by Rachel Caine
He pauses, and I realize that Connor is hammering at the window of the Jeep, trying to make me look at him. I risk a glance. His face looks desperately pale. I hear him yell, "I called the cops, Mom. They're coming!"
I know you did, sweetie. I give him a smile, a real smile, because this might be the last time I get to do that.
Then I turn on the drunk guy, whose other friend is heading toward us now, and I say, "Back the fuck off."
They both laugh. The one who's just arrived is a little broader and a little taller, but he's also even more drunk and has to hang on to the first guy as rocks turn under his feet. Keystone Kops, but deadly serious about the violence they'd like to do.
"You fucked up our truck," he says. "Gonna have to pay for that, you murdering bitch."
Back at the overturned truck, the passenger-side door is creaking up like the hatch in a tank, but unlike a tank--and I could have told these idiots this--car doors aren't designed to flip back and lie flat. The attempt to throw the door up and out of the way causes it to hit the hinge point and rebound at the man pushing it with vicious speed.
He yelps and lets go of the sides of the truck just before his fingers are crushed. It'd be funny if I weren't scared shitless and responsible for two innocent children, whereas these jackasses aren't even responsible for their own selves.
When the two facing me decide to rush me, I flip the stun function switch on the flashlight and keep it pointed away from me as I activate it. It's still like a brick to the face; the strobing, asymmetric, incredibly bright lights and the ear-shattering shriek are bad enough behind the thing, much less ahead of it.
It knocks Carl and his friend flat on their asses, mouths open in frantic yells I can't hear over the din. I feel a bitter, fantastic rush of adrenaline that makes me want to smash the hell out of them with the tire iron and make sure, absolutely sure, that these assholes never threaten my children again.
But I don't. I'm on the thin, shivering edge of it, but what stops me is the idea that I'll just prove Prester right. Prove myself a murderer. Local blood on my hands. As quickly as they'd acquit someone else for shooting me, they'd strap me down for the needle if I hit these guys when they're down. It's really all that keeps me standing there, holding the strobe and siren on them instead of finishing this for good.
Even though I'm blinded by the strobes, I know the police are coming when Connor rolls the window down next to me and grabs my arm. He's pointing down at the road, and when I look that way, I see a cruiser pulling up with its light bar slashing the night. I see two figures get out and start toiling up the hill toward me, flashlights bobbing and illuminating startling patches of green brush and bone-pale rocks.
I shut the flashlight's defense mode down and keep the halogen beam fixed on the two drunks, who are now struggling up to their knees, spitting mad. They're still holding hands to their ears. One of them leans over and throws up a gush of pale beer, but the other--Carl--keeps his gaze fixed hard on me. I see the hate in it. There's no reasoning with him. And no way to feel safe.
"Police are coming," I tell him. He looks over, like he didn't notice--and he probably hadn't--and a flash of pure rage makes me tighten up my grip on the tire iron again. He wants to hurt me. Maybe kill me. And maybe he wants to take his fury out on the kids.
"You fucking whore," he says. I think about what a satisfying crunch the tire iron would make coming in contact with his teeth. He's five foot eight of bad breath and shitty posture, and I can't think I'm taking a light out of the world if I end him. But I suppose he has people who love him.
Even I have that much.
Officer Graham is the first to make it to my side. I'm glad to see him; he's bigger and taller, and he looks like he could intimidate the spine out of just about anyone if he wanted to give it a try. He takes in the situation, frowns, and says, "What the hell is going on?"
It's in my best interest to get my story in first, and I'm quick off the mark. "These idiots decided to pay me a not-so-friendly visit," I say. "They blocked us into the driveway. Somebody--probably them--vandalized the house. I tried to go cross-country, but a rock took out my steering. I didn't have a choice. I had to try to keep them away from my kids."
"Lying bitch--"
Graham extends a hand toward the drunk without taking his gaze off me. "Officer Claremont will be taking your statement," he tells him. "Kez?"
