CHAPTER

15

WHEN SHE FINALLY opened her eyes, Jamie could tell it was way past noon. Slatted light cut through the plastic blinds, casting broken shadows on the wall. She sat up, groggy from the boozy sleep, and opened the blinds. Out back, sunlight glinted off the snow all the way to the ridge. Above that, the sky was a blinding bluish-white.

Her fingernails were cracked and split and caked with dirt and she remembered everything that had happened the night before. That man, his big head and lifeless eyes. The big bloody hole in his stomach.

God. She’d helped dispose of a dead man. That made her a felon. Except she was just an accomplice and she’d sort of been forced into it. But she wasn’t a minor anymore.

Even with her eyes open she saw the image of his slack face, the distorted angle of his neck. She’d stared too long before Loyal scrambled down the embankment and thrown the tarp over him. She hated horror films and zombie faces. That shit was fucked. The only people who could laugh at it were people who’d never seen a corpse. She started counting backward from ten before that image had a chance to set in and went to the bathroom to look for peroxide and ointment.

A man that age. He probably had kids, a wife. She chewed a thumbnail off and spit it out. How many rocks had she dug up and carried to cover him? Maybe a thousand.

This is how it starts. A life of crime. Except that it had started months ago. Making cash runs for Loyal. Small-time stuff, things that a public defender could get dismissed as a first offense. She weighed her age against her uncle’s and the judge’s and figured a court would take that into consideration. But that was stupid. Keating was a judge. Nothing weighed against that.

The trailer was quiet and she knew Toby and Loyal were gone. She turned the TV on and ran the faucet in the kitchen hoping for hot water. The keys to the old truck and a ledger were on the table along with a note saying that Loyal had hosed off the flatbed. Good. She studied the list: addresses and four-digit codes that would give her access to the machines in eight locations on the west side of town, ten up north, and thirteen on the east side. Almost the whole operation, but she had days to get to it all. She could do this. If it moved her closer to getting out of here, she could get it done. She thought through a few calculations, figured that between the extra work and the tournament she’d break even by summer. Steam billowed over the sink; Loyal had finally fixed the hot-water heater.

On the television, the weather man pointed at a map and predicted another cold front of freezing temperatures and snow.

She stepped into the hot shower, let the water beat down on her. She scrubbed her nails, peeled off a couple of broken ones, scrubbed them again, thought about that man, tried to remember what the Bible said about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. She couldn’t recall it exactly, but the notion was like this mess with Loyal and Keating. Their rivalries and alliances went back decades, without any logic that she could decipher. Small-town bullshit. She’d been born into it and knew exactly how her life would play out if she stayed. Two or three kids, a divorce or two. A dead-end job that would keep her half-starved if she didn’t eat junk food and get fat, get diabetes and lose her feet, or die of a heart attack. She saw it all around her, doughnuts and caffeine for the early-morning despair, booze after work just to take the edge off a twelve-hour grind. She thought about her mother standing behind the curtain in the window at Keating’s house. The woman had never had a chance in this town. No Elders did, not really.

If there was a window to escape, it was closing fast. Right here at the underside of twenty, there was an opening, maybe a month, and it might be the only time she’d be able to leave, find her way to some city where there were real jobs, where winters weren’t so fucking cold, where no one would ask her to help move a dead body in the middle of the night. Somewhere she’d have half a shot, before she got in too deep and this town pulled her under. Like it was doing right now.

The shower turned lukewarm and she turned it off and wrapped herself in a towel.

Outside, a car’s wheels crunched over the gravel in the driveway, its engine idling. Someone was probably looking for her uncle and she hoped whoever it was would see the Dodge wasn’t here and move on, but the engine went quiet and seconds later someone was banging on the front door. She grabbed her robe and peeked around the corner through the small window on the door and came face-to-face with Keating, peering through the glass.

“Loyal home?” he yelled through the door. His gray hair was smooth and slicked back. “Saw his truck.” Keating thumbed over his shoulder at the Ford sitting on the street.

