Blackbird (13 page)

You’re asking people to believe you didn’t do something you’re on tape doing. You’re asking them to believe that somewhere out there, a group of people are hunting humans for sport. You, possibly others. Then, besides that, you’re only coming in now, after watching a woman die and being pursued by a man with a gun. You hear the detective’s voice:
Why didn’t you come to us sooner?

Because you were scared. Because you were certain they’d arrest you, that now, days later, it’s still impossible to know how guilty you are. Because you can’t tell them anything about yourself—even your own name. You’re trying to think of all the reasons, to understand it, when the door opens again. The detective comes in with a police officer. Her hair is pulled back in a low bun, her lips stained with a burgundy gloss.

She’s holding something at her side just behind the detective, where you can’t see. A wave of panic rises in your chest, and you wonder if there was anything else, if you’ve betrayed yourself in some other way. Are they arresting you?

She sets a cup down on the table and slides it over. It’s tea. The tiny string hangs over the side of the paper rim, steam coming off the top. It’s so innocuous you almost want to laugh. Then the detective hands you a map. “See if you can show us where the
house is,” he says, pointing to a green section of the map labeled
Griffith Park
. “Do you know which direction you went when you turned out of here?”

The pin on the woman’s breast pocket reads
ALVAREZ
. She hands you a red pen. “We went right,” you say, marking the paper. “And I followed them for a few miles. Eventually I was on Hollywood Boulevard.” You trace down the road you think you exited out of, moving past the streets you know. Western, Gower, La Brea. You stop soon after. You went farther, but on the map all the side streets look the same. It’s hard to tell where the turn was.

“You turned left off this road?”

The pen hovers over the paper, and you’re not sure what this proves. Do they still think you’re guilty? Do they think you’re making this up?

“I don’t know. It was dark and the cross streets are a blur. If I saw the turn I could tell you. It was after a gray-and-pink motel.”

The detective and the officer look at each other, and it’s a long while before the woman finally says anything. “You’d recognize it?”

“Definitely. You just have to take me there.”

The detective nods, and it’s all you need. The officer doesn’t handcuff you. She doesn’t say anything, just motions for the door.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“
WHAT ABOUT THIS
one?” the officer, Celia, asks. She can’t be going more than ten miles an hour, the police car pulling around the block so slowly every neighbor seems to notice. A white-haired woman in a robe ducks inside, calling to someone behind the gated door.

“This isn’t the street. . . .” You lean forward, your face just inches from the metal grate that separates you from the front seat. When she opened the back door you couldn’t help but use it to measure how much they believed your story.
I trust you enough to
follow this lead, but not enough to let you sit beside me.

“But that restaurant I told you about—the one with the flower on the sign. That was just a little bit away,” you add. “It has to be around here.”

“It doesn’t seem like it is.”

The air conditioning is blasting, but you still feel like your skin is on fire. “We’re close—it can’t be much longer.”

She glances at you over her shoulder, and there’s something kinder in her expression. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she says. “If we don’t have a crime scene we don’t have much to go on. They didn’t find anything at the park . . . not even the knife.”

She points to some of the houses on the side of the road, another motel, a gated lot. She keeps pointing as if to say,
What about this? Does this look familiar? Do you remember this?

The street was dark last night, your headlights off, and you were more concerned with remaining unseen. You only know what you know. But you’re starting to feel like you have to turn up something, that there’s no going back without some proof.

Her phone breaks the silence. She pulls over, answers. “Not yet,” she says. “She thinks we’re close.”

Then there is a series of “yeses” and “nos.” You strain to hear the voice on the other end of the line, but between the radio station and the traffic outside, it’s hard to make out anything.

“I’ll let you know,” Celia says before hanging up. She tucks the phone in her breast pocket and pulls away from the curb. As she glances over her shoulder, merging into traffic, you look where she looks. Across two lanes of cars, you can just see a yellow house. It’s set in from the corner.

“Wait,” you say. “Take the next left. Try circling around.”

She does, but she drives just as slowly as before. You circle back to the previous block. A low tree branch stretches over the road, a few leaves grazing the car’s roof. You pass underneath it and suddenly things are familiar.

“This is it,” you say. “It’s up on the left.”

“The one on the end?” Celia asks, her voice uncertain.

As you get closer, you see why. The tarp is still covering half the house, but beyond it the facade is burned black. There are two fire trucks at the curb. A few firemen move supplies from the garage to a pile outside. “That’s the place.”

She parks at the back of the house, where you have a clear view. The windows on the bottom floor are broken and black. The fire is out, but soot streaks the sides of the house, trailing up to the second floor. Through the doorway, you catch glimpses of the
house’s charred insides, the walls eaten away by flames. Your stomach sinks as you take in the destruction. The fire can’t have been random. They’re covering their tracks.

Celia opens all the windows a crack. Then she turns off the engine. It’s only when she gets out, clicking the locks shut, that you realize she’s leaving you there. Your hand automatically goes to the door handle, as if trying it twice might open it.

Behind her, most of the firemen have gone back inside the house. One lingers by the truck, loading a tank into a compartment above. She approaches him and says something you can’t hear. “Looks like a party,” he says. “There’s a bunch of broken bottles, some syringes. Probably just some junkies.”

Celia disappears inside the house. When she returns, she’s confused—it’s all over her face. She turns back, looking around the back of the house, seeing what you saw. The place is exactly what you described to the detective. The house is the same color, the bars and roof the same. There’s even the same broken patio furniture—two wooden chairs and a rotten table in a pile in the yard.

She comes back to the car, leaning down to look at you. She’s about to say something when her cell phone rings. “We just got here,” she answers. “It’s the place she described. . . .”