Graham's partner tonight is a tall, lean, African American woman with close-cropped hair and a no-nonsense briskness. She leads the two drunks over to the wrecked pickup and calls for rescue and an ambulance to get the three from the cab and the one broken farther up the hill. They're babbling at her in high-pitched, urgent, slurring voices. I don't imagine she's enjoying herself.
"So all this came with no provocation at all, is what you're saying," Graham says.
I turn back to look at him, then lean into Connor's open window to kiss his forehead. "Lanny? You all right, sweetheart?"
She gives me a thumbs-up and tilts her head back to help slow down the bloody nose.
"Mind putting down the tire iron?" Graham says in a dry voice, and I realize I'm clutching it tightly, as if I'm still facing threats. My thumb is resting on the stun function button of the flashlight, too. I ease myself back from that invisible cliff and lay both things down next to the Jeep, then take a couple of steps away. "Okay. Good start. Now, you said these boys blocked you in. You had words with them?"
"I don't even know them," I say. "But I guess the information is out about my ex. I'm assuming you know."
He doesn't betray much, but I see something stir down in the depths of his gaze, and his mouth goes tight. He deliberately loosens it. "As I understand it, your husband is a convicted murderer."
"Ex-husband."
"Uh-huh. A serial killer, if I got it right."
"You know you do," I say. "Word's traveling fast. Guess it would in a small town like this. I asked Detective Prester for some kind of protective detail for my kids--"
"We were on the way to take that up," he tells me. "We'd have been parked out front tonight."
"I guess the paint would have probably dried by then."
"Paint?"
"Feel free to go look once you're done here. Can't miss it," I tell him. I'm flat exhausted. The aches from the crash are starting to make themselves felt. I have tenderness in my left shoulder, where I probably wrenched it against the restraints. My neck's stiff, and now my nose has a dull ache around the bridge. My nosebleed has stopped, at least, so I must not have broken anything, and when I touch it I don't feel anything shifting. I'm fine, I think. Better than I deserve to be. "This is just Round One. That's why I said we needed protection."
"Ms. Proctor, maybe you should consider that of the six guys who came after you, at least four of them have some kind of injuries," Graham says, not unkindly. "I think we can call this round for you, if you're keeping score."
"I'm not," I say, but that's a lie. I'm glad that shitty pickup is lying on its side leaking radiator fluid into the ground. I'm glad four of them get a chance to nurse wounds while thinking about never coming back at me. I'm just sorry they aren't hurt badly enough to keep them from ever doing it again. "You're not arresting me."
"You didn't even make that a question."
"Any decent defense attorney would make dog food out of you. A mother with her kids, attacked by six drunk jerks? Really? I'll be the trending hero on Twitter in half an hour."
He sighs. It's a long, slow sound that mingles with the lapping of the lake's waves below. Mist is beginning to rise from the water as the air cools just enough to start the cycle, like a thousand wisps of ghosts escaping. Lake of the dead, I think, and try not to look at it. Stillhouse Lake's beauty is ruined for me. "No," Graham finally says. "I'm not arresting you. I'm arresting them for criminal mischief and good old Bobby over there for driving under the influence. Good enough?"
It isn't. I want them all arrested for assault, and that word hadn't even crossed his lips.
He must have seen the argument coming up in me, because he holds up a hand to forestall it. "Look, they didn't lay a hand on you. At least one of 'em is sober enough to figure out he can claim they saw you wreck and came down here to help, and you got paranoid and fired off that--whatever the hell it is--at them. Unless we find paint or evidence of it on them or in the truck, they can claim they have no idea your house got tagged--"
"Tagged? It's not Banksy art!"
"All right then, vandalized. But the point is, they've got good deniability for everything to do with any stalking or assault. And you're the one who had the tire iron. Far as I can tell, these men were unarmed."
Six on one don't need weapons, and he knows that, but he's right, of course. Defense attorneys cut both ways.
I lean against the broken wreck of my Jeep, out of strength. "We'll need a wrecker," I tell him. "My Jeep's not going anywhere without one."
"I'll arrange for it," he says. "Meanwhile, let's get your kids and go back to your house. Make sure nobody's gotten inside."
