The One That Got Away

by Joe Clifford

  “Cole is practically Evie Shuman’s stepson, her boyfriend’s kid, so no. And coincidences don’t hold much water in a court of law.”

  “Have you talked to Kira’s friends? Meaghan, Trista, the others? Been out to their clubhouse in Plotter Kill?”

  “I’ve done my job, yes. I’ve been to Plotter Kill. I’ve interviewed all her friends. Every alibi checks out.” Riley swept his mangled, sweaty hair back off his brow. “Right now I have one concern: keeping the DA from shipping Benny Brudzienski down to Jacob’s Island. Do I think Benny killed Kira Shanks? I don’t know. His blood is in that room. So is hers. The only two positive IDs we could make. Besides a couple long-haul truckers halfway across the country when it happened.”

  “How’d you get Kira’s DNA if you never found a body?”

  “Body?” he spat. “No one’s ever finding a body. Kira Shanks was dumped in the river and dragged out to sea. You know how many bodies fishermen snag each month? There was a lot of rain that November. If she had been buried in the ground, we’d have found her. Once we didn’t recover Kira’s remains after a few weeks, I knew we’d never find them.”

  Riley reached around her for the bottle. “We got Kira’s DNA from her parents. And Benny spent so much time with doctors, hospital practically had his blood on tap.” Riley turned away, as if he had to think about whether to disclose this next part. “There’s no nice way to say this—Kira was promiscuous. She slept around, bedded half the men in this town. Even if we had found her body, I don’t know what it could’ve told us. And before you ask, yes, every one of these men has been cleared.”

  “Any names you want to share?”

  “Why don’t you start with your cousin’s boyfriend?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “There are no saints in this, Alex. You should know that better than anyone.”

  BENNY BRUDZIENSKI

  I hear Dad talking on the phone. It is the hospital. They want to ship me off and make me someone else’s problem. They use big, long words to describe what is wrong with me. Dad says I am getting worse, and I know it is true because I cannot do the few things I used to be able to do. My hands do not always move the way I want them to. I can still walk, sit up, use the bathroom on my own, but it is getting harder, all of it, this life. Sometimes I get stuck in time, and it feels like I am living the same day over and over. I want to quit. I feel alone. They are scared of me. Not because I would ever hurt them but because I remind them of the parts of themselves they do not want to see. We are family and share the same blood. They worry my sick will get on them.

  Mom was sick but it was different from the sick I have. I miss her. When I am gone, they will not miss me. They will be relieved. Speaking has become impossible for me. Even the one or two words I used to be able to sputter out. I do not try anymore. No more stuttering, no more stammering. No more standing and staring into space like a fool. There is nothing I can do about it. Thinking too hard makes my eyes roll up into my head. My eyeballs flutter so far back I can almost see my brain. I wish I could. Maybe then I could see what is wrong back there and fix it. I am good at fixing things with parts and gears, but the human brain does not work like that.

  No one tells me Mom is dead. They think I would not understand, that my days could continue and I would never notice my mother is gone. Even if the words do not always follow the right path, get jumbled and mixed up on their way to my brain, eventually I can put them in the right order and reassemble the pieces. I can make sense of things in my own crooked way. I know what cancer is. I know what dying is. When you live inside your head you have nothing but time to figure these things out.

  I often lose track of time. I do not know if this is a new problem or if it has always been that way, because that is how time works. It goes forward. Sometimes I feel like I am in two places at once. I am still young carrying firewood, or I am with Kira under the bleachers, or I am watching the bad men do bad things, even though I am not there now. I am here. Outside my window, I watch the men on tractors till the fields. I watch the big black crows.

  I miss my friend. I will go see her.

