If I Live

by Terri Blackstock

  “I think that would be a good idea. Someplace they wouldn’t think to look for you. Just until they’re exposed.”

  She looks at the floor as if trying to figure out where she could go. “All right,” she says. “Do you want to know where I’m going?”

  “I don’t have to know,” I tell her, because I want her to feel safe. “But it would be good if you could keep in touch with me in case I need you. Give me a phone number or something.”

  She nods and goes to a desk in the corner, writes down the number on a Post-it note, and hands it to me. “This is my cell phone number. Do you think they can find me through that?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “It might not hurt for you to get a different phone, just in case. A different phone number. You can get a temporary phone at Walmart or a drugstore.” I cross through the numbers she’s given me and write down my own burner phone. “When you get one, text me the number. I think that will be safer. Buy the card with the minutes in the store. Don’t activate it with a credit card.”

  She puts her hand to her head again and pulls her bangs back as if her temples throb. “I should have made him leave town. I should not have let him go to work.”

  “These people are ruthless. They’re brutal. I would advise you not to talk to anyone else at the police department for now.” “I know. How can I trust any of them? I wouldn’t have trusted you if you hadn’t brought it up to me.”

  “Just keep it quiet. It’s very important that they not get a heads-up that we’re on to them.”

  Her face turns red, and veins pop out on her temples. “We should have just paid, even if we couldn’t pay our mortgage or the tuition. I’d rather be bankrupt than have my husband dead!”

  “Mrs. Brauer, don’t do that to yourself. You didn’t cause this.”

  I get to my feet, slide my fingers into my pockets. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Brauer. I can’t imagine how hard this is. But I’m going to do everything I can to help.” She walks me to the door and hovers there as I step out onto the porch. “Don’t give up,” I say.

  As I walk back to my car, I say a silent prayer for her safety and her daughter’s, and anyone else who matters to them. I pray that God will keep them under Keegan’s radar.

  As I pull away in my car, I look back at the house. The lawn is manicured, the house well maintained. Hardworking people who deserve better live there. And now the husband is dead because these maniacs are willing to abuse the power their badges have given them.

  I can’t let that stand. People need to be able to trust their police. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make sure the Brauers get justice.

  8

  CASEY

  I start my job right away because I need money so badly and because I want to make a good impression. In my motel room, I get a list of all the motels in the towns Mr. Barbero directed me to, and one by one, I zoom in with Google Earth to get an aerial view of the pools.

  Most of them don’t have pool lifts, if I’m looking at them right. It surprises me, because I thought these leads would be harder to find. Surely this many people wouldn’t be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

  Before I call any of them to verify, I look up the Act and skim through it, looking for anything about a pool lift. I finally find it, and see that it is a requirement for any business with a pool.

  I find the phone number of the first lead—a small, privately owned motel with about thirty rooms—and I call. A woman answers. “Hi,” I say. “I was considering making a reservation there, but I may be with someone in a wheelchair, and I wondered if you have a pool lift.”

  “A what?” the woman asks.

  “A pool lift. You know, it helps people in wheelchairs get into the pool?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know. Just a minute.”

  I wait as the woman puts me on hold, and finally, after a few minutes, a man picks up. “Hello, this is the owner. May I help you?”

  I ask him again about the pool lift. “Are you making a reservation?” he asks.

  “Not yet,” I say. “I was just checking your facilities.”

  Silence.

  Feeling awkward, I say, “So you don’t have one?”

  I wait a moment. “Hello?” I say, and realize he’s disengaged from the call.

  On the form I’m to fill out for Mr. Barbero, I write, “Hung up when I asked.” I call back a few minutes later and ask the woman who answers for the owner’s name, and she gives it to me. I jot it down.

  I wonder if he’s going to get sued.

  I go to the next one, and this time the person I talk to says, “Look, I know what you’re doing. This is one of those Google lawsuits, right? If you want to make a reservation, then make it. We will have a pool lift here for you.”

  “So you don’t have one now?” I ask, wincing slightly.

  “When would you like to come?”

  I pause for a moment, then he says, “I have two kids in college. Do you even have a conscience?”

  That jolts me. I frown, feeling accused of something I don’t understand. “Yes, I . . . I’m just checking—”

  “This is criminal,” the man says. “Yes . . . I have a pool lift, okay?”

  “But you said—”

  “Sue me!” he shouts into the phone. “I have a ten-thousand-dollar pool lift. Waste your time if you want!”

  I hang up, and for a moment I stare at the motel in question on my satellite view. What is going on? Have I gotten myself into something that will dig me into a deeper hole?

  I’m writing down what he said, when Claire calls me. I pick up. “Hi, Claire.”

  “Liana?” she says. “Listen, I know this is short notice, but I wondered if you could take me to run some errands.”

  I look at my work and consider whether I should leave. I’ll take my computer with me and do the Google searches in the car wherever we go. I’ll hold off on the phone calls until after I identify the motels that aren’t complying.