I know they hadn't. I have mobile notification for my alarm system, and if it goes off I can immediately look at the tablet and rerun the footage to see who's been in there. Nobody broke any windows or kicked in any doors, but even so, the last place I want to take my kids right now is back to the house, with that red paint still dripping. I suppose they picked the garage for that particular splash pattern on purpose. Reminding me where Melvin liked to do his gruesome work.
But there really isn't a choice. I know just from Graham's expression that he's not taking us to any Norton motel for the night, and I strongly suspect that any calls to Detective Prester will go unanswered. With the Jeep destroyed, my only option would be to rely on the kindness of strangers, and . . . I'm far too paranoid to even consider it. My nearest neighbors, the Johansens, helped block my driveway. Sam Cade lied to me from the beginning. Javier's a reserve deputy and probably won't return my calls, either.
I reach into the open Jeep window and hit the unlock button, retrieve my keys, and help Lanny out. Her nose has mostly stopped bleeding now, and it doesn't seem broken, but she might have bruises. We all might. My fault.
I hold on to her as the three of us slowly follow Officer Graham up the hill, to a house that no longer feels like home.
10
Officer Graham takes diligent pictures of the damage. The red isn't blood; it's still vividly red, and blood would have oxidized to brown by now. Paint. Most of the words are spray-painted, the exception being Killer, which has extra-gothic drip from the vandal's liberal dip of the paintbrush. I unlock the door and disarm the alarm, and Graham checks the whole place thoroughly. He finds nothing, but then again, I knew he wouldn't.
"All right," he says, settling his sidearm in its holster as he comes back to us in the living room. "I'm going to need your guns, Ms. Proctor."
"You have a warrant for them?" I ask. He stares back at me. "That's a no, then. I decline to cooperate. Get a warrant."
His expression hasn't changed, but his body language has; it's shifted a little forward, become a touch more aggressive. I sense it more than see it. I remember what Connor said on the drive back: Graham's boys were the ones who beat up my son. I wonder exactly what they learned from their father. I want to trust the man; he's wearing a badge, he's the only thing truly standing between me and the angry people coming at me right now. But looking at him, I'm not sure I can make the leap.
Maybe I can't trust anyone anymore. My judgment's been so off.
"Okay," Graham says, though clearly he doesn't think it is. "Keep the doors locked, alarm on. Does it ring at the station?"
Why, so you can ignore it? "It rings directly there," I tell him. "If the power gets cut, it also goes off."
"And what about the panic room . . . ?" I say nothing to that, just look at him. He shrugs. "Want to make sure you've got a way to get help if you're inside there. Can't help if we don't know you're in there."
"It has a separate phone line," I tell him. "We'll be just fine."
He can tell I've gone as far down this road as I'm going, and Graham finally nods and heads for the door. I open it and see him off, and try not to look at the damage to our front door. Once it's shut, I can pretend, a little, that everything's normal. I enter the alarm code, and the soft beep of the "Stay" signal soothes something inside me I didn't know was trembling. I put all the locks on and turn to put my back to the door.
Lanny is sitting on the couch with her knees up, her arms circling them. Defensive again. Connor leans against her. There are smears of blood on my daughter's chin, and I go into the kitchen, wet a hand towel, and come back to gently clean her off. Once I have, she takes the cloth and silently does the same for me. I haven't even realized that I have so much on me; the white hand towel comes away with vivid red smears. Connor's the only one who doesn't need the cleanup, so I put the towel aside and sit with my kids, holding them and rocking with them slowly. None of us has anything to say.
None of us needs to.
Finally, I pick up the soiled towel and rinse it in cold water in the sink, and Lanny comes in to grab the orange juice carton and swig it down thirstily. Connor takes it when she's done. I don't even have the energy to tell them to use glasses. I just shake my head and have water, lots of it. "Do you want anything to eat?" I ask them. Both kids murmur no. "Okay. Go and get some sleep. If you need me, I'll be in the shower, and I'm going to sleep out here tonight in the living room, okay?"
They're not surprised. I think they must remember how, after my acquittal and before we left Kansas, I slept every night on the old sofa in the bare living room of the rented house with a gun right at my side. We had bricks smashed through the windows, and once a flaming bottle that guttered out without starting a fire. Vandalism was a constant fact of life before we'd moved for the second time.
