Delusion Road (19 page)

During the ride back to town, Keegan had urged Bailey to go to the police, but she’d refused. “When Wynn started calling and messaging me,” she explained, “I threatened to report him. You know what he did? He laughed. The police chief is good friends with his dad, so they’d never charge him. He told me, ‘Who’s going to believe that I gave trash like you the time of day?’ And he’s right. No one will. I’ll be a joke. A pathetic liar everybody laughs at behind her back. That’s not how I want to spend my senior year.”

Keegan had suggested that the phone calls and texts could be used as evidence, but Bailey said she’d deleted every message
as soon as it came in for fear someone—Willa especially—might see them. And she was sure Wynn could explain away the phone calls somehow. It was clear to Keegan that she was more than just intimidated, more than just afraid. She’d been demoralized. Broken. Her only hope was that Wynn would soon grow bored with her. If you could call that hope.

“I hate the thought of that asshole getting away with this,” he’d told her, “but it’s your call. I won’t say anything. But if he ever tries to hurt you again, you let me know, okay?”

Watching the bus pull away from the curb now, though, Keegan was pretty sure she’d never mention Wynn again.

Walking from the bus stop, he felt
The Mountain and the Valley
in his back pocket, and he remembered his reason for going to the mall in the first place. He certainly didn’t feel like reading the novel now, but he didn’t feel like going home either, which was why he’d gotten off the bus on Commercial Street. It was a short walk from there to Brookdale’s Memorial Park, where he planned to spend the rest of what remained of the afternoon. He hoped the river flowing along the south side of the park would make it feel cooler there.

Minutes later, his shirt damp with sweat, he walked under a large wrought-iron arch bearing the park’s name. A path to his left led toward an oval running track at least a quarter-mile around that, according to a sign, had been built with funds raised by the town’s Rotary Club. To his right was an open area that stretched to the river, a grassy expanse dotted with flower beds, park benches, and playground equipment that had also been donated by the Rotary Club. Those Rotarians were a busy group, he thought, his mind drifting to Casino Night. And to Willa.

It had been painful watching her react to the things Bailey told her. Not that he gave a damn about Willa Jaffrey, but it must have been tough learning all that stuff about somebody you cared for. Seeing her take it all in, Keegan had wondered if maybe she’d had some earlier suspicions of her own—she was, after all, going steady with the guy—but all of it was clearly a shock to her. What had Coach Cameron said?
The eyes give a guy away every time.
Watching Willa’s eyes, Keegan knew she’d had to force herself to sit there, force herself to listen to all the repulsive things her boyfriend had done. And was still doing.

He even understood her need to deny it. As much as he despised Wynn d’Entremont, the asshole could have his pick of dozens of girls who openly drooled over him each time he walked through the school’s corridors. Why attack somebody?

What bothered Keegan the most, though, was how he’d chosen his victim. He’d guessed somehow that Bailey wouldn’t go to the police. Had, in fact, counted on her not telling a soul, not even her own mother. The only reason she’d said anything today was because Willa had forced her to. How could Wynn be so confident? It was almost as if—

Keegan felt his stomach drop as his brain finished that thought
—as if he’s done it before.

He shrugged that idea away. He had to. If he continued to think about it, he might break his promise to Bailey about keeping silent.

G
riff had no regrets about killing the super. He liked walking anywhere in the building now without feeling he was being watched, although that was a false sense of security since surveillance cameras were still recording everybody’s movements. But at least he no longer had to worry about the person who’d be viewing that footage. Or what that person might be doing with it.

Riding up in the elevator a few moments ago, Griff had eavesdropped on a conversation between two other tenants about the super being found dead in his bathroom. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it,” one commented, “that he didn’t install a grab bar in his own tub. Might’ve saved his life.” Griff had kept his eyes on the changing number above the door, doing all he could not to grin.

But he hadn’t been grinning that night in the super’s apartment. He’d stared open-mouthed at the results his search of the guy’s computer had returned: dozens of photos, Griff in every one.

