No Such Person (18 page)

Is Stu the one who did it? Or is he terrified of the person who did?

Stu's eyes flicker madly, and again she is reminded of squirrels that bite their way through screens.

Nothing is good about drug dealers. They are greedy. Quick to panic.

Miranda's own panic drops away.

She could grab the boys' hands, and race them across the grass, through the trees and into their house.

But what will Stu do if three people turn their backs and run?

If it were not for the blood and the knife, she would not be considering him as a murderer. She's still not sure. But she cannot let him take the boys hostage. Or worse. She says firmly, “Henry. Hayden. Home. Now.”

The boys' little shoulders sag. They walk away slowly, knowing that the good stuff is here and boring stuff awaits them at home. They'll have to take a bath. And go to bed. But over at Miranda's, people are screaming and running down hills and chasing each other!

Henry taunts his brother. “Hay-den is a slowpoke.”

“Am not!” shrieks Hayden.

It is amazing how much racket two little boys running on grass can make. They pass through the backyards of the two neighbors who are rarely here. She cannot see them now but she knows they are pummeling each other, giggling, grabbing each other's shirts, trying to win the race.

“Get in the cottage,” whispers Stu. His hand is shaking so badly that the knife could be a spoon, stirring cake batter.

Drug dealers,
lectured the detective,
are always armed. And here's the other thing. They're always high.

Miranda Allerdon is standing with a murderer who is panicked, armed and high.

He's looking back and forth, up and down. She has the sense that he cannot believe what is happening. That he's hoping to see some way out. But there's only grass and trees and a dead body in the kitchen.

She forgets that Stu has another hand and it is not holding anything. Stu's free hand flashes forward. He threads his fingers through a hank of her hair. Miranda's hair is not elegant, swinging and shiny like Lander's. Loose, Miranda's hair is a pyramid of curly frizzy brown. Stu twists the hair.

A murderer now controls Miranda the way she controls Barrel on his leash.

The lights in the cell are relentless. She tries to sleep on her face. She tries to sleep with the pillow over her head and then with her elbow crooked across her cheek. The light still penetrates.

In real life, she would never be in bed this early. But there is absolutely nothing to do here. And because this
is
her real life—she really is here; there really are bars—sleep is the only escape.

“Can we turn off some of the lights?” she begs. “Or dim them?”

“No. Prisoners like you are under observation. You might try suicide.”

Suicide?

Her? Lander?

She has never thought of taking her life. In fact, novels assigned in middle school and high school often dwell on adolescent suicide. She is irked by these plots, and skips those chapters. Life is wonderful, the future will be better and who could possibly want to exit early?

But the word lingers.

“Suicide.”

If she peeks into the future outlined by the bars and the metal bed shelf, she can see why a person might consider it.

She slams her mind shut against the word. She will live in the minute.

This bright white glaring minute reveals nothing of how she came to be here and whether she is guilty. It reveals only the perfidy of Jason. She can think of no reason for him to ruin her. She is beginning to conclude that he did it for fun.

It's in the news sometimes—where young men in gangs kill people for fun.
Just wanted to see what it was like,
they say, smirking.

Is Jason out there somewhere, smirking?

Lander buries her face in the thin pillow and sobs.

SUNDAY EVENING

Miranda imagines Stu carrying his kayak down from his house to her little dock. Inflating it. Paddling slowly and alone down the river to meet some other boat, and take some delivery. Not marijuana, which comes in bales and would be too large and smell too strong. But drugs that take little space. Heroin. Cocaine. Perhaps that's what the cup holder is for.

She has thought all along that the water has something to do with it; that somehow delivery and sale and money all glide along the river.

But it doesn't start in front of our house, she thinks. It starts in front of Stu's house. I was going in the right direction. But I would never have gotten there. I would never really have thought that somebody I know would do this.

“Go inside,” Stu says very softly, as if the world is listening.

But the world is not listening and it is not looking. When they step through the thick band of shrubs and trees that wrap the Allerdon yard, they are alone.

Stu's teeth are chattering. She has never heard anybody's teeth click like that. The hand holding her hair has a tremor so intense that her scalp rattles. Stu is more terrified than she is.

Because he can picture the body in his kitchen?

Because he's in shock that he actually used a knife on a man's flesh?

Because his neighbor Miranda knows? And can tell?

What did happen at the top of that S-curved driveway? The chances are that Stu did not plan to murder anybody in his kitchen. The chances are that some rage swept over Stu, or perhaps over the victim. A kitchen is full of weapons, and Stu got there first.

