“No, sir.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be staying at Ben’s house while your parents are in Milwaukee?”
The coach knew everything about his players.
“Yes, sir.”
“Here’s what’s happening now. You’re going to march into that house and tell everyone the party’s over. Clear it out. I’ll give you the dignity of doing it yourself, which is more than you deserve. If I have to do it, it will not be pretty.”
“I understand. Sir.”
“We’re going to have a long talk about this on Monday, Hughes.”
“Yes, sir.” Devin hung his head lower.
Coach pointed at the house. “Go! Now.”
The three boys fairly ran into the house. It struck me that they were boys—but Coach was a man. He wasn’t just older. He had this presence, an aura of leadership and authority, that made kids do what he said. I wondered if he was born with it, or if he’d earned it through years of coaching.
“Idiots,” he muttered as he walked back to the car. He waved me out of the shadow of the elm. “Come on, Jody.”
I trotted next to him, weaving a bit. I was still very drunk. “I’m . . . um . . . I’m not sure everyone in there is sober enough to drive home.”
“I’m not a taxi service. They found their way here, they can find their way home again.” Coach glanced at me. “But I’ll give you a ride.”
He opened the Corvette’s trunk, tossed the shotgun in, and slammed it shut. Then he went around and opened the passenger door for me. No Holly Grove boy would have done that. I felt like I was in a fairy tale, or a soap opera. I’d often seen Coach driving his famous car and dreamed of being inside it. Now I got to slide in. The car smelled of polished leather and men’s cologne. The dash was rich, shiny wood, curving around the instrument panels so sensually it looked like a woman’s body. Coach slid in the other side.
The seat was a long bench seat, covered in supple black leather. I learned some years later that Corvettes normally come with two bucket seats, separated by a console. The coach had his car specially fitted with this single, long seat. I only understood how horrible that was afterward.
“This is a beautiful car,” I said.
“Thanks. It’s my baby.”
He turned on the ignition, and the tires purred against the gravel of the driveway. I thought of his other baby, the real one, growing inside his wife.
“How’s Wendy?” I asked.
“She’s sleeping.”
“Yeah, it is pretty late.”
“She sleeps a lot these days.” He turned onto Route 9. We were the only car on the road.
“I hear that being pregnant can do that.”
He nodded and turned on the radio to an oldies station. John Cougar Mellencamp sang about how it hurts so good.
“Wendy woke up when my phone rang,” Coach said, looking straight ahead at the road. “I told her it was an emergency. I didn’t tell her it was you.”
“Why not?”
“She can feel it.”
“What?” My breath came fast and shallow.
“The attraction between us.”
I nodded and swallowed. We passed farms, stands of trees, and small houses. I stared at the road’s dotted yellow lines, hoping their steady passage could sober me up. They didn’t.
He turned onto a dirt road. It’s funny what we wish for, isn’t it? For months, I wanted to be alone with Owen Fowler. I knew this wasn’t the way home, but I didn’t say anything. Because I desperately wanted to find out: What was at the end of that road? Now, of course, I know the answer. It was a monster.
19
After they got home from the memorial service, Cooper built a fire in his backyard pit. He, Anna, and Jody sat in the plastic chairs around it, drinking beer as the sun went down. The chickens scratched around the grass by their feet, and the goldfish floated to the surface of their pond. Cooper threw some food in and the fish devoured it with big round gulps. Sparky sat at the edge of the water and watched them, his head tilted quizzically. The chirping of insects was loud and steady, and the warm air was scented with earth. If she didn’t look at the shattered warehouse or the sunset reflecting off the curved glass of the Renaissance Center, Anna could imagine she was sitting in the countryside.
“How was the service?” Jody asked.
“A flock of butterflies flew right through the speeches,” Cooper said.
“Ha,” Jody said. “I bet Wendy bought them and had them released at just the right moment. She’s always been a drama queen. I’m sure she was enjoying her role as Grieving Widow.”
