Fractured Truth

by Susan Furlong

  I moved my hands to my breasts, cupping them, one round and soft and sensitive, the other flat with skin of sandpaper. I kneaded and prodded the nipples, my good nipple rose and tightened into a tiny bead. The other remained limp. I slid my hands up my neck and lifted my hair, tilting my head and exposing the full length of my ridged neck. They’d used skin recovered from fresh corpses to graft me, laying the flimsy flesh over me and stapling it to my body like a patchwork quilt. Some of it my body rejected immediately, and it was ripped up, and replaced with new layers of necro-sheets, holding the raw, oozing flesh inside. Like the skin on a hot dog. That’s what I looked like. An overcooked hot dog that’d expanded and burst through its casing, juices spurting out, leaving the meat inside dried and shriveled. Charred meat. Repulsive. Hideous.

  I gulped down more booze, leaving the mirror and my grotesque image, and made my way across the room to my bed. I lifted my mattress and pulled out a Baggie of pills, another hiding place Meg didn’t find when she cleared out my stuff after my “episode.”

  I climbed onto my bed, wedged the bottle between my thighs, and tossed back a couple of the pills. A calmness overcame me, a feeling of control, just knowing that I’d soon be asleep. All I wanted was to sleep and forget.... I emptied two more onto my hand, then tossed them into my mouth, washing them down with the whiskey.

  I drank some more, couldn’t remember how many pills I’d taken, and took another couple for good measure. A weightlessness overcame me, my fingers tingled. I hovered between consciousness and deep sleep. I was floating or falling, and it felt good. So good.

  And then sleep. Deep, dark sleep.

  “Brynn. Brynn!” Someone was shaking me. “Brynn!”

  I knew the voice. It was Colm. Colm? What is he doing here? In my bedroom? I’m naked. Exposed. Don’t look at me! Cover me. . . . Cover me.

  “What have you done, Brynn?”

  Another voice. Maybe two more. I couldn’t open my eyes. Others seeing me. Someone, please cover me. Or leave me. I’m tired. So tired. The comforting blanket of darkness took over again....

  My eyes opened. The sky struck my eyes as a painful blue, the clouds too close, and cold air stung my skin. Straps cut across my arms and torso, tight, cinched too tight. I couldn’t move.

  “One, two, three . . . lift.”

  I floated upward, closer to the sky, closer and closer, then down with a thud. More voices. Male voices and Colm’s voice. He was praying, touching my forehead, my palms. A loud siren and then darkness.

  My eyes opened again. A blinding light filled my view. It’s heaven. And it’s beautiful. I can’t believe . . . I thought I wouldn’t make it.... There must be a mistake.... People like me don’t go.... A face appeared and blocked the light. Blue scrubs, a mask, fat eyebrows. Move, asshole. Move. I want to see the light. Fingers touched and prodded me. A rhythmic beep, beep, beep . . . voices, a lot of voices. Someone forced my mouth open. They jammed something down my throat; it burned.... Stop, stop! I can’t swallow. I’m choking. Help me. . . . help . . . Darkness.

  I couldn’t open my eyes, but I heard the voices. Gran and Meg and others: “ ‘Graaltcha Mary, tawn a noos, Swuda’s gyay duilsha . . . ’ ” Rosary beads clicking and women crying . . . Don’t cry, Gran. It’s okay. I’m tired. I just want to sleep. More darkness.

  That smell. I knew that smell. It was my dog. It’s Wilco. I love you, Wilco. I love you. A weight on my chest, a wet nudge. Good boy. You want a belly rub? What’s wrong with my arms? I can’t move my arms. I love you, Wilco. I love you. . . . Again darkness.

  I drift and drift. I’m cold. So cold. Water is dripping. No, not water, blood. Drip, drip, drip . . . Maura’s body on the cold stone: black hair, white skin, eyes blue and glazed over . . . drip, drip, drip . . . pale lips move, a whisper of breath: “Help me. Help me. . . .” I want to help her, save her, but I can’t move. I’m so tired.

  Darkness.

