by Tessa Wegert
This seemed to surprise her. “Well, then, you’re out of luck because in case you hadn’t heard, I was unconscious.”
“You were unconscious when you were found. What about before that?”
“You snuck out of the house, right?” I said.
“So?”
“So what happened to you that night might be connected to what happened to Brett. Crissy,” I said, “you and your dad went missing the same weekend, and you were found in the woods close to where the police found him. That has to mean something.”
My cousin looked away.
“Did Brett have something to do with what happened to you?”
She hit me with a titanium stare. “You mean, did my own father leave me in the woods to die?”
“That was a poor choice of words. Shana didn’t mean to imply that,” said Tim. “We just need to rule it out.”
We hadn’t discussed how we were going to work the interview, but when Tim undermined me to mollify my cousin, I felt us slip seamlessly into a routine that felt right for the situation. Crissy nodded. Fine. Go on.
Tim said, “How were things at home back then? I understand your mom had some problems.”
“Still does.”
“Was it worse that summer? For her?” He paused. “For you?”
We were sitting around a desk now. It must have belonged to a sales agent once, but its sole purpose at the moment seemed to be collecting dust. Tim laid a hand on its gritty surface and waited. He would never touch a female witness, not even to comfort someone in pain. Small-town officers weren’t immune to sexual assault charges, and Tim had been well trained, but the act of physically reaching out to Crissy was enough to eke out some trust. She drew a breath, released it with a shudder, and met his patient gaze.
“You have no idea what it was like,” Crissy said. “The things she tried to convince us of. The stuff she had me believing. There was this time when the AC guy came to repair our system, and she told us she was scared he’d set it up to pump toxic air into the house. It made no sense—what possible reason could he have for wanting to hurt us?—but she refused to turn it on. Temps were in the 90s for weeks that fall. I thought we were all going to suffocate.”
I felt a jolt of recognition. This was one of the childhood memories Bram subjected me to in the cellar. Another strip of his past, snaking around mine.
“She checked closets and stove knobs constantly, until we were so late we had to skip whatever we had planned and stay locked in the house. She would wake up in the night screaming her head off about intruders, but there was never anyone there. It was all in her head, but it was real to her, and that made it real to us. I was so afraid I’d become like her. That’s why I started using,” she said, and for a split second my stubborn and cynical cousin let her mask slip, exposing the frailty underneath. “It was a way to escape her, the only way I could think of at the time.”
“Why didn’t she take medication to manage it?” I asked, remembering that Abe had called her a hypocrite for suggesting he do the same. If Felicia’s mental state was yo-yoing more than usual, I couldn’t imagine my mother choosing not to intervene. Surely she insisted Felicia get help? But then I remembered the conversation I’d had with my parents, and Mom’s impression that Abe’s bruise was the result of a fall. When it came to her sister, Felicia was good at downplaying her disease.
“She didn’t like the way the pills made her feel,” Crissy said. “Sometimes she’d take them, sometimes not. By the time I was fifteen, she was off them completely, and refused to go back on. You wouldn’t know that,” she said, sounding sullen. “Not even Della did.”
She paused to pinch the bridge of her nose. Tim gave her a nod of encouragement, and she continued.
“Abe never talked about it. He thought if your parents found out how bad things were for us, they wouldn’t let him spend time with you anymore. He said if he couldn’t see you, he’d die. So I didn’t tell Della, either.”
I tried to swallow, and realized I’d been holding my breath.
“It was hard on him,” Crissy said. “He was always on edge. When she had one of her episodes, Abe would cry for hours. The littlest thing would set her off, and then it would happen all over again.”
In all the years I’d known Crissy, I’d never seen her give a damn about her brother. Or was it that I’d convinced myself she didn’t care? I was starting to wonder just how badly I’d misjudged my cousin.
“So you didn’t tell your aunt,” Tim said. “Did you talk to anyone else? Shana’s dad? A teacher? Your father?”
