The Killer in Me

by Margot Harrison

  My heart trips when I see writing on the walls. HEATHER + LUIS 4 EVA, various linked initials, a couple of halfhearted tags.

  I don’t remember the graffiti. They make it seem less like his cabin and more like a hangout, a hookup spot, a dare-you-to-spend-the-night-here kind of place.

  Cigarette butts, a Coors can, more wall scratchings declaring eternal love. I heave open the stove’s bulky door and shine the beam inside, keeping my back to the wall and one eye on the door.

  I find soft gray ash mixed with black chunks from recent burns. Words come back to me from his dream: he was going to hide a bloody toy in the shed where he does the woodwork and “burn it later.”

  He burns things in this stove, in a place no one can associate with him.

  I scoop a few ashes into a Baggie and seal it. I need to get inside that shed. He padlocks it when he’s away for a while, hiding the key under Eliana’s potted aloe.

  Maybe there’s nothing in there—he was just dreaming, after all. Maybe there is.

  On the cabin’s threshold, I pause to make sure I’m leaving everything as I found it—footprints scuffed, door at the right angle.

  When I turn, all I see is bright. I shade my eyes and wait till sky and earth and road reappear.

  Hot wind scours me as I climb the ridge, keeping a nervous eye out for snakes. In Vermont, we’d call this barely a hill. Here it’s the highest point for miles.

  I have a flashlight and a phone, no shovel. I can feel how close the mine entrance is. I’ll climb down without breaking my neck, open the hollow bench, and snap pictures of his box with the guns and ammo inside.

  That’s enough for now. Knowing what I’ll find there—our dad’s Beretta Cheetah—is proof. Maybe not good enough for Warren, but good enough for me.

  The reddish ridge dips and bends like the corpse of a brontosaurus that pooped out in the desert. It takes me a few minutes to reach the drop-off facing the cabin, dodging boulders and taking care not to slip on gravel.

  This flat, bare place could be where he sits looking at the stars after he hauls himself out of the cave. Which means the entrance should be right below me.

  I let my legs swing over the cliff and close my eyes to feel my way like he does, in darkness. His legs are longer than mine. My eyes snap open as I start to slide, and I grab a rock protrusion and lower myself onto the narrow ledge I know will be there.

  Below stretches sheer rock face. I can climb back up, but not down. Right before my eyes should be a second ledge and a black crevice less than a foot wide.

  But there is no crevice, no overlapping lip of rock to creep under. Just hot red stone—seamed and gravelly where pieces have broken off, but not split open.

  This has to be the place. The grooved ledge under my sneakers feels right. The jutting parapet of rock to my left looks right. The distance to the top is right, allowing for the height difference. If it were dark, the stars would probably be right, too.

  There’s nothing here.

  I don’t know how long I spend perched on that ledge clearing debris from the creases in the rock, getting dirt and sand under my fingernails, willing a black chasm to yawn before me and invite me into Dylan’s private domain. I only know that by the time I pull myself up the ridge, my nails are torn and bloody, the shadows are long, and my throat aches from taking sharp, angry breaths of dry air.

  The cabin, the ridge, the stove, the chair, everything is right. But there’s no cave. No mine.

  No evidence.

  By the time I get back to Albuquerque, it’s six, and I have to rush to shower and scrub my nails clean. Throw on a nice summery top, apply lip gloss. Try to approximate presentable, when I’d rather curl up in the dark again.

  Whenever I close my eyes, there’s the unyielding rock face. And now I wonder why I didn’t explore all the way around the base of the ridge. Isn’t there also a tunnel somewhere, a back way he uses when he’s transporting something, like a body?

  But I’ve been inside that crevice in my dreams, and I still couldn’t find it. What are my chances of finding the tunnel?

  As I pass the pool, I remember the only time I’ve swum on this trip—at the Missouri motel with Warren. He did laps in a strong crawl, arms churning the water. When he stood up and slicked back his hair—darker wet—I glanced up and quickly back down, my face hot. In the western sunlight with his skin bronzing up, he looked different, like he’d grown into his own skin. I imagined running my hands over those strong shoulders beaded with chlorine-sweet water, into the hollow at the small of his back.

