“I tried to tell you, Mom, but you—”
“But me, nothing. Your father and I have already decided. You’re leaving early for Starry Sky. Go pack your shit.”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I’m not leaving. I’m not the one who needs help. Dad is having an affair with Hannah’s mom. I can’t believe you’re too naive to see that. But it’s as obvious as this tattoo. And you . . . you’re just like Grandpa used to be. A total drunk.”
Dakota saw it coming. She tried to duck. But some things are inevitable. Like the back of her mother’s left hand—that big, meaningless diamond—against her cheek, harder than she’d ever felt it. So hard, she saw stars.
“What the hell, Mol!”
Her head buzzing, Dakota sprinted up the stairs to her room. Slammed the door. Locked it. She touched her fingers to her cheek. They came back wet and red and shaking.
Numb, she moved through the room on autopilot. If she stopped, if she thought, if she let herself feel anything at all, she’d start to cry. She couldn’t afford to cry. Not now. Not yet.
She flung open her closet, her drawers. Grabbed her Grizzlies sweatshirt. A change of underwear.
She’d never run away before. But she stuffed her backpack with everything she didn’t want her mother to find. Her Shadow Man notebook from under the mattress, Roscoe’s collar from her rain boot.
Downstairs, World War who-knows-what-number had erupted. Dakota listened as the enemy combatants exchanged fire.
“She knows, Cole! Why can’t you just be a man and admit it to her?”
“Because you told me not to tell her, goddammit. Then you haul off and hit her.”
“She needs to learn some respect. Obviously, you’re not teaching her.”
“Like you are? Your dad hit you, right? Do you respect him?”
When the battle traveled up the stairs and into the master bedroom, Dakota slunk out, backpack on her shoulder. She tiptoed into the kitchen, shushing Gus, and stocked up on the essentials. Water and granola bars and a jumbo-sized bag of M&Ms.
“I can’t believe you kissed that woman in front of our daughter. You destroyed her.”
“Please. And you’re perfect? I saw the way you looked at Peter Jacoby at the Fourth of July party. You’re probably already fucking him, aren’t you?”
Dakota cracked the door open and slipped out, barely shutting it behind her.
She never looked back. Not once.
****
Dakota pedaled faster than she ever had.
She’d already zipped down Ridgecrest and taken the dirt shortcut toward downtown, a narrow, bumpy trail that wound through the woods. With her slim street-bike tires, she usually avoided it. But it was the fastest route and the most secluded. She just wanted to be alone.
Huffing, she stopped at the edge of the trail. She laid her bike down and shrugged off her backpack, resting in the shade on a rotted stump. The bleeding had stopped, at least. She couldn’t say the same for her tears, which kept flowing no matter how many times she told herself to stop.
Dakota closed her eyes and tried to think. One thought at a time. But they came in a rush, like demonic butterflies, each one intent on obliterating the other. So she gave up trying. Just sat there listening to the animals scurrying in the underbrush. But then it reminded her of Mol’s. Of that angry rattler staked to the tree. Of her mother. The whack across her face. She couldn’t sit still any longer.
Backpack in tow, she mounted her bike and rode toward the library.
****
At Storybook Corner, she logged on to Shadow Snoops. Three direct messages from Boyd.
I’m sorry.
So sorry.
Sorrier than the Dallas Morning News, circa 1977, when they forgot the second “e” in Wookiee.
A hollow laugh clunked from her throat. It felt raw, and her eyes welled again.
She reread Boyd’s messages—all of them—from the very beginning. Then she deleted them one by one. She felt stupid for wanting to impress him. For thinking she could solve the Shadow Man case.
Well, it was over now.
Dakota logged out and studied her reflection in the screen, a bruise already forming on her cheek. At least her mom would have to look at it for a while. She gathered herself, the broken pieces, and headed for the exit.
When the door parted, a familiar face greeted her.
“Gus! What are you doing here?”
He stood there in the heat, his dripping tongue lolling at her. His tail swished like a windshield wiper against the ground.
“Did you sneak out behind me?”