With the knife that is now lightly poking her in the back.

How hard will he push that knife into her skin? How much damage will it do? Will he use that knife on her as many times as he used it on Jason?

Because that's who it is.

Jason.

Drug dealers are always on the edge of betraying or being betrayed.

Did Jason betray Stu? Did Stu betray Jason?

But why don't these people just yell at each other and then grill a hamburger?  Why do they kill each other? How can it matter that much?

Far away, a door slams. Henry and Hayden are inside their house. They know how to call 911. They could save her. But they think Miranda and Stu are playing games.

Stu is panting. He pants like Barrel, mouth open, trying to cool himself off.

Stu is in a situation he cannot want. There are too many bodies now. He can't add another one and get away with it. She has to convince him of that. But what can she offer? Silence? He knows perfectly well she'll call the police the first chance she gets.

She drags her feet. The knife penetrates her shirt. Enters her flesh. She tries to get away but he is holding her hair. She can only arch her spine, as if an inch will help.

Perhaps for Stu and Jason, it is all a game. A crazy profitable fun game, sneaking around with kayaks and stolen boats, grinning at each other, having a beautiful girl on your arm. But it's not a game now that Stu has killed Jason. It will not end like a game. Nobody will fold up the board, put away the cards or collect the dice.

In front of her, the sun is sinking. The western sky is magnificent. It is a photograph night, with colors so wild and impossible it could be the beginning or the end of the world.

Stu's grip on her hair forces her head backward, exposing her throat. It occurs to Miranda that Lander lucked out. She's safe behind bars.

“In!” says Stu again. His whole body is having tremors; probably his whole brain.

Once they are both inside, he lets go of her hair.

She turns. For a moment they just stare at each other. She cannot think how to escape and he cannot think what to do with her. Anger is overtaking Stu's fear. Miranda is ruining everything.

He jabs the knife forward, not close enough to touch her, but she leaps out of range, and he is weirdly entertained. They cross the living room like this.

Jab!

Jump!

Jab!

If I had gone to Stu's Facebook page instead of the Warrens', I might have found Jason among his friends, she thinks. Or if I had gone to Jason's page—Jason Draft's, that is—I might have found Stu. I might have figured this out. The police are working on those friend lists. But do they even know who Stu is? Will they recognize his picture? Probably. But not in the next two minutes, which is when I need them.

“Get on the porch,” he orders.

She steps outside. The porch bakes like an oven. There is not a whisper of breeze.

Her only hope is reminding him that he likes her; he likes the whole family; he probably still has his crush on Lander. “Stu, what's happening?” she whispers.

“What's
happening
?” Stu shouts. Rage seems to come out of his pores as well as his mouth. “Jason was supposed to drown Derry. He was supposed to take Derry north to the marshes around the old nuclear power plant. Hundreds of acres. Nobody lives there, nobody goes there. But Jason saw that barge coming and decided to improvise. He loved the idea that all those witnesses would watch a murder and not even know. But it didn't work. Derry survived!”

And now, horribly, Stu is crying. Tears run down his face. Mucus comes out his nose. Is he full of regret or full of his drug of choice?

Miranda doesn't scream. There is no one to hear. The doctors Neville are never around Sunday evenings; they've already returned to Hartford. The two houses between her and the Warrens are not occupied this weekend. Henry and Hayden, the neighborhood spies, are safely inside and probably arguing about bedtime.

Last Saturday, when she and Stu were chatting next to Barrel's run, Stu was shocked to hear that the water skier survived the barge. Was he shocked, she wonders now, because he planned that murder? “Why kill Derry?” she asks.

“I make a ton of money, Rimmie,” says Stu. He laughs a little, as if acknowledging that money will not offset the situation he is in now. “I do college campuses. I have a stable of guys like Derry. He was keeping money that wasn't his.”

Miranda means to let him babble. Words will ease him. She will think of a compromise. But she forgets her plan. “Okay,” she says irritably, having earned the right to be irritable; the creep is jabbing a knife at her. “But what does my sister have to do with it?”

“Lanny wouldn't go out with me again. She had better things to do with her time. She even said that, right to my face! ‘My time is precious,' she said.” Stu mimics a high-pitched nasty little female voice. Miranda cannot imagine Lander speaking like that. Although she would certainly say it. For Lander, it is simply a fact; her time is precious.

