Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  Nicky didn’t say yes, but she didn’t dismiss his statement either.

  “The investigator called you back, right? Wednesday night, you’re at home, resting on the sofa, and the phone rings. What did you learn, Nicky? What was so important you had to leave right away?”

  “She gave me an address. Employment records list a state liquor store, but I’ve never been there before.”

  “Who is she? The investigator from Northledge?”

  “I have to leave. Go there quickly. Before I lose my courage.”

  Interesting, Wyatt thought. Because up to this point, they’d assumed the urgency behind Nicky’s sudden exit Wednesday night had to do with getting away from her husband. But now it would appear there was a different spin on the evening. Nicky had been contacted with information regarding someone who worked at the state liquor store. And she had to find that person before she lost her courage.

  “Who are you meeting?” Wyatt tried again.

  “I have to go.”

  “Who did you pay Northledge to track down? Is it Vero?”

  “I have to save her. I never save her. Every time I fail in the end.” Nicky’s voice picked up, growing agitated again. Wyatt took the hint and dialed things back down.

  “You put your Audi into drive,” he prompted.

  “The night is dark. No moon, no stars, just the thick storm clouds. I should turn around, head back home, but I can’t. God, my head hurts.”

  “What do you do, Nicky?”

  “I drive. I just keep going. What choice do I have? I see her everywhere; I hear her everywhere. Vero is having tea. Vero is braiding my hair. Vero is standing before me, maggots pouring out of her skull.”

  Wyatt paused, sparing a glance for Kevin, who’d gone positively wide-eyed. The detective quickly scrawled another note. While Nicky’s breathing quickened once more.

  “But Vero’s not with you right now,” Wyatt offered gently. “You’re alone in your car. You’re out of the rain, driving for the state liquor store.”

  “My hands are shaking. I think I could use a drink. But I’ve been doing so well. My headaches, you know. Thomas tells me alcohol is no good. I need to get healthy again. Then maybe we could be happy again. We were happy once. God, I loved him so.”

  “So you’re driving to the liquor store. Do you make any turns, any stops, before you get there?”

  “No, I must get there. Before I change my mind.”

  “Okay. You arrive. The parking lot is huge. Filled with burning overhead lights.”

  Nicky immediately shook her head, shuttering her eyes. “I don’t like them. They make my headache worse. I thought I’d just park. I don’t know. Maybe hang out. But there’s no place to put the car where I won’t be seen. And the lights, they’re killing me.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I park in the back. As far away from the store as I can get. Then I step out into the rain.”

  Nicky paused. Her eyes were open but had that glazed look again. Wyatt was about to bring her back, refocus her attention, when she started on her own:

  “I shouldn’t go in. I have to go in. I should just let it go. Thomas is right. What good will come of this? Oh my God, I think I’m going to barf. No, I can do this. Because it’s November and even the sky is crying and if I’m ever going to be happy . . . Thomas says I’m strong. He says he believes in me, he’s always believed in me. I was sad from the very beginning, you know. He said he just wanted to be the man who finally made me smile . . .

  “I get out of the car. I’m trembling. I don’t feel good. Maybe I will throw up. But I like the rain. It drips from my hat brim, dances across my cheeks.

  “I go inside the store,” Nicky murmured. She wasn’t looking at them, but staring straight ahead. “I’ll just look around. She might not even be working tonight. I never asked that question. Plus I might not recognize her. It’s been so long, decades, people change, you know. But then . . . What if she recognizes me? I hadn’t even thought of that. Or maybe I have, because I have my cap pulled low. Why bring the hat, if I hadn’t already known I’d want to hide my face?

  “I can do this. I walk by the cash registers. The store is very busy. Three lanes open, crowded with people. One cashier is tall, a man. I can see him. The others . . .

  “It’s too crowded. I shouldn’t have come. This was stupid. Better to let it be. But I can’t leave. I’m this close. So close. The closest I’ve been in God knows. Then . . . I can’t see her, but I feel her. I know she’s here.”

