Despite downplaying their attraction, Nick was already beginning to suspect things between Geoff and Kitty were serious.
On Friday afternoon they’d all three gotten off the bus at the stop serving Nick and Geoff’s.
Friday Nick’s dad let him have the afternoon and evening off. Once summer rolled around and harvest started, Nick would have to revert to his sunrise to sundown work schedule, all seven days a week. Even that Friday reprieve would dissipate.
Perhaps adding to Nick’s disgust with the whole Maddy situation was his folks were attending the Small Town Girl premiere. His dad could care less, but it was a social event and his mother loved the social events.
Mr. and Mrs. Verney had already left the house by the time the kids arrived in the afternoon. Shopping in the Tri-Cities would be capped off by swinging into Ashmond, and attending the premiere and then the post-premiere party at the country club.
Over at Nick’s they sat around and listened to music – rap, Nick’s favorite – and talked. Nick farted. Nick told Kitty some dirty jokes he bet she hadn’t heard. Nick kept talking about the movie premiere. How lame the assembly had been. No one in their right mind went to see Jack Ford movies anymore. He brought up how his brother had practically been stalked by Maddy while they were in high school. Unearthed the senior year annual and showed them Maddy’s picture. Nick flipped it off. Called her a ‘real show biz cooze’ if ever one had lived.
He kept telling them how he intended to bring all that premiere horseshit to a halt.
Just wait. He knew the right time to do it, take a dump all over the morons in attendance, including his parents.
Around 10 minutes after 6 he pulled out what he said was a disposable cell. He’d bought it using cash. He used the phone and called the Royal Cinemas in Ashmond. At least that’s whom he said he was calling.
It was quite the restrained performance. Leading up to the call he’d insinuated he might use an accent – either that of a gang banger or Middle Eastern terrorist. Instead it was pretty much his voice, a slight nerdish tilt tossed in.
Threat finished he hung up and put his arms in the air and yelled, “Advantage Team Verney!” He turned the stereo volume up to ear bleed levels and danced around the Verney home to Kanye West.
After that Geoff lost interest in hanging around. Said he was hungry. Nick had food, but nothing Geoff wanted to eat. When he left, despite Nick’s protests, Kitty left with him. Geoff just shook his head as Nick hollered after the two, how sad it was they didn’t want to chill with the baddest motherfucker Eaton High School would ever produce. Crossing East Jennings to get to Geoff’s they could still hear the stereo thumping from Nick’s.
Over at Geoff’s they talked for a bit. Geoff said they could go into town and eat if Kitty wanted to. That’s when she realized she’d left her jacket over at Nick’s. Managed to grab the backpack, but not the jacket.
She might not otherwise care, but her phone was in the pocket. She had a knack for losing her phone. Geoff started to laugh at her and then realized he shouldn’t since he’d lost his phone earlier in the week and wouldn’t be getting a replacement anytime soon – not until he could pay for it himself.
She told Geoff she’d be right back. He offered to go over with her, but she wasn’t scared of Nick. Free of an audience he was low-key. She’d caught him looking at her every now and then in that certain way a girl knows means someone likes them. He kind of excited her, but at the same time he repelled her.
It’d already been an hour since they’d left Nick’s.
The music had been turned down. Way down. She couldn’t hear it crossing East Jennings or even starting to get near the front yard.
Two big picture windows bordered the front door. Either one offered a view into the front of the house.
Kitty slowed down at sight of what lay on the porch. It looked like her jacket. Halfway across the yard she knew it was her jacket.
Stepping up on the porch she knelt and picked it up and felt around, sure enough finding her phone in a pocket.
Maybe Nick got pissed off and just threw the jacket out on the porch.
About to knock on the door and ask what was up with that, she heard a noise from inside the house.
Glancing through a window she saw Nick being dragged shoulders first from the living room down the long hall into the back of the house. Sunlight shooting through the kitchen briefly illuminated him. Blood covered Nick’s face. The figure dragging Nick had hold of him under Nick’s arms.
