Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  Vega bit her cheeks, so paralyzed by anger she had to remind herself to speak.

  “They lied. Your mom and Bailey are fine. They’re waiting for you.”

  She watched Kylie take this in, her eyes rushing around the room and back to Vega’s.

  “If you come with me, I’ll take you to them,” said Vega.

  Kylie shook her head violently now and cried, “No, no, no, no!”

  She began to sob, but it was different from other sobbing Vega had witnessed, because Kylie made no effort to cover her contorting face as the tears came out, making noises like she was suffocating.

  Vega was reticent to touch her again but had to bring her out somehow.

  “Kylie, Kylie, listen. Just listen,” she said.

  Kylie quieted to a long whimper.

  “I’m here to protect you. They can’t hurt you anymore.”

  “But Mrs. Linsom said…” Kylie began, then stopped.

  “What did she say?” said Vega. “Tell me.”

  “She said I was helping Cole. That he was gonna get Cole if I wasn’t here.”

  Vega stood up straight now.

  “He’s not going to get Cole. Or you. Or anyone.”

  “But he has a gun,” Kylie cried.

  Vega pulled back her jacket.

  “So do I.”

  Kylie stopped crying then and just blinked, a tremor still in her lungs as she breathed in and out.

  “Let’s go,” said Vega.

  She backed up to give the girl some room. Kylie straightened out her legs; now Vega could see how ridiculously small the toddler bed was for her. She was almost two sizes too long for it. Then she stood up and wobbled, uneasy on her feet. Vega held her by the shoulders.

  “Okay?” she said. “Can you walk?”

  Kylie nodded. She was only a few inches shorter than Vega. The white nightgown was too small also, the empire waist across Kylie’s chest, the hem above her knees. Vega thought it was probably one of Cole’s.

  Kylie looked toward the open door, uncertain. Vega went to it, nodded. Kylie came to her, slowly, learning to walk. Together they stepped outside the wine cellar to the foot of the stairs. They both looked up, toward the rectangle of light at the top.

  Vega put her arm around Kylie’s shoulders but didn’t touch her, and they began to walk up, Kylie keeping pace with Vega on each step, arms at her sides. They reached the top of the stairs and were in the kitchen, and Kylie squinted at the light.

  “It’s nighttime?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Vega. “Almost four in the morning.”

  Vega led her out of the kitchen and toward the front door. She was not planning on involving Mrs. Linsom in their exit.

  “Kylie!” Mrs. Linsom called from the living room.

  Kylie’s whole body jerked when she heard her name. Vega shook her head slowly, mostly to herself.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Kylie.

  But Kylie peered around Vega, through the entryway, like someone trying to see how far ahead the traffic accident was. Then she stepped away from Vega, hands still at her sides limply, and moved forward, around the oak table with the full flower arrangement, into the living room.

  Do not let the skip run the show, Perry said in her head. You let the skip make any decisions, you are cooked cabbage.

  But Kylie wasn’t a skip. She was a girl looking to settle up, and for all Vega knew, the next time Kylie and Mrs. Linsom would see each other would be in a courtroom. This might be the last time.

  So Vega followed her. Mrs. Linsom was right where Vega had left her, crouched on the floor against the piano. Kylie was walking toward her.

  “Kylie,” said Mrs. Linsom weakly, her skin a washed-out yellow. “Kylie, I’m sorry you had to go through that. But you did the right thing.”

  Vega gripped her thumbs in her palms. Her imagination expanded with what she could do to Lindsay Linsom. Tell Kylie to wait in the car. Pick up the glass deer centerpiece and crush Mrs. Linsom’s forehead, smash the jaw, crack the delicate bridge of the nose. When her free hand goes to her face to protect it, smash each finger one by one on the piano keys. Then make her play something.

  Then Kylie took the last couple of steps so she was right over Mrs. Linsom. She leaned down and screamed.

  The sound was so shrill, so harrowing, Vega had to slap her hands over her ears. Mrs. Linsom could cover only one with her free hand, her eyes squeezing shut.

