by Joe Clifford
The bright morning sun sneered cruel in the aftermath, the still-wet street blanketed with fat maple leaves dislodged by the rain. Linda lumbered to the front steps, long enough to call Alex a cunt and slam the door, rattling the whole rickety porch.
When they got to the sidewalk, Nick saw Alex staring at the ground beside her car. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone slashed my tires.”
Nick came around. Both curbside tires were carved in an upturned, evil grin. He glanced back at the apartment steps.
“Linda isn’t doing anything to keep me here longer.”
“Let’s grab a coffee,” he said. “I’ll call my uncle. He’s got spares at the garage.”
Java the Hutt drew triple the crowd on weekends, overflow jamming the parking lot. Not even the railroad tie seats were available. They took their coffee to his truck. Which was just as well. It felt like the seasons had changed since she’d been asleep. Winter was here.
“You want to tell me what that was about at your cousin’s?”
Alex did not feel like having this conversation.
“Can you talk to me? I’m trying—”
“I don’t know! Okay? I guess she was trying to wake me up and I wouldn’t open the door and she got pissed. Linda has issues. With me. About me. Can we talk about something else? Or how about nothing?”
“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”
“Why? Why do you care what’s going on with me?”
“Because we’re friends?”
“Is that what we are? I just met you last week. I don’t remember being in class with you, Nick. Like, at all. Sorry to burst your high school fantasies, but I’m a mess. Look at me. I’m sitting in a fucking truck, at some roadside, hipster coffee stand with a guy I barely know who hauls crap for a living. My cousin threw me out and someone slashed my tires. I’m fucking broke. I probably fucked up my bartending job. I’m sick of flirting for two-dollar tips. I’m sick of selling pills. My prospects are shit. I’m running ragged in a town I swore I wouldn’t be caught dead in trying to solve a crime that had fuckall to do with me.”
“Where did you go after you left my apartment?”
Alex groaned. “What?”
“I stopped by your cousin’s to check on you.”
“When? Tommy didn’t mention you stopped by.”
“I did. That night, morning. Like one a.m. You’d already walled yourself up, were incapacitated, wouldn’t answer the door, whatever. Tommy said let you be.”
“Why were you at my cousin’s at one in the morning?”
“I went down to those dive bars along the pier.”
Alex returned an empty stare.
“The cops were at Sweetwater. There was an incident. A couple pieces of shit got their asses handed to them by the Uniondale rowing squad. The police had the parking lot roped off. Whole bar was outside talking about it. Apparently the Uniondale team stumbled upon a pair of druggies trying to rape a girl, and they fucked them up. Bad.”
“Sucks for them.” Alex had a hard time suppressing a smile.
“The girl got away. The junkies, not so much. One of them has an orbital fracture. From the rowing team stomping on his head. Probably lose the eye. The police found a shit-ton of drugs. The two scumbags actually confessed, so the crew team is off the hook. Cops are looking for the girl, though. Guess she ran off before they got there.” Nick appealed sincerely. “I’m trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“How do you think this ends? Even if you learn something about Kira that the cops couldn’t, what then? Where do you go? Who do you tell? Have you even thought about that?”
Alex shrugged.
“Why won’t you let me in?”
“Let you in?” Alex laughed. “We’re not in some romantic comedy, Nick. There’s no misunderstanding to overcome. No one is learning a lesson. And I don’t need saving from some guy who lugs furniture in the back of his uncle’s pickup truck.”
“How about a married cop?”
“Fuck you.”
“He was at Sweetwater. Your pal, Riley. Your ex, your whatever he is.”
“You jealous?”
“Honestly? Yeah.”
“What did you tell him?”
“You mean did I say I sent you down to the pier to score drugs, to the same bar where a girl narrowly escaped being sexually assaulted?”
“Don’t screw around with me.”
“I didn’t give you up, if that’s what you mean. It was too dark for the crew team to give the police an accurate description. Although I’m guessing that had more to do with how drunk everyone was. Riley doesn’t know it was you. Enough shady shit happens at that bar. And you don’t have to tell me you were there. I know you were. I can see the swelling around your eye and lip.”
