CHAPTER 47

The stupid ER doctor wouldn’t give me anything for the pain. Over twenty stitches ran along the underside of my arm, a patch-up effort from the three inches of flesh Georgia had slashed out of my bicep. It hurt like hell, and the doc had given me nothing. Over-the-counter would take care of it, he’d said.

Whiskey comes over the counter. Thank you. Doctor’s orders.

Buying the bottle had been a bad choice, but Parks’s screams, so agonizing and ethereal, that even now they wormed through my mind . . . A woman I had worked with, shared so much with, yet apparently had never really understood. She had held a secret that could shatter her life, destroy everything, and I had never known. Had she ever suspected I had such secrets, too? We wrap ourselves in the fear of exposure of our own sins and failures, and yet we blind ourselves to those same gnawing burdens on others. And when they surface, we suddenly know: we are all victims of our past and vulnerable in our present. Parks’s screams would last a lifetime in my mind.

What I could do was numb it all. I wanted to forget what I had seen. I wanted to wipe it out of my mind. Drink myself and the memories and all the pain into oblivion, like I’d done so many times before. But each time I raised the bottle to my lips, Wilco nudged me with his nose, whimpering and whining, and gave me that look. He was worse than Meg.

But it was enough to make me stop before I even started. Instead, I smoked a couple limp cigs that I had found hidden in Gramps’s dresser drawer. Nasty things, but enough to calm my nerves. And I sat up until the sun rose in a bright orange morning sky, and tried to piece together the crime. Parks, Jake, Chance Walker, and Reed Bannock. How did they fit with Zeke Farrell and what had happened between them that ended with Zeke’s death? Jake had been working as a deputy DA at the time, and Georgia said that he had somehow been involved. Others must have been involved. Johnson or his partner at the time? And how did Georgia know who had killed her son? And why wait until seventeen years later to avenge Zeke’s death?

I didn’t come up with any answers. And it’d be a while before I got any. Both Jake and Georgia were dead, and Parks was hospitalized, and may or may not recover. The knife had penetrated her frontal lobe. The doctors were waiting for the swelling to recede before they could estimate brain functioning. So, four people murdered and maybe another permanently altered, not to mention the fallout for Parks’s family and no real answers.

“I need answers,” I said to my dog. He got up and walked to his food bowl and turned to look. Obviously, food was the only answer Wilco cared about!

“Good morn—” Meg began, then stopped and stared. “What happened to you?” She ran her fingers along my shoulder and gently turned my arm over and let out a small gasp. “Brynn. Who did this to you?”

“A woman named Georgia Farrell.”

“A woman? Why?”

I stared at Meg, but I didn’t speak. Didn’t even know where to start.

She stared back and didn’t speak, either.

An awkward moment passed between us; then she took a seat and placed a gentle hand on my shoulders, and we sat at the table silently, Meg just letting me know she was there for me. Family. I had so little of it left, but Meg was there for me, and I knew she always would be. If I let her in.

I took a deep breath and tried to explain what had happened the night before. She listened with round eyes, nodded as if she understood—not that anyone could or would—then said she needed to make coffee. Too much to take in without caffeine. After it brewed, we added milk and sugar and carried our mugs to the front room. Meg wanted to see if the story had made the news. They wouldn’t have the particulars yet, so it would likely be just a shocker headline, but at least we’d see what had been released so far.

“Where’s the remote?” she asked.

I slid into a chair. “I don’t know. You had it last.”

“Not me. I worked the closing shift last night. And the night before. Didn’t have time to watch any TV before I left for work.” She kept looking, under the junk on the coffee table, beneath the sofa cushions. “Did Wilco get ahold of it?”

“No. What would he do with a remote?” I got out of the chair and got down on all fours and looked under furniture. The carpet felt greasy against my palms and smelled like dust and dirty feet. “I’m not seeing it.” Damn it. Where’s that remote? I sat up, wiped my hands against my pants—ick, sticky and gross—and I remembered. Nina and her sticky fingers. Just a couple days ago, she had been here, and her hands had roamed over the stuff on my coffee table. She hadn’t been able to resist taking it. As if the remote to our TV had any value to her at all. Like it mattered. She took anything within their grasp, useful or useless, so long as it was shiny or pretty . . . or belonged to someone else.

All these years that I’d known, and she’d known that I’d known, yet she could never stop her impulses. Maybe she didn’t want to stop. An addiction to stealing. I thought of the past couple weeks, the Vicodin, the whiskey . . . Who was I to judge?

