Follow Me Down Page 20

  “I think, to be honest, it was a trophy. Something to remember the murder by, or else it was something to remember Joanna herself. Her red hair, I guess, was sort of her trademark. It was what people noticed first about her.”

  “I should go.” I whispered this; my voice wasn’t working. I bumped into the coffee table on the way to the door.

  “Wait, Mia, you need to tell me about how you knew Joanna was pregnant. Think about it. We’ll find out anyway if Lucas was the father. Why get yourself in trouble over this? And who knows, maybe in conjunction with the phone we’ll be able to eliminate Lucas as a suspect completely.” It was a good try, but Garrett sounded way too artificial, too Splenda-coated, to trust. Plus finding something in my brother’s day planner was in no way going to get him scratched off their one-person suspect list.

  “Eric. Eric told me.” I left his house before he could question me further.

  Up until then, I’d been trying not to think of Joanna as a real person. I’d only been focused on Lucas, and Joanna was the meat hook I was trying to unsnag my brother from. But now, thinking what her last months were like, and the fetus that had been beating along inside her, I felt overwhelming sadness.

  That poor, poor girl.

  * * *

  My head was starting to hurt. I was hungry for something. More pills or maybe just food. When had I last eaten? I needed something to take back to Lucas’s if I was going to stay put at the apartment for a while. I obviously couldn’t go to the more convenient Harold’s so instead braved Target, where at any given time, half the town was shopping.

  I wheeled an ambulance-red cart with a wayward front wheel around, loading it with the kind of food I’d eat when I shut myself in and was going through withdrawal or a painful craving. When I’d spend all day bingeing on Netflix and sugar. I grabbed chips and white powdered donuts, Gatorade and bananas, four premade sandwiches that would expire the next day, dark M&M’s, and Swedish Berries. At the last minute, I added a salad kit I knew I wouldn’t eat, just to see a pop of natural green among all that hypercolored food dye and white bread. I lingered for a minute by the cold medicine, peeking into the pharmacy. Professional curiosity, I guess. I had to check in at work. I would. I just wasn’t up to it yet. I listened in as a young, clearly inexperienced technician instructed a woman to take her iron pills on an empty stomach with a full glass of water. When the technician was finished, I coasted up behind the woman. “Iron pills can feel like a bag of nails in your gut. Better to take them on a full stomach, with orange juice. The vitamin C helps absorb the iron. Grab a laxative too.”

  The woman swung around, gave me an appreciative smile. If she recognized me, she pretended not to. “Thanks. It’s my darn Aunt Flo—it’s just so heavy.” I could never understand why women felt the need to use a euphemism for a period. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You betcha.” You betcha? Where the fuck did that come from?

  * * *

  I pulled into a checkout, but the cashier, a woman with severe zebra highlights, pulled out the CHECKOUT CLOSED sign as I was about to load my groceries on the conveyor belt. She looked at me and snapped her gum, daring me to do something about it. I backed out and went through the self-serve.

  Outside in the parking lot, a man was leaning up against the PT. Mid-fifties, bald, dressed like he’d just come from a bowling alley. He gave me a big toothy smile. “I saw you inside the store, recognized you from the TV.” This man stretched the word out in a goading way, TeeeVeee. I didn’t like this. “I figured this must be your car, and I was right.” He snickered, his arms snapping up in mock-surrender style, and moved away from the PT Cruiser. It took a second to get what he meant, but then I saw all the glass. The back window of my car had been smashed in. Glass was everywhere, all over the backseat. I felt a surge of panic. Joanna’s lock of hair, her journal. Enough to put my brother away for a very long time. It took a dizzying amount of self-control not to fling myself into the car and check that the garbage bag was still under the seat.

  “Tom Geller.” The man reached out his hand. A medical bracelet glinted. I didn’t take his hand. He made a meh sound. “Guess you’re not so well liked here.” Again, that smirk.

  “Stop following me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a happy coincidence.” He leaned against the side of the Cruiser again, put his hands in his pockets and started to jingle some loose change.

