Lucy's Chance

by Jackie D

  Erica waited for her to continue. She wanted to reach out and touch her hand, to let her know she was there for her, but she didn’t dare touch her. Lucy’s mind was somewhere else right now, and Erica didn’t want to startle her, or cause her undue stress.

  “The troops that were with us, they called in our location, they fought off the insurgents, and they kept us safe. There was so much yelling, so much gunfire, and so much blood. The sky had gone black from all the dust, from the wall that had crumpled down around us. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t actually black, but that’s how it felt at the time. I could hear people in the distance. There were cries, yelling. But you couldn’t tell from what side they were coming from. That was the weird part, ya know? All this devastation, death, horror, and you weren’t sure who was suffering from it. That’s the thing I remember most from being there. There was so much destruction, it was hard to tell who the victims were.” She looked over at her now, and she forced a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Is that where the scar is from?” Erica asked.

  Lucy rubbed her arm without looking down at it. “Yes, from the rebar.”

  “The rebar?”

  “I tried to pull out Bruce, the camera guy, when I heard him whimpering. I don’t remember how long I spent trying to pull the pieces of the wall off him. I remember being so incredibly tired. At one point, I slipped and came down on a piece of rebar that was sticking out of the wall that had fallen on top of him. I was lucky it didn’t go through any major veins, or I wouldn’t be here today. When I replay it in my head, I’m sure he was trying to cry out, but he couldn’t force more than a whimper. I wasn’t strong enough though, no matter what I did, and his cries just got quieter and quieter. Then, after a while, he didn’t make any noise at all. He was just quiet, that scary kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that only comes after death.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lucy.” It didn’t feel like enough. She wanted to give her more, but she didn’t have the words.

  Lucy blinked several times before seeming to come back to this plane of existence. “It’s okay. But I think my therapist took her last trip to Bora Bora on my fees alone.”

  Erica wanted to tell her that she could’ve come to her, that she’d have been there for her. But was that the truth? If Lucy had come knocking on her door all those years later, would she have answered? Erica silently told herself she would’ve, but she wasn’t sure if she was just lying to herself because of Lucy’s story.

  Lucy broke her internal reflection. “I never should’ve left you all those years ago. It’s one of my biggest regrets.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but the words seemed to echo, loud and clear.

  Erica felt like she’d been sucker-punched. She had spent months, years, wanting to hear those exact words, but they’d never come. And now, twelve years later, as they sat in a parking lot on some weird cop and reporter stakeout, which would never fly in a big city, Lucy bared her soul. Erica’s emotions were all over the place, caught between empathy for what Lucy had told her and anger for what Lucy had done to her.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I know,” Lucy said immediately, apparently prepared for the answer. “I should’ve told you years ago. I shouldn’t have let all this time pass. I should’ve come home to you.”

  Erica felt the brush of her hand on top of hers. “But you didn’t.” Erica pulled her hand away. “That night, after you told me we had to end our relationship, I drove home feeling like I had a knife in my heart. No, worse than that, you ripped out my heart. You didn’t just break up with me, Lucy, you ended our friendship, too. All those years, all those promises, all those memories. You just walked away.”

  “I didn’t want it to be that way. I wanted to give you space. Actually, maybe I needed to give myself space. I thought being with you was holding me back, which I realize now was ridiculous. I thought I wasn’t having the full college experience because I was involved with someone. Plus, everyone around me had broken up with their high school sweethearts and were playing the field. I thought I should do the same, like I was missing out on something.”

  “Were you? Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Lucy rubbed her palm with her thumb and stared at the floor of the car. “No. All I figured out was how much I missed you, how much I needed you. So I ran. I tried to escape from my problems, and I’ve been running every day since.”

  “You expect me to believe you missed me so much that you never contacted me? That it was so hard for you to be away that you never texted? Please, I’m not that stupid.” Erica was fighting down a whirlwind of emotions. They were bouncing around in her head, tiny jumping beans she couldn’t get under control. Each one tapped a different emotion—confusion, anger, and betrayal.

  “I was scared that you would’ve turned me away. And whenever I thought about doing it anyway, it always felt like the wrong time.”

  “And what if that’s how I feel now?” She watched Lucy closely, wanting to see if her reactions would mimic her words. She needed to know if this was genuine or if she was simply trying to clear her conscience.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you, Erica. You’re the last person I ever wanted to cause pain. I know you might not believe that, but it’s true.” She took a deep breath but didn’t look up.

