Over Tumbled Graves

by Jess Walter

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “I don’t have great timing. Did you and Joel get everything”—he paused—“resolved?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

  “That’s nice. That’s good.” He cleared his throat. “Well, this is probably nothing, but I just wanted to ask if you were going to see Spivey any time soon.”

  “I was just about to go see him,” Caroline said.

  “Well, the little dickhead keeps blowing me off. There was a break-in on the South Hill today. A guy named John Landers.”

  “The boat guy,” Caroline said.

  “Yeah, right,” Dupree said. “Well, it’s probably unrelated, but the burglar was clearly looking for something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. There were a bunch of files thrown open and there was a model of the neighborhood down there, and it got me to thinking about Lenny Ryan and the pawnshop guy and his uncle and…let me ask you something. Did you ever happen to run into the old security guard at that boat place?”

  “Security guard?” Caroline was having trouble following.

  Dupree laughed at himself. “You know what?” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “No,” she said, “keep going.”

  “I’m not even clear about what I’m saying.” He laughed again. “Could you just mention to Spivey that someone really needs to dust this house before the owners get home? Just in case.”

  “Sure,” Caroline said. “I’ll tell him.”

  “Thanks.” He laughed at himself. “Jesus.”

  They said at the same time, “How have you been?”

  Dupree laughed. “I want to apologize again for what I did the other day. I really had no right to drop it in your lap like that…to expect anything from you.”

  “Alan…”

  “I could forgive myself for a lot of things, but if I made you think you were a bad cop…well, I couldn’t live with that.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to say anything else, anything that might open her up for a question she wasn’t prepared to answer.

  “Well,” Dupree said, “I’ve got to meet this guy for pizza. You’ll tell Spivey?”

  “Yeah.”

  They were both quiet for a moment and Caroline pictured him six years ago, clinging to her on the couch, her legs wrapped around his, their hands gripping each other’s backs, knowing that if they let go they would make love and everything would change. A week before that, she had turned thirty. How could six years go by like that?

  “I’ll call you after I talk to Spivey,” Caroline said.

  “If you want,” Dupree said.

  She replaced the receiver and put her head back in her hands. When she was a little girl, maybe eight or nine, before the divorce, her mother would put her head in her hands like this for seemingly no reason, and Caroline would grow sick with worry. Once, when she was playing with dolls, her mother had come into her room, tears streaking down her face. “Caroline,” her mother said, “whatever you do, don’t let someone else decide what you want.” In her eight-year-old mind, the phrase what you want took on a kind of sanctity, as if happiness could be guaranteed by gathering around herself some items from a checklist—like a doll’s accessories: town-house, convertible, handsome boyfriend. Her life the past five years seemed like a catalogue of plastic objects, and when she thought about what she really wanted, all she saw was Alan Dupree.

  She was reaching for the phone to call him back when she caught a glimpse of a map on her desk. She spun it so that she could see it better. She thought about what Dupree had said. John Landers’s house had been broken into by someone looking for files. She tried to picture what that meant. She saw the boat dealership, smack in the middle of what McDaniel called “Lenny Ryan’s hunting ground.”

  She stared off into the distance again, then got up to look for the hard copies of the forensics reports. She found them on the conference table in the middle of the room. She leafed through them until she reached the report on fibers and particles from the first victim, Rebecca Bennett. She ran her finger down the column listing trace particles, and came to a carpet fiber that had baffled them for a while—a fiber they finally realized had come from a waterproof boat carpet. They knew that prostitutes sometimes took their dates into the boats in the Landers’ Cove lot. Caroline went through the other forensics reports, but none of the other bodies carried that particular fiber. Laird was in charge of forensics, and she doubted he would’ve missed something so obvious as a carpet fiber on more than one of the bodies. Caroline started for her phone, but again she stopped.

  This time she went to the file cabinet and removed another forensics file from a case they considered only tangentially related to the others. Shelly Nordling’s file. She ran her finger down the fibers and trace particles taken from Shelly Nordling’s body and clothing and there it was. The same boat fiber.

  Again she pictured Lenny Ryan asking questions and finding out that Shelly and the other prostitutes used to have sex in the boats at Landers’ Cove. Now she imagined Lenny Ryan breaking into Landers’s house, looking for…what? Dupree said he’d taken files. Files?

  She felt stupid and sluggish as she tried to piece this together. She rubbed her temples. Files? Where would you go if you were looking for files on someone? She checked the clock. Almost eight. The county offices would all be closed for the weekend. Caroline went to Spivey’s desk and found the city/county emergency phone list. She called the county clerk’s cell phone. He answered on the first ring, and Caroline could hear the bustle and noise of a restaurant behind him. She introduced herself and apologized for calling him so late.

  “I have kind of a strange request that really can’t wait until Monday,” she said. “Do you keep the names of people coming in to request documents?” She explained that she needed to find out if someone had come into his office looking for court documents pertaining to John Landers.

  “The boat guy,” the clerk said.

  “Right,” Caroline said.

  “I’ll call you back,” the clerk said.

  The call came two minutes later.

  “David Nickell.”