  “I’m warning you to stay the fuck away from me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, settle down. This is a just a friendly reminder that your brother’s debt is now at four grand. Might not seem like a lot to someone like you, but it’s best to deal with these things before they get out of control.”

  “Four grand?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what does four grand get me?” My mind started working. Maybe Garrett was wrong, maybe Tom figured the police were monitoring Lucas’s account, so he was waiting until I was desperate and scared enough to pay him off. No questions asked. No police.

  “It gets your brother debt-free.”

  “That’s it?”

  He tilted his head. “What do you mean that’s it? Being debt-free is a beautiful thing, doncha know?” Then offered me up a greasy smile.

  “Will it get me my brother back?”

  Geller made sucking sound with his lips, like he was thinking about it. “That I can’t say. Up to him isn’t it?”

  I stared him down. Tried to think of a way to ask if he was holding my brother for ransom, without outright asking because it seemed like we were talking in some kind of criminal-speak where you didn’t use incriminating words. I couldn’t come up with an innocuous simile for ransom. “That’s not good enough for me. If I give you the four grand you’re asking me for, I want my brother back. Isn’t that how ransoming works?

  “What now?” He hooted, loud. His eyes went watery like I’d just said something hilarious. “If I had your brother, you really think I’d be asking for a measly four grand? Tell me how that makes any sense?”

  I didn’t say anything. Worried I’d just driven up the price or else he was telling the truth and this whole conversation was useless. “How do I know Lucas even owes you money?” I tried, hoping he’d set up a phone call with Lucas or offer another kind of proof that he was alive and well and then I’d pay him anything he wanted.

  Geller stared me down, his tongue running over his front teeth. “You called me remember?” He let that hang there for a second. “Let me make this real simple fer ya, when this sort of situation arises in my business, the loan always goes to next of kin, and I’m not someone you want to owe money to.” He shifted, his foot crunching on glass. Another blast of dread that the journal and hair were gone, that Geller had them and his next move was going to be classic extortion. Worse, he really didn’t have them and there was someone else out there running straight to the police station with them.

  “Fine, fine.” I started digging through my purse, the plastic grocery bags swinging violently on my wrists. I pulled out forty bucks and tried to hand it to him. Geller tipped forward on his toes, peered at the money and balked. “It’s all I have on me.” I threw the money at him and it landed in a wet parking lot pothole. My voice had gone shrill. I didn’t even sound like myself. A woman pushing a squeaky cart shot me a dirty look. This was how it must feel right before you snapped. Blind frustration. I was being reckless. Really, this guy could have pulled a gun or a knife or just attacked me. He’d already tried to run me off the road! I’d let the publicness of the parking lot make me feel safer than I really was, because I seriously doubted anyone would come to my aid if this guy tried anything.

  Tom just stared at me, two beats long, like he was trying to decide something. “Well, I’ll be seeing you soon. Take care of that window.” He bent down, pocketed the cash, and whistled as he walked toward his silver car. Not a black monster truck, but a silver sedan.

  I flung open the driver’s door, bent down,
my knees crunching into a spray of glass on the pavement. Heart-in-my-throat frantic, I dug around under the seat, glass scraping against my palms until I felt the plastic bag.

  It was still there. Thank God, it was still there.

  * * *

  Back at the apartment, Madison Wilkes was at the pool again (I had to think she left at some point?), joined now by two of her friends. It was half past eight in the evening and getting too dark to swim. They had arranged themselves in a tableau of sexy poses on the loungers. Knees bent, leaning back on elbows, passing a bottle of raspberry-flavored vodka between them. Bailey was there too, wearing mannish khaki shorts and an oversized green T-shirt. Her hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the back of her head. From where I was, she looked like she could be the hapless forest ranger, not at all clued in that she was the butt of the joke.

  Madison was pointing. “There, get it out—it’s fucking gross.” A pair of tighty-whitey underwear was floating in the middle of the pool. Bailey was standing next to the deep end, wielding a net, trying to scoop it out. Snagging it, she brought it up, dropped it poolside like it was a big ugly catfish. The girls squealed. Madison stood up, hand on hip. “Well, you can’t leave it there. Throw it out.” Bailey picked it up with one finger and thumb and held it away from her as she ran to the garbage can that was chained to the fence.