She couldn’t explain her relief. Only that his licking and tail wagging and dog smiling soothed something aching inside her. She knew what she had to do.
“Let’s go home, buddy.”
AFTER
Chapter
Thirty-Four
(Friday, October 12, 2018)
My headlamps spotlight the fence line, and Cole’s voice wavers.
“Are those squirrels?” he asks as I park the Jeep in the turnaround next to my father’s pickup. There’s no sign of the regular patrol Detective Sharpe had promised me. But Sawyer spots Wendall’s empty Cadillac in the nearby tree cover, sitting smug as that black cowboy hat atop his head.
“Welcome to Mol’s Junkyard, where we kill anything that moves.”
Cole lets out a breath, shakes his head like he’s trying to convince himself he’s not dreaming.
“Jesus, Mollie. You grew up here?” He knows I did. So he may as well add no wonder or that explains a lot.
Sawyer cracks his door, letting in the familiar sounds of twilight, and I latch onto his prosthetic arm, suddenly wishing we could spin out, spitting gravel, as fast we came and leave this scrap heap forever.
But Luci was right. Cole too. I can’t let go. I never will. Not until I stare down the truth, unblinking at its ugliness. Not until I know for certain what happened to my daughter.
“Be careful,” I say. “The whole place is rigged. Assume everything is a trap.” Because I’d once seen my dad rig a single punji pit in thirty minutes flat. Who knows what tricks he’s managed to pull out of his camouflage sleeve in the last twenty-four hours?
“I thought the cops disabled all the—”
A distant crack pierces the stillness, silencing Sawyer mid-sentence. The birds take to the air, flecking the purple sky like confetti. I wait for them to settle in the grove of sycamores, but they keep flying until they vanish against the dark horizon.
Cole ducks behind the Jeep, wide-eyed. “Tell me that was engine backfire.”
I shake my head.
“Fireworks?”
When my eyes meet Sawyer’s, it’s confirmation of what I already know. Because once you’ve heard the sound of gunfire, there’s no mistaking it.
Stay here, Sawyer mouths, gesturing with is hand. Then whispers, “I’ll check it out.”
He points to the junkyard, to Dad’s trailer rising up from the refuse like the Loch Ness Monster. But unlike that elusive creature, it hides nothing. Its homemade curtains splay open. Its lit windows look back at us, winking. The oddest part of all, the gate is unlocked. There’s no mystery here, only an invitation that makes my stomach churn.
Sawyer slips inside the confines of my youth. The weeds, the beer cans, the lunacy. I’m still not sure how I made it out alive. But he moves like a soldier, careful and steady, arming himself with a rusty tire iron he retrieves from the bed of the burned-out jalopy. He turns back to us—thumbs up—before pressing on toward the perimeter of the trailer.
“We should call the cops,” Cole whispers.
I nod. “Here. Use my phone. But do it quietly.”
When Cole slinks inside the Jeep and out of sight, I gaze up at the sky. It’s nearly d
ark, but the limbs of the sycamores wave to me, calling.
Certain the gunshot came from the grove, I run toward it.
****
When I reach the end of the fence line and skirt beneath it, it’s as if I’ve awakened in my dream. In my past life. The one that lives inside me. That makes me who I am.
I’m chasing Roscoe again, his stubby legs galloping faster than they ever have. He’s up ahead, dodging sycamores like enemy soldiers. I do my best to keep up. But it’s nearly dark now, and the ground can’t be trusted.
The trees are different tonight. They sense me coming. Their limbs part for me like lover’s arms and gently push me forward. Until I see a faint glow escaping from between the shed’s dilapidated planks, a swatch of light from beneath its doorframe.
The bowling ball has fallen to the ground, its wire severed under its weight. The mouth of the punji pit is open and waiting, uncovered. The way I’d left it. If I squint my eyes, let the dark play its tricks, I see Roscoe digging there, his white paws sullied with dirt.
“Who’s in charge now, Grady?”
My father’s voice booms from the tiny shed, threatening to blow it over. I cower in its wake but keep moving like a small, determined animal through the grass.
