I had to fight to get his hands off me, but I found that I couldn’t. He was stronger than I thought, and determined. “Let me go,” I said.
I thought, maybe they’re gone. Maybe the house is empty and a bear has come through, ransacked the cupboards, the stinking refrigerator. I thought of her traveling on foot through the trees with Birdie on her back, disappearing into Canada. Changing her name.
My father had been in jail for fifteen years. No one had told us when he might get out. I wondered what she knew.
I ducked under Bear’s stiff, outstretched arm and made for the doorway, past the still-barking dog.
At first sight, the house was a mess, but nothing more than normal. Shoes and clothes on the floor and dishes on the table. There was a high cloud of cigarette smoke, and underneath that, a dark and metallic smell. Not like food. Not even rotting food. It smelled like blood.
There was blood on the walls, the cupboards, the ceiling, and a puddle on the floor, with the drag of a body through it.
I couldn’t breathe, my throat sore and contracting. I ran from the house back outside, fell to my knees and vomited up everything I’d eaten. It was so violent I could barely take a breath back in. I opened my eyes wide, like I was drowning, and sat up, arched my back, wheezing in air, my chest tight and panicked.
“Shannon,” Bear said behind me. The dog was still barking, but he had circled over to me and my vomit and was sniffing us both out.
I gasped for breath, my nose flaring.
It came back to me all at once: the feel of smoke, burning my eyes, constricting my airway, the desperate crawl through the farmhouse while the beams fell, flaming. “Mom,” I yelled, and in my head I heard my little-kid voice, calling for her, but I was saying it now. “Mom,” I called.
“Shannon,” Bear said again, in the same voice he used on the dog. I half expected him to say, “Come,” and for me to do it.
The trails were wet and cold, even in the sun. A couple of runners called out to us from the path. They’d heard me scream. They saw me on my knees in the gravel.
“Everything okay?” the guy yelled.
“Yeah, yeah,” Bear answered. “Dead deer,” he said, and then waved them on.
“Shannon,” he said to me, quiet and terse.
My throat felt like it was bleeding. He pulled me to standing. My head was light and I had to hold on to his arms, he had to hold me upright.
“What did you do?” I said.
“What did I do?” Bear asked, sharp. I watched behind him as the dog went back to the door but was quiet. He sniffed, his head low and cautious.
“Did you do this?” I said again, my voice like it had razors in it. “What we talked about,” I said. I held my hand out toward the house. “The house,” I said. “The boy,” I said. “The one who died,” I whispered. I felt crazy. Like I was putting together pieces of a bad dream.
He put his hands on my shoulders, heavy, and I felt like he was pressing me into the ground, or like he was the only thing holding me to earth. “Do you think I’m out of my fucking mind?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, my eyes wide. I gasped again. “You want the truth?” I said. “Yes, I do. I’m fucking terrified,” I said.
I started to scream again, and I thought he was going to hit me, but he covered my mouth. Behind his palm, my face broke open and all that came out was crying, my cheeks wet and my mouth open. When he let go, my belly caved in, and I fell up against him.
He held me for a moment, just his arms around my back, his hand rubbing. Then he picked my face up.
“Did you?” he asked.
I felt hollow. I thought the answer was obvious, but I’d done so many strange things since I’d met him, I wasn’t sure of anything.
“Me?” I said.
“What happened?” he asked again, as if I knew. Then he said, “It’s why I told you. I can get you out of it,” he said. “If you did.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
He looked hard at me.
“I was in your bed all night,” I said, and he nodded, but his eyes were sly, shifting. “So were you,” I added, but I knew, as soon as I said it, that when I finally fell asleep, I’d had no idea if he was there or not. And the same was true of me for him.
“Listen to me,” he said, holding my face. “Listen.”
There was so much blood. I looked, panicked, at my own shoes, but it didn’t look like I’d stepped in it. I screamed for Buddy not to go in. I couldn’t imagine getting blood off his white paws. I thought of him leaving prints all over the model home, the floors, the white bed, of my mother’s blood.
I tried to get free to go back into the house.
“Shannon,” he warned.
I wailed under his grip, and he put his hand over my mouth again, even tighter. My nose flared and I reeled it in. His stare was hard. His eyes a weird bright green in the forest light.
“I am going to make a call,” Bear said. I felt like I was choking. “And then we’re going to leave.”
“Where is she?” I asked, frantic.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. It felt like frost coming from his lips.
“How am I supposed to know that you didn’t do this?”
“Shannon,” he said. “I was with you.” He took my face. “I was with you,” he said again. “Say it. I was with you. You were with me.”
I swallowed hard and saw a flash of light behind my eyes from the pain. “I have to get Birdie,” I said.
“Listen to me,” Bear said, his voice so calm it felt blue to me, like a blue light, shining through dark water.
“She can’t be in there with that. She can’t be alone,” I said.
His look had changed. It was hard, searching. “She’s not there,” he said.
“She’s probably in the closet,” I yelped. “That’s where my mother puts her.” My mind raced, and my body was sore, from retching, from tension. I looked at my hands, my own skin, for freckles of blood. I didn’t know who to trust.
