“Hope I’m not disturbing date night,” I say.
There’s a pause.
“Is this Abby Williams?” The caller has the gravelly drawl of a pack-a-day smoker.
I straighten up instinctively, I snap my laptop shut—as if someone might be looking at me through the windows. “You got her. Who’s this?”
“This is Sheriff Kahn. I spoke to a Joe Pabon this morning about the fire. He listed you as the point of contact.” Sheriff Kahn has been around since I was a little kid. Big-ass mustache straight from the seventies, yellow fingernails, Chiclet teeth. Kahn is the kind of person you’d expect to see wearing cowboy boots and spurs, but instead, every day that I recall, he wore a spotless pair of white high-top Nike sneakers. “I wanted to let you know we’ve made an arrest. Local kid. Been in trouble before. Made some threats against Gallagher last Halloween. I doubt he meant to do as much damage as he did, though. You know how kids are.”
“Does this kid have a name?” I grab a pen and the first piece of paper I can get my hands on: Optimal check stubs, itemized, about two thousand of them, fanned out on my floor.
“Monty Devue,” he says, and I freeze. I used to babysit for Monty back when he was a stringy goofball, all knees and elbows, who wanted to be a freight train operator or Bill Gates when he grew up. A good kid—gentle, softhearted. Slow to learn, but tenacious and curious.
“There must be a mistake,” I say. Monty would never light a fire in the middle of a drought on Gallagher’s property, if only because of the animals. Monty always loved animals, used to rescue snails and turtles from the road.
“There isn’t,” Kahn says, and hangs up.
For a long time I sit there. Monty. The fire. Lilian McMann, and her daughter in those argyle socks, and Becky Sarinelli with her skirt cinched at her waist.
I open my computer again. The results page emerges from the darkened screen.
Wallace Rush, the CFO of Optimal, with Byron Grafton at a pledge event.
Wallace Rush and Byron Grafton, as undergraduates, shirtless and painted with the same fraternity symbol.
Wallace Rush and Byron Grafton, suited up at an alumni dinner for their fraternity. With them is Colin Danner.
And finally: a formal reprimand of Wallace Rush, Byron Grafton, and Colin Danner issued by the University of Indiana for “abusing the position of power they assume as representatives of their fraternity.”
Old habits, it seems, die hard.
—
I won’t sleep, not unless I drink, and if I drink I know I’ll be tempted by the closeness of Condor’s house, by his bright windows lit against the darkness like some kind of sign.
Before I realize it I’m in my car and I’m heading for Frank Mitchell’s storage space, as if I’m pulled there involuntarily by gravity.
Security is even shittier than last time: a secondary gate is wide-open, so I drive straight around to unit 34 without even blowing a kiss to the manager lumped over his phone in the main office. The whole place is a jigsaw of locked cells, a miniature postapocalyptic city with no people left in it.
The lock opens a little easier this time and I roll open the door, wincing at the way the sound makes crashing waves over the silence. But still no one comes, and I remind myself that I am here legally, sort of, that I’ve been given permission to enter legally, even if I got permission by lying. The lights blink on after a short delay, and I roll the door down behind me, once again wishing there was ventilation. The whole place carries a faintly chemical smell that tingles my nostrils and tastes sweet in the back of my throat. As I move toward Kaycee’s artwork I imagine that the paintings themselves are sweating acrylic, that the wet, slick look of the paint isn’t a trick of the light but because she was only recently here.
—
I’m only a few miles from home when an SUV pulls out behind me and nearly blinds me with its high beams. The brights bounce off my windshield and gobble up the road in front of me. I put a hand out the window, signaling. But the driver doesn’t take the hint.
Frustrated, I make a right on a ribbon of concrete that will loop me back to County Route 12 on the far side of the gas station.
A second later, the SUV turns, too.
My heart speeds up. I hit the gas, and the SUV accelerates to keep pace. It can’t be a coincidence.
There are no lights here, nothing but fields stretching blackly on either side of us. It was stupid to make the turn. The SUV nudges closer. I can hardly see. The windshield is all glare. My tires hit a rut and the wheel jumps out of my hands before I realize I’ve drifted and jerk back onto the road.