Alex snuck a peek out the window, searching for a stealth side view but she couldn’t get a good look. To hell with it. She pulled down the visor. Christ, she looked like shit. She had a fat lip, and the hastily applied makeup only made the discoloration more pronounced. She slapped the visor shut.
“What do you want me to say?” Alex was surprised by how exhausted she sounded.
“You can start by telling me why solving Kira’s disappearance is so important to you. And don’t tell me it’s a job.”
“Jesus!”
“It’s a simple question.”
“I don’t have an answer for you, okay? My life has been a mess since Parsons. Maybe I thought if I could find out what happened to Kira, I’d understand what happened to me. That good enough for you?” Alex put her head between her knees. “Fuck! Me!”
“I talked to them.”
Alex threw herself back against the seat, staring at the ceiling. “Talked to who?”
“Kira’s friends. While you were sleeping. For two days. I figured I should do something before you got yourself killed.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“Meaghan Crouse.”
“I talked to her already. Goth wannabe poser.”
“She didn’t mention talking to you.”
“I didn’t give her my name.”
“I also tracked down Patty Hass, Trista White, and Jody Wood.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Wasn’t that hard. Patty’s in town. Trista and Jody both work in Rotterdam.”
“What’d they say?”
“The same thing: Dan Brudzienski was head over heels in love with Kira Shanks. Like obsessive, stalker shit.”
“That’s what Meaghan told me.” Alex paused, thinking. “I saw him the first night I got back to town. Came to my motel room, said my car lights were on, some bullshit story. Then I saw him later at the Fireside, the night you and Tommy got into it. I think he’s following me.”
“Why would Dan Brudzienski be following you?”
“Tommy said people around town believe Benny was put up to it.”
“What? You think some high school kid ordered his special needs brother to kill Kira because if he couldn’t have her, no one could? A little extreme, no? Lots of guys have crushes on girls in high school and don’t—”
“Do anything about it?”
“I was going to say have them murdered.”
“Can you call your uncle? See if he’ll be able to fix the tires?”
“Already texted. Waiting for him to text back.”
“I need to find a check-cashing place.” Alex plucked her shirt, sniffed it. Even after her midnight laundry session, she still stank. “And I need to pick up some things.”
“Like what?”
“A new pair of panties. The pretty lacy kind. That okay with you? I’ve been wearing the same pair for days. I’m getting sick of ringing them out in the sink.”
“Okay, okay, got it.”
“And I’d like to take a shower when I’m conscious.”
“We’ll cash your check, go to�
�the panty store…hit my place so you can take a shower. Then what?”
“What I should’ve done before now. Talk to Dan Brudzienski.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Alex expected to find a ramshackle farmhouse with bowed planks and duct-taped doors, dried-up fruitless fields, emaciated horses, a foreclosure sign hanging in a broken window. She’d seen Dan Brudzienski’s truck, which didn’t scream new or expensive or special in any way. She remembered Farm Aid as a kid, figured all farmers hardscrabbled to get by. Instead she found a grand estate resplendent on the hill, a magnificent homestead standing proud atop thriving farmland. Massive John Deere machinery, windrowers, and sicklebar headers sat at the ready, ripe crops in robust pastures prepared for the fall harvest. A drift of cows grazed in the lush green grass. Tall rows of corn stalks vanished over the horizon, and mighty oaks peppered the brae.
As Nick steered up the long driveway, Alex recognized this wasn’t a residence that had been designed this way. Rather, it had been erected piecemeal, part and parcel, extensions and new wings added after the fact. The closer she got, the more she saw a Frankenstein house. The outline of modest brick quarters remained but the rest had clearly been augmented, like a low rider tricked out, gaudy and garish, with fifteen-inch rims and colors too bold. Not that it didn’t still look nice—it was probably the nicest house Alex had ever seen in Reine—but there was a grotesque, monstrous element to the home as well, like its architects had the means to do whatever they wanted but lacked the aesthetic acumen to pull off the job tastefully. Colors didn’t quite match; styles didn’t quite gel, the top floor tacked on, giving the house a childish, tree-fort feel.
