I rap on the adjoining door. There is no chain on this one, just the scratched memory in the upper right corner where it used to be. “Carl, did you get your clothes together for me?” I rap again. “Carl?”
The door opens four inches. A hand thrusts out a pair of jeans and a shirt, the day’s bloody, filthy clothes. No underwear. For that, I’m grateful.
“Thanks.” Almost before I get the word out, Carl’s hand disappears and he’s clipped the door shut. “Take your pills!” I yell. No response. Sifting through the thin door, the ding, ding, ding and chortling laughter of a game show. Probably just as well if Carl and I don’t meet again tonight.
I’d divided the vending machine supplies between us already. We’d swiped a Coke and a beer each from the cooler in the trunk, more of our Walmart loot. I don’t feel like going through the motions of laying out the snapshots for him tonight. He hasn’t said another word about Nicole. I want to crawl into that unforgiving sponge of a bed and drift into black.
But first, the clothes. I’d shed my own on the bathroom floor right before a lukewarm shower. As I retrieve them, I catch myself in the cheap full-length mirror tacked to the back of the door.
I wouldn’t be scared of me.
Shoes off, without lifts, 5'2". Stripped of makeup, hair pulled into a messy bun, seventeen, eighteen years old at most. Slightly rounded cheeks. The tiny nose ring that says just starting to rebel. A Columbus Zoo T-shirt with a panda because pandas are cute and because I have no ties whatsoever to Columbus, Ohio.
Shorts cut right below the curve of my butt, revealing fading bruises on both knees. Ant bites peppering my ankles.
A vulnerable-looking girl is in that mirror, which is good because it’s better if people don’t know what’s coming at them. Some people would say I’m taunting Carl on purpose. That I should cover up at all times. That I would half-deserve what I got.
Before I go, I wrap my body in a black garbage bag and arm myself with a Ziploc bag of quarters. I feel for the die in my pocket. I grab the pepper spray out of my purse. I leave the gun.
20
It’s an uneasy little walk, even though the motel laundromat is only six doors down, in Room 18, just like the clerk said. The slight awning is no protection. On one side of me, rain slaps at my garbage bag raincoat; on the other, room windows gape black and lifeless.
I pass one lonely cell where a lump in bed is watching porn in the dark with the shades pulled tightly up so everyone can see. Only two other vehicles are parked near our rooms—what I’m guessing is the porn freak’s old Toyota Camry and a red Audi rental that doesn’t belong. The Audi seems vaguely familiar, like we passed it on the highway a couple of times. Or I saw it in a Super Bowl commercial.
I resist the urge to turn around and go back to my room. It’s only 7:30 and these are Carl’s best jeans. I have to stay on top of every little thing, including bloody clothes.
I twist the knob on Room 18. The proprietor has unlocked it for me as he promised. He didn’t bother to turn on the light. In pitch darkness, for a good two minutes, I brush my hands across the wall, finally fingering the switch five feet from the door. The fluorescent light buzzes awake, casting gray light on two old washers, one dryer with a spaceship window, a splotched concrete floor, and no one hiding in the dark.
I throw open the lid of the first washer. The second.
No roaches. No body parts or molding clothes. Scratched metal, spun clean. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. I divide our clothes between the two, let them fill up, punch buttons enough times to figure out that all of the speeds on both washers appear to be slow motion. Whatever, I’m happy not to be doing it by hand in the motel sink, especially after peering into the mud-and-dog-blood soup I’m creating. As an afterthought, I walk over and lock the door, kicking myself for not doing it right away.
While the washers churn, I plug five quarters into the empty dryer and slam the door. Maybe it will make a good space heater for this chill I can’t get rid of. It begins its rumble as I slide down to the gritty floor and lean my head back. I imagine Carl’s ghosts trapped inside, twirling head over heels.
* * *
—
I open my eyes to complete darkness. The dryer has stopped. My knees are still drawn up to my chest. I have no idea how much time has passed. Cold concrete under my butt, warm metal at my back. Head still clogged with sleep. I was lulled by the heat and thump of the machine, the chatter of rain, the idea of a locked door.
