Nearly Found (6 page)

Raj took off his lab coat and slipped it around my shoulders to cover the puke stains on my shirt. It was long enough to cover my jeans too. “How about I take you home? On the way out, we’ll run Jane Doe’s prints through the computer and drop the evidence bags in the lab. You know, intern stuff.” He winked, like it was all no big deal. Just trace evidence. Not bits and pieces of a person I knew.

I
ASKED
R
AJ
to drop me off in the parking lot of the Bui Mart. I didn’t want him to see the “missing persons” flyers Lonny had plastered throughout Sunny View. The print quality wasn’t great, but if Raj had seen the body when he’d come to pick me up off the floor, then the blue hair was a dead giveaway. He’d know I’d recognized the victim and had kept it to myself.

I waited at the intersection for the light to change and walked with my head down when I crossed the street so no one would stare at my swollen eye. My shoulder brushed a man who passed too closely from the opposite direction. When I looked up, his head was down too, but I’d had the nagging feeling like he’d been staring at me. The same feeling I’d had all day at school. The same feeling I would have the next time I stepped foot in the lab. Like people were watching, waiting for me to do something wrong. Like I was being judged.

My head throbbed, and I glanced in the direction of Lonny’s trailer, half expecting to see him sitting on his front porch, watching me too. I would only have to keep this from Lonny for one more day. When we had run the fingerprints through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System an hour ago, Raj said the examiner would probably have a conclusive result in a few days. Homicides were prioritized, so the print would be matched quickly if Adrienne had a police record, and I was pretty sure she did, judging by the conversation I’d overheard at the police station last week. Once police knew the body was Adrienne’s, it would all be out in the open and I’d be off the hook with both Lonny and Doc Benoit.

But for now, no one in Sunny View knew Adrienne was dead. Not Lonny. Not her friends. Not her mother . . . a fact that tugged at my chest, making me stop and turn toward Lonny’s trailer. A light was on in his kitchen window. His car was parked outside. I hadn’t signed any non-disclosure agreements yet. But leaking the details of a homicide to a drug dealer with a criminal record would be a mistake. A mistake that could cost me my internship.

My feet kept moving, but my eyes kept wandering back toward his trailer. Lonny was a friend, sort of. He’d come through for me. And we had an agreement. But if I told him, he’d roll right down to the station and demand information, and then how would I explain my breach to Doc Benoit, and Raj, and the investigators working on Adrienne’s case? I lowered my head and kept walking. I didn’t look up until I was at my own door.

• • •

I put the key to the lock, but the door swung open under my hand.

Our trailer was always locked. Even when we were home. The importance of this had been drilled into me every day since I was old enough to stay home alone.

I looked over my shoulder, wishing I’d let Raj drive me all the way home. The street was empty and quiet. I stepped just inside the opening. The living room was dark, the evening light too dim to penetrate the closed drapes.

They’d been open when I’d left that morning. I was certain of it.

I slipped off my shoes and used one to prop the door open. That’s when I smelled it. Cigarette smoke, clinging to the heat of the room. So fresh I could still smell the strike of the match.

I reached into the corner. My hand closed over the blunt end of the baseball bat my mother kept in the entryway, and I waited for my eyes to adjust. I blinked, making out the rumpled yellow slipcover on the sofa, the juice glass full of butts and ashes on the table beside it.

Someone had been here.

A man’s button-down shirt was draped over the back of a kitchen chair.

Someone was
still
here.

I turned toward my mother’s bedroom. The light was off, the door was closed. But I swore I saw something move in the gap underneath. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. Scrolled to Reece’s name and started typing a message.

A floorboard creaked.

My fingers froze on the keys and I set the phone on the table, my message unfinished. I gripped the bat with both hands and raised it over my shoulder. Someone—a man—was in my mother’s room. I crept toward it, flattening myself against the wall. I listened for the sound of my mother’s voice, her breath. But it was silent. Like whoever was on the other side was listening to me too.

My phone jumped to life, vibrating against the table. Someone was calling. Probably Reece. I was supposed to call him when I got home. I didn’t move. I held my breath as I watched the phone skitter toward the edge.

