Skin Privilege (37 page)

She gave up, clasping the blouse closed. Her voice shook. ‘Why have you been calling Hank?’

‘Open your shirt again.’

‘No.’

‘Open it up and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

‘No.’

He made to stand. ‘Then call the guard, because I’ve got nothing else to say.’

‘Ethan-‘

‘Hey!’ he called, his loud voice echoing in the cramped room. ‘Guard!’

‘Shut up,’ she hissed, as if she’d ever been able to stop him from doing anything.

He smiled again, that same smile he used to give before he beat the shit out of her. He pointed his finger at her, indicating that she should open her blouse.

She could barely speak. Tears blurred her vision. ‘Tell me why you’ve been calling Hank.’

‘You know the trade. Tit for tat.’

Lena glared at him, furious with him, furious with herself.
He
was the one in chains.
He
was the one bolted to the wall. Yet, she was the one who felt imprisoned.

‘Open,’ he coaxed.

Her hands shook as she slowly parted her blouse. She was wearing an old bra, black with lace and a clasp in the middle.

He said, ‘Bra, too.’

‘No.’

He knew her so well – knew when to keep pushing and when to pull back. He said, ‘Spread your shoulders.’

She looked at the door, put her shoulders back like he said.

.‘Jesus, you look so good.’ Ethan leaned as far forward as the chains would allow. His hands were under the table, and she kept her face turned away, staring at the metal door, trying not to listen to what he was doing.

He let out a low groan as he finished. She heard him zip himself up, sit back in the chair. She pulled her blouse closed, trying not to imagine the satisfied look on his ugly face.

‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Just out of curiosity, when you called your boss that morning after I left, were you sitting down or standing?’

Lena shook her head.

‘Come on, baby. Sitting or standing?’

She shook her head again as the day came back to her. His hand muffling the scream in her throat as he slammed her down on the bed. Forcing back her revulsion when she kissed him good-bye and told him to have a good day at work.

Lena forced herself to speak. ‘What does it matter?’

‘I want to know,’ he insisted. ‘When you sent me into this hellhole for ten years of my life, were you sitting in the bed where I just fucked you, or were you standing beside it?’

She suppressed a shudder as his words recalled the sensation. ‘You got what you wanted,’ she told him, her hands steady now as she buttoned her blouse. ‘Tell me why you’ve been trying to get in touch with Hank.’

‘All right,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Come here.’

She leaned forward, waited.

The smile on his face should have been her first warning, but she was still surprised when the sound of his laughter filled the room. ‘You stupid bitch,’ he said, shaking his head as if he could not believe how hilarious the situation was. ‘Do you think I’m gonna tell you anything?’ Abruptly, the laughter stopped. ‘Get the fuck out of here. You make me sick.’

Lena was stunned by her own stupidity. ‘You said-‘

He slammed his hands down on the table, the chains clanging against the steel. ‘I said
get the fuck out ofhere,
bitch.’

Lena grabbed the records in front of her as she stood, backing up until she felt the wall behind her.

He looped his arm over the back of his chair, a satisfied smile on his face.

She didn’t leave. She waited, wanting to hurt him, to humiliate him, as much as she had been humiliated. ‘You know what, Ethan?’

‘What, baby?’

‘I’m really glad I came here today.’

‘Yeah?’ He reached down, grabbing himself between the legs. ‘Me, too, baby.’

‘No.’ She clutched the papers tighter to her chest as if they could serve as some sort of armor. ‘See, I was really upset about something.’ She paused, studying the sneer on his face, wanting to savor every moment. ‘Remember when I told you that I thought I was pregnant?’

He sat up in the chair. She had his full attention now.

‘I told you it was a false alarm, but it wasn’t.’

His lips parted, but he didn’t speak.

‘And then I told you that I had to go to Macon for a refresher course for work,’ she continued. ‘Only, I wasn’t in Macon, Ethan. I was in Atlanta.’ It was her turn to smile. ‘Do you know what I was doing up there, baby?’

His jaw clenched. ‘You shut up.’

‘Do you know what I was doing, Ethan? Honey?’

