CHAPTER
SIX
Butch
January 13, 2017
Friday
It’s been twenty years since I punched somebody, and damn, I’ve forgotten how good it feels. When you spend your nineteenth birthday in Folsom State Prison, you’ve gotta learn how to fight. Or somebody bigger is gonna teach you. It’s trial by fire, especially with a crime like mine. Back there, trapped in Folsom’s warped pecking order, my position was clear: One step up from the child molesters and rapists. I’d learned that the hard way when a skinhead sliced my neck with a sharpened piece of plastic and called me a sicko. It hurt like hell, and I bled all over the place, but I managed one good shot that flattened him.
Anyway, one good shot to the kisser is all you need to earn respect in the joint. Especially if it’s the kisser of the biggest, baddest SOB you can find.
This punch—a fast left hook to the jaw—feels even better than that one. Because I’ve been saving up for it, but mostly, because it’s not me I’m fighting for. The man wobbles back a step, and I hit him again. This time he doesn’t get up.
“Are you alright?” I have to yell to the girl, because she’d run right past me. Or from me. Not that I’d blame her. She’s sitting on the sidewalk, head down between her knees. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look up, so I jog toward her.
“Hey, miss. What happened back there?” Her hands are shaking. Bleeding too. There’s a gash on her forearm I don’t think she’s noticed yet. “Do you want me to call the police?”
I pray to God she says no, because a yes means I’ve got to stick around. And that means explaining myself, telling the coppers I’m on parole. And that means they’ll call McElroy, wake him up at—what is it now, midnight?—and he’ll be pissed at me. The last thing I need is a cranky parole agent on my case. I’m sort of hoping she’s a hooker—this is the neighborhood for it—because she’ll send me on my way, and we’ll both pretend this night never happened. But the way she’s dressed I doubt it. What hooker wears Chucks?
“Is he…am I…who are you?” The girl finally speaks, even if it makes no sense, and she lifts her eyes to mine.
“Holy crap.” I recognize her, her eyes anyway, and I think I might be sick. Waffles don’t taste so good on the way back up, but I swallow anyway, my throat burning. She was a kid when I saw her last, but you don’t forget eyes like that. “I mean, uh, you can use my phone if you need to. You should probably get that looked at.” She follows my finger to the cut on her arm, and her whole body starts to tremble, but she doesn’t cry.
“I’m okay,” she says. She stands up, swaying a little, and I move to catch her before she falls. She grabs on to my T-shirt, leaving a bright red palm print that may as well be a scarlet letter. And I deserve it. I swear I’ve got the worst luck, because the sirens are coming this way. I couldn’t have been the only one who heard her screaming.
“I’m on parole,” I tell her. God knows why. Maybe I’m practicing. But she doesn’t freak out. At least not any more than she already seems.
“I was hitchhiking.” I guess we’re both confessing, but she says it more to herself than to me. I nod anyway. Hitchhiking? Maybe she is a hooker. Great. I can add that to my guilty conscience too. Because one thing is absolutely certain. Whatever she turned out to be, it’s partly my fault.
“Is he…?” She’s pointing over my shoulder, her mouth slightly open in surprise. Behind me, an engine revs over the wail of the sirens, and the fervent growl of it hits me right in the ribs. I realize then the guy I decked is awake. And barreling toward us in his jeep, tires screaming the warning cry of a banshee.
“Watch out!” I yell, giving her a shove as he peels past us and takes a hard right onto the street, flooring it. It’s the kind of thing Young Butch would’ve done. Did. Getting the hell outta Dodge. But now, I’m a cannonball. A sunk anchor, old and rusted and pinned down by the weight of guilt and fear. I’m virtually immovable. And apparently, so is she.
“Thank you,” she whispers, still breathless from the shock of it all. “Thank you so much.” I’m not sure what to say—I can’t make her take it back—so I just keep my mouth shut and pretend it doesn’t gut me to hear her say that.
