Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  “More like your uncle’s phone might be,” he says. “The cops, the feds, he’s always doing that dance.”

  I briefly imagine my uncle doing a little soft-shoe in Ronan’s. Uncle Gavin, the Fred Astaire of crime. I’d laugh if I weren’t afraid I’d descend into hysterics.

  “Anyway,” Frankie says, “when you talk to the cops, don’t share anything unless you have to. Answer the questions you have to answer, but that’s it—nothing else.”

  “They’re going to want to know if I had anything to do with his death,” I say.

  “You were with me yesterday afternoon until I dropped you off here last night,” Frankie says. “You have an alibi for later?”

  “I picked up my sister after lunch today. But this morning? No.”

  Frankie dropped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “It’ll be okay, güero. Johnny Shaw is good.”

  He didn’t keep you out of jail, I think, but I don’t say it aloud because it would be cruel and because it’s not exactly a valid argument—Frankie confessed and took a plea deal. I plan on doing neither because I didn’t kill anybody.

  My phone vibrates again, trembling on the dresser. It’s probably Johnny Shaw. I get up and pick up the phone, but it’s not a call. It’s an email alert, confirming my video visitation with Fulton County Jail inmate Jay Gardner tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.

  I show my phone to Frankie. “Looks like I’m going to get all kinds of comfortable with law enforcement tomorrow.”

  “This is the guy Marisa went to see in jail?” Frankie asks.

  I nod, looking at my phone. “And the guy I’m going to get some answers from tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “SO MY BROTHER wants you to leave,” Susannah says to Frankie. “So what? He’s an asshole. Come on, stay, hang out, watch some Tom Hanks. It’ll be fun.”

  From the doorway, Frankie smiles, shaking his head. “Sorry, but I’ve gotta get home. Caesar’s going to stay, though.” Across the room, standing in my kitchen, Caesar does not look excited at the prospect.

  “Fine,” Susannah sulks. “You go and we’ll hang out with your stupid boyfriend.” She turns her head. “Not that I think you’re stupid, Caesar. Anybody who likes pre-Dominion DS Nine is obviously intelligent. I’m just annoyed that Frankie is leaving and that no one will tell me why we need someone else to stay here.”

  “Wait,” I say, “did you call Caesar his … boyfriend?”

  Susannah frowns. “What, you didn’t know?”

  “No, I know,” I say. “I just—how did you know?”

  She snorts. “Please. It’s obvious. They’re adorable.”

  “I need coffee,” Caesar says, looking about as adorable as a hammerhead.

  “Cabinet above the microwave,” I say. Caesar glowers, then turns away and starts rummaging in the kitchen.

  Susannah looks at me, grinning. “Adorable.”

  “Go watch Tom Hanks,” I say, pushing her toward the couch. As soon as she’s back in front of the TV, I turn to Frankie. “Is this really necessary?” I say in a low voice.

  Frankie lowers his voice to match mine. “He’s spending the night,” he says. “I’d stay, too, but … I have some work to finish for your uncle.” He sees the look on my face and rushes on. “Look, this Donny guy is dangerous. You call the cops, they might send a patrol car out, and that’s after they interrogate you six ways to Sunday about Donny, how you know him, where were you this morning, all that.”

  “I know,” I say, waving my hand like I’m dispelling smoke. “We went over it. It’s fine. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to work for my video chat with Gardner.” Even though I’m persona non grata at Archer right now, it’s spring break, so no one should be around to object.

  Frankie says, “Caesar could help you set it up here—”

  “In front of my sister?” I say, practically whispering. “No, thanks. She doesn’t need to be any more involved in this than she already is.”

  Frankie nods and claps me on the shoulder. “Good luck. And call Mr. Shaw.”

  “I will,” I say, and Frankie is gone. I shut the door, then lock it.

  “Finally,” Susannah says from the couch. “Come on, we were just getting to the good part.”

  Caesar materializes in the kitchen doorway—one second he wasn’t there, and the next he is. “Tell me you have something other than a drip coffeemaker,” he says.

  “What do you want, an espresso machine?”