I just want my TV remote returned. “I think I know where our remote is. Be right back.”

I walked fast, heels pounding the pavement, as I passed neighbors’ trailers. Mrs. Black’s curtains parted; old man Nevan stood outside his door and blew smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette. The next street down, I heard the Murphys’ new baby crying, and Mrs. Gorman was on her front step, drinking coffee. And then Nina’s street.

Most Pavees lived in trailers or mobile homes, manufactured homes, some called them, but Nina lived in a converted food truck. She’d gotten it for a steal—I shook my head at the irony of the idiom—a couple summers back, when some carny passing through got busted for assault and battery and needed quick bail money. Nina had made out. Tiny but efficient, with the original stainless-steel kitchen, and fitted with a fold-down bed and a camper-sized bathroom, the food truck had everything she needed. But some Bone Gap folks looked down on it, which was why her place was tucked out of the way on a secluded lot. Out of sight, out of mind.

She opened the door and stared at me through mascara-smudged eyes. “Hey, Brynn. What’s up? It’s early still, and I’m . . . You look horrible.”

“Yeah? Well, thanks. I want my remote back.”

“Your remote?”

“My television remote. You lifted it the other night, when you and the other girls were at my place.”

“Did not.”

“Let me in, Nina.”

“Really, Brynn? This is stupid. Why would I have your remote?”

“Because you’re a thief.”

I stepped up and pushed past her. The air smelled like sleep and bad breath and hair spray. “Where’s the stuff you’ve stolen?” I knew she kept her stolen treasures in a hidden stash.

I started with her kitchen cupboards, while she stood by, whining. “You can’t do this. Stop.”

I ignored her and checked the rest of the cupboards, found nothing except several bottles of gin and some cans of soup. I took three steps and reached for the stowaway above her bed.

She slapped my hand away.

I must be getting closer.

“You have no right—”

“Like you have the right to steal people’s things. Where’s my remote? And what about Queenie’s sunglasses? She lost those last week. Did you take those?” I opened a stowaway compartment: Just rolls of paper towels, toilet tissue, and cleaning supplies.

“You know I don’t want to be this way. It’s an illness,” she said. “Mama always said it was somethin’ that went wrong in my brain when I was a baby. I can’t help it. None of the stuff I take is expensive. It’s just crap.”

“Yeah, but it’s someone else’s crap, not yours.” I turned the latch on another stowaway compartment, and a bunch of stuff tumbled out: a scarf, key chain, lipstick tube, several nail polishes, a pair of sunglasses, a small bag, and . . . my remote. “You do have it.”

“Oh. Sorry. You can have that back.”

What the hell? “It’s mine, Nina. And you shouldn’t have taken it in the first place.” I ran my hand through the pile, held up one indictment after another. “Queenie’s glasses. You took them at the bar that night, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“And Mo’s scarf. Bet she’s been looking for this.”

She crossed her arms. “Usually I don’t take things from friends. Just stores. And y’all know they rob us, anyway. The way they mark things so high. They’re stealing from us to start with.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“I’m careful. Most of the time no one even notices something’s missing.”

“Do you hear yourself, Nina?” I pointed to the pile. “This is sick.”

“Well, if I’m sick, you are, too. You’ve known about it since we were kids. You’re just mad now because I took something of yours.” Her eyes grew wide. “You ain’t goin’ to arrest me, are you?”

“Who does the rest of this stuff belong to? Whose bag is this?” I unzipped a small flowered bag: lip balm, lotion, a couple wadded bills, and a work badge. “Where’d you get this?”

“Some lady’s purse at the bar.”

I flipped the badge over. MCCREARY COUNTY NURSING HOME. SADIE JONES. I looked closer at the photo. It was Gran’s aide, Sadie. “You got this at the bar?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“At Dee’s hen party.”

Maybe Sadie had been out with a few of the staff from the nursing home for a little fun. Pretty nervy of Nina to steal in the middle of a different group. Nina had never seemed the nervy type. At least not till she had swiped my remote.

“Was she alone in the restroom or something, and you grabbed it from her stall?”

“No. That’s gross!”

“Really? Like stealing isn’t gross?”

Nina rolled her eyes. “She was sitting by herself a few tables back from ours.”

“And you just walked up and took this?”