  I redden again at the memory. If Warren were here now, if he’d been with me today, he’d think I was certifiable.

  Sooner or later he’ll figure that out, and he’ll grow out of his feelings for me—what else can he do? Why should any sane person want to be with me when there are just two possible conclusions left: either my brother is a psycho, or I am?

  The walk up the path to the stucco house on Piedmont seems to take five years, my legs heavy, sun beating on my head.

  I can’t face Dylan again. I can’t stand him looking at me like he knows me because we lived a whole ten months together when I was too young to make memories.

  Eliana opens the door before I can hit the bell, and just like that, I’m back in the world where there’s no incriminating grit under my fingernails. Where I’m supposed to be polite.

  She looks older than Dylan, maybe mid-to-late twenties, but she’s working her shorts and tan thighs and long, thick dark hair. Her jewelry is arty, her hair sports a dyed-blue streak, and her scoop-neck exposes a tiny tattoo of an anchor.

  “Welcome,” she says, her smile displaying perfect teeth, and kisses me on both cheeks. Her nails are French manicured. I could count on one hand the women who do themselves up like this in my hometown.

  I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time. It’s not that Eliana looks different in Dylan’s head, just that he doesn’t notice the things I do. He notices her soft hands, her geranium soap, and the edge on her voice when she tells him to please clean up after himself, how old is he? He notices the soothing tone she uses to read Trixie bedtime stories, and how she smells after she bakes his favorite coconut cake. But the nervous energy that makes her whole body vibrate? How she has to have things just so? He tunes those parts out.

  Maybe that’s just how long-term relationships are.

  “When Dylan told me you were here in ABQ, I was stunned,” Eliana says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “It’s so exciting to meet you after hearing about you for years.”

  My guess was right: Eliana’s not happy with a last-minute guest. But she’s the perfect hostess, the perfect girlfriend, so she makes the best of the situation.

  What’s Dylan been telling her about me? “It’s great to meet you, too.”

  The small talk ends when a knee-high paisley whirlwind blows into the room, grabs Eliana’s hand, and twirls her in a circle. “I found Maisie! I found her!” it shrieks. “She fell in back of the TV and broke her back!”

  “Trixie, keep it down.” Eliana takes the whirlwind by both shoulders so it solidifies into a small girl with stringy hair and enormous dark eyes. “Nina, this is my daughter, Beatrix. Maisie is her stuffed rabbit.”

  “She’s a hare,” Trixie corrects.

  “Excuse me. A hare. Trixie, this is Nina, Dylan’s sister.”

  I kneel to the kid’s height. “My friend’s little sister is named Maisie.”

  Trixie retreats behind Eliana’s legs, clutching Maisie to her chest, her voice stretching into a whine. “Where’s Georgia? You said she was coming.”

  Eliana sighs, takes Trixie’s hand, and ferries her toward the open slider door. “This is Nina, his other sister. We’re not always good with new grown-ups, are we, Trix?”

  Grown-up? That’s not how I feel.

  “I saw pictures of Georgia,” I tell Trixie, who’s staring accusingly at me. Georgia is Dylan’s much younger half sister—mine, too, I guess. “She’s got pretty
black hair. So do you.”

  Trixie holds out her rabbit to me, like I’ve demanded an explanation for its condition. “Maisie didn’t break her back really. She doesn’t have bones, just stuffing.”

  I like this kid enough to be glad she’s not biologically Dylan’s. Because we’ve got craziness in our family somewhere.

  The slider leads to the back patio, and there he is.

  He’s grilling marinated chicken breasts and corn on the cob. He wears a clean button-down, tucked in, and he smiles and reaches out his free hand to grip mine. “I’m so psyched you could come.”

  As we touch, his eyes catch mine and dart away shyly. A maneuver I’ve noticed myself doing when I don’t feel comfortable.

  I don’t pull away first. I let him do it.

  I’m grateful for the distraction of Trixie twirling around the patio, singing a ditty about a fox and a hare. Eliana shushes her and asks what I’d like to drink.