Kitty wasn’t quite sure what she’d seen. Or who. She’d focused on Nick, not the person dragging him.
She dialed Geoff. Realized that wouldn’t do her any good. Plus she didn’t know the landline number to Geoff’s either. Then she thought of me. I lived nearby. She called and left a short message.
A door on the back of the house slammed shut. She froze in place. Footsteps on gravel in the back. A car door opened. Shut. Footsteps across gravel a second time. The back door opening and the screen door slowly squeaking to a close on its hinges.
Kitty had decided to just run for it when the person came back out. She froze on the porch, listening as the person got into their vehicle and started the engine.
She couldn’t stay on the front porch.
Driving around the house and starting up the driveway, all the person had to do was look left at the right moment and they would see her.
Kitty snuck to the edge of the porch and climbed the railing and hopped down to the yard. She edged up the side of the porch and stuck her head out around it, watching the car speed up the Verney driveway towards East Jennings. It turned right onto Jennings and vanished fairly fast, accelerating back towards town.
The front door remained unlocked.
Inside the house she called out. The power to the stereo was still on. The speakers turned so loud she could hear them, the static, even though no music played.
Trickles of blood on the kitchen floor led Kitty to the door to the back porch and then through it.
Cows in the pasture seemed content. So too the pigs in their pen and nothing seemed amiss in the hen house out back.
At sight of Nick, Kitty puked.
His face had been pulverized. The top of his skull had been crushed. His brow line and his face were skewed off the skull like the cheese slopping off a still hot slice of pizza.
He didn’t look like he was breathing. She had to hood her eyes with one hand, keeping the face from out even her peripheral vision, reaching out towards his chest with the other to check for a heartbeat. There was none. She drew her hand back from his chest, convinced one of his hands would snap up and snag her wrist while his misshaped face attempted to say something to her. Just her name, riding around in his throat like a weathered door creaking on hinges in a doorway.
She sat hunched on the back porch listening to the cows and the pigs make the occasional sound.
A car motor came to her ears and she froze, waiting for it to turn into the Verney driveway, but it just kept moving down Jennings.
She called 911. Then called me and left the second message.
Chapter 35
Kitty felt like a disappointment to the police.
She hadn’t seen the killer or processed the make of car or even retained partial license plate information. Too scared for the brain to let any of that sink in. It’d skimmed off like raindrops.
And then Geoff had totally freaked Kitty out by insinuating that if the cops started poking around, whoever had killed Nick would come looking for potential witnesses, seeking to silence them before they told too much.
He wasn’t a very good almost boyfriend.
I told both Kitty and Sherman as much as I could remember from my whole ordeal leaving out the nude photo the kidnappers had sent Dad.
Telling her tale had settled Kitty down. She’d halted rubbin
g her temples. Listening to me she looked bored or had just spaced out a little, trying to process it all.
She pointed at me and said, “Grizzly.”
“Or gristly.” I’d told them some of the things I thought I’d heard from the dark room. The engine noise, that rumbling muffler, I’d left out the fact that it sounded a lot like Uncle Bob’s junker truck.
“So like a name?” asked Kitty. “Like someone’s name?”
“I guess so.”
She looked like she knew something and wanted to share, but was unsure of the consequences.
“There was this one time when I was on the bus, I mean at school, after school, you know, and there weren’t that many people on board yet, and some guy showed up, like he got on the bus and knew Pat Corley,” said Kitty. “Started talking to him. It was like they knew each other and everything. And at some point he called Pat ‘Grizzly’. Like, ‘see you around, Grizzly. Have fun driving the bus’. I remember all that because the guy was really big and kind of scary looking. I mean even bigger than like Mr. Pederson. Not as, um, not in as good of shape I guess is what I mean. And he had a high pitch laugh. I mean it really didn’t fit. That laugh with how big the guy was.”
