Follow Me Down Page 8

  “I understand that, but I can’t see Lucas doing this. I can’t. He didn’t do it. There’s just no way he would lure a student into Dickson Park, choke her to death, and cut off all her hair. No, there’s no way. None of this is Lucas.”

  “Fucking Liam, we told him to keep that detail to himself. Now the whole town knows.” He clenched a fist around the stem of the wineglass and took a teaspoon sip. Grimaced. “I swear this is balsamic. Look, all we want to do is have a conversation with Lucas, that’s it. Surrender is his safest option.”

  “Surrender? Surrender doesn’t sound like you just want to have a conversation.”

  He flashed a conciliatory smile. “You’re right, Mia. ‘Surrender’ is a poor word choice, and I don’t mean it like that exactly. It’s just sometimes in these sorts of circumstances, people are driven to do drastic things.”

  “Are you telling me you think my brother might kill himself?” My body went soupy. Was Garrett not telling me something? Did Lucas leave a note? Some crazed ramblings that could be interpreted a hundred different ways?

  “I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve led this conversation down a dark path. That’s not my intention. Obviously I can’t speak to Lucas’s current state of mind, right?” Garrett ran his hand up the back of his buzzed head, his muscle popping through his shirt. “There’s absolutely no reason to think Lucas has hurt himself at this point. He took his ATM card with him, remember? It’s just a matter of time before he needs to use it.” And here I remembered (or really, was slammed with a bout of denial-fatigue as hard and biting as swimmer’s cramp) that Lucas did have a gambler’s tendency to keep a good amount of cash on him especially if he was gambling again (poker tables in smoky back rooms don’t take debit). Lucas could go days without needing to use his bank card. Maybe weeks. Of course I wasn’t going to say this to Garrett. “What I’m saying, Mia, is that I think we’d all feel better with Lucas safe and sound, here in Wayoata.”

  He said this with so much sympathy I couldn’t tell if he was planting fear to make me more compliant or if he believed Lucas committing suicide was a genuine possibility. Either way, both entailed me thinking my brother was guilty.

  “Well, I can speak to his state of mind, and he wouldn’t kill himself because he has no reason to.” I gave him an angry smile back. Shrugged a little too loosely and reached for my drink. No. Only cowards killed themselves, that was something Lucas had said. I was sure of it. The Haases kept themselves alive, even if it made everyone else around them miserable.

  “I just wanted to reiterate the importance of persuading him to come in and talk to us.”

  “So then tell me, already! What do you have on my brother that puts him at that park?”

  “It’s not just about putting him at Dickson, Mia. We have eyewitness accounts of a relationship that existed between him and Joanna, confirmed by a text message Joanna sent Lucas about a weekend getaway two weeks before she went missing. We think that was a blunder and all their other communication may have been done through burner cell phones; friends said they sometimes saw Joanna with a different phone. This might make sense, since Joanna had left her phone in her locker. Kids at school thought Lucas gave special attention to Joanna. They were seen together chatting it up in his classroom after school, in the hallways. They were even spotted in his car parked on a side street.”

  I couldn’t speak for a second. Felt a rush of anger toward my stupid, stupid brother. I wanted him here so I could shake him, swat the back of his head. What the fuck were you thinking? “Evidence of a relationship is not evidence of murder.” My voice had gone wet and sticky. It was a line straight out of a TV crime drama, and I immediately felt dunk-tank disoriented. It was not something that should be coming out of my mouth, not ever.

  “You’re right, but if Lucas isn’t guilty, then where is he? We told Lucas not to leave town, and well, he did. That makes him look very guilty, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe he felt threatened. His truck was vandalized—everyone in town already thought he did it. Pruden probably made sure of that. He couldn’t investigate his way out of a paper bag, so he’s just letting the court of public opinion do the legwork for him. Bringing him gossip like a cat dropping dead mice on a back step.” Even I knew I was starting to sound like a delusional broken record.

  “You don’t really believe that?” Garrett looked at me with a mix of pity and skepticism. This conversation was really getting too similar to the one yesterday at the station.