  My eyes open again. It’s night and I’m in the hospital and the lights are dimmed. I am awake. A single monitor beeps with my vitals. A shadow moves in the corner, an outline at first; then I see that it’s Pusser. He steps into view, rubbing a hand over his unshaven jawline as he looks down at me. “You’re back.”

  “How long?” My lips cracked with dryness.

  “A couple days. You’ve pretty much been out of it since we found you yesterday. Your neighbor called it in. The dog was going crazy inside your trailer, she got worried and checked and . . . I beat the first responders. So did the priest. We’d all thought . . .”

  Wilco appeared, his claws scrabbling at the bedsheets as he worked up on his haunch to get closer to me. I reached over, touched his face, tried to whisper his name, but my tongue felt like sandpaper.

  Pusser said something about pulling strings to get Wilco in here. He rambled on as if he were afraid that if he stopped, I’d slip away again. He was right. The darkness was inviting, a peaceful respite. My eyelids felt heavy. I forced them open and looked around the room.

  “Meg just took your grandmother home to get some rest. They both got here as soon as they could. And the padre. He’s been here, praying. There are so many people who care for you. Don’t you know that? Why’d you do it, Callahan?” I focused on his face again. “I came down too damn hard on you. I know that now. I thought in the long run . . . Hell, I don’t know. I thought it would help you get straightened out. I didn’t think you’d do something so stupid.”

  Stupid. Always doing something stupid. But I didn’t mean to . . . it was an accident. . . .

  “Don’t worry about the case. It’s done. Over. Harris and Parks got a confession from the Fisher kid. The pressure of losing his mother, taking care of his brothers . . . he cracked. It happens. Anyway, we got him. The press broke the story yesterday.”

  Jacob Fisher? The slaughterhouse, the body so carefully arranged, the flowers . . .

  “His arraignment is today. The confession pretty much seals the deal. And you should be extra happy. Nevan’s been released. He’s back home. You were right, it wasn’t one of your clan.”

  I licked my lips and tried to talk to Pusser.

  “You need to rest, Callahan. We can talk later. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”

  But something’s not right....

  Pusser patted my hand. “It’s all good. Just rest.”

  CHAPTER 37

  A hospital-appointed psychiatrist ruled that I was at no immediate risk to myself, recommended outpatient therapy, and signed my discharge papers the next day. Meg came to take me home late that afternoon. Except for a few attempts at small talk, the ride was mostly silent, with Meg casting nervous glances my way. Poor Meg. Our sick grandmother, and now me—the crazy, druggie, suicidal cousin. What burdens she bore.

  I played nice with Meg, listened to her lectures about booze and pills, and agreed to be a good girl. As soon as I got a second alone, I plopped myself at the kitchen table, opened my phone, and turned back to the journal and the last entry. Who had Maura confided in? I’d assumed it was her school counselor, or a priest. Any of those seemed reasonable. Older, wiser men in positions of authority. Like the men in my life that I would turn to if . . . No, I’d talk to Gran. A woman. I nodded. Sure, it made more sense that she’d confide in a woman. Someone close to her. Probably not her mother, but I’d have to start with her.

  * * *

  The door to Ona Keene’s camper dangled on a single hinge. I looked around. No one. No cars parked outside, nothing. As I stepped inside, everything seemed in order, yet selectively sparse—not emptied so much as just vacated. Ona and Eddie are gone, like gypsies in the night, I thought, shaking my head.

  I poked around. Looked in cabinets, under mattresses, and then my eye caught on a backpack. I dumped the contents on one of the beds. Pretty much empty except for a biology book and a couple notebooks. I leafed through the notebooks: nicely organized notes, neat handwriting. Eddie was a good student.

  I set the notebooks aside, then picked them up again. Somet
hing niggled at my mind, working its way back and forth from my subconscious to my conscious thoughts....

  My cell rang. I looked down, half expecting it to be Meg, checking up on me. It wasn’t. “What’s up, Parks?” I hoped my curt question curtailed any sentimentality or sympathy over my recent suspension; it wouldn’t suit Parks, and I sure as hell didn’t want it.

  It worked. She got right to the point. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but a strange call came in this afternoon from a female caller.”