  My stomach feels a little sick as I go pick up Claire. I pull into her driveway and call her. Instead of answering, she comes right out with Butch. She walks to my car and puts Butch in the back seat, then hops into the front.

  “I’m sorry for the short notice,” she says, “but you said to call you. I figured you might need the cash.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s fine. Where do you want to go?”

  “I need to go to the drugstore and then the bank.”

  “No problem.” She gives me the address to the drugstore, and I pull up in front, open her door for her, and watch as she feels her way along the wall to the automatic door. I back into a parking space so I can watch for her to come back out.

  She told me she might be in there about fifteen minutes, so I sign onto the store’s wifi guest signal and do some more searches. I find a couple of motels with pool lifts, but they’re the bigger ones. The smaller ones are almost inevitably without them. I write them down, find the owners’ names, and jot down their phone numbers to call later when I’m feeling less unsettled.

  When I see Claire coming back through the door, I close my laptop, pull up to the door, and roll my window down. “Right here,” I say, and she lets Butch pull her toward my car.

  When they’re back in, I take her to the bank. When she’s done there she offers to buy me lunch.

  “I’d love to,” I say, “but not as your treat. I’ll pay for my own.”

  She suggests a little café, and I quietly slip my arm sling off before we go in. I keep my sunglasses on as we head to a back table. People might assume I’m blind too. I take a seat with my back to the other diners.

  “This is fun,” she says. “I don’t usually get to eat out during the day.” When the server brings our drinks, she sips hers, then asks, “So how do you like working for Billy?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I tell her what happened with the guy who asked me if I had a conscience. “The thing is, I kind of feel sorry for that guy. I mean, he made me feel lik
e I was doing something wrong. Billy doesn’t sue people based off that info alone, does he? I mean, does he give them a chance to rectify things first? Like, before he serves them with a lawsuit, does he give them a grace period to get a pool lift?”

  “He should,” Claire says. “I mean, I’ve always assumed that the goal is to get them equipped with what disabled people need, not just to slap them with a suit.”

  “But he sues an awful lot of people, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he does. A lot of businesses are in violation of the Act.”

  “So when he sues someone for something that could impact a blind person, he uses your name?”

  “Right. He has others with different kinds of disabilities, and he’s disabled himself. But I guess he can’t file every suit in his own name.”

  “So do you get a percentage of the settlement or the award?”

  “No, I just get a flat fee. I never know how a case turns out or what he gets.”

  So he could be raking in millions. I draw in a deep breath. “I don’t know. I just kind of feel like I’m doing something dishonest. Maybe even illegal.”

  “It’s not illegal,” she says, and there’s an edge to her tone. “The Act is very specific. If it were illegal, he wouldn’t be winning the cases.”

  “But I’m acting like I’m going to check in and need a pool lift, when it’s not true. I’m literally setting them up. I mean, if I were disabled and I checked into a motel where I didn’t have access to what I needed, then I could see complaining about it. But I’m not disabled, and here I am finding people to sue, when there may not have been anyone at all inconvenienced by this. And if they’re not given the chance to fix it?”

  “I didn’t say they’re not. I said I didn’t know.”

  I soften my voice so I don’t seem accusatory. “That man mentioned Google lawsuits. It’s a thing. I looked it up, and it’s where attorneys do exactly this. They use Google Earth to find businesses violating the Act in random cities they’ve never even been to, and they sue them without ever going to the place. This owner has kids in college.”

  “Wow, you really got a lot of information from him, didn’t you?”

  I sip my drink. “I just don’t want to take advantage of real human beings, you know?”

  “Neither do I. But if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it.”

  Our food comes, and we’re quiet until the waitress leaves. She eats a French fry, then leans forward. “You know, you may be overthinking this. Billy and Marge are great. Unpretentious, humble people.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s just that I knew this couple who sued people for fraudulent things, and they were terrible people.”

  “I get it. But this isn’t fraudulent. If he sues them for not having a pool lift, then they’ll have to get a pool lift.”

  “They’ll also have to pay a lot of money in damages, and that could put some of them out of business.”

  “I don’t think he’s trying to put anyone out of business. I’m sure it’s all aboveboard.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  She stares in front of her for a moment. “That’s some conscience you got there.”

  I breathe a laugh. “Yeah, I guess. I’m just . . . I’ve been learning about Christianity. Honesty is a big thing. I’m just really not wanting to . . . you know, make God mad.”

  She laughs. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to make him mad either. I go to church too.”

  I don’t say it, but I don’t think Christianity is so much about going to church. “I’m new at this,” I say. “You’ve probably had all this figured out for years, but I’m still at the blow-my-mind phase. Like, seriously? Jesus let them crucify him for my sins? And that one act is something that can cleanse me now? Two thousand years later?”

  Her eyes are fixed just to the left of my temple. “Yeah, that is wild, huh?”

  “I mean, I heard this preacher talk about Jesus praying for us. Interceding, I think he called it. And I think that might be the first time I realized he’s real, today. Alive . . . you know?”