Many of them were obviously screenshots from the building’s surveillance videos, some recent and, judging by the clothes he was wearing, some more than a year old. But others had been taken within a few feet of Griff, likely with a hidden camera. Griff
didn’t give a shit about the
how.
It was what the guy had
done
with them that made his skin crawl—he’d photoshopped himself into each picture, posed with a hand on Griff’s shoulder or an arm wrapped around Griff’s waist or, most disturbingly, his lips pressed against Griff’s cheek. He must have taken hundreds of shots of himself to get images he could insert into each of those moments and have them look real. Because they did. Very real.

Seeing those pictures, Griff had scrambled to his feet, shoving the chair back so violently that it bounced off the wall behind him. He’d stood there trembling, tasting blood in his mouth from biting the inside of his cheek, hearing all over again the sounds of his mother screaming at him, calling him those names as she came for him.

He’d just returned from Clovis’s Airstream on Guinevere Lane, where he’d been helping the old guy with his latest gardening project: lady’s slippers, orchids that grew wild in the Northeast. Not in Arkansas, though—Clovis said they needed soil with high alkalinity, which was why he’d bought the special containers they’d spent that afternoon preparing for the two plants some flower nut from Maine had FedExed him. Griff figured their efforts were a waste of time—he’d googled lady’s slippers and found you couldn’t grow them artificially—but he admired Clovis for trying anyway.

Despite the nearly five-decade difference in their ages, Griff liked Clovis a lot, liked his easy, soft-spoken manner and the way he took his time explaining things. More than that, though, Griff
liked how he listened as much as he talked, really cared about what Griff had to say, something no one else ever did. The old guy didn’t have kids of his own—his first wife hadn’t wanted children and his second wife couldn’t have them—and it was obvious he enjoyed having Griff around. He insisted on paying Griff for the work he did, although Griff didn’t always feel good about taking the cash. Lots of times he’d end up at Clovis’s Airstream just because it was better than being home—his newest “uncle,” Travis Hubley, was a mean drunk, and Griff was grateful to have someplace else to go when the guy tied one on. Some days it was too hot to work in Clovis’s flower beds, so they’d just sit outside under the Airstream’s awning, drinking Cokes and talking about everything and nothing. And when Griff got up to leave on those days, Clovis would still pull out his wallet and press money into Griff’s palm. Griff figured Clovis knew more about what happened in the Barnetts’ double-wide than he let on—Lancelot Way wasn’t all that far from Guinevere Lane, and raised voices carried easily on still nights. It was no secret that his mother and Travis were easier to get along with when there was money on hand for crystal and booze.

At Clovis’s, Griff discovered the first thing he was really good at: computers. Sure, he’d used them lots at school, but only for dumb things like research and writing assignments. His mother had one but it was years old and, since there was no money for Internet, he’d done little more than play lame games on it. Clovis, on the other hand, had a new PC with fibre-optic high-speed, which was kind of a waste since he mostly used it to take part in online flower forums, pay bills, and play the occasional game of Scrabble. But he encouraged Griff to use it whenever he wanted,
and Griff did. At first it was just an excuse to keep from going home, but before long being on Clovis’s computer turned into something more.

It started when Clovis asked if he’d show him how to use some of the features of his email program he didn’t understand, which got Griff wondering about shortcuts, looking for ways to make the technology easier for his friend. Which led him to programming. He liked the logic of it, how you could always depend on the same outcome as long as the input didn’t change, something life with his mother and the uncles had never offered. Seeing him so caught up in it, Clovis began buying him books, starting with simple coding tips and working up to volumes on algorithmic information theory—rough going at first, but Google helped whenever he felt like his head was going to explode. He might have flunked ninth grade but, for the first time, he didn’t see himself as the idiot everybody thought he was. Everybody but Clovis.

After they’d prepared the planters for the lady’s slippers that afternoon, Clovis said he wasn’t feeling well and decided to take a nap. As usual, though, he insisted that Griff stay as long as he liked. Sitting at Clovis’s computer, he’d lost all track of time, and it was only when the light had dimmed so much he had trouble seeing the keys that he realized how late it was. He’d flown out the door, shouting goodbye over his shoulder to Clovis, who was probably just waking from his nap in the Airstream’s back bedroom.

