Gun Lake (5 page)

“He knows.” A pause. “We’ve tried.”

“So we’re going to try harder. He can’t keep doing this to me—to us.”

Ted sighed. “Be careful.”

“I will. I’ll call you if—if anything happens.”

“Okay.”

Michelle pressed the “end” button, laid the phone on the passenger seat, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands as she stared through the night. She still couldn’t believe they were planning to send their sixteen-year-old son off to boarding school. But they had no choice. Nothing else they had tried had worked.

Jared was already grounded for the summer. That was after he came home from a party and threw up all over their kitchen. But grounding didn’t seem to faze him anymore. Nothing did.

They had tried everything. Talks, church, books, grounding, taking things away from him, bringing in counselors, arranging talks with other high schoolers. But in the end, Jared didn’t care. He just didn’t care. They could tell him he was on his way to becoming a bum and that his soul was on its way to hell, and he’d just
stand there and shrug. They could lock him in his room and he’d stay there for days without contact, without food, without anything, and Jared still wouldn’t change. She and Ted would never abuse him, but Michelle sometimes wondered if
that
would even do anything.

He was stubborn and rebellious, sure. But he was something worse than that. Jared was indifferent. Not just about her and Ted and their rules, but about everything. About every single thing that came in contact with him.

About the only thing Jared seemed to care about was getting high. And Samantha provided him with this opportunity. Samantha from the city. Samantha provided this and who knew what else.

If I have to literally drag him out of her apartment, I will
.

She had cried enough tears over her eldest son, enough to know she didn’t have to worry about any tonight. It was her rage she needed to control. The urge to grab him and shake him and ask him why he hated her so much and why he didn’t listen to anything anybody said.

What would Pastor Young think of me, sitting here with these thoughts?

She had talked to her pastor and to so many others in her church. All of them had wonderful children, kids who were going to go on and be accepted into places like Wheaton College and Covenant College, who were going to become doctors and lawyers and pastors and change the world for the better. Kids who were good, Christian kids.

What did we do wrong, God? How did he get so far away from us?

Gripping the steering wheel of the Cherokee, Michelle forced herself to strangle the thought. She and Ted had not failed as parents. They had two other wonderful, beautiful children who were doing fine. And Jared was not lost. He was just searching, just going through a bad patch.

Jared had the most potential of all of them. Michelle had always known this. That was why his behavior hurt so much. He was blowing that potential. Frying that first-rate brain, using his charm and good looks to get what he wanted. Michelle knew that
Samantha, who was going to be a sophomore in college, was not interested in Jared because of anything more than that charm and those looks. Jared had so much going for him—
I’m so tired of thinking about all of this
.

The July night needed air conditioning, and Michelle kept it going at full blast. Turning onto Orchard Avenue, she found herself surprisingly unmoved to spot Jared’s red Toyota parked in plain view.

She stopped the Cherokee and stared at Jared’s car for a moment, then bit her lip, put the Jeep in drive, and went looking for a place to park.

The buzzer sounded, and Michelle opened the iron-grilled gate to walk up stone steps. Surely nobody in the older apartment building had bothered to look outside and notice that the newest arrival was considerably older than anyone else in the area. She knew the number by the label beside the apartment doorbell. Sam K. was the name Samantha had written. The apartment number was 3B.

The place was easy to find. She just followed the loud thunder of music from behind one of the doors. Probably nothing out of the ordinary, even on a weeknight. She didn’t bother knocking. The door was unlocked, so she walked into the loft to find thirty people standing around with bottles and cups and cigarettes in hand. A few gave her surprised, who-in-the-world-are-you glances, but most of the kids in the apartment didn’t even bother to notice her.

Rock music pulsed through the one large room she stood in. She looked at the faces of the college-aged partygoers around her. Michelle knew that a forty-two-year-old woman dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt looked oddly out of place at this bash, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to find her son.

A short red-headed girl walking across the wooden floor glanced her way and then stopped. Her eyes widened and she stood for a moment, seemingly frozen. Michelle had seen Samantha only a couple of times before, but she recognized her right away.