  I offer to set the patio table while Eliana tosses the salad, and she smiles with obvious relief and shows me where stuff is in the kitchen.

  I already know.

  The silverware is to the right of the sink, under the window with potted begonias and a kokopelli suncatcher. The plates and glasses are in the cabinets on the left. Those are Dylan’s two stops when he grabs a midnight snack.

  But the dark blue and burnt orange plates aren’t Fiestaware, like I thought, and they have leaf designs around the rims that I don’t remember.

  (Maybe the silverware and stuff was a lucky guess, I imagine Warren saying. Memories are malleable. You have to test everything you believe now, Nina.)

  When the table’s set, the platter of grilled food is ready to go, and Eliana puts a huge red salad bowl in the center. Maybe she wants to get the meal over with as quickly as I do.

  Dylan sits down opposite me and pops a Corona. He takes a swig, and Eliana, busy getting food on Trixie’s plate, says, “Please use your glass.”

  “But we’re outdoors.” He smiles like a naughty kid charming his mom. His eyes meet mine briefly, with that same shyness. I’m glad he’s not staring at me like he did in the café.

  “Fine. Be a frat boy.” Eliana collapses into her seat, her plate still empty, and her gaze shifts to me. “Nina, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you and Dylan have the exact same eyes. I’ve never seen anybody else with eyes that color. It’s spooky.”

  “Walnut-colored eyes,” Dylan says, rolling his dismissively.

  “My…mom calls them bronze.”

  This serves as Eliana’s cue to ask me a million questions about my mom, my road trip, my home, my school, my college plans. It’s tough to answer them all while I’m munching on lime-spritzed corn, choking down bites of unexpectedly spicy chicken, gulping water, and keeping my mouth politely closed. The food is amazing, but a lot hotter than the faux Mexican we eat in Vermont.

  Eliana shaves Trixie’s corn from the cob and shoots me follow-up questions like a good hostess. Dylan keeps his head down, shoveling food into his mouth.

  Twenty minutes in, I start to think that if this awkwardness is a “real” family dinner, I’m fine with my two-person household.

  Except I liked it when Warren joined Mom and me for dinner, those nights we planned the trip. The two of them arguing about politics, him making fun of our steamed kale, making us laugh—it felt weirdly right, like he was our missing piece.

  The memory makes something lurch sideways in my stomach.

  There may be more dinners with Warren when we get home. But every dinner will be followed, sooner or later, by sleep.

  If I’m wrong, and Dylan is innocent, maybe I can just keep my dreams to myself. But if I’m right, and Dylan goes to jail, the dreams won’t stop. They could get worse.

  It’s such an ugly possibility that I force it out of my mind, and an idea rushes in to fill the vacuum. I need to treat Dylan like exactly what he seems. To get confirmation one way or the other, I’ll need to fool him, and even fool myself a little.

  I haven’t asked a single question about my long-lost brother. I must seem like the most self-centered girl in the world.

  I ask, “How long have you guys been together?”

  The conversation gets easier after that. Eliana has a funny story about how they met: she and her friend were on a hike, city girls limping up a mountain in the wrong shoes, and Dylan “saved their lives” by giving them water from his canteen.

  “My big, burly mountain man,” she says, nudging his shoulder.

  Dylan finally starts talking. Maybe it was only the memory of our strange first meeting that made him shy. He gets more animated as he describes building scale models: manipulating tiny pieces of plastic and metal and wood, gluing and sawing them into shapes of bigger things. “Detail work,” he calls it.

  Yes, he’s good at managing details. Dump sites, bloodstains, hairs and fibers. But no. Who knows if that even happened?

  When I was little, I say, I craved a dollhouse like the ones in museums. I wanted to look down on a world exactly like the real one, but small enough to control.

  “You should see the dollhouse he built Trixie,” Eliana says. “Actually, why don’t you go see it while I clear the table? In fifteen minutes this princess is going to bed.”

  We go upstairs to Trixie’s room, which is painted violet like the sky right after sunset, and look at the dollhouse. Dylan turns on its tiny lights for me.