  Kylie had an enormous amount of air in her lungs, like she’d been accruing it for the past seven days. Even though time in general was working a strange game on Vega, stretching and shrinking, the scream lasted and lasted.

  Her voice turned hoarse, and finally she stopped. Beads of tears had sprouted on her lashes from the release. She stood up straight and backed away. Mrs. Linsom stared at her, stunned.

  Kylie turned around to face Vega, her eyes vacant. Vega removed her jacket and held it out to her.

  “Come on. It’s cold,” she said.

  Kylie wandered slowly to her, slid the jacket on, the sleeves long on her arms by an inch or two.

  “Mommy?”

  It was Cole calling from upstairs. They could not see her from where they stood.

  “Mommy, what was that?”

  Mrs. Linsom leaned as far as she could away from the piano, trying to stretch the cuffs.

  “Nothing, sweetie. Go back to bed. Everything’s okay,” she called in a chirpy singsong.

  Vega led Kylie to the entryway. Cole stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Kylie?” she said, half-asleep.

  Kylie lifted her hand and waved, her face blank.

  Cole waved back, the confusion just beginning to cloud her eyes.

  Vega put her hand on Kylie’s back and guided her to the front door. She turned back to Cole.

  “Call 911. Everything’s not okay.”

  Cole started to open her mouth to ask more questions, looking like a little lost tourist, but Kylie was already out the front door, and Vega was right behind.

  Then they were out in the air, colder than when Vega had entered the house, flurries still twirling, dissolving on Vega’s bare arms. Kylie was in a sort of sleepwalk, legs marching. Her eyes were open; she watched the ground a few feet ahead.

  “That’s my car,” said Vega, when they were close, pressing her key, unlocking the doors.

  As they walked, Vega pulled out her phone and texted Jamie: “I have Kylie. She is fine. Be there soon.” She skipped over texts and messages from Caplan, Junior, the Bastard.

  They opened the doors and got in. Kylie buckled her seat belt without having to be told and stared straight ahead. Alive but dead, Vega thought. It was too soon to tell if she was like Christy Poloñez. She won’t be when she sees Jamie. Then she’ll wake up, Vega found herself hoping.

  Vega started the car and drove out of the subdivision, past the field. She cranked the heat.

  “Tell me if you’re too hot,” she said to Kylie.

  Kylie didn’t respond. Her hands were in her lap.

  Vega didn’t need the GPS to find Jamie’s parents’ house anymore. She recognized the county road, and the U.S. route, and then the side streets. The stores and the liquor distributor, the strip malls and the post office.

  “What’s your name?” said Kylie.

  “Vega.”

  “Vega?”

  “V-E-G-A,” said Vega. “It’s my last name.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Alice.”

  Vega glanced at Kylie, who was thinking about it.

  “There’s a girl named Alice in my class,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Vega, thinking it would be good to keep Kylie talking. The more engaged she was now, the less likely it would be for her to reside in the shock state. “It’s becoming popular now. When I was a kid, I was the only Alice in my school.”

  “I’m not the only Kylie in my school. There’s three of them. Of us.”

  “But you’re the only Kylie Brand
t,” said Vega.

  Kylie was quiet, looking out the window.

  She was unsure of the point she was trying to make to the girl. You’re special? Vega thought she would see right through that line of bullshit right away. She thought, after the last seven days, Kylie would see through everything, the world now robbed of virtue and, worse, the potential of virtue. The swell of possibility gone.

  They were two blocks from Jamie’s parents’ house. Vega lingered at a stop sign, and a news van sped by them. Vega switched the hazards on.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you listening right now?”

  Kylie nodded, still gazing out the window.

  “You’re going to have a nice life. All this shit that’s happened to you is over. It’s not going to happen again. Your mom really loves you, and she’s a good person. You’re going to grow up and have a nice life. Get married and have kids and dogs if you want. Any time you get sore about what happened to you, just think about that. And take this.”

  Vega leaned to the glove compartment and popped it open, held out a card to Kylie.

  Kylie regarded it skeptically and then took it from her.