  I find my bicycle, wrapped like a pretzel around the old oak tree by the barn. It has been smashed with a rock. The chain is broken and the tires are slashed. Wren did this. He hates me, and he is mad I stopped working my jobs in town. Now he has to see me all the time. He thinks because I am sick that I am weak. I am not weak. When he was playing football at the school he did not have to look at me. Now he cannot escape me. Sometimes when he looks at me I know he wants to smash my head with a rock like he did my bicycle. It makes me sad because I knew him first. Wren does not know this but when he was a little baby, Dad and Mom used to let me hold him, play with him, take him outside, and we were like regular brothers. He loved me then. He would laugh if he knew that he used to look up to me. There are many years separating us. His first word was “Ben.” No one talks about that anymore, and he would not believe me even if I could tell him these things. No one wants to be reminded of the things they cannot change. I used to put him on my shoulders, back when Dad and Mom trusted me and still thought I might become whole. We would run through the fields, Wren and me, and he would howl with laughter. I held his legs tight so he would not fall. I never let him fall. Sometimes when he is staring at me, I see the murder in his eyes. I wonder if a part of him, way down deep where you cannot see, remembers me from before, if only in flashes of light you cannot describe because the words for that color do not exist.

  It is raining and I walk slow along the old roads. I am wearing a tee shirt underneath my bibbed overalls but no jacket. I keep my pine oil toothpicks and spearmint chewing gum in the pocket. The cloudburst erupts. It was not raining when I left and it did not smell like it would. I can usually smell when it will rain or snow. The air tastes different. Maybe that is another part of my brain that is not working anymore. I should have worn a coat. I want to see Kira. I miss her. I do not want her to think I forgot about her. There is scratching at the base of my skull, like rodents gnawing holes in the grain sack. How many times have I made this trip?

  The winds begin to blow and electricity fills the air. Then comes the thunder and lightning. Runoff water gurgles along gullies, carrying twigs and broken sticks. My boots and socks get wet. I see a tunnel and sit inside until the storm passes. There is a dead raccoon, fat and waterlogged. The water rushes past fast but the bloated body does not move. It must have been hit by a car and then crawled in here to die. No one will come to look for it. I could die in here too. No one would look for me either.

  When the rains stop, I start walking again, and I make it to the center of town, past the Dairy Queen and Dollar Store, past the church on Alling Street with its statues of angels carved in the stone. I keep shuffling along, past the library and the bank and the Price Chopper. In the grocery store parking lot, a group of boys sits on the back of a pickup. Even though it is cold, they are drinking beer and playing their radio loud. I am freezing, shivering so hard my teeth keep chattering and clamping on my tongue. They are laughing at me. I wonder what it feels like. Being normal, belonging, laughing at something lesser. One of the boys throws a bottle at me. To see if I will move. Then they all do because I am standing there staring. I am an easy target. It does not bother me, and I do not get sad when they call me names. I am different. Everyone fears the things they do not understand.

  Day switches to night. The storm clouds have rolled away. Over the hills and mountains, the sky washes purple and pink.

  I hear a familiar rumble beside me. My brothers get out of the truck. Through the bare branches, I can still see the boys in the parking lot. Lamplight falls on them too. They think it is funny, the way I am loaded on the flatbed, like cattle. I will try again later to remember their faces.

  After my brothers unload me at the farm, Dan leaves to tell Dad they found me. Wren stays behind. He tilts his head curious, like he can see what others do not.

  �
��I know you can hear me in there, Benny,” Wren says, and he pushes his forefinger hard into the center of my forehead, twisting it, like he is squashing a bug. “Yeah,” he says slow, “I know you do.”

  I can feel my mouth move, my lips quivering. I slobber like a big dumb dog, moaning louder and louder. I want to tell him I can hear him. I want to tell him that I understand. I try to nod but my head does not agree with what I am trying to do, and rolls without direction, flopping as I flap my arms like a farmed turkey too fat to fly.

  “Here’s the thing, Benny, you stupid, fat fuck. I am getting tired of having to hunt you down. That is the third time this week. I’m sick of it.”

  I know he is right and I am wrong. My order of things gets scrambled like the eggs Mom used to make in the morning. Everything happens to me today. It is always today. It never changes.

