The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  “Am I free to go?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” he said, grabbing his mug again and taking another slurp. “Go home. Rest. You’ve got a lot of healing to do.”

  I nodded. Rest sounded good, but the healing would have to wait. I got to my feet and started toward the door.

  “Harvey?”

  I stopped, turned slowly. I knew what he was going to ask me.

  “The shovel, right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  I scratched my head. My lips twitched. I knew exactly what I’d done with the shovel but couldn’t tell him. Not ever. I didn’t want to lie to him, either, but opted for the theory that false closure was better than no closure.

  Newirth sensed my hesitation, cocked an eyebrow. “Well?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” I shrugged.

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “My reasons.” The sadness in my smile was genuine—the only thing about me in that moment that was. “I never forgot, man. That was a lie. I bought that shovel to help Dad lay the last layer of sod on top of the bunker. I swore I’d never tell anyone about its existence. I knew it was just his usual crazy, but I’ve always tried to keep my promises.”

  It was a slick lie. A plausible lie. It had dropped into my head so effortlessly that I could almost believe it had been sent by Dad. Horseshit from beyond the grave. A little thank-you, perhaps, for clearing his name.

  Newirth nodded. “Right, and if I were to go looking for that shovel I’d find it … where? Your dad’s garage? His shed?”

  “I guess. Yeah. Probably.” I shrugged again, knowing the chief had better things to do than go hunting Dad’s property for a shovel that really didn’t matter anyway. “Good luck finding it, though. If you think Dad’s house is a shitshow, just wait until you see his shed.”

  Newirth ran one hand down the side of his face, where a day’s worth of grime and stubble had bloomed. He shrugged, then nodded. It was as weary and resigned a gesture as I’d ever seen.

  “Okay, Harvey,” he said. “Okay.”

  “So you’re not going to arrest me for keeping a promise?” I tried another smile, but it was a timid effort. “I hear it carries the death sentence in some states.”

  “Go home.”

  “And the question mark?” I pointed to a spot above my head.

  After a moment’s consideration, Newirth replied, “Given what you’ve told me, and with everything that has happened, I think that question mark will always be there.”

  The crazy thing: I agreed with him.

  * * *

  Something Sally had said—that she’d taken from Lang’s notes—suggested it could take weeks, even months for the antipsychotic drugs to suppress her coil, thereby weakening her enough for Lang to get into her mind. I wasn’t going to wait that long. Besides, I had another reason—a burning reason—to catch the next flight to Tennessee.

  Kill the fucker.

  It was all I could do to keep from going directly from the station to the airport, but there were a few things I needed to take care of. Top of the list: sleep; I had reached near-hallucinatory levels of exhaustion and would be good for nothing if I didn’t launch my head into a pillow. I stumbled the half mile home, my hands driven deep into my pockets and my face stiffening in the chill evening breeze. My landlord was on the entranceway steps with his guido blowout shimmering. He tried engaging me in conversation—something about getting the Cadillac logo tattooed across his chest. I nodded politely a few times, then went up to my apartment to find that Michael Jackson had shit all over the kitchen floor. I cleaned it up, fixed him dinner while he curled around my ankles, then collapsed on the sofa. I woke up at midnight with cricks in my neck and back, as if I’d been lifted by gigantic hands and twisted. I dry-swallowed Advil and staggered into the bedroom. The last thing I remember is thinking that my pillowcase smelled like it could use a wash, and that I’d get on that if I made it back from—

  And then sleep. Deep. Dreamless.

  Swan Connor was coast-to-coast news the following morning. There was no mention of Dad; he’d been muscled from the story entirely, and that was fine by me. I semi-celebrated with some lazy-ass yoga and a bowlful of quinoa flakes two weeks past their sell-by date. Almost like old times.

  * * *

  Next on the list: Find Michael a new home. I could have dropped him at the animal shelter with his celebrity brothers and sisters, but I had somewhere else in mind.

  “Isn’t he adorable?” Marzipan said, tickling beneath his chin. Then she screwed one eye shut and tilted her head—an allergy, I wondered, but no: her tic. She made the zipping motion across her lips, fighting it, losing it: “Shit and fuck. Scumbag. Fuckity.”