The dark end of the street brightens in flashing shades of blue and red. It almost looks pretty, the way the colors glint against the wet pavement. Until I follow her eyes—Evelyn, that’s her name, I remember it now—to the dingy mattress cast out with the rest of the trash. The red light washes it the color of blood, and I picture her there.
Her. The girl I saved.
Her. The girl I strangled.
Both of them. Interchangeable faces. I can’t tell the difference.
“Show me your hands!” The cop barks, gun raised and pointed right at me. “Now, get down. Slowly, slowly!” I know what it looks like to him. And I wish I could tell you the way it feels. To be innocent but guilty at the same time. To be Butch Calder. On parole. Bloodied shirt. Bruised knuckles. And with a helluva lot of explaining to do.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Evie
January 13, 2017
Friday
I’m not dead. I am not dead. I mouth the words as I glance down at my forearm. My skin—pale as ivory and cold to the touch—seems to belong to someone else. A corpse, perhaps. The gash on my arm soaked through three cotton bandages. But I am not dead. And it’s just a flesh wound, according to the paramedic. It’s up to me if I want stitches. Regardless, I’ll have to go to the hospital. “Protocol in these kinds of cases.” That’s what the officer had told me.
“So…” Such a small word, but heavy with accusation, with judgment. The officer frowns at me as he speaks. “Dr. Maddox, I just want to be sure we’ve got this right. You were hitchhiking?”
The single nod I give him takes all the energy I’ve got left, and I start to wish I had just kept running.
“And that man over there…he just happened to show up at the right time? He didn’t hurt you?” He’s gesturing, but I don’t look. I can’t. There’s something about that guy. The guy on parole. I think I know him from somewhere. And every time I let my eyes steal a glance, he’s looking back at me from his undignified seat on the ground. The pavement is still damp, a minefield of puddles from the afternoon rain, and by now, I’m betting it’s soaked through his jeans.
“I’ve already told you. He didn’t do anything wrong. He helped me. You really should let him go home.”
“We will, ma’am. He’s not under arrest—not yet, anyway. He’s been detained until we nail down what happened here.”
I suppress a giggle at the image of the officer, hammer in hand, swinging away, but it bubbles up anyway, escaping from a dark place before I can contain it. The officer raises an eyebrow, my nervous twitter an apparent confirmation that I am most certainly unhinged. The hitchhiking shrink, I can practically hear him snickering about me over beers with his buddies.
“At least uncuff him then,” I say.
“Ma’am, I don’t tell you how to do your job, do I?”
That’s the sort of question that’s not meant to be answered. It’s a statement. A warning, even. But I can’t seem to help myself. The parts of me I usually keep tightly wound have come unloosed. “Thank God for that.”
He snorts with contempt, and I continue.
“Did you catch him yet? Danny? The guy who attacked me?” I already know the answer, because it’s not the first time I’ve asked. But it seems necessary to remind him the real bad guy got away.
He regards me blankly, but his jaw tightens. “We’re doing the best we can. With the description of the vehicle and the plate number you gave us, I’m sure we’ll find him. Plus, we might get a hit on the DNA if you scratched him good like you said. These perps are usually in the system. Repeat offenders, ya know?”
Of course I know, but I deny him the satisfacti
on of my agreement. “And my backpack?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m getting to that. You said he drove off with it. What exactly was in your bag?”
I pack it the same way every other Friday—pepper spray, a book to pass the waiting time, and a picture of me and Jared—but I keep that to myself, pretend to be uncertain. I’d told the officer it was my first time. Hitchhiking on a friend’s dare. “Uh, not much. Some pepper spray. A book, I think.”
“Any valuables? Cash? ID? Cell phone?”
I pat my jacket pockets—the right, then the left—feeling smart for the first time in hours. In the middle of a satisfied smile, I realize something’s missing. Left pocket. Driver’s license. I pull at the thin fabric, turning the empty pocket inside out. Panic starts to seize my chest again, squeezing tight. I must’ve lost it in the struggle.
My eyes pinball across the shadows, the shimmering pavement, the old, waterlogged mattress, landing squarely on the man who saved me. Three officers lord over him like trees, blocking his view. Their mouths are moving in turn, but I can’t make out the words.