It dropped onto the floor, and then everything happened at once. My mother’s bedroom door flew open, an arm snaked out, grabbed me by my shirt front, lifted me off my feet, and shoved me hard against the wall. The bat clattered to the floor. The hall light snapped on, and I blinked against it, heart pounding under the huge hand at my chest.

“Nearly Faith Boswell! You scared me half to death!”

Butch. It was just Butch.

He let out a relieved breath and eased me to the floor. “Jesus, Leigh! I could’ve killed you. What are you doing, sneaking around in the dark? And what the hell happened to your face?”

My knees wobbled and I let the wall hold me up as relief washed over me. My mother held the light switch in one hand and clutched the front of her robe tight to her chest with the other. The man in her bedroom was just Butch. An awkward giggle escaped my throat. My mother rushed to my side and inspected my eye, prodding it with her fingers.

“Who did this to you?”

“Ow!” I swatted her wrist. “No one did anything to me. I slipped and fell in the lab.” I felt some of her worry rush out of her. Out of both of us.

My mother was safe. Butch was here. She pulled her hand from my face, but not before I tasted it. Something secretive, hard to place, hiding under my tongue. She darted red-faced looks between me and Butch. He bent down and picked up the bat, avoiding my eyes.

Butch was here. With her. Inside the trailer.

Inside my mother’s room.

Butch and my mother.

Butch stared at the floor, scratching the back of his big bald head, awkwardly trying to cover the red smudge on his shirt, just below his neck.

My mother fidgeted with her robe. “Butch was just picking me up for work.”

“Aren’t you late?” I asked, my tone thick with accusations.

“We were just leaving,” they said at the same time, which should have made it seem like they were telling the truth, but didn’t.

“Where’s his van?”

“I walked,” Butch said, still not quite looking me in the eye. “It’s just across the street.” He threw a thumb in the direction of Gentleman Jim’s.

Neither of them spoke.

It occurred to me that maybe he had been picking her up for work all summer, and I’d been spending so much time with Reece, I just hadn’t been around to notice. That maybe Butch had been parking his car in Jim’s lot to keep our nosey neighbors from talking about it. Maybe he’d been inside our trailer before—inside my mother’s room.

“I’ll wait in the living room,” I said, snatching the bat from Butch’s hand and storming down the hall. My mother hadn’t had the nerve to tell me. In the hospital, we had promised each other, no more secrets. That we would trust each other. But looking around my trailer, seeing Butch’s shirt hanging over the chair and the fresh cigarette butts in the glass on the table, I wasn’t so sure.

The floor creaked. I knew Butch was standing behind me, but I couldn’t look at him. I returned the bat to its place behind the door and grabbed up the glass of ash and butts. “She’s smoking again,” I said without turning around. The lipstick on the butts matched the stain on the neck of Butch’s shirt, confessing all the secrets my mother hadn’t told me. I shook them into the trashcan under the sink.

“She had a rough day,” he said softly, as though this should be enough. He pulled my shoe out from where I’d wedged it inside the security door and leaned against the frame, taking up the whole of it as he stared down the street. He always looked tough, but tonight he seemed troubled, and I’d never seen Butch troubled before. He tossed my shoe at me. “Be sure to keep the door locked when your mother’s at work tonight.”

“It was unlocked when I got here,” I said with a little too much sass.

“That’s because I was here.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oooh, Butch Reynolds, the big bad bouncer.”

“I’m serious, Leigh. I want you to be more careful.” Butch’s face was stony. There was a worry behind it I’d never seen before.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

He looked at me for a long moment, as though he wasn’t sure if he should answer. He glanced toward my mother’s closed bedroom door.

“Your mother got a letter from the state yesterday.” Butch scratched the back of his head, hesitating.

“And . . . ?”

“Reggie Wiles is out on parole.”

TJ’s father.

“Since when?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago.”

“What do you mean, two weeks ago?” Reggie Wiles wasn’t serving time for violent crimes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of them. “Why didn’t the state notify us two weeks ago?”

“The letter was mailed a month ago, but the mail carrier put it in the wrong mailbox. Apparently, it’s been sitting in a stack of unopened mail on Mrs. Moates’s coffee table. She noticed it when she finally got around to paying her phone bill and brought it by yesterday morning after you left for school.”

