“Butch’s family is in oil, remember? They’re remodeling that big house on Drury Road. It’s going to have an infinity pool.” My own lies parroted back to me in Gwen’s voice—soft and cajoling—sounded ridiculous. And I readied myself for the Shaw firing squad.
“Congratulations.” A curt nod, a raise of the brows, another smile. All covered in a thin layer of frost and disinterest. Not at all what I’d imagined, and suddenly I felt sorry for Gwen.
“Sir, I’d like to ask your permission to date your—”
“Fine. It’s fine.” He waved me off like a fly at a picnic. And in that flick of the wrist, I saw the truth. Meeting her dad wasn’t about her getting permission. It was about her getting noticed. My fairytale crumbled. Mr. Shaw was no king, and Gwen was no less on her own than I was.
“He plays the guitar too, Daddy. He’s really talented. I’ve heard him,” Gwen said, insistent. Confused, I frowned at her—damn if she hadn’t co-opted my lie—but she was fixed on her father, doe-eyed. And I decided right then. I loathed him.
“I’m alright,” I said, playing along. What the hell. I’ll do it for her. For Gwen. At least maybe he’d acknowledge her existence. My existence. But when Mr. Shaw’s lips pursed tight with impatience, I upped the ante. For me. “Actually, my music teacher told me I remind her a lot of Gene Simmons. I might play some gigs in the city this summer. Maybe even start my own rock band. Gwen could come on tour with me.”
“Good for you, Mitch.”
Gwen’s face fell, crumpled. “It’s Butch, Daddy.” And I started to wonder if I hadn’t missed out after all. If my parents would’ve turned out the same. A never-ending well of disappointment. But then I thought of my mom, carefully cutting the crusts off my PB&J. My dad, teaching me the perfect spiral. I hated Mr. Shaw even more for making me doubt them.
“Of course, honey. Butch. That’s what I said. Now, get in the car. You don’t want Dad to be late do you?” What a prick.
I watched the Rolls pull around the corner. Only Gwen looked back—beautiful as ever—and her cheeks flamed red. Peter Shaw had already forgotten me. No doubt about that. In fact, if I hadn’t murdered his daughter, I don’t think he would’ve remembered me at all.
****
The peeling blue paint of my dungeon awaited me as I tore into the parking lot blasting KISS’s “Not for the Innocent.” The ugly throb of the guitar drowned out Mr. Shaw’s indifference until all I could hear was Gene. And he was on fire and singing just for me. I’m mean and I’m dirty, like none you’ve ever seen. Bad habits drip like honey, no tongue can lick me clean.
I put the top up on the ’Cuda and sat inside, sipping from the miniature bottle of Jack I’d stashed under the seat. Tuesday afternoon, I’d slipped two in my pocket at the liquor store a block down from the library while Gwen had lounged on the counter, flirting with the clerk. We were a team now. Partners in crime. A regular Bonnie and Clyde. She’d want me to save her some—it was only fair—but I swigged the whole thing before I could stop myself, belting out the lyrics with an exaggerated rasp in my throat. I’m not of royal blood, I’ve never been discreet.
That’s right, Mr. Shaw. I’m not a goddamned royal. And neither are you.
The more I sang, the angrier I got. And the angrier I got, the more—the louder—I sang. I’ve been damned, I’ve been cursed, I’ve been guilty and abused. I spit the hangman in his face and hung him on his noose.
Halfway through the chorus, a girl burst out from the corner room. Her yellow dress was the first thing I noticed. Mainly because it looked too fancy for the Blue Bird with lace the color of a runny egg yolk. One of the straps dangled, broken, exposing the tan line above her breast. She didn’t bother to cover herself—like it was too late somehow—and that made me look away. The rest of the dress was twisted on her body, mangled as a car wreck, with a gaping wound in the fabric.
“Get back in here, Cassie. Please.” Trey Waters materialized in the doorway, a demon I’d conjured from the dark side. His eyes shone like black marbles against his pasty skin, and his hair hung freely past his shoulders, shrouding his face. I shivered when he ran his hand down the girl’s arm, my eyes following hers to where his pants hung loose on his hips, his belt buckle undone.
