Interlude

by Anna Cruise

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna go. I left work early and promised Molly I’d meet her for happy hour.” She pauses. “What are your plans tonight?”

  I need to pull out the pair of women’s jeans that are stashed under my bed. Jeans that don’t belong to you.

  “Probably just gonna rest. I’ve slept most of the day, I think.”

  “That’s probably the best thing for you,” she agrees. “That, and some Advil.”

  I manage another smile. “Yeah. That, too.”

  “Okay. Well…I guess I’ll call you tomorrow. Check in.”

  I don’t tell her that my phone is busted, and make a mental note to run out soon and pick up a new one. “Okay.”

  She leans in to kiss me goodbye, then thinks better of it. I wonder if it’s because I told her I hurt or because she knows something more is going on.

  I trail behind her as she heads for the door, then wait a few minutes before I secure the chain. Just in case.

  I hurry back to my bedroom and get down on my hands and knees, the aches and pains in my body making it a chore. I ignore Lydia’s shirt and grab her jeans. I dig my hand inside the front pocket, the same pocket where her hand went as she sat at my kitchen table, refusing coffee.

  A wrapped piece of gum. A five-dollar bill and some coins.

  And a flash drive.

  Bingo.

  Maybe I’ll have more answers than questions, after all.

  seven

  My hand shakes as I insert the flash drive into my computer’s USB port. Is this what Gino wanted, what he said Lydia had that belonged to him? I stare at the blinking blue light on the drive. Doubtful, I tell myself. Gino looked like a drug lord or a pimp, but not some tech guy. She was probably one of his or Joey’s clients, contrary to what she told me, and he was just coming to collect.

  The wheel spins on my MacBook, and it gives me time to think about what might be on the drive instead.

  Lydia porn is the first thing I think of. I instantly visualize her in a variety of poses, her long red hair teasing the tops of her tits, her slim legs open and ready. I see toys lined up alongside a bed, lifted straight from the shelves of Triple X. I see other guys pounding her from behind, girls tongue-kissing her. And I see me, driving into her, my hands on her shoulders, her legs wrapped around me.

  “Stop it.” I say it out loud, shaking my head, trying to get the images out of my mind.

  The drive is probably nothing. Filled with family photos. Or maybe papers for English Comp. She could be a student. I have no way of knowing because I know nothing about her. Except what she tastes like. What she feels like. What she fucks like.

  The icon for the drive finally appears and I double-click it. Five seconds later, it opens. A single folder is on the drive. Untitled.

  I click it.

  One file is in the folder, with an extension I don’t recognize. It’s not an image, not some Microsoft file. I click the file icon and something opens. The Notepad.

  A series of symbols appears. Some are letters, some are numbers, but nothing makes sense.

  “Shit.”

  It isn’t what I was hoping for. Not because I want Lydia porn – although I wouldn’t have complained – but because I was thinking I might finally have some answers to who she is and why she came to the house. And who Gino is. And why my ex-roommate is dead.

  I stare at the screen. I don’t know the first thing about computers, but it looks like an encrypted file, and somewhere in those lines and lines of random symbols is information. I just don’t know how to unlock it.

  But I know someone who might.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m in South Mission, maneuvering my car into a too-small parking space. The rain from yesterday is gone, and the sky is cloudless, the sun shining weakly over the ocean. The wind blows cool against my face and the salt in the air stings the cut by my lip. I walk a block, then hang a right and head bayside. I stop at a tan, stucco building, climb the rickety steps, and knock on the door at the top of the stairs.

  It opens immediately. Chase’s eyes are always big – they remind me of green grapes – but they’re huge right now as he takes in my appearance.

  “Dude, you look like shit,” Chase says.

  I ignore this and push past him, into the living room of the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his brother.

  “Are you alone?” I ask.

  He frowns. “What the—?”

  “Is Connor here?”

  He shakes his head.

  I pull out the flash drive and show it to him.

  He looks at me as if I’m completely mental.

  He’s not too far off.

  “I need you to look at this,” I tell him.

  “Dude.” He holds up a hand. “Back the fuck up.”

  “What?”

  He motions to me, then waves his hand up and down. “Look at you. You said on the phone you got jumped but you look like you just went a round with Mayweather. Now you're asking questions about whether or not I’m alone. And then try to hand me a fucking flash drive. What the hell is going on? Does this have something to do with Joey?”

  Chase Bakken is my best friend. He knows almost everything about me, which is exactly why I brought the drive to him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s planning to major in computer science when he transfers to State in the fall.

  “I need you to take a look at this for me,” I repeat. I thrust the drive at him and drop it into his outstretched hand.

  “What is it?”

  “I dunno.” I kick off my flips and plop down on the futon sofa in the living room. It used to be black but constant sun exposure has faded it to a dull gray. “I’m hoping you can tell me.”

  Chase sighs and shuts the front door. He grabs his laptop off the coffee table and sits down next to me and I get a whiff of salami. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours.

