As Sick as Our Secrets

by A B Whelan

  It was close to lunchtime when Brad called and asked me to come down to the station to talk to the detectives.

  The room where I was seated earlier has a row of window panels that provides me with a view of the station’s long, open corridor. I’m treated as a law-abiding citizen, not a suspect or an accomplice, yet I can’t shake the nervous feeling that sits heavily on my chest. As a feeble attempt to relax, I sip at my tooth-enamel-melting hot coffee in a paper cup and take a bite from my sugar-glazed donut.

  From the corner of my eye, I notice Brad outside the room. This is the third time I’ve spotted him passing by the window without even looking at me. I wish he’d come in and talk to me.

  I have a tough time focusing on the sergeant’s words. His Obama-doppelganger appearance makes me feel as though I’m being questioned by the secret police over a national security issue. Uniforms and authority have a special effect on me; they make me feel itchy and guilty. I sit with a stiff back and an urge to defend myself. No, sir, I haven’t been using. No, I don’t know any sketchy drug dealers. No, I have no idea where those people deal. No, I use protection when I sleep with strangers—I mean, not strangers, but, you know, guys I meet. Yes, sir, I’m a law-abiding citizen.

  I force myself to pay attention to our conversation because I sincerely want to help the police catch Skyler’s killer. Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can share about Skyler, but any little detail might help; that’s what the detective tells me. Besides, I want to get this interview over with because I need a shower, a stiff drink, and a little something to still my nerves. I close my eyes and visualize the bag of white powder in my glove compartment. The image relieves my anxiety.

  “Mrs. Hayes, are you here with us?” The detective even talks like Obama, speaking slowly and with measured words. I wonder if he practices in front of a mirror at home.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” I wash my face with my hands to help me focus. “I’m not married. Just call me Ashley, if you don’t mind.”

  “Very well, Ashley. So, would you please answer my question?” He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do. The early-afternoon lethargy is setting in for both of us—when a cup of strong coffee becomes more valuable than a winning lottery ticket. I pop a cherry-flavored throat candy into my mouth and put a handful of them on the table in case someone else wants one.

  “Yes, I met a man once at the house she rented in Los Angeles, near South Park, but I know nothing about the extent of their relationship.”

  The sergeant alternates his gaze between the cluster of candy and Peter, who is sitting next to me, silenced by grief. “Do you know this man, Mr. O’Neill?”

  Earlier, when I was leaving the crime scene at Lake Hodges, I called Peter from my car and let him know about Skyler. It wasn’t a particularly lengthy conversation. It’s hard to speak when guilt ties your tongue. He left Los Angeles right away to meet us here.

  After our breakfast meeting concluded at Betty’s house, I drove to the hospital and met Peter in front of the coroner’s building. He didn’t listen to me. He wanted to see Skyler’s body for himself. He burst into the building. I ran after him. The security had a tough time holding him back as he was trying to get to the autopsy room, bellowing like a wild bear. “Is that Sky? It can’t be…let me see her, you motherfuckers…let go of me!” He worked hard to penetrate the wall of uniformed men until he had no more fight in him. They took him down like a zoo animal broken out of its cage. “Oh, God. Sky!” he shrieked, collapsing to his knees.

  I didn’t help him. I froze, suspended in shock. I saw myself in him. Twenty years ago, when my boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident, I also refused to accept reality. It wasn’t until I saw him with my own two eyes that his death truly become real.

  After the accident, I spent a year seeing a family psychologist. He taught me that the first step to recovery was acceptance. I found that part the hardest. I felt if I did admit to myself that Scott was dead, then he’d truly be gone forever. I didn’t want to let him go.

  I look over at Peter, sitting next to me in this barren room, across the table from the interviewing detective. He seems calmer now than he was in the hospital, but broken.

  He now will know pain like I did.

  Peter shakes his head, looking at his folded hands on the table. “I’m not sure what was going on between them,” he tells the sergeant. “I think the guy, Cory, wanted more from Skyler than she was ready to offer.”

  “Would her mother know if she was in a relationship with someone?” continues the detective, a dog with a bone, repeatedly asking the same unimportant question. We already know that it was the work of the serial killer, the Fifty Shades Killer. So these useless questions about a boyfriend set me on edge. Starting our own investigation with the girls will be more productive than what we are doing here.

  Neither of the detectives from the crime scene join this interview. Whenever the door opens, I get my hopes up, until I arrive at a depressing conclusion: Skyler’s murder case is one that nobody is eager to work on, and not because the victims were prostitutes but because the police aren’t any closer to solving the murders now than they were ten years ago. The detective across the table from me couldn’t be more unsympathetic and callous. He may be here because he pulled the short stick. I can’t blame them. The scum of the earth lives in high concentrations in this city. The police have become desensitized. Hell, thanks to the media and Internet, we all are desensitized.

  I lean forward and tap my fingers on the tabletop. “I don’t know. I only met her mother once, and she didn’t strike me as the caring type. I doubt she knows anything about Skyler’s recent life. She left home years ago, you know.”