  “He belonged to Dad,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, and touched my forearm gently. A perfect gesture of kindness and sympathy. Then she tickled the cat again. “Does he have a name?”

  “Michael Jackson.”

  “Like the singer?”

  “He is the singer,” I said. “Dad believed that when Michael Jackson died, his troubled spirit soared the breadth of the country and landed in the body of this cat.”

  “Amazing.”

  “I know, huh?”

  “Can he moonwalk?” Marzipan asked seriously, and I could have hugged her.

  “Only when you’re not looking,” I replied, and it was my turn to touch her arm. “Will you look after him for a few days? Maybe longer? I have to … do something, and I guess there’s a possibility I won’t be back. Michael was real important to Dad, and I can’t think of anybody I’d rather have take care of him.”

  Marzipan held out her arms and I handed Michael to her. He rolled his head against her chest, getting snug, the way cats do. His purr was engine-loud.

  Marzipan beamed. “I think he likes me.”

  “I think so, too.”

  She hugged him, kissed his face. “This could be the beginning of my crazy-cat-lady phase.”

  And I said, “I hope so.”

  * * *

  Next on the list: Starbright Medical Imaging.

  Sally sent out a signal whenever she let the red bird fly, but that wasn’t how the hunt dogs found us in Cypress. They were there too quickly, which meant they were tracking us—tracking me. I’d been unconscious in that cinderblock room for I don’t know how long, and that was when they’d done it: a tiny implant near my shoulder or thigh, somewhere I wouldn’t feel it. Then they let me go and I’d led them to Sally, dumb idiot that I was.

  I told the tech what I expected her to find, but that I didn’t know where she’d find it.

  “Go whole body,” I said. “Run me through the big machine. I don’t care how much it costs.”

  “How about we start right here?” the tech said, indicating the scar on my left cheek. “It’s a fairly recent wound by the looks of it. Heck, if I were a tracking device, that’s where I’d be hiding.”

  I started to refute that. It was too conspicuous. Too in-your-face, was what I was going to say, but was stopped by the unintended aptness of it, then by the tech’s eyes, which were blue and deep and far smarter than mine. So I shrugged and told her to have at it. Minutes later, she held an X-ray image of my skull up to a light box, and sure enough, an inch below my left eye socket, was a piece of hardware no bigger than my pinky nail.

  “Those sons of bitches,” I said, running my fingertips across the scar and feeling the solid little lump beneath—what I’d always thought was a knot of damaged tissue. “They really did it.”

  “It’s thin, too,” the tech said. “Thin as a dime. Could be some kind of micro GPS tracker. I wouldn’t even say it’s hi-tech; it’s likely being tracked by a cell phone.”

  “Sons of bitches,” I said again, and recalled Jackhammer’s warning: We can get to you anytime, anywhere. Of course they could; they’d slotted the device into my open wound while I was out cold. It was too easy, and—for all my precautionary measures—I was too stupid to even consider it.


  “At least you know where it is now,” the tech said.

  “Right,” I said. “And I need to get it out of there.”

  “Yes, well…” The tech shrugged, her expression caught between regret and amusement. “There’s only one way for it to come out, and that’s the same way it went in.”

  * * *

  The smart thing was to have the implant surgically removed, but I didn’t have time for that and didn’t want to answer a bunch of awkward questions from medical staff. The alternative was to take care of it myself. A fairly simple procedure, I thought; it was just beneath the skin, after all.

  I arranged my makeshift surgical apparatus on the edge of the bathroom sink, everything placed on a clean cotton napkin. Two ice cubes (a spare, in case I dropped one). A sterilized razor blade. A sterilized pair of tweezers. Antiseptic swabs. A tube of superglue. I took several steadying breaths, wheezing through my busted nose, then looked at myself in the mirror.

  Ready.

