Armstrong refilled her cup. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“What weird shit do men want you to do?”
Dani thought about the question.
The corporal took a drink. “Oh, shit…You like it weird, right? Here I’ve been going on about…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you…To each her own.”
“No, it’s not that.” Dani’s mind scrambled as she tried to get control of the conversation. She was sent here for a purpose, and they weren’t anywhere near the topic she wanted to discuss. An idea came to her in a flash, and she went with it. “It’s just…I dated this one guy…I mean this is some real sick shit…” Dani twisted the cup of scotch on the table. “I can’t even say it.”
“The hell you can’t. I just went on about my husband popping off a load to my feet. You can say whatever the fuck you want.”
Dani hesitated. It was an act. She wanted to make it seem as if continuing was difficult for her. “This guy, he had a thing for stories…You sure you want to hear this?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“He had this thing for stories about missing kids.”
Armstrong furrowed her brow. It was getting increasingly difficult for her to hold her head up and keep her eyes open. “What the fuck?”
“I told you it was sick. He would get…you know…aroused if I came home and told him I was working on a missing kid case.”
“No shit?”
“It’s sick, right?”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard…”
“When I told him about the Farrow girl in Rock Hollow a few years ago— You know about that case, right?”
Armstrong searched her scotch-soaked brain and shook her head. “Never heard of it.”
“Kate Lynn Farrow, four years ago?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Hmm, wouldn’t the state police be involved in a missing child case?”
Armstrong nodded. “Feds, too.”
“Were you not on the job then?”
“This has been my territory for ten long years. I haven’t worked a single missing kid case in these mountains in all that time.”
“Not one?”
“Nope. I’ve been called over to help out on an abduction or two in west Tennessee on a couple of occasions, but never around here.”
Dani watched the inebriated corporal with the Tennessee state police struggle to appear unaffected by the alcohol. She’d just gotten confirmation that truly nothing had been done about the missing children, and it frightened her. There was something unimaginably huge going on. She knew it without a doubt now, and she didn’t know what could be done about it.
“What did he do?”
The deputy almost jumped at the sound of Armstrong’s voice. “Do? Who?”
“This guy…The one who got off on this sick shit…”
“Oh, him.” Dani shifted in her chair. She thought about coming clean and telling the corporal she made the whole thing up. That she used the story just as a ruse to gauge Maggie’s reaction to the Farrow case. She thought about telling her the whole story; that there were at least twenty missing kids over the past fifteen years that no one beyond local law enforcement had investigated, and the word “investigated” was a generous term for what they’d done. “Covered up” was more like it.
But Dani didn’t know the woman at all. For all she knew, Armstrong was in on it. The state police had been contacted; she knew that from talking to the mothers. More than a few of them had called the state authorities themselves, and when they did, there were always consequences from the local badges. Gut instinct told Dani she couldn’t trust anyone beyond her uncle at this point. “He…died. Accident at the slaughterhouse. Can’t say I was too broke up about it. One less pervert…You know?”
Armstrong raised her glass. “Fuck the perverts!”
Dani returned the toast and spent the rest of the evening listening to the corporal slur out story after story about her sick soon-to-be ex-husband.
Chapter 26
Step stood naked staring out the window of his bedroom. A cigarette hung limply from the corner of his mouth as he watched the dark world outside get darker. The voices of the neighbors he hated could be heard in loud, angry tones battling the silence of the cool evening.
Bones lay in the bed, her eyes half open, her mind completely numb. She stared at the sinewy figure of the man who’d fucked her nearly every night since they met a year ago. She knew nothing about him outside of his talents between the sheets. He fucked her like he was hiding, like he was burying a part of himself inside of her. He was shedding the saddest parts of himself every time she spread her legs for him, and he treated her like she was full of the parts of himself he hated.
“I wasn’t always ugly,” Bones said from the bed.
Step turned to her. “You ain’t dead?”