“Don’t you wanna thank Trey for all the nice things he bought you?” She stayed motionless as he fingered the broken strap, tying the two ends together, and fixing it on her shoulder.
I waited for Peggy to show herself, to make good on her promise. How dare he come back here! Then I waited for my own legs to carry me out of the car and into Trey’s personal space, where I’d punch him so hard he’d never call me Nobody again. Maybe it was the alcohol, as potent as snake’s venom, that left me paralyzed. Or some other poison coursing through my veins. I can’t say why I did what I did. Only that I did it—hunkered down in my seat so I couldn’t be seen. Turned down the music. Cracked the window. Watched.
“C’mon, baby. I won’t hurt you. I promise it’ll feel real nice.”
The girl—Cassie—fixed herself, tugging and straightening what was left of her dress and rubbing her fingers underneath her eyes until the black smudges were nearly gone. And I understood her completely. Whatever was about to happen, it had to be on her terms. She wanted to decide. That’s the thing about life—usually, you don’t get to choose how it screws you over. Or when. It’s just one bad surprise party after another where you’re the guest of honor. Live that way long enough and the options mattered less than the fact you’ve got to pick between them.
“You’re my girl now. Purdy as a damn picture. Come back inside, and let me take care of you.” He slid his belt from beneath the loops with a swish and a crack that sounded like the world splitting open. “Now.”
She didn’t speak. Her face was a blank where you could’ve written any answer you wanted. Her chest rose and fell once, before she stepped back inside and the room swallowed her. I must’ve known then who she was—that she was Evie’s Cassie—but I didn’t let myself think it till I locked the door to my own private hell and slithered beneath the covers feeling slimy as a snake. By then, whatever happened already had.
****
I see it plain as day, looking back. How much I’d wanted to take something from someone the way things had been taken from me. How I’d envied Trey for all the taking he did. But what I knew then came in a single vile thought. Hot and white like a meteor, it burned through my brain. I will fuck Gwendolyn Shaw. If it’s the last thing I do.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Evie
January 17, 2017
Tuesday
I watch the clock above Sebastian’s head and wait for the minute hand to move, wondering how the day has already gone so wrong. Not even nine o’clock, and I already want a do-over. To begin with, Maggie had tricked me, nudging me awake at 5:30 and luring me out of bed with a steaming cup of coffee and a slice of her organic banana bread.
“You’re coming to yoga with me,” she’d said, before I was caffeinated enough to launch a proper protest. Turns out yoga was code for interrogation. Which she launched the moment she’d trapped me inside her BMW with NPR and the cloying stench of Chanel No. 5 acting as her own personal torture rack.
“What was that all about last night? That detective?” I’d pulled my sweatshirt tighter around me, wishing I could disappear beneath the seat.
“Just an update. They have a suspect. Danny Dunaway. He’s done this sort of thing before. He might’ve even been involved in that murder near my office.”
“Shocking,” Maggie’d deadpanned. “Imagine that. A repeat sex offender.”
“Some of them do change, you know. They’re not monsters.” Christ, I was defending Danny.
“Of course. Why didn’t you offer your services, dear? I’m sure he would’ve been interested.”
“You know what I mean.” Really, I’d been defendi
ng myself. Maggie thought the notion of a rehabilitated sex offender was an oxymoron. And me, by association, just a moron. “Not everyone is a Ted Bundy.”
“Well, I’m just glad you’re okay.” I’d felt a twinge in my stomach. Maggie never gave up that easily unless…unless she had something better. “So was that all the detective wanted? I could’ve sworn I heard her mention your mother. That she’d been arrested with that Trey person once. Not that I was eavesdropping, but you know how thin the walls are.”
“Uh, no. You must’ve misheard her.” And just like that, I’d started the morning with a lie, followed by an amazingly awkward hour of yoga.
Thing is, it wasn’t just any lie. It was the worst kind. The pathetic kind. The kind that doesn’t fool anyone. Like the one I’d told the detective last night. “I don’t remember Trey Waters, but my mother knew a lot of shady characters.” She hadn’t bought it any more than Maggie had.
