Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Fine, fine,” he said, a little snappish. “I’ll send you a bill.”

  “Jack, don’t get me wrong. Come on, you don’t have to—”

  “Look. You can do what you want, Lucy. I—even before tonight, before this, I had decided to do your case pro bono.”

  “No way. You don’t have to do that.”

  “Don’t waste words. I can afford it. It isn’t that complicated, and it is kind of interesting. Plus I like you. So don’t try to talk me out of it. I can see you don’t have a lot of money. Nothing wrong with that. But I don’t want to take any of it, OK?”

  She looked him in the eyes. Then leaned over and kissed him, lingering. “Thanks, Jack. And if you still like me and I still like you when the air has cleared, I’ll fuck your brains out.” She backed off. “One of these days.” She grinned. “But not on the first date.” He smiled, a little uncertain.

  “Whatever you say, Lucy.” He downed his coffee. “Well, I guess I better get home to my dog.” He stood. Lucy got up and walked him to the door. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll make a plan. I have a couple street-wired friends who might know where to find the kid. Or at least give us a head start. I’d love to get to her before the cops do. And before your sister. Who knows what she’s up to? You know those anti-choice nazis have some pretty good contacts in the police department.”

  “No, I didn’t. Something else to worry about. But hey, my sister’s no nazi, she’s just a misguided zealot. I think. I hope.” She took his hands, looked up into his face. Those eyes did appear guileless, at the moment. He leaned down and kissed her. “Goodnight, Jack,” she said softly, touching his face with her fingertips. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  He went down the stairs to his car, waved once, then got in, started up, and drove off. Lucy watched the car, and then the lights flickering through the trees, until he was gone. “Whew!” She gasped, grinning at her brown-eyed dog. “You like him, pup?” Nice to know she could still do that to a man, and that a man could still do that to her. After a while you start to wonder. Cool. She went back in and cleaned up, then checked the phone messages. There was Ellen, sounding desperate. “Damn,” Lucy said out loud. If she hadn’t been out partying she wouldn’t have missed the call.

  Ellen opened her eyes on a dingy room strewn with clothes, mattresses, and broken-down furniture. Her stomach turned queasily, and through a faint sedative fog the facts of her life shifted into focus: she was pregnant, she killed daddy, where was her bag with the DVD? She sat up, looked around. “Hey!” she said loudly, causing a few lumpy sleepers to stir across the room. “Where’s that mohawk-headed guy?” She got up, pulled on her clothes, then ran outside as her stomach churned more violently. She hurled a mess into the weeds in the back yard, then bent double and gasping, sobbing as the puke stench filled her nose, and all the bleak world settled down on her small shoulders. She stopped, hands on knees, calming herself. She stood up straight and turned around, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Not feelin’ so hot, eh?” said the girl with the dragon tattoo, who stood in the doorway. Ellen couldn’t remember her name.

  “I’m pregnant,” Ellen said. “It’s making me sick.” She pushed past the girl back into the house.

  “Oh man,” the girl said, not unsympathetically. “What a fuckin’ drag. Hey, I know where you can get an abortion really cheap.” She followed Ellen into the house.

  “Does that guy Kenny usually come back here, like, every day?” Ellen said. The two of them leaned against counters in the kitchen. A broken stove, no refrigerator, no lights, no glass in the windows, no doors on the cabinets, peeling linoleum on the floor, dirty and grimy and spiderwebby. “Actually, I’m not going to get an abortion,” Ellen said. “I think it’s wrong.”

  “Yeah, he’ll be back. So what, you wanna have a baby? My friend Arlene had one and she’s like, miserable. Livin’ with her parents and can’t do anything. Kid’s a—well, you know, a lot of responsibility.”

  “You got something better to do?” Ellen asked her. “I mean, there’s gotta be more to life than this,” she said, gesturing at the room.

  “Hey, you try getting your ass kicked all over the neighborhood by a drunken dad and see what looks better,” the girl said.

  “Hey, forget it,” Ellen said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well look who’s here!” said Dragon Girl. “Hey, slug, what’s happening.” It was Kenny, the mohawk monster. He came into the room rather solemnly, holding Ellen’s green pack out front delicately, as if it contained nuclear waste or highly flammable material.