  Using my left hand, I pressed one of the ice cubes against my cheekbone until it had half melted and I could no longer feel the cold. It slipped from my fingers and clattered into the sink. With my right hand—still dry and warm—I picked up the razor blade and ran one edge along the scar, following its curve. I did it quickly and didn’t feel a thing, but blood flowed from the incision, obscuring visibility. I used a swab to wipe it away, then separated the wound. More blood pooled, dripping down my face, onto my chest. I swabbed deeply and felt the implant move. Then I saw it—one slick edge. I tried plucking it free with my fingers but it was too slippery and I only lodged it deeper. I winced; my skin was still numb but the subcutaneous tissue was not and a thumbtack of pain caused my eye to water. I blinked, wiped more blood away, grabbed the tweezers with a trembling hand. Gritting my teeth, I peeled the incision wider and poked the tweezers inside. I worked by feel more than sight (there was too much blood and now both eyes were watering), digging around with the prongs until they tapped against something solid. The pain expanded to my lower legs, making them quiver and sweat. It was impossible to ignore but I didn’t buckle, I didn’t quit; I tweezed the tracking device and pulled. There was some resistance where my tissue had fused to it—a wet sound as it dislodged—but I yanked it free with a triumphant cry.

  My head howled and pounded. Blood streaked my face and chest. I dropped the tweezers and the tracking device, grabbed the antiseptic swabs and pressed them to the wound. More pain, but I wasn’t done yet. I pinched the incision and ran a bead of superglue across it. The fumes stung my left eye but that was the least of my concerns. I counted to sixty, then trickled another line of glue across the wound.

  I didn’t move again until the pain had faded.

  The implant was on the bathroom floor, smeared with blood. I picked it up and placed it on the toilet seat. A tiny chip—yes, it really was as thin as a dime—responsible for so much hurt and damage. I was tempted to destroy it, but didn’t want the hunt dogs to know I’d discovered it. Let them think I was huddled in my apartment, playing guitar and jerking off.

  I lifted my gaze to the mirror. With my busted-up face, and with this new battle scar, I barely recognized myself. I recalled Dad saying—after he’d sheared my dreads—that I looked like I could win a fight, but right then I looked more like I’d fought a war.

  I touched my new wound and sneered. It was ugly and tender, but I didn’t care in the least; the tracking device had been removed. I was sure Dominic Lang—having found what he desired—was no longer interested in me, but now I was truly off his radar.

  The son of a bitch wouldn’t see me coming.

  * * *

  After cleaning up, I called Skylands Funeral Home and told them I was out of town for a few days, but that I’d begin arrangements for my father’s service as soon as I returned. I added that Dad had reserved a plot at Rose Hill next to Mom, wanting them to know this just in case I didn’t return.

  With this taken care of, there was only one thing left on the list. But first I had to wait until nightfall.

  Then I needed a shovel.

  * * *

  I took a cab to Newark Liberty the following morning. I’d packed only a few clothes, figuring this would be over—one way or another—within forty-eight hours. I didn’t pack the .38 Special, either; I planned on securing more powerful weaponry in Tennessee, not necessarily of the aim-and-shoot variety.

  My success incriminating Swan hadn’t healed me; the same emotions continued to push and pry. I sat in departures switching between the photograph of my father and the red feather, focusing on what each meant to me: love and family, justness and determination. I was faced with a do-or-die task, but I wasn’t backing down.

  It didn’t have to be a suicide mission, though. I had the element of surprise in my favor, and while Lang had too much influence—and I none—for the authorities to be any use to me, that didn’t mean I had to fight alone. Jesus, I wasn’t capable of fighting alone. I may have looked like a warrior with my new haircut, scars, and bruises, but the only weapon I brandished with any confidence had six strings.

  I needed help. No doubt about it. My own little army.

  And I thought I knew where to get it.

  Twenty-Four

  Tinsel, Tennessee, was a dismal patch of not much on the western edge of the state. Population 650, it was bordered to the north by redolent swampland and to the south by a landfill as large as the town again. Its main through road—the erroneously named Colorful Boulevard—was dotted with empty stores with FOR LEASE and EVERYTHING MUST GO signs posted in the windows. It was difficult to imagine a time it had ever flourished.