The minute hand finally moves, advancing one small step, and Sebastian clears his throat. Again. Over his shoulder, the hanging tree waits, and I try not to look at it, focusing instead on the file in my hand. DELACOURT, SEBASTIAN.
“I’m sorry to just barge in like this, Doc. But I needed to talk to someone.” He taps his fingers on that book of his, the sound of a tiny heartbeat drumming, and I fight the urge to strangle his hand with my own.
“You seemed upset out there. Did Butch—uh, the maintenance man—say something to you?” I replay the scene in my mind, but I get stuck at the same spot. Poised at the top of the stairs, Butch at my door. I’d been flooded with relief. I needed to talk to him. I had to tell someone—him—though I wasn’t sure what exactly or where to start. Only that I’d become too full with the past, brimming. Overflowing. And only then I’d noticed Sebastian, hovering like a shadow, the tension between them taut as a bowstring and threatening to snap.
“We’re roommates. Butch and me. Did he tell you that?” Sebastian smiles without showing his teeth, like he’s holding in a secret.
“Butch is an employee here. We don’t talk about that sort of thing.” Liar. His eyes say it. They speak it for him. Or maybe I’m projecting. But still, it is the truth. He didn’t tell me.
Sebastian leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. The book sits—quiet now—sleeping in his lap. “Oh, you don’t have to worry. I won’t tell, Doc.”
“Won’t tell what?” And I hate the way my voice goes up an octave.
“About you. And Butch. I saw you guys together at the Chicken and Waffles. If you ask me, you make a cute couple.” He’s playing me—I see it clearly. Yet, I’m powerless against it. My nerves thrum like tight threads, already so close to the surface.
I peek at the tree, the place where it all began. My unraveling. But today, somehow, I find strength in its indifference. “Is that why you came to the office? To talk about me and the custodian?”
His eyes widen, and he sits back, securing the book in both hands. I’ve rattled him, I think. “So…it’s my birthday. Kind of a rough day for me, if you remember…”
I grip his file tighter, thinking of the words inside. “Of course, I do.” Sebastian had one of those cases. The kind you don’t forget. The kind that would’ve sent Maggie into a tailspin. “How can you work with those people?” she’d asked me once, directing a pointed glance at Jared. “It’ll be different when you have children. What will you tell them?”
That was before Jared got sick, before the possibility of a pregnancy, a child, a long life together evaporated like smoke.
“She’ll tell them she helps people who did something bad learn to do something better.” And I’d fought the urge to cheer for Jared. “Geez, mom. She does therapy with sex offenders. She isn’t one.”
But looking at Sebastian, with his book and his red-rimmed eyes, I knew how Maggie felt. Some people are contagious. Before you know it, you’ve got whatever it is and you’ll never be well again.
“It’s just that…it happens to be her birthday too. A twisted coincidence, I know. She’s three years older than me.”
“Sasha, you mean?”
“Yes, Sasha. My stepsister. And it makes today doubly worse. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am, but…it’s not fair, that restraining order. I would never hurt her.”
“Try to see it from her perspective. If you were in her shoes, how would you feel?”
His face contorts in pain, as if I’d poked him someplace soft. “I’d want to see my brother. Stepbrother. I mean, it’s been twenty-something years. I know they want to see me. Her and my mom. It’s my stepdad. Even now, he’s the one feeding them lies about me. Telling them what a pervert I am. All the while, he’s having an affair. I’m sure of it.”
“I hear how difficult it is—that you love her—but you hurt her very badly. Her and someone she cared about. You murdered—”
“I know what I did!” His fists clench and his book falls to the floor. The edge of a picture peeks between two pages, but he snatches it up before I can see. “But I didn’t mean to hurt her! I never would!”
“You’re angry,” I say, ignoring his blatant denial. I’m suddenly aware of how vulnerable I am. Here, alone with him. And his rage. That feeling—the slimy, hot-breathed Danny feeling—squirms in my stomach. And part of me eyes the door, plotting an escape. The other part remains cold and clinical, a distant observer.
“Hell yes. It’s bad enough you made me say it out loud in front of everybody last week like I’m some freak show on display.”
