“This does.” I flip my hand at the Subaru like it’s an Aston Martin. “I need to go to Schenectady tonight, and it’s kind of a bad area, so I was hoping…Well, that’s why I wanted a gun.”
“I told you I can’t just hand you a deadly weapon.” One hand digs into his hair. “Jeez, Nina.”
“I’m not asking for a gun now.” I lower my voice to a humble almost-whisper. “If there’s any possibility you’d come with me to Schenectady…I hate asking you. But I might need help.”
“Sche—what? Where the hell is that?”
“It’s in New York. I said I’d meet my—my…biological mom there, and if my real mom finds out, she’ll…”
I was going to say, “She’ll tear me a new one,” but my voice falters, and the words get lost in my throat. My eyes swim as I think of who might actually be waiting in Schenectady for me, for us, for the Gustafssons.
I think those tears are why Warren gets in the car with me.
If he had Friday night plans before I came along, he doesn’t say so. He runs into the house to tell his mom something—she doesn’t text, he says.
Soon we’re on Route 4, flying toward Schenectady at seventy-five. I drove to the interstate on-ramp, but when Warren saw how my hands started shaking, he took over.
We’re still circling Lake Champlain, sun gleaming on bare maples in every direction. With luck, we’ll be in Schenectady by eight.
Warren doesn’t have a concealed-carry permit for New York, but he still took a handgun-shaped thing out of his backpack, swaddled in a sweatshirt, and stuck it in the glove compartment. I feel more reassured than I want to.
The Thief won’t come after us. Not right out on the street—he’s too careful.
I let my tired brain focus on the wrong things. How the sky looks smooth as an eggshell. How we soar over the hilltops, wind rushing through the cracked-open windows. How Warren has demolished the Twix bars I bought. The way he eats junk food, his wiry physique is a miracle.
He sees me looking. “My mom still thinks white sugar is the devil and high-fructose corn syrup is his handmaiden. So I stock up when I’m out.”
I grin at him. “I remember how you lit into our leftover Halloween candy.”
“Who still has a cupboard of candy corn in June? I was doing you a favor.” He stuffs another wrapper in his backpack. “I didn’t know you were adopted, Nina. Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
I bite my lip. “You know how kids were back in elementary school. Where’s your dad? I was enough of a freak without people going around saying my mom wasn’t my mom.”
His eyes are narrow on the road. “I still wish you’d told me. We were friends.”
Were. “Well, I can tell you now,” I say, and rattle off the boring details of my real adoption story—anything to keep Warren from reminiscing about the two of us.
The only parts I flat-out lie about are my birth mother’s location and my mom’s attitude toward her. “She’s, like, prejudiced against this woman. She doesn’t even want me to meet her before I’m eighteen.”
“Your mom’s right,” Warren says.
I glare at him, surprised to find myself offended on my birth mom’s behalf. “Why? Don’t you think I have a right to know where I came from?”
“I just mean…it’s weird. If your birth mom gave you away when you were born, that’s one thing. But you were ten months old. Once you’re bonded to your kid, you don’t stop being bonded.”
“Thanks for your expertise, Dr. Phil. Because it’s not like you know this woman or anything about her life.”
He blushes, and his hands fidget on the wheel. “So, but you do, right? You’ve been talking to her? Or e-mailing, or something?”
Does he think I’m so messed up I’d surprise my bio mom with an unplanned visit, or is he trying to trap me in a lie?
“Of course we’ve been e-mailing.” I feed Warren a few made-up details, trying to imagine my birth mother. In my head, she looks like Mrs. Gustafsson. She has a gruff voice, bad spelling, a Hotmail account she barely knows how to use.
I half expect Warren to say, “That’s such bullshit,” but instead he says, “When my brothers were riding me really hard, I used to wish I was adopted. Them and my dad I could do without. But my mom—I wanted to keep her.”
“Your mom’s cool.” Warren’s mom is a little weird, a little old-fashioned, and I could never tell if she liked me. But the way she looks at him, you know he’s the center of her universe.
