by Skylar Finn
She stopped and stared at Harper and me. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Ain’t you the cops?” She let herself behind the counter, grabbing an apron off a peg as she went. “I already done talked to the cops once. I’m not likely to talk to you again. I’m a minor; I should have my lawyer present. I don’t know who you think you are, coming down here and bothering me at work. You gonna show up at my school next?”
I was almost impressed with her open and insolent defiance. Dana scurried off and started making Harper his milkshake.
“We’re not the police,” I said.
She took me in with a single glance. The kind of quick up-and-down, fast judgment that could cut a young girl in half. At school, she was probably terrifying. She reminded me of a cartoon mouse pretending to be a tyrant. I could see how she might frighten another child, but to me, she seemed small and ridiculous.
“Who are you, then?” she asked.
“We’re from the FBI,” I said, flashing my shield.
Her shoulders sagged. If her mom and her boyfriend were into drugs, it was likely to have more of an effect on her than the local cops showing up. “We’re looking for Brittany. Anything you and Dana can tell us—”
“—will supposedly help you get her back,” said Crystal. “I’ve heard all that before. That other lady, what’s her name? Agent Clown? She came around here with that same spiel. And is Brittany back yet? I don’t see her anywhere around here, do you? We’re never going to see Brittany again.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Harper.
Crystal looked him up and down slowly. It was the predatory glance of a much older woman. Harper gazed back at her, unfazed.
She smiled a cat’s satisfied grin. “Nobody took that girl,” she said. “Haven’t you met her mama? She obviously ran away.”
“Did Brittany tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to! She’s talking to that boy every day, then all of a sudden, she up and disappears? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.” She glanced at me dismissively. “Let alone a whole army of cops and feds.”
“Did you know anything about the guy she was talking to?”
“I highly doubt she was talking to a guy,” she said. “If you catch my drift.”
“Enlighten us,” said Harper.
“I talk to men all the time on the Internet. They pretend they’re my age, and then I get them to send me stuff. I send them pictures I took from online, tell them that it’s me. They don’t know the difference. I told her it wasn’t that little bitch ass Peter from school, but she just believed whatever she wanted to believe. She thought she was in love.” Crystal rolled her eyes with disgust. “They’re all the same. Nobody loves you.”
Nobody loves you. It was the ones like this girl—even more than all the vanished Brittanys of the world—who kept me awake at night.
“And you think this person—this man—pretending to be Peter Moss took Brittany?”
“I don’t think he took her, per se. I don’t think he had to. I think even if she saw he was thirty years old, she probably would have jumped in his pick-up truck and took off. Anything to get away from Mrs. Hayes. That old bitch. I’d have done the same.”
“Brittany didn’t talk about him with you? Did she share any of their conversations?”
“She showed me all their dumb conversations. That’s how I knew it wasn’t no teenager. Kids don’t talk that way. It was clearly a man, pretending to be a teenager. Any idiot could have seen that. If she did get taken, it was her own fault.”
Behind her, Dana gasped, looking visibly stricken. Crystal glanced over her shoulder at the sound. When she saw Dana’s expression, she rolled her heavily mascaraed eyes. “It is, though. And you know it is. You’re too good to get into trouble, and I’m too smart. I know I make fun of you for being such a goody-two-shoes, but you would never go off with a strange man. Brittany’s so dumb she’d talk to anybody who paid attention to her. And you know why?”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Daddy issues, with a capital D. She’s desperate for male attention. That sad sack of a stepdad don’t pay no attention to her. Her mama pays too much. It’s a simple equation.” She gave a little nod as if to say, “cased closed.”
I wanted to tell her to stay in school—her deductive skills were exceptional; she could have a promising career in law enforcement—but I already knew how such a suggestion would be met: with unbridled contempt and utter indifference.
“You don’t have any information on this person? Anything that could help us catch him? Anything she might have told you before—”
“You don’t think if I knew I would tell you? I want Brittany to come back just as much as Dana here. I don’t like to think of her holed up in the city someplace doing weirdo shit with some creep. But I don’t know anything about it. Brittany had her secrets, too.”
With that, she turned abruptly away and disappeared into the kitchen. I guess maybe she was cooking after all. Dana slid Harper’s milkshake across the counter, looking up at him timidly, before turning her attention to me.
“Ma’am? I mean, Officer—Agent—”
“Yes?”
“Did you still want your fish sandwich?” she asked.
“Wow, she’s a real piece of work,” remarked Harper when we were back in the car.
“I found her extremely cynical for someone so young,” I said.
“Do you think there was anything to what she said?”
“No,” I said bluntly. “I don’t.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I don’t think there is a such thing as a child running away with someone two or three times her age,” I said. “Even if that’s what she believed.”
“Obviously not. But do you think it’s more likely than the family being involved?”
“At this point,” I said, “I’m willing to believe anything.”
It was still very early in the case and I already felt disillusioned. Something about a kid as young as Crystal being as jaded as she was, just got to me. And that was before we discovered what had become of Brittany Hayes, which was sure to be something thoroughly unpleasant.