“You think you can come on my property? Sneak up on me? You’re lower than a goddamned VC spy!”
I drop to my knees and crawl to the side of the shed. Press my eye to a dime-sized hole in the board where the woodworms have tunneled through. What I see, I hold in my throat, a silent scream.
Wendall’s arms are rope-bound behind his back and strung up from a tool hook on the wall, his gaunt shoulders threatening to pop from their sockets under his weight. His feet, still clad in those snakeskin boots, are tied at the ankles. Above his eyebrow, a gash gapes open, a stream of blood coloring his eye red. And there’s more blood spreading from a hole in his pant leg.
“Tell me what you were doin’ out here, rummagin’ around, before I make you wish Charlie had caught ya and given ya a one-way pass to the Hanoi Hilton.”
Clad in his army fatigues, dog tags clinking round his neck. Crazy Krandel stalks in a circle around Wendall, his .22 in one hand and a riled-up gopher snake in the other, its head secured in a snake hook.
“Private Krandel.” Wendall croaks, coughs, spits blood onto the dirt floor. “I came to apologize, soldier. They’re takin’ me away, court martial. Damn military police. It wasn’t your fault, the things you did. The things we did. I wanted you to know.”
My father lunges at Wendall, shaking the poor snake in his face, and Wendall screams, a sound so shrill, so pathetic, I cringe. He probably thinks it’s a rattler.
“What were you doing with these, Grady? You tryin’ to set me up?”
The board is flush against my forehead, the thin splinters pricking my skin. I know I’m not dreaming. But still. I must be.
My father holds up an old rucksack, emptying its contents in one fell swoop. Dog collars. Fifteen at least.
“I saw you. You were nosing around in here. With these. Trixie. Buster. Funny, those are some of the same damn dogs the cops were asking me about. I’d never heard of ’em.”
My mouth is dry as dirt. My breath, suspended. Only my heart keeps going—it has to—thudding against my chest like the march of a wayward platoon. Headed for certain death.
“Mollie!”
I whip around to Cole, stumbling well off the trail in the darkness, and gesture to keep him quiet with one swift hand across my neck. He keeps coming, clumsy as a fawn, tromping through the underbrush.
Until he trips, cries out. A punji pit swallows him whole.
****
My father glares at me down the barrel of his rifle. Under his eyes, two streaks of black mud. His war paint. “What in tarnation are you doing here, Mol?”
The words gather strength in my throat until there’s nothing to do but let them out.
“What are you doing? You’ve got a man strung up in there like some kind of prisoner of war.”
“You bet I do. But he’s not a man. He’s a lying snake in the grass. And you’re probably workin’ with him, the way you ran outta here last time, accusin’ me of things. You think I don’t know you’re the one who turned me in. Told the police I might’ve hurt Dakota. That I’m the goddamned Cloud Man.”
“Shadow Man, Dad.”
I give in to a fit of hysterical laughter, but when he nudges my cheek with the rifle’s bore, I sober up fast. “Get up and get in there. Before I take you outta this world.”
Casting a desperate glance at the spot where Cole disappeared, I step into the shed.
My father sets the lantern atop his footlocker, a circle of light stretching across the dirt floor. At its edges, I spot the gopher snake coiled in the shadows. Wendall’s black hat discarded in the corner. The collars, scattered.
“Sit.” My father directs me to the end of the trunk.
“I tried to warn you, Doc. Your daddy is one of them soldiers who didn’t heal right. He’s messed up in the head. Beyond savin’.”
“Because of you,” I say. “You made him do unspeakable things over there. How could he heal from that?”
“I’m real remorseful. It’s the whole reason I came here. To say sorry. To try to help him, even though he’s crazier than a June bug. Doc, you know you can’t make nobody do nothin’ they weren’t born for. Ask your daddy how many pretty VCs he blew up over there. Ask him who shot your doggie, Roscoe.”
My father points the rifle to the ceiling and fires a round, sending down a shower of splintered wood.