“Not yet,” she said, leaning against the wall.
Step held up a glass of whiskey. “Want some?”
She shook her head. “Did you hear me?”
“Hear what?”
“I said I wasn’t always ugly. I was pretty once.”
He examined her with one eye as he closed the other one to shield it against the stinging smoke. “Yeah, I could see that.”
“Used to wear pretty clothes. Got my hair done and nails polished.” She held up her dirty feet. “The toes, too. Boys used to put me up on a pedestal. They were handsome boys, too.”
“You’ve come far down off that pedestal, ain’t you?” Step said with a laugh.
She didn’t respond.
“Look here,” Step said, “I ain’t interested in feeling sorry for you. We’ve all got better days we can’t get back. That’s what the fucking world is all about. You think I feel good about my lot in life, you’re way off base.”
“I don’t think there’s anything good about you,” Bones said. “Nothing good at all.”
“Gotta be something you find good about me. Otherwise you wouldn’t be naked in my bed every night.”
“I only come here because I know you won’t do stuff to me whenever I fall asleep from my medicine.”
“Medicine?” Step laughed.
“It makes me feel good, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what medicine does?”
“You looked in the mirror lately? That make you feel good?”
“Watch it, Step Crawford. You almost sound like you care.”
“I only care because you give me a place to stick my dick from time to time. You’re getting to the point where it’s near impossible for me to get it up.”
She screamed and threw a pillow at him. “I suppose you could get it up for this Angie girl I heard you talk about!”
Step pointed at her and gave her a stern look. “You don’t want to say that name to me again, Bones. You hear me?”
She was terrified by his menacing expression. “I just heard you talk about her on your phone call last night…”
“Nobody was talking about her. It was a topic that shouldn’t have been brought up.”
She turned away from him. “I don’t want to talk about your other whores anyway. I got more men I run with, too. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re going heels on shoulders with some other girl.”
Step snickered. “I can barely stand you. Why the hell would I run with other whores?”
She turned back to him. “Then who is she?”
Step stared at her with pursed lips.
“Get mad at me all you want. You won’t do nothing to me.”
“The hell I won’t.”
She laughed. “This face has seen a fist or two, honey. You think I don’t know if a man’s got it in him to beat down a woman? You wouldn’t hit me if God himself told you to, Step Crawford. I know that like I know how to wiggle my ass onstage in front of a roomful of stiff dicks and fat dykes.”
Step sipped his whiskey. “You know what I do for living?”
She nodded. “Closeouts for Boss Perry.”
>
“Good, then you know I don’t see people as men or women. I don’t pay much attention to them at all unless they become a problem. Then I deal with them. You understand? I’m saying don’t become a problem I gotta deal with.”
She sniffled and fought back a tear. “I was just asking. It was just a question. I don’t know nothing about you, Step. Not a damn thing.” She snorted out a small a laugh. “Truth is, I don’t know anyone. Not who they really are. Everyone in my life is always drunk or doped up or they’re trying to fuck me. I don’t know no one. I want to know someone. I just want to see a life in my mind that is nothing like mine. I want a place to go, you know? A place to think about that brings me light in the dark.” She thumped her skull with her index finger. “It’s always dark in here, Step.”
He smoked away the regret that was building up inside of him. He thought long and hard before saying, “What makes you think Angie will bring you light? She ain’t brought me nothing but pain.”
She smiled weakly. “That’s a lie. I can tell by the way you say her name she’s something special to you. You protect her like a bitch protects her puppies.”
He snickered. “You’re reading me wrong, Bones. You’re reading me wrong. There ain’t a person on this planet I hate more than Angie Crawford.”
Bones’s eyes widened. “Crawford?”
Step grimaced when he realized he’d inadvertently revealed Angie’s last name.
“You’re married?”
“I ain’t married. Why would you assume something like that?”
“Because this Angie ain’t your mother or sister. You wouldn’t get so worked up about her if she was. You divorced?”
