Girl Last Seen

by Nina Laurin

  “Hey, look, you’re one of my fave clients. Sure, I can do it. How could I say no to Laine freaking Moreno?”

  “Thank you.” The air rushes out of my lungs with a whoosh. “Can you come down? Like, soon?” Like fifteen minutes ago.

  “Hey, look, I don’t do hotels anymore. Had a close call. Get your ass down here; I’ll get you sorted out.”

  Hotels are his best source of business, so he’s lying, and I know full well why, but that doesn’t stop me. It takes a good forty-five minutes to get to Sugar’s from where I am, so I should have just enough gas left. “Okay.”

  “Be alone though, right? No friends, no well-meaning acquaintances.”

  “Got it. You know me. Would I narc on you?”

  “Ha-ha. Hilarious. Hurry up, Princess; I don’t have all day.”

  I change my clothes in a fog. Oversize army pants, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt that’s getting ripe, but I don’t have anything else. I lace up my boots and tuck my phone into the right one.

  Outside, it’s the first real warm day of spring, and the sun is beating down from a flawless blue sky. For once, Seattle decides it’s going to stop the rain. It sure has a funny sense of timing.

  I’m drowning in my sweatshirt, and my back breaks out in sweat. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I wipe my forehead with the cuff of my sleeve. The couple of hotel patrons I come across give me odd sideways looks and step aside, not obviously but noticeably. Squeamish.

  This is what I’ve become. Untouchable. The thought doesn’t have any sting left anymore.

  Sugar lives in an apartment at the top of a shitty slum building. I huff and puff up the stairs until I think I’m going to pass out. My lungs burn, and my ears ring by the time I get to the door.

  I pound on it with both fists. He takes his sweet time, and for a moment, I think the bastard forgot and took off to do some more lucrative deal somewhere. I take out my frustration on the door, kick it, try to punch it, but after a couple of minutes, I hear shuffling steps inside the apartment.

  “It’s me!” I yell.

  “I can see that. What are you doing? You trying to wake the whole neighborhood?”

  “It’s almost noon, Sugar. Normal people are at work.”

  “Oh yeah?” I hear him chuckle through the door. “Since when are you the official spokesperson for normal people, huh?”

  “Just open the door.” A bit of desperation seeps into my voice. And I’m sure he heard it, because he spends two or three more agonizing minutes shuffling, fumbling, and sighing. Finally, the locks click one after another, and the chain slides aside with a squeal. Sugar takes his privacy seriously. Even for a drug dealer.

  The door opens a crack, and he peeks out. He looks like he just woke up. He’s wearing nothing except discolored boxers that might once have been white—great, one sight I could have done without. He still has the eternal baseball hat perched on top of his head.

  “Get in here,” he says, and moves aside. I slip through the crack in the door, doing my best not to brush up against him. He makes it pretty difficult.

  I’ve been in here maybe once before. It’s worse than I remember, or maybe my standards went up from staying at that fancy hotel. Yeah, hah. It’s a loft, with messy seams where the walls had been demolished, and it reeks of old tobacco and pot, like a giant ashtray. The main piece of furniture is a couch that’s folded out right now, with a mess of sheets piled on top. Clothes and empty takeout containers are strewn everywhere. It’s actually worse than my old place.

  And this is the guy who claims he makes five Gs a week. Wonder what he does with it.

  “So.” Sugar claps his hands then stretches his arms over his head, giving me an eyeful of hairy armpits. “Spill. What’s the sob story?”

  “There’s no sob story. I have a situation—that’s all. Something I’ve been hoping you can help me with, and there’s something in it for you too.”

  “Cut the crap, Laine.”

  I trail off. He puts his hands on his hips; his fading tattoo peeks through sparse chest hair.

  “I talked to Dom the other night. They haven’t seen you in weeks, but he did tell me, if I ever saw you, to let you know your ass is fired.”

  How did I not consider this? I clench my fists inside my sleeves. I need to think of something, some lie that will convince him to help me, but for once, I’m drawing a blank.