“It’s about accountability, Sebastian. Not judgment.”
“Did you see the way Vince looked at me? Pure judgment from that asshole. I think about what I did every day. Every time I see myself in the mirror, I see her. With him.” He claws at his face, tears already streaming. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just hate birthdays.”
I nod grimly. I can relate to that. “What can you do to make today more bearable?” I sit, silent, as he sniffles. This is also my job. To hold the space. To let him fill it.
“I need to be alone.”
“Okay. Where will you go?” More sniffling. More silence. And my eyes dip to his file and the article I’d clipped at the top, the one his PO faxed, along with the therapy referral form where he’d scrawled, Got a doozy for you! I read it with renewed horror.
Sexual predator wins habeas corpus suit against State, awaits January release
In 1995, seventeen-year-old Sebastian Delacourt sexually assaulted his stepsister, Sasha, and murdered her boyfriend, Roland Dermot, at the stepsiblings’ birthday party in Pacific Heights, one of San Francisco’s posh neighborhoods. Today, twenty-two years later, he is about to be a free man.
Sebastian’s voice is heavy and dull, and it cuts like an axe. “The tree,” he says, finally. “The hanging tree. It’s a good place to think.”
I can’t help but look at it—the tree. “Why do you call it that?”
He’s calm again, eyes serene as lake water. “Oh. Hmm…I don’t know really. An old wives’ tale I guess. Before my mom met my stepdad we used to live here in downtown Oakland. There were rumors about that tree.”
“Rumors?”
He shrugs. “They said a guy was hung there back in the 1800s. For murdering a little girl. And that if you climbed up high enough, you’d find the noose still tied there, all weathered and gray. Of course, we’d all get wasted and make our best attempt.” He points to a crooked scar on his elbow. “Five stitches.”
“You know, I’ve had this office for a long time and I’ve never heard that story.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. I have heard it before, but where? From who?
“Probably a good thing stories like that die.” He shuffles to his feet, tucking his book under his arm. Die. Die. Die. The word echoes, and I have to speak to stop it.
“Probably. So, I’ll see you tomorrow…”
I go through th
e motions, telling him goodbye. But before the door shuts behind him, a wave of nausea washes over me, leaving a memory, perfect as a polished pebble.
****
The smell of beer had bitten at my nose, and I’d pretended to take a sip from the bottle. “C’mon, Evie. You can do better than that.”
I’d shaken my head at Cassie, and she’d groaned, gulping down half of hers in one swallow. What was she doing? This wasn’t part of the plan.
“Yeah, loosen up, Evie.” The faceless man had laughed when he said my name—I wished Cassie hadn’t said it—and I’d felt my stomach drop. Still, I’d put the bottle to my lips and tipped it back, letting the bitter liquid trickle down my throat as he spoke again. “Atta-girl. The hanging tree’s more fun if you’re drunk.”
Evie
May 6, 1994
Seven days until my birthday
Cherice’s singing woke me up that Friday morning, and I was lying there, eyes closed and still half-asleep, just listening.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Hang down your head and cry…poor boy, you’re bound to die. I met her on the mountain. There I took her life. Met her on the mountain. Stabbed her with my…
“Knife!”
I sat up, straight as a board, and let out a shriek as Bobby Pierce jabbed me in the side with his grubby fingers.
“Gotcha, Evil Evie!” He scampered away with his entourage, but I could hear him shouting. “She looked at me! She looked at me!” The sound of their maniacal laughter followed them down the stairs until it grew faint and disappeared.
“Are you alright, Evie?” Cherice’s voice floated into the room before she did. “I’ll give him a good talking to after school today.”
I felt the tears start to well, but I willed them away. “What is that song about? The one you’re always singing?”
“Tom Dooley?”
I nodded at her, swallowing the sob still caught in my throat.
“Well, my grandma used to sing it to me when I was just a kid. But she told me it’s not for little girls…unless they’re very, very brave.” Cherice sat on the edge of the bed and patted my leg. She smelled like coffee and cinnamon, and I leaned into her, wishing she was my big sister. Wishing I had a sister at all. “Which you are, of course. Very brave.”
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 50