  Now he smiles. It is not a nice smile. “I know what you’re doing.” He winks.

  Wren squeezes my shoulder and leans in close next to my ear. I know what he is going to say. I have heard it before, and I do not want to hear it again. It is going to be a bad thing and make me angry. But it also makes me wonder: how many times have we had this conversation?

  “You’re looking for your little girlfriend, aren’t you? I know all about her. She’s bad news, Benny. You’d do well to steer clear of that one. That girl is a whore, the town bike. Everyone gets a ride.”

  He is talking about Kira and I do not like it. I do not like it at all. I can feel my skin get hot and my hands ball into fists. But my hands will not move like I want.

  I cannot remember when he was my little brother anymore, when he rode on my shoulders through the fields. If my hands moved the way I wanted them to I would punch my brother in his yellow country teeth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Of course Nick wanted to talk about what Riley said—he’d asked a hundred questions when he picked her up from Albany. Given how much he’d helped her out, what had happened between them before Riley’s call, Alex knew she should be straight with him. And she wanted to be. But finding the right words wasn’t easy, and whatever she said only seemed to make things worse. She was still processing everything Riley told her, the confession and circumstance of their conversation. How could she be expected to filter all this crap and be sensitive to someone else’s needs and wants? She asked Nick to please table the discussion till later. Nick said forget it, he had to get to work anyway. A kiss goodbye did little to soothe hurt feelings.

  Only a day had passed since Alex’s cousin called her a cunt and told her to never come back. Then again, if Linda wasn’t at work, Alex wouldn’t be here.

  Tommy answered the door in his filthy white robe and mossy slippers. He held a pot of coffee, chugging Extra Strength Pepto Bismol straight from the bottle, expression wan, skin gray. He waved her inside.

  Alex recalled the running joke, how Tommy never called in sick, no matter how late he’d been out drinking, even that time he did Jägerbombs on top of the Boilermaker Bar roof. She felt compelled to poke the bear.

  “Can’t hold your liquor these days, old man?”

  “Bad baked chicken. What’d you want to talk about? Sounded important on the phone.”

  “Kira Shanks.”

  “Still on that kick, eh?” Tommy poured her a mug of steaming coffee, plopping down at the kitchen table.

  “I couldn’t find the coffeemaker when I was here.”

  “Keep it under the sink. No counter space.”

  She grabbed the milk and sugar, swirling clouds, trying to figure out how to word her question without crossing lines or sounding ungrateful.

  “There’s no way to ask this without—”

  “Just ask, Alex.”

  “Did you ever hook up with Kira? I know you and Linda have been together since forever, and this is a weird question coming from me. When you talked about Kira the other day, how she got around, it sounded personal. A little too personal.”

  Tommy thumbed his eye, stalling. Alex wondered if he was going to deny it, because she already knew it was true.

  “Yeah. Once. Linda and I were going through a rough patch, and Kira—”

  “Was hot?”

  “Made it easy. I’ve made a lot mistakes but that was the only time I ever cheated on your cousin. And Kira, she had, I don’t know, this thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “She liked to fuck other girls’ boyfriends.”

  “How is that a thing?”

  “Everyone’s got their thing, right? What gets them off? Know a guy at work. Wants a girl to piss on him and stick things up his ass. Dude’s straight as an arrow. It’s his thing. That was Kira’s thing.”

  “Having sex with other girls’ boyfriends?”

  “No commitment. I think it was safer that way. Fuck guys who are already attached, no chance they get attached to you.”

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “The hook up? A party. One of her friends has this old house out by the preserve.”

  “In Plotter Kill.”

  “That’s the place. Glorified flophouse. They always threw parties out there. I don’t even remember where your cousin was. Shit. This is going to make me sound like a bigger asshole. I think she was visiting Diane in the hospital. When the new liver wouldn’t take.”

  “Who else knew about this?”

  “About me screwing Kira Shanks? Not your cousin, that’s for sure.”

