The Last Place You Look

by Kristen Lepionka

  At eight ten, I got my wish: Kenny Brayfield walked up the sidewalk and into the bar.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered.

  I felt my jaw tightening as I navigated to the interior cameras and watched as he went up to the bearded bartender, pointed, and shook his head. The bartender shrugged, turned away. A minute or two later, Kenny left.

  I went back to the outside cameras and saw him walk back in the direction he came, and that was it.

  I sped up the footage and watched through three hours of the bar’s Sunday-night business in a half hour. Then I stood up and walked back into the bar, the picture of Kenny pulled up on my phone. “You told me you didn’t see him,” I said.

  The bartender was muddling an orange for someone who was obviously feeling lofty. He stopped what he was doing and looked at the picture. “I didn’t.”

  “You did,” I said. “He came in here, and you talked to him. It’s on the camera. He was probably asking you something about that cinnamon vodka with the gold flakes in it.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That guy.”

  “Yeah, that guy.”

  “He wanted to know why it wasn’t on the top shelf. I told him because no one who comes into this bar is ordering that shit.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” he said. “He said he talked to the owner about placement, that’s his word, placement. I was like, Whatever, dude, we’re busy, go away.”

  “I thought bartenders never forget faces.”

  “No, we never forget a drink order. Faces, eh.”

  I watched him as he finished the old-fashioned with a generous whiskey pour. I shook my head as he tipped the bottle in my direction. “Okay,” I said, flipping back to the pic of Veronica, “if she didn’t order anything, you wouldn’t remember her either?”

  The bartender said, “No, I’d remember her. She’s hot. I mean, you’re not bad yourself, but—”

  “She’s seventeen,” I told him, not in the mood. “And she’s missing. Look at this picture. Are you sure she wasn’t in here?”

  He looked. “Positive.”

  I went back into the office and resumed my stop-start watching of the video footage, but I reached the two o’clock county-wide closing time without seeing Kenny or Veronica or anything else out of the ordinary. Then I navigated back to his appearance on the sidewalk cameras and inserted the jump drive from my key ring into the computer, copying the files. Kenny hadn’t exactly been lying earlier—he was doing some work. But his work took him pretty damn close to Veronica’s probable location.

  I needed more than that before I could try again with Lassiter, but at least no one could tell me this video footage didn’t exist.

  I left my car where it was and walked across the parking lot to where it backed up to a row of trees. There was a clear path worn into the muddy ground from people making a habit of cutting through, just like Shelby had said.

  I followed the trampled grass through the trees and came out in the backyard of a yellow split-level. The sky was grey and the air was wet and no one was around except a German shepherd that regarded me balefully as I hiked up the slight incline of the yellow house’s backyard. When I got out to the sidewalk, I saw that I was on the far end of Providence Street. About a dozen houses down, I could see two Belmont police cruisers now parked in front of the Wexford home. But no one was out canvassing, so I turned around and went up to the porch of the yellow house and knocked on the door.

  I heard signs of life—shuffling and banging and then a prolonged period of someone struggling with the dead bolt. Finally, an old guy in a plaid shirt flung the door open and scowled out at me, leaning heavily on a cane. “Did you just walk through my yard?” he snapped.

  “I did,” I said. “I’m sorry. People do that a lot?”

  “All the goddamn time.”

  I showed him the picture of Veronica. “Her?”

  He grabbed my phone and held it an inch or two away from his face. “Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, “she lives up the street or something.”

  “She does. How about last night, did you see her last night?”

  “Last night?” From his tone of voice, last night might as well have been last month.

  “Yes, around seven thirty, eight o’clock?” I sensed his interest was flagging, so I added, “You seem pretty sharp, I bet you notice everything that goes on around here.”

  He seemed to like the sound of that. “Last night?” he said again.

  I smiled politely and waited while he thought about that.

  “Right at the end of Wheel of Fortune.” He nodded. “Seven fifty-five, then. Someone went by. I got a light on a motion sensor.”

  “And it was her?”

  “I can’t swear to it, but I think so. That hair, it nearly glows when that spotlight goes on.”

  So Veronica had likely passed through the trees at around eight. At eight fifteen, Kenny was walking out of the Varsity Lounge. Their paths would have converged right after that. I had no idea what had happened next, only that Veronica likely hadn’t made it as far as Insomnia, and Kenny didn’t get back to his house until ten.

  After that, I tried the surrounding houses, but most yielded no response to my knocks—the residents either at work or hiding from me. Fair enough. When it started to rain, I headed up the street to Shelby’s house. The two cruisers in front of Veronica’s hadn’t moved, but I saw that one of the cops had gotten behind the wheel of one, ready to drive away. That is, until I got closer. Then he got out. It was Pasquale, the muscular guy who’d given me a hard time at the gas station last week.

  I held up my hands in a don’t shoot gesture as I climbed the steps to the Evanses’ porch. But Pasquale didn’t buy it. His expression told me he knew about my encounter with Lassiter already somehow. “Ma’am, the situation is under control.”

  I didn’t believe for one second that anything was under anything. But I didn’t want to get stuck explaining my way out of any more conversations with the Belmont police. “Oh, I know,” I said, knocking on the front door. “I’m just visiting a friend.”