  One of the other girls let out a shriek. “That’s so gross. She touched it with her hands.” The other one fake sneezed the word “dyke.”

  I felt a burst of protectiveness and had a brief urge to call out Bailey’s name, whisk her away from the catty taunts. Even serve up a dire warning on bullying, but I was too full of self-defeated heaviness, a chin-in-my-chest grief that had, for now, punctured all of my rage. I felt like a runny abscess on legs. I’d probably do more harm than good. No fourteen-year-old girl wins over the popular crowd by getting bailed out by an adult. Never mind one who was the sister of the suspected murderer of the queen bee’s sister. My thoughts were going soggy too.

  As I passed, Madison had gone stone quiet, her X-ray eyes on me. I had an overtired paranoid thought that she could tell what was in the bag based on the way it was shaped. I gripped it and hustled by.

  Again, I checked the Scotch tape on my door before entering—still intact.

  I needed darkness, my head felt like it was creaking, like I could actually hear fine little fissures spreading along the inside of my skull. I went into Lucas’s room, pulled his blinds, and lay down. I took Advil for my headache, half an Ativan, half an Ambien (it was a triple-A sort of night), and a shot of rye and slept. A hard, sweaty kind of sleep. I woke up six hours later, in the middle of a dream of Lucas standing before me, arms out, with something in his hands. Tangled seaweed. No, hair, dangling between his fingers like crimped tendrils. “Here, take it,” he kept repeating. “Take it.”

  15

  DAY 7

  TUESDAY

  It was almost 2 A.M. Someone was knocking on my door. This time, I looked through the peephole before opening it. It was Bailey. I opened the door just a crack, and the plastic bag crinkled under my hand where I’d left it hanging when I came in earlier, blurry-eyed with migraine, post-pill-binge aura.

  “Yes?” I looked behind her for dear old Dad, but it was just her.

  “I want to apologize about my dad the night before.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s OK, and you’re not the one who should be apologizing anyway.”

  But Bailey wasn’t listening. Her eyes were traveling all over the place; she looked panicked. She cut me off. “Can you help us? Please?”

  Was she asking if I could help her and her father? Still in the midst of a heavy brain fog, I wasn’t sure, but then I saw who she meant. Slumped against the wall, on the ground next to the door, was Madison. Her coltish legs were splayed out at an odd angle. Her head had pitched forward, and her blond hair fell over her face like she was a puppet put away. I stepped out of the apartment just as Bailey lifted Madison up, like it was nothing, and brought her inside. She dropped her onto the couch. “She took something—I don’t know what. You’re, like, a doctor, right? Can you help her?”

  “No, I’m not a doctor! I’m a pharmacist. I’m calling an ambulance.” I went for my phone on the coffee table. Bailey grabbed my arm, her face full of the desperate anguish only a teenager could muster. “You can’t. Her mom will kill her. Please, please doooon’t. I mean, just look at her first. Please!”

  Already I was thinking it wouldn’t look good that when a drunken teenage girl found herself in trouble in the middle of the night, she would knock on Lucas’s door. I knelt down and rubbed Madison’s sternum with my fist to try to wake her up. Her breathing was even, but she was unresponsive. Close up, she reeked like cough-syrupy alcopops and hairspray. Her eyelids looked weighed down by a thick crust of metallic eye shadow: smoky eyes.

  I asked Bailey again if she had any idea what Madison could have taken, but Bailey had backed up close to the door, looking terrified. Her hands tucked behind her, pressed into the wall. I dug through Madison’s pockets and found a white, half-crushed pill, definitely Vicodin. “How much did she take?” I held the pill out at Bailey.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see her take anything.”