  “You’re unbelievable. You show up here, after years have passed. You insert yourself into our investigation, spend maybe a total of twelve hours with me, and decide you want to be part of my life again. I’m not the same person I was when that car pulled away twelve years ago. You don’t even know me anymore.”

  “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

  “That’s not good enough, Lucy. You could’ve had this conversation with me at any point in the last decade. Why should I believe you now?”

  “Because it’s the truth; it’s always been the truth.”

  “And the other side of the truth is what I went through. You still have no idea how difficult losing you was for me.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me anymore, either. I’ve been through things that forced me to reevaluate my choices, the things I’ve done.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not chasing a ghost. You’re trying to fix something that can never be repaired. You broke something in me that night. More than my heart, you broke my trust. I’ve spent years and countless relationships trying to get it back, but it will never be the same. I don’t think it’s supposed to be. And now I’m just supposed to put it all in the past and be your what? You haven’t even told me what you want.”

  “That’s because I don’t know what I want. I thought I wanted closure. I thought I wanted to put this to rest, to let you go once and for all. Now, I’m not sure what—”

  Lucy was still talking, but Erica had zeroed in on the figure walking out of the building.

  “It’s Frank Wilds.” She tapped Lucy and pointed across the parking lot. Erica started the car. “Time to see where this guy goes at night.”

  His car made a right out of the parking lot, and Erica followed. She managed to put a car between them for the time being, but that wouldn’t hold. This was a small town and if he was going to eventually make it to the back roads, it would be clear someone was following him. The car in front of her made a left, and she fell back a bit farther when her phone rang.

  She glanced at the caller ID and answered. “Detective Chance.”

  She heard the words on the other end but couldn’t quite wrap her head around them. She slowed the car and checked the rearview mirror, then made a U-turn.

  Lucy looked over at her. “What’s up?”

  Erica tossed the phone back down in the cup holder. “There’s another body.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Lucy stared out the window, watching the flashes of the police lights beat against the empty fields. In a few months, they would be spilling over with corn, something Lucy hadn’t seen in years. She tried to focus on the eerie familiarity of her childhood and ignore the feelings tha
t buzzed through her from the conversation she had with Erica. She wasn’t sure what had come over her in that moment. She hadn’t said anything she didn’t mean, but she had wanted to time it better. She wanted to have a relationship with Erica; she just wasn’t sure what that meant. But above all, she wanted her to know how sorry she was, how sorry she remained. Instead, she let it dribble out, unable to stop once it started. It was like she had picked a scab which, once open, wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  She was mercifully rescued from her internal reflection and thrust into another person’s far worse tragedy when they turned down Orwood Road. She recognized Diego’s car as they slid up behind it. He was already having uniformed officers tape off a perimeter as they got out of the car.

  His expression was tired, pained by yet another small-town travesty. “It’s not Jessica Vargas.”

  Erica’s eyes flashed a look of relief and then anger when she looked past him to the body on the ground. She put her hands on her hips and kicked the dirt. “Damn it.”

  He nodded toward the two teenagers who were wrapped in a blanket and sitting on a log. “They found her, but we don’t have a lot of other information.”

  Erica pushed past him and went to look at the body. Lucy didn’t bother to follow, knowing full well she needed to stay out of the crime scene area. She stood next to her brother, who was making notes in his notebook.

  “Does it look like the same guy?” she asked.

  Diego looked at her briefly and then continued to write. “Everything is the same except for the fact that she wasn’t from around here. Also, her car was parked about fifteen feet away. Her driver’s license says she’s from Salinas, and we couldn’t find anything that would point to why she’d be here in Clearbrook.”

  “How do you know she isn’t affiliated with Clearbrook?” Lucy asked.

  “Well, I guess we can’t be sure yet, but she hasn’t been reported missing to us, and we’re checking with the Salinas Police Department.”

  “Same age?” Lucy asked.

  “Just about. Teresa is twenty-five.”

  “Jesus Christ.” She felt goose bumps prickle up her skin.

  “Any luck with Frank Wilds?”

  “We were following him when we got the call.” And saying things that should have been said long ago.

  “Where was he headed?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but it was the right route to go back to his house.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’m going to contact the Clearbrook Press and see if they’ll let me write a story, an update of sorts. You never know; it could shake something loose.”

  “Or it could enrage him.”