And I'd known then, like now, that I couldn't rely on the neighbors for help. Or the police.
The shower feels like heaven, like a sweet, normal, warm respite from the hell of the day. I towel-dry my hair and put on a fresh sports bra and underwear; then I find the softest pair of sweatpants I have, plus a microfiber shirt and socks. I want to be as fully dressed as possible, except for my running shoes, which I've rigged up with elastic ties so I can slip them on in an emergency. The couch is comfortable enough, and I keep my gun tucked just where I can reach it, pointed away from me. Too many paranoid people have failed to practice trigger safety.
To my surprise, I fall asleep, and I don't even dream. Maybe I'm too tired. I wake up to the soft beep of the automatic coffeemaker as it brews the morning pot, and I make a groggy mental note to tell Lanny that if I get arrested again, to turn the damn thing off. It's still dark outside. I find my shoulder holster and put it on over my shirt, tuck the gun inside, and go to pour my coffee. I'm in my stocking feet and very quiet, but even so, I hear the creak of a door opening down the hall.
It's Lanny. I know at a glance she didn't sleep much, because she's already dressed in black cargo pants and a half-ripped gray T-shirt with a skull on it and a black tank showing through the gaps. Two years from now, I think, I'll have to fight with her to keep the tank top on under it. She's brushed out her hair but not straightened it, and the faint natural wave in it catches the light as she moves. The reddened bruising under her eyes has turned a rich crimson, verging on brown, and her nose is a little swollen but not as much as I'd feared.
Even with the damage, she's beautiful, so beautiful, and I catch my breath on an unexpected pain and have to busy myself stirring sugar into my coffee so I don't show her the emotion. I don't even know why I'm feeling it. It comes as an overwhelming, warm wave that makes me want to destroy the world before it can hurt her again.
"Move," Lanny says, annoyed, and I edge out of the way as she yanks a cup from the shelf. She checks it--an automatic thing for her, from the time she was twelve and found a cockroach in a cup in a rental house--and then splashes coffee in. She drinks hers black,
not because she likes it but because she thinks she should. "So. We're still alive."
"Still alive," I agree.
"You check the Sicko Patrol?"
I dread doing it, but she's right. That's the next step. "I will in a bit."
She lets out a bitter laugh. "I guess I won't be going to school."
She isn't dressed for it, I think, and of course she's right. "No school. Maybe it's time for homeschool."
"Oh, yeah, that's great. We'll never get to leave the house ever again. Federal background checks on the UPS guy before we let him deliver a package."
She's in a foul mood, spoiling for a fight, and I raise my eyebrows. "Please don't," I tell her, which makes her glare. "I'm going to need your help, Lanny."
That merits an eye roll on top of the glare, which is a neat trick I suspect only a teen girl can truly master. "Let me guess. You want me to take care of Connor. As per, Warden. Maybe you should give me a badge and you know . . ." She gestures at my shoulder holster, vaguely but significantly.
"No," I tell her. "I want you to come with me and help me go through the e-mails. Get your laptop. I'll show you what to do. And when we're done with that, we'll talk about next steps."
She's momentarily at a loss for words, which is a new thing, and then she puts her cup down, swallows, and says, "About time."
"Yes," I agree. "It is. But believe me, I wish I could keep it away from you forever."
It's a tough morning's work, slowly acclimating her to the levels of depravity she'll encounter, and showing her how to sort and categorize them. I prequalify what I send her; no rape porn or Photoshops of our faces onto murder victims. I can't do that to her. She might see it soon enough, but only because I can't help it, not because I allow it.
There's a tsunami of hatred this morning, and even with two of us culling through it and reporting it back to the various abuse agencies, it takes a long, long time. Most of it's fairly regular stuff--death threats. One finally makes her stop and roll her chair away from her laptop, hands coming away as if she's touched something dead. She looks at me wordlessly, and I see something flame out inside her. A little bit of hope. A little bit of faith that the world could still be kind, even to us.