I spin a left at a dirt road and have a brief moment of relief: the SUV misses the turn. But a second later, it screeches to a halt, guns backward, and spins around the turn. It’s coming fast now.
Forty feet. Twenty. A scream knots in my throat.
Just as I spin the wheel and bump off the gutter and into the thwack-thwack of new corn, the SUV swerves around me. It’s going sixty, seventy miles an hour, far too fast for me to make out who’s driving. I jam hard on the brakes. Leaves churn up from my grill, smacking my windshield, and I bounce over stubbly ground.
Finally I get the car back on the road. By then the SUV is nothing but a pair of taillights swallowed into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Becky Sarinelli died, Sheriff Kahn came down to speak to the students.
I remember we were herded into the gym and the windows beaded with the condensation of all that body heat; outside, it was a cold October. I don’t know why they asked Sheriff Kahn to break the news—not like any of us hadn’t heard it already, anyway.
“Certain tragedies can’t be explained,” he said. I remember that because it was so obviously a lie. We all knew why Becky had killed herself. It wasn’t inexplicable at all. It was because of the photos. “Ms. Sarinelli was in a lot of pain. And I’m here to tell you that you got options. If you’re in trouble, you can talk to your parents. You can talk to your teachers.” They had him using a microphone and I remember that felt wrong. “You can come down to Blyck Road and talk to me.”
Sunday morning, that’s exactly where I find myself. Then, same as now, Sheriff Kahn looked like the last person in the world you’d ever want to talk to if you were in trouble. His whole mouth droops along with the line of his mustache, and the blunt furrows of his forehead read like a billboard for shut up and bear it. He’s tanner than I remember, and blingier, too: in addition to his big class ring, a gold necklace is nested beneath his uniform, and he checks a thick gold watch just often enough for me to know he finds me an inconvenience.
“I’m telling you,” he says, with a heavy sigh, after gesturing me into a seat across from his desk. “Got home just a few days ago, and I wish I could turn around and head right back on vacation.”
“Where were you?” I ask.
“Sarasota. Got a condo down there. Swampy as hell right about now, but I like it when tourist season’s over. Besides, all I do’s sit in front of a pool anyway.” His teeth are whiter than I remember, too. I can just see him in Sarasota, greased up and mahogany-colored, tanning oil quivering in his chest hair. “Now, what can I do you for?”
“I came about Monty Devue.” This is at least half true.
“Oh, sure.” Sheriff Kahn’s expression turns even sourer. “Sorry, but I can’t help you there. Turned the whole thing over to the county prosecutor.”
I think of Monty when he was six or seven, bending over to scoop a caterpillar from the asphalt, holding it carefully in his palm. “Do you know if they plan to charge him?”
Kahn settles back in his chair, crossing his hands on his stomach, so his watch catches the light. “Arson’s a serious business, especially in drought time.”
Behind him, a bulletin board is pinned with memorabilia, ancient municipal notices, five-year-old local newspaper clippings about the police department’s latest successes, and a flyer advertising the date of the Monroe County Police Department
cookout. No surprise, Optimal is listed as one of the sponsors.
The air in the office is so dry it feels like trying to inhale sawdust. “He says he didn’t do it,” I point out.
“What do you expect him to say?”
“All your evidence is circumstantial.”
“He boasted about getting revenge. The kid’s a firebug, too. He’s got all sorts of disciplinary problems.” Kahn’s losing patience. He leans forward again. “Listen, Abigail—”
“Miss Williams,” I correct him, and he smiles like I’ve just told him the name of my doll at a tea party.
“You used to know Monty as a kid. But kids change. And even their own parents don’t know the difference.” He leaned forward. “Did you know Monty got in trouble last September for threatening a classmate?”
He grins when I react. “You didn’t know? Tatum Klauss. Cheerleader, straight A-student. Nice kid.”
“Threatening her how?” I say.