A little glint flitted in her eyes, like a shiver of a thrill, an addict’s rush as she recalled a fix. “She had no idea. She was caught up in the entertainment, like Mo.”

“What do you mean?”

“She couldn’t take her eyes off the guy. Walker, the stripper.”

“Yeah, while your eyes were on every loose object in sight.” I snatched up the stolen loot and shoved it in an embroidered carry bag—no doubt another of Nina’s “finds”—and headed to the door.

“Brynn?”

I just shook my head. What can I do? Tell her not to do it again or that she needs help? She’s not ready to listen to all that. “I’ve got to go.”

I stormed off, now in possession of a bag of stolen goods myself. I sighed and took the next corner. Mo and Hughie’s repurposed school bus was parked not far from Nina’s food-truck conversion in the cast-off section of our little unsettled settlement.

Mo was just stepping out of their shanty of a latrine with one of the twins when I called out, “Hey!” Mo looked up, anticipation in her eyes, and I quickly held up a hand. “No, Hughie isn’t out yet, but he will be. Have you seen the news?”

“No. Kids got the cartoons on, but I’ll go—”

“Wait. Listen, I just wanted to return this.” I told her about Nina. I was done carrying the secret of Nina’s addiction around with me. I had enough secrets around my own neck. But Mo simply nodded, not at all surprised, as if she had known about Nina’s problem all along.

I sighed, opened the bag, and pulled out Mo’s scarf, but the lanyard on the badge was tangled with it. As Mo and I separated them, she suddenly stopped, held the badge up close.

“That’s her! So you found her,” she said.

“Huh?”

“This is the blond woman who came up to the truck when Walker let go of me and I ran off. I told you about her. Remember?”

“You said you didn’t get a good look at her.”

Mo shrugged. “Well, good enough to know this is her. So, you found her? And you know my Hughie wasn’t the one lurking around the truck. It was her.”

I took the badge, and my mind flipped gears, putting the pieces together. I’d assumed it was Nikki in that lot, lurking about, checking up on her boyfriend. But it was Sadie Jones. She was the last person to see Walker alive. And she’d been at the bar alone? Guys, sure. Guys sat alone in strip joints. But women? They went in packs, but not Sadie. According to Nina, Sadie had sat alone, concentrating on Walker. Then Mo had seen her walking around his car in the parking lot? I looked again at the picture, at her sunbaked skin, shallow cheeks, tight lines around close-set eyes. The same small frame and facial features as Georgia Farrell, just younger. Georgia’s daughter? We’d figured Georgia had been hiding somewhere, but we had no record of family for her.

Had Sadie hidden her mom? Or even been a part of this revenge scheme? I thought of the horse head we’d found in the woods and how we’d figured it would take a couple people to haul both Bannock and the head out of there. But when I found Georgia alone, going after Jake, I’d thought it was over, but . . .

* * *

I phoned Pusser. I knew by heart now the schedule of the aides working with Gran, and it wasn’t Sadie’s shift right now. She would be home. Pusser was on it, would find an address for her and would send a unit out. I hung up, relieved. I’d head in later and take a crack at interviewing her, but I’d make another stop first.

I got my dog and my car, gave Meg the television remote, told her that I had to go, and that I’d fill her in later. Twenty minutes later I pulled up to the nursing home. I walked down the old people–perfumed corridor, stopped outside Gran’s door, and pushed through it quietly. Gran was in her chair.

My breath caught. Sadie squatted in front of her, a spoon in hand.

Gran’s mouth worked overtime, like that of a cow chewing its cud. A line of brown puree dripped from her lips and dribbled down her chin, but Sadie wasn’t paying attention. Her gaze was riveted on the television screen. “A fatal altercation occurred late last night in a downtown residence. Local police departments are still on the scene at the victim’s home.”

Sadie’s face paled.

“Hey, Sadie.”

She looked up. Her eyes glazed over with shock.

I took a few steps closer. “How’s my grandmother doing?” Keep it light. Simple.

Her expression hardened. She got up and stood behind Gran.

Nice and easy, Brynn. Keep calm. I worked my way closer, stopped about five feet away. “I just came by to see Gran. I can feed her, if you’d like.”

Gran’s head sagged to the side, but her focus was on me, her eyes warm and calm and loving. Just as always.

Sadie glanced back to the television reporter, who said, “Police have yet to release a full statement but have indicated that this crime is related to recent murders in the area.”

