No Bad Deed

by Heather Chavez

  The second photo, of a woman in her forties, was newer. The subject wore a blue dress and had been captured in profile. On the back of the photo was written another name: Anne.

  While questioning me, Detective Rico had mentioned both those names: Natalie Robinson and Anne Jackson.

  There was no name on the back of the third photo. Only a question mark, written in pencil. But I didn’t need a name. It was a photo of me.

  I traced the question mark, wondering if the same pencil had etched the number two on the chocolate wrapper.

  Though Natalie, Anne, and I weren’t related, we could have been. We were all redheads with light eyes, though it was hard to tell if Anne’s and Natalie’s were the same green as mine.

  There was one more photo, which Brooklyn had placed in the stack facedown.

  As I flipped it over, she said, “I’m sorry. But you had to know.”

  I had assumed the last photo would be of Brooklyn. It wasn’t. Faded, obviously decades old, it was another of Natalie. No smile in this one. Her eyes were swollen slits, and though her lips were parted only slightly, I could see gaps where teeth should have been. She had been wedged in a box, then lowered in the ground, a mound of dirt at the edge of the frame. Obviously dead, and abused beforehand.

  I dropped the stack on the table, hands shaking. I was so over being confronted with horrifying images.

  “That’s a copy of the original, which I turned over to the police. There’s no picture of it, but Anne’s dead now too. So that just leaves me, who Carver tried to kill—and you.”

  My fingers burned where I had touched the photo of the dead girl. “I don’t know him.”

  “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know you,” she said. “And in case you’re thinking I’m not his type . . .” She slipped the case off her phone and pulled out her driver’s license, which had been tucked inside. “This is how I looked when I met him.”

  She handed me her license. The photo showed the same blue eyes, the same pale skin, but the hair was a shade lighter than mine. At one time, Brooklyn had been a redhead.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” she said.

  I wasn’t convinced of my part in any of this. “That night on the trail, he didn’t seem to know me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I considered this. “He seemed surprised.”

  She let out a small laugh. “Let’s say a man comes home to find his wife and best friend having sex. He’s going to be mighty surprised, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know them.” She winced. “Sorry. Bad analogy. But that night, did he ever ask your name?”

  He had asked who I was, but it had sounded less like an inquiry, more like an accusation: Who are you? Was that the same thing as asking for my name? “The situation on the trail didn’t exactly lend itself to introductions.”

  “So what do you remember Carver saying that night?”

  I remembered the threat about letting Brooklyn die, of course, and Carver asking whom I loved.

  But what else?

  Mouth suddenly dry, I poured myself a cup of cold tea. I drained the cup.

  Carver had said my life was fucked up, but I didn’t know it yet. As if he had known it because he knew me. But maybe I was just letting Brooklyn get into my head.

  When I didn’t answer, she said, “What I remember from that night is he could’ve killed you, easily, but he didn’t. He seemed shaken that you were there.”

  I was skeptical. “You say Carver killed Natalie. He killed Anne. He tried to kill you. So, if that pattern holds, and he has a photo of me, why wouldn’t he kill me?”

  “I only know what I believe.”

  “Which is?”

  She hugged a pillow to her chest with her good arm. “Before he killed Natalie and Anne, he loved them. I think that’s his pattern. He identifies a woman who interests him, stalks her, gets to know her from a distance, woos her. Loves her. Then he gets bored, or angry, and he fixates on someone new.”

  I studied her eyes, wide and blue and framed with a fringe of dark lashes. Innocent, or the illusion of it anyway. I looked for tells that she was lying, but I could find none.

  She continued, “I think he fixated on you while he was following me, because of my relationship with your husband.”

  If I believed her, there was a question I needed answered. I braced myself and asked, “Was Sam planning to leave us?” Because it was us—me, Leo, and Audrey—that he had abandoned.

  “If he was, it wasn’t for me.”

  Since I had arrived, I had been uncertain whether to believe her, but this was the first statement I was sure was a lie.

  “Early on, I had illusions it might be something,” she said. Too quickly. “But it was never that way for him.”