The washers are spinning out of control, like they might explode into a thousand pieces of shrapnel. The air is nauseating, sick with the smell of Tide and smoke.
The light is out. There is smoke. These facts unfurl like a pair of black bats, first one, then the other. The possibilities. Someone in here besides me. Something could be on fire. One of these things, or both.
I feel along the floor on both sides of me, desperately seeking the plastic bag with the pepper spray and the quarters I could sling full-force into a cheek, a crotch, a knee. There’s nothing but grit, a wad of hard gum, an old dryer sheet.
I begin to crawl quickly toward the door, disoriented, unable to see a thing.
My guess at the exact location of the door is pretty good, not perfect. I find the light switch first, flip it, and turn. The air is hazy but it’s easy enough to see Carl, sitting on top of the closest washer, offering me his lazy grin. In his lap, my bag of quarters.
In his hand, the source of the smoke.
“How did you get in here, Carl?” I can barely hold back my fury.
“I twisted the doorknob. The second time, I twisted it harder.”
“Why the hell did you turn the light off?”
He waves at a little path of smoke weaving between us. “So we don’t get arrested. Don’t you sleep better in the dark?” He draws on the roach. “This is good stuff. I’m liking you a little better all the time.”
I’d ask him where he got the pot, but I already know. He filched it from my suitcase. He’s puffing on the Larry G from the mommyzhelper.com guy at Rice Village who’d provided my driver’s licenses and license plates. The freebie sample because I was such a good customer. Larry G turned out to be mellow, all right, just not a jazz CD.
“Come on up,” Carl says, patting the other washer. “We’ve got five minutes left on the spin cycle.”
“That is not my pot,” I say.
“Of course it isn’t.”
“You need to stay the hell out of my suitcase, Carl, or we are going to have a big problem.”
“Ditto.”
Despite his retort, Carl’s body language appears docile, unspooled by the dope. I push myself up onto the other washer. He hands me the roach. I hesitate before taking a deep drag. It’s been two years. I’d stopped anything that could affect my focus. But now? Now I think I need to do whatever it takes to bond.
“Who is the other ghost?” I ask. “The one who got in the car at Mrs. T’s.”
“Who said he’s a ghost?” He blows a snaky stream of smoke. “His name is Walt.”
“Is he…here right now?”
“Walt’s back in the room watching Family Feud. Refused to change the channel to Discovery. I took a walk.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Long time. I shot his picture once in Big Bend. We got drunk a few times.”
“What does he look like?”
“Well, he doesn’t run marathons. Used to drive a rig. Likes people to buy his beers for him.”
I take another puff. Then another. Decide not to ask if Walt’s always been invisible, even when bellied up to the bar. If Walt’s transparent even in the pictures Carl took of him.
“And…the other one?”
“She took off an hour ago. Allergic to dog hair and smoke, who knew? Says Family Feud is for morons. She’s always pissed off about
something.” He takes the roach from me and has another drag. “She doesn’t like me to talk about her to other people.”
“Did you take her photograph, too?”
“Probably. She’s a beauty. Pretty lips. Like yours.”
“Are you playing with me, Carl?”
“A little,” he admits. “I’ve got a new condition for you.”
* * *
—
“How’s Barfly doing?” I’m whispering into the phone although I’m not sure why. There is a wall and a Door Jammer between Carl and me, and he was snoring before I left his room at ten. What do I care if Carl knows I’m checking in on the dog?
“He’s great. Sleeping like a dog. I stuck my good luck teddy bear in his cage.” Daisy is just as chipper at midnight. “We’re real happy with his progress. Aunt Kiwi says it’s because he’s so young. She expects a full recovery.”
“OK, then. That’s excellent news. I hope you can get some sleep.”
