Blackbird

by Anna Carey

  “This used to be Parillo Construction, but it’s not anymore.”

  “But you guys are still listed online—”

  “Look. We’re closed; now will you let me finish what I’m doing?”

  You try to take in as much as possible: the white truck filled with wooden boxes, the back brace you can see through his T-shirt, the snake tattoo that wraps up his left bicep, disappearing beneath his sleeve. Nothing about him is familiar. Still, you take one more look at the garage door behind him. There’s something he doesn’t want you to see.

  After you leave, he follows you out to the edge of the building, watching you cross the street. You ignore Ben in the Jeep, pretending you parked and walked here from a few streets away. You disappear behind a corner.

  You go up two blocks, hang a right, then another to circle around. It takes you a few minutes to find a good view of the back lot. The truck is still parked there, the cartons stacked on the pavement. The man is now talking to a woman who’s much taller than him, her plum-red hair slicked into a bun. He keeps pointing to the open garage door, then to the front, and you can only hear a few words: Girl. Parillo. Asking questions.

  The woman says something too low to hear, then the man locks up the truck. They both disappear around the front of the building.

  The garage can’t be more than thirty feet away—just a sprint across the parking lot. There’s only one security camera in the back. You hop the wooden fence and you’re gone.

  As you approach the door you can hear movement beyond it, though when you press your ear to it, you can’t decipher what it is. You pull the handle and light floods the cement room, revealing half a dozen pit bulls, all in their own separate cages. When you open the door they spring to their feet, darting along the periphery of the metal pens, jowls curled back, teeth bared. The barking is so loud your muscles tense up, the shrillness a knife in your ear.

  Their faces are scarred. One dog’s cheek is ripped away. Another has marks on its front legs, the skin bloody and raw. You push through a door beside them and the stench is so strong it steals your breath. You grab the edge of your shirt, using it to cover your nose.

  In the center of that room is a metal ring, the cement floor stained brown. Folding chairs are set up along the walls. Scanning the corners, you notice the far-left side of the garage, where someone has dug up the concrete. There’s a large garbage bag slung into the hole. Your hands go cold.

  You approach the bag and kneel down, the smell so strong you can’t breathe. You rip a section of the plastic, just below the top, and it’s enough to make out the man’s chin. His skin is a waxy, bluish-white.

  You pull the rest of the plastic away, exposing Ivan’s face. His skin looks strangely thin, as if it might slip away from the bone. His eyes are sunken in. His chin is set at a strange angle, the bruises on his cheek still visible, the blood dried black.

  You let go of the plastic and step back. The fine hairs on your arms prickle. Your stomach tenses, the rotting stench so strong bile rises up in the back of your throat. You choke it down, your shirt to your face as you leave through the other room, the dogs still barking as you sprint from the building.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  YOU BANG YOUR hand on the dashboard of the Jeep as Ben takes off. You peer out the rear window for any sign of the man or woman behind you.

  “Take a right up here,” you say. “They might come after us.”

  “What the hell happened?” Ben asks as he speeds ahead, barely pausing for stop signs.

  “They were hiding some dogfighting ring. And . . .” You trail off, not sure if you can go on.

  Ben takes a hard left toward the freeway. As soon as he sees the sign he pulls onto the ramp, barely looking at the direction you’re headed. “And . . . ?”

  “And I found a body. Ivan’s body. That man who was helping me.”

  As soon as you say it your throat tightens. You lean forward, your elbows on your knees, trying to slow your breaths. You knew something bad had happened, you could feel it in your gut, and yet seeing him, seeing his body, makes it all feel real. It shouldn’t have happened like this, you think as you watch the cars change lanes, the freeway passing beneath you. The photo is still folded in your pocket. You let your hand rest on your leg, feeling it there beneath the fabric, not wanting to look at it—to look at them. He saved your life. He was trying to help you. He lied to protect you.

  Once you think it you can’t unthink it. It repeats on a horrible loop.

  He’s dead because of you. . . . He’s dead because of you. . . .

  Ben pulls off at the next exit. He doesn’t say anything as he drives, instead taking the turns a little too wide, stopping a little too short. As you approach his house you duck down in the passenger seat, staying hidden, still afraid the cops might be watching. You wait until the Jeep is in the garage to sit back.

  Ben leans in, his hand resting on your shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “How, though? How?” You can’t help the edge in your voice. How is anything okay?

  “I don’t know,” Ben says. “There has to be something you can do with this information, someone you can give it to. The cops, maybe. It proves you were telling the truth. It proves they killed him.”

  He reaches down and takes your hand, folding his fingers into yours. His thumb runs over your skin, tracing the lines inside your palm. You let him hold it there, setting it down against his chest, right beside his heart.

  He’s tentative as his hand slips up the side of your neck, resting behind your ear, getting lost in your hair. You let him hold you for a moment, enjoying the warmth of his hand on your cheek, listening to your breath—a reminder you’re still alive.

