet place, and we needed the money.”

  “Did that make you mad that he was blowing off work, and you had to pull extra shifts at the bar?”

  She tapped the ashes from the cigarette into the cup.

  “Mrs. Haines, did it make you mad?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “There was a bartender back then who confirmed you were working both shifts.” He pulled the statement from the file in 1986.

  “I guess,” she said.

  “It says here your coworker, Nancy, said you worked with her behind the bar.”

  “She’s dead, you know.”

  “Who is? Nancy?”

  “She died a couple of years ago. Cancer, I think.” She finished the cigarette and dropped it in the water. “You hear stuff in small towns.”

  “On the day of December fourth, you didn’t see anyone at all until your shift that night?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Let’s go back to the bat.” He slid the photo in front of her again. “Is it starting to look familiar?”

  “You tell me. You seem to remember more than I do.”

  His phone went off. Geena texted one word: Trisha. “Wait here,” he said and walked out of the room, purposely leaving the door wide open.

  Parker thanked the trooper who had picked up Trisha and brought her to the station for him. Then he went out to the reception area, where Trisha stood waiting. Her winter coat was draped over her arm. Her sweater hung on her small frame. She wore the same fur-lined boots, but it was the way she carried herself that didn’t match the image of the typical Slate Belt resident. She couldn’t hide the scent of money on her, regardless of what she wore.

  She was unmoving, as she’d been every other time she’d been in his presence. But there was something more going on behind her still body and the mask on her face, something in her eyes he recognized in other victims of abuse. He’d seen it enough times on the job: the battered woman who couldn’t quite meet his eyes, or, if she had, the pain and broken will that had poured out of them. He’d suspected as much when he’d interviewed her just yesterday. Trisha was not only hiding the alleged abuse by Lester in her past but also things in her present life. He was now certain her marriage was more of the same.

  He caught himself staring and diverted his eyes. “Thanks for coming in again.” He escorted her past interview room one on their way to room two, making sure both Sharon and her daughter got a good look at each other.

  So far the plan he’d put together with Geena late last night was working.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Trisha was sitting on the hard plastic chair across from Detective Reed. She held her coat in her lap and her spine straight. He didn’t speak for a long minute, holding a file in his hands, his finger rubbing the frayed corner. She suspected he was waiting for a reaction from her at seeing her mother in the room next door. Her mother had left the house early. Trisha had been woken by the phone, and then her mother had rattled around in the bathroom before Trisha had heard the front door open and close. Her mother had been gone about an hour before the phone rang a second time, this time summoning Trisha. They’d sent a patrol car to pick her up.

  She sat unmoving, eyeing the detective. He was up to something. He had a plan.

  A small part of her respected him for it. She sensed confidence in him despite his young age. To his credit, he hadn’t tried to sway her with his good looks. He hadn’t resorted to charm or flirtatious banter. Lesser cops would have. She’d known plenty in the past who’d look the other way if offered a free blow job. But not Detective Reed. He was a guy who firmly believed there was a right and wrong way of doing things. He’d end up on the right side, no matter the circumstance. In some ways, he reminded her of Scott, although she hadn’t decided whether this was a good or bad thing.

  Time would tell.

  “We had a nice long chat with your mom,” the detective said after reminding her of her rights again and that the interview was being recorded. A trace of stubble covered his chin. His clothes were rumpled, as though he’d slept in them. Shadows lurked on his handsome face, the kind that clung to the skin from lack of sleep. She wondered what had kept him up at night, considered asking him but then thought better of it.

  He continued. “Why don’t you tell me what happened on that trail?”

  “I already told you everything I know,” she said.

  “No, I don’t think you did.” He leaned forward. “Your mom told me a few things that you left out the last time we spoke.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You doubt your mom talked to me?”

  “I think you’re playing games, Detective.”

  His body language changed. He held the file more firmly in his hands. His face showed frustration. “It was your softball bat, your hangout by the trail. You have no alibi for where you were that day. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you right now.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “So you said.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “If you didn’t kill him, then who did?” he asked.