  I pulled the envelope from my purse and unfolded it. “There’s a photo I’d like to share with you too.” I slid it across the table. “Is this you?”

  Her face blanched, but she recovered quickly. “No.”

  On this, I believed her. The young woman in the picture was thin like Brooklyn, but taller, with longer arms and a narrower torso.

  “Is it Hannah?”

  Brooklyn remained silent, her eyes cemented to the photo in front of her.

  “Is Hannah a brunette?”

  She looked up then, and her nostrils flared. She exhaled and faked a wince, trying to pass off as pain the anger I recognized in her eyes.

  I asked the same question she had refused to answer earlier, “What’s Hannah’s last name?”

  Her eyes shuttered, her lips thinned. “I’m tired,” she said. “Call me if I can be of more help.”

  She tried to sound sincere, but we both knew if I did call again, she wouldn’t answer. Regardless of what she had professed moments before, Brooklyn had indeed believed her affair with Sam wasn’t just about sex. She had brought him cold medicine and worried over his children. She had just had a conversation with his wife about his disappearance. It was all very civil and adult. Brooklyn had likely believed that when Sam returned, he would make his choice, and there was a better than 50 percent chance he would choose her. She had probably already considered how we would share custody.

  Like hell we would.

  But now, seeing a photograph of someone else having sex with the man she loved confirmed a truth Brooklyn hadn’t wanted to face: she wasn’t special.

  I understood, because I knew exactly how that felt.

  21

  I went straight from the home of my husband’s mistress to my son’s football game at Santa Rosa High. It was dusk when I arrived, the junior varsity game not yet started, but I still chose a spot at the top of the bleachers. No one to look over my shoulder that way. I held the envelope with the photograph in my lap, the cold aluminum leaching through the seat of my jeans. The empty bench reminded me of Sam’s absence.

  Soon, dusk succumbed to full dark, and I huddled in my fleece-lined sweatshirt, alone, until Zoe and Audrey joined me midway through the JV game. They arrived late because they had stopped for ice cream.

  “Thanks for watching Audrey.”

  “I’d pay to watch her.” Zoe’s fingernails were painted with messy polka dots, the same lavender as her hair. “Even got a free manicure out of it.”

  Audrey looked up at me, a smear of ice cream still on her cheek. She squirmed when I wiped it away with my sleeve. “I tried to paint Smooch’s nails, too, but she wouldn’t let me.”

  “Smooch is independent like that,” Zoe said.

  “So I had to put a bow on her tail instead.” Smooch was even more of a saint than Zoe. “I was gentle, like you say. And I gave her a treat after.”

  “She might’ve given her several.”

  “I love Smooch.” Audrey beamed, then wrinkled her brow. “I put a bow on Boo’s tail, too, but he didn’t like it as much, so I took it off.”

  With more than an hour to go until the varsity game started, the bleachers were just starting to fill, but the parents and students already there supported th
e JV team with full enthusiasm. Except for Audrey. She fidgeted more than usual. It was a relief when, midway through the third quarter, she noticed a classmate a few rows down.

  Once Audrey left to sit with her friend, I filled Zoe in on my conversation with Brooklyn. Then I handed her the envelope.

  “At school today, a man slipped this in Audrey’s backpack.” I couldn’t bring myself to mention the Post-it that had accompanied it.

  Zoe scrunched her nose and raised an eyebrow. She pulled out the photo, then angled it to get better light. She quickly swallowed a gasp and worked hard to keep the shock from her face. I loved her a little more for that.

  “Sam?” she asked. She had no reason to recognize him. Unlike me, she’d never seen him naked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I had studied the photo enough that I didn’t need to look at it now. In truth, I wasn’t sure I could look at it again. “Yes.”

  I watched Leo, standing, arms crossed, on the sidelines, and glanced at the scoreboard. The Santa Rosa Panthers led by twelve. The rival quarterback threw too high, the ball bobbling off the fingertips of the intended receiver, allowing one of the Panthers’ safeties to intercept it. He ran ten yards before he was taken down. The crowd’s cheering sounded shrill in my ears.

