In Plain View

by J. Wachowski

  “Okay! You little shithead,” I announced, loud enough the old lady in the Bonneville rolled up her window, speedy quick. “You want to conference with me? Let’s do it. Right here. Right now.”

  Another horn blew, longer this time.

  “Maddy, no!” Ainsley stood in the gap of the open driver’s door.

  Jenny’d crawled out of her seatbelt and had her palm pressed against the glass at the back window of the station wagon as if she were trapped inside. Her small pale face had no expression in the white glare of the headlights; nothing but stillness and round eyes.

  The SUV’s passenger windows were tinted and the early night shadows made it impossible to see more than the shape of a head behind the steering wheel. I pointed at him and then reached for the passenger side door handle. Suddenly, the asshole cut out of the waiting line of cars straight into the oncoming lanes, then gunned a U.

  Gone.

  The riot of horns and Ainsley waving come on! snapped my attention in line. I threw my hands in the air and forced a smile. Must have been a fairly scary-looking smile; the guy in the car next to me stared like I was some kind of zoo exhibit.

  “What?”

  He pulled in his chin and faced the traffic ahead.

  I walked back to the Subaru and got in.

  Ainsley and Jenny were giving me the same look.

  “It’s fine,” I told them. “We’re fine, okay? Drive.”

  “Where to?” Ainsley asked, the words clipped hard.

  “Office. I got stuff to pick up,” I snapped back. I caught a glimpse of Jenny in the rearview mirror. She was staring out her window without blinking, tearing at her fingernails with fast, nipping motions.

  My knee started throbbing like a son of a bitch. “Give me a sip of your pop,” I ordered Ainsley, using it to swallow another pain med. I shut my eyes and waited-for pain to pass and temper to cool.

  I needed time. I needed more time than I had. As usual.

  “Was it the same guy?” Ainsley asked, his voice low.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I just terrorized some unsuspecting SUV driver who happened to have an errand at the mall the same time we did.”

  “How could anyone have followed us? We didn’t plan to go to Jost’s place.”

  I looked at him. “I’d say they’d have to have followed us from the sheriff’s party.”

  “You don’t think-?”

  “I don’t know. Jack-Curzon-seemed awful hot for me to make a report, so I doubt he had anything to do with it, but his cousin? I don’t know. Too much I don’t know here.” I looked back into the back seat. Jenny was half-asleep, slumped against her door. Adrenaline does that sometimes.

  “But why?” Ainsley sounded as mystified as I felt. “What do they want?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  After the office stop, Ainsley decided to talk to me again. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

  I couldn’t resist a high drama sound. “What kind of bullshit question is that?”

  “No bullshit. I’m really asking.”

  “Fox News.”

  Ainsley blew a gust of exasperation.

  “Look College, it’s a personal-fucking-question. Ask me my cup size, I’d be more inclined to answer.”

  “Really?”

  “Every man in the television business I’ve ever met can estimate stats on a woman within fifteen seconds of meeting her. What’s your problem?” After five minutes, I couldn’t take the pout. “Fine. What do you mean by worst? Worst destruction? Worst suffering? Worst smell?”

  Ainsley’s face crunched tighter with each question. Obviously, he hadn’t considered all the possible permutations.

  “First thing that comes to mind, I guess,” he answered.

  “I don’t feel like doing an ugliness Rorschach for you, College. What’s your point?”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you the worst thing I ever saw. There was this guy I knew in school who used to-” he caught his breath before saying it, “-cut himself. On his hands, arms, chest, everywhere.”

  “How?”

  “Razor blades. Pens. Push pins. Everybody thought he was psycho. Once he did it with a fork in the lunch room.” His pretty face wrinkled with disgust and he shagged a hand through his hair, smoothing everything back into place.

  “That’s it? That’s your worst?” Now he was depressing me.

  “Well, no.” He got defensive. “One night, it was late on a Saturday night, I walked into the bathroom in the dorm, you know-”

  “I know what bathrooms are, yes.”