  Trisha hadn’t asked Carlyn if she’d killed Lester. It had been too much to process at the time. Trisha’s head had been a mess, her heart turned inside out. Her whole life she’d thought things were one way, only to find out they were another. She’d been wrong about everything. She’d clung to the idea for so long that her friends had abandoned her, that it had been her hands that had taken her stepfather’s life. But Carlyn had gone looking for her, had wanted to bring her home. Dannie might’ve gone, too, if she hadn’t been strapped from taking care of her mother.

  If Carlyn was the one who had killed Lester with the bat, then she’d done it for Trisha. It was time Trisha returned the favor.

  “If you didn’t do it, then who did?” the detective asked again.

  Trisha picked at the underside of her wrist that she’d hidden underneath her coat. Her breathing slowed, and, like dominos falling in a choreographed dance, she shut down. Her mind became a blank slate as her thoughts receded, drifted away. She’d practiced this meditative state of nothingness to perfection. She could summon it at will. It was a place she’d turned to time and again where nothing could touch her: not the fists, not the ropes around her ankles and wrists, not the beating between her thighs. It was a place where words lacked sharpness, their syllables too blunt to cut. Even the pain in her ribs, the bruises on her flesh, became nothing more than a distant ache.

  The detective kept talking.

  “You need to talk to me, Trisha, if you want my help. If you don’t tell me what happened, then there’s nothing I can do for you. Do you understand?”

  His phone went off. He ignored it and continued. “I think you were a scared kid who got caught up in something that wasn’t your fault. He never should’ve hurt you. You’re not to blame for the things he did.”

  His phone went off again. “Were you protecting yourself? Is that why you stole the bat from gym class?”

  He glanced at his phone. Trisha listened to the bustle of activity outside the small room, the shuffling of papers, electronics beeping, phones ringing. White noise.

  “Did you go to the trail that day hoping he’d show up? Did you want to get back at him for what he did to you?” He paused. “No one would blame you if you did. I think a judge would understand, might go easy on you.”

  His phone beeped for a third time. “I wouldn’t blame you,” he said.

  Trisha stared at a spot over his shoulder, her mind a black hole where sounds echoed in the dark.

  Detective Reed pushed his chair back, the metal legs scraping against the tile floor. He got up and walked out of the room, leaving the door wide open.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Parker looked over Geena’s shoulder at the screen, watched both Sharon and her daughter on the CCTV. Sharon smoked another cigarette, readjusted her hips on the chair. Trisha sat unmoving, her eyes staring at a spot on the wall.

  “What do you think?” Parker asked.

  “I don’t know.” Geena tilted her head toward Parker. “She’s hard to read.” She pointed to Trisha. “Is she on something? Some kind of medication?”

  “I don
’t think so. I never thought to ask.” He made a mental note to bring it up. Somehow, he didn’t think that was the reason for her strange behavior. It seemed more like a defense mechanism or some kind of self-preservation tactic. He’d heard about victims of abuse going into what was referred to as a freeze state, or a form of disassociation. This freeze response was thought to be the biggest factor in how some victims survived trauma. Had Trisha trained her body to shut down and her mind to black out when she felt threatened? “What about Sharon?” he asked.

  “She’s lying,” Geena said. “She knows something.”

  Parker nodded. “Let’s keep going.”

  Parker returned to the reception area. Carlyn was sitting on the bench, waiting. She stood when she saw him. She wore workout clothes and sneakers. Her hair was pulled into a slick ponytail.

  “Thanks for coming in again,” he said.

  “I don’t have much time,” she said. “I’m seeing clients later this morning.” She clutched her car keys in her hand.

  “It shouldn’t take too long.” He escorted her past interview rooms one and two on their way to room three, making sure Sharon, Trisha, and Carlyn all got a good look at each other.

  “Have a seat.” Parker motioned to the chair on the other side of the small table. He sat in the chair opposite her. Room three had the same setup as the other two interview rooms: the same plastic chairs, gray tables, beige walls.

  Carlyn glanced at the camera mounted in the corner, up high and close to the ceiling.

  “This interview is being recorded,” Parker said. He asked if she was okay with it, advised she was free to go at any time. “Are we good?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Have you ever heard of the term freeze state?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s when a person experiences some sort of trauma, and they go into what they call a freeze state as a way of coping or surviving whatever is happening to them. They disassociate from the event; the body protects itself, and the person checks out, so to speak. It can occur when fight or flight is not an option.”