It was for that reason that I got much drunker than I meant to that evening after I got back from the hotel. I finished the flat pint bottle of Jim Beam, sitting in the chair in the corner of my room, taking pensive little sips as I looked out the window to the water of the river that ran beneath the dam.
I don’t know how long I sat that way when I heard a soft knock at my door. I jumped about a mile. My reflexes were over-developed, my nerves frayed. I didn’t know how to calm down. I never knew how to calm down.
I went to the door, unsurprised to see Harper. He had his customary six-pack in hand. He raised it, leaning against the door frame in the hallway. He looked a little over-served himself. I opened the door wider and stepped aside.
“Sorry,” he said. “I knew you’d be awake.”
In my experience, there were two kinds of heavy drinkers: blatantly sloppy alcoholics who stumbled all over themselves and people who only seemed to grow more composed with every drink they took.
Harper was the second kind. He went over and sat in the chair in the corner of my room, the one I had just vacated. He was still dressed and looked like he could have sat in on a briefing, except that he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“What have you been up to?” he asked conversationally.
“Drinking,” I said.
“Same here.” He flipped the top off one of his beers. “You know, it’s a commonly held misconception that beer before liquor causes you to be sicker. I like to begin my evenings with liquor and end with a nice, refreshing beer.”
“That’s pretty hardcore.” I went over and sat on the bed closer to him. “I start with liquor and end with despair.”
“A buddy of mine in the field office in Chicago told me he uses guided meditation techniques to fall asleep at night,” he said.
“That’s c
ute,” I said. “Does that actually work?”
“No,” he said. “He uses meditation; then, he uses Ambien.”
“I see. Do you ever wish you’d done something different?”
“Like what?” He loosened his tie and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Just as quickly, he glanced away, as if he didn’t like the reminder of what he saw there.
“I don’t know. Opened an ice cream shop. Joined the circus. Anything but this.”
“I don’t know that I could have done anything else,” he said. “I have an inclination toward analysis and a strong stomach. What else is there?”
“I wanted to be a psychiatrist.” I shrugged. “Sometimes, I think about that.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I met somebody who made me see things differently. Someone who thought I might have a gift for forensics.” I smiled ruefully. “If there is such a thing.”
“I think there is.” He rested the bottle contemplatively on the inside of his foot. “If anyone has it, it’s you. I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. Not that I know you well enough to say.” He smiled ruefully. He looked out the window at the river, the same view I had become so lost in earlier. I wondered if he saw anything in the swirling icy water outside that I did not, or if the view was just as bleak for him as it was for me.
Against my better judgment—and my typical rules for drinking—I finished the six-pack with Harper. I ended up lying on my side in the fetal position, curled into a ball, my hands in a prayer position folded neatly between my knees. I was laughing so hard at something he’d said that my hair spilled over my face, the kind of hysterical laughing that can just as easily turn into emotional, drunken sobbing if you’re not especially careful. I was always especially careful.
Harper kept saying, “No, I’m telling you. I’m telling you the truth—” but by the time he got to this point in the story, I couldn’t even remember what the story had been about.
The whole time in my mind, I kept repeating to myself like a mantra: Don’t sleep with Harper, don’t sleep with Harper, don’t sleep with Harper. It’s hard to deal with the things we see. Chasing serial killers, looking at mutilated bodies, contemplating the mindset of a child rapist or a serial molester. A lot of us become incredibly destructive. The only thing worse than drinking myself half to death or drugging my way through this would be sleeping with my partner.
He fell asleep sitting upright in his chair, like a giraffe. Do giraffes sleep standing upright, like horses? Or do they fold their graceful limbs beneath their bodies, resting their long necks along the ground?
The next morning, sunlight streamed through the window, startling me out of my half-remembered and anxious dreams about rivers and water and missing girls. I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep. I checked to make sure my clothes were still on. At least I’d accomplished that much.
I got up while Harper was still sleeping and got pancakes to go from Bob’s Big Boy next door. I got an extra order for Harper with a side of bacon. I didn’t know how hungover he was, but if he felt half as bad as I did, he could probably benefit from the grease.
When I got back to the room, he was already showered and dressed, adjusting his tie in front of the mirror over the bureau. I placed the bag on the dresser alongside two steaming-hot cups of coffee. He glanced over at it.
“Thanks,” he said. “You ready to go to CARD headquarters?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”
We didn’t talk about the previous evening, for which I was grateful. Either he was as skittish as I was when it came to talking about feelings, or just accustomed to dealing with skittish women. There was something else bothering me that he’d mentioned before, something that had been tugging at the corners of my mind ever since. I waited until we were in the car to ask him. It’s always easier to have these conversations in a car, I’ve found. You’re both looking forward through the windshield, and it frees you from the potential awkwardness of having to look directly at the other person.
“What did you mean the other day?”