  “A good French press would do. But if I have to I’ll make do with this twenty-dollar piece of plastic and glass from Taiwan.” He turns to go back into the kitchen, then stops. “I can’t find the filters.”

  The machine has its own mesh filter—I hate the paper ones—so I go into the kitchen to show him. He’s standing at the far end of the kitchen, the pantry all but blocking him from the den. “The filter—” I begin.

  “I know about the filter,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “Wanted to give you something.” He holds out something in his hand. It takes me a second to realize he’s holding a pistol.

  I shake my head. “No thanks.”

  “Pretty sure this Donny character isn’t interested in playing Chutes and Ladders,” Caesar says. “This is just a little insurance.”

  “I’m not taking a gun,” I say.

  Caesar raises an eyebrow. “Not a Second Amendment supporter?” he says.

  “A gun ended up killing my parents,” I say. “Nearly killed me and my sister. So, no. I don’t want a gun.”

  Caesar shrugs and pockets the pistol. “Your funeral,” he says. “Now please tell me you at least have filtered water.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I close my bedroom door and call Johnny Shaw, who answers on the second ring. The old lawyer reassures me that I am not being arrested, that the police simply want to hear my side of the story with Bridges. “Of course they want the DNA, which they’re not getting,” Shaw says. “Get there early, at noon, and you and I can talk and go over your story. It will be fine.” I hang up marginally less anxious about the meeting.

  The rest of the night passes uneventfully as Caesar brews a pot of coffee and wanders around the house, followed occasionally by Wilson, while Susannah and I fall asleep on the couch watching Nothing in Common. I wake up with a start around two AM to see Caesar standing in the corner, looking out the window into the front yard. He notices me and nods, then sips from one of my mugs. I glance over at Susannah and see her pale face, her eyes closed. She looks less like she’s sleeping and more like she’s enduring a nap—her eyes are rolling under the closed lids, and her arms twitch. I pull my fleece throw over her and stand up, yawning, then wave to Caesar and wander back to my bedroom, where I fall into a troubled sleep punctuated by chases and bright flashlights shining across dark fields.

  * * *

  I WAKE UP to find Susannah standing at the foot of my bed.

  “Jesus,” I say, sitting up.

  “Not even close,” she says.

  A gray light seeps through my blinds. It’s morning, then. I rub my eyes. “What’s up?”

  “I’m bored. Caesar’s taking a nap on the couch. Poor man’s exhausted. I kept him up all night.”

  “Naughty.”

  She rolls her eyes. “We were talking Star Trek and other geek lore, you moron.”

  “Any problems?”

  She shrugs. “He likes The Last Jedi, but that’s it.” When I look at her, she sighs. “No, Ethan. No bogeyman tried to get me.”

  I get out of bed and head for the shower. “You take Wilson out yet?” I call over my shoulder.

  “Pooped and peed and fed and now he’s a happy little man. You have anything to eat?”

  “Whatever you can find.”

  I shower and shave and put on my standard work clothes—I want to look professional when I go talk to the police. When I walk into the den, Susannah is on the couch, eating dry cereal out of a bowl and watching Tom Hanks play “Chopsticks” on a floor piano in Big. Caesar,
his leather jacket removed, is typing on his phone.

  “I have to go in to work,” I say. “Shouldn’t be gone long.”

  “Okay,” Susannah says, waving vaguely in my general direction. Caesar grunts and continues typing on his phone.

  “Need anything?” I ask him.

  “Coffee,” he says, continuing to type. “And a toothbrush. I forgot to pack one.”

  * * *

  I PULL INTO my parking space at Archer with twenty minutes or so to spare before my scheduled video appointment. Spring break began yesterday, so the school is deserted—my car looks abandoned in the empty expanse of asphalt. The sky is overcast, the cloud cover low overhead. I use my key fob to get in through the front door. The halls are dim, the overhead lights turned off, although there’s enough sunlight to see as I make my way to my classroom. I unlock my classroom door and push it open, allowing the stale air inside to escape. The overhead fluorescent lights are harsh, but although I’d prefer them off, I want Gardner to be able to see me clearly on the video connection.