Even before he reached their trailer on Lancelot Way, Griff could tell something was wrong. There were no lights on, not even the flicker from the flatscreen that Travis had gotten at a huge discount because of the scratch in the bottom left corner
(a scratch Griff was sure Travis had put there himself when the salesman wasn’t looking). And since his mother was between welfare cheques, he knew she and Travis hadn’t gone anywhere. “I’m back,” he called as he opened the double-wide’s aluminum door. Nothing.

He reached for the light switch and the fluorescent tube above the sink stuttered to life, casting a harsh glare over what served as both kitchen and living room. The place had been ransacked: furniture askew, drawers yanked out of cupboards, boxes upended, stuff thrown everywhere. Dishes lay smashed on the floor, and the curtain rod over the picture window was hanging from one end, the mismatched drapes having slid off and puddled on the cheap linoleum.

His heart pounding, Griff spied his mother’s legs protruding from beyond the sofa. “Mama!” he cried, striding through the mess, cheap porcelain crunching beneath his feet as he reached her and dropped to his knees.

Afterwards, he would think he should have called an ambulance or at least run for help. Things might have turned out differently. But all he could think to do at the time was get his mother up off the floor. She was drunk, no question about that, and she’d pissed herself and puked at least once, chunks of it clinging to her bleached blond hair. His arm around her neck, he pulled her to a sitting position and she began to retch again, her eyes open and rolling as strings of slime looped from her mouth. He drew her hair away from her face as the retching eased and she floated toward consciousness, her eyes slowly focusing on him.

And then she exploded. “
You
!” she screamed, cuffing him, clawing him.

He fell backwards on his ass, his arms up trying to ward her off. But she kept coming for him, screaming. And it wasn’t just booze that was fuelling her rage. Beneath that godawful lily of the valley perfume Travis had bought her, he could smell the burnt-plastic stink of cheap meth on her hands as she flailed at him. “
You
did this!” she shrieked.

Did what?
he wanted to ask, but he was too busy trying to keep her ruined yellow fingernails from his face.

“He left ‘cause ‘a
you
!” Her fetid breath washed over him as he tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet, his worn sneakers slipping on the porcelain-littered linoleum.

Travis
, he thought as he managed to snare her hands between his. One more “uncle” gone from their lives. He was about to say they were better off, but she fell on him snarling, “You sonuva
bitch
!”

He tried to roll away from her, but she clung to his back, screaming profanities and slapping him, punching him. Despite her smaller size, her strength was astonishing.

“
Stop
it, Mama!” he cried, hoisting himself up on his hands and knees.

But she grabbed his neck from behind, her fingers digging into his throat, squeezing as she howled in his ear, “I
loved
him!”

And there it was. Unspoken but clear as day.
Not you.

All his life, Griff had blindly clung to the notion that all mothers loved their sons, had convinced himself that one day, when these bad patches were behind them, she would tell him exactly what he meant to her.

She had, in fact, done that now.

He meant nothing.

“You drove him away, you sick bastard!” she shrieked in his ear. “He couldn’t stand to
look
at you no more! He knowed what you was!”

Prying her fingers from his neck, Griff fought for air. He had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t care. He just needed to get up, to get away until the crystal wore off. He tried to shrug her away but couldn’t, tried getting to his feet but slipped again and went down with her on his back, those bony fingers once more closing around his neck.

Her voice became a thin growl, raising the hair on the back of his neck. “Waltzin’ in here with cash in your pocket, smilin’ like a Cheshire cat. You musta took us for fools, laughin’ your head off at us after what you done.”

This about money? Griff thought dimly as he struggled for breath. Hadn’t he given her all of it? What more could she want from him?

“All that talk about plantin’ flowers,” she spat, her lily of the valley perfume souring the air as her fingers tightened even more. “Travis knew. He tol’ me ‘fore he left what was
really
gettin’ planted over there, how the thought of it made him wanna puke.”