Alex hopped out of the truck, standing beside the open door.
Nick didn’t move. “We’re just going to go up and ring the bell?”
“That’s the plan.”
On the way over, Nick fretted endlessly, warning Alex about Dan’s brother, Wren. “He’s rattlesnake mean. Seen him at the Fireside a few times. One of these good ol’ country boys. He sits on the tailgate, showing off his hunting rifle to the rocker chicks, always ready for a fight. You know he used to play college ball? Almost went pro. Until this shit with Benny brought him back home.”
Showering, shopping, and finding somewhere to cash Noah Lee’s check on a Sunday had chewed up a good chunk of Alex’s day. Now late-afternoon skies threatened to swallow what little light remained. She didn’t have the luxury of sweating a red-ass farmboy.
“Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”
“What’s he going to do? Shoot us for ringing the doorbell?”
“We don’t even know if anyone is home.”
Alex pointed at the truck in front of the bay, then at the house lights illuminating the bottom floor. “Someone is in there.”
“And I don’t think he’ll be happy to see us.”
“Why?” Alex glanced down at her new jeans and pristine white tee fresh from the pack. After a thirty-minute scalding shower, with actual shampoo and soap, Alex felt scrubbed clean. “We’re not the cops. Besides last I checked, the cops were on the Brudzienskis’ side.” Or at least Riley was. “We have a few questions. No big deal.”
“You can’t go up to random people’s houses uninvited.”
“You never had a Watchtower shoved in your face? You can wait here if you’re scared.”
“No,” Nick said, defiantly. “I’m coming.”
The truck parked in front of the garage looked like the same one Alex had seen at the Fireside the other night. It’s hard to tell with trucks. She knew these farmboys took a lot of pride in their four-wheel drive but to her the goddamn things all looked the same. When she rang the bell, the man who answered wasn’t wearing a trucker’s cap. Not being nighttime, Alex was able to get a better look at his face. This wasn’t the same man who’d come to her motel. He was much smaller, younger, not nearly as imposing.
Maybe she had left her lights on that night. Her driver’s side door only locked with a key, sure, but what if she’d left the passenger’s side unlocked? What if some good-hearted stranger just happened to be passing by, taking the time out to spare her battery? Linda had been drunk at the Fireside when she ID’d Dan Brudzienski. What if this entire past week had been the by-product of one big misunderstanding?
“Can I help you?” the man asked. Although boy was more like it. Baby-faced, wholesome, innocent, a pup.
“Dan? Dan Brudzienski?”
The boy checked with Nick, who stood off to the side pretending to be preoccupied with the topiary choices in the hedgerow.
“What’s this about?”
“Kira Shanks.” Alex decided to go with blunt and straightforward, which were powerful weapons when it came to disarming the intimidated. And Dan Brudzienski wasn’t holding up under questioning.
Hearing Kira’s name, Dan didn’t get defensive or grow combatant, and he didn’t seem besieged with guilt. His eyes only saddened.
“I’m writing a story for the newspaper,” Alex added. “If you have a few minutes?”
Dan turned and headed through the spacious foyer. Alex and Nick followed down the long hallway, into a massive living room, which sported the same mismatched décor as the outside of the ranch, as if two teenage boys with inflated allowances had been given carte blanch to decorate their own really big playhouse. A giant flat-screen television plastered the facing wall, hunting rifles mounted in the glass cabinet beside it. Two massive reclining leather chairs with cup holders sat inches from the TV. PlayStation controllers snaked from the chairs to a console on the floor. Surround-sound speakers angled down from the ceiling. Like an IMAX movie theater. Empty pizza boxes and crumpled two-liter Pepsi bottles scattered about. There was even a pair of life-size Fathead decals that had been slapped up, one of Ben Roethlisberger, the other a player Alex didn’t recognize. She only recognized the Pittsburgh quarterback because they broadcast the games in the bar on Sundays.