  “That’s horrible.” I wasn’t sure whether Zoe referred to the man slipping the picture into Audrey’s backpack or the actual act photographed. Both were pretty horrible. “She looks—”

  Zoe stopped, so I finished her thought. “Young.”

  She turned the photo facedown on her lap and pulled me into a hug that nearly crushed me. “I’m so sorry, Cassie.” Her mouth, her eyes, her shoulders all fell on her exhale. “This sucks.”

  Audrey and her friend had wandered about twenty feet away, to the side of the bleachers. “Audrey, not too far,” I called. I turned back to Zoe. “It does indeed suck,” I agreed. My hand shook as I turned the photo faceup again. “But is it real?”

  That was the main reason I had decided to share the photo with Zoe. My social media–obsessed friend had a gift: even in the age of Photoshop, she could find the flaw in any picture.

  Zoe took a deep breath and returned her attention to the photo. “Lighting seems consistent,” she said, aiming for neutral even as her voice broke. “No shadows or highlights where they shouldn’t be.”

  She tucked a lock of lavender hair behind her ear and furrowed her brow. “If it’s edited, there aren’t any obvious artifacts left behind, and perspective’s spot-on.”

  My heart plummeted. “So it’s real?”

  “I’m not sure.” She moved the photo closer. “Overall quality isn’t great. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but sometimes editors will disguise tweaks by making the whole photo look crappy.”

  She looked up. When her eyes settled on mine, I knew she believed the photo to be authentic. Still, she asked, “Do you mind if I take this? I’d be able to tell more easily with better lighting and a magnifier.”

  I held up my hands, which felt dirty just from touching the envelope. “Take it,” I said. “And Zoe—thank you.”

  She tucked it inside her jacket. “So you showed this to Brooklyn?”

  “I did.”

  “No chance it could be her in the photo?”

  “Depends if it’s been edited,” I said. “There’s a number on the back. Just like with the wrapper.”

  I intended no recrimination, but Zoe winced. “Sorry, Cassie, I really thought it was an S.”

  I waved off the apology. “So . . . 3, 2, 1. Counting down?”

  “To what?”

  I shrugged and handed her Leo’s yearbook. “On the way here, I picked this up too. I thought maybe we could research all the older girls named Hannah.”

  “Let me do it,” she said. Zoe tensed for another hug, but she stopped short and instead grabbed my arm, nearly crushing it. She bounced on the bleachers, coming down with such enthusiasm, I got a little air too. She pointed to the field. “He’s going in.”

  My eyes had been on Audrey, but when I shifted my focus toward the field, I could see Leo had indeed strapped on his helmet and taken his place behind the defensive line. I felt my lungs seize, at once proud and wary.

  On the field, the center botched the snap, but the quarterback fell on the ball, losing yards but not possession. On the second play, the quarterback passed off the ball to a running back, for a gain of five yards. On both plays, Leo was minimally involved in the action. Both times, he sprinted forward but stopped short when a teammate got there first.

  The third down was different.

  The wind blew weakly, but with an icy edge. As the Panthers lined up on their thirty-five-yard line, I forced myself to breathe, the action followed immediately by superstition. I had held my breath for the first two plays, and Leo had remained standing. Ignoring superstition suddenly seemed a wrong, even dangerous, choice. I tried recalling the oxygen to my lungs, feeling it like a weight inside my chest.

  But it was too late.

  The ball spiraled high in the air, too high. A bad throw, it was anybody’s to take. Black jerseys and white converged, bodies crashing against one another, receivers and linemen alike fighting to be first to snatch the ball from the sky.

  Leo won the battle, catching the ball before, a fraction of a second later, he was tackled. A pile of white jerseys pinned down my entirely breakable son.

  The referee’s whistle trilled, the pile cleared, and Leo emerged, unbroken.

  I let the oxygen back into my lungs.

  Zoe grinned at me as she clapped. “Worried for a second?”

  “As a mom, always.”

  As the Panthers defense switched with offense, I was surprised to see Leo stay in the game.

