“Looked like nobody else was going to do it.”
Skyla shivered like she had tasted something bitter. “Ugh, I don’t do organization. I subscribe to the toss-it-in-the-corner-and-look-for-it-later school of thought.”
I smiled and said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Skyla wore her hair in a mop of wild, dark curls. Her sleeveless T-shirt revealed extensive tattoos, a tiny stud glinted in her left nostril, and her earlobes stretched around thick, black gauges. The anti-establishment would have nominated her as their favorite poster girl.
Skyla turned to her stack of sale stickers. “I’ve got to mark down all of our summer clearance,” she said and rolled her eyes. “How lame.”
I pointed to the swinging door at the rear of the store. “I’m going to head back. Holler if you need me.”
In the stockroom, I crouched over the pile of thermal underwear I had started sorting yesterday before Thorin and Val interrupted. Everything lay as I’d left it; my stint as an organizational muse had apparently failed to inspire. I sighed, tightened my ponytail, and went to work.
The chore should have taken no time to finish, but by late afternoon I still had a whole rack left to tackle. “Arrrgh!” I growled when a heap of Smartwool socks rained onto my head as I tried to pull its box from an overhead shelf.
A snicker gave her away.
“Skyla,” I said and blew a loose hair from my eyes. “How do you manage to find anything back here?”
Skyla stood in the doorway, wearing a sardonic grin. “We use a Ouija board and a divining rod.”
I knelt and grabbed up armfuls of socks. Skyla took pity on me and came over to join me. “I’ll help you with this, even though it goes against my religion.”
“Thanks. I was afraid I was going to have to come back another day. Thorin really will have to put me on his payroll.”
Skyla’s eyes widened. “You’re not doing this for free, are you?”
“Well… yeah… I guess so.”
“You’re monkey nuts, chick. Thorin owes you, and I’m going to make sure he knows it.”
I shook my head as I followed her toward the last shelf on the stockroom’s back wall. “No, it’s no big deal.”
Skyla spun and put her hand on her hip. “That man does not need any favors. You make him pay you, Mundy.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. Skyla passed me a box of beef jerky mixed in among bootlaces and keychain flashlights. I couldn’t tell her what it was like—that I was here solely as a way to meet her. To do the very thing I was doing now—talk to her, sound her out.
“You don’t have enough to do?” she asked. “Are you done with Mani’s apartment yet?”
“Almost. I made a big dent in it today.”
“What about your meeting with the cops? How did that go?”
I paused, a bundle of bootlaces knotted around my fingers. “You know about that?”
Skyla rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Mundy, where do you think you are? Small towns aren’t good at secrets.”
“It’s doing a good job of keeping them about my brother.”
Skyla sighed. “I think people know things, but in his case, they aren’t talking.”
“What people?”
Skyla crouched and rifled through a pile of Life is Good T-shirts. “These things are cheesy as hell.”
“Skyla,” I whined.
“People people,” she said. “Not the police. They don’t know jack.”
“Who then?”
Skyla exhaled and let her chin drop to her chest. She said nothing, and I gave her a second to deliberate. Finally she rose to her full height and looked me in the eye. “I’m telling you this only because you’re his sister and maybe that means I can trust you. The police, they got nothing because they’re walking in all their regular circles, looking for regular answers. What happened to Mani—it wasn’t regular.”
“How do you know?”
Skyla’s nostrils flared. “Didn’t you see the crime scene photos?”
I swallowed in an effort to moisten the desert settling in my throat. “No, not yet. I haven’t worked up the nerve.”
Her lips twisted into a cynical smile. “Haven’t worked up the nerve?”
“How did you see them?”
“I slept with the crime scene photographer and got them from him.”
I backed away from the hot ball of crazy standing before me. “You what?”
“Don’t look at me that way.” Skyla jerked her chin out and glared at me through slit lids. “When you care about somebody, you do whatever you have to.”
“Don’t talk to me about caring for Mani. He was my twin brother.”
“Then what are you doing pissing around in this stockroom and playing lovebirds with Val? What are you here for?”
“What I’m here for—and nobody seems to understand this—is my own damn business.” I kicked aside a box full of metal bits and pieces. The contents clattered, sounding like the clanging anger inside me.
“Oh, now she’s mad,” Skyla said in an antagonizing tone. “Get pissed, Mundy, and stay that way. It’s the only way you can hope to find out the truth about your brother.”
I kicked the box again, and its contents scattered everywhere. The resulting chaos complemented my irritation. “What the hell, Skyla? If you know something, spit it out already.”
Skyla marched into my personal space and leaned in so our noses were inches apart. She arched a single eyebrow. “I don’t know much, but I know people we need to talk to. If you think you’re up for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”
“The police don’t know their asses from their elbows. This doesn’t involve their world.”
I shoved my hands on my hips and uttered a sound of frustration. “What movie are you living in? The Matrix?”
Skyla leaned back, crossed her arms over her chest, and slowly shook her head. “Wrong fairy tale, Goldilocks.”
“Jabberwocks and vorpal swords?”
That brought out a genuine grin. “Now I think you’re getting warmer.”
