Fear No Truth

by LynDee Walker

  The whole universe had flipped clean upside down.

  I snapped gloves from the first aid kit onto my hands and groped through Graham’s bag until I came up with the phone. Pressing down on the tape over the home button, I whispered, “Please.”

  The screen came to life. I raked my thumb left to right and typed Find My Friends in the search bar. Opened the app. Nicky was the only name on the list. I touched the screen. Watched the wheel roll.

  “He’s almost to the dam,” I said. “Dammit, Graham, he’s going to jump.”

  Siren wailing and lights flashing, Graham peeled out southwest.

  I stared at the still-green dot on Tenley’s screen, praying harder than I’d prayed since Charity died that we’d get there before the worst could happen again.

  46

  A nurse shut off the lights as the doctor droned about being responsible with his meds, avoiding alcohol, and keeping up with therapy.

  “Why haven’t you been seeing your doctor regularly?” She did pretty well masking the admonishment in her tone, but Nicky could hear it anyway.

  Because Pastor wasn’t a doctor and the fucking electroconvulsive therapy was causing massive headaches. That they hadn’t warned him about. The memory lapses, they did. He was fucking tired of those, too. And the lying bastard said six weeks. Six weeks had come and gone since his last treatment and he still couldn’t remember chunks of where he’d been, what he’d done. Like Monday night. He dropped T off. He was amped up and pissed at himself that after eight months of this conversion therapy bullshit he’d let his dad talk him into, he still couldn’t get it up for the hottest, smartest, sweetest girl in Texas.

  He remembered pulling out of her driveway.

  And then nothing until another headache woke him up on Tuesday afternoon. It had been almost eight weeks. Why hadn’t they stopped?

  Nick shrugged at Dr. Lindgren. She seemed nice enough. But she couldn’t help. Nobody could.

  This was just him. His fate. Nothing could stop it: not prayer, not bleeding himself every time he thought about another guy. He’d literally tried everything up to and including apparently breaking his fucking brain.

  Therapy his hairy white ass.

  Therapy was supposed to help you. Not make you sick.

  The coach had lost his shit, storming about, screaming that nobody warned him the treatment could induce bipolar disorder in teenage boys. Or maybe just surface what was treading under. Either way, Nicky was caught in full-on rapid-cycling mania, the actual doctor said.

  His mother cried and took more pills as she begged Nicky to take the ones they gave him.

  He tried.

  They made him feel like he was watching his own life. A bystander. Not in the story, but reading it.

  He hated them. Was almost relieved when his dad had a fit about the pharmacy bill in November and stopped buying them.

  He blinked. This new doctor, Dr. Lindgren, was holding a syringe. “Just something to help you sleep. We’ll work on getting your meds straight in the morning.”

  Nick leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  A bolt of pain ripped through his head, laying a memory he’d lost bare in its wake.

  A recent memory.

  My God, he’d been there.

  He could see his Tenley, his princess, his favorite person in the world, lying broken on the packed sand.

  He shook his head, tears falling as Dr. Lindgren finished pushing the syringe into the IV. “You need to sleep, Nicholas. I’ll be back in the morning to check on you.”

  He couldn’t sleep. That was the problem. His brain raced around the clock, sleep an elusive enigma that might visit for a few hours around dawn, and then only if he was lucky.

  He tried wearing himself out. Pushed hard at the gym.

  Took those damned pills his dad started bringing home around Christmas. “Same stuff, half the price. If Mexico can get it right, why the hell can’t we?” he boomed as he shoved the bag at Nicky.

  They didn’t fix him. He lost more time. Got more angry. Felt more helpless.

  He tried swiping some of the coach’s bourbon. Seemed to work for the old man, right?

  Just left him off-balance and pissed off at the world.

  The internet wasn’t much help, either. Bipolar mania is supposed to be a euphoric state, the articles said. Except when it’s not. A very small percentage of people get black-hole-caliber depressed. Become a danger to themselves.

