Follow Me Down Page 6

  “No thanks. Is Zoey here?”

  “Zoey starts at three, but she’s always late.”

  I ordered a tomato juice the shade of Mimi’s paint job on my shirt. A near-adequate meal replacement.

  “OK, well, I’ll just leave these. Just in case.” She left two greasy menus.

  I chewed the soggy celery and looked out the window into the parking lot, trying to shut out the whispery drone of an announcer covering a golf tournament and the smacking sound of hot sauce being licked from fingers. The warm, relaxed feeling of the Valium started to radiate from the back of my neck and spread outward, wrapping itself around my shoulders like an old friend’s embrace.

  Across the street was the strip mall with a Chinese buffet restaurant, a used women’s clothing store called Encores, and a “full-service” beauty salon with a sign out front that read CONGRADULATIONS TANNIS.

  I put the word “Gent” into Google on my phone. “Gent + Wayoata,” “Gent + Lucas Haas.” The actor came up. I scrolled farther down to see a list of search results for news sites with headlines like HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER SUSPECT IN STUDENT’S MURDER, STUDENT-TEACHER AFFAIR GONE WRONG, MISSING STUDENT TURNS UP DEAD—TEACHER DISAPPEARS. My brother’s name was next to words like “suspect,” “murderer,” “vicious,” “slaying,” and “missing,” and pictures of Joanna Wilkes’s beaming teenage face. The story was gaining traction. It was trickling out of Wayoata, out of North Dakota to newspapers and five o’clock news channels in Nebraska, Minnesota, and Manitoba. It was like a bad rash that spread each time it was scratched. I couldn’t bring myself to click on any of them.

  * * *

  I typed in “Gent + Debt” … then remembered that whenever anyone in Wayoata wanted to keep something private, hair plugs, gastric bypass surgery, an abortion, etc., they would drive sixty miles east to St. Roche. A site came up. GenTech in St. Roche. A paternity testing center.

  Oh my God. Lucas got his girlfriend pregnant! His promiscuous girlfriend. Why else would he need the test? He was trying to work out how much he would have to pay in child support, so it had to be his. He would never have left if he knew he was going to have a baby.

  Not willingly.

  My muscles spiked with adrenaline. My mouth went furry, the tangy juice curdled on my tongue.

  I was struck with a howling vision of a midnight mob with hands still covered with nicks and cuts from trashing his truck, yanking him out of his bed. Dragging him back to Dickson Park to deal out some Old Testament justice under the angry haze of torchlight. My heart started to beat faster, but then, just as quickly, it went spongy and soft on the Valium. Calm down. Lucas just called on Friday. Maybe he took off because he got his girlfriend pregnant.

  We never knew who our father was. Mimi would dole out little bits of information here and there when she was drunk enough, details that were conflicting and nonsensical. She just liked getting Lucas’s rapt attention. The description always added up to a pastiche of all her previous boyfriends. I gave up listening to her, trying to piece together some image of what he looked like, who he was. She could easily have had no idea who our father was anyway. The only consistency was that she had been very young (hardly twenty years old) and he was much older and married and had moved away before we were born.

  For a while, Lucas was obsessed with finding out who he was. He felt that if Mimi lied all the time, then maybe she had lied about our father moving away. He became convinced that certain men around town bore a striking resemblance to me. He took after Mimi, while I had the wild-card features that could be our father’s—dark hair, olive complexion, a Mediterranean nose. Maybe it was that guy who helped him with the chain on his bike at the end of our street or his Peewee coach. He would follow the guys around like a duckling until they got annoyed and wanted to know why. Lucas would make something up, because his father, his real father, would have known why.

  Then one day he just dropped it, vowed he would never abandon his future children. “I don’t even want to know someone who could run out on their kids.”

  Didn’t childhood convictions like these often go limp in adulthood? I tried to picture Lucas tiptoeing out a back door, giving the whole just-going-out-for-a-pack-of-smokes shtick, then gunning it out of town. Too panicked to give a second thought to that whole, completely unfounded “person of interest” crap.