Butch rested a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. Reggie’s living in a halfway house in Arlington. He’s closely monitored and he’s got a curfew.”

So did plenty of kids at my school, but a curfew didn’t keep them from sneaking out either. “For how long?”

Butch hesitated before answering. “Three or four weeks. Then they’ll release him to live with an approved family member.”

An approved family member. Probably the same one they’d assigned TJ to live with when he was orphaned. With his drunk uncle Billy, four trailers down from our own. “No! They would never let him live that close to us.”

“We don’t get a say,” Butch said, shushing me and looking down the hall like he didn’t want my mother to hear. “He’s served his time. Technically, he’s a free man. We have no reason to assume he’s a danger to you or your mother. And you know I would never let anything happen to either of you.”

Butch’s hand brushed my cheek. His worry had a sour center, but it was cocooned in something I recognized. Something thick and honey-sweet. The way Reece had tasted all summer when my hands wrapped around his waist on the back of his bike. Or his wrapped around mine while we were supposed to be studying algebra.

How had I never seen it before? When Butch talked about my mother, all his hard angles melted into something soft and warm.

My mother came into the living room, bringing our conversation to a quick close. Neither of us wanting to worry her any more than she already was.

“Ready to go?” she asked, grabbing her keys and purse, then pausing over the cigarette-ashen glass in the sink. Her eyes met mine. She pulled a crinkled pack of lights from her pocket and tossed them into the trash.

“Mom, you don’t have to—”

“No, no more cigarettes. I promise.” She kissed my head and didn’t let go. Butch stepped outside, and she spoke softly into my hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about us.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I guess I was worried about how you would feel about Butch and me . . . being together. I love him. I think I’ve loved him for a long time. But you were so obsessed with the notion of finding your father, and I didn’t know what it might do to you, if I were to bring another man into your life. Then after everything happened in June, and you were in the hospital, Butch was the one who was there for us. And your father . . .” She didn’t have to say it. I had almost died, and my own father hadn’t even called. “By then, you knew the truth about David. And I thought, maybe it was time I started facing up to some truths too. Like my feelings for Butch. He makes me happy. I won’t apologize for that, Nearly, but I’m sorry if you’re not ready for me to move on.”

Her shame tasted like ash on my tongue and I didn’t want to make her feel that way. “I’m not upset about that. You know I love Butch. And I want you to be happy. But you shouldn’t keep secrets from me. Not when those secrets affect both of us.”

“I’m sorry.” She smiled. “No more hiding cigarettes and boyfriends. I have to go. Don’t forget to lock up behind us.” She kissed my forehead and left with Butch.

I watched them twine their fingers together and walk slowly over the rutted gravel. My mother didn’t clutch her purse to her side, or pinch her coat tightly around her neck. She never once looked over her shoulder, even in the dark. She was happy. She was safe. The two things she’d never been with my father.

I locked the door and scraped my cell phone off the floor. The battery and cover had come loose when it fell, and I snapped it back together just as Reece’s motorcycle skidded to a stop outside my trailer. Shit, I hadn’t called him back.

“Leigh!” Reece pounded on my front door. “Leigh! Are you—?”

I threw the deadbolt and opened the door. Reece’s fist hung, knocking in midair, his expression frozen somewhere between relief and what-the-hell-happened-to-your-face.

Reece took my chin in his hand and turned my cheek to the light. I swallowed back salt and hot metal. Felt the rise of his blood pressure in my own veins. “Who did this to you?”

I stepped aside to let him in, and then locked the door after him. “I did it to myself. I saw something in the medical examiner’s lab. I guess it freaked me out. I fell and hit my head.”

Reece watched me check the locks again, then studied the bruise. “Does it hurt?” he asked, wincing.

“It’s better than it was.” Reece touched my brow with the tip of his finger, awakening the pain, and I flinched. He headed to the kitchen and put some ice cubes in a plastic bag. Then he eased down beside me on the sofa, carefully pressing it to my face. I shut my eyes against the cold, then smiled at the soft warmth of his lips against mine.

“What did you see?” he asked me when I’d opened them again. His face was close to mine, and his eyes were a dark, deep blue. They were hard to look away from and easy to get lost in.