Chapter Eight
Although I wasn’t a priest and Skyla wasn’t my parishioner, we slipped into the roles of confessor and confessee. As she talked, Skyla worried a hangnail on her thumb. I passed her a stack of loose T-shirts to fold as a more constructive way to occupy her nervous energy.
“I knew a guy,” Skyla said. “His name was Adam Skoll. I met him after I moved to Siqiniq and started working for Thorin. We weren’t like a couple or anything. We hung out sometimes. He took me to a bar one night, and we partied hard. Really hard. I sorta passed out in the corner for a while, but I woke up when Adam and a couple of guys started shouting at each other. It got ugly really fast. The guys, they all sort of tumbled outside, fighting, so I got up to follow, to see what was going to happen.”
I handed her another rumpled T-shirt from the pile and said, “You weren’t afraid they might hurt you?”
Skyla shook her head. “They forgot all about me. Adam and the other two, they were all caught up in this fight.” The more she talked, the flatter her voice went, like she was in a trance. “I still don’t know what I saw, exactly, but by the time I stumbled outside, the fight was over. It was summer and the sun was still up, so I could see the—the blood, everywhere. One guy was lying in the parking lot, moaning—screaming. It sounded like he was gargling. I wasn’t really drunk anymore. I guess fear and adrenaline had burned through the alcohol. I went to him, to the man, and, and…” Skyla’s words drifted away, and her gaze turned unfocused. She stared off into the distance. In her mind, though, she likely saw something vivid and real.
Before I could encourage her to continue, she started again on her own. “He was torn to shreds—h-his neck was ripped open.” Skyla’s trembling hand rose to cover her throat. “His body was bitten, clawed, eviscerated. It was an obvious animal attack, but there was no animal, only Adam.”
“What about the other guy?” I asked. “The third one.”
I clamped on to her arm and squeezed, partially begging her to say the rest, but mostly wanting her to stop. Her eyes slid to mine, and she said, “I saw the photos from Mani’s murder, and it was like seeing that night all over again.”
My world lurched and took off spinning, dizzy and sickening. “It’s not related,” I said. “No way. The guys chased off some animal before you saw it.”
Skyla shook her head. “He was covered in blood. Adam. He had it all over his face. I was going to run, was going to call the police.” She wiped her eyes like she wanted to rub away her memory. “Adam, he looked at me and laughed, real low and mean. His teeth were stained red.” She bared her teeth at me, reenacting his gesture.
My stomach heaved into my throat, and bile burned on my tongue. “You didn’t tell anybody?”
Skyla’s eyes flew open wide. “Hell no. He drove me home and told me if I opened my mouth, I’d be next.”
“You got in a car with him?”
“I’ve seen terrible things before, Solina. Terrible things like you wouldn’t believe. But this was not mundane. This was not a bullet or a bomb or a knife. What it was, though… I have no words.”
“I was afraid of what Adam would do if I tried to run. Somehow I knew running would be worse for me than staying with him.” Skyla’s voice warbled. I leaned over and put an arm around her shoulder. She buried her face in my neck.
All my actions, all my big talk until this moment had been nothing more than posturing. If I believed Skyla—and I wavered on the line of incredulity—then coming to Alaska put me on the verge of unfathomable danger. I hoped Skyla was wrong, because if she was right, then I was about to do something really, really stupid. “You’re taking me to that bar,” I said.
Skyla flinched, but then she smiled as if her favorite student had aced the test. As if my demanding to go to the bar was the exact reaction she’d anticipated in telling her story. “You sure?”
“Somebody there knows something. I want to know it too.”
Skyla traveled primarily by Suzuki DRZ, a mean-looking street bike, so either I latched onto her like a spider monkey, or we had to take the 4Runner. I insisted on the 4-Runner.
“Get on the highway and head north,” Skyla said, ignoring my pointed look toward her unfastened seatbelt. I let it go. She and I would undoubtedly find more important things over which to squabble.
“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked.
“It doesn’t really have a name. It’s just this place.”
Girls who decorated wedding cakes for a living rarely went to places on the outskirts of town that weren’t legitimate enough to bother with names. “This is probably dangerous, right? This is a bad idea and we’re both going to regret it?”
Skyla stared at Resurrection Bay through her window as we rolled past its shoreline. “Don’t whine, Mundy. Val might go for it, but that kind of thing doesn’t turn me on.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. She must have seen me in the window reflection because, without turning to face me, she flipped me the bird. Skyla’s fingernails were painted a disturbing shade of purple, the color of a bruise.
After a few miles of road noise and awkward silence, I gave in and turned on the stereo.
Skyla groaned. “Stevie Ray? For real? You really are his sister.”
“You’re co-pilot,” I said. “Change it if you want to.”
Skyla perked up and rifled through the 4-Runner’s console and glove compartment. “Mani’s music tastes are for shit.”
“Hey,” I objected. “My brother schooled me on good music.”
“Let me guess. The Beatles were gods, Sid Vicious a minor deity, and Jethro Tull played a bitchin’ mean flute.”
I burst out laughing, and tears filled my eyes—the happy kind for a change.
“I’m right,” Skyla insisted. “Say it.”