  Nope. I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see him skipping out on his future child’s life. He was too scarred by being abandoned by our own father. And I get that patterns repeat, I do, but not with us. Lucas and I were too self-aware. We were not ruined by our mother. We were not. The Haas twins made it out of their miserable childhood just fine. I could say this with absolute, Valium-infused certainty.

  Plus, why would he have been working out child support equations if he were planning to skip out? Though maybe it will make perfect sense once I meet this ex-student/girlfriend.

  I ordered another juice, settled into the Valium, and watched the sky cloud over until light, hazy rain started to fall.

  At quarter past three, a purple hatchback with a pink lei hanging from the rearview mirror came banging into the parking lot. A dark-haired girl got out and ran, looking damp and frazzled, across the lot. The other waitress was on her, pointing at me. Zoey nodded, went to the back of the restaurant, presumably to change into her uniform. Another fifteen minutes, and she reemerged in a cropped tank top that revealed a very toned stomach, her vampy black hair refluffed and resting like a silken stole on her shoulders.

  “Mia?” Zoey plopped herself down across from me. “I knew it was you. Wow, you look so much like him. Like, your face shape. Honestly, I am getting chills right now.” As proof, she held out her tawny, goose-pimpled arms.

  “Thanks, I don’t see it, but people automatically say that a lot once they find out we’re twins.”

  Zoey nodded. Pursed her full, glossy lips. In her tiny uniform, it was easy to see why Lucas would find her attractive; she was built. All smooth muscle and large rounded breasts. A body like a high school student. One who had the time to play volleyball and basketball, and run track and field, and attend cheerleading practice. This looked very bad for him.

  “I was so worried it was that bitch again from the Sun.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” All I could think about was a budding fetus inside this girl.

  “Yeah, I know, huh? Finally. Lucas talked about you all the time.” She touched her hair.

  “You too,” I lied. “Do you know where my brother is?”

  “I don’t. I’ve asked around. Thought he could be staying with the Sorenson cousins, but Bo, do you know Bo too?”

  I nodded. The Sorenson cousins were a couple of years older. They had a reputation as enforcers on the ice, the kind of melon-headed thugs who chased other players into the corner and nailed them into concussions. Every third or fourth word out of their mouths was “pussy” and they could taunt other guys into doing stupid, dangerous shit for their entertainment. They were also well known for dropping their partial dentures into unattended Solo cups and would double over with laughter when the person felt the brush of false tooth against their lips and spewed out their mouthful of beer.

  “So Bo even took me to his house to prove that Lucas wasn’t hiding out there.” I was sure Bo was also hoping for something a little more. How gullible was this girl? “Anyway the Sorenson cousins are keeping their eye out and if they hear anything about where Lucas is, they’re gonna call me right away.” She chirped resolutely, like the burly Sorenson cousins were professional mantrackers.

  “So you have no idea where he is?”

  “I wish I did. I’m so worried about him. He hated that people were talking shit about him. I think he’s just taken off for a few days, until things cool over, y’know?”

  “I am so relieved to hear you say that. It’s exactly what I think.” I wanted to hug her. Pull her in, my comrade, and start to plot exactly how we were going to get Lucas back here. My pricked, tensed muscles, for the
first time since I got here, went lax and rubbery. Like I’d just finished a marathon.

  “I know he didn’t do this, he said he’d never cheat on me.” And then she had to go and let out that bit of reasoning. I practically winced. Noooo. I wanted her to say she knew my brother couldn’t do this because she knew it wasn’t in him to do it. Not some fairy-tale trust in him that he wouldn’t cheat on her.

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Not since he dumped me, via text message.” She overenunciated “via,” so it flung from her lips like a ninja star, and jutted out her chin as if expecting an explanation from me. I tried to look sympathetic. She sighed. “Anyway, the police say I’m the last one he had any contact with. He sent it to me Friday afternoon. They’re using it to create a time line or something.”

  “What did the text say?” So Lucas pocket-dialed me in the morning, then dumped his girlfriend by the afternoon?