Crissy gave a small nod. “Just before the end of the school year, I told Brett. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone with her all summer, and I was worried about Abe. Brett confronted her about it. I’m sure the whole block heard the yelling. Felicia wouldn’t go back on her medication, and he couldn’t change her mind.”
“So he decided to leave?” I said, confused. Why would Brett try to help his children, only to ditch them a few weeks later?
Behind us, the coffee maker gurgled, and with a spluttering release its cycle came to an end. Crissy startled and tried to cover up her nerves by brushing her bleached hair off her shoulder. “No,” she said. “He decided we should leave. All three of us.”
It was the last thing I expected her to say. Brett had always seemed so selfish. That was the footing on which my perception of my uncle was built. In the past couple of hours, I’d come to find out the man I thought I had pegged had quit gambling, started dealing drugs to build a nest egg, and launched a mission to rescue his children from his ex.
“It didn’t happen right away,” Crissy explained. “Brett had just started seeing Cheryl, and she wanted him to hire a lawyer, try to get sole custody. He was looking into that, but it was taking too long. He tried to threaten her. Everyone saw us, our clothes, those haircuts.” Crissy’s expression was etched with fury. “Everyone knew she had problems, so Brett told Felicia he’d go to child services. She just laughed. He didn’t have a leg to stand on. Everyone knew about his gambling and drinking, too. After a while, he realized the only way to get us out of there was to take off.”
“What about Cheryl?” I said. “She thought they were in a serious relationship.”
“He liked Cheryl,” Crissy acknowledged. “He was sad about having to leave her. A couple of times he even said he’d try to convince her to move after we got settled—if he could get her to forgive him, that is. Cheryl had it in her head that she was going to reform me.” Crissy snorted. “Anyway, the main thing was that we had to get out of town, and Brett didn’t tell Cheryl anything about that. He said he had a whole plan—he was going to quit his job and collect his final paycheck, and then a few days later we’d clear out. We were going to do it when Felicia was at work. We kept it from Abe. The only way we could pull it off was if Felicia didn’t find out.”
“But she did find out,” Tim guessed, reading the grief in Crissy’s eyes.
Again, she nodded. “Abe picked that Friday to try to corner Brett at work. You were with him,” she said, shooting daggers my way. “When he found out Brett had quit the plant and was planning on leaving, he flipped out and ran straight to her. If he’d just kept his mouth shut, she wouldn’t have had a clue. God, was she furious—not with Abe, with Brett. Abe just happened to be the one standing in front of her.”
Again Crissy’s gaze flicked to me, sharp as the tongue of a snake. As if I needed reminding about what happened next. For Tim’s benefit, she said, “Felicia hit him.”
Heavily, Tim rose from his chair and lumbered to the coffee machine. As Crissy reached for the full mug he set down before her, a new emotion brewed behind her eyes, but I couldn’t surmise what it was.
When he sat back down, Tim asked about Brett. Crissy explained she’d called her father and told him what happened.
“He wanted to leave right away after
that. We had plans to go to the movies the next night and didn’t want to look suspicious, so he said we should take off afterward. Get away before she knew what hit her. So we went to the drive-in,” she said, “but as soon as Felicia dropped us off, Abe started looking for Brett. All he knew was that his dad was leaving town, and he was scared he’d never see Brett again. I panicked. I didn’t want him making a scene, so I decided to tell him the plan. Abe got real quiet. He didn’t argue, though, and I thought, Okay, we’re good. After the movie, Felicia drove us home and we went to our rooms. I packed a bag and told Abe to do the same. Then I sat down and counted the minutes until it was time.”
Crissy took a sip of coffee and licked her lips. Some of her sticky pink lip gloss came off on her tongue. “At one in the morning, I went to get Abe. That was the plan—I’d get him, and we’d sneak out. When I opened the door, he was sitting on his bed and his eyes were like saucers. Felicia was right next to him. She looked ready to skin me alive.”
