by Joe Clifford
No question in the accusation, statement of fact. Evie Shuman had obviously done her homework.
“I said I’m working on a story for a newspaper, helping with the research. But, no, I’m not an actual reporter or anything.”
“You said you was a reporter. You said you was going to do something to help me keep my property.”
“I apologize if you thought that. I may’ve misspoken.”
“You may’ve misspoken,” Evie Shuman parroted. She poured rye into a smudged motel glass, holding up the bottle for Alex to see. Alex shook her head. The offer felt like a last cigarette before the firing line.
Alex glanced over her shoulder. The now-torrential downpour fell in sheets, flooding the lot, muddy ponds filling potholes and divots. “Raining cats and dogs out there.”
“No shit. I can see. What do you want?”
“I was hoping to ask you some more questions.”
“You told me I was going to be on the TV.” The old woman sneered, tossing back her rye. “I ain’t gonna be on the TV.”
“I never said you were going to be on television—”
“Yes, you did. Dirty little liar.”
When Alex was in her early twenties she went through a phase where she got in a lot of fistfights. The brawling didn’t last longer than a few months, a chapter she later regretted, though looking back on that time now, she understood what it was all about. Parsons had taken control from her. Fighting strangers was her way of taking it back. So that’s what she did. Instigating fights at bars and clubs, on sidewalks after closing time, in the heat of a party. Man, woman, didn’t matter. Alcohol, drugs, late nights, perceived slights, real or imagined, and it was on. Immature and lamentable, sure, but her antics won her legions of fans, which led to more shots and freebies. There was something about a pretty girl who could throw a punch. The real benefit from that time: Alex wasn’t afraid of physical confrontation. The other night at Sweetwater she’d been distracted, reckless; she’d put herself in a dumb situation, tunnel vision clouding judgment. She had nothing to worry about with a sixty-something alcoholic, even if Evie Shuman acted ready to throw down. With the hard rain and drastic change in barometric pressure, old thing would probably break a hip if she made any sudden moves. There were easier ways to handle this.
“You’re right,” Alex said. “I owe you an apology. I misrepresented myself. I’m sorry to bother you again—”
“Then why are you? You’re interrupting my programs.”
“I was hoping you might show me the room.”
The old woman cocked her head. “Why you want to stay at this dump?”
“Not to rent. I’d like to see the room where it happened.”
“Where what happened?”
Damn this old fool. She was going to make her say it.
“Where Kira Shanks was last seen.”
“Rooms are twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. I ain’t running no sightseeing tours.”
“No problem.” Alex reached in her pocket.
Evie Shuman pointed at a sign on the wall, the novelty kind you can pick up along the highway, in the gag section of truck stops, the kind aimed at blacks in the rural South. “You see that?”
“Yes, I can read.”
“Says I reserve the right to refuse service to no one I don’t like.”
Alex pulled out forty bucks. The motel was falling down, in need of serious repair; Evie Shuman wasn’t in any position to soapbox.
She snatched the cash, stuffing the bills in her front pocket.
Bypassing the keys hanging on the wall, the old woman creaked below the register. Alex heard a lockbox unclasp. The sounds of metal against metal, scraping, clanking, Marley’s ghosts rattling. Shuman popped up holding a key.
“That’s one of the rooms we don’t rent no more. I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
Alex wanted to say she paid forty bucks, she’d take all day if she wanted to, but she could worry about that part once she got inside.
Walking out the office, the two kept beneath the overhang, following the L shape of the motel. Rainwater gushed out gutters, overflowing in a waterfall. The room she wanted was all the way at the end. The storm came in fits and bursts, and soon even the overhang didn’t offer protection. The rain slashed sideways, splattering off stone, soaking ankles.
When Evie Shuman unlocked the door, years of sealed-in mustiness rose up and smacked Alex in the face. It was more than mildew trapped in damp carpets and the wet, rotten wood. The pungent stench carried the echoes of death. Soon as Alex entered the room, any questions of whether Kira Shanks had survived her ordeal went by way of the wild winds. That girl had died in here.