  Ainsley coughed. “Anyway, he was in there. On the floor. With blood. Lots of it.”

  Long breath. I finally understood where this was going. “Dead?”

  “Just about. He died at the hospital, I guess.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Puke,” he admitted with a grimace. “Then, I called somebody.”

  Silence, except motor sounds and the wind, the sound of time passing.

  “Here’s the thing,” Ainsley continued with a reasonable imitation of backbone, “since I was the one that found him, it always seemed like maybe, if I’d have gone to the bathroom sooner, you know? He wouldn’t have died.”

  “You found him, so it was your fault?”

  “Yeah.” He rolled his palms up on the steering wheel in a sort of baffled partial shrug. “We weren’t even friends. Still. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to brush my teeth that night.”

  All I needed. Goading parables by innocent savants. “Who is it you think I can save, College Boy?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I stared out the window into the dark and the ghost of my own reflection.

  Ainsley looked over at me, once, twice. Obviously, he wasn’t done.

  “What?”

  “Remember how you said, what we see when we look at something is ourselves? I can’t help wondering what an Amish person looks like to you.” He sounded curious, hardly flustered by my bad attitude.

  We were still a good twenty minutes from civilization, such as you’ll find between a television station and suburbia. Street lights were few and far between but the autumn moon was fat and high. I could see the stumps of a broken, harvested field whip past my window and the darker ruffle of trees beyond. Farther out, almost at the horizon, I could see the glowing creep of monochrome homes, all constructed in the same shape like a Monopoly game run amok.

  Empty farm land, or expanding home land, I’m not sure which image depressed me more. Without a disaster or a battle underway, I didn’t belong in either scene.

  I never did answer him.

  None of his damn business, anyway.

  12:06:38 a.m.

  Stupid bitch! What was she thinking? An open confrontation where anyone could see? Anyone could be watching?

  He popped the glovebox and pulled out one of the blister packs he stashed for himself. He clutched the tablet in his hand and stared out the window at the darkened house.

  What if a patrol car had rolled up in the middle of her little demonstration?

  That’s all he needed. Curzon was all over him now for bullshitting his way onto the police lot to search Tom’s car. If Curzon had the slightest reason to think he was linked to Maddy O’Hara, there’d be a shit storm of questions.

  He would have it out with Maddy O’Hara when he was ready.

  Right now, he needed to find the things that belonged to him. He’d searched everywhere he could think, anywhere even remotely possible. He was nearly out of time.

  Had he missed something when he searched Tom’s apartment? Unfortunately, that fat-assed VFD building super of Tom’s hadn’t called with the heads-up until after O’Hara and her gay boyfriend were already in there. She’d looked so satisfied, so fucking smug when she walked out. It made him itch to floor the accelerator again. He wasn’t going to run her down or anything, just put the fear of God into her. Remind her that everything can change in a second, just press a button and boom!


  Christ, his head was pounding! He got out of the car and walked toward the house. He needed to calm down. Get on track. He tightened his grip on the tablet in his hand.

  There were no street lights in the neighborhood and the light by the front door was on a timer. He’d watched it blink off a while ago. Nothing but dark out there.

  There was a garden hose hanging near the garage door. The faucet squealed when he opened the valve. The rush of flowing water could probably be heard inside the house. It might even wake someone. He popped the pill and drank from the hose.

  No lights came on. No one woke.

  He stared at the empty windows, mapping the house in his head: bathroom, bedroom, another bedroom. That’s when he realized-there was someone who could help him, someone who would know Gina’s hiding places.

  Jenny.

  3:19:06 a.m.

  Must have been close to 3 a.m. when Jenny came screaming awake. She hadn’t done it in a while, but I was on my feet and in her room before my head recognized what was happening.

  “Don’t go! Don’t go. Don’t go.” Eyes popping with fear, she leapt out of the bed into my arms, half football tackle, half baby monkey in long-john pajamas.