I asked, “Is he from here?”
“Who?” asked Sherman.
“Pat.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. My brain’s half asleep,” I said. “But…if it’s a nickname, maybe it’s some sort of sports thing. Are any of the mascots around here the ‘Grizzlies’?”
Our knowledge was weak. With the exception of my involvement in long distance all 3 of us were in the ranks of the non-athlete, the non-cool.
“Hold on. I think I know who we could ask about Pat.” Sherman had his phone out and was dialing already.
“Who are you calling?”
“My grandpa.” Once Grandpa Blackwell picked up, Sherman stood up and started walking around the Ferguson’s house.
The bar was called Blackwell’s. People made fun of it a little, but it wasn’t the establishment so much as the clientele. They did have good food. On some of our dates Sherman would call ahead and swing in real quick, get us each a salmon sandwich along with some spicy fries.
Newsworthy or rumor worthy fights, arguments, and relationship disintegrations seemed the order of the day at the bar. One of the biggest put downs among boys seemed to be insinuating that your friend or enemy could only ever get laid by picking up some chick down at Blackwell’s.
Last summer’s marquee bar drama had involved a guy driving into the bar, right through a wall. It was 3 a.m. when the accident occurred. The driver hadn’t been a patron earlier that morning or during the prior nighttime hours. However, at the time of the accident, he was, of course, plastered.
Once the insurance money was in hand, a carpentry crew assembled from the ranks of regulars tackled the repair. Pat Corley was a semi-regular. Sherman remembered his grandpa mentioning Pat when he’d been telling Sherman’s mom about the guys helping out.
After ending the call Sherman told us, “It’s a tattoo.”
He reached up and patted at his shoulder blades. “Like right back here.”
“Of a grizzly bear?” asked Kitty.
“Of a grizzly bear. When they were fixing the bar it was kind of hot. Pat worked shirt free a little bit.”
That information settled down on us.
“Lucy, when you were being…When they had you… Did you hear a weird high pitch laugh?” asked Kitty. When I didn’t react she replicated the noise as she’d heard it.
“Stoner’s laugh,” said Sherman. “Totally.”
“No,” I told Kitty. “Not like that. Not quite like that.”
Still I concentrated, just trying to make sure that I hadn’t. If I sorted through the memories again and again, I might see one of the impressions a little bit different, just enough different that it might lead us to finding Maddy.
I didn’t want to unearth too much and come across memories best left buried. I was afraid of remembering hands working at my bra or pulling my dress up. I asked Kitty if I could use their bathroom.
Behind the closed door I sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the sink, repeating the moments the doctor had said there’d been no sign of sexual assault.
I wanted to take a shower. At the same time I doubted I could scrub enough. It’d be like trying to clean an oil spill. The obvious parts of it might get cleaned up, but there’d always be more, it’d always be present, somewhere, under the water, always wrong, always changed, little globs of it washing ashore when you least expected it.
Back in the living room Kitty and Sherman waited.
Sherman asked if I was ok. I told him I was just tired.
Once I sat, Sherman said, “He was in the military.”
“Pat?”
Sherman nodded.
“He’s older, you know, so it was like the first Gulf War, not the 9/11 thing, but he went over and fought that. And then I guess my grandpa was saying that after that Pat kind of did private security work for some companies. Like military companies and all.”
“Like Quantum,” I said.
Sherman gave me a look and shrugged. He continued. “He’s not one of those guys that bellies up to the bar and brags about that shit. He kind of keeps it quiet. Grandpa likes him. Or I don’t know. Likes that he isn’t a total butthole, I guess.”
We all looked at each other. I laughed.
“What?” Sherman grinned at me.
“It’s just…It’s…This is kind of ludicrous. I mean, yeah, there’s that, the whole military thing, but why would…I mean you said that was…”
“’91 was the Gulf War. Well, Gulf War 1.0.”