“She puts her in the closet?” Bear asked. I thought: I am insane. This has made me insane.
“Give me your phone.”
He looked afraid. For the first time ever, I looked at his face and thought he looked scared. Not of everything that was happening, but like he was scared of me. What I might do. Like he might be next. It filled me with enough rage that I thought he might be justified. I noticed the toes of his boots were soaked in blood.
“No,” he said, when I held my hand out, and tucked the phone away.
“So I can use the flashlight,” I yelled.
I pointed at the hose on the side of the house.
“What?” he said.
I made him hose off his boots, pink water running off the soles.
“Come on,” I said, when the water finally ran clear.
* * *
Outside the Land Rover, I made him take off his boots.
“I washed them,” he said.
“Give them to me,” I said.
He seemed alarmed at my directness. He bent and unlaced the boots, took them off, and then I said, “Socks too,” and he did as he was told.
“What are you doing?” he said.
I walked them over to the dumpster behind the pavilion and threw them in. I took mine off and did the same. He stood there barefoot in the parking lot.
“Those are five-hundred-dollar boots.”
“So?” I said. “You don’t have another five hundred dollars? You want to get into your car with my mother’s blood on your boots?” I asked. “Are you crazy? Trash comes tomorrow,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?” he asked, like I’d been scheming.
“I live here,” I shouted. I gripped and released my hands, trying to remember anything.
I got into the car barefoot, and Buddy jumped into the back seat. The dog leaned over my shoulder and panted, his nose wet and his breath hot. I felt like I’d been hit over the head and stunned. My body ach
ed. My throat was sore. I watched Bear, pacing in the grass, phone cupped in his hand. I watched his shoulders hunch while he bent at the waist, yelling something I couldn’t make out.
Buddy nudged the side of my face, hungry, impatient.
The dog didn’t know the difference. He’d forgotten the trauma of the blood. I was just his other owner, the one in the passenger seat, the one on the left side of the bed.
My mother’s truck was parked in the last spot, under a pine tree. I fished my keys out of my pocket and walked over to it, while Bear put his phone away and called out to me.
“What are you doing?” he asked, suspicious.
“Taking my own car,” I said.
When he looked at me, blank, searching, I said, “I’ll meet you there.”
* * *
I went around the park and drove slow up and down the hill of Mill Street before I went up Fountain. Baby Jane’s remained closed up tight, the way it had been the last time I was there. The blinds without an inch of light coming in or out, the yard neat and empty. A newspaper sat, damp and rolled, on the concrete step.
Back at his house, Bear asked me to make him a drink.
“Of what?” I asked. My head felt stuffed with cotton.
“Whiskey,” he said.
I stood in front of the bar. There were three different types of whiskey and a variety of glasses. I always drank straight from a small, plastic bottle. Usually Canadian Club, usually with Baby Jane. I picked up a bottle called Angel’s Envy and poured it into a heavy-bottomed glass.
“Make it how?” I asked, stupid.
Bear hunched over his phone on the island. “Just put ice in it, honey.” He was texting quickly, with both thumbs, and then swiping over the glass, deleting as he went.
I put the drink on the island. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, and frowned before he looked up. “Meghan,” he said.
I was about to ask him how often he saw Bee but couldn’t get the words out of my tight throat. I plunked down on the stool across from him and held my head.
“What am I going to do?” I asked.
Bear pushed the drink at me.
“You’re going to take a drink,” he said, “and a deep breath, and relax.”
I didn’t know who he’d talked to or what he’d said. He’d made the phone call far away from me, with his shoulders hunched and his back turned.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“Who?” he said.
“Nine-one-one,” I said.
“Just to check the welfare,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“You know,” he said. “If you haven’t seen a neighbor or you think a kid is at home alone. You ask the police to come check the welfare of the occupants.”
“Did you say that?” I asked. I felt my hair stand on end. “Did you mention her?” They were going to find her. It was going to be over. I had no idea what that meant for me. Or her.
“No,” Bear said. He held up his hands in surrender.
“But they know it was you who called,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m just a bystander,” he said.
I stared at him. “But you’re not.”
“There were lots of people in the park today,” he said. “Anyone might have called.”
“But they know it was your phone,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“They can trace you to me.”
His mouth was tight, and he closed his eyes for a moment before he said anything. “I didn’t use my phone,” Bear said.
I felt in my pocket for mine, confused. “Whose phone did you use?” I asked.
“A burner,” he said. He shook his head a little. “I threw it out.”
“Why do you have a burner?” I asked. The whiskey was hitting me hard. I’d poured enough for him, which was too much for me.
“Look, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Lay low. And I’ll take care of it.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, full of confidence in that one second. “Did you?”
He looked at me hard, eyes blazing. “Oh my God, Shannon,” he shouted, and I ducked. “No,” he said.
“Why do you have a burner?” I hissed.
“Sometimes I need one,” he said, showing his teeth, the way he had with Meghan.
I tried to believe him.