“She did play it well,” Anna said. “Although I’m sure she’d also be good at Aggrieved Divorcée.”
“How do you mean?” Jody asked.
Cooper described what he’d learned at the memorial service. Anna added, “I checked the court system, and Fowler versus Fowler hadn’t been filed. Yet. But it makes sense. A neighbor said they seemed to be living in separate houses.”
“Wow,” Jody said. She took a sip of beer. “You are good, Annie. Bust into town and find out everyone’s deepest secrets in less than seventy-two hours. Impressive. But . . . so what?”
“So it’s a motive,” Anna said, with satisfaction. “From the person most likely to kill the coach to begin with.”
“How do you figure?”
“When someone’s murdered, unless the person is a drug dealer, it’s usually by a lover or spouse. And with a separation, there’s even more motive. Wendy and Coach Fowler were about to get into the messiest thing two people can get into. Custody battles, splitting the assets, dragging each other’s reputations through the mud. Considerable assets, considerable motive to kill. If they got divorced, Wendy would get half of everything—if she was lucky—minus lawyer’s fees. Now, she has everything. Murder is a lot cheaper than divorce.”
Anna was thrilled to suspect someone besides her sister. The ongoing stomachache she’d had since coming to Michigan had abated at the news that Wendy was contemplating divorce immediately before her husband was killed.
Jody said, “Do the police know about this?”
“If they did, they’d be searching her house.” Anna looked at her sister. “Did you know they were separating? Was he leaving her for you?”
“I’m not sure,” Jody murmured, looking into the fire. “I had certain hopes and dreams about the situation. I was stupid.”
Jody went inside and returned a moment later with three more beers. She gave one to each of them. They sat in silence, watching the fire dance and pop. Sparky rested his head on Cooper’s knee.
“Today was hard,” he said, petting the dog. “All the tears and grief. How do you do it for a living, Anna? Every day, seeing people go through the hardest time of their life? Immersing yourself in the most terrible things people do to each other?”
“It can be tough.” She stretched her legs out toward the fire, enjoying the warmth on her feet. “But I really believe being a prosecutor is the most rewarding job I could have. There’s nothing like putting a predator in jail. Knowing that my efforts every day are to keep my community safe. What about you, Coop? You weren’t exactly seeing lollipops and roses in Afghanistan.”
“No, though there were quite a few poppy fields. Which are beautiful, really. These huge pink flowers, going for acres. You know what they’re for, right?”
“Heroin,” Jody said.
“Yep. We burned those fields. Had to be careful, because if you inhale that smoke, you can get sick.” He looked into the fire. “I hated that part. I grew up on a farm. Can’t imagine how much I’d despise anyone who came by and burned our fields.”
“Your family grows wheat and corn,” Anna said. “Your fields are legal.”
“Still. We made a lot of enemies.” He poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks dancing up. “Eventua
lly, the army changed the policy, after the farmers turned to the Taliban for protection. Then we were in charge of protecting the poppy fields.”
“The world is complicated.” Jody said. “Sometimes right and wrong aren’t so clear.”
“And sometimes people just change their minds,” Cooper said. “Like Michelle.”
Anna remembered Michelle Zamarin, a pretty brown-haired soccer star. She and Cooper had dated in high school.
“Whatever happened with her?” Anna asked.
“We got engaged before I went on my tour. When the IED went off, I thought I was dying, and all I wanted was to get a message to her. I kept telling the guys who put me on the helicopter: ‘Tell Michelle I love her.’
“A medic told me I could tell her myself, and he was right. Eventually, they got me to Germany, where I had a couple operations. And then I spent a year at Walter Reed hospital, getting rehab, learning how to walk with this.” He knocked on his metal prosthesis. “You and I missed each other in D.C. by a couple of years. But Michelle came to visit. Brought me a basket of bagels. Spent a couple days holding my hand. And then told me she was very sorry, but she’d fallen in love with an accountant.”