  “Hi,” he said, then looked at Ellen, his expression serious, vaguely accusing. Scared. “I brought your pack back. Sorry I took it.” He gave it to her. She took it and unzipped it for a look. “Don’t worry. Everything’s in there.” He gulped. “I watched the—the you know.”

  “The DVD,” Ellen said.

  “Yeah. Last night. God, I didn’t know. I didn’t realize who you were. Not Alice. Ellen.” He looked at the other girl. “She’s like, the one who was in the paper. Remember, from Utah? They said she was probably in Seattle, and that she had—”

  “He used to rape me all the time.”

  “She stabbed her dad and it’s right on this DVD,” Mohawk said in a hushed voice. “The knife’s in there, too.”

  “Oh, man,” said Dragon Girl. “That is so weird.”

  “Man, I don’t know if—I don’t want the cops comin’ after us like we were, you know, involved or something.”

  “You want me to leave? Is that what you’re saying?” Ellen said. “Don’t want the killer chick in your house?” Her voice notched up. “Too heavy for you, Mr. Mohawk?” she said. “Well thanks for bringing my shit back. Do me a favor and don’t call the cops. They’ll never know I was even here.” Ellen stomped out into the back yard, slipped through the hedge and ran down the alley. A minute later she was on Broadway, pack on her back, nowhere to go. She started down the block.

  “Hey, you know, you might need these if you don’t want the cops to find you.” Ellen jumped. It was Dragon Girl, offering a black wool watch cap and a pair of sunglasses.

  “Hey thanks. You’re right. Probably every cop in town’s got my picture, huh?” She took the hat and pulled it on. “How’s it look?”

  “Goofy, but that’s OK. Try on the shades. Sun’s almost out.” Ellen put on the wraparound sunglasses. “All right. Certified punk disguise, girl,” said the girl. “So hey, what are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, maybe go to Canada. They got insurance up there.”

  “Not for Americans they don’t, I don’t think. Lissen, you wanna get somethin’ to eat. Cuppa coffee?”

  “So where’s your doofus friend with the mohawk?”

  “Kenny? Forget about him. Hey, don’t worry, he won’t say nuthin’. Hey in case you forgot my name’s Adrienne. Anyway he’s a geek but he’s all right. I mean, for a rich kid and all.” They walked down Broadway in the quiet early morning. The few people out and about looked like they’d been out all night, or slept under a bush. A block down the street they went into a coffee shop.

  “Morning, girls,” said the man behind the counter. He had five rings in his lips and nose, and five in each ear. “Hope you have money today, honey,” he said pointedly to Adrienne. She glowered at him.

  Ellen flashed a twenty. “No problem.” They looked at the menu and ordered coffee, bacon and eggs and toast and orange juice.

  “Well, Kenny may be all right, but I can’t go back there. I scared his ass. I think he thought I was gonna get him, too.”

  “Ellen—that’s your real name, right? You saw that place. What are you gonna do there anyway? You need someplace to really live. Man, I can’t believe you’re pregnant, from your Dad.”

  “But I was adopted. He’s not my real father, goddammit.”

  “Hey, hey, I didn’t know. Sorry. The paper didn’t say nothin’ about your bein’ pregnant. Or you bein’ adopted.”

  “My mom
didn’t tell the papers. But it makes a difference. To me anyways. But my mom’s a drunken dipshit. She liked to act like she didn’t even know he was...you know...messin’ around with me...but she knew all about it. I don’t know what she told the cops. That’s why...” The food arrived, and they stopped talking to eat.

  Five minutes into it Adrienne said, “Ellen, you must be starved. I don’t think I ever saw anybody put away breakfast that fast.”

  “I know, I know. You know what they say about eating for two?”

  “Yeah, right. Hey lissen, I know a place not too far from here where you could probably stay a night or two. I mean, if you don’t wanna get a cheap room or something.” Ellen shook her head. “It’s like, outta doors, but its safe. Least it was last year. I stayed there almost a month. Only people that knew about it then were like some friends of mine.”