  “That’s me,” said Vega. “Anyone bother you, or your sister or your mom, send me a note. I will get on a plane and come here and put them in the fucking earth. Sound good?”

  Kylie read the card start to finish, then turned to Vega and nodded.

  “Good,” said Vega.

  She turned off the hazards and pulled out. As soon as she turned the corner on Jamie’s parents’ block, she saw the throng of media, the vans with satellites and full camera crews, the street lit up like it was the middle of the day. Kylie peered through the windshield, nibbled her bottom lip.

  “I’m going to park as close as I can, and then we’ll walk fast. They all know your name and will ask you questions, but don’t talk to them and stay close to me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Vega slowed. No one saw them yet. She parked halfway down the block and cut the engine, unbuckled her seat belt.

  “You ready?” she said to Kylie.

  Kylie nodded.

  “Ready.”

  Vega got out and shut the door on her side, and one reporter, a blond woman in a parka, turned her head and saw them.

  “It’s them!” she announced, giddy.

  Vega went around to Kylie’s side and opened her door as the crowd rushed to them.

  “Don’t worry. I’m here,” Vega said to her, but Kylie may or may not have heard because of the noise.

  You’ve seen the rest. You saw the footage running for thirty-six hours straight on CNN, or you were forwarded a YouTube video, or your friend or your mom put a link on Facebook. You watched; you clicked: Vega walks Kylie down the sidewalk with her arm around her, people and cameras and mikes in their faces. Vega tilts her head to whisper in Kylie’s ear. Kylie blinks a little at the lights but keeps her eyes ahead. The questions keep coming and are variations on the same: Did he hurt you? Where did they keep you? Were you tortured? Are you okay?

  The last is really an afterthought.

  Then you’ve seen the paint-by-numbers courtroom drawings of Lindsay Linsom on the stand, the tearful prison interview in which she describes how she crushed the Valium into glasses of orange juice for Ashley Cahill and Sydney McKenna before smothering them with pillows. And then the bodies were placed in heavy-duty garbage bags and buried in the woods on the Linsoms’ property in Hershey. The tabloids dub her “Ice Queen.”

  You’ve seen the program Mind of a Monster, the story of Preston Linsom’s sordid childhood, during which he was likely repeatedly molested by a business associate of his father’s.

  You’ve heard the whole story, but it’s confusing: how Evan Marsh looked like a movie star and John McKie looked like an old man’s dead son, how Lindsay Linsom kidnapped three girls and dressed them up to look like her own daughter—all of them stand-ins for someone else.

  You’ve seen the long-awaited funerals of Ashley Cahill and Sydney McKenna, their parents burying the decomposed remains in small white coffins. You notice the mothers, one young and stunning in the way of a high school homecoming queen, the other old and spectral with white hair and a dowdy black dress.

  You’ve seen the speeches made by Chief Traynor, praising his police, the FBI, the ingenuity of the private investigator team. You’ve seen him take many questions and answer only a few, saying the investigation is ongoing. We’ll let you know when we have further information.

  You’ve seen the profile of Max Caplan and seen his professional comeback celebrated, if for no other reason than his tousled charm.

  The only thing you remember about Alice Vega is the image of her in a short-sleeved shirt, holster with gun crossing her back, her face bruised and bandaged as she steers Kylie up the path. Then Jamie Brandt, probably meaning to watch at the window until they come inside but when she sees her daughter can’t control herself, bursts through the front door and runs, in a cropped football pajama top and shorts, barefoot. Kylie sees her and runs too, both of them toward each other so fast you think they will collide and knock each other unconscious.

  But they don’t. They know what to do. Kylie jumps into Jamie’s arms, even though she is nearly as tall as her mother, and Jamie is frail but doesn’t budge under the weight. You can just barely see Jamie’s face, because the cameras aren’t allowed on the property; they have to stay at the curb. Her eyes are closed; she is crying. They go inside, and Alice Vega follows.

  It is all familiar to you by now.

