How to Disappear (28 page)

A man is dead.

His blood splattered in plumes. He was dead before he hit the floor. He’s turning to gray blue as Mendes goes white, his eyes staring straight up but seeing nothing. I’m bombarded with weird, fragmentary thoughts. How many coats of primer will they need to paint over the kitchen? How many times did I shoot him?

The shots reverberated like a rocket catapulting past the sound barrier, breaking it, blasting through eardrums as if they were tissue paper: the first blast, then the second, the third, and again, and again, and again.

I’m bent over Mendes, my hands sticky with blood. The corpse is maybe two, not even three feet away. There’s a scream coming out of Nicolette that won’t stop. Her dog is licking blood.

I can’t wrap my head around what just happened.

What I know is, I could have stopped it all—but I didn’t.

Nicolette got the gun away from me when I was on the ground in the Sierras, concussed, lying facedown in pinecones. But who am I kidding? I’m twice as big as she is and in better shape. I could have dragged her into any sheriff station between Primm, Nevada, and Podunk, Ohio. But I didn’t.

Instead: this. I marched along, not resisting, allowing myself to turn into the man I’ve known I was all along. Everything I wanted to believe about myself, it all disappeared into this murderer I’ve become.

There’s a dead guy I could reach out and touch with the same hand that held the gun that felled him.

I’m a killer.

It wasn’t the DNA or the sinister dad with his boxes of bullets, or the mother who sat there while he trained me to “think,” or the orders of my sociopath shit brother, that brought me here. It was my decision after my decision after my decision.

I’m tracking blood down the hall, tracking Mendes’s and his goon’s blood all along his carpet to the front door of Nicolette’s house. The cop protects my head, pushes me into the back of the black-and-white, and we drive away past a line of cars with government plates and, where the driveway meets the street, a red Camaro.

I say, “My name is Jackson Manx, and I want to make a statement.”

When all else fails, I pitch a fit. When I finish breathing into a paper bag, it’s one in the morning and they take me to see Steve.

There are tubes running in and out of him. A heart monitor beeping a rhythm just behind him. And his skin’s still the wrong color.

I am so sorry.

A security guard with a vintage crew cut and a
Men in Black
suit stands rigid just inside the doorway.

Steve opens his eyes. “What? Are you protecting me from my daughter? Go.”

Steve tells me, “Sit.” As if I were a dog. Or a girl who likes to be ordered around. The security guy looks back over his shoulder, checking to make sure I heel.

I sit in an olive-green plastic chair that squeaks whenever I move.

Very softly, Steve says, “Tell me what you did.”

Not the first time I’ve heard this particular instruction.

“I’m really, really, really sorry!” I bend over the hospital bed to hug him. He smells medicinal and unfamiliar. “This was
not
supposed to happen to you. Please believe me.”

“
Tell me what you did.
I can’t make it go away if I don’t know what it is.”

I sit back down in the chair. I fold my hands in my lap. “Starting when?”

“That girl in the woods.”

“That was totally Alex Yeager!”

“Nicky, come here.” He holds out his functional arm.

It’s like God is making me stand and look at my own evil handiwork. “I’m so sorry! You weren’t supposed to get shot! I swear!”

Steve says, “How could you think I would harm you?”

“You
said
I wasn’t even your kid. And you were going to get rid of me. And I was nothing but trouble to you.”

Which, given that I got him shot, might not have been that far off base.

“Sweet girl, I would have lied on my mother’s soul to get those boys away from you. I would have said anything.”

“You said—”

“
I know what I said!
They bring me a corpse to bury . . .
this young girl. They’re in my shed, looking for shovels. I go downstairs to see what’s going on, and they think I work for Karl so that means I’m going to help them.” He starts to shake his head, but winces. “I crunch
numbers
for Karl. Then you show up on the trail out of nowhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“When they came back, and you were gone . . . My God. I didn’t know if I would get you back.”

“I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t cry.” He’s patting my shoulder, squeezing my hand, calling me
mi’ja
. I am so the daughter from hell. “Nicolette, what were that Yeager boy and his lackey doing at my house again?”