  “Oh, a friend?” Pasquale said, doubtful.

  Fortunately, Shelby opened the door right then and invited me inside. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and stick out my tongue. Instead I just followed her into the house. Joshua was in the armchair, talking on the phone, but he raised a hand to me in greeting. They both seemed slightly more relaxed, which made me wonder what spin the police were putting on Veronica’s absence now.

  “He’s talking to my grandma,” Shelby told me as we went down the narrow hallway to her bedroom. “She lives in Indiana. He wants us to go there to stay with her but I don’t want to go anywhere, I want to stay here.” She sat down on the bed and spun her laptop screen around so I could see it. “I’m making a poster. I don’t know what else to do. Dad talked to the police and they told us we should stay home in case Veronica tries to come back and she gets nervous because of the police at her house.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was willing to bet that Lassiter was responsible for that brilliant excuse, but I supposed it didn’t matter. There was nothing Shelby could do yet anyway. I nodded at her poster. “That looks good. Listen, I’m going to show you a picture and I want you to tell me if you recognize the person.”

  “Okay.”

  I showed her the image of Kenny, and she immediately nodded.

  My heart jumped into my throat. “You recognize him?”

  “I think he lives around here,” Shelby said. “I’ve seen him driving by.”

  My mouth had gone dry. Kenny didn’t live anywhere near Shelby’s street. East side, west side. “Shelby, when was the last time you saw him driving by?”

  She thought about that for a second. “We saw him on Friday, I think. Yeah, Friday, it was the day you came over the first time.”

  “Have you ever talked to him?”

  “No.”

  “Has Veronica?”

  “No. I mean, not with me. He
’s just some guy.”

  He wasn’t. He wasn’t just some guy. He was hanging around on Shelby’s street often enough for her to notice. I was not going to let the Belmont police pretend that this was nothing anymore.

  “Why?” Shelby said next. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. I ran a hand through my hair and tried to breathe. “You’re listening to your dad, right? Staying inside?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I could see clear through to the end of Kenny’s street from Clover, the main drag. A cop car was parked at the Brayfield house, in front of the gates, like a warning. I kept driving and turned on the access road that had taken me to the overlook the other day. The rain was steady now, slanting against my windshield as I pulled over along the back edge of the Brayfield property. The wrought-iron fence made it easy to spot. I switched from my leather jacket to my raincoat, transferred my phone and keys to the pocket, and, in a last-minute inspiration, grabbed my revolver from the glove box, hoping this act would not draw trouble to me. More trouble. I snapped the magnetic holster onto my jeans at my right hip and pulled my hood over my hair.

  I probably looked like I was up to no good, which I was. I had no idea how the situation had escalated to this point. Danielle Stockton had hired me to track down a woman she saw at a gas station, but she was really asking me to save her brother. Everything else sprang up around this like a cage I couldn’t get into. Or out of. But Veronica Cruz was somewhere, and I had reason to believe Kenny knew where. I looked up at the fence, almost waiting for it to talk me out of this. I told myself that I would go through the front if I could. But I couldn’t. And something had to be done. If the Belmont police weren’t willing to look everywhere, I sure was.

  I got out of the car and went up the slight hill to the fence, which was comprised of square-shaped iron beams about the width of a quarter, spaced roughly ten inches apart. They stood a good eight feet tall and tapered to a point on the top. The fence was old, the metal going rusty on the edges. I looked past them at the house, a hundred or so yards ahead. There was a light on above the pool, and it cast a murky glow over the water and through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The house was huge. There were endless places to conceal a person in there. Was that what had happened? Had Veronica been in the house while I was drunkenly looking out the window by the pool? I rested my forehead against the fence. I’d never forgive myself if that was the case. But there was really only one way to find out.

  I considered whether or not I could squeeze in between the gap between bars in the fence, experimentally putting one foot inside to see if I could get my hips through. But I didn’t get far before I heard a faint creaking sound behind me. A cop’s utility belt was the only thing that made that sound. I pulled my foot back and turned around to see Jack Derrow a few feet down the embankment. His face was partly in shadow from his own raincoat hood. Somehow the coat made him appear bigger than he was.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said. “You know this is private property too, right?”

  “I know,” I said. I wondered if he’d help me, as he had on Sunday. But something in his face told me he’d already gotten the download from Lassiter. I would just go back to the car and wait for him to go away. “I was about to leave.”

  I took a step, but he moved into my path.

  “I’m afraid you used your freebie the other day,” he said. The smile was gone. “I’m going to have to ask you to put your hands above your head.”

  “I’ll seriously just go—”

  “You’re under arrest for criminal trespass,” Derrow said. “Hands above your head.”

  “A fourth-degree misdemeanor,” I said. A current of panic vibrated through my body. I was no use to Veronica if I got arrested, something I probably should have thought more seriously about. But I hadn’t. “I don’t think this is necessary, is it?”

  “I don’t make the rules. Put your hands above your head.”

  I exhaled slowly, disbelieving, but I did want he wanted.

  Derrow went behind me, so close he stepped on my heel. I could hear him breathing. “Do you have anything on your person that I should be aware of?”