“He told her,” I said.
“Yeah. We were supposed to meet Brett in less than an hour, and Felicia had a death grip on Abe. She said she’d never let him take us, that she’d report him to the police and we’d never see him again, and then she propped a chair under my door handle so I couldn’t get out. She literally locked me in my room.” Crissy turned to me, and for the first time I felt the full weight of her wrath. “It’s your fault,” she said. “All of it.”
“Me?”
“Don’t you get it? Abe told Felicia everything because of you. He was obsessed with you, Shana, and you lapped it up. You’re the reason we couldn’t get out of there.”
Obsessed? Lapped it up? My legs turned to jelly. “We were friends.”
“Some friend,” she said. “He was a damaged little kid with some pretty sick hobbies, and you encouraged him. You loved it.”
What? No. I could feel Tim’s puzzled gaze bore into me. “They were just games,” I said and almost choked on the words. I felt sick.
“Games,” she repeated with disgust. “We had a chance to start over, to get away from Swanton and live a normal life with Brett, and Abe refused to leave you. He picked you over his own father, and look what happened. I hope you’re fucking happy.”
“Hey.” Tim lifted his hands. “There’s a lot to unpack here, a lot of history between you two. I know this isn’t easy, Crissy, but we need to know exactly what happened that night. If Felicia locked you in your room, how’d you end up high on meth in the woods?”
Crissy’s eyes shot to the right, and I thought, My God. Had Bram been abandoned by his sister, too?
“I had to go,” she said weakly. “I couldn’t stay in that house one more fucking minute. I snuck out the window and went to meet Brett on Hook Road.”
“That’s gotta be three or four miles,” I said. “And you walked it?”
She nodded.
“What happened when you got there?” asked Tim.
“He never came. I waited and waited for him, but he never showed up. Next thing I know, I’m in a hospital room.”
Tim leaned forward. “Do you remember anything else? About what happened out there, or the drugs that were found in your system?”
She shook her head.
My eyes grazed Tim’s. “Crissy,” he said. “All these years, what did you think happened to your father?”
She flexed her fingers around her mug. “I thought he left without us. That’s what I believed, and that’s what I told Abe later on. I thought Brett was a selfish bastard who left us both behind, and sometimes?” She swallowed hard. “Sometimes I think he deserved to die.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
She’s lying.”
“You think?” said Tim.
I wanted to give Crissy the benefit of the doubt. Like Uncle Brett, she was a lot more nuanced than I’d realized, but Mac’s comment about the killer having years to hone their act had made an impression on me. “I don’t buy that she can’t remember what happened that night. She resisted talking about it for all this time when she could have given everyone more information. I think she’s still covering something up.”
I felt punchy and on edge, would have given a kidney for a strong drink, but it was early afternoon and I was having a hard enough time unraveling these two cases sober. What I needed more than anything was to debrief with Tim, so I drove to the field again. Leaned back in the driver’s seat, and watched the tree line like a hawk.
“If Crissy really wasn’t involved in Brett’s death,” I said, “why not tell us everything right now?”
“Could she be trying to protect someone?”
“Not Brett. It’s too late for that.”
I took out my phone, pulled up the e-mail that came in after I left Cheryl’s, and passed the device to Tim. “The chief of police up here, guy by the name of Fraser Harmison, let me sneak a peek at Crissy’s file. The officer who filed the report confirmed she sustained a blow to the head and said her short-term memory appeared to be compromised. What Crissy’s describing isn’t temporary memory loss, though; it’s full-blown amnesia. A meth high can last twelve to twenty-four hours, more if you binge, but I don’t see how it could wipe out her memory.”
“Know anyone who might have wanted to mess with her head?”
“Russell Loming,” I said at once. “Brett owed him money. He could have tried to use Crissy to barter. There’s also Cheryl, Brett’s girlfriend at the time. She claims her relationship with Brett was serious, but he left her without looking back, plus I don’t think she liked Crissy very much, despite the fact that she was supposedly willing to take the kids in.”
