Follow Me Down Page 16

  * * *

  Back in the living room, I made up a bed on the couch with Lucas’s pillow and comforter. Eyed the envelope, the shape of its bulging innards. Who the fuck was I kidding? I grabbed it and dumped the contents onto the coffee table. A cell phone clunked out. A notebook, pages fluttering, dropped onto the table. I picked up the cell first and tried to turn it on, but it was dead. I flipped over the notebook, and something dropped over the edge of the coffee table. I think I knew what it was before I even looked. I’d already felt it. I leaned down, picked it up. A lock of hair, alarmingly similar in color to Joanna’s, held together by a purple elastic. Similar. As if. Even I couldn’t fool myself that much. It was Joanna’s hair. I could almost smell the teenage fruity scent of hairspray emanating off it.

  I jumped up. My vision went starry. I was light-headed, like all of my blood was draining. Printed neatly on the front of the notebook was “Joanna’s Journal.”

  11

  I started bouncing up and down like I was standing on hot coals, my hands spastically fanning the air. Something wild was clawing its way out of me, and I managed to grab a couch cushion just in time to cover my mouth. I let out a guttural, animal scream. The cushion button crashed into my teeth. “He fucking did it. He did it.” I kept repeating it, a savage panting. More screaming and then I didn’t have the strength to hold the cushion to my face anymore and I dropped it to the floor, fell to my knees, and pushed my face into it. The cushion smelled both musky and like sickly floral Febreze, and I was choking on it, and I wanted to choke. My mind skipped to the pills in the bathroom. Why not swallow them all? Maybe the Haases were meant to die off, go extinct before we wreaked too much havoc. Mimi was half gone; the budding Haas in Joanna was gone. Lucas had gone off the rails.

  Thinking about it now, since he’d moved back to Wayoata, our conversations had become shorter, flimsier. “How are you?” was always answered with “good” and “busy.” We didn’t pick that hard at each other’s surfaces. Maybe the things I thought I knew, the absolute certainties, were just stats from our childhood: Pepsi over Coke, pizza was better cold, always the ability to fly over immortality. It wasn’t like Lucas knew that I could pop pills like Tic Tacs. But my belief that I knew him knew him was gone.

  Once, Mimi, in one of her fits of whimsy, decided she would play fun mom. She covered the kitchen table with newspapers and served us spaghetti for dinner. The playful catch: we were supposed to eat it without utensils. We were fourteen, way too old for this kind of thing. I refused to eat it. She poured herself a giant glass of red wine and watched a shirtless Lucas plow through his plate, smearing the tomato sauce all over his face, dangling strands of spaghetti from his mouth, hamming it up while Mimi laughed.

  All this time, I’d believed I got the brunt of Mimi’s meanness. But maybe Lucas got something far worse. He had the role of pleaser while I was Mimi’s “difficult” child. Maybe all his aim-to-please character was just a facade after so many years of tap-dancing on demand for his drunk mother. The humiliation of Mimi giving it to one of his friends was too much, and something dark, a seething rage that had been secretly building all those years from Mimi pushing him into playing man of the house in between her boyfriends, ruptured that night. It settled in, had free rein like an undiagnosed cancer, and all along under his affable grin, there was this dark and vicious thing blooming.

  The hair. The hair Joanna had wanted to donate to kids with cancer. Why did he shear her, take home this sick memento? I thought of the numerous times we had pulled Mimi from the tub because she had passed out there. How Lucas had started doing it himself because he was stronger, Mimi’s wet hair slapping him in the face. It stood to reason that with a mother like ours, Lucas would go Norman Bates-y.

  I mean, I’d nearly killed her. We were not a nice family. The black glove. He kept it. What did he do with it? My mind skittered to some twisted masturbation thing. A glistening glove full of lube. Oh God.

  And what about the blood? I guess it was an aversion he got over, then got a taste for. My mind shuttled back to the Sticky Ricky incident, how stealthily Lucas had moved, how he’d just walked right up and cracked his stick into Ricky’s back. Two good wallops. Not saying a word, he watched Ricky writhing on the ground afterward like it was a curious thing, then stalked back to his room. But he was protecting me. I knew him to his bones. He didn’t have a bad bone in his body—that was what people said about good people.