  Caroline scrambled for a pen. “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah. I just finished chewing out a clerk for mailing a copy of a court file to this guy. Lives up in Springdale. It’s against policy. People have to come in to get documents. No exceptions. I don’t care how sad your sob story is, how far out in the sticks you live, we don’t mail court documents to people.”

  “When did the file go out?”

  “According to my deep-in-shit assistant, he mailed the envelope this week. I think this David Nickell slipped my guy a twenty for the favor. I oughta fire the shit.”

  “Do you know, did he have ID?”

  “He couldn’t get documents without ID.”

  Caroline had to catch her breath. “Do you know what he looked like?”

  “Clerk said he was bald and had a beard.”

  Caroline pushed her luck. “Get me an address?”

  “How’s Monday?”

  “It’s no good,” Caroline said. “Any chance you could get your assistant down here tonight?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said and hung up.

  David Nickell. She started with the Springdale telephone book. She found it: David and Angela Nickell. The address was just a route number; apparently David Nickell lived in the sticks. She called the phone number, but there was no answer, no machine. Next she went to the computer database and entered “Nickell, David,” checking it against all the tips they’d received, every witness or suspect or victim. Nothing.

  She tried another computer, checking his name against local, state, and national criminal records. Several David Nickells came up, so she narrowed the field by adding the word “Springdale” and soon had a social security number. This David M. Nickell, forty-two, of Springdale, had been arrested for domestic violence against an Angela Nickell, and t
hree separate counts of driving under the influence. Two months ago he had been cited for another DUI on the west side of the state, as well as auto theft and evading a police officer. He was in jail in Tacoma, awaiting trial. His mug shot came up after a moment and showed a balding man with a beard and glasses. She remembered the recent descriptions of Lenny Ryan with a full beard and a cap.

  If David Nickell was in Tacoma, then someone else was coming into Spokane asking about John Landers. And if David Nickell was arrested in a stolen car, then the person with Nickell’s ID might just have his car too.

  Caroline had convinced herself that it wasn’t Lenny Ryan parked in front of her house that night, that it was just the kid with the beer. But she wasn’t exactly surprised when she ran David Nickell’s name and social security number with the state department of licensing, and the description of his car came up—a red 1992 Nissan Sentra.

  She fell back against her desk and stared at the ceiling. Like everyone else, she supposed, she believed she could stay separated from the events of her own life, stay dry in the middle of all the rush and tumble, and so it came as a surprise to find herself being tugged by the same current she’d been fighting all along.

  48

  There was a pinch, and then Rae-Lynn felt a warmth and a tightness in her arm. She wiggled her fingers and leaned back in the stall and felt the warmth move into her shoulder and all over her body, and her calves tingled, and she licked her gums. Tim untied the bandanna around her arm and she fell back against the toilet seat and hummed. A few seconds later her eyes snapped open, and she saw Tim standing at the sink, taking the needle off the syringe. He washed the needle in peroxide and put it back in his kit. She loved Tim for being so clean and safe. She watched him from the stall, where she sat on the toilet, legs spread, the back of her head against the wall.

  “That’s really nice, Timmy. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.” His back was to her as he worked at the sink, washing his hands and putting his kit away.

  “I’m so glad I ran into you,” Rae-Lynn said. “This is gonna be a great night.”

  “I meant what I said before, you know,” he said. “If you got your boobs done, you really could be a dancer.”

  “Aw, you’re just sayin’ that,” Rae-Lynn said.

  “No, I mean it. You’d have to eat better, put a little meat back on your ass and thighs.” He turned to look at her, sprawled out in the stall of the men’s room at Denny’s. “You know, at the better clubs, they don’t like it if the girls look sick.”

  “Do I look sick?”

  Tim had the round, soft face of a kid, and blond hair that he parted on the side. His hair made him look sort of stiff, and sorry about things. “A little,” he said. “You look like you haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

  Back out in the restaurant Rae-Lynn melted into a corner booth and rubbed her face. It felt elastic. She touched the bruise under her eye where Michael had hit her yesterday as punishment for running away. That could have been worse, certainly. She pressed her small breasts together and stared down at her cleavage. “Would you help me get a boob job, Timmy?”

  “Me?”

  “If you help me pay for it, they’d be like, half yours.”

  “So I keep one and you get the other one?”

  “No, but you could touch ’em whenever you wanted.”

  He reached over. “Can’t I touch ’em now?”

  “You could ask your dad for the money.” Tim’s dad was a lawyer or something.

  Tim opened his menu to the breakfast page. “Hey, Dad. Can I have a couple grand to help this girl get her boobs done?”

  “Yeah!” Rae-Lynn laughed without making any noise. She fell over in the booth, then looked up at him. “Hey, can we have pancakes, Timmy?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She sat back up. “On your birthday, they give you a steak.”

  “I think that’s a different place.”

  She watched Tim read the menu and wanted to tell him that she liked him, but she couldn’t remember if she’d just thought that or if she’d already told him. “After pancakes, we can go back to your place?”

  “That depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “On how much you plan to charge me.”

  “How much is a boob job?”

  “Couple thousand,” he said.