“Could she really attack a teenager, though?” Tim asked, his disgust plain in his voice. “Or kill the man she claims to have loved?”
“It might have been unintentional. If Cheryl accidently killed Brett in a fit of rage over his decision to leave, and Crissy saw it happen, Cheryl might have felt trapped. But if Cheryl wanted to impair Crissy’s memory, there are better drugs than meth for causing confusion and amnesia. Rohypnol, for one.” Just saying the word numbed my tongue and sucked the moisture from the insides of my mouth. My intimate experience with such drugs might come in handy for my job, but it wasn’t something I liked to revisit.
“How does Crissy feel about Cheryl now?”
“Actually,” I said, “she indirectly discouraged me from investigating Cheryl. That could be because of her relationship with Suze, though—she’s an old friend of mine, and Cheryl’s daughter-in-law. So where does that leave us?”
“Maybe what we need is a fresh angle,” said Tim. “Should we look at this from Felicia’s point of view?”
I didn’t want Tim thinking my aunt could be a killer, for many of the same reasons I didn’t want him knowing about Bram. Tim was perceptive, though, and he’d heard more than enough from Crissy to realize Felicia warranted examination.
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” he said tenderly, “but is there any way Felicia could have had a hand in Brett’s death? Brett was trying to take her kids away, right? Her only alibi witness is her son, who was a child at the time. Are we absolutely sure about her movements that night?”
“You mean could she have driven to the refuge and offed her ex?”
Looking uncomfortable, Tim said, “Well, yeah.”
“Honestly, there was a time when I thought that was possible. But what about Crissy’s head injury? Felicia did hit her son once, but I’m not sure I can see her staging a violent attack against Crissy, no matter how hard it was for them to get along.”
I stared out the window at the baseball diamond, which was covered in snow. Beyond it, I could see the place where the trees parted and a path snaked into the woods. The sight of it made me feel numb.
“Is this what you do?” Tim said. “Drive out to the most remote spots you can find and hope for a face-off mano a mano?”
“Jesus. You’re not in some cheap action movie.”
I ignored that and said, “Can I ask you something? Did you talk to Gil Gasko about me?”
Tim went quiet. I wasn’t going to bring it up, but the past few days had left me feeling brittle. The confidence I’d had in my recovery was cracking at the seams.
Tim said, “I may have, yeah.”
“You told him you think I’m ready to go back to work.”
“Right.”
“Do you still?”
Tim’s dark eyebrows, his most notable feature, came together. “What I think is that this case is too personal for you. If there’s any chance Felicia and Crissy are mixed up in Brett’s death, you’ve got to defer to Harmison. You’re in no position to conduct an objective investigation, not even an unofficial one.”
“I disagree. I’m perfectly positioned to get this solved. There’s a lot about the Merchants and the Skiltons you don’t know—that nobody knows but me. We’re not your average family.”
“Does that even exist? I was raised by two moms. I’ve got a sister and two stepbrothers, one of them adopted from Haiti, and more cousins than I can count. I kissed one of them by accident once.” His cheeks flushed. “There were so many around town I didn’t even know we were related.”
“But there was love there. Loyalty. Trust.”
“Of course,” he said. “Was it not like that for you?”
“In my house, definitely. But you heard Crissy. Things were different for her.”
The car windows were fogging up. I wiped a circle with the side of my fist. In my mind’s eye, I saw my ten-year-old self burst from the deep green shade of the trees around Raleigh Field and cross the grass. It was hot as a furnace that day, the sun a searing blanket on my back and my skin shrink-wrapped to my bones. I remember realizing, with a pang of regret, that I was sunburned. I knew I’d get a lecture from my dad, whom I had to thank for my English complexion, but in the moment there was no reversing the damage, and I had a job to do. So I put my head down, looked for clues, and ignored the impression that my ears were being singed to black.