“My license,” I say. “It’s not here.”
Frowning, the officer turns away, and my stomach shrinks in the clutches of reawakened fear. Danny has my license. My full name. I head back toward the darker end of the street scanning the ground with desperation.
“Hey, Calder,” the officer yells. “You take this lady’s license?”
Calder. My brain sticks on his name, repeating it with each step, but I still can’t work out the puzzle. I know him, but how? The officer stalks toward him in a huff.
“I asked you a question. Did you—”
“No, sir.” I can’t help but feel sorry for him. He has the look of a dog kicked too many times. I’ve seen it before from the men in my group. “That’s what the big house will do to ya,” George would say, the other men nodding at his sage wisdom.
A few feet from the mattress, black rubber marks the road where Danny made his hasty exit. I prod a half-emptied trash bag with my foot, and something small and fast scuttles into the shadows near the place he had me pinned. The concrete there is bare, expectant. Like it’s still waiting for me. And the wound on my arm is beginning to throb. Tangible proof. But the whole night feels like a dream. A dream I’ve had before. A dream upon waking with a new reality. Danny knows who I am. Danny will find me. And worse—I let him get away.
****
The officer motions me over to his patrol car, and I trudge past poor Calder, still handcuffed on the sidewalk. I feel the urge to speak to him, to ask him how I know him—at the very least, to tell I’m sorry for dragging him into this—but the words stick in my throat.
“Do you live alone?” the officer asks me. Assuming attack-cat Sammy doesn’t count, I nod bleakly. “Is there someone I can call?”
“There’s no one.” A hard sentence to hear and worse to speak it.
“Then I’ll drive you to the hospital myself. Do you have someplace you can stay tonight?”
“Other than my apartment you mean?”
“It’s probably best if you stay somewhere else until we get this scumbag. Especially since he seems to have driven off with your license.”
Feeling reprimanded all over again, my cheeks burn, and I press my cold fingers against them. “My mother-in-law’s, I guess.”
“You’re married?” The question prods at the dull ache in my chest, the one that never really goes away.
“Not exactly.” Widow. I hate that word—it makes me think of a spider, small, black, and deadly, spinning cobwebs around my heart—and I won’t say it. Not for him. “But I’ll need my car for the morning. Could you give me a ride…after?”
“Your car. Your car.” Repeating my words, the officer smirks at his buddies as they pull Calder to his feet and free his hands. “You might want to use your car from now on, Dr. Maddox. Like when you come to the station tomorrow to talk with the SVU detective.”
He juts his chin in Calder’s direction. “And you. Go home. Your PO will call you in the morning.”
The officer holds his door open for me. “Give me a minute,” he says, shutting me inside. I expect it to be warmer in here, but the air bites my skin, and I shiver. Calder walks past, head down and hurried, fists clenched. I’m sure he’s wishing he never met me…again?
I know him, but how? I ask myself for the second time, groaning at the certainty of another misplaced memory. I start to open the door, to call out to him, to thank him once more, but I think better of it. It’s raining again, and the clock on the dash reads 1:13 a.m. Thirteen. My unlucky number.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Evie
January 13, 2017
Friday
My fingernails have been cut and bagged and carted away for evidence. My clothing is gone too. They let me keep my Chucks at least, but I left in a donated sweat suit. My bruises have been catalogued. Photographed. All of them. And my mouth swabbed for the saliva Danny left behind.
Tonight can’t get any worse. I’ve been convincing myself of that for the last fifteen minutes, the entire winding drive up into the Oakland Hills. “Where the rich folks live.” That’s what my mother always said when I’d asked her, pointing up at the houses stacked like dominoes on the edges of the hillside. “You’re gonna live there one day, baby girl.” She’d said that too, when she wasn’t too stoned to make sense. Her noticing me had felt so good, I’d never told her I didn’t want to live there, lost in the thick fog where it seemed the whole world could slip right out from underneath you.
Like mother, like daughter. Danny’s in my head again. But he didn’t say that. He couldn’t have. And I wonder how something imagined can seem so real.