You see now that she believes you, or at least believes that
you
believe it. Why would you turn yourself in if you were lying? How could you describe it in detail if you weren’t here?

She paces the concrete backyard, occasionally glancing at the narrow path that leads to the front of the house. Then her expression shifts. There are a few more “yeses,” “rights,” before she puts the phone back in her pocket.

She opens the car door. Her hand comes down on your wrist, pulling you to stand. She’s squeezing your arm so hard it momentarily stuns you.

“What are you doing?” you manage. “What did they say?”

“They ran your fingerprints. There’s a warrant for your arrest in San Francisco.”

You feel like someone has rearranged your insides. You have to remind yourself that you weren’t lying, that whatever she’s talking about—you didn’t know.

“Club Xenith? The arson you committed? How you bounced between juvenile halls? Any of this sounding familiar?”

“When? When was I in San Francisco?”

“Okay . . . spare me any more bullshit,” she says. This time her voice is colder, foreign, and you can tell she’s already back at the station, already thinking about bringing you in and telling everyone how stupid she was to believe you. She turns you around. When she reaches for the handcuffs at her waist you don’t initially resist. She nearly has them on you when you pull away, slipping from her grasp.

She looks surprised. As you spin back, heading toward the neighbor’s backyard, she grabs for her radio. You dig your toe into the chain-link fence, jumping it, and land hard on the other side. You expect her to come running after you, but when you turn back she’s still by the car. She’s still standing there, the radio to her lips, calling to someone on the other end.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

WHEN THE POLICE
come to Ben’s door he’s still asleep, the bell sounding somewhere above, like some strange distant song. He twists on the couch, pulls the blanket to his neck. He keeps his eyes closed but then they knock several times, banging hard against the wood.

He’s up. Wiping the crust from his eyes, his legs feeling unsteady as he fumbles in the dark basement. He trips over his shoes. As he goes to the stairs the knocking is louder, barreling toward him down the long hall. He knows something’s wrong. He stands there in the foyer, his skin cold and clammy, wondering if it’s too late to run.

He stares through the peephole. Two uniformed men stare back.

The cop has his badge out already. He holds it in front of the peephole, waiting. “LAPD,” he says. They heard footsteps in the hall. The officers already know he’s there.

Ben turns back into the house, making a list of where everything is—the pound he has in the coffee table in the basement, the plastic boxes and scale in his closet. When he opens the door he still pretends to be half asleep, even though his heart is wild in his chest, his hands shaky. He’s in his boxers. He wipes his eyes again, wipes his nose. “Can I help you?”

It’s about his mom. They know he’s been selling pot. They caught him on camera with Sunny somewhere and now they’re here, looking for her. He doesn’t consider the other option. He won’t consider that someone could be dead.

“Morning . . . Ben Paxton?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Are your parents home?”

“No, my mom’s not here . . . why?”

“We were hoping to ask you some questions. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, yeah.”

The first cop is older, with black hair that’s stiff with gel. He holds up a piece of paper. Ben takes it, turns it over, and studies the receipt before understanding what it is.

“Does that look familiar?”

“It’s my phone number,” Ben says. “I wrote it down for someone.”

“Who?” The younger officer is heavier, balding at his temples.

Ben doesn’t know whether to lie about her or to tell the truth. Where did they find this? What do they know? If they had any reason to think she’d stayed here he’d already be in trouble. Wouldn’t they be asking to come in?

“A girl I met at the supermarket.”

The officer plucks the receipt out of Ben’s hand, folds it, then puts it back in his pocket. “When did you meet her?”

“About a week ago. Why?”

“Did she call?” the older officer asks.

Do they know? Ben tries to figure out where Sunny called him from . . . the motel? Do they know she was there?

“No, she never called. Why, what happened?”

“We’re investigating a case she’s involved in.” Ben waits, wants the younger officer to say more, but he doesn’t. What case? Where is she? He wants to ask but he’s afraid he’ll give something away.

“Is she okay?” It’s all he can manage. The officer pauses, like he’s puzzling over the question, and Ben feels the need to say more, to explain. “When I met her she seemed kind of out of it. That’s why I gave her my number.”

“What do you mean, ‘out of it’?”

“Just, I don’t know. She had a cut on her arm.” It sounds so stupid when he says it out loud. Why would he care about a stranger? He should stop talking; he shouldn’t say anything else.

“If you hear from her, you’ll let us know.” It’s part question, part statement.

“Sure, yeah. I will.”

Ben’s afraid they might ask something else, that maybe they’ll want to come in, but those few simple answers seem to appease them. The older one turns to go first, the younger one following, and they whisper something to each other as they start down the front path. Ben watches them get into the car.

He closes the door, locks it. He keeps his face to the peephole, forehead resting against the wood. They’re sitting in the car. It takes them a few minutes to start it, to pull away.

They don’t know anything, Ben reminds himself. They were just checking in.
You’re fine; it’s fine.
But as he stares out at the empty street his breaths are still shallow. His hands feel numb. Then two
questions consume him, one after another:

Where is she? Where did she go?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

WHEN BEN ANSWERS
the door the Dodgers game is on in the background. He’s in sweatpants and a T-shirt, his hair messy, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Behind him, two boys are on the living room couch. They’re scrawny, their chins covered with stubble. One has a backward hat on and acne on his cheeks. The other is rolling a joint. They barely look up.

Ben’s eyes squeeze shut, as if you’ve just thrown water in his face. Before you can say anything he pulls you away from them, into the dining room, shutting the door behind him. You know it’s better if they don’t see you.

“Where were you? Do you know the cops are looking for you?”

“They’ve always been looking for me.”

Ben shakes his head, points out the front window. “No, they were
here
. This morning. They came here and wanted to know if you’d called me.”