  “Who’s there, Nicky?” Wyatt asked. “Who are you looking for?”

  But she shook her head, agitated again. “I’m going to throw up. I think my head is on fire. Oh God, I gotta get out of here. I make it to the bathroom. I turn off the light, close the door. I stand in the pitch-black until finally I can breathe again. I like the dark. I used to hate it once, but since the headaches . . . I find the sink, turn on the cold water. It feels nice against my wrists. I wish I had my quilt. Then I would curl up on the floor. I would stay here.

  “Knocking. Someone else wants in. It takes me a moment, but I pull myself together. I open the door. A guy is waiting. He doesn’t say anything. Just moves in as I move out.

  “Now what? I don’t want to go home, but I can’t just stand here. I wander. Up and down the aisles. I pretend I’m looking at wine or flavored vodkas, but really, I’m trying to check out the store clerks. Then from the back, I see her.”

  “See who, Nicky?”

  “That’s her. I know it. I’m staring at the back of her head and even that’s too much. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. If she turns around . . . I panic. I march into the scotch aisle, grab a bottle. You don’t understand; I need it. Fuck the concussion and my stupid headaches. I need this.

  “I go straight to the nearest checkout line. It’s her line, but I refuse to think about that. This is normal, nothing special. I’m a customer; she’s a cashier; end of story. Nothing to see here. Then it’s my turn. She’s busy, barely even glances at me. Is it better this way? Do I want her to truly look at me? Do I think . . . Do I think she’d really know?

  “She rings up one bottle of Glenlivet. I swipe my card.

  “We’re done. Just like that. Thirty seconds or less, and now she’s moved on to the next person. I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid I’ll drop my bottle. I clutch it against my chest like a baby. Then I leave the store. I walk into the parking lot. I climb into my car. And I . . .

  “I should call Thomas . . . ,” Nicky whispered. “Tell him what I have done. He’ll be angry but he’ll help me. Poor Thomas, still trying to save me after all these years. I should dump out the scotch, drive home. So many things I should do. Things I know I should do. But I open the bottle instead. The smell. My God, it’s like a long-lost friend. And the second I smell it, of course, I have to take a sip. I don’t understand, I’ve never understood, how something so evil can taste so good.

  “I’m bad. I’m weak. But then, I already knew that.”

  “What do you do next, Nicky?”

  “I sit. I wait. I drink. Eventually, by the time the store empties out and the lights turn off, my limbs are loose, my face is rubbery. I’m not nervous. I’m not shaking. I’m not scared. I’m happy. Is this really the only time I’m happy?

  “She comes out. Just like I knew she would. It’s still storming. I can’t see her that well, raincoat pulled over her head. But I recognize her, even though she hadn’t recognized me. No, she’d stood three feet from me, not a flicker of realization on her face. Not even a sense of déjà vu, hey, haven’t I seen you once before? Nothing. Nada. Nope.

  “That pisses me off! She should know, dammit! I never forgot her. How dare she forget me!

  “Her car. It’s pulling out of the parking space, headed for the road. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I just do it. Jerk my own car into gear, head ou
t after her. I’m not driving great. The night is very dark. My headlights bounce off the raindrops, which makes me dizzy. It’s hard to find the road.

  “At least there are no other cars around. I follow her taillights. I don’t know where I’m going or what I will do once I get there, but I can’t stop either. I can’t . . . turn away. I drive. I grip the wheel, I force my eyes to focus and I stay behind her.

  “Around and around we go. Along this road, then there. And here, and there and everywhere. A dark and stormy chase. We drive through one town, then another. Then she turns off the main road and now we’re bouncing and heaving along some little side street. It needs to be repaved. I keep hitting the potholes and my stomach heaves.

  “Brake lights. She’s slowing before a house, probably going to turn into the driveway. I don’t know what to do. There is no place for me to go, no place for me to hide. I can’t just stop in the middle of the road. I can’t turn in after her; that would be too much. So I . . . hit the gas, pass her right on by, just another driver with places to go and people to see. But then, when I’m far enough way . . . I hit the brakes, loop around.

