County Line (31 page)

“Ours is a small community, honey. Word gets around.”

“It’s sick.”

“I won’t argue the point.”

“It’s worse than school.”

“Some things never change.”

“There’s nothing I can tell them.”

Mrs. Parmelee knew what she meant by that as well. “Ruby, let me tell you what I’ve learned. Okay?”

Ruby Jane frowned at the table top. She didn’t want to know what Mrs. Parmelee had learned, afraid, perhaps, her discoveries might lie too close to the truth. She only wanted to escape. To pound the asphalt, to dribble, to shoot. To climb the fluid terra-cotta quarry walls. Rain threes from the corner. Feel the wind in her face, smell warm stone. But she knew they could keep her as long as they wanted.

“Sure.”

“You’ve put yourself in a difficult position. It’s not fair, but it’s the way things are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Clarice has a lot of pull around here. You can’t say the same.”

“Because of one missed shot in the tournament.”

“Like I said, it’s not fair.”

“You’re saying if I made that shot, she’d be sitting here?”

“No, but she is the one people believe in right now.”

“And I broke her nose.”

“Yes.”

“She deserved it.”

Mrs. Parmelee licked her lips. “What she deserved is beside the point. This isn’t the Old West. No matter how valid your grievance against her, in the eyes of the law you committed assault. And though I hate to say it, I believe you’re this close to getting charged.” She held up her hand, finger and thumb half an inch apart. “Mr. Grabel thinks it will give him some leverage over you.”

“So why not charge me?”

“You said it yourself. Clarice is a side show.”

Outside, the starlings returned with a clatter. The birds poured off the roof like water from a clogged gutter, their calls shrill and disconcerting. Her vision of the quarry washed away with their passage. She sighed and dropped her face into her hands, elbows on the table’s edge. She’d been in this cramped, sour room for far too long. Her tongue felt thick and dry. Nash had promised her something to drink.

“Ruby? What are you thinking?”

Clarice was a smart girl. Her parents were no dummies either. She could press charges, drag Ruby Jane into juvie court. But what would happen then? It had been a fraught, unsettling week. Ruby Jane had no history of legal trouble. Not like this. With all that had happened, the mitigating circumstances would work in her favor. An assault charge would go nowhere. Clarice surely knew it.

But something more serious, a missing father and a drunken admission late one night, now
that
might have legs. Ruby Jane could picture it: Clarice answering Grabel’s questions. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
No, …
But then Clarice could offer a tentative,
well, maybe this is nothing, but
… dropped at the right moment, Grabel wouldn’t be able to resist Clarice’s gold nugget of accusation.

If it led to a genuine crime, the result might be far worse than the wrist slap a girlfight would bring. And if not, interrogation by Detective Pervert offered a measure of vengeance Clarice would never see in juvenile court.

Ruby Jane pushed her fingers through her hair and sat back. “Clarice is screwing with me.”

Mrs. Parmelee went around the table to the window and leaned against the glass. Her dark hair haloed her long face. “Honey, it’s going to get worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Has Mr. Grabel mentioned Gabi yet?”

“No.” Her voice struggled to rise from a hollow in her chest.

“There’s talk about you and Gabi, and Clarice is doing most of the talking. You can assume Mr. Grabel has heard, and will try to use it against you if nothing else works.”

Ruby Jane sagged. She could almost hear the whispers, could almost feel the Clarice’s lies and insinuations bearing down on her.

You should have seen Ruby and Gabi after the banquet, their tongues were like snails wrestling
—

It would be bad enough at school, the talk and the looks, the sudden lulls in conversation as she walked past. But if Detective Pervert started in on her—
“Fuck Gabi Schilling—oh, sorry. Poor choice of words.”

Gabi didn’t deserve that.

Mrs. Parmelee moved away from the window and kneeled at Ruby Jane’s side. “Do you remember the conversation in my classroom a couple of months ago?”

She would never forget.
Sometimes all you can do is take matters into your own hands
. Ruby Jane stared at her hands.

“I can help you.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry about that. But there’s something I need to know.”

“You want to know what they think I’ve done. If it’s true.”

Mrs. Parmelee shook her head. “I know you, honey, maybe better than you realize. All I need to know is if you want my help.”

Ruby Jane opened her mouth to respond, just as quickly closed it again. She dropped her hands into her lap. The idea Mrs. Parmelee might put an end to this nightmare sent a trill of anticipation through her, followed by a shadow of doubt.

Do I deserve what she’s offering me? Does Jimmie?

Ruby Jane thought back to that day in the classroom, the long awkward pauses during Mrs. Parmelee’s unexpected revelation. The message then and the message now was clear: the facts were less important than the truth they hid.

Only she could answer her own troubling questions. Did she deserve to go free? Jimmie pulled the trigger. Ruby Jane dug the hole. Perhaps the time had come to let justice have its way.

Ruby Jane gazed out the window, unable to invoke the Bibemus Quarry again. She felt insubstantial, like the filmy clouds which hung loose and fluid in the thin grey sky. At her back loomed Grabel. Before her, Bella.

Jimmie is the weak one.

Bella—mother, dispossessed rich girl, perpetual drunk—had concocted the whole dark scheme.