  “Well, there were a lot of suspicious circumstances surrounding my mother’s accident that Pruden ignored.” I was, I knew, veering off into dangerous territory, but I decided why not use it? Why not use something I was guilty of to help my brother.

  “Yeah, the chief mentioned you might feel that way.” Garrett nodded briskly.

  “He did?” I felt a cross between irritation that I couldn’t unsettle Garrett and slight paranoia that they were discussing me. For a second I held my breath. What if they did reopen Mimi’s case? Would Lucas and I get side-by-side cells?”

  “Yeah, he said you both felt your mother’s car accident should’ve been handled as suspicious and this might make you reluctant to work with us.” He eyed me like I was a petulant child. “But if it makes you feel any better, I looked over your mother’s file, and there was nothing in it that suggested it was anything but an accident. Her blood alcohol level was three times over the limit.”

  “But there was a glove left behind in the car. A glove.” I pressed my finger into the table like I’d just made a major point.

  “I didn’t read anything about that.”

  “Of course you didn’t, because Pruden worked the case.”

  Garrett started to say something, stopped. He looked nervous about this awkward shift in the conversation. He was here to glean information about Lucas, not talk about my mother or his boss’s incompetence. He was visibly grateful when the waitress showed up again and set down the platter of calamari. A gelatinous entanglement of appendages that jiggled like Jell-O. Garrett picked one out, dipped it, chewed for a long time, scrunched his face up, and pushed the plate away. “I would not even let you try this.” He picked a breadstick out of the basket, took a bite. “Here, have a breadstick. It will make me feel better.”

  I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. I took one from the basket, slick with oil, and passively let it slide down my throat. Garlic and baked cheese goodness. The breadsticks were the only reason this place was still open.

  “Pruden already has his mind made up about Lucas; I don’t. I’m still open to the possibility someone else could be responsible for this. We just need to talk to Lucas again. See if he can explain some things. Find out why he ran.” He wagged his breadstick at me.

  “So just small-town gossip and one text conversation, that’s it? I mean, I think I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that’s not a lot.” The knot in my stomach had loosened. It was a witch hunt. They had no one else and needed someone to blame.

  “We’re still waiting on DNA results, Mia. So for now we’re looking at patterns of behavior.” Garrett’s jaw flickered. “That’s why you need to do the press conference. Maybe if Lucas sees you up there, he’ll rethink his current strategy. You need to convince him to come back and face these accusations like a man. That’s what he needs to do.”

  DNA.

  Three letters that felt like three shots to the head from a nail gun. Of course they were waiting for DNA. I realized I’d been running on a civilian’s misconception that DNA processing had an hour turnaround and that any DNA had already been analyzed and deemed inconclusive (because they wouldn’t find Lucas’s DNA on that girl—I had to believe that). I was tempted to snap back that Garrett didn’t need to prove anything because Lucas didn’t do it, but that hardly made sense in this context. So I nodded and agreed to do the press conference.

  The waitress started the vacuum and ran across the restaurant like some manic housemaid in a passive-aggressive way to get us to leave. Garrett
paid up, and the waitress gave us a big, warm have-a-nice-night wave good-bye. Outside, the OPEN sign flickered off. We stood in front of the restaurant in the pink June twilight.

  “This alleged weekend getaway, where was it supposed to be?”

  “St. Roche, but Joanna had to cancel because of a dance practice.” Garrett stared at me, removed a toothpick from the corner of his mouth, and rolled it back and forth between his thumb and index finger. “Why?”

  The knot in my stomach returned; the ground pitched forward. I was back dangling from a pendulum speed-swinging between hope and fear. I couldn’t decide if I should ask whether Joanna was pregnant or not. I could hear Mimi’s voice, clear as if she were standing right next to me, saying in my ear, Don’t be such a tattletale.

  “I was just curious. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t ignore my headache any longer. It felt like something had unfurled its prickly body and was now slithering around, snapping vessels inside my head. Streetlights were going hazy along the edges of my vision.