“Oh, and tell Mr. Smith thanks again for slipping me the twenty-dollar bill for my Harvard fund. I take the PSAT next week. He didn’t have to give me any money. I’m full in love with y’all’s dog. I’d take care of him for nothing.”
“Mr. Smith.” I’m drawing a blank.
“Your father?”
The fake name I gave her.
“Yes, of course. I’ll tell him.”
Carl’s play money, now down to $10. Carl, whose new condition is that he wants to pan for gold with the sauté pan he stole from Mrs. T’s.
I want to give Daisy a quick lesson about why Harvard does not choose sunburned girls named Daisy from Waco, Texas, who read smutty romance and love dogs in their spare time, even though they make better people. About how all the stupid reasons that Harvard won’t choose her—those are the reasons the Carls of the world will. But I don’t. Instead, I thank her for tucking her cellphone number into my hand back at the clinic, for letting me call so late.
“Good night, Daisy,” I say.
I pry open my laptop lying on the bed beside me. Something Carl said has been niggling at me since we stood in the desolate field of that memorial.
I tap into the motel WiFi. To hell with using my computer only for emergencies. It’s taken less than forty-eight hours to convince me that being disconnected from the world would be just as dangerous. I’m going to trust that the encryption tool I downloaded two weeks ago will hide my location.
A few computer strokes, and I have my answer.
I wanted Carl to be lying about the screaming rabbits.
But he wasn’t.
TITLE: THE BRIDE
From Time Travel: The Photographs of Carl Louis Feldman
Calvert, Texas
Chromogenic print
Photographer’s note—I loved her the best of all the girls on the block. I didn’t expect to be enticed by all that sexy white lace. I shot her from every angle, every curve. She stared back like the proud bride she was, almost daring me, even when it began to rain. She looked more vulnerable then. I could see the cracks in her makeup. I knew she didn’t stand a chance. She’d soon be a skeleton like the rest.
21
For the last half-hour, Barfly’s nose has been thoroughly fluffed and pollinated by the wind. He is still roving back and forth between the two backseat windows, sticking his head out, as if there isn’t a ghost passenger named Walt to step over or eighteen delicate stitches holding together a hole in his side.
Daisy threw in the teddy bear. No long goodbyes. No chance for Carl to tug playfully at that pretty braid. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this earlier—the likelihood of Carl scouting victims other than me. At the least, seeking cheap thrills.
Carl and I, we’re both a little queasy and hungover from the Larry G. We overslept. The bumps on Highway 6 are stirring the pot. Carl’s line, not mine. He hasn’t been too chatty today after the grumpy acceptance of his budget breakfast: a bruised apple from the Motel Casa Blanco lobby bowl and a generic granola bar. He is insisting that we stop off at some point and pick up quart-size plastic bags as part of his nonsensical plan to pan for gold, which reminds me he didn’t return my Ziploc of quarters.
I half-regret sharing the pot. It made Carl open up a little last night but has ramped up my paranoia. It feels like I’m driving ten miles faster than the speedometer says. I’ve flipped my head around twice because I actually thought I heard someone mutter in the backseat.
“You’re in a pissy mood,” Carl had grumbled minutes ago.
Maybe that’s because I know the bloody mess you made down the road, Carl. We’re only a half-mile from the second red dot on the map, a tiny town that is about a sixty-mile shot south of Waco.
I don’t know exactly why I call them red dots. It’s just better than the coldness of female victims. The titillating nature of dead girls. I don’t want to ever feed the world’s ravenous appetite for smooth white skin left to rot. I will never write a book about my sister. None of my files, about any girl, woman, female, victim, will ever be public.
I tell myself that people can’t help their ghoulish curiosity. They are just too removed. It would take about ten minutes for any normal human being to throw up in my cold, dark cave of a storage unit after just a brief examination of the hard stuff.
Normal people would never be the same if they spent even a little time with a grieving father who hears his daughter scream for him every time he sleeps, in a bar with drunk homicide cops telling jokes to forget, with a serial killer who doesn’t seem to care about anything other than where his next sweet tea is coming from.