“There’s nothing else for you to do right now,” he said.
TWENTY-FOUR: KATERI
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1
At the station, Kateri makes another full pot of coffee and goes into her office alone. Hurt went home before he came in, to shower and change, and she won’t blame him if he’s taking a quick nap. She can’t believe he was up all night.
She logs in to the state database and does another search for Bear Miller. Again she finds nothing out of the ordinary. He attended the University of Vermont. Is still listed as legally married, though she’s never seen or heard anything about a wife. She doesn’t know why she thinks she’ll find something this time when she didn’t last time. But part of her feels certain there’s something not there, something redacted, something sealed.
She could press charges.
On what? she thinks. The threat? He’d say she pushed him down the stairs. And probably have the bruises to prove it.
She wants to walk down to Shannon’s cell and ask him outright, “Did Bear Miller kill your mother? Did Bear Miller kill the cop? Did he take your sister? What has he done to you?”
But she knows he’s tight-lipped and protective of Bear.
If she arrests Bear, who will pay for Shannon’s defense? It’s a sure bet that without it he’ll be convicted. Of something he probably didn’t do. Possibly something he was forced to watch someone else do.
Joel Hurt opens her door without knocking and she jumps, and he jumps. She spills coffee down her work pants and grabs a handful of tissues to mop it up.
“Someone spotted the girl,” he says, and hands her a report. “And your report came back. There’s blood that’s not a match for Pearl or Shannon or the girl.”
She throws the tissues into the garbage can under her desk and then moves her coffee cup away from the computer keyboard. “Where did they see her?” she asks.
“Dirt road near Star Lake,” Hurt says. “Beside an old Buick.”
“Alone?” Kateri asks.
“No description of the driver,” Hurt says.
“Fuck,” she says. She needs to get a DNA kit on Bear Miller.
She presses her fingers into her lips, and Hurt asks her, “Are you okay?”
“How can I see if someone has a sealed file?” she asks.
“Shannon Jenkins doesn’t have previous,” he says.
“Not Shannon,” she says.
“You need an order,” he says, and shrugs. “It’s not hard. Who?”
“Bear Miller,” she says.
She’s afraid he will go straight to last night, but his head is in the case. “What makes you think?” he says.
She presses her mouth closed and shakes her head. “A feeling,” she says, annoyed, and disappointed that it’s the best she can offer.
She holds up her hand. She was grateful for him last night, for his sitting up, waiting, making her tea. But right now she doesn’t want a work lecture on how feelings affect cold analysis.
“Let me figure it out,” she says.
He backs down. “Okay,” he says. Then, “I trust your feeling. I’ve had the same one,” he says. “Well, maybe not exactly the same.”
She gives him a look. “Can we get an APB on the Buick?”
“Already done,” he says, and leaves her with the evidence report and damp pants.
* * *
The judge sets Shannon’s arraignment for November third with no bail. The closest local news stations come to perch on the lawn in front of the justice center, reporting on the arrest of Shannon Jenkins and the continuing searches for Pearl Jenkins and a sm
all child. It makes Shannon sound like a serial killer, and Kateri thinks, he’ll never get a fair trial in this town. Photographers from the paper flash lights in Kateri’s eyes when she goes in to work.
Brewer comes in every day. She begs him to please not talk to the news.
“I might suggest the same to you,” he tells her. “The less info we have out there, the fairer a trial this kid gets.”
Nothing in this kid’s life has been fair.
Brewer wants the charges reduced. He tells Kateri that Shannon shouldn’t be charged with murder at all but manslaughter self-defense, and adds that Shannon keeps fighting him on it because he insists he didn’t do it at all.
“She was abusive,” Brewer says to Kateri.
“I know.”
“Did you see the bruise on him?”
She thinks before she answers. “I did,” she says.
“I don’t know why he won’t trust me,” Brewer says. “I can get him off.”
“Because he didn’t do it at all,” Kateri says, against her better judgment. “And because he’s probably been raised not to trust people in authority. His father’s incarcerated,” she reminds him.
Brewer shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s in the blood,” he says.
He slides into his suit jacket, which is black and shiny like it’s coated in oil. “I fucking hate these white-trash cases,” he says. He leaves the door open when he goes. Outside, there’s a flutter of flash as he gets into his car.
Kateri feigns working late. Hurt comes into her office at six and asks if she wants a beer, stammers, and adds, “Or whatever,” as she clicks away on her keyboard without actually typing anything. She looks up from the screen. “Nah, I need to follow this thread,” she tells him.
In fact, she’s sure there is a thread she should be following, and she has a feeling it goes back to Park Jenkins and Pearl’s desperate fear of him. She wishes there were an easier way to take their fucking white-trash case and zoom out—to the county, the state, the nation. Something that might illuminate the connections for her. Might light up a line whose hook ends in Bear Miller.
They have an all-points bulletin on the Buick. There are Amber Alerts for Sparrow Annie Jenkins, age five, 38 inches tall, 38 pounds, blue eyes, red curly hair, mixed race. No one is sure what she’s wearing. Or if it matters.
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