“He doesn’t drive that anymore. Bought a new one.” Jamie thought for a minute that was all the information the man would need to leave, but the knob turned and the door opened and she cussed Toby because he could never be trusted to lock a door. Keating pushed through and she stepped sideways, knocking into the table by the couch.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Like I said, he’s not here.” She knotted the sash around her waist and tugged the towel tighter around her neck.

“He should’ve left me a package. Do you have it?” He cut his eyes around the room, at the broom leaning against the kitchen table, the dishes stacked in the sink, the muddied floor, and openly cringed. Then he asked, “Where’d you take him?”

“Take who?” She ignored the question about the package, knowing he’d let it drop rather than bring up Loyal’s business.

He stared at her flatly. “Don’t play stupid with me. That man. Where’d you take him?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Loyal made me ride on the floorboard.” Besides, she was supposed to play dumb about last night.

Keating picked up a piece of mail off the kitchen table, read the address, and tossed it back. “So you really don’t know?”

She thought he said this with some relief, so she added, “I only helped pull him off the truck. I don’t even know who it was.” It came out so calmly that it sounded absurd. Her feet—she hadn’t had time to towel them off—were freezing.

“Do you understand how important it is to keep quiet?”

“Seems obvious.”

“Don’t get smart.” Keating pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and wiped the seat with the palm of his hand. Up close and in the bland light he seemed older than her uncle. His hair was whiter and there was something stiff and wary about the way he moved his body, as though he thought the trailer might collapse on him.

She didn’t sit, hoping he wouldn’t either. But he did.

“That woman,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows. “Your mother, I mean, was invited into my home. My home. A judge’s home.”

Jamie tried to follow, but last night’s whiskey was making it hard to keep up.

He snapped his fingers. “Are you listening, young lady?”

She moved her eyes to meet his, felt her shoulders hunch up around her neck. It was starting to sink in. They would be linked forever by this, she and this man.

“I knew her history. I knew she was an ex-con. But I looked beyond that and extended hospitality. What happened was an accident, but if word gets out, the authorities won’t be kind. Her parole will be revoked and that’s just the beginning. I’m willing to go along with this for her sake, for the sake of her children. But if anything comes to light…” He lifted his palms. “A woman like that? Well, a lot of assumptions will be made. It could be bad for everyone involved. For her family, her kids.”

She slapped at the water dripping down the backs of her legs because it made her think of spiders and, right now, she needed to concentrate.

“There’s no weapon. I assure you that’s been taken care of. It was the least I could do.”

Weapon? She hadn’t thought of a weapon. But what did she think? That someone could rip a hole in a man with their bare hands?

“Could be seen as a crime of passion, I suppose, but who knows, really, why some people turn out the way they do.” He looked her up and down. She hated that. He was big enough to take her if he wanted. She backed closer to the hall and pulled the towel tighter around her neck. He’d been with Phoebe in a way that made Jamie ill to think about, but she doubted that screwing a lover’s daughter would matter to a man like him.

“I don’t know what happened before I got there,” she said, to remind him what he’d come here for. “I just did what my uncle told me to.”

He stopped staring at her legs and bobbed his head almost imperceptibly. “But she had the gall to steal something from me. I want what’s mine. Get it back. And tell her to keep quiet. If she’s quiet long enough, this thing will blow over.”

“What did she take?”

He sighed impatiently. “Do I have to explain everything? No. No, I don’t. This is all her fault. She’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Get it from her and bring it to me.”

“But, I don’t—I mean, I never see her.”

He slammed his fist on the table and Jamie jumped. “Go, damn it. Go see her!”

He took out a silver money clip from his pocket and peeled off some twenties. “This is for you. Girls like you always need a little extra money.”

She just stared at the money he set on the table. What good would a hundred bucks do her if she had to deal with this lunatic?

He stood up. “There’s more if you keep your mouth shut. And believe me, darling, you want to keep your mouth shut. You don’t want anyone knowing you were an accomplice to—to anything.”

He started to say more but just shook his head and waved his hand in her face. He walked out the front door and Jamie locked it behind him. Water dripped from her hair as the wheels crunched on the driveway and the noise of the Cadillac’s engine faded down the street.

Accomplice.

There it was, hanging over her head.

Darling.

Like he had the right to call her that.