  The detective scribbles down something on his notepad, and his right leg is swinging from side to side, giving me the urge to put a hand on it to stop him from fidgeting.

  “Do you know if she was using drugs?”

  “I’d only seen her once in my office, and we never got around to talking about her drug habit, but based on her behavior and appearance, I’d say, yes, she was using.” My neck hurts. I’ve spent half the day at the station, sitting on uncomfortable chairs, waiting to be summoned to pointless interviews. I should be out there, tracing Skyler’s footsteps.

  “Yes, she was. I saw her smoking crack two days ago.” Peter’s deep voice is like a warning bell, demanding attention, and we both look at him. “She was a sweet child,” he smiles a painful smile, “but then she started to hang out with the wrong crowd. She’d disappear for weeks at a time. When I asked her where she had been, she’d have these violent outbursts. She was upset that I treated her like a child. I warned her that she had to get her act together. Go back to school and straighten things out in her life.” Peter’s eyes well up with tears. “The last thing I told her on the phone was not to come to me for help anymore.” He starts shaking and his chest’s heaving and collapsing. “I didn’t mean it,” he manages to say. “I’d do anything for her. I only wanted her to get her life back.” His voice is completely broken now, the sob has taken over.

  “What happened to her is not your fault. You did more than anyone else in her life.” I know anything I can say now is nothing more than empty words. Nothing could comfort me when I was grieving.

  The interview lasts another two excruciating hours as we cover everything from Skyler’s home life to her drug abuse. I give a detailed description of the sex dungeon where Skyler was allegedly held captive. I even e-mail the detective the sketch of her attacker I have on my iPad.

  With all the information Peter and I provide, and with what the detectives know about the other murders, they should be able to connect a few more dots.

  Once Peter and I are dismissed, I leave him sitting by a vending machine while I go search for Brad. As a patrol officer, his involvement with Skyler’s murder investigation was limited to securing the crime scene, but I hope he knows how to get ahold of sensitive information from others.

  I’m out of luck because his sh
ift ended an hour ago, and he’s already left the station.

  *****

  “Are you sure this is the place?” I turn to Betty. Her face is buried in a piece of paper—a couple lines on a handwritten note from her sister.

  “Happy Hands. 3 p.m. sharp. That’s what it says here.” Betty shrugs.

  Olivia confirms the name of the place Cathy told us we could get an illegal gun.

  “Well, what can we lose?” I start toward the open door of the small corner shop next to Macy’s. “If nothing else, we’ll get a good back massage. God knows I can use one.”

  A list of services is printed on an elongated banner hanging in the window. I find the forty-minute combo, a half-body and half-foot massage, but not the fifty-minute one we were instructed to order by Cathy.

  “What the hell?” I point at the list. “You need to call your sister and ask her what’s going on.” I look back at Betty. She’s shaking.

  I, too, was nervous when we entered the mall, but the line I did in the bathroom helped me get a grip on my emotions.

  “You don’t have to come in with me. I got this. Just wait in the car.” I almost look past Olivia because in the bright shopping mall, she is nearly unrecognizable without her usual makeup and elegant clothes.

  “I’m coming with you,” Olivia says, grasping the shoulder strap of her purse. “It was my idea to come here.”

  We must look lost and aimless because three Asian men and a woman spill from the store and beckon us to come inside the parlor, as if we were foreign tourists at a market in Istanbul.

  I lean closer to Betty. “We’re being lured into the devil’s lair.” She doesn’t find my comment amusing. She lost her taste for my humor in Vegas.

  “We’d like to order two fifty-minute combos,” says Olivia to the older Asian man in a pineapple-yellow polo shirt baring the parlor’s logo. His eyes shrink even deeper as he measures us up. Betty remains beside the escalator, rolling back and forth on her heels.

  “Just go home, Betty,” I tell her. “You don’t need to get involved. You’ve helped enough.” She puts her hand up to conceal her face from the couple leaving Marcy’s.

  “Keep your voice down. Jesus,” she hisses at me.

  Confusion spreads among the employees. They engage in a seemingly heated argument in their native tongue. The woman rushes inside the parlor and disappears behind the curtain at the far side of the room. Then she reemerges with a calmer expression and points me to a bed.

  I’m not good at hiding my emotions, and my surprise is evident. We didn’t come here for a massage; we came to buy unregistered firearms. I tell them that there must be some misunderstanding, but the guy in the yellow shirt doesn’t give up harassing us until all three of us are on our bellies, faces pressed into paper-towel-covered holes.

  I’m not relaxed. I’m agitated.

  I hear Olivia arguing with her masseur. I lean back and see her playing tug-of-war with Jackie Chan. “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “I hate being touched. I don’t want a massage, and this little man won’t leave me alone.” She rips her arm free and drops herself onto a chair by the entrance, hissing at anybody who approaches her.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but if we are already here, I’m getting a fucking massage.” I lie back down, and my masseur starts kneading my body like dough. My muscles are so tense that every touch brings borderline pain. Instead of resisting it, I sink into it.

  If only my mind could relax, but the murmuring among the employees is irritating, especially as I don’t understand a word they’re saying.

