A Dark Horse

by Cooper, Blayne

  After a beat, “I’m sorry. I think I should go now. Maybe this is a mistake. I shouldn’t have bothered you and I shouldn’t—”

  “No, please don’t hang up!” Natalie perched on the sofa arm, trying not to panic. She pressed the phone so tightly to her ear it hurt. “I have so many questions. Please, Misty.”

  “I…okay.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” Natalie let out a shaky sigh. “Okay, I tried to find you and Josh that summer you left. I went to the police for help, but somehow you were just gone.”

  “We…we ran out of money and did some really bad things, Natalie. We, um, fell in with some homeless kids who drifted around town and slept in abandoned houses. We started using drugs. Then we couldn’t stop using.” Misty laughed softly, but it didn’t carry an ounce of joy. “Not that we wanted to stop. We didn’t have the money to fund the habit, so we started doing favors and running small errands for our dealer and then his friends.”

  Natalie heard a dry swallow. Misty was a pretty, if vapid, girl and she didn’t want to think about what exactly those favors might have entailed. It was so repulsive to consider, Natalie wouldn’t even let her mind go there when it came to Josh.

  “By the end of that first summer we were going back and forth to Houston, picking up drugs and bringing them back to New Orleans.”

  Natalie sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  “None of that was your fault. We were dumb. Dumber than you’ll ever know.”

  “Do you…” Natalie paused to wipe at her eyes, “do you know what happened to Josh?” Hearing her brother’s name, even from her own lips, caused a pang deep in Natalie’s chest. Her parents, unable to cope with the loss, barely acknowledged what had happened, and she hadn’t said or heard his name in more than two years. But that didn’t mean Natalie didn’t think about him often, along with every mistake she’d made along the way to his death.

  “That’s why I called. I need to…to tell you that I was there that night.”

  Natalie’s eyebrows drew down. “The night he was killed?”

  “Yeah. At the Dixie Brewery. We hung out there sometimes.”

  “And that means…you saw it happen?”

  “Yeah. I wish to God I hadn’t. But I did. I mean, I was so high, and Joshie was too, but it’s like it’s burned into my brain. It’s killing me.”

  Natalie frowned. “So you saw Crisco hit him?”

  “I-I need to tell you about that. Crisco didn’t do anything. He slept through it all. He was passed out cold, I think.”

  “Misty.” Natalie’s frowned deepened. “Maybe your memory isn’t as good as you think. The police caught and arrested Crisco that same night. He had the murder weapon. He confessed. He did it.”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  Natalie looked at the phone in confusion. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  “Crisco didn’t kill Josh. He didn’t do it.”

  Natalie’s stomach dropped to the floor, and she groaned loudly. “Jesus Christ! What?”

  Misty burst into tears. “I was too afraid to say! I saw it all. It wasn’t Crisco. I swear it wasn’t.”

  “But—”

  “What happened to Crisco was all over the news, especially after that one detective ratted out the cops.”

  That detective. Natalie looked skyward and closed her eyes.

  “But I was too chicken to do anything about it or go to the police. You have to understand. Please, Natalie. What could I say? I was strung out all the time. If I wasn’t using myself, I was a pack mule. At least until I was so messed up I couldn’t even carry dope back and forth. I didn’t talk to the police back then, I ran from them.”

  Natalie’s hands trembled. She hit the speaker button on her phone and set it on the coffee table so she wouldn’t accidentally hang up. Detective Lejeune. Ella. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Regret bubbled up so quickly she thought she might be ill.

  “Are—are you still there?” Misty asked worriedly.

  Natalie gritted her teeth. “Tell me what happened.”

  “We saw a drug buy go down between two guys. No—no biggie. We’d seen a million of them. By that time we were mixed up with some really bad people. I stepped away from Josh so I could, you know, take a leak. It was raining that night. God, was it raining.”

  “Was one of the men in the drug deal Crisco?”

  “No! Like I said, Crisco was asleep. I’d seen Crisco at the brewery lots of times before. He was always dead drunk…passed out.”