You never know who’s going to come looking for you, baby girl
.

Something hardened within her. She didn’t care if she lost. She only cared that Bella not win.

She met Mrs. Parmelee’s gaze. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

“Of course you are.”

“What are you going to do?”

Now Mrs. Parmelee smiled. “I’m going to have a little talk with Mr. Grabel.”

- 36 -

Stormy Night, August 1988

Ruby? Is that you, baby girl?

She shivered at the sound of Dale’s voice rising out of the shadows. The last time he referred to her as “baby girl,” he was lying in a pool of his own blood. She’d returned from a run and entered a house throbbing with noise. Bella sat at the dining room table, head in her hands, sobbing. Ice melted in a glass between her elbows. Jimmie, somewhere upstairs, vomited a torrent of pungent obscenities. Dale’s moans set the base line, a pathetic drone laced with slurred entreaties for help.

Ruby Jane stepped over a broken bourbon bottle on the kitchen floor, paused at the dining room door.

“What happened?” She’d run thirteen miles at marathon pace in the cold January air. Her quads felt like they’d been stabbed with needles. All she wanted was a banana, a bottle of Gatorade, and a hot shower. “Mother, I asked you what’s going on.”

Bella ignored her. Ruby Jane moved into the hallway and found Dale at the foot of the stairs, Jimmie on the landing above. Dale moaned and reached toward her with a bloody hand. A gash on his forehead drained into his eyes and down his cheek, puddled beneath his head. His legs were a tangle on the ground.

“He hit me, baby girl. He hit me with that goddamn club.”

Ruby Jane looked up the stairway. Jimmie’s useless arm, in a cast since the last fight, dangled at his side. With his good hand, he wrung at his hair. The light from the landing shone on his face. She made out the stark red shape of a fist, all five knuckles clear in the soft tissue below the cheek bone. Jimmie never started anything.

“What happened?” She directed her question up the stairwell, but Dale stirred at her feet. “I tol’ you, baby—”

“Jimmie?”

He turned his broken hand over and grimaced. “Same as fucking always.”

Dale’s groping paw found her ankle and she sighed. She tugged free of his grip and went into the kitchen, soaked a dishtowel in cold water and tossed a dry towel over her shoulder. She returned to the hallway and set to washing the blood off Dale’s face. He winced when she touched the ragged wound with the damp cloth. “How bad is it, baby girl?”

“I look like a doctor to you?”

She pressed the dry cloth to the wound, told him to hold it there. Looked up the stairs.

“Jimmie, help me get him to the car. He needs stitches. And we need to get your arm looked at.”

“Let him bleed to death.”

“You don’t want that.”

“You’re next, Roo. Soon as I’m out of here, you’re next.”

“Jimmie—”

There was a knock at the door. From the dining room, Bella wheezed. “I called the police.”

As soon as Officer Callan stepped through the door, Jimmie started shouting. Bella appeared from the dining room and shouted back, though whether she was defending Jimmie or Dale was impossible to tell. Callan tried to calm everyone down. At some point he looked at Ruby Jane and asked her if she knew what happened.

“Look around. Look at Jimmie’s face. How many times you been here?”

“That’s not helping—”

“You’re useless.”

She went out and started the Caprice. The temperature hovered in the teens. A light snow fell. Ruby Jane waited in the back seat. Drying sweat contracted the skin on her arms and legs. After a while, Callan left—no charges filed, again. Shortly after, Bella helped Dale to the car, then returned to the house. Jimmie, sober and licensed, would have to drive. Bella wouldn’t be spending her evening in the emergency room.

Looking back, it would have been better if Dale had bled to death that night. At least Jimmie could have claimed self-defense.

Now, in the brush at the edge of the depression, Dale moved. Not much, enough to make a sapling or twig crack beneath him. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.

“Ruby, baby. Where am I? Something’s wrong.”

Grunting, he hoisted himself onto his elbow. A silver flash of moonlight gleamed on his forehead. “Christ, my chest hurts.” His eyes were caverns of darkness, but as his head pivoted left and right she felt the weight of his gaze.

“What were you—?” His roving head locked on the hole, a trapezoid of mud and darkness.

She felt the pressure of the gun in her sweatshirt pocket.

“You’re gonna put me in that hole.”

He lurched to his feet, wincing, his face pale and wet in the flashlight’s uncertain glow. Bemused. “Christ, it’s your grandmother, isn’t it?”

“Don’t—”

“You found out, didn’t you?”

“Shut up!”

You’re next, Roo. Soon as I’m out of here
…

He moved toward her. She groped for the gun, jerked it from her pocket. Dale went still when the stubby barrel rose out of shadow. A Denlinger gun, not a Whittaker gun. A Whittaker gun might refuse to fire. But a Denlinger gun in the hands of one of Dale Whittaker’s ill-used spawn?

No problem
.

“Baby girl, you don’t want to do that.”

“Shut.
Up
.”

“Your brother, I know what your brother did to me. I’ll tell—”

“You’ll tell
no one
!”

He raised his hands. His expression twisted from confusion into fear.

“Listen, I get it, little girl. You’re pissed, your brother is pissed. Maybe I earned that. But this,
this
is too much.”