  But nothing and no one had warned him he might be a danger to others.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw locking against the pain, and pushed through the noise, reaching for the memory.

  He’d been a danger to Tenley.

  He couldn’t manage how she ended up on the sand, but he could see her. Could smell what was left of the water as he sped down to the shore with the windows down, feel the dew on his skin as he sprinted to where she lay.

  Her eyes stared at nothing, her face at peace.

  The barest ring of blood showed just around the crown of her head, the sand soaking up the rest.

  Her arms were sprawled at unnatural angles, her legs twisted half around from her torso like a broken mannequin.

  She stared up at him.

  The monster leapt. Howled.

  “No.” It slid through Nick’s teeth, low and loud at the same time.

  The monster couldn’t have his Tenley. Couldn’t touch her. This part of his life was off-limits to the seething anger that hated nothing more than it hated Nicky.

  She deserved the very best the universe had to give. She deserved to be free.

  He hit his knees next to her. Pulled his knife from his pocket even as he wondered how it got there in the first place. Moved her thin silk skirt up over her hip. Drew the blade up sharply over her flesh.

  But the blood didn’t come.

  Of course not, stupid. Her heart wasn’t beating. He couldn’t help. Couldn’t save her. Couldn’t set her free.

  He sobbed until he ran out of tears, orange light peeking over the water as he scrubbed at his face and reached for her, arranging her carefully in her favorite sleeping position: flat on her back with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “I always, always loved you best.” He kissed her forehead, already cold against his lips. “I wish I could’ve made things different for us. Given you your happily ever after. Be free, princess.”

  He stood and turned back to the car, and the memory fragmented, Pastor Otis standing near the trunk, a fat yellow envelope clutched in both hands. His red, squishy face flickered like a broken TV set, darkness rushing in from all sides.

  In the hospital bed, Nicky fought, ripping the tape off the IV needle and pulling it free, watching blood trickle over the back of his hand.

  Cleansing.

  Freedom.

  He struggled to sit, pushing himself from the mattress and unplugging the beeping IV pump.

  Clothes. Shoes.

  He splashed water on his face and strode from the room, down the hall, out the doors behind a nurse on her way home, and into the stairwell before anyone had time to notice him.

  Everything had been fine until the coach brought up that damned camp. Not fine enough for the coach, but fine enough for Nicky. He let himself be talked into it, though, the possibility of a normal life, of Tenley and babies and a white picket fence and all the things he’d been taught to want since before he could talk just too damned perfect to walk away from.

  “Perfectly safe,” they said the first time they strapped him to the table and put the headband on. “It’ll just straighten the neural pathways, so to speak.”

  “Perfectly safe,” Pastor Otis told the coach the first time he took a scalpel to Nicky’s thigh to bleed the devil out of him. “Surgical grade and sterilized, you have my word.”

  He walked into the cool night, glad he’d driven himself there, swearing he could smell rain in the air. Tenley loved the rain.

  But Tenley wasn’t perfectly safe. Wasn’t here to smell th
e storm. Because of him.

  Because of them.

  He owed the coach a long chat. And a little drive.

  47

  Tenley’s parents were looking for Darren Richardson, too.

  I shook my head at the text from Skye informing me of that. “The coach should’ve stayed in jail. He’d be safer there.”

  “What now?” Graham asked.

  I held up one finger, staring at the gray dot bubble in the corner of my screen. His wife is swearing he’s not here. The dead girl’s father looks like he wants to kill someone.

  I wasn’t about to tell Skye Morrow why Brent Andre was pissed. If you see the coach, let me know, please, I tapped back.

  I turned to Graham. “The Andres are over at the Richardson house. Looking for the coach.”

  “Oh shit. Should we send a patrol car by there?”

  “As long as the coach isn’t there, there’s no need. And his wife says he’s not.”

  “Probably halfway to Mexico by now.” Graham shook his head. “There’s something inherently unfair about a jackass like that guy fucking up so many lives and literally walking away from the consequences.”