  “It said something like ‘I’m done with you.’ Whatever. After the police took a look, I deleted it. I think he was snapping under the pressure. It just didn’t sound like him. He was trying to protect me. I know people are making a big stink that I’d been his student, but I had mono my sophomore year. Bad. I was only in his class for, like, the first month. I’m twenty-one years old now.” Inky tears started to spill onto her cheeks. “Shit,” she grabbed a napkin and tried to sop up her mascara, gave up, and kept it scrunched in her fist. “It’s just all been so awful. The cops kept grilling me about when and how the relationship started, like they thought he was pressing his hard-ons on me since freshman year. Telling me he was likely grooming me. Seriously? Grooming me for a relationship almost five years later? Like that makes any sense.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Four and half months.” She looked hurt that I didn’t already know that. Clawed her hair again. “Things were going so good. I felt like he was my soul mate. I know people say that a lot, but this was different. I could just talk to him. Look.” As evidence, she took out her iPhone and showed me a picture of them together on Saint Patrick’s Day. It was taken at Casey’s, and their faces were pushed up together, Zoey with clovers painted onto her cheeks, green beer in front of them. He looked happy.

  Zoey filled me in. They first met (technically it was the second time), predictably, when she started working at the bar. Lucas came in a lot after hockey games, “for the wings—they’re really good—he wasn’t all pervy and gross. Unlike his co-coach, or whatever.”

  “Wyatt?”

  “Yeah. That guy is in here all the time. I don’t think he likes going home. So, anyway—”

  “And he hits on you?”

  “Totally. He’s so touchy. I mean, he never did it in front of Lucas, but whenever he’s here just on his own, or with other friends, especially when he’s with other dudes, he acts like we had something going on between us. He’s all winks and dirty jokes and grabbing my ass. Once he pulled me into his lap; that pissed me off. Mostly it’s annoying. But, whatever, he leaves good tips.”

  Typical Wyatt. It was like everything Lucas touched turned to gold in his eyes. If there were rumors circulating about Lucas and his student Joanna, did he try the same thing on her? Was that why he was acting so sketchy and trying to disassociate from Lucas? Was he worried that something he said or did to Joanna was going to come back to bite him?

  “Aaaannnyway…” Zoey said it little more sternly this time. She wanted to talk about Lucas. About their “courtship.” “I’m the one who came on to Lucas. Do you know how rare that is in a place like this? I practically had to beg him to have me over. In the morning I was thinking, all the girls at Westfield wanted Mr. Haas, and, wow, here I am, in his bed.”

  I kept waiting for her to tell me she was pregnant, but she only continued to gush about Lucas. “When Joanna Wilkes went missing, were you with my brother that day, did you talk to him?” I knew the police would have asked her this already, but I wanted to hear for myself.

  “No. I wish I’d been, but I was working here until close, at two A.M.” She leaned forward, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I even told him I would lie for him, say I was with him, but he wouldn’t let me get involved. People turned on him so fast here. His truck was totally trashed, windows smashed, ‘sicko’ spray-painted on the side. I was there for him. That’s why this text, it just came out of nowhere.”

  “It doesn’t sound like him, to break up with someone through text.” In fact I had no idea if this was something Lucas would do. I didn’t think so. Still, maybe he wanted to avoid a face-to-face breakup with everything going on. He couldn’t handle one of his ex-students looking so lovelorn and disappointed.

  “I know, right? I don’t believe Lucas would ever hurt anyone, but the thing is, the night that girl went missing, he didn’t answer my texts for, like, three hours. He said he fell asleep. I didn’t tell the police that, just so you know. That I texted him, and he didn’t answer. Though I’m sure they know about it anyway.”

  I could see how the police interviews with Zoey went, her barely eighteen looks, sounding naive and brainwashed by Lucas, a master manipulator who’d been working on seducing her since she was just a bright-eyed high school student. Get ’em good and young, while they’re still malleable.

  A couple other waitresses had been throwing Zoey dirty looks for the last fifteen minutes, and I guessed one finally told on her, because an older woman from the back, with a MANAGER button pinned to the strap of her sequined top, was coming toward the table.

  Zoey mumbled, “Shit, gotta go.”