  I ran to the bathroom, rummaged through my red makeup case. I kept naloxone with my pill stash, which I guess was an admission of sorts that my pharmacy degree didn’t exempt me from losing control or mixing up my pill pairings. It made little sense, though, because I lived alone, and if I was overdosing, it was unlikely I’d be able to self-administer it. Still, it was like an expired EpiPen; probably useless but it just made me feel better having it on hand. Back in the living room, I administered two shots in each of Madison’s delicate nostrils.

  This roused her. Her stomach started making heaving noises. “She needs to throw up.” Bailey and I carried Madison to the bathroom, where she threw up a watery, yellow mess. “Get some water.” I had Madison drink three glasses of water before I arranged her on the couch on her side and put a pillow behind her so she couldn’t roll onto her back.

  I spotted the plastic bag hanging from the door. Fuck. I got up and ran over to it. “Just a sec,” I mumbled to Bailey, and stuffed it in one of Lucas’s dresser drawers.

  “Can I sleep on the floor next to Mads?” Bailey panted, oddly cheery. Like this could still turn into a pillow-fight, Oreo-gorgefest variety of slumber party.

  “That’s a good idea.” There was no way I was going to be here alone with Madison Wilkes overnight. “Where were you both, anyway?” Bailey was still in the same shirt/khaki combo, while Madison looked like she was dressed for her first number on a stripper pole.

  “A party,” she answered. I tried to press her further, but she was skittish about giving out details. “Can I turn on the TV? I can’t sleep without it.”

  “Keep it on low.” I handed her the remote. She turned it to the Home Shopping Network, drew the sheet up that I gave her, and closed her eyes to a pantsuited woman purring over a five-piece quilted luggage set.

  I monitored Madison for another hour, sitting in the beat-up recliner across from her. When I was sure she was stable and in a deep sleep—she’d be sleeping it off for hours—I decided it was safe to go back to bed.

  * * *

  I half woke again, no idea of the time, sensing movement next to me. A light gust of air brushed against my neck, mascara-stiff eyelashes prickled against my skin, the weight of an arm wrapped tight around my stomach. I felt a dreamy calmness that I wasn’t alone. My eyes flicked open, wide. I was being spooned.

  I rolled away, looked behind me. “Madison?” Her eyes were open, her face lit up by the strange light from the sole parking lot lamppost coming in between the slates of the blind. In the semidarkness of Lucas’s bedroom, she looked nothing like she had before. Now she looked like a feverish child. Her makeup had rubbed off, and pressed against the pillow (my pillow!), her cheeks looked fuller. Almost moonfaced. She looked like her sister
. I wanted to run from the room. I looked at the drawer where I’d put the plastic bag, my vision full of squiggles. It didn’t look like it’d been opened. I fought an urge to check.

  “Can you tickle my neck?” She twirled the end of her hair into her mouth and sucked.

  I sat up. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I’m sorry, I just miss her so much. So much. We used to do this. I’d come into her room if I had a bad dream and we’d take turns tickling each other’s necks.” Her voice was weepy. “Did you and Mr. Haas do things like that when you were young?”

  “I’m sorry if you had a nightmare, but I think it’s better if you go back to the couch, Madison.” I pressed my back farther into the headboard.

  “No, please, don’t. I’m afraid.” She reached up and gripped my wrist and started sobbing, loud, bed-quaking sobs. “I thought you’d understand.”

  “OK. Fine. You can stay here, just for a little while. All right? Just until you feel better, then back to the couch. Or why don’t I call your parents? They’re probably very worried about you.”

  “No, don’t bother. They don’t give a shit about me. I could disappear, and they wouldn’t even care. I hate being at home. My mom is always angry and crying. My dad’s gone, like, totally silent. I’m sick of Officer Burke being there all the time. He sits in my sister’s room for, like, hours, like, on the edge of her bed, just looking around, for what, I don’t know. It upsets my brother that he’s in her bedroom. No one even notices I’m never there.” She buried her face in the pillow. I could see Garrett, crossing over from dedicated to obsessed, desperate to spot something in Joanna’s bedroom as if it could all come down to a Where’s Waldo? moment. I wanted to say something consoling, tell Madison that the downward spiral of her family would eventually end. Even get better. But I didn’t believe it. There were things that people did not recover from.