  Sitting at the desk in the front of my classroom, I open my laptop, log in to the video conference, and, with a click, agree to the parameters of the visitation and acknowledge that the jail officials can terminate a video at any time. Then I wait, sitting in my bright classroom, the desks empty, whiteboards cleaned, books stacked on the desk and the side tables, all waiting for students to return from break. I realize that if today goes badly—or even if it goes well—I may not return to Archer myself. That realization leaves a cold hollow in my stomach.

  My laptop dings—my scheduled visitation is about to start. I sit up in my chair, wishing I had thought to bring a water bottle because now my mouth is dry. And then the open black window on my screen is replaced by a grainy video feed. There is a man in a dark V-neck T-shirt, seated in front of a white wall, facing me. His head looks like a squat rectangle, reinforced by the buzz cut. He has a long nose that looks like it might have been broken at some point. “Hey,” he says, his voice tinny in my laptop’s speaker. “You Ethan Faulkner?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You’re Jay? Gardner?”

  The man nods, shifts in his chair. I wonder if he’s chained to the chair—the angle won’t let me see.

  “So,” Gardner says, “why’d you want to talk to me?”

  “You had a visitor last week,” I say. “I wanted to ask you some questions about that.”

  Gardner looks blank for a moment, then smiles. It’s not pretty. “Yeah, she was hot,” he says.

  “What did she want?”

  He opens his mouth, then shuts it. “Who’s asking?”

  “Just me.”

  His eyes narrow. “Why should I talk to you?”

  “Why not?” I say. “You’re bored, you’re in jail. I bet she had a good story.”

  He rubs his hand over the top of his head. Not chained, then. “Why do you care?”

  “She was my girlfriend. And now she’s … gone.” I stumble slightly on the last word, deciding at the last moment not to say dead. “I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”

  He frowns. “Look, man, that bitch—” He stops and looks to the side. “I’m sorry, Officer,” he says to someone offscreen. “My apologies. I’ll watch my mouth.” He returns his attention to me. “Sorry. That witch was poking around, asking questions. Sticking her nose in.”

  “What did she want to know?”

  “Man, I don’t got to tell you a damn thing.” As if to emphasize the point, he folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his chair, a signal as clear as a door slamming shut. This isn’t going how I wanted.

  “I know she asked about Sam Bridges,” I say, trying to get a reaction.

  Gardner mumbles something.

  “Sorry?”

  He leans forward. “I said, you don’t know anything.”

  “I know you and Sam did time together,” I say. “But he got out. Looks like you’re back in.”

  “Man, forget this,” he says, and looks to the side again. He’s going to ask the guard to end the video and walk away.

  “She knew about Donny Wharton too,” I say quickly.

  That gets Gardner’s attention—his eyebrows scrunch together and he leans in toward the screen. “You know Donny?” he asks. His voice is different. It’s hard to tell through the laptop speaker, but I’m a hundred percent sure Gardner isn’t best buds with Donny. In fact, Gardner sounds worried.

  “Oh, I know Donny,” I say. “And so do you. And now my girlfriend’s missing, and Sam—” I stop, as if I’ve misspoken and said too much.

  Gardner’s mouth is slightly open, like a kid watching a movie. “Sam what?” he asks.

  “You see the news last night, Jay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says sarcastically. “Right after I played a round of golf and then had a dip in my Jacuzzi. No, I didn’t watch the damn news.”

  “Sam’s dead,” I say.

  He stares. “Say what?”

  “Sam is dead,” I say. I know this is being watched, maybe even recorded, and because I’m going to be sitting down with the police later this afternoon, talking about this might be a bad idea. But I need Gardner to give me some idea of what’s going on, so I use the only thing I have—information that I hope shocks him into revealing something. “Someone stabbed him in the back,” I say. “In a monastery, Jay. That’s cold.” I pause to let that sink in, and once it does—but before he can respond—I add, “And I think you can guess who did it.”