  The noise suddenly stops when a man appears in the doorway and orders a twenty-minute back massage. Once he is settled, the room falls into silence, and only the occasional Asian blabbering reminds me where I am.

  At the end of my body massage, I’m escorted to the chair where a container of warm water awaits. I’m so loose that I have trouble walking. I’m under a spell. Damn, I need to do this more often.

  Betty is already sitting in the chair, her feet soaking. The whole image seems surreal. We don’t have time for this circus. All we wanted was a gun and to be gone. Any traces left of Skyler’s murderer are getting cold, and we are wasting time.

  I make one more attempt to clarify our purpose for coming here, but nobody wants to hear it.

  A large, balding man pushes me into a reclining chair and starts taking off my shoes and socks.

  Olivia leans to me. “What’s going on? Maybe we messed something up? Gave a bad order? Came to the wrong place?”

  “I don’t know, but when we’re done here, I’m gonna kick Cathy’s ass for messing with us.”

  The masseur is touching places on my foot that have never been touched. I feel my grief and fear slipping away. I can’t let that happen. I’m not falling for some ancient magic.

  I put my hands on my knees and lean closer to the guy, who is sitting on a small chair by my feet. “Gun? You know, boom-boom?”

  He lifts his hand to me and starts yelling at me in a language that sounds like angry chickens fighting.

  “Your sister is a fucking joker,” I tell Betty.

  I’m shushed by the woman at the front desk. Apparently, I’m disturbing the only other customer’s late-afternoon enjoyment.

  I offer to pick up the tab, feeling guilty about being foolish enough to believe it was this easy to get hold of a gun.

  “Twelve hundred dollars,” says the hostess in an innocent, girlish voice. I bend over the counter to see her notes because I don’t think I heard her right.

  “How much?”

  She writes 1,200 down on a piece of paper. Scribbles the dollar sign in front of it and hands the note to me with a wink. It takes me a second to process the information, to understand that we are indeed buying an illegal firearm. As the realization sets in, my knees start shaking and my heartbeat quickens.

  I take out an envelope full of cash from my purse and hand it to her.

  She puts two small glossy shopping bags with the company logo on the counter. “Enjoy the rest of your day.” She bows to me.

  I bow back to her so deeply I nearly hit my forehead on the countertop. My mouth goes dry, and all feeling has left my fingertips. I lift the silvery bags from the counter. They are heavier than I expected. I bow one more time and hurry out of the store. “Let’s go!” I hiss at the girls. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I add, murmuring under my breath as I speed-walk down the escalator.

  Catching up to me and breathing down my neck, Olivia says, “What happened?”

  “The fucking guns! I have the fucking guns!” I say without looking back.

  Betty

  THURSDAY

  The gushing water on my face fills my ears, muffling Brad’s voice, but I know he is talking to me because when I don’t respond he calls out, loud and distinct. Most days pass without my husband feeling the need to engage in a conversation with me, but now he wants to talk to me when I’m trying to relax in the shower.

  I press my hand against the tile and dunk my head deeper into the cascade of water to block out the outside world. I wish I could remember how it feels to have privacy. I gave up on locking the bathroom door a long time ago because when I did, either Brad picked the door lock to get his hair gel or toilet paper or the kids broke in for some equally life-or-death matter.

  “Betty?” Brad calls my name again.

  As I pull the shower curtain aside, I knock over a few of my sister’s expensive beauty products, which I’m not sure how she can afford.

  “What did you say?”

  “That poor dead hooker’s cousin came by the station today,” Brad says, leaning into the mirror and trimming his nose hair. Another sexy image burned into my head that I’ll never be able to remove. I have a whole mental closet full of them: farting in bed, poking bellybutton hair, reeking toe fungus, and pale butt-crack shots.

  I focus my eyes on the framed black-and-white baby picture of our eldest son on the wall. I put these types of family pictures
all over the house to remind me of the value of my marriage and that, somehow, it is all worth it.

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” I retort. “Would you like someone calling your daughter a whore?”

  “What do you want me to call her then? A working girl?” His face is inches from the mirror, his breath fogging up his reflection.

  “How do you know she was a prostitute?”

  “Your friend Ashley told me about her at the station today.”

  I let go of the curtain and get back under the warm pelting water. “What did you tell him?” I ask.

  “What?”

  I pull the curtain to the side again. “I said, what did you tell her cousin—Peter, right?”

  Brad rubs his face as if trying to smooth out the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes—reminders of sleepless nights and constant stress.

  He lifts a bottle of beer to his lips and then says, “I told him to go home and get some sleep.”

  “How could the poor guy sleep? I couldn’t.”

  “Yeah, poor bastard. He’ll be one of those guys who calls the station every day for new developments. He’ll be disappointed. I talked to the detectives, and there’s not much to go on. That’s all the station needs, a fucking L.A. lawyer’s grudge.”

  I step out of the shower and wrap myself in a towel. “Were there any fingerprints or DNA on the body?”

  “Look at you!” he says, smiling. “Netflix education?”

  I punch him on the shoulder, hard enough to release my irritation at his mocking tone but not too hard to hurt his ego and upset him.