The Butterfly Clues (33 page)

I open my eyes. I must have passed out. We’re moving, roaring forward. There’s a dark sheet of plastic blocking off the back of the car from front. I can’t see the driver. He can’t see me. Gordon is next to me, watching.

Flash: Flynt, watching me wake up, his hand dancing across his sketch pad. His fingers smoothing the scar above my eye—just before we kissed; that patient, perfect moment.
He doesn’t know. He’ll never know me again. And I’ll never know him. Never know his real name.

It was my first kiss. It was my last kiss.

“Want to do a dance for me … Penelope? Before I put a bullet in your brain? One last time?” I curl myself against the door, as far away from him as I can possibly be, which is still too close. Breath shoots heavily from his nostrils; he wipes some spit from his lips.
He knows my real name. He knows everything.
My brain swivels in my skull; I feel it going soft, preparing to be divided by an inch of quick-moving metal.

“This is your fault,” he says, shaking his head, like I’m a student who has failed a math exam. Disappointed. “We told you to stay away. We warned you. And now …” He rolls up the cuffs of his dress shirt. There’s a dark splotch on his forearm: a tattoo. An anchor tattoo. “Well, now I have no choice. You dumb bitches never give me a choice, do you?”

The watch on his wrist flashes as we pass under a streetlamp. All at once, another piece of the puzzle clicks together. I gasp out: “Your watch—Mario had it at the market with Sapphire’s things—” I’m floundering for truth, for clarity, for something to hold on to. “He knew about you and Sapphire… .”

Flash: Mario’s dyed red hair and bewildered face as he grabbed the watch from my hands at the flea that day.
That one’s not for sale.

“That freaky little bastard started sniffing around in my business. He tried to blackmail me. So I had him killed,” Gordon says, voice flat, lifeless. “Unfortunate, but necessary. He was another one who didn’t know how to let sleeping dogs lie. Or sleeping sluts, in this case …” He half smiles, the neon red of taillights fusing with his face; crazy shadows bloom around his eyes as the car jerks, turning off of the highway, speeding down a narrow ramp, air whooshing around us like a scream.

We jag. Zip. Swerve. The sky is a dark tunnel, no light at the end. I lick the dried blood from my lips. The car
screeek
s into a big open parking lot, jolting forward as it stops.

“Don’t try to run, pretty girl. I have a gun in my pocket,” he says, smiling—perfect rows of teeth, nothing out of place, no gaps. “And don’t bother screaming. No one will hear you.”

Teeth. They dance around me, chorus line around my head. Blood. Still on my lips. I lick. Three times. Three times again as he opens the car door with one hand and wraps his fingers tightly around my wrist with the other, pulling me with him, into him, into a stiff dance that makes me want to puke. But I can’t— everything is lodged too tightly inside of my body right now, shocked still.

Soon I will go somewhere blank and empty, and I will not be alive. The concept makes no sense. To be alive one second and not alive the next. To be dead. No sense no sense no sense. Nonsense. Nonalive.

I can barely see. Only a few thin bands of light pour out from within the multi-level warehouse in front of us—
JONES INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS SHIPPING # 6
.

Keep him talking. Keep him talking. It’s the only way, only chance. “The bouncer!” I cry out, into his too-close chest “You had him framed, didn’t you?” I try to pull away; he pulls me tighter.

More comes back to me: Vinnie’s big red nose. He’s sneering at me through the opened curtain of the private booth at Tens.
Mr. Jones, you need another girl?
Gordon grinning, saying:
No, Vin. I’ve got a girl, thank you.
Then: on the sidewalk near my house, he’s there again. Closing his phone. Hopping into a sedan.

“Smart little thing, aren’t you? Figuring things out, up and down.” His hand slides down my back, squeezes me. “Vinnie has been working for me for a while. I’ve taken care of him. Now, he gets to pay me back.” He laughs, humorlessly. “Getting slapped with a prison sentence is one of the hazards of the job.”

“My yearbook pictures … it was
you
. The acid …” I try to keep the wail out of my voice, but it doesn’t work. “You got into my school, you—you knew where my locker was …”

“Your locker?” For a second Gordon looks completely confused, and I can tell that he honestly doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then he leans closer, smiling. “You know what? That’s your problem. That’s been your problem all along. You thought this was a joke. You thought
I
was a joke. Just like she did. You thought I was a goddamn clown, didn’t you? I told her. I told her I would never let her go. She didn’t believe me. She gave me no choice… .” He pulls me even more tightly into him, pushes my face into his chest with the back of his hand until all I can breathe is the too-strong cologne smell of his dress shirt. His mouth is wet against my ear: hissing, foul breath.