  “Look, I get it. You’re broke, you need your stuff, you’re in a bad spot. You want me to do you a favor.”

  “Something like that.”

  His grin widens. “You really think you’re worth that much, sweetie?”

  In guise of an answer, I pull my hoodie over my head. Underneath, I only have a T-shirt, no bra. I remember that I’m not wearing anything to cover my scars and notice the way his nervous gaze flickers to my wrists. “How about, you’ve wanted to fuck me since the day we met? And you think I have no standards, but I actually do, so you’re not getting another chance. So? Take it or leave it.”

  He gulps, and his tongue darts out from between his pale lips to nervously trace the top one before disappearing again, like an eel. “Come on,” he says, feigning a sigh of resignation. My legs feel soft as I walk over to the foldout couch. He sits down, making the whole thing creak, and pats the sheet next to him. I follow suit.

  But instead of reaching for me, he reaches for the nightstand. “We’re going to have us a little party,” he says as he extracts a couple of tabs of some pill I don’t recognize and grinds them up on the top of the nightstand with the bottom of an empty glass. “Special occasion and all.”

  He does a line first, to show me he’s not trying to poison me, probably, then gestures for me to do the same. I still have no idea what it is, but it’s good. The tight knot in the center of my chest starts to unwind, and my head feels light in all the right ways. I let my eyes close and savor the initial rush. The couch creaks and tilts as he gets up.

  “Drink?”

  He must interpret my silence as a yes, because I hear him clang around, and when he comes back, I open my eyes to see him holding out a glass, waiting for me to take it.

  “Oh. So you like that.” He grins and clicks his glass to mine. It’s hard liquor, and I down it in one gulp. “Whoa. Pace yourself.”

  I don’t want to pace myself. I need help to get through this, although “this” becomes more and more fluid and less definable with every passing moment. It turns from an enormous, gut-wrenching ordeal to barely a blip on my mental radar.

  I lean over to do one more line and can’t seem to sit upright again. So I let myself rest, my face on his dank sheets. He stretches out next to me.

  “So it didn’t pan out, I take it?” His voice fades in and out.

  “What didn’t pan out?”

  “The thing with your new boyfriend. Or I doubt he’d be okay with you being here, stoned out of your mind.” He gives me a look. “Or he doesn’t know?”

  The knot in my chest tightens again, and I realize it never disappeared in the first place. I just stopped being aware of it. “There was no boyfriend. I told you.”

  He chuckles. “Don’t freak out—I’m just messing with you. I know everything, and it’s fine by me. No judgment. I’m the last person to judge anyone, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  When he says Olivia Shaw’s name, I feel myself sinking, and the drugs only make it worse. I think I might throw up; the booze already burns the back of my throat. “How do you—”

  “I watch the news, and I know how to use Google.” He sits up, shaking his head. “And right now, you look like you could use a pick-me-up.”

  Numbly I watch as he makes a small baggie of coke appear, dips in the tip of his fingernail, snorts. Holds it out to me. I shake my head.

  “You’re about to pass out. Come on.”

  Coke is the absolute last thing I need. I tell him so. He shrugs and takes out another of these mystery pills and grinds it up into a fine powder.

  From ther
e on, everything swims in and out of a foggy state, and time is brief flashes of clarity followed by more fog. When I come to, the room is darker, and a horror movie flickers black and red on the flat-screen, lots and lots of Technicolor blood, carefully edited screams. It’s nothing like reality, I find myself thinking. Real-life horror is quiet.

  “What’s that?” Sugar leans in, bathing me in his Jack Daniel’s breath. I have forgotten he was there.

  “I didn’t say anything. Fuck off.”

  He slaps my ass playfully, and I realize I’m down to my underwear. I’m momentarily thrown into confusion and panic, but it subsides when he gives me a sip from his glass. Like a lover.