She walked quickly toward the heavily made-up young woman.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Um, I don’t know.”

“Jared’s coming home with me,” she said. “I can make a scene, but I’d prefer just to get him and drag his sorry tail home with me.”

Samantha looked confused. “I—he called me and told me he was coming—”

“I don’t care what he did or you did. Where is he?”

“Um, I think maybe he’s back in one of the rooms. I don’t know.”

“What rooms?” Michelle could hear her voice, the aged and authoritative voice of a parent, a voice she still sometimes didn’t recognize.

“Back there, down the hall. The one on the right?”

The uncertainty in Samantha’s voice made Michelle hesitate. Up close, she could see the person behind the red lips and dark eyeliner, the little girl who probably actually cared for Jared and showed it in the only ways she knew how. The red lips quivered, and Michelle almost felt sorry for Samantha. She didn’t want to feel sorry. She needed to stay mad a little longer.

Michelle stalked down the hallway past clusters of laughing and talking kids. Most probably underage, most probably drunk and high. She didn’t care about any of them. Maybe she should have. Maybe she should have called the police right away and busted all of these kids, but all she wanted to do was get her oldest son.

She tried the door handle and found it locked. She knocked and a voice asked who it was.

“Jared’s mom. Open up.”

The door remained closed as she heard voices whispering behind it. She knocked again, then pounded on the door.

Finally, the door opened to a dimly lit room that emitted a haze of smoke.

Jared stood at the doorway, the door still mostly closed, obscuring most of the room.

“You’re coming home with me,” Michelle said without blinking. “Tonight.”

His eyes looked like half-opened slits. His jawline clenched as he shook his head.

“I swear, Jared, I’ll call the cops. I will have them bust you and your friends and your cute little hostess.”

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked, his voice slow, stretched out.

“Do you want me to make a scene?”

“No.”

“Then head for the door.”

She waited as the door shut for a moment, then it opened again and Jared walked out.

He looked like a catalog model for Ambercrombie & Fitch. Tall, skinny, a head of thick, wavy, light-brown hair. He wore baggy cargo shorts, an untucked tee-shirt, and sandals. A few fiber necklaces wrapped themselves around his neck. He walked slowly toward the apartment door.

More faces looked their way now. Probably the word was out on who she was and what she was doing here. A few looked concerned, but she was surprised at how many of the students’ faces scowled at her. Giving her pitying looks, hateful stares, and arrogant glances. She didn’t bother giving them back. She simply followed Jared to the door.

He stopped and turned and looked around for a moment.

“No time for good-bye,” Michelle said.

She opened the door and nudged her tall son into the hallway. He cursed at her in a slurred voice, and she told him to watch himself going down the stairs.

“SOMETHING’S WRONG.”

Sean walked up to the waiting Dodge Durango and breathed in the night air.

“Tell me something.”

“Huh?” Wes asked.

“Isn’t it a great thing to look up at the stars?”

“I can’t get ahold of them. I’ve tried three times and nothing.”

Sean laughed.

“What’s that for?” Wes asked.

At night, we swim the laughin’ sea
.

“Try ’em again.”

Steps brushed up behind them, and Sean turned to see Rita. He had told her to stay inside the bar while they made a call.

“I thought you guys had left,” she said with a hint of desperation.

She looked like a poor man’s Courtney Love—tall, too-skinny, raggedy overbleached hair, and too much makeup on an otherwise chalky face. Undoubtedly older than the twenty-eight years she admitted to. She probably thought her tight shorts were provocative, though Sean thought they looked silly. It didn’t matter. Sean had needed her the other night. Sean also needed her now, and if Rita was ignorant enough to believe she might mean something to him down the road, that was her problem.

He reached over and slipped a hand behind her back and then kissed her on the lips.

“Beautiful night, huh?” he asked with a smile.