“Hanging around too much. Following her after school. Showing up when he wasn’t invited.” Sheriff Kahn is obviously enjoying himself. “One time she came home from a party and found him waiting for her.”
I want to believe it isn’t true. At the same time, I know Monty, and remember how he would fixate on things. I once spent forty-five minutes trying to coax a dead turtle out of his arms. He just kept clinging to it, trying to make it come back to life.
“I never said he didn’t have problems,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean he started the fire. Look. You said it yourself. Monty’s been threatening to get revenge on Gallagher since the fall. But we only recently came down to investigate Optimal. Don’t you think that’s a big coincidence? We could have lost a key paper trail.”
If he gets what I’m implying, he doesn’t seem to—which makes him either very dumb or very smart. He doesn’t even blink. “So you of all people should appreciate how serious this is.”
I’m tempted to tell Sheriff Kahn about the car tailing me last night, but I’m sure he’s the type to chalk it up to female hormones.
I switch tactics. “You were sheriff back when I was in high school,” I say, “back when Kaycee Mitchell disappeared.”
This time, he’s not quick enough to repress a slight ripple that moves his expression into one of distaste. “Oh sure. Biggest to-do this town’s ever had. Hysteria. Teenage girls going cuckoo.” He smiles thinly. “You weren’t one of them, were you? One of the…?” He holds out both hands, mimics a small seizure, the wild flapping of the hands.
“No. I wasn’t.” I’d seen what real sickness looked like. I knew that being sick didn’t make you special. It just made you sick. “I just wanted to know whether you ever considered the possibility that she wasn’t making it up.”
“No,” he says shortly. “It was all for attention. Everyone knows that. The other girls copped to it afterward.”
“You mentioned hysteria. That spreads by copying, emulation. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth in it.”
He smiles again. “That’s just like a lawyer,” he says. “Always trying to make the plain facts more complicated. Kaycee lied and got embarrassed when it all blew up.”
Every single person who talks about Kaycee mentions that she was a liar. But if she really was sick, she was the only one who wasn’t lying. At least, not about that.
“Running away because she didn’t want to admit she’d been faking it seems pretty extreme. Especially if she was as good a liar as everyone says.”
He waves away the distinction. “That’s old business, anyway. Can’t see why it matters to you.”
A memory surfaces: sophomore or junior year, I was passing Misha and Kaycee in the hall when Misha began to bark. That was her newest cruelty—I was ugly as a dog, she said, and she had started growling whenever I passed.
But that day Kaycee was with her. She turned to Misha and slapped her hard, once, in the face, so quickly and unexpectedly I almost missed it. And for a moment all three of us froze, stunned—Kaycee, lit up with fury and something else, something I couldn’t name. Misha, shocked, her face slowly flushing with color.
I hate dogs, was all Kaycee said.
“Do you know where she is now?” I ask him.
“No idea.” He’s watching me closely. “She rang me up maybe a few weeks after she left. Told me she was in Chicago then. But that was ten years ago.”
“She called you? Here?” This surprises me. “Why?”
He shrugs again. “Must’ve heard I was looking for her. Her friend Misha talked to her a few times.”
I wonder if there’s a possibility that even now, Misha is covering for Kaycee—and knows exactly where she is. “What did she say?”
“That was ten years ago, Ms. Williams.” His voice turns flinty. “Things dead and buried are best left that way.” He peels his lips back from his long teeth into a smile. “They don’t look none too pretty when they come up.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Even before Optimal came to town, there was one place we never cut corners: for more than thirty years, the Barrens Tigers have always played in a two-thousand-seater stadium donated by the great-great-grandson of the town’s original founder. Barrens loves its football. And the team was always really good, too, competing against bigger schools in the state and putting Barrens on the map. More energy went into football and the team than anything else. From a distance, it looks like a gigantic spaceship landed in the middle of a plowed field. It dwarfs the high school next to it, and when I was in school it sometimes doubled up as an auditorium for assemblies.