  They made a plan for later. Adrienne left her in the coffee shop, and after while Ellen got up and left too. She put on her cap and shades and went out into the street, and spent the day roaming the stores and streets around Broadway, eyes peeled for cops, for those FBI guys, for Lucy, whom she half-hoped she’d see although she figured Lucy had probably given up on her by now. At six she and Adrienne met at the corner of Broadway and Madison, and Adrienne took her to the secret hide-out. That night Ellen slept with her head propped on the root of a tree, her body under a bush, behind a building at Seattle University. There were two other people sleeping in Heven, the name someone had scratched into the tree trunk. WELCOME TO HEVEN. They were boys about her age. Huddled in blankets a few feet away from Ellen, they shared a bottle of codeinated cough syrup and then passed out. She was wrapped in her clothes, clutching her pack, scared. Not of them, for they had nothing more than “Hi” to say to her, but of almost everything else. She took her last two valium just after hearing eleven chimes from a distant clock.

  At dawn she woke, put herself together, found an all night restaurant and had breakfast. Then she put her pack on her back and began to walk, ignoring the grogginess and the nausea and the pain in her neck. Watching for cops all the way, she walked all the way across Capitol Hill and then down by Lake Union and around the lake and through Gas Works Park and along the edge of the lake all the way to Fremont. In Fremont she ate again in a place that served Greek food, and then went up by the troll under the big bridge. She climbed up into the bridge understructure and up under a rafter she found a hiding place where no one would ever look. She stuck her pack way back deep in a recess in the bridgeworks, then climbed down and headed back into Fremont.

  On that second trip through Fremont, while furtively wandering, waiting for something to tell here what to do, she got the word. She saw a poster with her face on it, framed by the question, “Have you seen this girl?” and went over to have a closer look. There she was, with an 800 number underneath. She wondered if it was the cops, or maybe Lucy, or would it be her mother who’d answer if she called? She wondered how many of these posters had been put up, who did it, and when. She wondered where she should go next. She felt the baby in her stomach, and named her Lucy. Or Lucky if a boy. What luck, her life. Then she saw another poster six feet down the same graffiti-scarred wall. It was a rock n’ roll concert advertisement for a club called Moe, back up on Capitol Hill not far from Heven. The concert featured the comeback debut of the new band led by Timothy Yarber, formerly known as Chain Saw, former lead singer of The Wet Prophets. The new band was called Shard. She felt a rush, a thrill. Back in Utah a million years ago she had found in The Wet Prophets’ first CD, the words and music that made her feel, from the moment she heard them, that she was not alone in her misery. The concert was scheduled that very night. She would have to go back up to Capitol Hill. She could sleep under the same tree. Maybe tomorrow something else would happen. Meanwhile she took this as a sign.

  Shard. Lucy spotted the poster advertising a gig by the artist formerly known as Chain Saw in the middle of her afternoon chasing phantom teenagers around Capitol Hill, the U District, Fremont, and other street hangouts in search of Ellen. Jack the lawyer and would-be lover had set up an 800 number in his office with someone to answer it should it ring; and he had provided a couple of bodies to help distribute posters; he had done all he could, but nothing, no one seemed able or willing to clue them in to Ellen, except some nose, ear, and lipringed numbskull in a Capitol Hill cafe who reported serving her breakfast along with another teenage girl he’d seen around for a few weeks, and thought she was living on the street. Lucy spotted the Shard poster on a wall behind a supermarket not two blocks from the crash house where Ellen had spent her first night on the run, but Lucy had no way of knowing that, she only knew, and remembered with a mix of shame and amusement, the one night she’d spent in the arms of Mr. Chain Saw after watching his band blow half of hip New York out the window one night in a downtown club. Anyways for reasons chemical he had been one limp dude, and later had surfaced briefly in her life to apologize for turning her on to heroin on a night she’d been lost in this very neighborhood, Capitol Hill, on her last trip to Seattle. Ah, the bi-coastal life. Now here he appeared, postered up all clean with a new band and a gig this very night at Moe, the Capitol Hill club she’d heard about. She’d have to drag lawyer Jack out for a rock n’ roll night on the town, see how Mr. Saw’s doing. Or maybe leave Jack back on his island, see Chain—Timothy now—on her own, see what might develop—no, no, no, Lucy! she yelped at herself, he’s just a boy. What, two years since they met, he’s probably hit 25 by now. She’d definitely take Jack, introduce them. Maybe, who knows, maybe Ellen might show up. Lucy remembered with absolute clarity that first encounter with Ellen in the truck, when Chain Saw’s voice screamed out over the radio, bemoaning his sorry young fate, and she and Ellen had bonded in agreement that he understood the pain of life, and that his was a way cool band.