  “Easy, Jenny. Easy.” My hand went up and down her back on autopilot. She’d lost weight since I’d come. I could feel the vertebra of her spine. It gave me a hollow, sinking feeling.

  I forced myself to speak softly. “Calm down. I’m here. I’m here.”

  Clutching my T-shirt in her hands, the rest of her body relaxed. I stretched out beside her on the bed. My heart was thudding hard with the adrenaline rush of being woken from a sound sleep by terror. Jenny didn’t seem to notice. When my hand began to prickle from a lack of blood circulation, I pulled back slightly to shift her weight and she mewled a cry of despair that didn’t stop until I had my arm around her again.

  We lay glued together most of the night, while I listened to her sleep and wrestled my familiar demons of fight and flight to the mat.

  All I’d ever done was watch and point. I’d never had to fix anything.

  Insecurities never hit harder than when they’re spliced into the black between dreams. Over and over, my head played an endless loop of mortification, you are fucking up. You are blowing it. Do something.

  “Be okay,” I ordered Jenny through the darkness. “Please be okay.”

  VIDEO AUDIO

  Doctor Graham (log 2) small office. If you take a young teen, pull them out of school, concentrate their world experience into farm life, marriage and parenthood-it fundamentally changes the possibilities of their future.

  Wide shot Amish family selling veggies, Centennial Park; boy licks ice cream. The life that looks like happiness to them will have a certain shape.

  MONDAY

  9:23:14 a.m.

  “Good thing we worked so hard to make up with the sheriff yesterday,” Ainsley remarked. Our feet crunched on the crushed stone as we marched up the long driveway.

  I was surprised he got out of the van at all, after the stink he’d thrown. “Why?”

  “After they arrest us, Curzon’ll have to go easy on us.”

  Worst thing first, is my motto. Quick stop at the office and back out this morning, straight to a visit at the Jost farm. Farmers kept early hours, right? I shifted the binocular box under my arm to the other side.

  “You think?”

  “He certainly won’t want to tell his granny he just put his new girlfriend in jail.”

  “Right,” I drawled. “Quit your whining. It’s not like Uncle Richie would let you rot.”

  “He would if Mom told him to.” Ainsley made it sound likely. “If Jost calls the police, I’m running for the truck.”

  “How’s he gonna call the police, College Boy? He’s got to go all the way out to the phone hut on the other side of the yard. Give us plenty of time to sprint to our get-away vehicle. Not that we’ll need to,” I added with all the shiny confidence of a well-practiced bluff.

  “Don’t remind me. I cannot run on an empty stomach.”

  Ainsley hadn’t been employed long enough to realize Monday is the work day most likely to exceed safe-living speeds.

  I had a list that started at my hairline and ended where my trouser-cuff broke. We’d managed to finagle another interview with the Amish psychologist, so I could ask her about Rachel Jost’s situation. We needed to squeeze in another attempt to speak with Pat-the-fireman. And I had a conference call with New York scheduled, along with rumors of another GM visit.

  Ainsley’s to-do list seemed to hold one item at a time. Currently, it read doughnuts.

  “Tell you what. If there’s time, we’ll get doughnuts before we hit the hospital.”

  “If we have time?” he said. “We had time to run Jenny to school.”

  It was still early and I was feeling mature, so I chose not to shoot back. Points for me.

  Getting Jenny to school had been even harder than usual this morning. She was slow, then she was sick, then she was “bored with school. It sucks.” I heard all about how her mother would leave her home alone if she promised to just lie on the couch and watch TV.

  Right. My bullshit meter was pinging red-red-red, then she missed the bus and I saw red-red-red. I don’t really remember my mom hollering at me before eighth grade. Jenny won’t remember either.

  The Jost farmhouse appeared as Ainsley and I rounded the tree line, exactly as white as the sun on a cloud, except for the windows. Glare made the glass a one-way mirror to interior shadows. I scanned the windows and continued walking. As we passed the chicken hut, there was a burst of cackling clucks and crows.