  “I backtrack down the road. The second I see the right house, I kill my lights. The night goes pitch-black. Out this remote, there are no streetlights, not even porch lights glowing from surrounding homes. No, I’m in back-of-the-closet dark. Don’t-make-a-sound dark. One-false-move-and-the-monsters-will-get-you dark.

  “But I don’t care.”

  “Nicky, where are you?” Wyatt asked carefully. Nicole’s eyes were unfocused again. Staring not at him, but at things only she could see.

  “Shhh,” she murmured to him. “I don’t want her to hear; I don’t want her to know. I pull over. Get out of my car. Immediately, I’m soaked. But it’s okay. I creep carefully forward toward the little house. It’s nothing fancy, but I like the color; she’s painted it yellow with white trim. I always liked that shade of yellow. I wonder if she’s happy here. It makes my chest feel funny. I want her to be happy. Right? But maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe I’m jealous. I’m almost at the side window now. Step, step, step.”

  “Where are you, Nicky?”

  “Vero is learning to fly.”

  “Who are you trying to find?”

  “Six years old. She is gone. November is the saddest month of the year.”

  “Nicky, stay with me, honey. It’s Wednesday night. You’ve been drinking. You followed a woman home from the liquor store. Now you’re standing in the rain outside her home. What do you see?”

  “I see the impossible. Vero. All grown up. Sitting on a couch in the family room. I see Vero, back from the dead.”

  Chapter 20

  WHAT IS HAPPINESS? I feel like I’ve been chasing it my entire adult life. I study it in commercials, watch it on other people’s faces. When Thomas and I first married, he took me on vacation to Mexico. We tried on fake names, invented wilder and wilder character histories. He was a runaway circus clown, I was a burned-out Vegas showgirl. We laughed hard, we drank too much. Then we woke up and did it all over again. I remember lying on a warm, sandy beach after one particularly crazy night, feeling the sun on my closed eyelids and thinking, this must be happiness. I can do this.

  Except I woke up screaming, night after night after night. Regardless of the rum. Regardless of my new and improved backstory. Regardless of Thomas’s strong arms around my waist.

  Happiness, it turns out, is an acquired skill, and I’ve had problems learning it.

  Just be happy, the song says. I tried that, too. Especially all those mornings, waking up to find Thomas studying me so intently. Knowing I must have dreamed again, or maybe shouted out, or hit him. He learned quickly not to touch me once the thrashing started. That in fact, I’m stronger than I look.

  Meditation, yoga, juice fasts. It’s amazing how many tricks are out there. I took up painting. Art therapy, because Thomas and I both knew talking to someone was not an option. Those first few years, Thomas was very good about burning the canvases. The images I created, the color palette . . . These were not pictures to hang on your wall.

  Fake it till you make it. So I studied photos of flowers and serene landscapes. I dissected petals and leaves and dandelion fluff. I re-created each image on canvas down to the tiniest detail because maybe if I didn’t feel happiness, I could at least copy it. Then it would be mine. I could point to it and say, I made that happiness.

  Then November wouldn’t make me cry. And I wouldn’t spend my free time lying with a yellow quilt talking to the skeleton of a little girl covered in maggots.

  Maybe happiness is genetic. Maybe it’s something your parents have to gift to you. That would certainly explain a lot.

  Or maybe it’s contagious. You have to be exposed to it, to catch it yourself, and given my small, isolated world . . .

  I want to be happy. I want to not only see my husband’s warm smile, but feel it in my chest. I want to hold up my face to a clear summer sky and not already notice the clouds on the horizon. I want to sleep, the way I imagine other people sleep, deep and uneventful, and wake up the next morning feeling refreshed.

  But I am none of these things. Only a woman twice returned from the dead.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME I’m done talking to the detectives, I’m exhausted. They ask me more questions, but I can’t answer. My eyelids are sagging; I can barely stand without stumbling. You’d think I’d spent the evening drinking, and not just retelling my last drunken misadventure.