I make the turn, and I know she’s waiting for me. A single light—an unblinking eye—watches me from the window. Margaret Maddox is awake. And angry no doubt. This is what she’s left with. A sad sack of a daughter-in-law who she never wanted anyway. A daughter-in-law who takes rides from strangers. And nearly gets herself killed. A daughter-in-law who seduced her precious baby boy for his money. Never mind that Jared approached me at Claremont Country Club the spring I’d turned nineteen and wouldn’t take no for an answer from the girl who waited on snooty tables to put herself through college. Never mind that Jared insisted he pay my way through grad school with his ample trust fund. Maggie owned my PhD. She just didn’t know it.
The curtains stir, and I imagine her there, the anticipation of my arrival bitter in her mouth, sour as a lemon. She’d never said it to my face—“That girl’s a stray puppy, Jared. Be careful she doesn’t bite you”—but she had no qualms telling Jared just loud enough for me to hear every chance she got. Even the night after we got hitched on a beach in Mexico, thumbing our noses at the fancy Napa wedding she’d planned. And honestly, she hadn’t been wrong. Deep down, I am a stray puppy, and now she’s stuck with me.
I tug my duffel from the backseat, and Sammy lets out a low growl from his carrier. “It’s okay, buddy. We’re almost there.” My words are no comfort to either one of us, and by the time I mash the doorbell, he’s howling. I know exactly how he feels—there’s no place like home—but I couldn’t leave him behind. In two years, we’d never spent a night apart.
“Evelyn, my goodness. You look awful, just awful.” See what I mean. “What were you thinking, dear? Hitchhiking. Really?” I want to hate her, with her coifed hair the color of a fox and her acrylic fingernails, long and red as claws. But she has Jared’s face, Jared’s fawn brown eyes. Strong dislike is all I’ve ever been able to muster.
“Can I come in?” I raise my voice to drown Sammy’s meows, so plaintive I wonder if he’s channeling my soul.
“Of course, dear. But does that thing have an off switch?” She taps the carrier, provoking a hiss, then opens the door and beckons me inside. “Jared was always partial to dogs, you know.”
&n
bsp; I swallow hard. “I know.” The house is different than I remember—cold and vacuous. Two years since Jared’s been gone, and longer since Bill, Maggie’s grief feels as permanent and palpable as the polished hardwood under our feet. “It’s been a long time,” I say. “Thanks for letting me stay on such short notice.”
“Well, you’re still family. Even if I haven’t heard from you in…what’s it been? Six months?”
“I’m sorry, Maggie. It’s no excuse, but I’ve been really busy with the move.” It had been harder than I’d expected leaving the place where Jared lived…and died. Like losing him all over again.
“I still don’t understand why you left that house. It was beautiful—a little modest for my taste—but all those windows. And so close to the Claremont. You know how I like to play tennis there.”
I hang my head. “It was too…” Lonely. “Big. For just one person. And a cat.”
“So, moving…that’s your excuse?” She’s joking. But not.
“And work, of course.”
Maggie makes a noise from her throat, half-understanding, half-contempt. “I imagine so. Is that what you were doing tonight, Doctor? Recruiting a new patient?”
It stings, but I laugh, because it sounds like something Jared would say. “Touché.”
“So, why were you hitchhiking?” she asks, raising her manicured eyebrows. Maggie will never buy my I-did-it-on-a-dare story. And the truth? I’ve been hitching rides from strangers since your son died, hoping I’ll remember a murderer from twenty-three years ago, a murderer nobody knows exists. Nobody but me. That sounds even more preposterous.
“Is it okay if we don’t talk about it right now? I’m exhausted.”
“Well, are you alright? At least tell me that. Your arm. It’s…”
“A little worse for wear.” I show her the bandage. “But not that bad, all things considered. This bystander sort of saved me. He saw the guy trying to…” I couldn’t say it. Years of sex offender treatment, and I’m the one in denial. “…hurt me, and he intervened. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know…” I want to tell her I recognized him. I know him. But that would make me sound completely certifiable.
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 36