“Yeah, well, somebody in the family had to be.”
I wonder if his three brothers still “ride” him, whatever that means. I’ve never seen Warren with a bruise, but he had a darting, furtive way of moving in middle school, like he was ready to dodge a cuff upside the head.
His oldest brother used to terrify me on the school bus when I was little; the crown of his head brushed the roof. The middle one had a scary laugh. It’s the youngest of the three, the smart-mouth, I really don’t like.
Like Warren’s reading my mind, he says, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m really sorry about Rye being an asshole that time.”
I laugh. “That was three years ago.” And then realize I’ve just admitted I remember.
“I should’ve said something then.” Warren’s knuckles whiten on the wheel. “I was just a stupid kid, Nina. I was embarrassed.”
“It was so not a big deal.”
I was at Warren’s place that Saturday in March, the weekend I still think of as the Bad Weekend, the two of us shooting and editing funny videos on my laptop. We were trying to clicker-train one of the barn cats to play the piano when Warren’s brother Rye sauntered into the living room and started playing with the cat, chanting, “Here, pussy, pussy” and cracking himself up. When I bent over to open the woodstove, he stage-whispered to Warren, “Damn, squirt, you tapped that yet? That’s one nice ass.”
“It was a big deal,” Warren says now. “I mean, you were just a kid.”
“So were you.” I shrug like I’m way past that, though I still remember my skin prickling with humiliation as I wondered if my jeans were too tight.
I didn’t want to be a thing, reduced to part of my anatomy. But Rye put those words in Warren’s head, and maybe they’d already been there. If Warren didn’t think I was hot, maybe he thought I was a lesbian, like some kids at school insisted. Or ugly. Or a sister. Which was worse, being a thing or being nothing?
We spent two hours trying to train the recalcitrant tabby with tuna, both of us pretending it hadn’t happened. For those two hours, I thought being objectified by Rye Witter was the worst thing that could ever happen to me.
Then I fell asleep that Saturday night, and when I woke up, everything had changed.
I acted cool toward Warren afterward, but it wasn’t because of his brother. It was because I couldn’t trust boys after they hit a certain age, not anymore, and I didn’t ever want to feel that way about him.
Soon I started thinking I couldn’t trust myself, either.
After we make a stop at Whitehall for real food, the car won’t start again—just shudders and clicks. We have to get it jumped and driven to the closest twenty-four-hour garage, five miles out of our way. Warren and I wait, drinking bad coffee (me) and more sugar water from the vending machine (him), till the mechanics finish up another job and can handle replacing the Legacy’s starter. Night falls outside, and I jiggle my leg and watch the clock.
My phone buzzes twice—Mom.
Warren frowns when I let the second call go to voice mail. “You’re not telling your mom anything?”
“Of course I did. Texted her before I left.” With a story about spending the night at Kirby’s cousin’s horse farm, though my mom knows I don’t do sleepovers and don’t take the car out of town without asking.
“If she’s calling, she wants to hear your voice.” Warren points at the TV, which is playing a cop show with closed captioning. “Now, that is not how you hold a gun.”
“Do you check
in with your mom every time you go anywhere?” I don’t like the snide tone of my own voice.
“If I’m gonna miss dinner, yeah. She likes company, and my dad and brothers are usually MIA.”
He says it so casually I feel a rush of tenderness for him, which I hide by checking my e-mail. We’re already in TV prime time now—how long will this take?
“You worried we’re gonna be late?”
“No, my birth mom says it’s absolutely fine,” I let myself babble. “She’s a night owl. Like me. Maybe it’s genetic. She’ll be up late—I’ll text her instead of ringing the doorbell, so I don’t wake up the rest of her family. She just put on another pot of coffee.”
Warren nods after each sentence, like, Okay, I get it, but knowing he isn’t believing a word does nothing to shut me up. I have to convince myself, too.