  It’s not one of those Victorian mansions, just a little bungalow with two bedrooms. Every detail is perfect, from the tiny weave on the rugs to the white princess phone to the lettering on the encyclopedias in the bookcase. “How long did this take you?”

  “Maybe ten months. A lot of it just looks real. The book spines are painted on, and the plumbing doesn’t work.”

  He sounds so rueful that I laugh. “Why would you need it to? The dolls aren’t going to be heeding calls of nature.”

  Dylan chuckles, too. “You never know.”

  “It takes so much patience to do this.” So much obsessiveness.

  But I have my obsessive side, too. Sitting in Trixie’s room surrounded by stuffed animals, hearing splashing and laughing as Eliana gives her daughter a bath, I feel my fear giving way to a gentle buzz of familiarity. These sights and sounds are like my childhood. My home.

  “Yeah, well,” Dylan says. “Eliana has a different way of describing my ‘patience.’ She says I got the world’s biggest stick up my ass.”

  “Focus is a good thing.” When did I become his life coach? “Look at everything you get done that way.”

  Bathwater slurps down the drain, and Dylan stands up. “Bedtime.”

  I’m still staring into the dollhouse. On the tiny quilt in the second bedroom sits a fuzzy figurine of a white cat. “Sugarman,” I murmur.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, nothing. I miss my cat back home.” And I realize the dollhouse’s immobile cat is the spitting image of my Sugarman, bright yellow eyes and not a spot of gray.

  “Want a nightcap? Orangina?” Dylan asks when we return to the patio, where the mountains look bleached against the dusky sky.

  “Sure.”

  But I don’t feel like sitting down. When he disappears into the kitchen, I walk over to the far corner of the backyard, to the large shed made of grayish reclaimed wood. The shed.

  No time to peek in now, though the door’s not padlocked. My eyes go to the potted plants clustered on a low wall at the patio’s edge.

  Aloe, aloe—why do they all look like aloe? Why aren’t my memories photographic? Why am I so dumb about plants?

  I kneel and lift one pot of maybe-aloe, then another, then a third. A fourth—and I’m running out of aloes. No tiny silver key.

  The door snaps open, and I rise as quickly as I can, teetering on my wedges, and reach out to take the bottle of Orangina. “I love your garden.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan flops down at the table, raises a beer to his lips. “Eli does it.”

  I sit opposite him
. If you want to trick him into admitting something, now is the time. I try to remember the plans I made on the drive today, but they all feel childish and transparent. “I want to go out in the desert,” I say—the first thing that comes to mind. “It’s so scary and beautiful, all that light. I want to walk in it.”

  “Well, Ma lives in the desert, pretty much. You’ll see plenty of sagebrush at her place. I’ll take you on a hike, too, if you want.”

  “Where?” My heart seems to suspend its beating, my throat taut. What if he takes me exactly where I was today?

  “Chaco Canyon, maybe, or Sky City. Show you the Anasazi ruins.”

  Damn it. “I’m not so into tourist stuff. I want to walk out away from everything, like they do in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” (Old-movie reference courtesy of Warren.)

  Dylan chuckles. “So what you’re saying is, you want a parched throat and second-degree sunburn?”

  Sounds like what I got today. I take a big swallow and almost choke, bubbles filling my nose. “Where do you go when you want to get away from everybody?”

  “Me?” He chuckles again, two fingers loosely circling the bottleneck (fingers that tightened on the neck of Kara Ann Messinger?). “I just drive, mostly. The open road—that’s where I feel free. But you know about that. That’s why you came here, right?”

  “What?” He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying—that I’ve been with him on the road in my sleep. That I know where he’s been and what he’s done.

  I breathe again when he says, “I mean, you know what it’s like to want to put home in your rearview and drive like hell.”

  “Actually,” I say, “till a few months ago, I was scared to drive freeway speed.”

  “What changed?”

  Why did I tell him that? Now I have to stick imaginary Jaylynne in Warren’s place and explain how my friend taught me to drive with confidence. How she’s more of a daredevil and a wild girl than me. I don’t mention that “she” also taught me to shoot revolvers and semiautomatics.