  Natalie couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it. It was as though someone came back after the fact and rewrote a piece of history that you knew in your heart was true. Only now it wasn’t. “Go on.”

  “Josh teased one of the men from the drug buy. I don’t know why. He never did stupid shit like that. But he was so damned trashed that night. Worse than ever before. The man walked over…” Misty sniffed loudly and her next words came out in a rush. “He picked up a brick and hit Josh in the head.” She sounded a little astonished, even now. “He hit him so hard.”

  Natalie’s eyes fluttered shut again. She tried not to picture what Misty was describing, but it was impossible.

  “The man couldn’t see me, but I could see him. After he hit Josh, he took the brick and put it in Crisco’s hand and just walked out like nothing happened. Oh, and he made a phone call on the way out, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. That’s it.”

  “Oh, my God, Misty. Why didn’t you say anything at the time? The police arrested the wrong man!”

  “I did! I ran out of the brewery and bummed a phone off a guy at the strip club a couple of doors down and made one of those calls where you don’t give your name.”

  “Anonymous?”

  “Yeah. That kind. I said there was a really bad fight and the cops needed to break it up. It wasn’t until days later that I saw Crisco had been arrested and there was a massive shit parade going on about brutality in the NOPD. I couldn’t go to the cops then. I was afraid they would put me in jail.”

  “His confession wasn’t true,” Natalie murmured, heartsick and consumed by guilt. “She told me it couldn’t be trusted, but I didn’t believe her. Or maybe I just didn’t care.”

  “Huh?”

  Natalie scrubbed her face. “Never mind. Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because I’m getting my life back on track, and for the first time in forever I can see things clearly. I know I need to go to the police. But I’m-I’m still afraid. Maybe it’s a bad idea, you know? It’s been years. It’s over and done with. Josh will still be dead whether I do this or not. And that Crisco guy was released from jail or something. I saw it on a TV in a bar. I know the cops won’t want to believe me, but I can tell them everything.”

  “Misty—”

  “Lately I dream about him,” Misty carried on, sounding a little frantic. “About Josh, I mean. About how his killer walked out of the brewery like nothing had happened. And—”

  “Go to the police.”

  “I-I want to do that.” But doubt colored Misty’s words.

  “Then let me help you. We owe it to Josh.” And I owe it to Detective Lejeune.

  “I’m not—not sure, Natalie.”

  “Give me your address. I can be in New Orleans by tonight.” Her gaze swung outside. The snow was falling even harder. She’d need to leave for the airport right now.

  “Okay, okay, yeah. I’ll call the cops today to set up a time, and then you can go to the station with me when you get here. You have to promise you’ll go with me. I’m really scared. I can’t go alone.”

  “You won’t have to go alone. I promise to go with you, but you need to promise me you won’t run before I can get there.”

  For a few seconds the only sound on the line was two sets of heavy breathing.

  “I really loved Josh, you know.”

  The non sequitur caused Natalie to lean a little closer to the phone, but remain silent.

  “Maybe you don’t
think I know what love is because we were just kids or because of the drugs, but I did and I do. He stayed for me.” Misty’s voice cracked piteously. “When everything got horrible, and it was just stupid to stay, he did anyway. He knew he could come home to you, Natalie. But I couldn’t do the same thing. My mom…well, there was never anything for me back in Wisconsin. So he stayed in New Orleans for me.”

  Natalie felt a little light-headed at Misty’s words. To know that Josh at least knew he could come home was an unexpected gift. But now that she finally had a target for her frustration, beyond herself and her parents, she wanted to blame Misty for what happened. She wanted to lash out and lay everything at her feet like a horrible, tragic offering to youth and stupidity and addiction.

  But she couldn’t.

  Misty hadn’t forced a needle into Josh’s arm. Natalie was still having trouble coming to terms with it herself, but deep down she knew that despite everyone else’s failings, hers included, it was Josh’s own decisions that led him to the Dixie Brewery that night. So Natalie said the only think she could think of. “He loved you too.”

  “I…Thank you for that. Natalie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please hurry.”