  Employment came by way of a waste management facility and a sheet metal company. I had a feeling the town would give up the ghost if either of these businesses folded, like a diseased body with some vital organ removed. There were several nicer homes, but most were minimal style with faded siding and junked lots. I estimated that half the population lived in Outer Town (the sign adjusted to read Outhouse Town), a cluttered trailer park that boasted its own fundamentalist church and shooting range, and was bordered to the west by the Mississippi River.

  No public transport. No hotels or other accommodations, which was fine because I didn’t plan on staying the night. I took a bus from Memphis to Dyersburg, and a cab from there into Tinsel. I was dropped on Colorful Boulevard and walked three blocks before finding what I was looking for: a dusty bar with neon in the windows and live music Fridays and Saturdays.

  I went inside and asked if they knew Elvis.

  * * *

  Five words: Mom took care of them. Five words that had drummed through my mind loudly and often since the hunt dogs took Sally, and that formed the basis for my plan of attack. Mom took care of them. Five words, five syllables, one simple sentence upon which everything hinged, and while it wasn’t up there with Kill the fucker in terms of mantra, it ran a respectable second.

  We packed our bags and laid low at a hotel just outside Memphis, Sally had told me. But Lang found us within a few days and sent his muscle. Mom took care of them—made them turn their guns on each other—but it was a close call.

  I walked from the dusty bar to the trailer park on the west side of town. It was a pleasant day—clear skies, mid-seventies—but not a pleasant walk. I wore sunglasses to disguise my bruised eyes but still earned uncomfortable stares from the locals. One of them called me a “tall-drink-of-motherfuck” and spat between his boots. I was glad I no longer had dreadlocks; I may have been burned at the stake.

  It wasn’t long before I smelled char and sourness, and saw a riot of aluminum flashing in the afternoon sunlight. I took a cracked path between stunted tupelos and came fifty yards later to the park. There was a dead armadillo at the foot of the OUTHOUSE TOWN sign, rocking on its carapace in the breeze. I skirted two grimy toddlers hitting each other with sticks and headed toward the park’s office, only to find it closed. No sign of when it would open, so I carried on walking, following dirt roads fringed w
ith trash. I heard country music, a child crying, dogs howling. A pickup with mismatched doors and a plastic Hulk toy strapped to the grill passed me at a crawl, its driver eyeing me from beneath the peak of his baseball cap. A few minutes later, I stopped outside a trailer where a middle-aged woman with one arm curled a twenty-five-pound kettlebell. An older man sat in a lawn chair beside her, feeding live mealworms to an albino rat perched on his shoulder.

  “Whachoo want?” he drawled.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  I was there because of something else Sally had said, and which also drummed through my mind. When I’d asked if her parents were still alive, she’d replied, Last I heard, Mom had shacked up with an Elvis impersonator in Tinsel, Tennessee. I don’t know where Dad is. A gin-soaked regular in the dusty downtown bar told me—in exchange for a drink—that the only Elvis impersonator he knew of lived in Outer Town. He wasn’t sure where, exactly, so I’d have to ask around.

  “Elvis?” the woman snapped, grunting as she curled the weight. The vein in her bicep bulged. “You mean Lou Shipp? That ol’ cock basket?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Does he live with a woman named Tatum?”

  “Miss Patches, we call her. And she ain’t no woman.”

  “Where can I find them?” I asked. I removed a twenty from my wallet and let it ripple in the breeze. “It’s important.”

  Moments later, I stood outside a trailer as stained and dull as an unwashed kitchen sink. Its torn awning flapped in the breeze and a faded US flag covered one window. I wrinkled my nose as I approached the front door; the smell of trash and old cigarettes was nauseating.

  I knocked twice, loudly, to be heard over the TV, and looked down at a sign almost buried in the weeds.

  I had to smile. It read WELCOME TO GRACELAND.

  * * *

  Lou answered the door, almost knocking me off the orange crate that doubled as a step. He was a big unit. Bigger than the real Elvis, even at the end. The top half of a heart-surgery scar poked from the neck of his grubby white vest.