  Next time I surface, the TV is dark, only our reflections dance on its screen like ghosts. I become aware of being fucked from behind, the wet slap of flesh. When I can’t see him, it doesn’t feel that bad. I don’t feel much at all, but it’s nice to be filled. I don’t even notice when he comes with a shudder until he collapses next to me and grabs the back of my head, pushing me close to kiss me wetly on the mouth. I taste sweat and booze but don’t pull away.

  “I kind of always knew you’d be hot,” he says. He can’t catch his breath as he wipes more sweat from his eyes with the corner of a sheet. “But damn. We need to do this again sometime.”

  “There won’t be a sometime,” I say. It’s funny, not feeling my lips move. “It’s the last time. Tomorrow I’m starting a new life.”

  “Wow. You’re breaking my heart.”

  “All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts.”

  He gives a loud, shrill laugh, like fingernails on glass, and my skin prickles with gooseflesh even though it’s boiling in here and my sweat hasn’t yet cooled. I climb on top of him, straddling his skinny thighs, and try to guide his still-soft cock inside me. He rolls me over onto the damp sheets, facedown.

  “So this new life,” he’s saying, “are you absolutely sure? Do you need a place to stay in the meantime? ’Cause I’m available, and at this rate, you won’t even need to pay rent.” He nudges my legs apart with his knee, but his halfhearted erection can’t last longer than a couple of thrusts. “It’s not exactly chic, I know, but it could use a woman’s touch.” A laugh bubbles out of him at his own joke. “And it’s safe, with all these locks. Not as easy to break into as your old place. I was thinking of getting a security system installed, and…” He trails off with a huff, the head of his dick poking me in the thigh.

  I feel like I’ve been plunged headfirst into ice-cold water. Instinctively I squeeze my legs closed just as he manages to find his target, and push myself up from the couch. “What—did you just say?”

  “Your old place was broken into, right? That’s why you had to leave.” I glimpse his confused face before he rolls me over again. I’m breathing in the stale stench of his sheets, aware of it more acutely than before.

  “I didn’t tell you that,” I mumble, but my tongue won’t obey. And it wasn’t on the news. Or on the Internet. Was it?

  “Someone at the club told me. Relax, babe. Everything’s fine. Do you want more—”

  I do want more, and he obliges. He was right—everything is fine again, and the contours of my body begin to gently dissolve. That last line hit hard—and the more I try to fight it, the faster it pulls me under, like one of those Chinese finger traps. When I lift my face out of the sheets, Sugar isn’t around anymore, and not too far off, I hear the shower running. I’d only closed my eyes for a moment, hadn’t I?

  I can’t think about it right now. I can’t think about anything.

  I want only emptiness, dark and silent.

  I want nothing at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When I wake up, my mind is quiet, filled only with the dull throb of pain. My throat is dry; each breath is an effort, inhale, exhale, inhale again.

  I’m shrouded in darkness, soft as velvet. As my vision starts to adjust, I gradually make out my surroundings. I feel the stab of panic when I realize I’m lying on a hospital bed and the steady beep at the edge of my hearing is a heart-rate monitor.

  I try to prop myself up on my elbow only to hear a strange clang. The sound reverberates in my bones, and a sinking sense of foreboding fills my core. The tug on my wrist is painfully familiar, a sharp bite into the tender flesh of my scar, and I already know what I’ll see when my gaze travels to my right hand. The handcuffs gleam dully, locking my wrist to the metal bar on the side of the hospital bed. I tug and pull, clink, clink.

  Someone moves at the edge of my vision. I look up in a panic, and relief floods me when I realize it’s Sean, getting up from a chair at the other end of the room.

  He can make it stop, pleads a tiny voice in the back of my mind. He can take off these cuffs; I just have to ask nicely. He can’t say no. He knows about me, what it’s like for me. He understands. He’ll take them off. I’ll beg if I have to.

  Memories come flooding back. Sugar’s apartment, the plastic baggie of coke, the ground-up pills, three or four or God knows how many I snorted.

  My mouth tastes bitter. And I remember the rest.

  Shame and self-loathing fill my chest until I think my rib cage might burst, my ribs snapping like twigs. It all spills out in ugly tears, in sobs that shake me to the core. I squeeze my eyes shut so I can’t see the look on Sean’s face.