Alex pointed at the decal on the wall. “Steelers fan?”
“My brother, Wren.”
“Your brother home?” Nick asked.
“No. He coaches football. They have an away game this weekend. You wanted to talk about Kira?”
“I’m a reporter,” Alex said. “The Codornices. We’re doing a feature on the seven-year anniversary of her disappearance. You guys were friends?”
Dan waited, processing and still confused, like this didn’t quite add up—and he was right, because it didn’t.
“Can I get some water?” Nick asked.
Dan headed for the kitchen. Alex trailed. Nick on her heels, miming with his brows, flapping his arms, her shrugging response saying, Give me a break. I’m new at this!
Dan reached into the shiny chrome fridge. Dull pots and pans coated in thick layers of dust hung on an unused rack. Handing out the water, Dan noticed Alex staring at them.
“We don’t cook much since our parents died.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said.
Dan shrugged. “They made sure we were taken care of. Financially. Life insurance.” He pointed out the window, around the boundless quarters. “Farm was falling apart. We used the insurance money to buy more plows, more tractors, hire more workers, built a silo to store the corn. Our mom had been fighting the cancer for a while. After Ben—I mean, after everything that happened, I think she just gave up.”
“How’d your father die?” Alex asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.” She added that last obligatory part, which is what people do when they inquire about touchy subjects. How much you paid for a house. How much money you make at a job. How so and so died. If you don’t mind me asking. Same thing as asking if you can ask a question.
“Heart attack,” Dan said. “Why aren’t you writing anything down?”
“Huh?”
“You said you’re a reporter. But you’re not writing anything down.”
“Because we’re not talking about Kira, are we? I’m getting to know you. Tryi
ng not to bulldoze you with endless questions right off the bat.”
“Sorry,” Dan said, checking again with Nick, who since asking for the water had returned to silent observer. “Didn’t mean to—I don’t talk about—her name doesn’t come up much.”
Alex patted her pockets, turning to Nick. “I think I left my notepad in the truck.” She hoped he knew enough to play along. “Can you get it for me?” She got the impression Dan might be more willing to talk if she were asking these questions alone.
Nick hopped to it with a two-finger salute.
“Were you and Kira close?”
“I had a pretty wicked crush on her. Who didn’t? Not sure she noticed. We hung out early on, but always in large groups. She ran with a different crowd. Faster, wilder kids. I was pretty focused on football in those days. Trying hard to get a scholarship like Wren. The farm didn’t bring in enough money to pay for college.”
“Didn’t work out? Playing ball?”
“I didn’t have the drive my brother did. Didn’t love the game, I guess.”
“What do you do now?”
“Not much.” He laughed but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “Sometimes I feel like an eighty-year-old man. I can go days without leaving this house. Since we hired the extra help, I don’t do much around the farm besides shooting the occasional jackrabbit. I don’t even do that right. I don’t like guns.”
“It’s just you and Wren?”
He nodded. “He was selected in the draft. Wren. Not drafted but invited. To training camp. The Browns. Wide receiver. Never signed though. He was great. A lot better than me. When they died, he came back to run things.”
“Where’d you say he was?”
“He’s an assistant coach at North Valley State. Division II. They had a game yesterday down in Virginia. I’m sorry. What’s this got to do with Kira?”
Alex leaned back on her heels. She had nothing to sweat with this boy. He was as menacing as a field mouse. No way he’d been involved in what happened to Kira, but as long as she was here, she might as well see what he knew. Anything he told her about Kira’s friends would be more than what she had now. “This feature article I’m writing for the paper, it’s informal. We want to know about the real Kira. Celebrate her life, not dwell on the tragedy.” Alex sometimes surprised herself with how well she could slip into the role of someone else. She liked this, playing the part of a normal, well-adjusted person.