The Girl in Acid Park (8 page)

Then I realized Jamie had removed his glasses. I don't know when he'd done it, but he had. The flash of lenses would have given us away for certain. The guy was a fucking genius.

The beam jogged toward me, and I closed my eyes, feeling it pass in broken dapples across my line of sight. Why was my hair so red? Why? I had no idea whether he could see well enough through the wisteria and ivy to make out our shapes, but it didn't matter. If he didn't see us now, he would soon. Jamie's fingers clenched the back of my shirt, and I understood the unspoken agreement to run.

"Gustav.
Listo. Vámonos guey
!"

The flashlight beam swung away. The silhouette turned around. I got another waft of his mall-kiosk cologne as he shouted something back. The rest had gathered toward the VW van at the end of the drive, though I couldn't see them past their own van's lights.

A brief exchange followed, during which I don't think Jamie or I had a pulse. Then the the backlit figure grumbled something and turned around. I watched him kick at the foliage, trampling a path back to the driveway. He circumvented Jamie's truck, and the headlights finally hit him at an angle.

He was lean, but built like a bulldog, wide and low. Some narrow word was tattooed in gothic letters around his throat, but I couldn't read it. He had a squarish face and thick, short-cropped hair, but that was all I saw before he disappeared into the headlights.

It was another thirty or so seconds before I heard the roll and slam of a van door and the headlights bounced, bending toward the ground as the vehicle mounted the highway in reverse. The beams swung back toward the road, and with a surge of engine noise, vanished around the treacherous curve.

Neither Jamie nor I moved. I don't know how long we lay there with me clutching the cold whirligig, Jamie's arm half around me. We didn't even speak--just breathed. Eventually, we rolled to our knees and used one of the whirligig's cross-braces to pull ourselves to our feet.

I felt nauseous. My face burned and I leaned it against the rough metal. Jamie had hooked an arm over a whirligig struts and was rubbing his naked face.

We stood there a few more minutes, not asking each other the obvious questions. Somehow, it seemed like a good idea not to confirm anything we'd just observed until we were safely back at school.

I wanted to get there as soon as possible. On the other hand, I had no desire to end up as another rusting wreck around a pine tree.

"Can you drive?" I asked.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at me...ish. Looked in my direction anyway. "We'll have to find my glasses."

"I thought you took them off!"

He grimaced.

"Shit. Was it when we ran into each other?"

"I don't remember--it wasn't really my priority at the time."

"Can you see well enough to look?"

"Yeah, I'm nearsighted--I just wouldn't trust myself to drive half high and half blind."

We picked our way back toward the driveway, patting the ground in our path as we went, in case his glasses had ended up in the woods. I walked one direction around the truck, and he went the other, and we met in front, empty-handed. He sighed.

"I could drive?" I said. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, which had a pine-needle stuck in it.

"That's probably for the best. At least I have a back-up pair." He fished out his keys and the tinkle of metal sent a shudder down my back. I retracted my hand a few centimeters. "I'm never buying wind chimes," I grumbled, making myself take the keys.

"Same." Jamie looked toward the road, toward the VW van where we'd last seen the girl. It was a pointless movement, since he apparently couldn't see shit. I crossed my arms. The ghost seemed to be gone, but I hadn't stopped shivering. Jamie rubbed his eyes.

"Big dark blur, big light blur?" I asked.

"Not even the light blur, but I appreciate the Star Wars reference. What do you imagine they were doing?"

I laughed nervously. "I want to imagine it was a puppy deal."

"A..." he squinted. "I'm sorry, a what?"

"An illegal exchange of pedigree puppies, performed in the middle of the night off a dark country highway. Illegal, b-but adorable." The shivering had progressed to teeth-chattering. Jamie peered at me with naked gray eyes, then moved to the passenger's side of the truck, opened the door, and pulled out my jacket. He handed it to me.

"W-wh-aren't we leaving?" I said. He quirked an eyebrow.

"I had assumed you wanted to investigate."