He lunged at her, the chains jerking him back against the wall. He screamed, ‘I will fucking kill you,’ saliva spraying from his mouth. ‘You goddamn whore!’ Every muscle in his body shook from the effort of pulling at the restraints. He was like a rabid pit bull, ready to choke himself to death rather than suppress the urge to attack.

Lena knocked on the door. ‘Think about what I did,’ she told him. ‘Think about what I did to your child the next time you jerk yourself raw.’

The guard opened the door. He looked at Ethan, then Lena, obviously sensing the tension in the room. ‘You finished?’

‘Yeah,’ Lena said, glancing back at Ethan one last time. ‘I’m finished.’

Lena didn’t break down until she was out of the parking lot, well on her way to the interstate. She felt disgusting from being in Ethan’s presence, and like a monster for the callous way she’d spoken about their child. Leaving that room, walking down the hallway to the exit and knowing Ethan could not follow her, she had felt powerful, invincible. Then her words had come back to her, and the stupid way she had yet again let him talk her into doing exactly what he wanted made her feel raw inside.

By the time she made it back to the Elawah County limits, Lena was exhausted. Over and over again, she kept reviewing how she had played right into Ethan’s hands. He had always taken a sick delight in mind games. She could picture him calling Hank with that smirk on his face, delighting in the prospect of torturing the old man. Ethan had always used other people to get to Lena, whether it was threatening Nan or trying to rile up Jeffrey. Lena wasn’t even sure Hank had heard the calls on the machine. Even if he had, what the fuck did he care about Ethan Green? A couple of phone messages weren’t enough to make Hank take up the needle again. There had to be something else – something Lena still wasn’t seeing – and she felt in her gut that it all tied back to the drug dealer with the red swastika that she’d seen leaving Hank’s house.

Hank had said that the man had killed her mother. Where had he done this? When? How?

The visit to the prison had been a waste of time. Lena had pissed away a full day tracking down a false lead when she could have been looking for information on Angela Adams. She had to find something – a birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate, last known address. At the very least, a Social Security number would lead to income tax information. Tax information would give an address, a place of employment – something she could use for leverage with Hank. Lena felt certain more and more that her mother was the key to all of this. Hank was spiraling out of control for a reason. If Lena knew what had really happened to her mother, why Hank had lied all those years, then she could confront him with it, make him get help. As Lena drove down the state highway leading into Reece, she started making plans.

It was time to talk to the local cops. Fuck Al Pfeiffer and his lecherous hands. Lena was no longer a cowering teenager scared of a speeding ticket. She was a detective on the Grant County Police Force. She would go to the sheriff’s office first thing in the morning and demand copies of the reports in the investigation into her father’s death. If Pfeiffer balked, then she would call Jeffrey and let him do the good ol’ boy shuffle. If Jeffrey needed a reason for her wanting the file, she would spin him some yarn about needing closure. Since Jeffrey had married Sara again, he’d gotten enough estrogen back in his life to believe in that kind of shit.

Lena could still go to the hospital and try to track down her mother’s birth certificate. If that didn’t work, she would go back to Hank’s and find the information on her own. She shuddered at the prospect of going up into that attic again, the smell of Deacon Simms. She had no choice, though. Hank was consistent in one respect: he never threw away anything, whether it was an electric bill from 1973 or a newspaper covering the Challenger explosion. Somewhere in that house under all the self-help pamphlets and dirty clothes and boxes of crap, there had to be information about her mother.

Lena followed the car in front of her, turning off the highway and going toward downtown Reece. She passed the motel but did not turn in, the thought of the dark, lonely room too much to handle. Without realizing it, she had made the decision to go through Hank’s things tonight. She would get some big trash bags and throw out the trash as she went along.

Maybe she could find a way to dispose of Deacon’s body.

As she passed the high school, the car ahead of her slammed on the brakes and Lena turned the steering wheel hard, trying to avoid an accident. Her head slammed into the steering wheel as she skidded into the oncoming lane. The Celica stopped just short of rolling into the ditch. Her heart was in her throat as her brain processed what had happened. She could feel blood trickling down the side of her head and she wiped it away as she pushed open the door.

Up ahead was a white Escalade.

Lena reached under the seat and grabbed her folding knife. She flipped the blade open and got out of the car.