“Oh.” Anna was pained on his behalf. “Speaking of terrible things people do to each other.”
“Nah. She didn’t want to hurt me. And it wasn’t because of the leg—I don’t think. I’d been away for a long time, and she’d just moved on. Still, I can’t help but hate bagels now. And accountants.”
Anna felt fierce anger at the woman who’d hurt Cooper when he was already wounded. “I think that’s pretty rotten.”
“You know what’s rotten?” Jody said. Her words bled together at the edges, like a kid’s watercolor painting. Anna wondered how many beers she’d had. “You know a terrible thing one person can do to another? What they did to Hayley Mack.”
“What happened to Hayley?” Anna asked.
Jody looked at her. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
But she pulled out her phone. Something about a campfire made everyone want to talk. Jody scrolled to a picture, then handed it over. Anna looked at the screen.
It was a picture of thirteen-year-old Hayley, asleep on a couch. Or, more accurately, passed out on a couch. The girl’s eyes were closed; her mouth hung open with a thin line of saliva hanging from it. Her shiny black hair spilled down the couch like a waterfall. Her shirt had been pulled up, revealing a taut patch of her stomach between her rib cage and her jeans. Someone had written all over her belly with thick black marker. I’M A SLUT. FUCK ME. I LIKE IT HOT AND WET. On Hayley’s cheek was a crude drawing of a penis, with liquid erupting from it toward her mouth. The boy with the blond mohawk stood by the couch, laughing. Anna inhaled sharply.
“They posted this online,” Jody said. “It’s been deleted, but I saved it in the iCloud before they took it down. In case the police ever wanted it. Which they didn’t.”
Jody swiped to another picture. Now Hayley was on a bed. The mohawked kid held a teddy bear’s crotch to her mouth, simulating oral sex.
“This was posted too?” Anna asked. Jody nodded. “Did the police look into whether she was sexually assaulted? These boys could have done anything while she was passed out. You can see what was on their minds.”
“Those are football players. You think the Holly Grove police are gonna do anything that’ll hurt the team?”
“There was no investigation?”
Jody shook her head.
“Did the school do anything?”
“To their darlings? Of course not. Hayley was teased by the kids for a couple weeks. They were merciless. She was slut-shamed and mocked and cast out. These pictures were all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The sites eventually made the kids take them down. But the adults in Holly Grove, the ones she trusted to help her, did nothing but hurt her even more. Even the moms—they were all saying that Hayley shouldn’t have been drinking so much, that anything that happened was her own fault. And then she killed herself.”
Sparky sat up suddenly and looked at Cooper. The dog poked his nose persistently into Cooper’s legs. Anna realized Cooper was having a pre-PTSD reaction. Hearing about Hayley made him almost as upset as it made her.
“It’s okay, boy,” Cooper ran his hands through the dog’s fur. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
They all knew it wasn’t.
20
The next morning, Anna sat at the kitchen table sorting eggs into cartons to be sold at a farmers’ market, while Cooper stood at the stove, making breakfast. Sparky lay on her feet. Jody came down the stairs, her hair disheveled from sleep, still wearing pajamas. She looked pale and exhausted.
“Hey, Jo,” Anna said.
“Come have some breakfast,” Cooper said.
Jody shuffled over to the table and sat next to Anna. She leaned over to read the headlines of the Detroit News, which, thankfully, did not have a story about the coach on the front page today. Cooper gave Jody a plate heaped with bacon and scrambled eggs, sprinkled with fresh cilantro. Jody took one look at the plate and bolted from her chair. Anna heard her in the bathroom, retching, and followed her there. She held Jody’s hair back while Jody heaved into the toilet. When she was finished, Anna gave her a wet washcloth to wipe her face.
“Thanks,” Jody moaned. She flushed, put the lid down, and buried her head in the washcloth. “Ugh. I feel awful.”