  I pulled in to a convenience store. Cupped my eyes and massaged my temples with my thumbs. A couple of kids on bikes circled the lot aimlessly, sipping enormous cups of pop, pausing every so often to stare into my car. There were other reasons Lucas could have been planning to go to St. Roche with Joanna; I was sure of it.

  I just couldn’t think of any.

  The Valium was a distant memory. It surprised me how intact my tolerance felt after such a solid stint at sobriety. The painkillers were already calling out to me again. I had a little bit of everything, but no acetaminophen or ibuprofen. I zombie-walked inside the store, bought some Advil and a bottle of water. By the time I got back into the car, I’d convinced myself my headache was too dire for Advil, so I took a Percocet instead. Everything felt dire. I couldn’t be handicapped by headaches while I was trying to both find and exonerate my brother.

  As I exited the lot, a black big-wheeled tank of a truck pulled up close behind me. Headlights on high. Its front end was covered with one of those big, glinting metal guards. I slowed down to let it pass, my eyes watering from the pulsing light, but it kept riding my bumper.

  * * *

  My first thought was bored teenagers screwing around. I sped up, and it sped up. I slowed down again, and it slowed down. I opened the window to wave at it to pass me, and it strobed its lights back.

  We drove like this for a few minutes, a synchronized cavalcade. I watched the truck in the side mirror. Tempted to hit my brakes hard, to force it to back off. I changed lanes, and the truck followed like my car was magnetically towing it. Go away. I wanted to give it the finger, but something told me not to, that whoever was in the truck was fucking with me and would like that too much.

  I was getting nervous. Trickles of sweat slid down my back, and yet I felt cold. A chill inched across my neck. I remembered how Percocet could sometimes make me paranoid—was this even really happening? Was I just imagining how close they were? It wasn’t like everyone didn’t need to take Main Street to get somewhere in this town.

  But Percocet did not work this fast. I wished it would.

  Ignore them. Just ignore them until they get bored and go away.

  I had just flicked my rearview up to decrease the glare of the truck’s searing headlights when I felt a full-body sucker punch as the truck rammed into my back end. I flung forward, my head snapped toward the dash, the seat belt hugged my rib cage tight. I went breathless, like someone had sat down on my chest.

  The truck came up behind me again, not as hard this time. Kissing my bumper and then pushing my PT forward.

  The whole car started vibrating, heaving a death rattle, like it was about to snap. I braked, but nothing happened. I was being steered, ridden like a bike.

  “What-the-fuck, what-the-fuck, what-the-fuck.” The car was going to break apart, and I was going to be smeared across the road like its gooey center. Gripping the steering wheel, my jugular jumping, I brought my foot down hard on the gas, pressed it to the floor. Accelerated and broke away.

  Suddenly the truck shot past me. Cut back in front of me, then hit its brakes so that I nearly rear-ended it. I swerved over onto the shoulder. A cloud of gravel dust kicked up around my car so that I only saw the fiery rear lights of the truck as it fishtailed away. I didn’t even try to get the plate number.

  My bone-white hands stayed on the wheel, like they’d been nailed there. Who the hell was that? A sickly feeling rushed hot across my chest. It could have been anyone. I’d been back for over twenty-four hours, it was likely common knowledge at this point that I was there. Without Lucas, I was the next best thing for the town to take its anger out on. I tried to release the brake, but couldn’t. The dark flat landscape tilted back and forth. I flung open the car door and drew in quick, labored breaths. Half hanging out of the car, I could picture the truck returning and sideswiping me. I got back into the car. Foot shaking, I started to drive.

  Welcome home.

  5

  DAY 3

  FRIDAY

  I fell asleep in my clothes on Lucas’s couch. I dreamt that Lucas and I were looking for Mimi in the backyard of our childhood home. We’d buried her, and now we couldn’t find her. It was raining heavily, but we just kept digging all these little holes until the ground looked pockmarked. Lucas paused his grating whistling of Orbison’s “Here Comes the Rain, Baby,” only to say, “Huh, I thought we put her right here. Right here.” He shook his head, moved half a foot over, and brought his mud-caked shovel up and started hitting the ground again and again.