  Riding a wave of euphoria, I was momentarily unconcerned that the rival defenders towered over the Panthers line. Though nearly the same height as my son, the largest of the defenders outweighed Leo by, I guessed, fifty pounds.

  The quarterback threw the ball downfield, on the side opposite of Leo’s, and the white jerseys swarmed the receiver.

  Leo ran, too, but he was the farthest Panther from the ball. Only one player was farther: the mountainous defender who, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, raced at an angle away from the ball. Then I saw, and I understood, though because it didn’t make sense, my lungs continued pumping as if they, too, were oblivious to the danger.

  Leo didn’t see it either, turned away as he was, toward the ball and away from the unknown threat. Because he didn’t see it coming, Leo didn’t brace himself as he might have. When the hit came, helmet to helmet, Leo was knocked in the air, crashing to the turf as the defender pounced, coming down hard, with every pound of his extra fifty.

  The referee blew his whistle, nearly as apoplectic as the Panthers coach, and Leo’s teammates started shoving their opponents at the obvious foul. This brought a new wave of whistle-blows, coaching staff and players gesturing and shouting from the sidelines.

  This time, Leo didn’t get up.

  22

  My phone buzzed once in my pocket, but for the first time since Sam disappeared, I didn’t immediately reach for it. My eyes were fixed on the midfield, where my son lay unmoving.

  For a moment, I was as frozen as Leo was. Then I raced down the bleachers, grabbing Audrey’s elbow as I passed. The metal stands vibrated beneath our feet. From the bleachers, we stepped onto concrete, which we followed to the short fence that circled the track. At the edge, I hesitated, pulling Audrey hard against my chest, as if such a gesture could protect her from the harm that had befallen her brother, and perhaps her father before him.

  Why had I let him play? I should’ve pushed harder to keep him out of the game. I should’ve done more to keep him safe.

  Leo was still prone on the field, but now he was circled by a contingent of medical and coaching staff. So still, like a bird swatted from its nest. I zeroed in on his chest. I thought I saw the rise and fall of his breat
hing

  “Mom, too tight,” Audrey complained, wriggling in my grasp.

  I loosened my grip, but only slightly. “Sorry.”

  “Is Leo okay?”

  “He just got a little banged up, that’s all.” Because anything else was unthinkable.

  My mind raced through the possibilities. Ligaments could be torn. The helmet-on-helmet impact made concussion likely. Then there were the bones. Two hundred and six in the human body, and the force could have easily snapped any of them. I worried most about the neck. With that could come internal bleeding, paralysis—death.

  But that shouldn’t happen to my son. He wasn’t a starter, almost never played. He should be safe.

  Then I saw Leo’s foot move. Though only a twitch, I imagined him walking off the field, stiffly, maybe even limping or dragging an injured limb while supported on either side by teammates.

  But that wasn’t how Leo left the field. My son left on a stretcher, carried from the field to an ambulance waiting just on the other side of the gates.

  I checked my phone. A text, from Sam’s number but, I was now certain, not from Sam.

  Sorry about Leo.

  Only hours earlier, I had believed nothing I saw that day would disturb me more than that photo of my husband having sex with another woman. Then Leo was taken away on a stretcher. Seeing him like that rattled me in a way nothing had since Audrey was hospitalized as an infant.

  I hadn’t taken that number on the back of that photo seriously enough. With Sam already gone and my children safely with me, what more could be taken?

  The answer, apparently, was everything.

  Previously, I had considered that the numbers on the rock, the wrapper, and the photo might be a countdown of days. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. The night Detective Rico had found the rock, there lived three people in my home that I loved beyond measure. Then Sam had disappeared, leaving only two. If something happened to Leo . . .

  Though the diagnosis of a concussion didn’t require a CT or MRI scan, the doctor was concerned enough about the hit Leo had taken to request tests. Once he was rolled away, Zoe left to see to Boo and Smooch. She asked if I wanted her to take Audrey—my daughter could certainly use the distraction—but I declined her offer. Until I found Sam, I wanted both of our children near me.