The whole of Barrens has turned out for the end-of-year PowerHouse game, a tradition that mixes JV and varsity and pits the teams against each other, and includes all the swagger, name-calling, and end zone dancing typically barred at real games. The teams paint their faces and wear costumes over their padding. One person, typically the quarterback, wears a dingy set of fairy wings passed down from class to class.
When I was in high school, I would have killed to walk into the PowerHouse with Brent O’Connell. Now I feel almost embarrassed—as if I’m squeezing into clothes that don’t quite fit anymore.
My hands are raw, sore from scrubbing them too hard before I left home.
Ever since I came home to Barrens, I can’t shake the sensation of dirt embedded beneath my fingernails. Handling Optimal’s documents just makes it worse. It’s like they’re covered with a chemical film that leaves me raw and itching.
When Brent reaches for my hand, I pretend not to notice and stuff my fists deep into my pockets.
Five hundred people, all funneled into the stadium seating, drum their feet along to the rhythm of the marching band—but the crazy thing is I spot Misha right away, or she spots us, one or the other. At the exact same second my eyes pick her out of the crowd, she lifts a hand to wave—a quick spasm that could be either an invitation or a desire to ward us off. Only when I see Annie Baum sitting next to her do I realize she’s sitting exactly where she always sat, four bleachers up, right next to the aisle. There’s even a little gap, a break in the arrangement of people, right next to her—as if an invisible Kaycee is still occupying her spot. A stranger has taken Cora Allen’s place.
For a second, we lock eyes. She gives me a funny little smile.
I’m afraid Brent will want to go and sit with them—Misha converts her wave into a frantic, two-handed come here gesture—but he only lifts a hand and, placing one hand on my lower back, steers me toward an entirely different section of bleachers. I feel a rush of relief.
The game kicks off: a blur of green and white bodied players collide on the field. I find Monty and lose him again in a scrum of players. I know little about football except what I’ve absorbed from years of living in Indiana and from watching Friday Night Lights, and he seems like a more than decent player, although after he fumbles a pass from the quarterback his coach benches him for a quarter. High school cheerleaders shimmy with their pom-poms, and every time they leap or backflip, they se
em to remain suspended momentarily in the air, hung like Christmas ornaments on a dark backdrop of sky. I always think about what will happen if they twist a few inches in the wrong direction; I see them landing on their necks, breaking like porcelain dolls.
“We weren’t that small when we were in high school, were we?” Brent leans in to speak to me over the roar of the crowd and the stamping. “Do you think they’re shrinking? I definitely think they’re shrinking.”
That makes me laugh. I never knew that Brent was funny, but he is. He tells me that when he played football, he invented a technique so he wouldn’t be nervous: he’d pick a random guardian angel from the crowd, a stranger, the weirder the better, and name him or her. If he ever got nervous he’d just find the Angel of Lost ’90s Hats or the Patron Saint of Handlebar Mustaches and say a quick prayer.
“Did it work?” I ask him.
He winks. “We were undefeated our senior year.”
Weirdly, I find that I’m almost enjoying myself. With Brent. At a football game. In Barrens.
I have to remind myself again and again that I’m here for information. And yet the first quarter slips by, then the second, and then the third, and though we’ve talked almost continuously, the closest we’ve come to discussing the investigation is to debate the best junk food for powering through a long work night. Brent swears by Skittles. I’m a peanut M&M’s girl. Protein and caffeine—can’t beat it.
It’s not until the fourth quarter, when the conversation turns to our families, that I see an opening. And by then, I’m almost sorry to take it.
“You told me you have a cousin at Optimal, too, right?” I ask, as casually as I can. “Byron Grafton?”
“You are good.” Brent looks at me with either admiration or exasperation or a little bit of both. “Byron’s not at Optimal, though. He’s a subcontractor. But I bet you know that. Byron’s the one who got me in with the CFO, Wally Rush. They went to college together.”
Of course, I know this, too. “Byron’s a good guy deep down. He had some problems back when he was drinking. Married, divorced, married again, had a kid, made some bad business decisions. Pie-in-the-sky kind of things, too much ambition and too little sense. Wally helped push him in a new direction.”
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