  I’d been wrong. I sniveled into the pillow. Wrong.

  The Lucas I knew would not have had the hair of a murdered teenager in his apartment. Like mother, like son. It must run in the genes, the sexual assault of minors.

  He never stood a chance.

  And now it was too late. It was all too late. The damage was done.

  * * *

  Finally, finally, finally, when I felt I could lift my head free of the snot-soaked cushion and breathe, I went into the bathroom and swallowed an Ativan and a muscle relaxant. Longingly cupped the other bottles, like they were pet hamsters, put them back. Made up my mind.

  I gathered it all up, the journal (and here I flipped through the pages fast, unable to stomach the perky writing, the dated entries so hopeful in their plodding progression toward the free-fall days of summer break. Lucas’s red check marks in the bottom corners like inverted scythes. Checking off the days until he could kill her), the hair, the phone, and stuck it in a black garbage bag and snuck down the stairwell into the parking lot and stuffed the bag under the driver’s seat of the PT Cruiser. Got in and started driving. I made it to the intersection just before the police station. It was 3 A.M., and some part of me hoped it’d be closed, but the lights were aglow.

  The traffic light flashed red. Guilty, guilty, guilty. It pulsed inside my head, a red ember that started to smoke in the middle of my brain. I smacked the steering wheel. Go. Go. Just plop the bag down on the front desk and walk out. I couldn’t lift my foot off the brake. My body was going puddly from the relaxant.

  Tomorrow.

  I’d go tomorrow. I’d be able to think better tomorrow.

  What’s the rush, anyway? The police already think he did it.

  Yes, I’ll come back tomorrow. I did a squealing U-turn.

  Back in the Terrace parking lot, in Lucas’s parking spot, I pulled the cell phone out of the bag before going up. It’d be my only chance to see what was on it before I turned it in.

  I tried my own charger for the cell phone, but it didn’t comply. I guessed it was the secret cell he’d used to communicate with his teenage lover. Maybe there was something on it that could explain all of this away. A text from Joanna asking him to hold on to her journal, a text that went with the lock of her hair that clarified it was meant as a romantic gesture. Something was going on between them, but that didn’t mean he killed her. I had to see what was on this phone. Before—and here I felt a hard twist in my chest, Tattletale, tattletale—I turned it in to Garrett.

  12

  DAY 5

  SUNDAY

  In the morning, after a ragged sleep, I waited until the stores opened and went shopping for a charger that would work. Before I left, I fished Scotch tape out of a drawer from the kitchen. Outside in the hall, after I locked the door, I pressed a small strip of the tape across the bottom of the frame and door so it was almost impossible to spot unless you were looking for it, another trick we’d used to tell if Mimi had snooped in our bedrooms. A strategically placed strip of Scotch tape can be as good as a wax seal when it came to catching interlopers. I noticed above my ribbon of tape there was already the sticky remains of floppy Scotch tape. A few pieces, actually. So Lucas had been worried someone was coming into his suite too?

  I sensed I was being watched, whipped around, and noticed the peephole on the door across the hall from Lucas’s was dark. I knocked on the door. “I’m Mia. I am staying in my brother’s suite across the hall, and I’m just wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions?”

  “Don’t bother trying
, dear, she won’t answer. Doesn’t come out of there at all.” Lucas’s right side neighbors were just exiting their suite with their matching Rollator walkers. They started on a slow shuffle toward the elevator. They looked they were on their way somewhere nice, both smartly dressed in their Sunday best. The hallway filled with a mix of perfume and aftershave.

  “She’s one of those, what’re they called again, Doris?” The man turned and aimed an ear toward Doris.

  “Oh Stan, don’t tell me you forgot to put in your hearing aids?” She huffed back at him. Her lips wobbled with irritation. “Go back inside and put them in.” Stan looked back at his apartment door, and then waved her away. Like he’d come too far to turn back. “Anyway, she’s an ag-ora-phobe. That’s what she is.” Doris was practically shouting it, over-enunciating, so Stan could hear, and I was certain the “agoraphobe” could hear her as well.