  “That’s how much I’ll charge you.”

  “How about a cigarette, instead?” Tim asked.

  She laughed. “Deal.” This was fun.

  Tim pulled his wallet out and grabbed some singles, then stood and walked over to the cigarette machine across the restaurant. Rae-Lynn stared at his wallet, still lying where he’d left it, in the crease of the booth.

  She was at the door with Tim’s wallet before she could remember deciding to do it. She walked around back and hid behind the Dumpster and remembered that night the freak in the truck had tried to strangle her. She wondered what it would have felt like to die that night. Or what if she was dead and didn’t know it? Like in that movie. The thought freaked her out a little. Crouching in the shadows, Rae-Lynn opened Tim’s wallet. He only had a ten and two singles. She pulled out the cards. A driver’s license in which Tim looked fat and pitiful. A bogus gold credit card, the kind they gave anyone, well, anyone but her. She reached in the other side of Tim’s wallet. A couple of espresso stand punch cards. At one of the stands, a drive-through a few blocks away, he needed only one more punch for his free latte. A video rental card and a picture of a little girl, only a little bit bigger than Rae-Lynn’s baby. She didn’t know Tim had a baby. Finally she pulled out a library card and, for some reason, that was the thing that made Rae-Lynn feel bad.

  She stood up and walked around the corner to a window on the side of the restaurant. Tim was just sitting at the booth again, turning the pack of cigarettes over in his hands like he was waiting for her to come back, even though he must’ve known. Outside a woman was walking toward the door, and Rae-Lynn grabbed her by the arm. “Can you do me a favor?”

  Rae-Lynn opened Tim’s wallet, took the ten and the punch card for the free latte, then handed the wallet to the woman. She pointed to Tim. “Can you take this to that guy at the booth and tell him I’m sorry?”

  “Sure,” the woman said and started walking toward the front door.

  “And don’t steal it!” Rae-Lynn said. “I’m watching you.”

  She watched through the window as the woman delivered the wallet. Tim thanked her and put it in his pocket without checking for his money. Rae-Lynn thought he would know exactly what she had taken. He was smart like that.

  She watched him for a few more seconds, but he didn’t look up at the window. He invited the woman to sit down and she did. He opened the pack of cigarettes, gave the woman one, put one in his mouth, and reached in his pocket for his lighter. He took a long drag and the end chirped into flame. The woman said something and Tim laughed and blew the smoke straight up into the air.

  Rae-Lynn turned away. With Timmy’s ten in her jeans pocket, she started down Division toward downtown. She hoped Michael would be over his anger, because she really wanted to party tonight. She found a cabdriver filling up his car at a convenience store and promised him a blow job for a ride down to East Sprague.

  The cabdriver had thin hair and a terrible goatee but he wasn’t ugly. Rae-Lynn liked the way he raced his cab, the way it swerved in and out of traffic. Sitting next to him in the front seat, she closed her eyes and spread her arms out like wings. He told her that he owned this cab himself, that he didn’t work for anyone else, and that was all he’d ever dreamed of doing, working for himself like this.

  The driver turned down Sprague. “To me,” he said, “life is a movie. You gotta be the star of your own movie.”

  Rae-Lynn opened her eyes and stared at the cabdriver. “Wow. That’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks. That’s, like, my philosophy.”

  “I was in a movie once. A couple weeks ago.
In Moses Lake.”

  “Cool,” the driver said.

  “You want to contribute to my titty fund?” She pressed her breasts together. “I’m raising money for implants. I’m gonna be a dancer.”

  “Did you see, Pamela Anderson took hers out.”

  “After you get famous you don’t need ’em anymore.”

  “I ain’t gonna contribute if you’re just gonna take ’em out after you get famous.”

  Rae-Lynn jumped over to the passenger window. “Stop the car!”

  The cab pulled over in front of the Happy Stork and Rae-Lynn hopped out. “Look, I’ll be right back. I just gotta run inside and see if my friend’s in here and then I’ll come right back.”

  The cabdriver seemed suspicious but she smiled. “I swear, I’ll be right back.”

  Rae-Lynn giggled at the slap of her bare feet on the sidewalk and tried to remember where she’d taken off her shoes. She needed both hands to pull open the door of the Happy Stork, and as soon as she did, she was hit by smoke and swamp-cooled air. A couple of old guys were at the table near the window and two younger guys were at the bar. They all checked her out. Rae-Lynn felt beautiful.

  “Hey.” The bartender recognized her. “Where you been?”

  “Movies,” she said. “And some dancing.”

  “Cool.”

  Rae-Lynn fished in her pocket and pulled out the ten. She leaned against the bar to catch her balance. She felt like she was still in the cab, still flying. “I’ll buy my first drink, but then I expect somebody to step up.”

  “Oh, I’ll step up,” said one of the guys at the bar.

  Rae-Lynn considered the forest of bottles behind the bartender. “Tequila.”

  “Ta-kill-ya,” said the guy at the bar.

  The bartender grabbed a dirty plastic bottle and filled a shot glass to the rim, then gave her eight bucks change. Rae-Lynn emptied the glass and squeezed her eyes shut.