“I didn’t realize you had that much to drink last night,” Anna said.
“I didn’t either.”
Anna looked at her sister. “When was the last time you had your period?”
“I dunno.” Jody’s eyes got wide. “Oh God.”
One trip to the pharmacy later, the women were back in the same bathroom, looking at the pregnancy test stick that Jody had peed on. The line in the little window became an unmistakable blue, darkening at approximately the same speed that Jody’s face drained of color.
“You’re pregnant,” Anna said. “Congratulations?”
• • •
The first thing Anna wanted to know was, “Who’s the father?”
Jody just shook her head. “Nobody.”
“It’s a miracle!”
Jody didn’t laugh. Anna pushed a plate of dry toast closer to Jody. They sat at the kitchen table. Cooper was outside with Sparky, working in the orchard.
“Eat. It’ll make you feel better.”
Jody took a bite, chewed, and looked repulsed.
“Seriously?” Anna couldn’t hide the hurt in her voice. “You’re not going to tell me who the father is?”
“Maybe I don’t know who the father is,” Jody said.
Anna looked at her sister, trying to figure out if she was kidding.
“Never mind.” Jody pushed the toast away and went upstairs. Anna could hear the shower going. She sighed and cleaned up the dishes. When Jody came down again, her hair was damp and she’d changed into jeans and a yellow T-shirt. She said, “I want to go home.”
“You don’t even have a toilet yet,” Anna said.
“I’ll get one. I need to go home.”
Anna went outside to tell Cooper.
“You don’t have to leave,” Cooper said. “It’s great having you guys here.”
“I need to be in my own house now,” Jody said, standing on the dirt patio. “Maybe I’m nesting. But I really appreciate your hospitality.”
Anna met Cooper’s eyes and nodded. She went inside, changed the sheets on Cooper’s bed, and packed up her few things. Down in the foyer, she realized she was wearing his T-shirt and promised to return it soon.
“Keep it,” he said. “I like the idea of you wrapped in my shirt.”
Cooper helped them load their few belongings into Jody’s truck. Sparky sat on Cooper’s foot as he waved good-bye to them. Both
dog and master tilted their heads to the left, looking mournful as they pulled out.
Anna steered through the empty streets of Detroit. An overpass a few blocks from Cooper’s house was covered in graffiti. #NOHIPSTERS stood out in puffy red letters. They passed the old Packer auto factory, which was now an abandoned shell, similarly covered in graffiti. EPIC DECAY was sprayed across the top in electric blue.
“Do you want to keep the baby?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know.” Jody leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes.
“Do you want me to schedule an appointment with your ob-gyn? Or Planned Parenthood?”
“Eventually.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Mm. Yes. But . . . not right now.”
Jody kept her eyes closed. They drove the rest of the way in silence. Jody might have been sleeping, or she might have kept her eyes closed to shut down any more attempts at conversation. Anna drove, but hardly noticed the traffic on the street. She tried to picture her fiercely independent little sister as a mother. She couldn’t do it.
At Jody’s house, they began to clean up the chaos the police had left behind. Anna had never been on this side of a search warrant—trying to put the pieces back together again. She wasn’t sure where to start. She began putting pots and pans away. Jody tried to push the kitchen table back into place.
“Hey, not in your delicate condition,” Anna said.
“I’ve been drinking all week,” Jody said. “And I have to keep working on the line. This kid is gonna have to be hardy.”
Together, they moved the table back to its spot. Anna cleaned the kitchen while Jody tackled the spare bedroom. In a stack of papers on the floor, Anna found her own wedding invitation. She held the creamy white cardstock.
It is with great happiness that
Jack Bailey and Anna Curtis
invite you to celebrate the beginning of their life together
at their marriage ceremony.
The Blown-Away Inn, Shenandoah, Virginia
July 5, 2014, at 5:00 P.M.
Dinner, dancing, and merriment to follow.
A Good Killing Page 10