“Calvert, Texas,” Carl says lazily, reading the sign, as I slow my speed. “Pop one-one-oh-oh. This place used to have the largest cotton gin in the world.”
I signal, and turn left off the historic main street.
He’s talking about a cotton gin in the 1800s. I’m picturing the day in the twenty-first century when news trucks and reporters were crawling all over this town like roaches. The crime scene photos, the ones I bribed a low-level Texas Rangers employee to copy for me. A horror show, and the victim wasn’t even in them.
He’s wrong about me being in a pissy mood. I’m far, far past that today. “So you know Calvert?” I make it sound casual.
“Bunch of beautiful ladies, barely breathing, almost bones. Jesus, look at your face. I’m talking about the Victorian architecture. It’s a cemetery for it. Or a decaying art gallery. Take your pick. Most of Victorian-era Texas is raked over, but not in Calvert.”
“Her name was Vickie,” I say furiously, pulling up to the curb. “We’re here.”
“Is this one of your damn red dots?”
I switch off the ignition. Carl is staring at the chaotic explosion of gables, cupolas, wings, and bays that in 1902 was dubbed Queen Anne by its architect. Eight years ago, a caustic media renamed it Bloody Victoria—Bloody Vick for short.
Now Bloody Victoria looks beaten by a lover. Scabbing white paint, plywood-bandaged windows, broken spindles, scratched curlicues, missing scalloped shingles.
“If it makes you happy, I remember this house,” Carl announces. “Used to stop off here in Calvert every now and then to document the slow demise of this street of ladies. I called this one The Bride. All that lace and trim. Always my favorite. Got a job off it once. Spent a whole morning shooting it for an old lady in a nursing home who used to live here. She wanted a painting done for her room. Her nephew in California was pestering her to sell the place, give him the dough. Wonder how that turned out.”
Not well, Carl. The neighbors remember you, too—the man with the camera peering in these windows just days before Vickie Higgins disappeared. One of them wrote down your license plate. Police tracked you down. They stopped your pickup while you were out on bail before the Nicole Lakinski trial and pummeled you with questions.
Then the prosecutor fir
ed shots at you in depositions. He asked the police to interview your little old lady in the nursing home, but, not surprisingly, she couldn’t remember. The judge ended up declaring that any mention of Vickie at Nicole’s trial would be prejudicial. So here you are, Carl, still free.
I shut down the speech in my head and remind myself to breathe as I crack open the car windows. “Barfly, you’re going to stay here, OK? I don’t want you to pull your stitches.” I adjust the teddy bear a little closer to his head and those soft eyes stare at me with more affection than my last boyfriend did. Only Andy had looked at me that way.
Don’t get attached, Barfly. I don’t know how this is going to end.
“There’s a real estate agent on the front porch. We’re a half-hour late. Just follow my lead. Whatever I say, nod your head. Whatever you remember, wait until we’re back in the car.”
“You’re the boss. Look, she’s waving.” Carl cooperatively waves back.
We walk across the bare lawn in silence. I have desperate hope for this red dot. There is a room inside this house that knows terrible things. I’m going to make Carl stand smack in the middle of it. He is going to hear Vickie’s screams.
The real estate agent is balancing a floppy straw hat while gingerly walking down the threadbare carpet of moss on the front stoop. A cool cave is visible underneath the rotting porch—a place my sister would have dragged me to play Trolls Under the Bridge. She liked to hear me squeal.
“You’re late,” the agent says brusquely. “I’m Trudy. Welcome to Calvert. It’s a lovely little place to escape suburbia. Not so grand now, but back in the Victorian era, this was the fourth largest city in the state of Texas. Downton Abbey had nothing on Calvert but a radically different take on vowels. This home is magnificent, a rare trip back in time. Well worth the investment you will need to put into it.”
Not a single word about murder in a town that usually has zero. And just a hint that fixing up this million-dollar mansion could cost at least twice that.
Paper Ghosts Page 8