The streetlights nearly blinded her, or maybe the crash had jostled her brain. She felt dizzy and sick, her head pounding like a drum. Lena squinted, trying to see inside the SUV. The rear window slid down with a mechanical whirl. Charlotte Warren sat in the backseat. Duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide with terror.

Hank’s dealer got out from behind the wheel, leaving the door open. Lena clenched her fist around the pearl-handled knife, ready to use it, but the man simply grabbed her by her hair and threw her toward the Cadillac like a sack of flour.

‘Get in,’ he said. Her knife was in his hand. She must have dropped it. He folded down the blade and tucked it into his back pocket while she was watching.

Lena pushed away from the car, but he threw her back toward the open driver’s door. Charlotte gave a muffled yell and Lena saw that another man was sitting beside her. This one wore a black ski mask. Surgical gloves covered his hands. He held a gun to Charlotte ‘s head. His smile sent a cold shiver through her body.

He said, ‘Get in.’

Lena didn’t move.

He pressed the muzzle of the gun to Charlotte ‘s temple. ‘Get in or I’ll kill her right now.’

Lena got in.

THURSDAY EVENING

NINETEEN

Jeffrey sat on the front steps of Hank Norton’s house as he studied the street map of downtown Reece. Sara had ridden in the ambulance with Hank so that she could manage his care on the ride to the hospital. Jeffrey knew without asking that she would want to stay with him until his condition was stabilized. Sara had cut her teeth as an ER doc. She wouldn’t leave Hank’s side until she was sure he was in capable hands.

That left Jeffrey with plenty of time to search the man’s house. First, he had opened every window that would budge in the hopes that the place would air out. While he was waiting for this miracle to occur, he checked the shed in the backyard. Other than rat shit and about a hundred boxes full of paper so old it was starting to pulp, he found nothing. The old Chevy pickup was empty, the cab floor so rusted that the bench seat had fallen through.

The clothes Hank had worn were by the fence. Jeffrey guessed from the way the pants, shirt, and underwear trailed along the lawn that the old man had taken them off as he walked into the backyard. After the paramedics had shifted Hank to the gurney, Jeffrey had checked the grass underneath the man’s body. Jeffrey took comfort in the discovery. When he’d first seen Hank lying in the grass, he’d thought Lena ‘s uncle had lain there for days, waiting for someone to discover him. The ground underneath his emaciated frame would have been dry if he’d been therfe overnight.

Jeffrey was biding his time, pacing around the backyard, when his foot found the soft, wet earth over the septic tank. Obviously, the system had backed up into the house. Whoever had taken a sledgehammer to the toilet bowl had broken the natural seal and allowed raw sewage to spew out into the house. A plumber would have to suck out the septic tank, then some poor bastard would have to get a shovel and take care of the rest of it. As far as Jeffrey was concerned, the easiest thing to do would be to rent a bulldozer and push the whole damn house down.

After waiting half an hour for the odor to dissipate, he was able to go back inside without dry-heaving. Even with the windows open, rotting food and the various insects it attracted made Jeffrey gag so many times that bile had made his throat raw. He’d felt odd looking through Lena ‘s girlhood bedroom. Like most parents, Hank had not changed much when the girls left and like most children, Lena and Sibyl had left behind the crap they didn’t want to take with them. When Jeffrey found himself faced with Lena ‘s underwear drawer, he decided to move on to Hank’s room.

As he went through the man’s things, Jeffrey got the distinct impression that this wasn’t the first time the house had been searched. He didn’t know if this was Lena ‘s doing or someone else’s. He did know that when he pulled back the duct tape from around the front door, the splintered wood around the jamb looked newly damaged..

Lena knew how to kick in a door. She also knew how to perform a thorough search. Knowing she could have done either of these things to her uncle’s house did not come as a consolation. Jeffrey knew she was hiding out, sleeping at the school, or at least she had been until now, but what had she been doing in the daytime? Why was she still in Reece?

Jeffrey gave up wondering what Lena was up to as his search finally ended up in the kitchen. He supposed the stacks of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets on the table and the empty syringe he found under the chair was what you’d call irony, but Jeffrey wasn’t in the mood to play word games with himself. He’d wiped the chair opposite Hank’s and sat down at the table, wondering what would make a man do this to himself. It was suicide, plain and simple.