  “That’s weird.” Ainsley jabbed at me with his elbow.

  “The watch-chickens?”

  “No. That.” A car was parked almost out of sight, around the side of the house that led to the barn. It was a modest gray Toyota-about as Amish as you could get in a car.

  We both stopped to stare. Then the front door of the farmhouse banged open and out comes a guy in a suit coat with a briefcase the size of a dog kennel and a wad of manila folders. He’s clearly pissed and rushing to get out. So naturally, the folders slip and stuff shoots everywhere in a papery blizzard of fifty-two pickup.

  The guy shouted something fairly common, but definitely not Plain language.

  “Go help him. See what you can find out.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m going in to see Mr. Jost.” I held out the box in my hands.

  “Trespassing, breaking and entering-” Ainsley ticked off the words on his fingers.

  “Not ‘breaking.’ Guy left the door open, see?”

  “-being a public nuisance.”

  I blew him a kiss and stepped around the mess to get to the front door.

  Behind me, I heard Ainsley offer, “Let me give you a hand.”

  The door swung open with the slightest push. I could hear Rachel’s voice in the room beyond the entrance hall.

  “-don’t understand.”

  “Understand this!” her father shouted back. “I will have nothing of his. Nothing.”

  I wonder sometimes why other people back away in retreat when they hear the sounds of an argument. Is it fear? It can’t be only that. I am something like afraid when I walk toward trouble. But I still can’t turn away. As a kid, I slept with the closet door open and staged routine falls off the bed to stare into the dark beneath.

  The world is too full of things to fear. A fight gives you a chance, at least.

  From the doorway of the dining room, I saw Rachel gather her apron in both hands and cover her face. She looked like a small child hiding her eyes in the hope of not being seen.

  Jost was the opposite. He wore no hat now and the blunt cut of his hair and wiry beard made me think of old photos of Rasputin. His face was burning, blotchy red, squeezed in a vise-grip of strong emotion. When he looked over and saw me, I thought he’d blow his last gasket.

  “What are you doing here? Get out of my house!”

  Rach
el dropped her apron in shock. She covered her mouth with her hand and gave the smallest shake of her head.

  “I brought you something,” I said. The room was an echo chamber of flat, reflective surfaces: hardwood floors, bare walls, a long dining table with bench seating. My voice sounded loud and hollow.

  Jost looked at me like I was a lunatic. “I want nothing of yours.”

  “It’s not mine. It’s yours.”

  10:47:41 a.m.

  “The rumspringa. It’s a fascinating contradiction. Follow me. We have to be quick, I have a patient coming in fifteen minutes.” Dr. Graham pointed us up the corridor, making us work for every second we recorded. “The Amish way of turning teenagers into responsible adults is to set them free. One day they are completely under the rule of their parents and then they turn sixteen and suddenly, they aren’t.”

  Ainsley danced around trying to stay ahead of her, or at least in profile. I was lugging the separate audio track. It was a good test of College Boy’s mobility skills. But I hated traipsing through the hospital. The place gave me the creeps.

  “Both the boys and girls?” I asked.

  “For the most part. The commitment to their church must be made by an adult. Parents cannot force children to enter the church. In a way, it’s also a test of the parents.”

  “If I were sixteen and somebody said I could do all the crap I’d ever wanted, I’d have been gone.”

  “That’s how a lot of boys feel,” Dr. Graham said. She stopped to let a gurney pass and smiled at Ainsley. “I knew a boy about your age who acted out quite a bit when he turned sixteen. He even bought a truck so he could be the one to haul kegs to their parties.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s married. His wife gave birth to their third child last May. Cute little girl.”

  Ainsley looked horrified. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.” She laughed. “That young man, everyone he knows-his family and friends, his peers-they’re all Amish. He fell in love. But there is no marriage in the Amish church until both members commit themselves to the community. The truck was sold. The keg-hauling stopped. He started a family. Life went on.”