The low lights flickered on. Wasn’t much to see. Alex didn’t know what she’d hoped to find. The room, unoccupied for years, spread out like any budget motel, minus a TV, an empty spot on the dresser where one had once lived. Everything else of value had likewise been removed. There was no chalk outline of an invisible body on the carpet, no yellow police ticker tape. Blood and bodily fluids had long been wiped cleaned, room sanitized, sterilized.
“Did you rent it out after she disappeared?”
“I said you could look at it. Didn’t say I was answering any more of your questions.” Evie Shuman paused a moment, before whispering, “Dirty little liar.”
“How long had Cole Denning been working here?” Alex asked, scouring the room for clues.
“Told you. He don’t work here no more. Fired him last week.”
Alex bent down, craning her neck to check under the bed. “I heard he was like family.”
With the door still open, rain and wind wailing, Alex couldn’t say if the cold alone was responsible for the shiver down her spine, the goose bumps on her arm. She felt a presence in that room. Not Shuman’s. Not hers. A separate one altogether. Like a living, breathing third person were standing right there with them. Alex didn’t buy into ghost stories, and she had no use for the supernatural, and don’t even get her started on organized religion. But she didn’t dare turn around, for fear of validating all the things she didn’t believe in.
Alex shook off the creeps, straightening up, making for the sink adjacent to the bathroom. She could feel the old woman in the doorway, swigging from her bottle, seething impatience, waiting till Alex got her money’s worth because no way was she leaving Alex unsupervised.
“When did Cole Denning start working here?” Alex asked, rephrasing the question, stepping toward the closet, which was now an open space, doors taken off the hinges. She flipped on the lights above the sink. Bulb burned out. The mirror was filthy, opaque, covered in a thick layer of scum.
Alex went to wipe the mirror, like clearing steam after a hot shower.
That’s when she saw the bottle crashing down on her head.
The bottle was not in Evie Shuman’s fist.
It’s really hard to knock someone out, no matter how hard you hit them. Except in the movies. The man who hit Alex had hit her hard—hard enough to send her face first into the dresser; hard enough to make her chomp down on her tongue and tear out a chunk of meat; hard enough for her to taste her own blood. The back of her head burned with sharp, searing pain, like someone had lodged a pick axe at the base of her skull, but she never lost consciousness. The blow did make it tough to think straight though, eyes unable to focus, bearings too scattered to gather. She heard voices.
“You idiot,” Shuman shouted. “She’s still awake. Hit her again!”
Clodded steps approached. Flipping onto her back, she expected to see Cole Denning, or at least someone she knew. Instead, she came face to face with a stranger. She did not know this fat, old man coming at her, had never seen him before, had no idea why he cocked the liquor bottle above his head or why he wanted to kill her so bad, but she didn’t plan to stick around and find out. As the fat man readied the bottle for a second strike, Alex curled her leg to her chest, kicking her sneaker out, a clean, straight s
hot to the groin. He dropped to his knees, both hands covering his junk, bottle clunking off the bathroom linoleum. Shuman bellowed to grab her. The old man wobbled like a walrus rolling to get upright. Alex scrambled to her feet and sprinted into the pissing rain.
Spinning mud and gravel, Alex peeled out of the parking lot, and drove straight into the storm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
She checked her face in the mirror, gingerly touching the back of her head, scouting the damage. The skin felt shredded, like a butterfly cut of poultry, underside wet and gummy. She brought back slick bloody fingers. Alex tried Nick but couldn’t get through. Why had that man attacked her, and when had Shuman summoned him to do so? The way the man appeared, like a demon conjured, Alex couldn’t shake what Noah Lee said about the evil she cursed upon this town. Maybe she never escaped that bunker after all. She’d died down there in Parsons’ basement with the others, and somewhere the girl the world knew as Alex Salerno lay on a cold, concrete slab, stuck in time, daydreaming storylines while her organs calcified; or maybe time worked the same in the afterlife. Her body had been dumped in the woods, the worms fed on her, feral animals picking bones clean. With the sweet release of death, a chemical reaction sparked neurons, firing a final fleeting thought into the ether, conspiring to create this fantasy of a girl with a bloody head, driving around her hometown, trying to solve the mystery of her own murder.