No reason he couldn’t be nice to Rita. He owed her. Even when they’d met up two nights ago, he’d made sure he showered her with attention and affection, knowing she could be a valuable asset to him. He trusted her, even with her airheaded dippiness. So far, she’d done everything Sean had asked her to do. Everything.

Amazing what a little love years ago could end up generating.

Wes was staring at the cell phone. “Nothing,” he said.

Sean studied the formidable mass of man in front of him. He took the phone from Wes.

“You sure your cell is working?” he asked Rita. “You get a signal out here, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. I told you I come here all the time.”

“The batteries?’

“I just charged them last night. They’re fine. They must’ve turned it off.”

Sean tried dialing Rita’s cell phone twice. He had given it to Kurt to maintain contact. Craig would’ve lost it, and Lonnie wouldn’t have bothered answering it. Kurt was the only responsible one over there, the only responsible one out of them all, in fact.

Too bad for Kurt
.

“You can try the house,” Rita said.

“No.”

“Why not? Nobody’s going to know. They’re not around.”

“I don’t want to call the house.”

“Maybe they’ve invaded the liquor supply,” Wes said.

Sean looked at Wes and shook his head.

“Not if Kurt had anything to do with it. We’ll try them in a few minutes. Rita, I want you to stay here.”

She looked confused, as if she didn’t understand the words coming out of his mouth.

“We’ll be back here in an hour or so. Okay? Just wait.”

And meet me at the back of the blue bus
.

She nodded, still unsure why they were leaving her in this bar.

“And just keep thinking—Cabo San Lucas,” Sean said, giving her another kiss on the lips. “You remember that brochure?”

Rita nodded and grinned in a silly sort of way.

They had been driving for a few minutes when Wes finally asked the question.

“What’s that Cabo stuff you’re talking about?”

“Oh, nothing,” Sean said. “Just a dream. A nice dream that’s good to think about.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He could picture Rita waiting, thinking about Cabo San Lucas, dreaming of what it would be like when they got there.

It was a nice dream. But that’s all it would ever be.

The utter blackness reminded Kurt of Stagworth, of lying on a hard cot with a mattress that should have been outlawed. For a stretch there, the guys in his gallery would routinely knock out the lights that filled their corridor. They’d be broken as soon as they were replaced. And sometimes he would lie in the dark with his eyes wide open and would try to see something, anything, but nothing would be there to see. It was a deathly black, like a cave, where you couldn’t see your hand in front of you.

He had a harder time sleeping in the dark than with the corridor light. Closing your eyes meant you might dream, and sometimes your dreams would be worse than the prison that housed you. Sometimes, whispers blew into your ears.

Erin

Just like that. Just that easy. Just that awful.

“I’m going back upstairs,” a voice in the darkness said.

“Shut up,” he said to Lonnie.

“Cowards hide like this.”

“And you’re—what? A hero?”

Lonnie cursed at him.

“We’re staying down here.”

“Says who?”

“Lon, come on man,” Craig whispered.

Even he knows what’s going through Lonnie’s mind
.

“I’m not asking permission,” the young man said, sounding like a teenager.

“What are you going to do?” Kurt asked.

Lonnie didn’t say a word.

“Yeah, you know. You know exactly what you want to do. And it’s not going to happen.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t be asking why if I was Sean,” Kurt said.

“You’re not Sean.”

“You kill a couple of people, everyone’s going to know.”

“They don’t have to,” Lonnie said in a voice so casual, he might have been arguing for the remote.

“You can’t just get rid of people like that and expect nobody to find out. There’s accountability. Know what that means?”

“No, tell me, wise one,” Lonnie said in a mock inquisitive tone.

“They show up missing, people call, come by, ask questions, call the authorities. Look, nobody knows where we are right now. They’re looking in Florida, and now, thanks to you, they’re looking in Louisiana. If something happens here, the whole country’s going to be putting a bull’s-eye on Texas.”

“Why’d we come out here in the first place?” Craig asked, not a very original question since all of them had asked Sean about it and never gotten a decent answer.