“I say to Lander—‘What? Too precious to waste on me?' ”

Stu has backed her halfway across the porch and now Miranda's hand is close to the knob of the kitchen door. If she rips it open fast enough, and leaps inside and throws the bolt, she can race to the other inside door and bolt that, and then bolt the front, and then use the landline to call the police!

“Do you know what your sister did?” screams Stu. “She shrugged! She walked off. She drove away. I asked her out again. I have lots of money. We can do anything. She didn't even look up.”

Lander has treated her younger sister like this. Miranda knows how much it hurts. Lander does not even bother to raise or harden her voice when dismissing somebody. Lander really and truly forgets that person immediately.

“And then,” says Stu, brushing away his tears, “Lander went out with Jason. My runner. He's nobody. And she fell in love with him.” Stu is weeping for Lander. Not for the body on his kitchen floor. But for the girl who didn't love him back.

“Lander wouldn't even have a second cup of coffee with me!” cries Stu. “But for Jason she turned into a puppy wagging her tail, hoping Jason would pat her little head.”

Miranda's hand flashes out to the kitchen doorknob.

This time when Stu slashes he is not teasing. She is so shocked to see her flesh laid open that she doesn't cry out. She wraps the bleeding hand in the cloth of her T-shirt. She is afraid to think about the damage. Will her hand still work? It's her right hand. She's right-handed. Has he cut through her tendons?

“Don't do that!” screams Stu. “Don't get in my way! You shouldn't have gotten in my way! Too many people are getting in my way!”

Is Stu about to finish her off the way he finished Jason? Miranda wants Stu to talk, not slash. “Derry got in the way?”

Stu's rage abates. His tears dry. He's sufficiently aware to wipe his nose on the bottom of his T-shirt.

They are both panting with exhaustion.

“Derry was thrilled when I got him out of that hospital,” says Stu. He looks sad and confused. He frowns a little, as if remembering a distant decade. “See, if they identify or fingerprint Derry, it's not good, because he's got warrants out under his real name. Prison was going to be his next stop. When I tiptoed in with street clothes, he thought we were buddies.” Stu looks puzzled. Maybe he too thought they were buddies. “Derry thought when I drove down a deserted driveway and we parked the car and I helped him down a footpath into the marsh that I had some great boat for him to escape in.” Stu's teeth are chattering again. “No, but I had a nice bullet.”

Stu killed Derry.

Lander had nothing to do with it.

This is wonderful to know but useless. The information doesn't count unless the police have it. Miranda cannot phone or text them. She cannot quickly write a note for them to find.

Her back is against the last door: the door that opens to the steps, the grass, the cliff and the river. Will he push her over the edge? Drown her? There are two big old wooden chairs on the grass, the painted kind that look like comfy recliners, but without piles of puffy cushions they're unsittable. She can get a chair between herself and Stu. And then what? Run in little tiny circles around the chair until her parents get here?

And how will her parents know to be afraid of Stu Crowder?

What if Stu holds them all hostage?

“But, Stu, how did you make it look as if Lander did it?”

“I had to talk Jason into it. But he's a druggie, you know. It's easy to corner a druggie. Once Derry was dead, I texted Jason that we were all set and he brought old Lander in on that little skiff they stole. She was all giggly and eager to please. She couldn't even stay for a whole evening with me, but for Jason she picked up a gun, when she thinks guns are for sickos, and she shot it because Jason told her to, and beamed at him and hoped for her reward. She was a dog wanting a treat.”

Stu is nodding weirdly. The nod includes his entire upper body. The nod includes the knife hand. He is stuck in bobbing motion. He points the shivering knife toward the last door. She has to turn her back on him and she doesn't want to turn her back and she's slow and not thinking, and again he threads the fingers of his free hand through her hair. Her plan to run is ridiculous.

“So then,” Stu says, “Jason walked away. Old Lander just stood there like a good puppy. I'd already called in a tip to the state police. We dropped our disposable phones in the water and the two of us left in another boat. Easy peasy.”

The cliff stairs are not visible from a single house on the river. If Stu shoves her off the cliff, she won't be able to swim out and save herself. There is a rock shelf, which is why the fishing is good. She will go neck-first into the rocks.

“We had to get rid of Derry anyway,” says Stu, “so I figured, why not give old Lander something to do with that precious time of hers? She's so proud of being Little Miss Perfect. I'll make her Little Miss Killer. And all that precious time? It'll be hard time now. That's precious. None of her friends have that.”

Miranda remembers a sermon.
Much sin,
said the minister,
stems from the love of money and the pain of love.

I will never know love or the pain of love, thinks Miranda. I will be dead.