  Vero.

  The name comes and goes from me. I lost her. I found her. I killed her. I know where she lives.

  These concepts are too much for me. They overwhelm my battered brain. Each possibility seems more improbable than the last. Vero is my imaginary friend; Thomas told me so. Vero and I sit together and indulge in scotch-laced tea, but only in my concussed head.

  Vero is six years old. She is gone. Disappeared.

  She never existed.

  Except my husband had her picture hidden inside his jacket pocket.

  The detectives are trying to help me up the ravine. It’s slow going. My legs don’t want to work; my feet stumble over twigs, sink deeper into the mud.

  I remember this ravine, the blood on my hands, the rain on my face. Pushing myself past the pain, forcing my way through the mud and muck, because I had to save Vero. That’s the key to happiness for me, I think. Whether the girl is real or not, it’s my duty to save her. So I keep trying, again and again, because even the worst of us wants to be able to sleep at night.

  “I don’t get it,” the younger detective, Kevin, is whispering to the other. “I thought we agreed Vero didn’t exist.”

  “Technically speaking, the husband told us she didn’t exist. Doesn’t mean we have to agree with him.”

  “But if Vero’s real, doesn’t that mean our suspect just confessed to killing her?”

  “Only if she’s dead. Our suspect has also just claimed to have found the girl alive.”

  “Remind me never to get a concussion,” Kevin says.

  “It would be a waste of a great Brain.”

  I stumble. Both detectives pause, Wyatt bending down to help me up.

  “Northledge Investigations,” he tells me. “That’s the firm you hired, right? I want to talk to them, Nicky, which would happen quicker if you granted permission. Do you think you could help me with that? Give them the okay?”

  I stare at him blearily. I don’t nod yes and he finally frowns at me.

  “I thought you wanted answers.” His tone is faintly accusing.

  “Shhh,” I tell him.

  “Nicky—”

  “It’s not the flying; it’s the landing,” I inform him soberly.

  But he doesn’t get it. How can he? He has yet to understand the yellow quilt and the real reason Thomas wouldn’t come with us.

  He doesn�
��t understand this night isn’t over yet.

  The detectives pull me up the ravine. They tuck me back into the SUV. They hand me my precious quilt.

  I sit in the back of the vehicle. I think these are two good, hardworking men. They deserve better than to get involved in my messed-up life.

  I’m sorry.

  Then I close my eyes and let it all go.

  * * *

  I’M ON THE basement floor. The concrete is hard against my neck and shoulders. I try to move, sit up, roll over, something. But I can’t. There is pain, radiating everywhere, but mostly in the back of my skull.

  Distant footsteps, moving quick.

  Footsteps down a hall, I think, and feel immediate panic.

  No. Stop. Focus. I’m in a basement. Cold floor. Surrounded by discarded clothes. Laundry. That’s it. I’m a grown adult, doing laundry in my own home, and then . . .

  Floorboards, creaking above me. “Nicky?” a man’s voice calls. “Nicky? You all right?”

  I wonder who Nicky is. Is this her home?

  “Honey, where are you? I thought I heard a car in the drive. Nicky?”

  My brain throbs. I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the pain caused by the overhead lights. I try to turn my head, but that makes my head groan. I should say something. Cry out, call for help. But I merely lick my lips helplessly.

  I don’t know what to cry out. I don’t know who to ask for. Where am I again? Who is that upstairs?

  Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, he says.

  But Vero is all I think.

  Footsteps sounding closer. A man’s form appears above me, silhouetted at the top of the stairs.

  “Nicky, is that you?” Then: “Oh my God! What happened? Nicky!”

  The man hammers down the stairs. He drops to his knees beside me. Thomas, I think, but then frown, because I’d swear that name isn’t quite right. Tim. Tyler. Travis. Todd. A man with a hundred names, I find myself thinking. Which makes perfect sense, as I’m a woman with a hundred ghosts.

  He’s touching me. My shoulders, my knees, my hips. His touch is light and feathery, trying to check me out, afraid to land too hard.