  “Handgun, right hip,” I said.

  I felt his hands on my torso. Then one arm snaked up as he reached for the zipper pull on my coat. As a reflex, I found myself stupidly reaching down to hold the collar closed.

  “Do not move,” Derrow said, all business now. He jammed his elbow between my shoulder blades, forcing me face-first against the fence. My cheekbone cracked against the iron beam and the rough metal tore into my skin.

  Derrow continued shoving his elbow into my back as he used his other hand to reach into my coat, his fingers brushing the bare skin of my hip as he unfastened the holster.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “You got a CCW permit for this, or are we adding to the charges?”

  “I have a permit,” I snapped. Rain had immediately begun to soak my shirt.

  “Thank God for small blessings, right?” Derrow said. He pulled off my hood and continued the pat-down. “I’m going to cuff you now, and then we’ll get you to the station.”

  “Then what?” I said as he jerked my hands down to the small of my back and tightened a set of handcuffs around my wrists, the cold metal biting into me.

  “I think that depends on you,” Derrow said. “Doesn’t it.”

  “What is that supposed to mean,” I said. The rain was running down my face now. My cheekbone was on fire and I tasted blood.

  “It means you might want to start behaving yourself,” he said, “because you’ve got some people pretty pissed off.”

  * * *

  First he made me wait, wet and handcuffed, on a bench in the holding area of the police station while he slowly removed his raincoat and hung it up. Then he uncuffed me and directed me to empty my pockets onto the counter. I complied and just tried to breathe evenly. Anything else seemed likely to make the situation worse. That was a self-preservation tactic I wished I’d discovered about thirty minutes sooner. Derrow examined my driver’s license, then put my phone, keys, wallet, and the handgun into an envelope, which he tucked under the counter.

  “Okay,” he said then, “come on.”

  “Come on where?” I said. I had hoped for one naïve second while he was at the counter that I could pay a fine and get back to my search for Veronica. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  He grasped my arm just above the elbow. “I’m going to need you to sit tight,” he said, steering me into a painted concrete holding cell.

  “Wait,” I said. The small cell had a buzzing overhead light, a short row of cloudy glass-block windows near the ceiling, and a long stainless-steel bench that looked like it belonged in a slaughterhouse. The same instinct that made me try to hold my coat closed in the woods now made me dig my heels into the floor.

  But he pushed me inside and pulled the metal door closed. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and then he smiled.

  He walked around the corner and went out of sight. I exhaled violently. What, exactly, did a bit mean? I sat down on the bench but stood right back up again, too wired to be still. I paced the length of the cell, maybe fifteen feet from end to end. The wall opposite the windows offered a metal toilet and a tiny matching sink. I went to it and bent over the sink, peering at my blurry reflection in the shiny surface. It was hard to see much, but I could tell that my cheekbone was bruised already, bleeding from a vertical laceration directly below my eye. I didn’t need to see my reflection to tell that, though. I grabbed a wad of tissues, the cheap kind that disintegrate if you so much as look at them, ran water on it, and used it to gently wipe my face. The paper came away tinged with pink and dotted with dried blood and dirt and rust. I repeated the process until the tissue came away clean. I dropped the bloody tissues into the toilet. Then I sat back down and waited for the bit to e
nd.

  It didn’t.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I had never been arrested before, but I had been around enough criminal cases to know that this was not how it was supposed to work. There was supposed to be a process to it: intake questions, fingerprints, mug shots, a pay phone for collect calls.

  Eventually I stood up and went to the barred gate of the cell and tried from different angles to see anything around the corner. From the far end, I could see the desk and the envelope that contained my possessions. I could see a clock on the wall, the kind that looked like it belonged in a high school. I squinted at it until the time came into some semblance of focus: two p.m. From the other end of the cell, I could see a security camera mounted near the ceiling just outside the gate.

  I paced for a while longer, then sat on the bench again, then got up and squinted at the clock.

  Two thirty p.m.

  I took off my raincoat, which had gotten wet on the inside when Derrow had unzipped it in the woods. Removing it felt like giving in, accepting that I was not just going to be able to pay the fine and then be on my way. I turned the coat inside out and draped it over one end of the bench to dry out. Then I took my shirt off and attempted to wring water out of it over the sink, aware of the security camera at my back.

  Three fifteen.

  I put the still-damp shirt back on and stretched out on the bench on my back. The ceiling of the cell was disgusting, dotted with wads of gum and dead insects. I contemplated who was directly responsible for my current predicament. Maybe Chief Lassiter had me followed. Maybe Kenny had seen me through the woods. Either way, I felt pretty certain that I was stumbling in the right direction now.

  Or was, before I was sidelined here.

  Four o’clock.

  I tried to distill my theory down into an elevator pitch that I could deliver to the next human being I saw. Kenny Brayfield had been killing women in Belmont for sixteen years. Two of the women had been written off as runaways, until they turned up dead. It was thus wildly negligent for the police to pretend that another missing girl had left of her own accord, especially when Kenny had been hanging around the street where Veronica lived. Especially when he was at the Varsity Lounge at the exact moment she would have been walking by.