Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  Berk ended up paying for parking on M Street and walking back to what he hoped was Julian’s house. He stepped up to the brightly painted red door but before he rang he peered into the front window. A man who looked like Julian, still thin but now with a shaven head, was clearing plates from a large dining room table where an older man sat. He too had a shaven head and both had oxford shirts on.

  When Julian came to the door he stared at Berk for a silent minute before he spoke. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice place.” Berk looked past Julian and inside the renovated row house.

  “It’s Allen’s. It’s mine too, but his.”

  “Your roommate?”

  Julian rolled his eyes at the word roommate, but Berk kept going without noticing.

  “I suppose rent is high here. Not like at VCU. Man, what did we pay for that dump? Two fifty each?”

  “I’m not going to have a reunion on my doorstep. It’s after work. We’re tired.”

  “Has anyone been contacting you? About me, or that summer?”

  Julian’s brow furrowed. “We shared an apartment for one year, and it’s been fifteen years since. I’m not who I was then. I’m really not proud of some of the stuff we did.”

  “You did that favor for me. And it saved my life.”

  * * *

  —

  When Berk woke up at his parents’ house in the afternoon on July 5, he was still tripping on the Rain Forest acid. Waking in the middle of the hot day, all Berk wanted to do was throw up, then go back to his room and listen to some old Jesus and Mary Chain to come down. When he got up he looked down at the entrance from the second floor and saw three men talking with his mother. Men in bad suits and short sleeves.

  Berk quietly walked back into his bedroom and phoned Julian.

  “I need you to get the box out of the apartment!” he whispered desperately.

  “The box?”

  “Yeah, the Polaroids. Don’t throw them in the garbage. They’ll look there. Just put it, like, on the roof. And flush anything you’re holding.”

  The detectives did not knock when they came into his bedroom to arrest him.

  * * *

  —

  Walking with Julian through the cold Georgetown night fifteen years later, Berk realized it was strange what time did and did not do. It made bodies soft and pushed memories further apart, but it did not change relationships. With a few words Julian was following Berk’s orders again, walking a step behind him on the street, looking at the ground.

  “The way I see it,” Berk said, “they’ll figure out everyone I knew and drag them in again. Just for a cable show. Kennedy, still fucking up my life.”

  Julian stopped walking and rubbed his cold hands under his arms. “That girl died out in those woods alone, Berk.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Julian stared at him. “I didn’t know what was going on that day. If I knew I wouldn’t have hidden those things.”

  Julian had stashed away the photos that day, and when Berk was released after the drug charge, he retrieved them—as Julian quickly moved out. The semester was over anyway, he’d said, but Berk had known something had been broken between them.

  “What are you saying?” Berk asked now, lifting his chin.

  “I’m not going to keep lying for you. If that producer calls I’ll tell him everything I know.”

  Berk grabbed Julian by his cardigan and pulled him close, almost off his feet. Berk’s arms were big from pushing dollies all day. “I got a good life now. Biggest house in Blueheart. Looks like you got it good too. You want to keep it?”

  Julian flinched. “I did the worst thing I ever did in my life because—”

  Berk felt Julian’s gaze on him, lingering as it often had. He let go of him.

  “Because of friendship,” Berk finished, unwilling to see who Julian was or the different directions life had taken them. “Doesn’t that matter anymore?”

  Chapter 34

  Kennedy heard the key in the lock downstairs. Gerry was home. She hadn’t been able to look at the note she’d found in his closet. It rode down the stairs in her hip pocket. The Polaroids had disturbed her enough. She wanted to get out of the house. She had her coat half-on, slung over one shoulder, the other arm reaching back and fumbling as she ran. There were two options—Carter or Nathan Doyle. Carter was clearly the better person to talk to. But it was the middle of the day, and even if she broke her silence with her sister, Carter would be at work. How much of a phone call could she manage?

  “Whoa!” Gerry said as Kennedy sped past him. “Where you going? You need a ride?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Well, slow down and tell me where you’re going. I am responsible for you.”

  “Oh Jesus. Well, give me the ride then.” She found her hat in her coat pocket and pulled it on. She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder.

  Gerry held up the keys. He made to throw them to her and she opened her hand in time to catch them. As she looked at him, she tried not to think about the book in his closet or what he might have done with it. But she could already feel her face burning.

  “Practice time. You’ll thank me one day.”

  They wound through the cul-de-sacs, Gerry in the passenger seat and Kennedy clutching the wheel so tightly she didn’t know if it was because of her growing fear of Berk Butler or the nervousness she felt in a small space with Gerry. She could feel a patina of sweat forming over her forehead but didn’t want to take her hands off the wheel to remove her hat or turn down the dash heat from where Gerry had set the dial. Whenever they were in his car she felt like they were two shoes shoved into a suitcase. Compressed. Even if it was a luxury vehicle. She had once known how to do this, she reminded herself, putting on her signal and moving into the right-hand lane, the expressway ramp coming up in a half mile.

  “I was thinking of calling Carter,” she said as she veered a bit too suddenly into the ramp.