  I tapped one finger on the side of my phone case, staring at the still-green dot on my screen. “We’ll find him. But we have more pressing matters to handle right this minute.” I meant it. I would make it my personal mission to bring Richardson up on whatever charges we could make stick. Very publicly. But it could wait until his kid was safe.

  I looked out the window, silent neighborhoods blurring by as Graham took the dark, twisty road as fast as he dared.

  Another buzz. Did Tenley Andre get into a car crash going to pick her drunk mother up from a party?

  I stared at the letters. “Somewhere she didn’t know how to get to in the middle of a school night,” I muttered. “Damn.”

  I didn’t answer Skye that time, letting my head fall back against the seat. “Tenley’s folks paid Stella Connolly off because Erica was drunk and Tenley was going to pick her up. Alone. In the middle of the night. With just a permit.”

  “So maybe Tenley flipped that around on her folks because she felt like the mom owed her?” Graham asked. “Damn. No wonder the kid was blitzed when she died. Keeping all these people’s secrets straight could make a nun start slamming shots.”

  “Right?” I rubbed my temple. “Like my head didn’t hurt bad enough already.”

  My phone buzzed again. Skye: Coach’s wife says her son has been depressed. Cutting himself. Not sleeping, going up to the dam at night. He was close with the Andre girl, but . . .

  Damn. I rubbed my head harder. “Nicky’s mother says he’s been going up to the dam at night. Can’t sleep. Cutting himself.” I was talking half to Graham and half to myself, typing a reply at the same time.

  On my way to him now. Send.

  “That would’ve been good to know a couple of days ago.” I glanced at Graham.

  “So did he just see her up there and happen to attack her?” he asked. “I’m still trying to work this out.”

  “Me too.” I sighed, dropping my phone into the cup holder. “He loved her. No way he was lying about that. How could he do such god-awful things to her?”

  I stared at Tenley’s phone screen. The dot was still there. Nicky should still be alive. I wondered if even he’d be able to explain his friend’s death.

  Because Nicky did love Tenley.

  That woman in Houston probably loved her babies, too, but she still drowned them in her tub. I’d seen a handful of similar cases in my years in homicide. Severe mental breaks can make people wholly not themselves. And the green dot still couldn’t tell me if we’d make it up there in time.

  “Three minutes,” Graham said. He’d always had a weird way of knowing what I was thinking before I said it.

  “Park at the bottom of the hill,” I said. “The last thing we want to do is startle him.”

  I folded my hands together so tightly they were both cold from lack of blood by the time he cut the engine. We climbed out and started up the shoulder in silence, gravel crunching under boots and short breaths the only noise save for the katydids. Blooming honeysuckle drifted to my nose on the stiff breeze.

  I needed the excuse for quiet. My head was warring with my heart for what could cause me the most pain right that minute. Nobody would ever say it, but some cop I was. I didn’t simply miss this. I flat-ass refused to look for it. Every last road and rock led to Nicky. But he reminded me of myself after my sister died: same lost look, same unimaginable bastard of a father.

  The dark, naked truth was that I hadn’t wanted him to be guilty. Hadn’t dug far enough to see that he was sick.

  And now he might end up dead because I fucked up.

  Pretty shitty consequences to live with for one lousy mistake on the job.

  “Stop it,” Graham murmured in my ear. “This was not your fault. Nobody else got it either.”

  “You didn’t talk to him.”

  “Did the kid seem like a killer to you either time?”

  “I didn’t want him to be.”

  “If we’re playing true confession, I wanted it to be the little snot quarterback. I’d still like another crack at that one.” Graham huffed. “We’re sure it’s not him?”

  “DNA is sure.” I didn’t break stride, my words clipped. Wanting it to be anyone was the biggest misstep we’d taken here. There’s a reason circumstantial evidence doesn’t carry much weight—any cop worth their shield can stack up indicators against a suspect they can’t stand. Seeing the guilt I didn’t want to see was so much harder. “Zayne sure made for an easy train to jump on, though, didn’t he? And Darren Richardson was just as good a villain. What the fuck kind of parent sends their kid to get electric-shock therapy because he’s gay?”