  My heart kicked up a notch. “Yeah.”

  “Said she had information regarding Dublin Costello’s murder, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. She said you should be the one to get the information. It was strange, the way she put it.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “She wouldn’t say. Harris tried to track it, but it looks like the call came from a burner phone.”

  “Harris?” He already suspected something was up with Dublin’s murder. Now this stuff with Katie. “Was she going to call back?”

  “She said you’d know how to get in contact with her.” She paused, suspicion creeping into her tone: “You been working that case on the side?”

  “No. I haven’t been working any case. I’m suspended, remember?”

  “You don’t have any idea who she is?”

  “None.” Accusatory silence on the other end. “I swear, Parks. I don’t have any frickin’ idea. Is there anything else?”

  “No. Guess not.”

  I hung up. Crap. What type of game is Katie Doogan playing with me? Things were falling apart.

  * * *

  A gust of gray cold wind slapped my face as I walked from my car to the front door of the Meaths’ trailer. Wilco sniffed the air and looked pleadingly my way. I gave him the signal to go ahead. He bolted straight for the nearest shrub to lift his stub, leaving his calling card.

  A tense pause ensued after my knock, then the sound of footsteps. Riana opened the door, wearing a chenille sweater and full makeup.

  “I didn’t expect you to be here. Where’s your mother?”

  “Her back’s out. She’s in bed. I’m fixing her some supper.”

  I pushed past her and went inside. A frying pan crackled and popped on the burner. The place smelled hot and greasy. Cigarette smoke billowed from an ashtray next to the stove. A lipstick-stained glass of wine rested next to it.

  She walked to the stove, turned a piece of chicken, and took a long drag on the cig. “What is it you want, Brynn?”

  “I’m looking for Ona. I was just at her place. No one’s there. Not Eddie, either. The place looks vacant. I thought maybe you might know—”

  “Why would I know anything about where they’ve gone?”

  “Eddie and Nevan are friends. I thought Eddie might have told Nevan—”

  “Nevan’s not here. I don’t know when he’ll be back.” The same cold-shoulder dismissal I’d gotten from people all along. No one knew anything they’d tell this turncoat musker.

  “I’m trying to figure something out. Maybe you know.” I put my phone on the counter, a page of the journal displayed on the screen. “Maura kept a journal. This is the last entry and it’s about how she confided in someone. Was it you, Riana?”

  She turned her head, took another long drag on the cig, and scrutinized the journal through the corner of her eye. “No. Why would she talk to me?”

  No reason I could think of that anyone would confide in this haughty witch. But Maura had talked to someone. And every tense muscle in Riana’s frame told me she knew something. I showed her a couple more entries. “You’ve known her for a long time. Look here. She talks about you in this entry. Says you caught her and Nevan together—”

  “Kids. Certainly, you must remember how it felt to be that age and in love.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “She was pregnant, with nowhere to turn. She was scared. . . .”

  She exhaled a long stream of smoke, tipped back her chin, and made a throaty sound. “Poor thing. Guess she shouldn’t have gotten herself knocked up.”

  “There are more entries, where she talks about trying to earn enough money so she and Nevan can go away.”

  “Sounds like every lovesick teenage girl. Remember back when we were that age? You and Dublin.”

  Everything in Riana’s world—or conversations—came back to her life, her hurt, her needs. “I wasn’t lovesick over Dublin Costello. You were.”

  “Yes. But you were the one who got him.”

  Yeah, I got him, alright.

  She sucked on her cig again and blew the smoke my way. “Only he wasn’t good enough for you.”

  I stifled a cough. “Forget all that, would ya, Riana? It was a lifetime ago.”

  “Yeah. And Dub’s dead. Wonder if you cops will ever figure that one out.” She half smiled.

  I said nothing.

  Riana flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette. “Look, Brynn. This is stupid. They already know who killed Maura. That settled boy.”

  “Jacob Fisher.”

  “Yeah. He was into all that devil stuff, right?”

  “We don’t really have proof of that. It may not matter, anyway. I’m not sure he did it.”

  “You’re not sure? I heard he confessed.”