  I jolted awake, skin blazing. Ran to the bathroom and retched into the toilet. Slapped my face with cold water.

  The night of my mother’s accident, Lucas was having a party. Mostly his hockey team and a few lucky girls were there. It was February, and one of a handful of parties he’d started having as graduation approached. I guess he’d stopped caring what his friends thought of Mimi because we would soon be leaving her behind. It also didn’t hurt that Mimi was permissive of teen drinking.

  Up until then, we’d both avoided bringing friends around, because our mother was an attention-seeking drunk. She would poke her head into our bedrooms, under the pretense of looking for something, like hairspray (she went through hairspray like crazy; sometimes I seriously thought she must drink the stuff), and the next minute, she would infiltrate our conversations, spread out on the bed like “one of the girls” or peek under the fort built in the living room for the umpteenth time—“Oh, there you are.”

  That night, Mimi fluttered in and out of the basement, an unfinished concrete dungeon that Lucas had recently claimed as his own with beat-up couches and a busted foosball table held together with duct tape. Mimi refilled chip bowls, then lingered long enough to insert herself into conversations. Laughing too loudly. She kept her hands on Lucas’s friends too long, on their backs or shoulders, until they moved away first. I wasn’t at the party but upstairs at the kitchen table half studying and half eavesdropping; still I knew exactly what Mimi was up to. I could hear the sudden stops in conversations, the awkward hushed laughter that followed Mimi’s breathy voice. Eventually she didn’t bother with the chip bowls or ice or straws or whatever it was and just stayed downstairs like another party guest.

  Lucas poked his head into the kitchen. “Keep her upstairs—fuck, Mia, help me out.” He was pissed.

  “You keep her upstairs,” I snarled back. He should have known better than to have that many people over and expect Mimi to act like a normal human being. Plus, I was feeling left out. Carolyn was there, and I didn’t want to make it any easier for Lucas.

  Mimi came back up to refill her drink (she knew enough to keep her own bottle of gin out of the reach of the guzzling teens). Her cheeks flushed like she was the belle of the ball. She swayed at the kitchen counter to the music pumping through the floor. The way she was moving, all hips, I could tell her buzz had taken her back to when she was seventeen and unencumbered and co
uld have the choice of any boy. She’d even dressed for the occasion in a lacy camisole top and tight pants.

  Then a skinny-armed boy came upstairs to use the bathroom. My mother followed him, licking her lips like he was a piece of tender meat. I didn’t know what was happening there, but I could imagine. Not that I wanted to imagine. I went downstairs, tried to get Lucas’s attention so I didn’t have to walk all the way in, but he was busy with Carolyn.

  “Lucas, Mom’s in the bathroom with your friend.” I hadn’t meant to say it so loudly, but everyone froze. Lucas’s face shifted, went dark and angry. His friends laughed. “MILF” was tossed around. Lucas fled the basement, taking two steps at a time. Upstairs, Mimi was just exiting the bathroom, dabbing her relipsticked mouth, with the boy now flush-faced and smiling. Lucas stood there, looked at Mimi with hard contempt. His mouth set in a razor-sharp line. “You’re disgusting.” Lucas fled the house with his posse of friends, slamming the door so hard the house rattled.

  Mimi waved at them, ridiculously, like nothing had happened, like she was about to hand out goodie bags at a birthday party. She hummed as she fixed herself another drink. I pictured the thoughts cruising through her head. Guess those tight-bodied high school girls got nothing on me. You still got it, Mimi.

  I must have lingered too long, because when the last ice cube clinked against her glass, she spun around. “Oh, what are you looking at? You tattletale. Tattletale, tattletale, tattletale.” Her hair had come loose and had fallen over her left eye. Her lipstick was smudged, and her bra strap had slackened and fell down her exposed arm. “Always competing with me, aren’t you? That boy would never be interested in you anyway.”