  “The kind who pats himself on the back for not kicking the kid out in the street,” Graham said. “I see it every day, working major crimes. Kids who trusted their parents, or maybe were outed by a bully or a teacher—and the parents just show them the door. Cut them off like they never existed. They end up on the streets, stealing, or begging, or worse.”

  We both nodded, falling back into silence.

  “Thanks,” I whispered ten steps later.

  Graham bumped my shoulder. “What friends are for.”

  The top of the hill in sight, I stopped, catching him by the arm when I heard voices. At least two. Both male.

  What the hell else was I wrong about?

  We crept closer.

  “You promised it would make me normal!” Nicky screamed. “Do you have any idea what I’ve done? You made me a monster!”

  I swallowed hard, my insides going cold in the warm night air.

  Jesus, no.

  “You were trying to fuck a woman at least, were you not?” That was Richardson, I thought, but the words sounded slurred. Like he’d hit the bottle again after he got out of jail. To my right, Graham froze.

  I took two more steps, just trying to get above the sight line.

  Nicky paced, probably five feet from the edge of the dam. The light from the almost-full moon glittered off the blade in his left hand, dark liquid dripping from the tip.

  His father stood a half step from death, blood running from a gash on his cheek, wide eyes following Nicky’s every breath. Richardson’s arms and hands trembled violently enough for me to notice from fifty yards out.

  The fingers on Nicky’s free hand disappeared into his curls, twisting around them as he shook his head. “My God, there’s really no hope for you, is there?” He stopped, squaring up to his father. They were roughly the same size, I noticed for the first time—the elder Richardson just seemed larger because of his overinflated ego. I’d noticed that about many a politician, growing up. A good scandal to take them down a few pegs and they never looked quite so big again.

  “Right there.” Nicky kicked the dirt. His father flinched. “She was right there when she fell. Begging me, the person she trusted most, not to hurt her. Because of y
ou. Jump, you heartless prick. Now!” Nick swung the knife.

  Richardson scurried two steps to his right, rocks scattering over the edge into the void behind him. “I only wanted what would be best for you,” he said.

  “Bullshit,” Nick shouted into the gusting wind, stepping toward his father. “You don’t even know how to want what’s best for anybody but yourself! Not me, not your team. Feeding those guys pills until they leave broken addicts who end up on the streets. And you don’t care. Not about anyone. Not Mom. Not Tenley. You know, she told me what happened. She just didn’t tell me it was you. You raped my best friend on the field house floor when she was a virgin and then called her a lousy piece of ass. You miserable bastard!” He screamed the last words from a raw throat and swung the blade again. “Don’t make me push you, Coach.”

  Lightning brought the night sky to blue-purple life overhead, a whopper of a Texas storm brewing over the thirsty lake.

  “Nicholas, stop.” Richardson’s voice jumped three octaves. “I don’t want to die. And you don’t want to kill me. I know you.”

  “You haven’t ever known me. Not even a little.” Nick swung again, lunging. “I’ll see you in hell.”

  Richardson scuttled sideways again.

  Shit. My legs pumped, lungs burning and head throbbing as I sprinted for them.

  I opened my mouth to scream for Nicky to freeze.

  Before the words hit the air, he hit his knees, the knife falling to the dirt, his chin dropping to his chest.

  I slowed, my breath coming easier. He couldn’t do it. As vile and possibly deserving as his father may be, Nicky—this Nicky—wasn’t a murderer.

  I pulled my cuffs from my belt. “Darren Richardson, you are under—” Crashing thunder swallowed the words. I cleared my throat to try again.

  And the night erupted.

  Bright blue white lit everything in sharp contrast, the honeysuckle perfume swallowed by the sting of fried ozone.

  An engine roared. Gravel and feet flew, yet the world slowed, not a blink or breath unnoticed.