  “Slow down.”

  “But I have to speed up in a second.” She eased her foot off the gas as she took the curve.

  “Now speed up.”

  For a second Kennedy recalled having this exact exchange before, when she was sixteen and Gerry fortysomething, back when they still had a typical father-daughter relationship. The other drivers moved over to accommodate her. At least Virginians were polite.

  “Everything I’ve done for this family. That stupid bitch sold us out,” he said as she got the BMW SUV up to speed.

  “You can’t—” she started, but when she glanced over he had no expression on his face. It was the same look he had when he talked about the weather.

  “Just like when she was into the drugs. With you, you were young and didn’t know any better. With her, it was almost gleeful. For Christ’s sake, she’d seen you go through it and look how that turned out.”

  “They say you can’t learn through others’ mistakes,” Kennedy said through tight lips. She couldn’t help but defend her. Carter had been the one with their mother up to the end. She’d watched her die. It made sense that she would lash out in some way afterward.

  “Your mom and I did smoke some grass once, at a party. We both felt good but said we’d never do it again. You girls were just little. Are you checking your rearview and your side mirror? Keep your eyes moving.”

  Kennedy glanced nervously up, then sideways, monitoring the other traffic into the city. He changed the topic and asked where they were going. Work, she lied. There was a new telephone script and they had to be there early. In truth, she planned to call Nathan from a phone outside the building and see if he could pick her up in his clunky Trans Am.

  After a moment, Gerry scrubbed a hand down his face. “I guess I sympathize with how you got so caught up with that son of a bitch Butler, if you felt anything like we did that night we
smoked grass. There he was, feeding you euphoria on a paper tab.”

  Kennedy hit the gas for no reason. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Easy.” Gerry’s hand went to the dash.

  Maybe her father was right, although she hated to agree with him. Maybe she hadn’t been in love with Berk at all but with the feeling of her own body when it was high. The shimmering universe. She recalled the nebulous feeling she had as she lay on that futon in the Polaroid and stared up at the orange spun-glass lamp that hung in the apartment. What did he mean by sending the photos to her?

  Suddenly Gerry’s hand was on hers, pulling the wheel slightly, realigning her. She put on her blinker for the next exit. They drove in silence. The building where she worked was a plain brick two-story with large windows across the front. It said futures on the front of it in brown lettering that looked tired, as if the future were a pause button. When she brought the vehicle to a stop in the parking lot just off Broad Street, Gerry said, “From now on, it’s probably better if we don’t talk while you’re driving.”

  She nodded and took out a cigarette that she wouldn’t light until she got out of the vehicle. He hadn’t opened his door though and she felt there must be something else—something he was waiting to tell her.

  “We got a fair offer on the house.”

  “Not Mrs. Kim—”

  “Guy in the three-piece suit. Little redheaded girl flying around. Wife with the Burberry handbag.” He reached into the backseat and pulled out a newspaper. It was open to the real estate section, and several houses and condos had been circled in blue pen. Glancing at them, she saw he was favoring the city over the suburbs. “We have to be careful of neighborhood though. There’s so much violence these days. Miranda has some places for us too, ones that aren’t listed yet. Add any you think are worth consideration.”

  “Prison may actually have been less complicated than this,” Kennedy said as she stuck the cigarette in her mouth and opened her door.

  Gerry got out his side and as they passed each other behind the vehicle, he grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t be so ungrateful.”

  “Dad!” She ripped her arm away from him, then stroked the place he’d gripped her, thinking it might bruise. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just don’t understand.”

  “Was there someone in the house, or wasn’t there?”

  She put her hand into her pocket and felt the edge of one of the Polaroids. She had once told Berk how to pop the sliding back door, that there was a way to do it using a screwdriver or the blade of a knife even if it was locked, but that was years ago and Gerry had replaced the door with a newer one since then. She shrugged, unable to trust her voice.

  “Then you know why. Because she’s there, her presence,” her father said. He got back in the car, and Kennedy jumped out of the way. He pulled out of the lot less smoothly than she had pulled in.

  Kennedy stared after the BMW. She thought he meant Laine. She had assumed the redecorating had been meant to scrub the place of any last fingerprint of her mother’s. She walked across the street to a family-run taco restaurant and used the pay phone there. Nathan Doyle’s voice sounded sleepy when he picked up. She felt like an idiot for thinking about how warm and smooth his chest was, that thorny bed of roses tattooed over rib and muscle, how the blankets would stink like him, and how she wanted to burrow down and hide underneath them and maybe never come up.

  She ordered a taco plate, and under a fuzzy speaker playing ranchera music, she waited for Nathan to show up. She unfolded the note Haley had written more than fifteen years ago. It began:

  Dear Kennedy,

  I can’t tell you whose it is. But I told the tree our initials, just like in the song. Not quite, ha ha. I’m always getting things wrong.