  He loads the drive and I lean forward, staring at the screen. He finds the folder, clicks the file and the same screen comes up, filled with a jumble of letters and symbols.

  “It’s encrypted.”

  “I know.”

  He glances at me and frowns. “Did you do it with Windows?”

  “It’s not mine.”

  His frown deepens. “Whose is it?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s not a complete lie. I don’t actually know that the drive belongs to Lydia. He doesn’t do anything so I ask, “Is there a way to open it?”

  “Maybe,” he says. He taps on the keyboard, right clicks the track pad. “If it’s Windows EFS, Cipher should do the trick.”

  My stomach jumps and I swallow a couple of times. I don’t know why I’m nervous, or what I think I might find on the drive. All I know is it feels like there are a couple of snakes slithering around inside my gut.

  He taps some more, then sighs. “No dice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s not EFS. It’s a different encryption.”

  “You can’t crack it?” I ask.

  He gives me a look. “Do I look like Anonymous?”

  I don’t know the first thing about computer stuff. My expertise is pretty much limited to Google and ordering take-out. And most of that, I do on my phone instead of my laptop. Except my phone is now broken.

  “I thought you might know how to open it. Unless you’re not planning on being a computer engineer anymore…”

  He glares at me. “Fuck off.”

  “I’m just sayin’…”

  Chase is in his third year at Mesa Community College, slogging his way through general eds. Pretty sure he’ll be pushing thirty by the time he gets his BS.

  “You should talk,” he says pointedly.

  It’s my turn to glare. “Jesus, not from you, too.”

  He shrugs. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, bro.”

  I nod my head at the computer screen. “So you really can’t open it?”

  “Nope. I mean, I can try brute force, see if that does
any good. Or install a password unlocker. Something like Ophcrack or John the Ripper—”

  “You’re speaking in tongues. Dumb it down, please.”

  He cracks a smile. “There is software you can install that will just keep generating random passwords to see if they can make a match.”

  “So let’s try that.”

  “But if the password is long,” he continues, ignoring me, “it might not ever guess it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

  “It’s worth a shot, right?”

  He shrugs. “Sure. If you really want to see what’s on the drive.” His eyes narrow as he looks at me. “Where did you say you got this?”

  “I didn’t.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, hiding the blue O’Neill logo on his tee shirt. “I’m not doing shit ‘til you tell me what this is.”

  “I already told you. I don’t know.”

  “Don’t play dumb, Nash.”

  His tone is disapproving, like one my mom might have used when I was, like, ten. I’m going to have to give him something, some little piece of info, if I want his help.

  “I think it belonged to Joey.”

  “Dead Joey?”

  I make a face. “Seriously, dude. Not cool.”

  His ruddy cheeks go a deeper red. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Roommate Joey?”

  I nod. “I found it this morning. It’s not mine so I figured it must belong to him.”

  “Where was it? In his room? I thought he moved everything out.”

  “He did,” I say. And then I add, “Found it between the sofa cushions.” Because that sounds like something that legitimately could have happened.

  He nods, his eyes back on the screen. “We could try a few password combos. See if anything clicks. And I could install the software to try to unlock it. If you want.”

  What I want is to open the file right fucking now. But it looks like that isn’t going to happen.

  “The software is free?” I ask.

  He nods again. “Some are totally free, and some offer a free trial – like 30 days, I think.”

  “Alright. I could probably do that on my own.”

  I don’t want him to have the file. It might be innocent information, but it might be dangerous. Or it might reveal who the drive belongs to.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I pull the drive out of the USB port and stand up. “Thanks for looking at it.”

  He shoves his hair off his forehead. He hasn’t gotten a haircut in ages and it’s shaggy, hanging over his ears and in his eyes. “You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You look like you hurt.”

  “I do.”

  “Gonna see a doctor?”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when people beat the shit out of you? That, and press charges?”

  I fish my keys out of my pocket. “Nothing’s broken.” I don’t address the cop issue.

  He leans back on the couch and props his feet on the coffee table. “You need help with the SAE party Friday?”

  Chase usually helps out with my light shows, hauling stuff in and doing set-up. “Yeah, if you’re cool with that.”

  “Fifty bucks, right?” I nod and he smiles. “Money, beer and chicks. I’m in.”

  We say goodbye and I head back to the car, but not before I stop and grab rolled tacos from Alito’s. I wolf them down back in the car and wish I’d ordered three more.

  I stop at the Verizon store on the way home and spend a half hour upgrading my plan so I can get a free phone. The girl behind the counter is thin with red hair and she reminds me of Lydia. I can’t get out of there fast enough.

  A police car is parked a couple of houses down when I pull up to my house. Opposite side of the street, next to the yellow bungalow where two lesbians live. I cast a quick glance in that direction. The cruiser’s windows aren’t tinted, but the darkening sky makes it hard to see inside. I take a deep breath. Just because a cop car is parked on my street doesn’t mean they’re there for me.

  I pull the phone out of the box and shove it in my pocket. I step out of the car and the driver’s door on the cruiser opens.