  “You the sister?” Stan’s rheumy eyes scanned me.

  “I am.” He grunted something and Doris cut him off.

  “Last winter when Stan had his stroke Lucas would come by and ask if I needed a ride to the hospital or if I needed groceries.” She said this like she was reminding her husband of Lucas’s kindness. Stan’s face tightened, and I could tell he was thinking about how many times his wife was alone in a car with Lucas. I thought about asking if they had anything go missing from their suites, but didn’t want to stir up any anxiety. Stan and Doris parked in front of the elevator and when Doris reached to press the Down button, her massive bejeweled purse started to slip from the seat of her walker. Stan reached over and caught it. He pushed the purse back into its place and they got onto the elevator.

  Still standing in front of the “agoraphobe’s” apartment, I heard the sound of something brushing up against the door. Maybe the sleeves of a sweater? As if this person had her back pressed against the door to keep it shut. I knocked again. Someone who peeped on life through holes and crannies and lifted curtains might know who’d been coming in and out of my brother’s suite. Might even be able to vouch for Lucas’s lame alibi of being home alone all night. This woman could have heard his door close and corroborate that he never left until the following morning. She probably played blind and deaf to the police, worried they would compel her out of her apartment down the road to testify, but she might tell me what she saw because I didn’t have the power to force her out. A long shot, I knew that.

  No answer. Forget it.

  Dale Burton. He really had been warning me. Keep the door locked, and I did lock it. Of course. I should have thought about it before. I stomped down the stairwell, pissed as hell. Knocked on unit 11 “PROPERTY MANAGER,” hard and incessantly, until I heard stirring behind the door. “Yeah, yeah, keep yer panties on,” I heard Russ grumble behind the door. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His stomach bulged out; it didn’t even look real but made of smooth latex. A movie fat suit.

  “Yeah, what can I do fer ya?” There wasn’t even a glimmer of recognition in his face that he had banged on my door last night. He hadn’t been looking to get lucky in the way I’d thought. Lucas had a good bar. I was sure Russ had told himself a bottle here and there wouldn’t be missed, and hey, while he was at it, might as well borrow a bottle of gel and cologne and an expensive cordless razor. Snagged the Polaroid too. Never know, he probably reasoned, it might be worth something if this thing gets on Dateline. And why not go for some red sneakers too, which cost almost two months’ worth of rent in this place? But looking at Russ now, he seemed more a fluffy-haired, narrow-toed, cowboy-boot sort of man.

  “I want you to stay out of my brother’s apartment, or else I’ll report you to the police.”

  “Not sure I follow?” His eyebrows furrowed. He cracked his neck.

  I could smell his stale warm beer breath. An alarmed-looking Bailey lurked in the background, eating a Pop-Tart. I wondered if Russ had already been an alcoholic when he named his daughter after a liqueur. I spotted the bottle of bourbon on the kitchen counter, front and center in a cluster of other booze bottles next to the microwave.

  “Oh, I think you do. I think when you’re running low on your own booze, you go dipping into the tenants’ cupboards searching for more. Don’t do it again.” I gestured toward the bourbon but Russ didn’t even look.

  Instead he just snorted like I’d said the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “Now, you listen to me, girlie. I don’t take kindly to being accused of something I didn’t do. Think you’d understand that, going around saying your brother didn’t kill that little girl. Unless you got me on hidden camera or somethin’, then you better watch what you’re saying. You don’t want to be accused of slander with everything else you gotta worry about. Now, I’ll be a gentleman and forget this conversation ever happened.” He closed the door. Still, I heard him say to his daughter, “Can you believe that cunt?”

  So Lucas wasn’t back in Wayoata.

  * * *

  I avoided Walmart. There was no way I wouldn’t run into someone I didn’t want to see at Walmart. I decided to try Eddie’s Electronics. The shop was full of old fax machines, giant fifty-pound printers, and tube televisions. I had turned to leave when Eddie came out of the bathroom, still tucking in his shirt as he introduced himself, toilet midflush. “What’cha looking for?”