“That’s my mama they’re talkin’ about, isn’t it?” She shot me a look. “You comin’ for me now, is that it?”

“Zeke was your brother. I’m sorry, Sadie. It must have been awful what happened back then.” I started to take a step.

“Get back, ya hear? I don’t trust nothin’ you say. Where were you cops all those years ago, when they killed my brother? Y’all covered for one of your own, you did. I mean, how’s it goin’ to look if the big attorney in town got a young girl knocked up? And then she turns round and helps kill a kid, huh?”

Young girl? Did she mean Parks? Jake?

She continued. “Used his job to help them kids cover it all, just to save his own hide. Bunch of crooked cops, that’s what you are.”

So there it was: Jake stood to lose a lot, too much. He’d fathered a child with an underage girl. Parks. Maybe she had threatened him if he didn’t help. Or maybe he couldn’t risk his career. Whatever the reason, Jake had helped three teenagers bury the truth along with the mutilated body of a throwaway boy.

“We’ll open an investigation. Find out what happened to your brother.”

“No need. I already know. Some dopehead came by here and told me. All she wanted was a little cash in exchange for giving me information ’bout Zeke’s death.”

Nikki.

She went on. “Her meth-head boyfriend got high one night and told her how it went down back then. It was ’pposed to be a prank.” Her eyes wandered now, as if she was envisioning the scene that had destroyed so many lives. “Drink some booze. Have a little fun with the stupid kid. They didn’t expect Zeke to fight back. But when he did, they ganged up on him. Bannock, Walker, and that cop friend of yours, Nan Parks. The boys took turns kickin’ him, while the girl stood by and let it happen. He didn’t get up from that fight . . .”

And then they put him on the tracks to cover their crime. “I’m sorry, Sadie. So, you told your mother, and she—”

Her eyes snapped to me, hatred burning deep. “She’d just wanted the truth all them years. So I told her. Yes, I told her, and then Mama knew what to do. Mama always knew what to do. See, she brought us up on her own, she did, taught us to live right. Zeke needed special care, you see, and nobody cared. So, she taught us good at home.”

“I’m sure she did her best—”

“Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.” Sadie recited the words like a litany, something she’d heard and said a thousand times while she, along with her younger brother, learned how to “live right” at the hem of their mother. A mother who, in the end, wanted justice for her child, the boy who’d been targeted and beaten and mercilessly killed.

In the distance I heard a siren. “How did you find them?”

Again, Sadie’s eyes wandered as she recalled what had happened. “I waved a few bills at Chance Walker, and he drove to my place, no problem. That one was easy. Bannock heard what we did, and he knew we’d be comin’ for him. Ran, he did, the bastard. But we got him.”

“And Jake?”

Sadie shook her head. “I told Mama it was all over the news, and just a matter of time before they’d come for us, Jake knowin’ and bein’ in the law and all. Shoulda done him first. Mama got scared, said she didn’t care if they got her, but she didn’t want to lose her daughter, too. Torched everything, tryin’ to destroy any record of me. I been tryin’ to talk sense into her. Get our stuff together and leave town. But, no, she wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘See no evil. See no evil,’ she kept sayin’. I thought she’d gone to bed last night, when they called me in for a double shift.”

Sadie looked up at me, her hands clasping the back of Gran’s chair, hope and fear at war in her face. “Is my mother . . . ? Is she . . . ?”

“I’m so sorry, Sadie, but—”

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway, and a handful of cops burst through the door.

Sadie panicked. Her hands jerked forward, and she put one on Gran’s chin, the other on her head. The same pose a hunter might take to snap the neck of a wounded animal, fast and lethal. “Don’t you come any closer.”

I held up my hand, motioned to the guys to stay put. Then to Sadie, “I understand, Sadie. Let me help you.”

One of the guys broke from the group and moved out at an angle. Positioning himself. The cop’s gun was locked on target. He gave me a nod.

A slight shake of my head. No. No. No. If he shot, he could hit Gran.

Sadie’s nostrils flared, in and out, and her grip on Gran’s head tightened. Her voice hissed, “Help me? I ain’t got nobody left, don’t you see? You want to understand how that feels? See what it’s like to have nobody . . .” She started twisting.

“Nooo!”

Bang.

Thud.

And a second thud.

Gran . . . “Gran!”

She was on the floor, limp, eyes closed, her breath coming in shallow rasps. Shot? “Gran? Gran? Someone help!”