  It’s the cop from the day before.

  Heading straight toward me.

  eight

  I don’t know if I should acknowledge the cop’s presence or ignore him.

  He decides for me.

  “Tanner Williamson?”

  I cringe. No one calls me Tanner. It’s Nash. Has been for as long as I can remember, before my mom picked up from Tennessee and relocated us to San Diego, before I can even remember leaving Nashville as a three-year old, stuffed in the back of an old Subaru wagon, with piles of clothes and boxes sandwiched around me.

  “Yeah.”

  “We spoke yesterday,” the officer says.

  I don’t need the reminder. “Yes.”

  He’s a couple of feet away now. His gun is holstered and his badge catches the light from the streetlamp that just flickered on, momentarily blinding me. He’s wearing sunglasses, even though the sun is pretty much a memory, those mirrored kind that reflect a distorted image back at me.

  “What are you up to?”

  His tone is casual but my radar goes up. Why is he here, asking questions? And how many do I have to answer?

  “I was getting a new phone.” Carefully, I reach into my pocket and withdraw the phone.

  “That’s right,” he says, nodding. “You broke your phone yesterday. A fight, right?”

  “I was on the phone with my girlfriend and we fought. Yes.”

  He nods and I wish I could see his eyes, try to figure out what he’s thinking. “Right. The fight was earlier. The one where you got those bruises.”

  “I wasn’t in a fight. I was jumped.”

  “That’s right.” He hooks his thumbs on his belt. “Jumped.”

  There’s no mistaking the doubt in his voice. The rolled tacos in my stomach feel like boulders.

  “Did you need something?” I ask. “Because I have some stuff I need to do.” I think about the flashdrive in my other pocket, the name of the app I need to download and install.

  “Actually, I do.” Another car pulls up and parks two houses up, across from his cruiser, and he glances at it before turning back to me. “I need you to come down to the station and give us a statement about last night.”

  The rolled taco boulders threaten to come up and I swallow hard a couple of times. “What?”

  “Make a statement.”

  “About what?” I’m sweating bullets. “I already told you what I did last night. Where I was.”

  “Not on record.”

  My throat goes dry. I know I’m not responsible for Joey’s death, but I also know I haven’t told the truth. Is that punishable? Maybe not in my house, but if he takes me down to the station and I have to give a statement under oath, I know that’s breaking some law.

  “I don’t know…”

  He frowns. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  “Or no way at all.”

  A female voice from behind surprises me. I spin around and a tall blonde is walking up the sidewalk, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Excuse me?” The cop interrogating me doesn’t bother to hide his irritation.

  The blonde is wearing black pants and a lacy pink blouse, with lipstick that matches. Sunglasses hide her eyes, too, and I wonder if either of them realize it’s almost dark out. She doesn’t say anything, just closes the distance until she’s standing in front of me.

  She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me. Her lips are warm and sticky – the lipstick, no doubt – and she threads her hands through my hair. I pull away but she digs her nails into my scalp and moves her mouth to my ear.

  “Go with it,” she whispers fiercely.

  I pull back to look at her but she drags me back down and whispers in my ear again. “I’ll explain later. I promise.” Her lips graze m
y cheek, then my lips.

  I don’t have a lot of options. So I kiss her back.

  She finally lets go and I straighten. The cop’s sunglasses are resting on top of his head now and he’s assessing both of us.

  “You done?” he asks bluntly.

  The woman smiles. Her lipstick is a little smeared. “For now,” she tells him.

  “You are…?”

  “Someone who doesn’t have to give you that information,” she responds smoothly.

  His brows furrow and he shifts his gaze to me. “You know this woman?”

  “Of course he knows me,” she says, speaking for me.

  “Is this your girlfriend? The one you fought with last night.”

  “I’m the reason for the fight,” the blonde tells him. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrogate him. Unless you’re planning to charge him with something?”

  The cop shifts his stance and rehooks his thumbs on his belt. “Not charging him with anything. We’d like for him to come down to the station and give us a statement.”

  “Which, legally, he doesn’t have to do.”

  “You a lawyer or something?”

  The blonde’s smile is tight. “Something.”

  The cop is quiet for a moment. He stares me down and I struggle to not look away. The woman stands next to me, her hip touching mine, and I do my best to breathe calm and steady, to not let my heart beat out of my chest.

  Finally, the cop gives us both a cool nod and heads down the sidewalk, back to his car. I relax my posture and exhale a deep breath.

  I wait for him to pull away, then level my eyes on the woman standing next to me. Her smile is gone and I can tell she’s waiting for the question.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  nine

  It’s the second time in two days that a strange woman has been in my house.

  “Who are you?”

  The blonde is sitting on my couch. She'd ushered me back to the house as soon as the cop drove away and hadn't said a word. Her legs are crossed, her hands in her lap. She looks like she’s waiting for a cocktail. Her sunglasses are tucked in her purse and I stare at her, trying to figure out how I know her. If I know her. Like with Lydia the night before, I draw a blank.