“There were two,” I said. “You got hit by the Taser. I got tranquilizers shot into me. Then I got taken away.”
“Right. And then when they took Maddy that had to be at least two guys, too, right?”
Soon as he said it he made a face. And swore.
Kitty’s eyes bulged. She looked at me.
Too late. She’d processed his revelation.
“Sorry,” Sherman whispered.
“It happens,” I sighed. “I guess.”
Chapter 36
Kitty’s mom had worked several jobs, from the grocery store to the hair salon to volunteering for the meals on wheels. She had a rough idea of just about where everyone in Eaton lived. She knew where Pat lived. Mrs. Ferguson also knew that Pat’s aunt Ellen lived in town on Lemon Street.
Once we ventured outside to pester Mrs. Ferguson Kitty’s headache returned. She wasn’t one for the sun when a migraine was at full force. The last I saw of her Sunday she was lying down on her bed and thanking me for setting a towel next to the bed just in case she really did have to barf.
Sherman and I drove into town with a plan. We’d go past Pat’s house. If the Jeep was there, then it’d serve to defuse the growing concern that he’d had some part in everything going on since Friday.
I’d seen him drive up to school in his Jeep before, arriving for work while I was jogging with others out to the track during last period gym class. It was red, not bright red, but fading with age. If the weather held steady, he left off the canopy.
Pat’s house was set right in the middle of the block. There weren’t any trees around it. People out doing yard work up and down the street. Plus there were kids out in one of the lawns next door playing.
It didn’t seem very likely he’d be holding Maddy hostage there. Or that I’d been held hostage there either.
No Jeep parked in front of Pat’s. I knocked on his door. Blushing, feeling like the whole world was watching I walked around to the back of the house and tried the doorknob. Locked. Peering into windows revealed only the stillness inside.
Two little girls and the little boy playing in the lawn next door didn’t know if
their neighbor had been home today or yesterday. I asked if their parents were home. Their older sister was.
At my knocking a sullen 12 year old in a checkered shirt appeared behind the screen door.
“I’m looking for Pat Corley. Your neighbor. Have you seen him at all this weekend? No? Do you know if he’s even been home at all? No. Ok. Thank you.”
She hadn’t spoken a word. Just moved her pinched, glaring head on her neck to answer my questions. Perfecting her teenage Maddy impression.
Walking away from the house back to Sherman’s car something shattered inside the house like the sullen girl had randomly murdered a vase purely on impulse.
Pat’s Aunt Ellen lived in a yellow-shingled singlewide trailer enclosed by a chain link fence. The location was fortified by at least two small incredibly yappy little dogs. I could hear them as soon as I’d closed the gate behind me. Curbside, Sherman waited in the car.
The roof extended out into a kind of carport that wasn’t a carport since there was no car there, only traces in the grass indicating where there’d once been a driveway.
The concrete steps leading to the door were coated in a green felt like substance decaying with time. Even before I knocked the two little bodyguards were at the base of the screen door, hopping and snapping and clawing at the mesh, trying to get through to get at my shins.
A couple prolonged plunges of the doorbell produced Aunt Ellen. A normal looking brown-haired woman with a normal enough scowl. It wasn’t for me though. She yelled at Tiny and Shooter and they beat a retreat into the bowels of the trailer.
At sight of me, a normal enough looking teenage girl, Aunt Ellen pushed the screen door open, asking me just what it was I wanted like I could only ever be up to something pleasant like selling cookies or signing people up for a pledge drive.
On the drive over, Sherman and I decided I should go for dumb rather than slutty. Most good decent people had an aversion to slutty. Plus I didn’t know how to convincingly play slutty.
I’d almost asked Sherman, “You think I could do it if I channel my inner SharDi Leasey?” but left that one chambered.
The switch from one approach to the other consisted of this - instead of trying to find out where Pat was because he owed me money, I went with I needed to find Pat because I owed him money. Sherman had handed me a wad of bills to clutch in my hand for a prop.