It took a moment to consider. I was scared out of my mind. I wanted to go home. I wanted to find every single weather vane in a quarter mile radius and hit it with a baseball bat. But under the fear, closeted deep, was the knowledge that I would leave this place and eventually want answers. I would look back and hate the me of right now for chickening out when the tracks were fresh. I shuddered again, but nodded.

He opened my jacket, and I had to repress a flush of nervous embarrassment as I realized what he was doing. I slid one arm in, then the other. I let him help me into my jacket, wishing all the nice moments weren't so tangled up with the bad. Then I led the way down the drive to where the van had been parked.

Jamie kept close to my shoulder, and we kept bumping into each other as we walked. I suspected it was the mutual gravity of fear contributing to our clumsiness. We got to the road before I realized I wasn't even sure what to look for. He squinted at the dirt and gravel, shining the flashlight on his phone on the ground near the tire tracks.

"No paw prints," he said.

"No puppies," I confirmed.

"Likelihood of puppy deal negligible to small. Next hypothesis, Miss Collins."

I rubbed my chin, then opened my hand out to the air helplessly. "Drug deal? Maintenance? Neighbors who saw our car? I don't want to judge, but bro had the throat tattoo thing, which leads me to believe he wasn't just a worried neighbor checking on an unfamiliar car."

Jamie crouched, peering at the ground. I dropped my hand to my side. "Going to analyze the dirt, Sherlock?"

He snorted. "No, I'm trying to see if I can read the impression on this footprint, for whatever good that will do."

"Not a lot, I'm guessing."

"You're probably right."

He stood up, and I was beginning to suspect the answers we'd find by looking at the scene were vanishingly small.

Something clunked behind me. I whipped around, facing the crashed VW van. I always thought they looked like kids toys with their curved sides and bright colors. Once, this one would have been the white and yellow of an easter-egg. Now, in the underwater darkness of trees and fractured moonlight, it was a corroded mass of pale metal, an alien among the brush growing in its wheel wells.

"Did you hear-"

"Yep."

We didn't look at each other, but as one, we stepped forward. I expected to hear another thump, maybe the skitter or skritch of another fucking possum. I heard nothing, but a step or two later, I smelled it.

My grandfather has always had terrible gas, and to combat this, my grandmother used those plug-in air fresheners. When grandpa got going and those little fruity bulbs started heating up the air, it was enough to make your eyes water. This smelled similar, only with a bonus tinge of rot.

My steps faltered, nausea stealing my breath. Jamie stopped an arm's length from van's back door. I moved to his side, terrified he would open it, wanting to be there if he did.

He reached.

"Fingerprints," I whispered, barely managing the sound.

He inhaled, then tugged the cuff of his jacket down over his fingers and grabbed handle. My face prickled, but I nodded when he looked at me. He heaved on the rusted door.

It rolled opened half way and stuck, but that was all we needed. The glossy black form, wrapped up like a mummy, was unmistakable. Black trash bags. Duct tape. A piece of paper with something written on it, pinned to the form with a pocket knife stabbed into the chest. The stench rolled into us, and we both staggered away from the dilapidated van.

I twisted around and collided with Jamie's shoulder. He caught my arm. We stood there, gripping each other for an anchor to reality. My throat throbbed.

"Holy fuck," I croaked.

We'd just found the missing body.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Coffee ex Machina

"...And if I find you near the investigation again, you're going to be looking at a charge for obstruction of justice."

I winced, leaning back from Deputy Reid's reprimand as she marched me out into the sheriff's station's main office.

"You ain't had enough publicity? Talking about bricks through windows--I'm starting to agree with the folks that think it was you, trying to get attention. You better hope we don't look into it. You'd be looking at destruction of property and whatever else I can find to hit you with, little girl."

I stayed silent. My throat was sore from talking, and maybe from the marijuana I was still afraid she would mention.

The sheriff's office was a cinderblock building near the public middle school, situated across the street from what was, at the hour of our arrival, a darkened Piggly Wiggly. If I'd been in a joking mood at all, I'd have pointed it out to Jamie, but the grim memory of death lingered like pockets full of stones, drowning my desire to make light of my own fear.