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later, Natalie stepped out of a cab in front of a tiny shotgun-style house on North Roman Street in the Faubourg Tremé. The home looked ancient, but the tiny patch of grass outside was well taken care of and held several pots brimming with purple and red flowers. Paint was peeling from the walls, and the house sat a little uneven on its foundation. But someone had made an effort. The vibrant colors of the flowers looked foreign but beautiful to Natalie, having just come from the frozen tundra where this time of year everything seemed beige.

  As she ascended three crumbling concrete steps, Natalie stretched a little. She was exhausted, and her back was sore and stiff. Her connecting flight had been delayed by a snowstorm at O’Hare where she’d been forced to spend the night in a hard plastic chair, both dreading and anticipating seeing Detective Lejeune again, and running through contingency plans in her mind in case she had to abandon the airport completely and simply drive through the storm. Luckily, the morning had dawned clearer and she’d been filed onto a later flight.

  Misty had seemed so jumpy on the phone that Natalie half-expected no one to answer the door when she knocked. She wasn’t wrong.

  After knocking, then pounding, then barely resisting the urge to kick the door in, she let out a frustrated sigh and checked her cell phone. She had the right address. Okay, plan B. Be bold. Shoulders squared and looking as though she was comfortable breaking into people’s houses every day, Natalie simply opened the door and strolled inside, a little shocked to find the door unlocked.

  “Misty?” she called out loudly. She set a small duffel bag and her purse near the front door. “It’s Natalie.” She glanced around quickly, scanning the messy living room. Frowning, her attention was drawn to the blaring television, the laugh track from Friends filling the small space. A tiny bolt of worry shot through her. Who goes out, but leaves on their TV? Loud. Purely out of habit, she reached for the remote control that sat on a ratty love seat and turned off the TV, plunging the room into silence.

  “Misty?”

  Still no answer.

  Maybe Misty slept like Josh had. A freight train pulled by wild horses couldn’t stir him. Natalie passed a sink filled with dirty dishes without pausing. The bathroom, too, was empty. The last door to what she presumed would be the bedroom, was open a crack.

  Feeling like a thief in the night, Natalie stuck her head inside. The curtains were drawn so it was dark in the room, but she could still make out a figure lying on top of a partially made bed, blond hair fanned out gently on her pillow. “Thank goodness,” she mumbled, grateful that she wouldn’t have to spend the day scouring every bar on Magazine Street to try to find where Misty worked.

  “Time to wake up.” Natalie wondered whether Misty’d been so nervous about going to the police that she’d gotten drunk the night before. “C’mon. I know it’s early, but up and at ’em.” Gently, she reached out to softly shake her awake. But the second her hand touched the other woman’s skin, she knew something was dreadfully wrong. Misty felt unnaturally cool and rigid.

  “Wake up!” Natalie said loudly, shaking Misty’s shoulder a little harder with a trembling hand, still expecting her to bolt awake. The movement caused Misty’s head to roll sideways so that the younger woman fully faced Natalie, gazing up at her with dull, unseeing eyes. Natalie gasped and yanked her hand back as though it had been burned. “Jesus!” She retreated so quickly her back slammed against the bedroom wall. A framed picture near Natalie’s head rattled off its nail and crashed to the floor, glass shattering.

  For several seconds Natalie stood there, dumbstruck, the blood draining from her face, both hands clamped over her open mouth in stunned disbelief. She forgot to breathe, or even blink, as her eyes began to adjust to the light and the scene came into sharper relief.

  Misty’s face looked much the same way she remembered only a little thinner and tinted gray. She was fully dressed in jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. A thick rubber band was tied around her right bicep, and the appendage was a deep purple. A syringe and needle, still half-stuck in the flesh at the crook of Misty’s arm, hung limply against a pile of wadded sheets.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Natalie’s eyes flicked around the room as though there was someone she could ask for help. But she was alone.