  Ellen mingled with the crowd standing in the pissing rain outside Moe. Over the front door some giant joker head grinned down at her, made her think about her little brothers. She kind of loved them even thought they were whining brats. She missed their whining. She’d been there half an hour. A couple of private cops prowled around, but they weren’t looking for her; and in her watch cap and shades no way they’d spot her even if they were. Problem was, you had to be eighteen to get in and she didn’t have any fake ID. It was almost 9:30 and the show started at ten. She lurked inconspicuously around the door, making herself scarce in the way she’d gotten good at the last few days. When a bunch of people created a critical mass at the door, and the ID and ticket dudes looked overwhelmed, she made herself small to the point of invisibility, found a seam in the crowded doorway, and slipped through it.

  Lucy arrived with the reluctant Jack, who’d confessed that he hadn’t been to a rock n’ roll show in at least ten years, around 9:45. Lucy wore black from head to toe. So did Jack. He looked really elegant, like a vampire—but an interesting one, the sort beset by 500-year old existential problems. The kind you’d like to have bite your throat. Bite mine, Jack. They looked over the crowd around the door. Jack said, “Hell, Luce, you sure you wanna do this?”

  “Hey, bear with me, grampa,” she said. ‘It isn’t so bad. Listen, this guy’s great, I tell you, and...”

  “I know, but rock n’ roll is a kid’s game, Lucy.”

  “Well, so I’m a kid at heart. Not a bad thing to be.” She neglected to mention that the last rock show she’d seen was this same guy, two years earlier, at the Crocodile Cafe down in Belltown.

  “Yeah, but I have to take a deposition at 8 am, and my knee hurts, and...”

  “Do me a favor, Jack. Shut up! I’m going in here. You don’t want to come, go find a ferry and go home, watch Cops or whatever it is you do weeknights.”

  “Hey, lighten up, Luce. I’m just griping for form’s sake. Let’s do it!” He took her hand and made an authoritative move towards the ticket window. Being six and a half feet tall, his authoritative moves were effective. Within seconds they had their tickets and rol
led doorwards with a stream of twentysomethings wearing everything from 1950s cocktail dresses to black leather. Not quite downtown New York, but definitely a step up from the grunge-plaid universe of Seattle a few years back.

  Inside, Lucy scoped the scene while Jack worked his way to the bar to get drinks. Crowded bar on the left, crowded stairs ahead, double doors on the right leading to crowded restaurant and soon-to-be crowded music room. The bodies pressed, thick, sweet, sweaty. The walls had been covered with all this weird shit from some new wave circus sideshow. Guys who picked up anvils with their dicks, or lit themselves on fire, or hung by their tongues nailed to a wall. The air reeked of spilled beer and cheap perfume. Another night in the rock n’ roll whirlwind. On the stairs, suddenly, Lucy saw her: Ellen, wrapped in dark glasses and a watch cap, but definitely her! How the hell did she get in here? “Hey, Ellen,” she shouted. No way she could hear over this din of canned music and loud chatter. Lucy started towards the stairs. Jack arrived at her side. “Hey, here’s a beer, Luce.”

  “There’s Ellen, up there,” Lucy said. Only now when she looked up Ellen was gone. “Damn, I just saw her!” she said.

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  “Without a doubt. She’s wearing like a dark blue hat, like those seaman’s type things, you know? And dark wraparound shades. I’m going up there. Is that the only staircase?”

  “You’re asking the wrong hombre, Lucy,” he said. “Never been in here. But there’s gotta be another one. No way the fire department would let them open an upstairs without two ways down. I’ll check in the restaurant. You go that way.” Lucy headed up the stairs, Jack went into the next room. She elbowed her way through the crowd—more odd collisions of grunge and pseudo-fifties cocktail garb, boys in thrift shop tuxedoes—and went up the stairs. On the mezzanine level a kind of general hangout area throbbed with kids drinking beer, and a couple of small rooms overlooking the stage and the music room had been sealed off for record company honchos or some sort of VIP geeks. Lucy strolled past the startled door boys into each, had a look around, and left, seeing no Ellen. She’d found some other way to disappear. Lucy shoved through the crowd to an open balcony overlooking the music room, planted her elbows on the railing, and scanned the mobbed floor below, in search of the black hat, the dark sunglasses of Ellen. Several hundred people faced a small empty stage. Recorded music blasted loud and relentless.