Alex didn’t decide to drive to Linda and Tommy’s. With Nick gone, she didn’t want to be alone, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. If she were thinking clearly, she’d have checked the clock, known Linda would be home from work by now. She wasn’t up for another fight. Alex wasn’t thinking clearly.
Pulling in front of their place, she didn’t see Tommy’s truck, only her cousin’s car. Linda was already at the door, dressed in sweats, holding a can of beer.
“Great.” She held open the screen. “It’s you.”
Blue smoke ribboned through the messy living room. The place stank with a mix of hopelessness and musk, like every bar before they banned cigarettes and professional drinkers had to ply their trade elsewhere. Without Linda having to say it, Alex knew Tommy was gone. And not simply because his truck wasn’t parked outside. Closet doors and drawers remained opened, hangers ripped to the floor, evidence of all things gathered in haste. Alex knew she was going to get blamed for this latest rotten turn in her cousin’s life.
“You got a towel? Some ice?” Alex held out her hand, covered in blood after holding together her skull.
“What the hell happened?”
Alex sat on the couch. “Got jumped.”
Linda lumbered to the kitchen, grunting to access lower drawers and a dishrag. She packed ice from the box, running it under the tap, twisting the rag into a hard, bulky ball.
Her cousin handed her the homemade icepack, breathing heavy through her mouth.
“Tommy?” Alex had to ask.
“I think you know the answer to that.”
Linda’s face pulsed, a torrent preparing to unleash a lifetime of resentment, and not just for Alex’s role in Linda’s failures, but her mother’s too. As if Denise hadn’t been around, maybe Linda’s mom, Diane, wouldn’t have been such a fuck-up. But Linda shook her head, ire abating, like only now she recognized how pointless it all was. Storing years of hostility hadn’t done her any good; and truth, in its various forms, has its limitations. Any attempt to repair the damage at this point was too damned little, too damned late.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Alex asked.
“He admitted fucking Kira Skanks. After your little heart to heart.”
“I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“Not your fault, coz.” Linda sounded like she almost believed it. “You didn’t stick your tiny dick in her.”
“You won’t want to hear this right now, but he loves you.”
“Yeah,” Linda said, sitting on the couch beside her. “You’re right.” She lit a cigarette of her own. “I don’t want to hear it.”
The two sat in silence listening as the rain slowed to a steadier rhythm, beating against the asphalt and concrete, the hardest parts of this brick and mortar town.
“Why did you have to come back?”
“Just blame me for Tommy and let’s get this over with.”
“I don’t blame you.” Linda sucked on her Marlboro, a wheeze rattling deep in her lungs. “I think in some ways I already knew.” Linda looked down at her shapeless body, the oversized tee shirt soiled with mustard and pizza sauce, beer dribble, the unflattering sweat pants stretched too wide at the hips, the protruding belly that might’ve been understandable if she’d had kids. But Linda didn’t have any kids. She wouldn’t have any kids. And everyone knew that was for the best. “I can’t say I blame him.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m not like you, Alex. Men don’t fight over me. I’m no one’s prize. I’m the girl they take home at the end of the night when all their other choices are gone. I’m last resort.”
“Tommy took you home. Picked you first, if I remember right.”
Linda grumbled and guzzled her beer.
“What are you going to do?” Alex said.
“Get drunk for a few days. Might go down to the bar, catch a dick. Then I’ll call Tommy, and we’ll patch things up. Truth is we’re both too tired to start dating again. Neither of us can be alone.”
Alex had nothing to add to that statement, which might’ve been the saddest thing she ever heard. At least since yesterday.