  It takes him a few seconds, but he gets there. “Whoa,” he says, holding up both hands. “I don’t know that. I mean, I haven’t even seen Donny in, like, years.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “For real, man,” he says, growing upset. “I ain’t seen the dude since he and Sam drove into Cargill’s to get rid of their—” He stops.

  Now I’m the one staring at him. “Did you say Cargill?” I ask. “Brad Cargill?”

  Gardner is trying to decide what he should say, and a saying of Susannah’s pops into my head: He looks like a monkey doing a math problem. “No,” he says, unconvincingly.

  “You said they drove into Cargill’s to get rid of something,” I say. And then understanding drops like a quarter in a slot machine. Among his various enterprises, Cargill runs chop shops where stolen cars get stripped for parts. Bridges mentioned Donny Wharton’s car yesterday. “They were driving a cherry-red Camaro convertible,” I say.

  Gardner’s eyes bug out. “How’d you know?”

  “I know a lot, Jay. I know that you and Bridges got busted for trafficking. I know they had to go to Cargill to take care of their car. And I’m guessing you told Marisa where Bridges was. But I need to know what else she talked to you about. And I need to know where Donny is.”

  He leans in close now, his features filling my laptop screen so I almost flinch. I can see his face is starting to gather a sheen. “She asked me if I knew him, okay?” he says. “About where he was. I told her I didn’t know anything, and I don’t. And I wish I hadn’t even told her that. We’re done, man.” He looks to the side. “I’m done, Officer.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Tell me—” Then the video feed cuts off, replaced by a message from the Fulton County Jail, thanking me for using their video service.

  I sit back in my chair, frustrated. Marisa had already known something about Donny when she went to talk to Gardner. And she’d known about Bridges, too. She’d tracked both down like some sort of investigative journalist. Why she’d done it was due to her fixation with me, with what had happened to me. The question is, how did she know about those men in the first place? I think she died because she poked around in my life, just like Bridges died because she went to talk with him. Or because I had.

  All bets are on Donny. And now Donny might be coming for me, or Susannah. And I know of one person who might know where he is.

  I look at the time—it’s over two and a half hours until I have to meet with the detectives and Johnny Shaw—and then I c
lose my laptop, stick it in my workbag, and head to my car, thinking about the easiest route to Brad Cargill’s garage.

  * * *

  ATL BODY SHOP is hardly different from when Frankie and I were last here to exchange envelopes with Cargill. The parking lot is still cracked with patches of gravel, and the building itself is still white, most of the bay doors pulled down. The maroon Honda with the windshield that Cargill redesigned with a wrench is gone, replaced by an equally dilapidated silver Ford Escort.

  I walk into the nearest open bay, where a green Dodge is up on a lift. The concrete floor is oil-stained, the tangled snarl of a cord crossing from a compressor to the Dodge, where a man in a gray coverall is removing the tires with an air wrench. He looks up at me. “Yeah?” he says.

  “Cargill here?” I ask.

  The man puts the air wrench down on a workbench and grabs a rag from his back pocket to wipe his hands. “Who’s asking?”

  “Salvation Army,” I say. “Is he here?”

  The man stops wiping his hands, replaces the rag in his back pocket, and considers me for a minute. “In his office,” he says with a jerk of his head, indicating the far end of the garage.

  I nod and walk down the length of the garage, keeping to the side closest to the bay doors. Half the bays are empty, but there are some cars on the lifts and I want to keep out of the way. At the far end, someone put up Sheetrock across half of the last bay, put in a plate-glass window and a door, and turned the space into an office. Through the window I see Brad Cargill sitting at a desk, talking on a phone. There’s one other mechanic at this end of the garage, bent over the open hood of a GMC pickup, and he glances up at me as I pass and walk up to the office.

  “—don’t give a shit what he says, he needs to show me the parts,” Cargill is saying into the phone, as rawboned and pale as ever, a brand-new Atlanta United cap pushed back on his head, his feet in heavy work boots resting on his desk. He glances at me and continues talking into his phone. “I’m not ordering bad parts from anybody. Tell him that.” He hangs up and leans back in his chair. “Help you?”