  Ben is right. You have to do something. You have to keep going. You have to find a way.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “PAPER OR PLASTIC?” The bagger is an older man with knobby, arthritic hands. He holds the quart of milk up over a bag, about to set it inside.

  “That’s okay. I’ll just carry it like this,” Celia Alvarez says. She hooks her finger in the handle. Then she walks toward the sliding doors, past rows of orchids and roses, crumpling the receipt and tossing it into the trash outside.

  The parking lot is quiet. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. As she roots around her uniform pocket for her keys, she thinks again of the video from the interview. How many times had she watched it? Gallagher made fun of her, saying she was obsessed, that they knew all they needed to know. Junkies. Arson. They found syringes. They found vodka bottles and gasoline. The girl was at best mentally ill, schizophrenic maybe, suffering some strange hallucinations. She was convinced people were hunting her.

  Celia hits the button on her keys, momentarily missing her Civic, which is hidden behind a red van. The lights glow and there’s a beep. She continues toward it. What about the girl’s story, though? So much of it matched up. The time line, for one, and her details were internally consistent, her account unwavering. Gallagher said she might’ve been on drugs. She wasn’t, though. There’s no way . . .

  Then there was Celia’s own story—the one she’d told the two officers as they came around the back of the house, looking for the girl. She’d grabbed the girl’s wrist. She’d taken out the handcuffs, but had she really meant to arrest her? When had she ever let someone get away? She only pursued her for a few yards before stopping. She hadn’t even climbed the fence.

  It was like she was going through the procedure, arresting the girl because she was told to, all the while knowing it wasn’t right. It was against her instincts. Had that been it? Had she wanted her to get away?

  In the past few days Celia
found herself looking for the girl as she passed local high schools, wondering if she was walking in those sidewalk crowds. She studied every face of every girl along Hollywood Boulevard. The ones who slept with blankets pulled up to their necks. The ones who sat with cardboard signs. The ones who stood in darkened doorways, asking for a ride.

  For this reason she wonders if she’s imagining it when she sees the girl sitting beside the red van. The girl stands, backs away, watching Celia’s hands to see if she’ll reach for the gun. She doesn’t. She just takes the girl in. Her black hair falls past her shoulders. Her clothes are clean, though they’re several sizes too big, the basketball shorts folded over her hips.

  “Please don’t do anything,” the girl says. “Please just listen. Please.”

  Celia doesn’t need her to beg. She already has this strange motherly instinct to hug her, even though Celia’s only thirty-four, with no kids of her own. The girl seems smaller next to the van. Her tone is even but her expression is tentative, as if she’s nervous. Afraid?

  “I followed you from the police station. You need to know I wasn’t lying the other day. All of it. It was all the truth.”

  “I know,” is all Celia can manage.

  The girl stands by the van’s bumper, watching her, keeping a good ten feet between them. “There was one thing I didn’t say at the station,” she says. “I only remembered it after. The supplies in the house—they had the name Parillo Construction on the sides. I can’t tell whether it’s a real company or not, but I went there.” She takes a breath. “I found the body of the man they took, Ivan. Someone was in the process of burying it.”

  Celia pulls the pad from her front pocket and writes it down. “When was this? Today?”

  “This afternoon. There were all these dogs in cages, too. . . . It looked like they were running a dogfighting ring.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “Two people saw me looking around, but they didn’t see me go into the garage. They probably haven’t moved the body yet.”

  Celia nods, considering. She’ll have to get a lead on the dogfighting ring, following it there. She can’t let anyone know she saw the girl, that she let her get away again. It would be too suspicious.

  “One more thing,” the girl adds, taking a few steps back. “You said that stuff about San Francisco . . . Club Xenith . . . but there’s nothing in the articles about me. Did you find my name or where I’m from? Anything about who I was before?”

  Celia leans on her car. The girl’s not lying, that’s even more obvious now. She really doesn’t remember anything before the day at the subway station. She doesn’t even know her own name.

  “They didn’t have a name on file for you,” she said. “Everything I’ve read just has basic info. In San Francisco the other kids called you Trinie. One of them told police you were originally from a town near Palm Springs . . . Cabazon, I think it was.”

  “Where is that?”

  “A couple hours east. It’s hard to know whether that’s the truth. You were camping in a park in San Francisco. It seemed like most people you were with were runaways. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of information about you.”

  As Celia says it, she wonders if she should tell her the other piece, the one that she’s been thinking about herself. One of the kids is still in juvenile hall outside the Bay Area. A boy who was living there at the same time. She’s thought of going there to speak to him. It might not be anything, though. And it’s not the type of thing she wants the girl exploring on her own. It’s probably too risky to share.

  When she looks up the girl is backing away from her, setting out across the empty lot. “Let me drive you somewhere,” Celia says. “It’s late.”

  “I’ll be okay,” the girl says. “The tracking device is gone; they haven’t been able to find me for a few days. Please just go to Parillo. Please just find him.”