“It was his only shame,” I said, still snorting with laughter.
“Oh, no, he had others.”
“Like what?”
Skyla lowered her voice and cupped her hands around her mouth as though she was about to reveal a horrible secret. “Manilow. He loved that stupid ‘Copacabana’ song.”
“Oh my God!” I shrieked and fell into another fit of giggles. “And all this time I thought he was so cool.”
Skyla laughed too. “Don’t worry. I took his iPod from him and deleted the file. He was too ashamed to stop me.”
I snickered a while longer, but when I regained control of myself, I asked Skyla a serious question. “You really cared about him, didn’t you?”
Skyla put her hand over mine where it rested on the center console. “I loved him, Solina. Loved him scary.”
“Scary?” I asked. Maybe her confession should have surprised me, but I had already formed a few suspicions. No one would seduce crime scene photographers and go on this crazy mission with me unless she was as devoted to Mani as I was.
“I loved him so much I was scared of it. Scared of how big and powerful it was, and I was even more scared of losing it.”
“Did he know?” I had searched that journal high and low, but Mani had never expressed whether anything had happened between him and Skyla. He hadn’t written much of anything after the entry in which he admitted how he felt about her.
Skyla inhaled and held her breath. Then she let it out in a rush. “Yeah. Just before he died, I got drunk at The Pits and told him how I felt.”
My mouth fell open. “But you’re such a hard case.”
“Not when it came to Mani.”
“What did he do?”
The corners of Skyla’s mouth curled, and she chuckled, low and suggestive. “He took me home with him.”
“Really?”
The pale evening light gave out and night enveloped us, but the dashboard lights illuminated Skyla’s sad smile. “Yeah. It was good for about two weeks. I was off with clients on an overnight trip when it happened.” She exhaled a brief laugh. “I never saw him alive again.”
“Damn,” I whispered.
Skyla sniffed. “You can say that again.”
“You think they know how to make a good Cosmo?” I asked, staring at the rusted metal building leaning on its foundation. A neon Miller Light sign in the window flashed OPEN… OPEN… OPEN. If The Pits was the pits, then the owners should have named this place The Dumps. “I like an extra dash of cranberry in mine.”
Skyla snorted, and though I couldn’t see her face, I suspected she rolled her eyes. I stopped the 4-Runner in the corner of a parking lot occupied by a couple of motorcycles—the American-made kind—rusted pickups, and a primer-gray Olds Cutlass.
Skyla turned in her seat, drawing a knee under her chin. “It’s been nearly four months since Mani died. What took you so long to decide you wanted to start looking for answers?”
“After he died, I felt like I was living in an underground tunnel. Everything was dark and muffled and I did most things on autopilot, like getting up every morning and going to work. I threw myself into the bakery, worked every possible hour, anything so I wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to remember. Wouldn’t have to feel.”
“We trusted the police to do their jobs. We had no reason to think they would fail. But after a while, the fog started to lift. I realized the police had no answers and they were nowhere close to finding any. No one was going to fight for justice for my brother unless I did it myself.”
I rubbed away a tear and sniffed. “But to tell the truth, I think I’m still trying to run away. This trip to Alaska is just another distraction. Another way to stay occupied. I don’t think I’ll have any more luck than the police.”
Skyla snorted. “The police stuck their heads in the ground the moment they realized Mani’s murder wasn’t going to fit onto their pre-printed list of check boxes.”<
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“Why are you doing this?” I said, throwing Skyla’s question back at her. “Why didn’t you tell anyone that story before?”
“I’m tired of being a chicken shit.” Skyla’s mouth curled into a funny smile, and she raised an eyebrow. “And now I’ve got someone to watch my back.”
“What if something happens to us?”
Skyla giggled. She sounded unhinged. “You want to go back? Go home? Be safe and happy?”
I blinked. “Well… the thought had crossed my mind.”
“We’re already here, Mundy. We can go through the looking glass together, or you can go home, ignorant and blissful.”
“It’s tempting, but I guess I didn’t come all this way to chicken out now. What’s the plan?”
Skyla’s expression hardened as if she had made up her mind to do something unpleasant. Determination showed in the tight set of her mouth. “The plan is, I’m going inside this bar and I’m going to stay until we learn something useful. You coming with me?” She tugged on the door handle, and the steel squealed as the door swung open. The interior light popped on, harsh and bright.
“Skyla, wait.” I lunged and grabbed her elbow. “Give me a minute to work up my nerve. This is all new territory for me.”
Skyla pulled her arm free and slapped me on the shoulder. “No, girlfriend, it’s now or never.” She scurried out and slammed the door closed behind her. I kissed my fingertips and smacked the truck’s headliner, my way of making a quickie prayer to St. Jude. I had looked him up before I left home in case I needed a little help from the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes.
Chapter Nine
Every man in the grubby little bar stopped and stared when Skyla and I walked in, probably because we were the only women gracing the premises. More people occupied the room than the number of cars outside suggested. Maybe Alaskans liked to carpool.
Skyla scanned the interior, and then her shoulders drooped, but from relief or disappointment, I couldn’t tell. “Adam’s not here.”
Midnight Burning Page 6