“I know. Not terribly romantic. But you know what? Romance dies pretty quick, and people ain’t perfect. I can count on Tommy to be there, and he can count on me, and we’ll get through this.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“What about you? Someone jumped you?”
She shook her head. “I went to the Idlewild to talk to the woman who runs the place. Someone didn’t like me being there.”
“Why do you care so much? You didn’t know Kira. Or Benny. You don’t live here anymore, and when you did, you hated this fucking town. Neither one of us has happy memories of this place. I wish I could get away. Growing up here was awful. Our mothers were drunken whores. What happened to you—you should’ve died. Why? Why come back here and relive it?” Her eyes brimmed earnest, a last-ditch effort to bridge unbridgeable chasms. “Is this about Riley?
“No, it’s not about Riley.”
“Benny ain’t Parsons. They have nothing to do with each other. You know that, right?”
Alex turned to face the wall. Wet brakes, grinding gears, the distant sound of retreating thunder.
“I’m sorry,” Linda said.
“For what?”
“I haven’t been very nice to you.”
“I haven’t been very nice to you either. Not sure it matters. We’re blood.”
No one spoke for a long time. Then Linda pushed herself up and said she had to be somewhere. Alex knew her cousin didn’t need to be anywhere, other than not here. Only so many times you can talk about where it all went wrong and not do anything to make it right.
“You can crash if you need to.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you can still stay.” Linda was almost to the door when she stopped. “How far do you plan to follow this?”
Alex thought about laying it all on the line—the farm, Wren and Dan Brudzienski, Riley getting thrown out of his house and falling off the wagon, the tiny parts of her heart breaking all over again. She thought about confessing that even though she knew Parsons acted alone, a part of her still lived in fear that he hadn’t, that someone—or something—else lay in wait, a monster in the closet, a beast hiding under the bed, preparing to steal her back just when she got comfortable, and so her only defense was to never be comfortable, worry constantly, pay penance in advance like layaway. She wanted to share the rest of it, too. Sharn DiDonna’s theory. Noah and Yoan Lee, the politics
of parenting and punishment. Cole Denning. Evie Shuman and Stan “Smitty” Supinski. A photo album filled with flowery snippets of poetry. Meaghan Crouse, Trista White, Patty Hass, and Jody Wood—the list of possible suspects endless—either guilty as sin or wrong place wrong time, complicit through inaction. Alex was desperate to trust someone other than the guy she met last week in a bar, and who better than family? She missed her mom.
But by then Linda had already walked out the door.
Alex woke in the dark, unsure where she was, smells of damp, sodden earth overpowering, then that old familiar panic set in, the claustrophobia that the air was going to run out soon. Took her a moment to remember she’d passed out on her cousin’s couch, that the torrent had passed. She filled her lungs with after-the-storm calm. Her head felt as if it had been riddled by the business end of a Howitzer. She recalled the Idlewild, Sweetwater, the burden of an unexpected week that had thrust her into the past, forcing her to face demons she thought had been laid to rest, only to be reminded that demons don’t go to sleep so easily.
Linda hadn’t returned. Alex knew her cousin wouldn’t come back until she was gone. In the kitchen, Alex filled a paper cup with cool tap. The cut still felt tender to the touch. She soaked the cloth, dabbed at the gash, wiped away the crusted blood, tried to free the matted hair, but the wound had fused, become a permanent part of her. The clock on the stove said she’d lost half a day. She checked her phone. Nothing from Nick. But there were several calls from a number she didn’t know. Not blocked like Yoan or Sharn but an unfamiliar local number. She checked her voicemail. Nothing but dead air. A text dinged in.
At house in Plotter Kill. Come alone. Cole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After the Idlewild, Alex knew she shouldn’t brave that house alone. But Linda was gone, and it wasn’t like she’d be any help anyway. She couldn’t reach Nick, who was still trapped up north in the storm’s path. Alex contemplated calling Riley, but what would she tell him? Would he still be drunk and raging? Some things you have to face alone. Alex grabbed the Louisville Slugger by the door.