He glanced at me mid-yawn as he scratched at the stubble accumulating on his chin. He hadn’t gotten around to shaving yet. I tried not to notice his eyes. He had kind eyes. “What did I mean about what?”
“About this case. Something about it being…strange.”
“Oh, that’s right.” He paused, contemplating my question. “I’m not sure. I guess it’s just a feeling. You ever get one of those?”
“I get them all the time,” I said.
She heard the sound before anything else. The sound of stones at her window. It was the dead of night, nearly dawn. She’d been fast asleep before then.
It was him. She knew it. He’d come for her at last.
Whenever Brittany—that idiot—had started talking to that guy online, she couldn’t believe it. Who would want that flat-chested baby? She was completely naïve, a total nitwit. Crystal knew she was the more attractive of the two. So how had Brittany pulled some older guy and gotten him totally obsessed with her? Obsessed enough to take her away from her shitty family and over state lines, risking kidnapping and statutory rape charges and who knew what else.
Crystal knew it was only her due when she met him outside the gas station that day. She bet that Samuel made whatever ugly old man was catfishing Brittany look like Danny DeVito by comparison. He looked like a movie star.
Crystal sat up in bed. She peered through her window. There was no one there.
She sat back, confused and disappointed. Had she dreamed it? Was it just what she wished would happen, rather than what actually had?
Secretly, though she would never admit it to anyone, when she had found out that Brittany had been “kidnapped” (run away, Crystal would always spitefully correct whoever said it in her mind, whether it was her friends, teachers, or the news), there was a part of her that had been jealous. Crazy, undeniably, and painfully jealous. It sounded insane, but only if you believed for one second that Brittany had actually gotten kidnapped. It was just because she was young. But not really that young. It’s not like she was eight and disappeared from a playground when her mom turned her back.
Anyone who knew Brittany Hayes or even just a little bit about her knew that she was deeply unhappy, that she hated her mom, that she made fun of this town and everybody in it every chance she got. Anyone with half a brain in their head could figure out that Brittany didn’t get taken. She ran away.
She found someone who liked her, and she stuck out her thumb and hitched a ride. It was as simple as that. Crystal would have done the same thing herself the second she got the chance. If she ever got the chance.
When she met Samuel, she thought this might be it. She thought that he might be her chance. A way out of this town and her depressing life that she could never seem to escape no matter what she did. No matter how many drugs or how much booze or how many cigarettes she smoked behind the gym. No matter how many stupid football players she let touch her just to feel something other than what she felt.
It always came back to this: waking up in this bleak little depressing room, damaged by mold from years of living on the river through flood after flood. The peeling paint, the smell of meth and cigarettes baked into the walls. Into the very foundations of the house, probably. Even when she turned eighteen, what would there be for her then? No college fund like Brittany and Dana. No scholarships. No job, either. She’d probably have to go to work selling drugs for Randall. And then where would she be?
She could see it already. Knocked up by eighteen, just like her mama. Stuck in the same small town forever, never to escape. Raising a mouthy little daughter just like her. Her karma for being a loser.
It was then that she heard it. The rumbling of an engine. It was so distant, at first she wasn’t even sure she heard it. She thought maybe she imagined it, the way she’d imagined the sound of sleigh bells the night before Christmas when she pretended she could hear Rudolph and Santa Claus, Do
nner and Blitzen, and all the rest land on the roof of her house. Back when she still believed in things.
But no, this was real. It was the sound of an engine idling, and it was definitely coming from somewhere outside. She sat up again.
Quick as a bolt of lightning, she was out of bed. She crawled halfway under the sagging springs of her mattress, barely elevated off the floor by a cheap Walmart frame, and grabbed her gym bag.
If I come for you, don’t bring your phone. They can find you that way.
She glanced over at it and thought about bringing it anyway. What did he know? She could turn off Find My Phone. But maybe he’d find out and get mad. Maybe he would bring her back. Then she’d never get away.
Don’t bring anything at all. If you really believe I can do anything, you won’t need it. That’s how I’ll know that you believe you can do anything, too.
She didn’t like the idea of leaving her house without so much as a change of clothes, but it wasn’t like she had anything of value, anyway. Her grandmother’s jewelry? Pawned. Along with everything else in the house that wasn’t nailed down or on fire. The only things the Deakins family could accrue were things that held no value to anyone in the first place.
Kind of like me, she thought bitterly. Then she shook herself of the thought. That wasn’t true. She had value to Samuel. He saw what she was really like. Her true soul. Wasn’t that how he put it?
Smiling, she put on shoes and a jacket. She could bring those, at least. Then she crawled through her bedroom window just like she had a hundred other times, even though she knew her mom did so many downers at night she’d sleep through a tornado and Randall spent every night on the couch in a coma. It was just part of her ritual. And she hoped that tonight, it would be for the very last time.
She ran around the back of the house and down the steep hill to the street, her breath making gray clouds in the chill night air. And there, under a velvet sky strewn with stars like they had come out just for her, he was waiting. The engine idled, expelling great clouds of fumes into the sky. It was like a chariot, just for her.