Step slowly shook his head.
She thought about the remaining options and then asked, “How?”
“How what?”
“How’d she die?”
The question floated around Step and put him in a trance. As if under its spell, he lazily said, “Bowline knot.”
“Knot?”
“She took a class at the high school. It was at night. One of those ‘reasons to get out of the fucking house’ classes that adults take, a rock climbing class. She never went rock climbing. She just took the class. Learned how to tie knots like a goddamn expert. Bought herself a rope, tied a bowline knot…” He fixated on the whore. “That bring you light, Bones?”
She shook her head. “What was so bad about her life? Why’d she do it?”
“What difference does it make? Knowing that won’t help you feel better about yourself. There’s no light to be found in Angie—” He stopped abruptly and choked up. He didn’t expect it. It was as if he were possessed by the ghost of grief.
Bones covered herself with the sheet and scooted to the end of the bed. “You should let yourself cry, Step. I don’t know what’s snaking through your mind, but crying will get it out. Let it out.”
He roared and threw his drink against the wall at the opposite end of the room. Shards of glass sprayed in all directions, and the whiskey stained the faded paint. “Crying don’t do shit! I’ve done enough of it to know. Wasted weeks on end, crying. All crying does is give you a fucking headache. I’m done with it.”
“It ain’t done with you,” she said, kneeling beside him.
“What do you want from me, Bones?”
“I want you to tell me about her. Show me the light, Step. I just want to have it. I want to get out of my own head.”
He leaned back and studied the burning end of this cigarette. “Angie ain’t the light, Bones. Angie’s the coward who cut out on me when our light went away.”
The whore furrowed her brow.
“A bright little light named Nellie.”
Bones stood and backed away slowly. “I don’t want to know any more. Don’t say any more.”
“She drowned.”
“Shut up!” she shouted and covered her ears.
Step let a dark grin spread across his face. “You asked for this. You pushed to hear more about my light.”
“I didn’t know…”
“You knew, goddamn it. You know I’m fucking wrecked. You love that I’m torn to pieces inside. It’s been enough just knowing I was in a soul-sucking hole with you. You had somebody to hold your hand. But, turns out, just having another body down there with you wasn’t enough. You wanted to know who was holding your hand. You wanted to know, and you’re gonna know.”
She went to the dresser and rifled through her clothes.
“What are you doing?” Step asked.
“I need my stuff…” She pulled a balled-up piece of aluminum foil out of her jeans pocket and turned to the bed. Spotting the syringe, she moved toward it, but Step scooped it up before she reached the bed. “Give it to me!”
“You’re gonna hear my story.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Give it to me.” She stomped her foot. “You gotta give it to me, Step!”
“I was at work. Worked for a pest control company. Industrial pest control. Shit pay, shit supervisors, shit hours. Inhaled chemicals all fucking day that had me near puking by the end of my shift. Wore a mask, but it didn’t do shit. I did it because I had a fucking family to feed. Who doesn’t, right? Well, I don’t. Not anymore!” He chuckled.
Bones brought a shaky hand to her face and wiped away a bead of snot that had escaped her nose. “Please, Step.”
“Angie took Nellie out walking. My little light loved to go walking down by the river. She loved watching the current whip around and soar down the way. That’s the way she’d put it. She’d say ‘Look, Daddy. Look at the water soar down the way.’ ”
The whore covered her ears and quietly repeated the word “no” over and over again.
“Angie said she lost sight of her. She said she only looked away for a minute. A minute.” His eyes glazed over. “When she told me that, I told her she was wrong. She didn’t look away for a minute. A minute’s a long time. I told her she meant that she looked away for a second. Just a second.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and pulled one of Bones’s hands away from her ear. “You want this?” he asked, holding up the syringe.
She nodded with a pleading look in her eyes.
“You listen to my story.”