  “A charger for this phone.” I held it up. Eddie ducked behind the counter, brought out a box with CHARGERS written on it in marker. I dug through the box, finally finding one. It cost me $1.50. On my way out, after he made his sale, Eddie cleared his throat and said he’d gone out with the search parties looking for that poor girl and hoped my brother would burn in hell. He added, “Such a pretty girl,” as if ugly girls were more deserving of having their heads smashed in.

  * * *

  Back on Main Street, I drove right past her. She was a flicker on my peripheral vision that didn’t come into mental focus until I stopped at the lights and wrenched the rearview mirror down to look back. I did a sharp U-turn on the red and pulled up next to her, grazing the curb.

  “Mimi?” I hollered through the open passenger side window.

  She was walking, fast, bent forward, as if against a strong wind. Still in her floral nightgown, but instead of the nursing home–issued flip-flops, she had on black rubber boots that in this heat must have been making her feet ooze sweat. She glanced up at me, but did not break from her power-walker’s stride. I parked. Jogged up behind her. “Mimi, please stop.” She still didn’t acknowledge me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She jerked her head back, like someone had pulled hard on one of her braids, and aimed an aggravated gust of breath toward the sky. “Like you really want to know. I have to go.”

  “Mimi, I don’t think you’re supposed to be out.”

  She turned, again that smile. “No I’m not. I’m like the bad kitty who got loose when no one was looking.” She curled her hands up into paws and rubbed her face, her tongue flicking out. Playing a cat grooming herself.

  “I can take you back. Please. My car’s right there.”

  “No!” She slung the word over her shoulder, and I knew there was no way I could get her into my car. I was too afraid to touch her, too afraid to rile her up.

  I pulled out my phone and called the LightHouse. “My mother is out walking down Main Street right now. How is this happening?” The staff was always so quick to inform me when Mimi’s antics resulted in a bill that needed to be paid, and yet conveniently left out that she could escape. How shoddy was this place?

  The nurse assured me that there was a “crisis intervention” team out looking for Mimi this very second, that she’d never broken out before. She droned a list of their safety protocols that I couldn’t possibly have cared less about at that moment.

  “You need to come and get my mother. It’s dangerous.” I wasn’t sure if I meant the world was a dangerous place for Mimi or Mimi was a danger to the world.

  Mimi, now several feet in front of me, stopped suddenly, as if she’d hit a windowpane
. She turned back, and in her wicked singsongy voice said, “You shouldn’t have done that,” and broke out into a surprisingly fast sprint down a side street. I went after her, gave the nurse her exact whereabouts so she could radio it over to the crisis team. Mimi didn’t slow her pace, which didn’t seem possible, given how much she smoked. She suddenly veered to the right, up someone’s driveway, and into the backyard. A girl stared at us from her massive trampoline, never breaking from her steady, springy jumps.

  Mimi hiked her nightgown up and scaled the fence with shocking ease. She was moving like a fucking werewolf. I struggled over the fence and found her again on the sidewalk, still trotting along at an even stride. Finally a white van pulled up alongside Mimi. Two burly medics got out. I thought there’d be a showdown, that Mimi would kick and spit and bite, but instead she greeted them like old friends. There was even a shoulder squeeze and a handshake. No way this was her first prison break.

  I locked eyes with Mimi as the medic opened the van door for her, and again, that thing, the essence of who she was before the accident was back. The sharpness in her eyes. Where had she been going? Did she even know, or was it some illusory destination conjured by her broken brain?

  I watched the white van wend its way down the side street and disappear. Got back into my rental, rested my head against the steering wheel, and sucked on a Klonopin like it was a dinner mint.

  My mind shot back to ninth grade, when a pretty classmate asked me to stay for dinner two nights in a row. Maybe she sensed my reluctance to go home, that the whole normalcy of a sit-down, well-rounded supper with glasses of milk had enchanted me. In the Haas household, there were no mealtime rituals. The second night, just as bowls of mint chocolate chip ice cream were being served, my mother showed up with a suitcase full of my clothes, shouting, “You might as well move in,” and drove off. I dragged the suitcase home, where Mimi was sitting on the couch, the room hazy with cigarette smoke. She patted the cushion next to her and gathered me into her. You’re my daughter—don’t you forget it.