Truly, I’m waiting for lightning and the wrath of God to strike me as I sit there and lie. “I don’t know! I’m so sorry!”

“And that Manx boy who found you? What were you doing with that one?”

“Nothing! He was trying to protect me. His mother was going to get killed if he didn’t find me. Don’t do anything to him!”

“Don’t you believe a word he says. Not one word.”

“But, Papa—”

“He stays out of my way, he stays out of your way. Do you understand me?”

“But—”

“No ‘buts,’ Nicolette. No maybe, no nothing, no anything
but you being a good girl who stays in the house until this is over.”

“But it
is
over, right? They found that girl’s body; they know who did it; they know why I ran away; they know Jack was trying to protect me. What’s left?”

“If it’s over, it’s because I’m Karl Yeager’s accountant,” Steve whispers as if someone was manning a stethoscope on the other side of the wall. “I know where Karl Yeager’s money goes. Because Karl doesn’t think like a normal person.” He looks straight into my eyes. “Karl might think you set up his kid.”

All of a sudden, I understand what Jack meant when he said that thing about me making his blood run cold. Only this time it’s
my
blood. The sensation of ice chips in my veins. My heart trying to beat with an icicle through it.

“Please, you have to make him think it was an accident! Can’t you make him see that?”

Steve shifts position so his face is inches from my face. “An accident? Two people are dead. This isn’t like giggling too loud during assembly. I can’t write you a note. And now it’s a
Manx
?”

“He didn’t mean it! He’s nice! It was totally my fault! I’m sorry. Can’t you please, please make this go away?”

He sighs and squeezes my hand so hard, it almost hurts.

“You’re a little girl who had a knife coming at her head in her own kitchen. What kind of a boy does that? Karl knows
something wasn’t right with that boy. We’ll talk, and we’ll end it.”

“Not just me! I
made
Jack come with me. None of this was his fault.”

Steve looks over the giant cast on his left arm and shakes his head. “Fine, but he’s out of your life. This happens my way or it doesn’t happen. Understood?”

When he gets like this, all you can say is yes.

I say, “I’ll do whatever you say. I just want my life back.”

He sighs. “All right, Nicolette. Show me your hands so I know you’re not crossing your fingers, and tell me this Manx boy is not in your life.”

“Please.”

“It’s over.”

I tell him, “Whatever you say, Steve,” but I don’t look him in the angry, angry eyes.

I can feel where my fingers were curled around the trigger, my palm against metal. My forearm is caked in dried blood. I lean back in the metal chair, trying to get comfortable, but comfort is out of the question.

This is a shit show. There’s no way around it, just through it.

I wanted to be the guy who pulled out of the swamp, stepped up, and lived with the consequences—but it’s not working out.

The interrogation room buzzes with an almost-spent fluorescent light bulb. We’ve been here for hours. They keep dragging me back through the story as if they think they’re going to trip me up. But I’ve already incriminated myself, Don, Karl Yeager, Esteban Mendes, the guys who beat me up in my apartment, the anonymous drunk guy I beat up—everyone but Nicolette and her ice pick.

By the time I get to the part with the biker bar confession, no matter how bad a picture I paint of myself, they think I’m worse. They think that without reason or provocation, I attacked a biker and dumped him somewhere. I don’t want to give them the idea that Nicolette helped me do this thing that never happened.

“Would your story change if you knew Esteban Mendes has been cooperating since he was forced to help bury the girl? We’ve been tracking those boys in the kitchen like flies on a carcass until we could secure Miss Holland—which leads us straight to you. Quite a coincidence, no?”

“No! And how do you know Mendes was forced? Are you taking his word for it? And the girl has a name: Connie Marino.”

“You seem to know a lot about that,” Agent Birdwell says, looking put out, while Agent Garrity sits there. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“I was in Nevada! Check the attendance records at my school.” I imagine how much the ladies in the front office at El Pueblo will enjoy police inquiries about me.

“Yet you know when it happened and who it happened to.” Agent Birdwell keeps spouting irrelevant truths.

“I didn’t know Connie was dead until my brother told me.”