“Shut your pieholes. The both of you. I’m the one doing the talkin’ here. The next round is goin’ in your other knee.” Under his breath, he mutters Roscoe as he turns his fiery gaze to me. “I did shoot that damn dog. Grady told me I had to. That the cops would see him in that picture in the newspaper. That they’d know he stole him from the shelter.”
“Is that true?” I ask Wendall. “Did you tell him to shoot Roscoe? Did you bring those collars here to set him up?”
But he doesn’t answer. His wide eyes trail the gopher snake slithering toward his boots. Like it’s Charlie himself come to end him in the worst possible way.
He presses his lips together, shakes his head. “I’d never hurt a doggie. You know that, Doc. They say dogs are the best judge of a man’s character. Your goldie, Gus, he liked me a whole bunch, didn’t he?”
The scene replays in slow motion. Me running after Gus. Gus leading me to the office. To Wendall standing there, grinning and waiting. Had I told him Gus’s name?
“Ain’t nothin’ worse than a lyin’ SOB.” My father aims the gun at Wendall’s kneecap. “You made me shoot that dog. You told me the shelter would come lookin’ for him. Maybe lock me up. Take Mol away. She loved ol’ Roscoe. We both did.”
I meet his eyes, two simmering stones of coal. Beneath the fire, it’s all pain. I should know.
“I kept his collar, Mol. Did Dakota tell you she found it?”
Wendall answers for me. “See there, Doc. Your daddy saved the collar. A twisted little memento from his kill. And every time he looked at it, he lived it again.”
My father fires off a shot into Wendall’s kneecap, evoking a pitiful cry. Then he pulls his army green T-shirt over his head and stomps toward him, baring his teeth and the wiry gray hairs on his sun-spotted chest.
“Burns, don’t it?”
He wraps the shirt around Wendall’s fresh wound. It’s soaked through in an instant.
“This here’s a tourniquet,” he says. “Because your death is gonna be slow. Real slow. Mol, how long do you think it’ll take this here snake to swallow up a man as big as Grady?”
I can’t answer. I’m transfixed by the tattoo on my father’s bicep. A caged bird, identical to Dakota’s, except for this written beneath it: R.I.P. Dakota. “Is that
real?” I ask my father. “Your tattoo?”
He turns to me, shrugs, as Wendall speaks through gritted teeth.
“Looks like you’ve got two matching cuckoo birds in your family, Doc. Both of ’em desperate to fly the coop. Well, just one now, I suppose. May Dakota rest in peace.”
I retrieve the hook, snag the gopher snake, and hold it up to Wendall’s pale face. Blisters of sweat bead up on his forehead, like he’s burning on the inside. In his rheumy blue eyes, I see my own reckoning. The police never publicized Dakota’s tattoo. The detectives held the information back, waiting. For a suspect. For a moment like this one. Something only her killer would know.
“So you wouldn’t hurt a dog,” I say, inching the snake closer to his hawk nose. “What about a girl? Would you hurt a girl like Susana Donnelly? Like Miriam Woodbury? Jacqueline Pierce? Jessica Guzman? Would you hurt a girl like my daughter?”
My father stands beside me, rage wafting from him in waves. Together, we’re radioactive.
“Do you mean to tell me this rat bastard killed Dakota?”
I nod at him through blurry eyes. Heat, not tears.
“Say it,” I demand of Wendall. “I want to hear you admit it.”
“Wouldn’t you, now? I’m always takin’ the blame. Like with that bitch, Sister Frances. She found a whole bunch of strangled chickens one Sunday mornin’. Had the nerve to accuse me of doin’ it. Like it was any worse than what she did. Too bad she slipped down the rectory stairs and broke her back. She never did walk right after that. And your little friend, Nurse Dalton. I could’ve had my way with her fifteen times till Sunday, and not even a thank you. Then, there’s your daddy. He killed them gooks same as me. Killed Dakota too and those other girls. But I’m the one sufferin’. It ain’t right.”
Wendall’s head droops. He’s breathing hard with the effort of it all. As if he’s giving birth to a demon baby. We’re on fire—all three of us—and I wait for the whole shed, the whole world, to burn.
Shadows Among Us Page 35