By the time we’re on the interstate again, soaring past Saratoga Springs, I’m getting sick of the way Warren taps his feet to inaudible music and fusses with his lank hair. He’s probably just as fed up with my silence, because he stops trying to make conversation as we navigate our way into downtown Schenectady.
We roll up to the Gustafssons’ house at 11:53.
When I point it out, Warren doesn’t say a word. Just slides up alongside the curb and turns off the engine.
“Are you sure the number’s right?” he asks then.
“Yeah.”
My whole body hums with the excitement of being here. But I see why Warren has doubts. The lights are out at the Gustafssons’, even the porch light, and there’s no car in the driveway. The garage door is down.
It can’t be too late. We’re barely into his hunting hours. I step out, stretch, and get my bearings.
“She said to text her, right?”
“Yeah.” I forgot. I grab the phone and pretend to text, but my eyes won’t stay on the screen. I need to see this place.
At first, everything comes at me from a different angle, and nothing looks familiar. The little ranch house with its neat lawn is like a million others.
Then I spot the rusty wheelbarrow adorned with an age-stained McCain ’08 bumper sticker. This is it.
I turn left at the mailbox and walk just far enough to catch sight of the overpass and the green sign in the distance. 890 VIA CHRISLER AVENUE.
My memory of this place is three-dimensional, full of sounds and smells. Now I’m walking in it, me and not the Thief, and I fizz with tension down to my fingernails. The air smells different from Vermont: distant smokestacks instead of wood smoke. Traffic hums on the interstate.
Warren is out of the car, tenting his long arms over his head, and I motion at him to get back in.
“Why?” he asks.
“I’m waiting for her to text back. We don’t want to raise a ruckus.”
“A ruckus? Seriously?” Warren rolls his eyes and leans on the car. I’m glad, in a deep and cowardly way, that he didn’t follow my instructions.
The Thief could be in that house. Lurking behind the garage, or just inside the grassy alley.
Despite what I told Warren, I can’t wait out here. I haven’t planned what I’ll say when Mrs. Gustafsson comes to the door in her bathrobe and slippers and snarls at me. But let her come. Let her snarl. Please let those things happen.
A cold dread sinks into my limbs and shortens my breath as I stride up the cutesy flagstone path and the concrete steps. Lace curtains cover the window in the door—the Gustafssons care about keeping their place nice.
He’s chosen this place, these people. I’m in his way.
When I find the doorbell, my stomach drops like I’m climbing the top loop of a roller coaster. This is much worse than calling a stranger from a pay phone.
My gloves are back in the car, so I wrap one hand in my scarf, then close my eyes and press the bell.
And wait.
The second ring resonates through the silent house, a soft ding-dong like a dove cooing.
My cat killed a dove last year. I found it under the Douglas fir, beheaded and disemboweled. Doves represent peace. Doves hurt no one. Yet I cuddle my little dove killer, I stroke his cheeks, I feed him treats, I let him sleep on my bed.
I put my ear to the door, my heart pounding as if the Thief could reach out and stab me through the wood.
Nothing.
If he’s in there with them, he’ll lie low. Two targets is more than I’ve seen him handle; he won’t go for three. Not with houses on either side.
If he’s not with them, where are the Gustafssons?
After the fourth ring, I walk around and peer through the garage window. Still open a crack. A thin spear of light splashes paint cans, but I can’t see if a car’s there. The only way to know is to hoist the window open and climb in.
He imagined it. I could do it. Slither through the window, silently open the house door, or break the glass. (Did I remind Mrs. Gustafsson to lock that door when I called? I have a feeling I didn’t.) Creep up the stairs, check their bedroom.
But if I did all that, I’d be the intruder. I’d be the Thief.
Not tonight. I let my breath out slowly, close and open my eyes (you’re awake), then tiptoe away from the garage and back to the Subaru.
Warren must’ve got bored waiting, because he’s back in the driver’s seat, listening to talk radio and eating his next course—Funyuns.
I take out the key, silencing a voice ranting about the hidden messages in zombie movies. “Don’t run down the battery. We might have to wait here a little while.”