  20

  The doctor was a woman, in her fifties, hair dyed auburn with gray roots. She was short and a little overweight and had small padded hands like a baby. Cap watched them while she picked up and put down various tools to examine the stitches on his ear, which the ER doctor had sewn. Nell stood in the corner of the room by the door.

  Cap was not in pain; they’d given him acetaminophen with codeine and it was working. He didn’t feel his ear, but he was also fighting to keep his neck straight and his eyes open.

  “The good news is there’s no damage to the ear canal or any of the vasculature of the outer ear,” said the doctor, facing him, still holding the otoscope. “Bad news is he shot off part of the helix. This,” she said, running her finger along the top curve of her ear. “So you’ve lost about half an inch off the top. Which, if you like, you can reconstruct surgically after the stitches are removed from the laceration.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” said Cap, hoping the words came out fully formed. “What do you think about me going home? I’ve been here a long time.”

  “I have to talk to Dr. Muncy, who did your stitches, and then I’ll discharge you. No more than an hour. You have someone to drive you home?” she said, turning to Nell in the corner.

  Nell said they would figure it out, and they all said thank you, and the doctor left.

  “How you doing, Bug,” said Cap.

  She came up to him and put her arms around his neck.

  “Okay,” she whispered into his hair. “They said I should go to an ENT for the ringing.”

  “Good,” said Cap. “We can go together.”

  “And to a psychiatrist for this.”

  She stepped back from him and held her arm and hand out straight. Her hand trembled, a miniature diving board.

  “We can go together to that too,” said Cap.

  They stood there for a while, with Nell leaning her head on his, Cap listening to the sound of her breathing. He let his eyes close and pictured a soft foamy tide rolling up on the sand. Sun, seagulls, the whole thing.

  “Let’s go, Nell.”

  He opened his eyes, and there was Jules in the doorway. He hadn’t seen her in a year or so, Nell traveling back and forth between them unaccompanied. She had let her hair grow long, Cap noticed, and was coloring it too, her natural deep brown almost black. He realized how much Nell looked more and more like her as she grew—the cheeks, the eyes, the dark, expressive eyebrows. Gorgeous elegant creatu
res, both of them. Brunette giraffes.

  “Come on, Nell,” she said quietly. “Let’s go get some sleep.”

  Nell pulled away from Cap and looked him in the eyes.

  “Let’s try a week without physical injury, deal?” she said.

  Cap smiled.

  “Deal.”

  He hugged her once more and kissed her hair. She walked toward her mother, and Jules came forward to say something to Cap.

  She wore a long wool sweater, jeans and boots, and hadn’t slept, eyes heavy, arms tightly crossed in front of her as if to prop herself up.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  She wasn’t looking at him, staring at his lap.

  “Yeah, Jules, I’m fine.”

  Now she looked at him and pursed her lips, trying not to cry. She stepped closer, up to his face.

  “I’m so so pissed at you right now,” she whispered. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Then she kissed him on the forehead. It was so quick he wasn’t sure it had really happened afterward. He saw Nell grinning in the doorway.

  “Let’s go, Professor,” she said to her mother.

  Jules turned quickly and went to Nell.

  “Text if you need anything, Dad,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Cap.

  Then they were gone. Cap glanced at his phone, which was almost out of juice and overrun with texts and voice mails. He didn’t have nearly enough energy to navigate them, so he turned his phone off and leaned back on the pillows. He shut his eyes, and his mind sailed along in drugged exhaustion. Again with the small beach and the soft tide. He couldn’t recall ever seeing such a beach—maybe near his parents’ in Florida? Except that they had to be Gulf waves; the Atlantic would push you over if you got in past your knees. Still it would be nice to try that water—warm if not clear, lying on your back letting the salt push you up.

  Then he had a feeling he wasn’t alone. He opened his eyes, and Vega was there now, at the foot of his bed, watching him.

  “Are you really there?” he asked, genuinely unsure.

  “I think so,” she said.

  Cap sat up and forced himself to wiggle his big toes and make fists, all the old tricks he used to do on a long shift to keep himself awake.