“Don’t make me…I’ll suck you off. We’ll just do that. We don’t have to talk. I’m sorry I pushed it on you…”
“She did look away for a minute. A whole fucking minute. You ever paid attention to how long a minute is?” He pushed the whore back and then put the syringe on the bed. “You’re gonna see how long a minute is. I won’t say another word for a whole minute. If you can stay there and wait that minute out staring at that fucking needle of yours, you don’t have to hear no more. You think you can do that?”
She nodded emphatically. “I can do it. I can do it.”
He pulled out his cellphone and looked at the time. Snapping his fingers, he said, “Starting now.”
The whore scrambled to her knees and stared at the syringe. Time did not move. She felt the air grow thicker. A ringing invaded her ears. She looked at Step and then back at the syringe. She heard a clock ticking, but knew that couldn’t be possible. There was no clock in the room. Her mouth went dry. She swallowed and felt a sharp pain at the back of her jaw. She couldn’t take any more. She lurched forward, and Step snatched the syringe off the bed.
“You didn’t even last fifteen seconds,” he said with a laugh. “Fifteen fucking seconds. And my wife lost sight of my baby girl for a whole goddamn minute. I lost everything in that minute.” He stood up straight and pictured himself on the banks of the river. “This is what she did, my little girl. I know. I’ve thought about it often enough. Put together a pretty good picture of it. She stood there for a second or two watching the water soaring down the way. She smiled at the mystery of it. ‘Where’s all that water going?’ she used to ask. That’s what she wondered that day. Where’s all that water going? She probably turned to see if Momma was looking. She wanted to touch the water, but she knew Momma wou
ldn’t let her. Momma was looking away for a whole goddamn minute. Little Nellie squatted down and stuck her hand in the water. It was so cold. She fought back a giggle because she didn’t want Momma to hear. She leaned out farther. Leaned out.” Step stretched his hand out. “Leaned out.” His face went blank as he pulled back his hand. “The water took my light down the way.”
Bones looked at him with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can see it, Step.”
He held out the syringe. “This will help you forget. Take your trigger.”
She stared at it. “We’re the same, Step. We belong together.”
“Who the fuck did you lose?”
“Me.” She stood, took the syringe from him, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Step eyed two jagged pieces of glass on the grimy wood floor and picked them up. He spotted a set of footprints in the dusting of glass that spread out in all directions. Cradling the broken glass in his lean hands, he stopped at the bathroom door and stared at it as if it would magically open. Bones wouldn’t be there. She would have vanished into that space where she was lost, consumed by her efforts to forget. He reached to knock, but pulled his hand away.
He exited the room, moved down the short hallway to the stairs and descended into the small kitchen. The moonlight poured through the small window above the sink and cast the room in a blue hue. Step opened the cabinet underneath the sink and dumped the broken glass in the garbage.
A cup half filled with cold coffee sat in the sink where he had left it the day before or a couple of days before. He couldn’t remember exactly how long it had been there. After vacillating for a brief moment, he decided if people in the big cities paid big bucks to drink cold coffee, he’d be a fool to let a virtually free cup go to waste. The first sip was a tentative one. It was cold and bitter and unsettling. The next sip wasn’t a sip at all. He downed the remaining dark brown liquid in a single gulp.
The image of his little girl standing on the banks of the river came to him in a flash. He spent his days trying to vanquish any memory of her. It was too hard not having her in his life. He had been successful in convincing himself he loathed Angie. The thought of her brought the taste of bile to the back of his throat. Before he’d walked into the garage and seen her swinging at the end of a climbing rope, he’d begged her to forgive herself. He tried to be the good husband. He tried to convince her that she wasn’t to blame even though he didn’t believe it. She was to blame. It was her fault. She looked away for a whole fucking minute. He would have never done that, and Angie must have sensed how Step really felt. She knew he was lying. Taking her own life was the only thing that made sense. She didn’t even leave a note. What was the point? From that day forward, Step put all his efforts into forgetting and hating.
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