“Why?” he asks between crunches. “It’s, like, midnight. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She texted you back, right?”
I nod, then shake my head.
His eyes have narrowed to slits, that familiar expression: Stop BS’ing me. “I thought you weren’t supposed to ring the bell ’cause you’d wake up her family.”
“They’re not here. Nobody is.”
“I don’t like this,” Warren says after a long pause, looking right at me.
I’d rather let him stew about my lying than tell him the truth, so I don’t answer, just pull my heels up on the seat, chin on my knees. All the possible scenarios crowd into my mind, blunt and relentless as a cable-news ticker: The Gustafssons listened to my warning and left the house for the night. The Gustafssons happen to be on vacation. He’s already been here and taken them somewhere. He’s already been here, but a neighbor called the cops, and he’s in custody. He’s here now, inside, with them bound and gagged or dead. He won’t come. He doesn’t exist. There’s just me, and I’m here. I’m here for some reason I can’t tell Warren because I don’t know why myself.
“So you want to just wait?” Warren asks. He sounds deeply skeptical, but also curious, like he’s giving me the benefit of the doubt.
I nod, hoping he’s right.
The Thief is going to do this, and he’s going to do it tonight. The army trained him to follow through. He may abort a mission, but he’ll never go AWOL.
When I close my eyes, I can almost see the place where he plans to leave them.
He’s been carrying memories of that place in his head for the past week, cherishing them like an unwilting flower. I don’t know where it is, only that there’s a cabin or shack, and a brook trickles in the silence of the deep, dark woods.
It’s the perfect place. It will honor them. It’s almost as special and remote as his place in the desert, the old mine where he left the homeless man.
If the Gustafssons are already there, there’s nothing I can do.
My head feels like somebody jammed a beehive into it; the dark, quiet street seems to yell at me, to mock me. Nothing. Nothing. If you break into that house, you’ll be him.
But it’s only midnight.
“I know this sounds crazy, Warren, but this could be my only chance. I have to give her time. I need to be sure.”
“Sure, yeah, Nina.” He clears his throat. “How’d Mrs. Gustafsson sound when you called to say we wer
e gonna be late?”
My throat closes. “How do you know her name?”
Warren points. “It’s on the mailbox.”
I breathe again. Still, he’s starting to sound like a detective on a cop show. Collecting clues, building a case against me.
“She sounded totally fine, like I said. She said she’d be up.”
“Maybe she fell down or had a stroke.”
“She’s not that old, Warren.” I don’t hide my irritation.
Why didn’t I pound on the door? Old people sleep soundly. I should’ve knocked loudly enough to wake the neighbors, to wake the dead.
I could still do it. Let Warren think what he wants.
No, Warren isn’t the problem. My fist will stay suspended above the door as I imagine the knocks reverberating to the cellar. I need silence, invisibility. The suburban night is too peaceful for me to disrupt.
Warren drums his fingertips on the dashboard. “So we’re just gonna sit here?”
Fighting back my own impatience and the ragged curtain of fear that keeps descending, I reach for his hand and trap it so he’ll stop spazzing.
Warren draws in a deep, fast breath, doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t come closer, either, or meet my eyes.
Touching him distracts me, too, in a good way, making my heart skip a few beats. His hand is bigger than I expected, dry and reassuring. This hand pulls triggers; it kills bucks, probably skins them, too. He can keep it steady when it matters.
He’s such a good person under the snark. Straight-shooting and loyal in a traditional way. Long ago I made a resolution to keep him out of this, to keep it all away from him, yet here we are.
I could put his hand on my heart, kiss him, let him push me back against the seat and hold me, and all this would go away for a while. He came here because he cares about me. But if he knew what’s in my head, he’d never touch me again.
Warren’s hand opens into mine, and I press his palm with my thumb before letting it go. Touching him makes me feel safe, even if it sends the wrong message about why I’m letting him help me.
“Warren,” I say, “I know how this looks. So all I can say is—thank you.”
The Killer in Me Page 4