It was surprisingly office-like inside, with desks and staplers and in-out trays like any other building. The smell of stale coffee and overheating computers permeated the atmosphere. Then again, the uniforms, the warble-click of radios, and the presence of darkened interrogation rooms sort of destroyed the cubicle fantasy.

They made me write my statement four times, and I must have been asked to tell it twenty more, always with more questions. Did I see how they entered the house? No, because there were men coming toward our hiding spot. Did I see the color of the men's van? No, because the headlights were shining toward us. Did I see any of the men? One, the one who'd come into the bushes. What did he look like? Height, build, race, tattoos? Could I pick him out of a lineup?

I told them all I remembered, down to the guy's cologne, which I guess was probably there to help mask the stench of the dead body he'd been chilling with. I described his clothing, his facial hair, the timbre of his voice. I looked at a bunch of pictures that weren't him.

I didn't mention the girl.

I'm not sure why--it would go in the report as evidence. They'd get an expert like Hiroki or the cop from Durham to confirm there really was a ghost, since I was no longer a reliable source. Maybe it was the fear of explaining the marijuana, which they hadn't mentioned but I was certain they knew about. Maybe if I told them I was smudging Acid Park with sage in a Native American cleansing ritual, they'd believe me.

Then again, I wasn't sure they'd be willing to take anything I said seriously after the possum incident. At least Jamie was at the station with me, locked in another questioning room with the same pen and photocopied statement form.

By the time they sent me back into the main part of the station, I'd had about four cups of coffee and I couldn't tell if my trembling was from fear, exhaustion, or an excess of caffeine. My eyes were too dry, and felt too big for their sockets, and there was a distracting tinny whine in my head that had me glaring at all the department's fluorescent lights, searching for a source.

Jamie was already in a blue plastic chair by the door, leaning over his knees with his head in his hands. Someone had located his glasses, though he was rubbing his forehead like he had a headache. He looked up when I approached.

"They kept you forever," he croaked. Shadows hung like purple-bellied storm clouds beneath his eyes.

"How long have you been waiting?" I asked, and my whole body vibrated with exhaustion as I sank into the seat before him.

"About an hour and a half. Brother Emmanuel is here--I think he went to find the restroom."

I nodded, unable to dredge up any excitement about my favorite teacher.
 
"Why'd they keep me so long?" I wondered aloud.

"Probably because you remember things most accurately closest to the event, and they wanted all the details you could give them without time for your brain to make shit up. Also, because I couldn't give them many details, since I couldn't see most of the time. They needed you to identify the person you saw."

I sighed and picked at the loose threads on the knee of my jeans. "What time is it?"

"Nine thirty."

I didn't mean to lean toward him, but I was tired and the seats were right up next to each other. My arm pressed against his, and he was so still it made my shaking more obvious. In my peripheral vision, his head turned toward me. I didn't look at him. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. Luckily, it seemed he was done with talking too.

His hands were clasped in his lap, and one twitched, thumb tapping. It seemed weirdly separate at the end of his sleeve.

"I didn't tell them about the girl." My voice seemed to float out without my permission. Jamie's thumb stopped tapping.

"Hm?"

I clenched my eyes shut and opened them again, trying to clear my brain. I rubbed my eyebrows. "The girl," I repeated. "The one who warned us? With the hair and the disco-tactic dress? I didn't tell them."

Jamie's eyebrows pointed toward his nose. After a second, they lifted again, and he shook his head, comprehension dawning. "I didn't see her. I only heard the wind chimes."

"But..." I twisted toward him. "But you were just as high as I was!"

A sigh registered behind me, and I saw Jamie glance up over my shoulder. I twisted around.

"Lord help me, I didn't need to hear that," Brother What-a-waste said. I felt the blood drain from my face. That was it. As if my credibility couldn't get worse, I had to go confess to the very thing I was afraid they would discover. I must have looked terrible, because when I looked up at Brother What-a-waste, his expression arrested. His perfectly-stubbled jaw twitched. "I would urge you to come to confession."

Jamie and I glanced at each other. I had a feeling it would take more than a couple of Hail Maries to work this one out.