“Is Wilkins here?”
“No.”
He didn’t know how lucky he was. The mood I was in, I wasn’t sure what I might do to him.
I sat on Emily’s bed and laid back and thought about what it might have been like for her to imagine her parents under her small bed, scratching and whispering. I could see Emily doing the same kind of thing that I had done in my time. Curling up in a ball and begging for Mommy.
I walked out past the nurse and let her go rushing back to her station where she’d hit the panic button and get the cops down here. Guards from other wards and wings would come running, but I’d be gone by the time anyone got close.
I walked the halls, unlocked the security doors as I came to them, and slipped out the back door past the orderly I’d knocked out. He was starting to come around. I stepped past him and stuck to the shadows. More lights flashed on across the grounds but I knew my way around them. I made my way back to Dell’s drop car, got in, and drove towards town.
I’d been stupid. I should’ve started with the thing that had caught my attention right at the beginning, a moment after I set eyes on Cecil’s corpse.
The popgun .22.
——
Dell had friends of the club inside the police department. He’d have the autopsy report and paperwork on the gun probably before the sheriff did. I showed up at the clubhouse for three days straight waiting for him to get the call.
When it came I was having a beer with him in the clubhouse, watching the Friday-night town girls playing strip nine-ball with a couple of the brothers.
Dell answered his cell. I watched his eyes darken and knew he was getting the word. His responses were terse. He disconnected. He said nothing for a long time.
“Was she pregnant?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “How’d you know? Did she tell you?”
“How far along?”
“Three months.”
It was time to tell him about my visit to the ward. “She had no visitors, not since the last time you showed up on her birthday. But she slipped out of Sojourner at least once that they knew about. Three months ago. She could have gotten out plenty of other times before she showed up at my place.”
I watched him. He sipped his beer and stared into the scarred wood of the bar top. His blunt features hardened and twitched through a few subtle expressions before his face became stony again.
“She did, didn’t she, Dell? She came to see you.”
He chuckled sadly but with some relief. He wanted to talk about it. “Kid walked here. Can you believe that? About a month ago. Shows up at two in the morning, barefoot and bleeding. She tried the same thing on me that she tried with you.” He gripped his beer mug so hard that he put a hairline crack in it.
“It’s why you thanked me,” I said. “You thanked me for not sending her back. Is it because you did?”
The crack grew larger and beer started to seep out of the side of the mug. “I was ashamed. She laid in the back like one of our weekend whores and tried to make me. And I watched her get undressed, man. Christ, she looked just like Katy. I watched her for longer than I should have before I finally told her no. And then I proved what a worthless piece of shit I am. I drove her back to the hospital. Some of those fucking orderlies buy crank from us, and I shelled out some cash and had her slipped inside again. I’ve heard stories of what goes on there, and I sent her right back to that asylum.”
I nodded and couldn’t seem to stop. It was like my neck muscles had been cut. My heart slammed at my ribs. This prick had always said he thought he was her father, but when she came to him for help he dodged his responsibility. He’d never know just what he’d done. Unless he’d been inside, he’d never realize.
“Did you give her the gun?” I asked.
“No.”
We continued to drink. I decided that Dell and I would have to throw down one of these nights.
“If she came to see us she might’ve gone to visit others,” I said. “She must’ve met with someone three months ago. Who?”
“Whoever he is,” Dell said, “he’s dead.”
I kept running names and faces of my neighbors through my head. Who would a disturbed teenage girl listening to the veil-choked whispers of her dead parents go to in order to find out who killed them? Who else would she think might help her? Who had fallen off the razor’s edge into bed with her?
“You think it might be one of yours?” I asked. “The .22?”
“Our friend in the sheriff’s department said the serial numbers were filed and burned out with acid. That probably makes it one of mine.”
“You sell any recently?”
“The last six months?” He scoffed. “Dozens. They’re not worth shit to us. They’re not worth shit to anybody. You know that. No firepower.”
I nodded. “Unless you were going to swallow the barrel. She probably stole it from him.”
“So did she get it from him three months ago? Could she have hidden it that long?”
“No,” I said.
I’d failed again. I was being stupid, again. I feared I’d never smarten up no matter what was on the line. I was still going at this all wrong.
“She got it from him right before she came to see me. She stopped at his place first.”
I held up the little plastic purple house that looked like it belonged to a board game. I showed it to Dell.
“You ever seen something like this before?”
He had. He had a lot of contacts. He was involved with a lot of crooked deals and a few legit ones. He told me he’d seen this in a shop window on Main Street. It went along with a raffle. You fill out the paperwork and your name goes into a box for a drawing. He couldn’t remember what you won and he couldn’t remember the name of the business.
It didn’t matter. I thought I knew. I drove up Main Street until I found the right storefront. I parked and walked around back to the separate apartment behind the shop. Two windows bordered the back door. One to the left and one to the right. The left was new, with a plastic-frame screen instead of wood like the others.
Emily hadn’t known about any secret key stashed under a rock in the family yard. She’d visited here three months ago and smashed a window in. She’d come back before seeing me and gotten the gun. This is where she’d gotten the little house. It’s where she found a small gun and thought its power might help her to discover the answer to the question that haunted and tainted her life. It’s where she fell into bed with a man and whispered in his ear that her dead mother was asking for his help. It’s where the father of her baby lived.
——
I’d never been much of a burglar but I didn’t have to be. The new window was open. I slid it open and climbed inside.
John Acton—Remember, Acton means action for your Home Buying Needs!—lay naked in his bathtub with an X-Acto blade pressed to his wrists. He glanced up at me as I entered but said nothing. Emily’s death had given him the idea. There were hesitation cuts all up and down his forearms. It looked like he’d been trying to slash his wrists for days, but he wasn’t nearly as strong or single-minded as she had been.
He let the blade slip from his fingers and started to cry.
I closed the toilet lid and sat and listened to him weep. I lit a cigarette and smoked and stared at him, noting the half-moon scars on his chest and back made by a fierce woman who liked to cause her men to bleed.