  Misty was clearly dead, but she had to be sure, right? Biting her lip, Natalie reluctantly made her way back to the bed, each quiet step sounding unnaturally loud to her ears. This time she leaned down, and the scent of stale urine and feces wafted up. With a grimace, she pressed her fingers against the cool skin at Misty’s throat to feel for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Natalie’s mind jumped into hyperdrive. Had Misty been so stressed about going to the police that she’d needed to get high to make it through the night? Then an even more disturbing thought reared its ugly head. What if Misty simply couldn’t cope with what she was about to do and she’d overdosed on purpose? Would the poor kid really do something so horrific? Natalie honestly had no idea.

  Shock gave way to disgust, which quickly slid into anger, all in the span of a few seconds. Natalie wanted to scream. “Why is this happening?”

  The words sounded petulant, even to her ears, and especially when faced with someone who was having a significantly worse day than she was. Natalie was suddenly furious at everyone and everything: the snowstorm, for causing her delay, Misty, for doing something so incredibly stupid, herself, for not having found a way to arrive in New Orleans sooner. And even, to her surprise, Detective Lejeune. Because even though Natalie still half hated her, she needed the detective’s strong, calming presence with her now, and she wasn’t there.

  Forcing her shaking hands to still, she clicked on the bedside light. Natalie tore her attention from Misty’s haunted face, already knowing that it would hang alongside the portrait of her brother on a steel morgue table in a particularly gruesome gallery in her mind. “No, no, no,” she murmured, wishing fervently that she hadn’t set foot inside this house. She was already anticipating the nightmares.

  More than willing to drop to her knees to feast on an enormous piece of humble pie, Natalie grabbed her phone and began to scroll through her contacts, looking for Detective Lejeune’s number, when something on Misty’s bedside table caught her eye: it was a cell phone. One she recognized instantly as the phone she’d purchased for Josh just before he’d run away from home.

  Natalie moved to the other side of the bed and reverently picked up the device. The green and gold Green Bay Packer cell phone case was cracked, and chipped, and scratched but still wrapped around the phone. She turned it over to find that the engraving she’d added to her purchase had survived as well. Joshua Edward Phillips.

  Natalie ran a single fingertip over the cool, dark screen, her thro
at constricting. Misty had kept it all these years. The pity she felt for Misty intensified. Another life wasted. None of this had to be this way.

  Natalie wanted this small memento of her brother, and while she wouldn’t have begrudged Misty holding on to it, she didn’t want it to end up in some garage sale held by Misty’s drunken mother. Absently, Natalie slipped it into her purse, and began to scroll for the detective’s number on her phone. Her finger hovered over the screen, unable to hit send. She recalled the look of raw hurt she’d intentionally put into glistening brown eyes the last time they were together.

  A phone call wouldn’t do.

  Instead of calling Detective Lejeune, Natalie dialed 911 and stepped outside into the bright sunshine. Adele might be able to avoid her phone call, but she couldn’t keep from speaking to Natalie in person, not if Natalie simply wouldn’t go away until she did. Or at least she hoped that’s how it was going to happen. In any case, Natalie was sure that whether or not she was successful in getting Adele to forgive her, or better yet, enlisting the other woman’s help in finding Josh’s killer, the rest of the day was going to feel like sticking her hand into a blender.

  Natalie sat down on the front steps of Misty’s house and watched a bee buzz around the pretty flowers as she waited for the police to arrive.

  * * *

  Natalie had spent almost an hour with the police at Misty’s house and then another hour being questioned at a police station she hadn’t been to before. The officers were respectful and easygoing. Somehow she thought their questions would be a bit more intense, but the police had taken one look at the scars up and down Misty’s arm and the needle sticking out of it and quickly decided she was nothing more than a loser junkie who had overdosed. It was a simple case and something not to be overanalyzed.

  Drug paraphernalia found in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and a small amount of dope in Misty’s bedroom dresser, backed up the police’s assumptions about Misty. It would be up to the medical examiner to decide whether the death was an accidental or an intentional overdose. The only thing that seemed to pique the police’s interest for even a moment was the broken picture from the wall, that is, until Natalie admitted that she’d done that herself.