  I can see from her expression that it’s been a long time since she’s thought of it that way, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. She seems to consider that for a moment, then she says, “It’s fun to see someone discovering that for the first time. It becomes old hat to some of us.”

  “How could it ever be?” I ask, astonished.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe we kind of get immunized.”

  “Immunized,” I say. “Yeah, that would explain it. You hear it so much that you start tuning it out. If I convert, I don’t want to get that way.”

  “If you convert? You sound like you’ve converted already.”

  My heart sinks, and I know I can’t explain to her why I’ve hesitated. “I guess I’m in the consideration phase.”

  She looks down at her drink. “I know I’d probably qualify as lukewarm. I actually didn’t realize that until just now. But I can give you one piece of advice. Don’t wait.”

  Her cheeks blush as she says that, and I realize she means this sincerely.

  “Seriously,” she goes on. “It’s not complicated. If you’re this pumped about Jesus . . . take it now. This feeling might fade if you don’t, and you might never go all the way. You don’t want that to happen. It sounds like he’s wooing you.”

  “Knocking at the door,” I say, because I read that part in Revelation last night.

  “Yeah. Let him in.”

  I didn’t expect this lunch to go here, but we both get quiet as we eat. We don’t pick up with the Christian talk again, but her words hang in my mind for the rest of the day.

  9

  CASEY

  They say that walking through the forest does something to your brain, releasing hormones that give you a sense of well-being that lasts for days. I don’t know if that’s true, but being around people does that for me. The sound of other humans, a smile exchanged, the brush of shoulders in a crowd, the sound of voices, all contribute to my inner peace.

  Except when people are staring at me because I look like that murderer on TV.

  I pull into a parking space at the megachurch near my motel and look toward the front doors. It’s an old movie theater converted into a church. I know about it only because they advertised their midweek service on a commercial during reruns of Andy Griffith. The commercial showed a dark room with the stage lit up, so I’m hoping I can slip in a few minutes late and disappear into the darkness.

  I check my wig in the mirror. Maybe if I hurry inside I can keep my sunglasses on until I get to the dark auditorium.

  There are a few people in the front area, talking to each other as they greet guests, so I smile and hurry past them, saying a quick hello, as if I belong here and they should know me.

  The sanctuary is just as it looked on TV, with theater seating and the lights turned down. The audience is singing, and the stage is lit up as a music group leads them.

  I slip into a back row and push the theater seat down. The words to the song are shown on the screen up front. I don’t know this song, but I listen and study the words, relishing the sound of a few hundred voices. I wonder if heaven is something like this, with thousands, millions of voices singing prayers to God. I wonder if I’ll get to hear that someday.

  After one verse of the song, I pick up the tune, singing along with the others. Peace does seem to flow over me, greater than the peace I’ve ever felt in a forest.

  I wonder what it would be like to know these people and be a part of this group, to be recognized in a good way when I walk through those doors, to be depended on like family.

  I can’t even imagine what that’s like.

  I wonder if Dylan is like that at his church. I try to picture him shaking hands and hugging people, looking down at his open Bible as his preacher teaches, writing notes in the margins. People are probably always trying to fix him up with single Christian women. I’ve never asked about that.

  What was I
thinking, to imagine a future with him?

  The pastor comes to the microphone and tells the crowd to greet the person next to them, and to my horror, the lights are turned up. People begin speaking to each other.

  I dart out of my row and head to the exit. The people who were greeting are gone now, probably in the service themselves. No one stops me.

  I don’t slow down until I’m at my car. I hope no one saw me.

  I cry on the way back to my motel, knowing I’m leaving a muddy trail again. I try to shake it off and hold on to the few minutes of peace I had. It’ll have to last for a while. I won’t let my thoughts snuff it out.

  I go to my room and open my new Bible and read the passage that was marked on the screen, the passage the pastor was about to preach from. But I don’t understand it.

  What would he have said? I really needed to hear it.

  I Google the passage and see a list of sites come up. I click on one of them and find another message by a different pastor. I turn it on and try to imagine I’m there in person, with people around me, soaking it all in.

  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I can learn so much about Christianity by listening to YouTube videos.

  For the next few hours, I listen to this preacher teach on six different topics. When I’m done, I feel better about having to walk out of church.

  Even if I can’t go to God’s house, I can still hear from him.

  10

  DYLAN

  The call from Kurt Keegan comes on Friday, and I answer with suspicion. I can’t see my high school friend as an old buddy when I know he’s the son of a serial killer.

  “Dylan, what are you doing tonight, man?”

  I try to keep my voice light. “What have you got in mind?”

  “I thought we could meet for drinks at Monnogan’s.”

  “That dive?” I tease, knowing it’s the favorite club of most of the cops at the downtown precinct.

  “It’s not so bad. Thought I’d invite some of the old gang. Miller, Kramer, Jecowitz. A few others.”

  I can’t let on that I don’t trust Kurt, so I grudgingly agree. It’ll be a good chance to gauge whether he’s getting a piece of his dad’s action.