  “No, I mean, about her getting off on doing other girls’ boyfriends?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone? She was a sad girl, Kira. I hate talking about her like this because of what happened, but she was fucked up. And because of the way she looked, prettier than all the others, it made it worse. She was eighteen, but that body…Jesus, I sound like a pig.”

  “I’m not judging you. You know any other boyfriends she seduced?”

  “I don’t think I’d call it that. Seduced. Didn’t take a lot of convincing. Happened often though. In fact, that night I was out at Plotter Kill, she’d gotten into it with another girl, because she’d fucked her boyfriend, too.”

  “Remember any names?”

  “Are you kidding me? This is, what, eight, nine years ago? They were in middle school when we graduated. I can’t remember how I ended up at that party. I think Cal Miller dragged me there.”

  Alex took a courtesy sip of coffee, then stood to go.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” Alex fanned her hair out of her collar. “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to Linda.”

  “I know.”

  Alex was almost to the door when she heard Tommy mutter something. She turned back around.

  “Trista,” he said. “That was the girl’s name. Trista White.”

  Alex thought a moment. “You know anyone from Kira’s graduating class? Enough to ask a favor?”

  “Couple guys. Maybe. Why? What are you looking for?”

  “Yearbook.”

  Alex drove out to Java the Hutt’s, grabbed a good cup of coffee, and sat on the railroad ties, staring into the never-ending forest on this edge of town, the gray, black, ashen stalks of a wasteland. That’s what this town was to Alex, despite its shiny coats and newly erected façades. It was ground zero, the day after, like one of those old movies of the week they aired trying to scare the hell out of everyone. How one day they would drop the big one and there was nothing you could do about it; we were all doomed. Circles of scorched earth, a post-apocalyptic horror show with hordes of survivors fighting over cans of powdered milk.

  “Alex?”

  She squinted up. Casual sports coat suit sans tie, bike messenger leather bag slung over his shoulder, pointy helmet tucked under his arm, the kind of guy who worked in finance downtown and rock climbed in a gym on his lunch break.

  “Greg,” he said. “Greg Judd.” He reached into his shoulder bag and extracted the brown pleather book, passing it along. “Don’t hold the pop
ped collar against me, okay? Or the Pink Floyd yearbook quote.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll get it back to Tommy.”

  “No rush.” He glanced around, unsure whether to stay or go.

  “Can I buy you a coffee?” Alex nodded toward the pop-up shop. “Place is amazing.”

  “I heard about it. Been meaning to check it out.” Greg checked the time. “Sure.”

  Who says no to a pretty girl buying you coffee?

  It was a smart move on Alex’s part. Greg wasn’t tight with any of Kira’s friends, having been part of a different clique, but graduating the same year, he had no problem picking out photos from a lineup, and he had plenty to say about them.

  “They were trouble.” Greg sat on the railroad ties, sipping his small half-caff soy macchiato. “Like I said, I hung with a totally separate crowd. But everyone knew about those guys. Burnouts, screw-ups, druggies. Weird sex parties.” He stopped. “Who knows, right? Like heavy metal and Satan worship in the nineties. I don’t know how much of that stuff was true, but that entire bunch came with a reputation. I remember when Kira got here. She was so good-looking, so nice, sweet. There was a fight over her. There were guys like me on one side, guys who played football, wrestled, were part of student council. And then you had that group. I never understood why she picked them.”

  Alex flipped open the yearbook. Greg instantly pointed to Meaghan Crouse, and had no problem identifying Trista White, Patty Hass, and Jody Wood, as well.

  Alex located a picture of Sharn DiDonna. “How about him?”

  “Sure. Sharn DiDonna. We called him Sharn Prima Donna. Family was loaded, but he’d go undercover for the weekend. Get ripped on whatever new designer drug was trendy, then go home and sober up beneath satin sheets at his dad’s mansion in Bethlehem.”

  “Do you know if he dated anyone? Trista? Kira?”