  Chapter 35

  The BMW launched into the grocery store lot. Gerry sped into the nearest parking spot, stopped the car, got out of the vehicle, and headed over to the sidewalk, a long, cold walk toward the store doors. It was one of those strip mall layouts where you had to drive around to get to the nearest ATM before completing your errands—a concrete maze of competing needs. The restaurant where they’d eaten when he’d confronted Carter about Everett Kimberson was in an adjoining strip, up and around the next block of buildings. The numbness in his jaw came back as he clamped his molars together as he walked.

  Cars cruised through the lot and the lane next to the sidewalk, disoriented drivers trying to figure out the best place to park. One driver was plodding past slowly when the car jerked to a full stop beside Gerry. He turned and saw the weary face of Marly Kimberson.

  Someone was with her in the passenger seat. Gerry tried not to look, hoping they hadn’t seen him. But Marly put her four-ways on, and got out and approached the building with the ATM, walking only feet behind him. Gerry continued on, then stopped a little farther away and looked back. There, in the passenger seat, was Haley, her yellow top streaked with dark blood. She glared at him from her stony gray skin. Gerry stopped walking.

  Marly finished at the machine and had started back to the car when she spotted him. She got back into the vehicle beside the ghost girl, turned off the four-ways, and advanced. She was muttering—to herself, or to the girl, Gerry wasn’t sure. As they passed him, Marly lowered the passenger-side window and yelled, “God sees everything you do, Mr. Wynn! He knows what’s in your heart!”

  Gerry waited for Haley to disappear. But she didn’t. If anything, she turned her face toward him. He stared at her hazel eyes, the black liquid eyeliner on the bottom, the long, pale lashes on the top. She opened her mouth and a snail rolled out the open window and fell at the curb in front of him.

  Marly put the window back up and inched out of the lot as slowly as she’d been going before.

  As he watched the girl’s bright hair winding through the lot, disappearing as the car continued, someone struck him hard between the shoulder blades; it felt like the point of a knife. So hard, he felt it all the way through his body, from back to chest. He folded at the knees and leaned forward, not from the pain but to try to touch the snail shell there among the cigarette butts and pebbles. If he could reach it with his finger, touch it, he would know if it was real. If she was.

  Gerry heard a stranger asking if he was all right, but the words sounded like they were sizzling, the hiss of water boiling over in another room. They were not his concern. He stretched for the snail shell; his hand came up short, scratching at parking lot dirt.

  Chapter 36

  Kennedy passed the photos of herself under the table to Doyle. “That asshole I told you about, the one who’s stalking me. He sent me these.”

  She glanced around, over her shoulder and out the window to the street, afraid he might be there somehow.

  When she turned back she saw Doyle’s gaze had turned hard. He was looking down at the photos. “How old were you here?”

  “Sixteen. She was seventeen.”

  After he’d glanced at them he said, “Don’t feel right looking at that.”

  “That’s her. My best friend.” She didn’t know how much more she should tell Doyle. He didn’t sneak another glance at the photos, just passed them back silently. “Berk Butler—he’s the one who sent them to me.”

  “A Butler? Figures. No doubt in my mind he did this,” Doyle said of Berk. “I knew a couple of killers inside. I think it changes people. Doing someone in. You can see it in their eyes—they didn’t have to weigh anything else ever again because they broke the scale. I look at you and that’s not there.”

  Kennedy unfolded the note. She read aloud from it, her voice weaker than she expected.

  I can’t tell you whose it is. But I told the tree our initials, just like in the song. Not quite, ha ha. I’m always getting things wrong.

  With Berk, we tried, but it didn’t work. He gave up after a few minutes. He says that you two have a soul connection, and that he and I do too. He
said something about spirits in the material world but I think he was too high. The person most likely to be the father is already a father.

  Too afraid to tell you for real, face-to-face, who else might have planted this in me. Please, don’t say anything to Carter. I feel too ashamed as it is.

  * * *

  —

  As Doyle drove her out to Blueheart Woods, Kennedy licked her lips again and again nervously. “She appeared to me. When I was jogging, I heard her voice. It was so I would find this.”

  “That dog don’t hunt.” Doyle fished a new, tightly rolled joint out of his car ashtray, one that had been waiting there as if he’d known she would call. “Or I have to be higher before I believe in ghosts.” He put it between his lips and lit it with an old Zippo lighter.

  Kennedy eyed the joint. The sweet richness of pot was too much to resist. When Doyle finished his puff, he handed it to her and then the taste was on her lips, in her lungs. She closed her eyes. They would find the tree, she thought, feeling a buzz of confidence.

  After they’d parked, she led him in. The light was melting—buttery, five-o’clock light. Kennedy got out and walked in, singing under her breath, the last words she’d heard Haley say. She hoped that Haley would guide her somehow, that she would feel the physical grip of her, like a hand, know exactly where to step and in which direction.

  Chapter 37

  Wearing a black business suit, Dee Nash waited for Everett, leaning against the shabby building where Crime After Crime had its production office. When he pulled up she came around to the passenger side and opened the door.

  “Well,” she said as she reached into his passenger seat and took out the tray, staring at the knife. “There it is.”