  I don’t know how long I cry like this. It’s a wonder I can make tears at all, there’s so little water left in my body. All the while I’m painfully aware of his presence by my side, not moving or speaking. I wish with all my soul he’d reach out and touch me, hold my hand, brush my hair off my forehead.

  But then again…I don’t blame him if he doesn’t want to touch me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.” I hate my own words sooner than I can get them out. They ring so hollow but I can’t seem to stop myself. “I’ll go to rehab. I’ll do whatever you want. Just—”

  “Laine,” Sean says softly. There’s no anger in his voice, no disgust or hatred. That makes it even worse…if it could be any worse.

  “Just get this thing off me.” The cuffs give another feeble clink against the metal bar. “Please?”

  “You really have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

  I can’t stop it—my face screws up like a child’s, except there are no more tears left. All that comes out are dry sobs that sound like heaving, which isn’t far from the truth, because I feel like I might throw up any second.

  “You OD’d. And you’re lucky that your dealer isn’t a total scumbag and had the presence of mind to call an ambulance rather than just dump you somewhere.”

  I sit up, tugging on the cuffs. “Sean…”

  “Please stop. You’re just making it worse.”

  The door opens, and three more people come in. The ceiling light flickers on, slicing across my eyes, and when I can see again, two people in cop uniforms are standing at a short distance. Next to them, a nurse glances anxiously from them to me and back.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t believe it,” Sean mutters, not to me, not to them, but not really to himself either. “I can’t believe I trusted you.”

  The very same words I was two seconds away from hurling at him.

  The other two officers come closer, surrounding me. I feel like I’m shrinking inside my hospital gown, Alice about to tumble down the rabbit hole. “Sean, what’s happening?”

  “I mean it. Keep your mouth shut. Everything you say can be used against you. And will be.”

  One of the other two starts to speak, and all words bleed together into a crimson river. He rattles off term after meaningless term, and I can’t make sense of any of it except for certain words that pierce through the cloud of fog in my head. You are under arrest. Possession…distribution…involvement in the disappearance of Olivia Shaw.

  This cannot be happening.

  I have to still be dreaming. Maybe I’m in a coma or something and this is
just in my head, like in the movies. God, I need my pills. All these thoughts crowd inside my mind, and I feel a bizarre urge to giggle. I’m about to wake up any moment, right? They can’t mean it. The very idea is crazy. Involvement in the disappearance…

  Sean puts a stack of folded clothes at the foot of the bed.

  I have to wake up.

  Without a word, without a backward glance, he walks out the door, leaving me alone with the two other officers. My gaze slides across their faces, searching for a response, a reaction of any kind—but there’s none; they stand there like marble statues. When I try to meet the nurse’s eye, she avoids looking at my face.

  They all think I’m some kind of…

  They all think I’m guilty.

  The words replay over and over in my head as they walk me down the hall to the indoor lot where a car is waiting. The ride takes barely a few minutes before we pull up to the station. One of them unceremoniously tugs the hood of my sweatshirt over my face, and seconds later, when the flashbulbs start exploding in my eyes, I understand why. They drag me to the door through the clamor of voices and all I can see are the toes of my boots: left, right, left, right.

  Then there’s quiet.

  * * *

  The vents are too strong in the interrogation room, it’s freezing, and it smells like a mix of cleaner and stale air. I haven’t been able to stop crying. The briny streaks down my face have solidified, and I feel them every time I blink.

  I’m alone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. What do they do on TV? Ask for a lawyer or something. I can’t pay for one. And so far no one has been asking me any questions. No one has said so much as a word to me.

  The door opens eventually, and Sean comes in. I almost don’t recognize him because the look on his face, everything about him, has shifted. With him is a woman in a dark-blue suit, dark hair and lined face—she reminds me of Jacqueline, but harsher, metal to Jacqueline’s porcelain. She introduces herself, Sergeant Detective this and that. But my gaze is riveted to Sean the whole time, and only him.