  “I will, I promise. But be safe.” Celia opens the car door, setting the milk down on the passenger side. She doesn’t get in. Instead she watches the girl circle around the back of the store, disappearing through a neighboring yard.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I’M GETTING POOL ADD,” Izzy says, pulling her iPhone from her sweatshirt. She turns onto her stomach, then turns back, punching at the screen.

  “It’s only been an hour.” You know because you’ve been keeping track. An hour since Izzy came over, another two until Ben’s back from school, then another three until you’ll be getting to Cabazon—the town Celia, the cop, told you about last night. When Izzy knocked on the pool house this afternoon you tried to seem light, breezy even, excusing the last few days away (you were back at your parents’, you told her). But it’s hard to make conversation now, hard to seem normal.

  Izzy points the phone at the vines that have grown over the top of the fence, zooming in on a hummingbird hovering there. She takes video for a few seconds, then sits up, pulling a T-shirt on over her bathing suit.

  “I need to do something,” she says. “Let’s walk to those shops on Hillhurst.”

  “I’m supposed to wait here until Ben gets back.” As soon as you say it you know how it sounds—like you’re some pathetic girl who lives for her boyfriend. There’s no way to explain to Izzy what’s been going on. Last night you and Ben made a plan. You’d go to Cabazon for a couple days and see if you could find anything. If you did grow up there, something about it might trigger your memory.

  Izzy smirks. “Okay . . . Sunny Stockholm Syndrome.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Stop acting like some brainwashed hostage! I don’t want to lie around another day—I’m turning into a banana slug. Come on, we’ll be back within an hour.”

  She steps into her jean shorts and pulls them up, then tosses you your pants and T-shirt, which are piled on the lounge chair. You get up, knowing there’s no convincing her. You’ll just have to be quick, and you’ll have to be careful.

  By the time you’ve dressed, Izzy is already out the gate. You follow her down Franklin, the traffic moving beside you. You’re wearing the sunglasses Ben lent you, your hair down and obscuring your face, but you can’t help but turn back, glancing over your shoulder every now and then.

  Izzy walks beside you, stopping for a second to take a picture of a heart-shaped crack in the sidewalk. “So”—she says, tucking her phone back into her pocket—“are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve been zoned out all day. Something happened . . . I just want to know what. Hot, steamy night?” Izzy reaches for your hair but you pull away, your hand jumping to the scar on your neck.

  “Izzy . . . stop.”

  “I was just going to check for hickeys.”

  “Ben’s just a friend.”

  The question brings back a rush from the night before, and you’re worried your face will betray you. You fell asleep on the couch beside him, his arm underneath your head, the other wrapped around your waist. As much as you know you shouldn’t, you can feel yourself getting attached to him. The house felt empty today without him there.

  “I have friends like that, too. . . .” Izzy laughs.

  You pass a street lined with palm trees, their fronds towering high above. Row after row of condominiums. A woman on a balcony is smoking a cigarette, her feet crossed over the stone ledge.

  Up ahead you notice the street sign—VERMONT. The subway station you woke up in is just south of here, and it’s another reminder of how you’ve lied to Izzy. How can you possibly explain who Ben is? How could she possibly understand?

  “It’s just . . . complicated,” you say.

  “It always is. Start from the beginning. Where’d you guys meet?”

  “I ran into him at the supermarket. Literally . . . we bumped into each other.”
>
  As Izzy walks she holds up her phone, filming the back of the cars as they drive past. “How long ago was that?”

  You can’t tell her the truth. You’ve known Ben for a week, and you’re staying in his house. “About a year ago. I used to go to his school. Then we moved to the other side of town. Things with my mom got messed up, so I’m looking for a place to stay more permanently.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  You think of the memory from the church, the coffin covered in white cloth. “He died a while ago.”

  Izzy stops on the sidewalk. She studies you, her head tilted to the side. “I thought your parents have been fighting a lot?”

  For a moment you can’t speak. You take a thin breath, not looking at her. Thankfully a few stores come into view ahead. There’s a 7-Eleven across the street, a children’s clothing boutique to your right. A woman stands on the corner near some health-food place, her smile oppressively cheerful. “Free smoothie?” she asks. “Promotion runs all week!”

  She offers you each a coupon. Izzy studies it, then slips it into the pocket of her sweatshirt. You’re hoping the distraction will be enough to draw her out of the conversation, but she keeps glancing sideways at you, waiting for your response.

  “I meant my stepdad. He’s been with my mom for a while. It’s not that interesting. . . .”

  “It’s not that interesting? Or you don’t want to talk about it?” Izzy shakes her head, sending the tuft of black hair away from her face. The piercing in her cheek catches the light.

  There’s no chance of getting anything past her. You like that about her, but another part of you wishes she wouldn’t ask questions, that whatever friendship you’re forming can remain on the surface of things.

  You follow her down the street, passing the diner you met Ben at, then continuing on toward some clothing stores. A few moments pass before you remember the question and realize you haven’t answered her. Isn’t that answer enough?