  I reached out, grabbed her hand. “But you’re OK, then?” I wanted her to tell me she was pregnant. I needed to know it was this girl, sitting right here in front of me, that my brother had impregnated. It had to be her.

  She sniffed, her head drooped. “I will be, when he’s back and we can talk. Really talk.”

  “What I mean is, is the baby fine?” I whispered gently, suddenly wondering if I’d spoken out of turn. Maybe she’d lost it, under the stress. Maybe she’d decided not to have it. I felt a sudden rush of excitement at the prospect of being an aunt. I could see a little girl who looked like Lucas, or even me, out shopping, at movies, over tea confiding in me things she couldn’t tell her mother, or whatever aunts and nieces do.

  “Baby? What baby?” She pulled her hand away, her voice suddenly loud, defensive. The manager did a U-turn back toward the kitchen.

  “I just thought…” But I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t think fast enough to backpedal out of it. “You’re not pregnant?”

  “No, I’m not.” Her nostrils started to flare, her eyes blinked rapidly, then her arms went tight around her stomach, pushing her breasts up so high they were spilling out of her bra. “So he got some other chick pregnant?”

  I didn’t say anything; my mind was blank.

  “Huh, well, isn’t that just fucking great. So he did cheat on me? With who? Was he with that girl Joanna? Someone else? I knew it. I gave four and a half months of my life to that pervert pedophile, and he got some slut pregnant and dumped me in a text?! Fucking asshole!”

  I wanted to calm her down, but I was too slow-witted—fucking Valium—and before I could say anything, she had stormed off to the bathroom, sobbing.

  4

  Dickson Park was a short fifteen-minute drive south, a sprawling stretch of wilderness right on the edge of town. It was just after 4 P.M., and despite how exhausted I was feeling, something was drawing me to go looking in those woods. The woods that always felt like they were watching you back.

  The park was named after James David Dickson, founding father of Wayoata, who cleared the land of Native Americans after finding out Wayoata meant “bountiful.” Something like that. A plaque was mounted on a stony pillar not far from the public bathrooms detailing the final bloody battle that was fought next to the river, where Dickson waged a surprise attack. Stories that the park was haunted were common fare. An unmarked sacred burial ground was blamed for
any strange happenings in the park. And there had been some: hikers getting lost on a trail they knew well, the drowning of a girl widely known to fear water, and in 1988 a husband who’d just snapped and murdered his wife and toddler midpicnic with a corkscrew. He was found covered in his family’s blood, leaning against a tree, humming Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” between swigs of wine. Or so goes the legend.

  Then there were the stories about Chappy, a ratty-dressed sex offender, with a face that had been mangled by a frying oil incident in prison. He sold brooms on the street in the summer; no one knew where he went over the winter. He looked like a Depression-era hobo, right down to the torn plaid suit jacket and the flower sticking out of a buttonhole. If you got too close when you passed him on the sidewalk, he’d swoop in, flashing a rotten-toothed grin, his breath hot and boozy as he’d try to hand you the browning flower off of his jacket. Giving a sad-clown expression when the kids scattered. One summer, halfway through high school, Chappy gave up selling brooms and vanished.

  Everyone said he lived in Dickson Park. That he leered in the shadows at little kids sucking on fast-melting Popsicles, at teenage skinny-dippers, while furiously jerking off into the bushes.

  Mostly, at night, when the weather was warm, Dickson Park was a place for teenagers to get drunk and pair off into the woods.

  As I drove up the winding dusty road into the parking lot, I still got the feeling it should be littered with warning signs to KEEP OUT, TURN BACK, LAST CHANCE. And then I did pass a sign. Written in red, drippy, spray paint: DICKSON PARK CLOSED AT 9 P.M. CURFEW IN EFFECT. Underneath that, in marker, someone had written HIDE YOUR DAUGHTERS.

  * * *

  It was sunny again by the time I parked, and the rain had turned everything blinding bright. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find the spot where Joanna Wilkes’s body was found, but when I looked at the park map, there was a heart drawn in permanent marker off one of the trails, near the river. I tensed up.