  Diego was right. Writing the story was a fifty-fifty shot. “Yeah, but if you two are right and this is the same killer from twenty-five years ago, I bet he’s pissed that he hasn’t gotten the recognition he probably thinks he deserves.” It had been her experience that on some level, these mad men wanted recognition for their work. Even if he didn’t realize it, he would once he saw his name in print.

  He seemed to consider it for a moment. “We’ll have to check with the chief.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She won’t like the idea.” He nodded in Erica’s direction, who was still kneeling next to the body. She was jotting in her notebook and looking around the body, probably for any clue she could find. Erica would think Lucy was putting herself in danger, and she would think an article with her name on it was too dangerous.

  “No, probably not.”

  “I’ll make the call.” He sighed.

  Two hours later, Lucy was sitting in front of her computer screen. She watched the cursor blink at her from the blank page, mocking her. The kitchen table was littered with several files she had been given permission to make copies of for the story. Holly and Bella lay at her feet, curled in a joined ball of snores and blissful ignorance. Erica had dropped her off at her parents’ house to write the story while she went back to the office. As she had suspected, she didn’t like the idea of giving this monster any kind of recognition, but the chief had groggily agreed when Diego made the phone call.

  Grayson came downstairs and poured himself a glass of water, taking a seat at the table next to her. “What’s all this?”

  She continued to stare at her computer screen, waiting for the words to magically start appearing before her eyes. The tone and sentiment of this article could mean the difference in that fifty-fifty split, and the implications were stressful. She was accustomed to stress from her job, but not of this nature. This story could mean the difference between life and death for Jessica Vargas.

  She touched his hand. “You should go home. I don’t know how long I’ll be up here. I know you don’t like flying, but there’s a train that runs from Stockton to San Diego.”

  He drew a few circles on the table with his finger. “I think I’m going to stay up here for a bit. Clearbrook is kind of growing on me, and I’ve got a ton of vacation time.”

  She looked up from her computer, suspicious. “What?”

  “I like your family, and this little town has a lot of charm.”

  “Charm?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Am I cramping your style or something?”

  “No, I just thought you’d want to get out of here as soon as possible. What was it you said? You hoped the horse smell didn’t stick to your clothes?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well, whatever, I changed my mind. You get used to the horse smell. Besides, I’m going to go visit Napa.”

  “With who?”

  “I know people.”

  “You know exactly eight people here, and that includes me.”

  “When did you become so nosy? I’m going with your parents and MJ.”

  “MJ?” Lucy hoped she was able to hide her bitter tone and mask it as curiosity instead. Was everyone in her family eager to spend time with everyone but her?

  “Yeah, you know that guy you’re related to?”

  “I just don’t understand—”

  He cut her off before she was able to finish her thought. “What is all this anyway?”

  She decided to let the subject drop, at least for now. Her underlying family issues had been in place for years and wouldn’t be solved in one conversation with Grayson. “I’m going to write a story, try to draw this guy out.”

  He leaned back in his seat. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I need to do something. People are dying and there’s a woman still missing.”

  “And you’re a reporter. Maybe you should let the police handle this.”

  “I am. I’m helping. You know, where I can. The way I do things.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, clearly turning something over in his head. “You know, putting yourself in danger won’t bring Erica back to you.”

  “Good to know you have such a high opinion of me. I’m doing this because it’s my job, people have a right to know, and because it could help.”

  “It could also make you a target.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Have you looked at these women? You share some similarities.”

  “Yes, a few, but they’re much younger than me.” She had noticed a pattern with all of the women. She knew what they shared regarding looks, upbringing, and ethnicity. But it wasn’t enough to scare her off the story, or from trying to help. She survived the Middle East. She could take care of herself.

  “Oh? And how do you know he won’t make an exception if you piss him off?”

  “Grayson, I’m a reporter. This is what I do, and I’m going to do it. I don’t need your approval or permission.”

  He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay. No need to get all ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’”

  “You’re supposedly a feminist,” she practically shouted.

  “Sure! Equal pay, pro-choice, down with the pussy grabbing president, rah-rah-rah! But I can set all th
at aside when it puts my best friend in danger.”

  “I’ll be fine.” It was a mantra she had repeated to herself over and over again in a variety of situations. Sure, it lacked eloquence, but it had worked in the past and it would work now.

  He stood and kissed the top of her head before heading back upstairs. “I hope you’re right.”