  “He’s scared.” I shook my head. I didn’t read him as a killer. Mixed-up, yeah. Into some weird stuff, but the way he treated his mother’s body. The way he cared for his siblings. It didn’t fit for me. Then there was the note. The Latin. The Bible verse in that big, loopy scrawl. Was it from Jacob’s hand? If I could see a sample of his handwriting, like I’d seen Eddie’s in his notebook, then I could . . .

  The handwriting . . . there had been something that bothered me about the notebooks, bothered me enough to hold on to it. I looked at the journal entry on my phone. It was the same tight script with that telltale left-handed slant. The writing in Eddie’s notebooks matched the handwriting in the journal.

  I stared at my phone screen, a slow realization seeping into my mind:

  No one will understand . . . this doesn’t happen to Pavees. . . . I wish I were normal. . . . I can’t even trust leaving my journal around here. . . . I told Mother.

  Mother.

  This wasn’t Maura’s journal. It was Eddie’s. Eddie hand wrote the journal. Maura’s only connection was hiding it for him at the diner. That meant... “Riana, are Eddie and Nevan . . . ?”

  “Are they what?” Riana stabbed her half-smoked cig in the ashtray, and turned her focus back to the chicken, turning and turning the pieces of meat.

  “Are they lovers?”

  She wheeled and shook the tongs at me. “Shut up. Nevan isn’t like that.”

  Yes, they were, and according to the journal, Riana knew it. Caught them. The realization stunned me.

  The room fell silent, the only noise was the chicken on the stove, popping and sizzling, grease hitting the burners and giving off little puffs of acrid smoke. The sound bothered me. Sizzle, sizzle . . . like skin burning. Like my skin burning.

  All this time, I’d been looking at the case wrong. My anxiety kicked up, my mind whirred: Nevan and Eddie’s relationship. Was that what this was about? Someone had tried to hide their relationship. But Maura had the journal. She knew. Is that why she was killed? But who would kill to keep something like that a secret? I knew who, and I raised my eyes just in time to catch a flash of metal. Hot grease splattered my face....

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER 38

  “You damn bitch,” Riana spat. I was being dragged, my head bouncing along the vinyl floor of Riana’s kitchen. Whoosh . . . thunk . . . whoosh . . . thunk. Hot pain shot through my right temple, where the pan had connected. My eyes rolled back in my skull. I forced them forward again, opened my lids, saw a blur of the ceiling moving overhead. The effort was too much. I let them roll back again.

  “I need your frickin’ help, that’s what. Now get over here.” Riana’s voice again. The back of my head was wet, with snow or ma
ybe blood, my arms pinned to my side. A blanket. She’d wrapped me in a blanket and dragged me outside to the dark yard.

  “No. She’s dead . . . because she knew too much.... No, Mama didn’t see nothing. She took two of them pills for her back pain, you know how they do her. . . .” Dogs barked in the background. They grew louder and louder. One bark stood out. Wilco’s. Wilco was still here.

  Footsteps sounded by my head, back and forth, back and forth. Riana was agitated. “Get over here and help me!”

  Then her hand slid under my back. I felt my body being lifted up, up, and then I slipped. Powerless to brace myself, I hit the ground hard. A noise escaped my throat.

  “What—” Riana said. “You’re alive!”

  I thrashed, side to side, got one arm loose. More barking. A weight straddled me, so heavy on my chest; one arm was still pinned, it ached, my fingers tingled. The blanket came down, cool air hit my face, the smell of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. I opened my eyes, a strange shadow played across Riana’s face like a mask, twisting her features. I shook my head. No, no, please no.... Her fingers on my neck, thumbs pressed against my throat, my pulse thumping, thumping.... I thrashed, fought, snot and tears dripped down my temples. I strained against her weight. The stench of her breath hot on my cheeks. “Stop fighting me. . . .”

  The blow came hard, straight in the jaw. The blackness started from the edges and closed in on my vision. Then the fingers were back, closing in around my windpipe. I didn’t care. I was slipping into the darkness.... I’m going to die. This is it. Finally I’m going to die. . . . I’ve wanted to die for a long time.