“You’re sticking to that? Your brother told you Nicolette Holland did it? And she knew things about Karl Yeager?” This is a game of cat and mouse where the only rule is, the mouse loses.

“The way we see it, maybe you were there,” he says. “Maybe
you dragged Miss Holland away with you, and maybe you came back to get rid of the witnesses.”

I can’t predict the plot of the story they’re making up. I have to keep controlling waves of anger, grabbing on to the seat of the chair, wadding my hands into fists and sitting on them as a last resort.

I say, “What witnesses was I trying to get rid of?”

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was supposed to confess to what I actually did, and in return, they were supposed to believe me and lock me up somewhere I couldn’t do any more damage—not this.

“How did you get involved with Alexander Yeager?” Birdwell demands. “Dead at
twenty-one years old
. Ten degrees to the right, and you’d have had Mendes, too. Two witnesses blown away. One minute Alexander Yeager is burying Connie Marino, the next minute you shoot him.”

“
Wait!
The dead guy in the kitchen was a
Yeager
?”

Garrity presses his lips together as if he wants his mouth to disappear, a tell. Never play poker face with a guy from Las Vegas.

“Come on! I shot Karl Yeager’s kid?
He
buried Connie? Don’t you get this? Of course Karl Yeager wanted Nicolette dead! She saw his kid bury Connie—with Mendes. I was the guy they sent to do it.”

“You’ve had a long time to think this up, haven’t you?” Birdwell says. “Was one of those shots meant for Miss Holland?”

“No!” Jesus, this guy only believes his own stories. “Why would I drag her to Ohio to shoot her?”

The back of the chair is digging into me. I start to stretch, but
Birdwell pushes me down with such relish, the fact that I’ve put myself at this asshole’s mercy starts eating at me.

“We’re not done here,” he says.

I try to turn to get out from under his hands, but the only way to shake him would be to come up punching. My fingernails are pressed into my palms. I’m saying to myself,
Think, Jack. This would be a colossal mistake. Don’t do this.

I lace my fingers behind my neck and squash my head between my arms.

Garrity says, “Kid, do you want some water?” Birdwell looks as if he might bite him. His hands linger, but they come off me.

It’s late, and my mind is Swiss cheese, but I can still recognize his provocation for what it was. I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, so he issued an invitation to assault a cop. Thanks, but no thanks.

My ability to control myself for much longer is doubtful if I don’t get somewhere I can punch something other than Birdwell’s face. I want to land it right in his smug mouth right now, when he’s reveling in how much power he has over me.

I’m not going to prison for something a blowhard who likes pushing me around claims I did, a confabulated tall tale that ends with me trying to kill Nicolette. I didn’t. I want to
be
with Nicolette. I want to wash the blood off my hands and go to sleep and wake up to her—not this.

“I want a lawyer. I invoke my right to counsel.”

Birdwell doesn’t make a move out of his chair, but Garrity yawns. “He’s invoked, Bill. Let’s call it a night.”

Birdwell looks as if he’d like to make it Garrity’s last night on earth.

I say, “If you haven’t contacted my mother, I want to make my phone call. On the off chance I’m telling the truth, she needs more security.”

Garrity says, “On the off chance, yeah, we did—about three hours ago.”

“Thank you.”

Birdwell is so pissed at Garrity for giving me this, he half-throws a chair.

The car they use to drive me back and forth to the hospital has dark tinted windows and door locks the passenger can’t control. They hustle me into the house through the back door. It’s somewhat weird to be there with police nannies and not Steve.

At the hospital, Steve said, “Are you all right over there? I could sell that house in a week, move to the south shore, get more land.”

“Then I’d have to go to Jefferson! Please! I have to be in school with Liv! I just want things to be
exactly
like they were.”

Steve was so doped up, he couldn’t control his face. How sorry for me he looked. How amazed at my cluelessness.

I said, “Except for the kitchen.”

He looked relieved I wasn’t in a total state of (sick) denial.
He paid a counselor big bucks to get me to stop that before. When the therapist thought I was substituting sparkly nail polish for a mother.