“You’re—you’re right,” I tell him, into his chest, trying to squeeze the right words out past the terror. “She shouldn’t have left you. She’s—she was”—
please listen; please hear me
—“wrong. Anyone who leaves you is—is wrong. I—I’m sorry. Please. Just let me go, and I promise I’ll—”

“Shut up, dead girl,” he cuts me off, shoving me away from him, and I spin into another man’s giant, meaty arms. I smell cigarettes, caked into his skin, his clothes. I gag, he wraps his fist around my throat. I try to scream, but there is no sound.

“How you want this done, G-man?” The words rumble, heavy, loose in the wide-open dark. I recognize his voice. He is the man who threatened me in Tens.

Click.
A gun cocks. Muffled voices, my arms pulled tight again—my heart, clicking off, on, off, on; my father and mother, when I’d catch them kissing in the kitchen as he stirred dinner. Sage, thyme, squash, risotto.

“Shut her eyes, Frank.”

“Doesn’t really matter though, G.”

“Just shut them.”

More—Oren and me, lying over the vents in winter in our old house in Baltimore—he pulls a blanket over our heads, and we suck in the warm air, feel it blow against our cheeks, the smell that rises from the vents is soft, delicious.

A big, thick, cigarette-smelling hand slides over my eyes, a cold metal lip presses against my temple; his breath vibrates in my ears. My legs quiver and give out. Sapphire reaches for me through the thick air, I feel her wings drawing around me, feel myself beginning to spin and spin, to shrink and change, to rise from my body even as part of me remains glued to the earth and those hands—I still feel them—gripping the flesh part, heavy, tired, terrified while the other part, the soul part, shakes off its weight, rises like mist.

Somewhere far away, I hear Gordon’s voice: “It’s time.”

The air goes still and thick and slow, and every instant of my life—past, present, future—divides, scattering into everything, into nothing.

And in that second, which is like a forever, I’m terrified that Mrs. Kim, the science teacher, was wrong: that I will not become molecules, become everything; I will disappear and—
click—
Oren will not be waiting because he has disappeared, too, and I will never never never get to see him again because he’s gone because we’re all gone because we never come back and everything has been a lie and Flynt will never know—never know—never touch— never love—

“Okay, G-man, here we go.”

Never know that I love, never know anything, never grow, never smell, kiss, taste—

And then, between the scattering of moments, I hear a sound like screaming, a machine going wild somewhere—closer, closer—other voices, colors—blue, red—the scream right beside me now
.

I feel his hands tumble away—like they’ve been pulled off, Band-Aid quick—and then a different set of hands. Tears roll down my cheeks, sobs shake so hard through my ears I can’t hear, I can’t see. But these new hands—they lift me up; they pull me in—I don’t know how, I don’t know who or why. I don’t know what is happening.

Suddenly: pine, snow, cloves, grass—the smells of Flynt, everywhere, cloaking me.

Maybe there is something when it all ends. Maybe there is memory, memory of the person you loved, when you lived. Maybe this is the white-light-tunnel deal, and I’m pressing toward it, and it’s pressing back, until we become the same thing.

Flynt.

Flynt is holding me, and I still don’t understand. I don’t understand if I’m alive, or if I’m dead, or if I’m somewhere in between. I hold my mouth to his shoulder. The sounds around us are tiny, panicked islands, far away—shouting, clicking, slamming, sirens wailing. I try to speak, but my mouth is as blurry as my eyes, and he’s saying, “Shh, shh shh,” over and over again, and, “Lo. Oh God. Lo, you’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” And he’s stroking my hair and his fingers feel so good. So real.

I lift my head from his shoulder and look at him. He’s sobbing as he looks back at me—we’re both sobbing: huge, fat tears staining his face, his beautiful face. “Lo.” It’s all he can say, again and again. “Lo. Lo. Lo. Oh God.”

“Flynt.” I choke it out, somehow, and it feels good—the vibration of my voice, saying his name. Our bodies shake together in the dark, in the April chill, in this one stretched-out moment in which every smell, every sound, every single salty tear that rolls into my mouth is so vibrant and perfect that finally, I’m certain of it: “I’m alive,” I cry into his chest. He hugs me tighter, shaking.

“You’re alive.” He smells so good. So good. “You’re alive.”

CHAPTER 31

“I’ll be back in a few,” Officer Gardner says. The whir of the Cleveland police station filters through the cracks in the office door, a symphony around us. “Anything else you need? An extra blanket or anything?” Flynt and I shake our heads no and she smiles, clicking the door of her office softly shut behind her. It’s funny how being here feels so different now, with Flynt, hot chocolate, and a fleece blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

My mind is still a blur: of blue and red squad car lights blinking against the asphalt, against the blank face of Gordon’s warehouse, of cops—shouting commands, clicking guns, handcuffs, lights. Of metal against my temple, of Gordon Jones’s shadowy face in the back of the black van, the burst of red around his eyes.
Shut her eyes, Frank.
I keep hearing him say it
.

“How—how did you find me?” I whisper.

Flynt pauses, moves his hand to my neck, tracing little circles to the base of my skull. The symmetry comforts me. “I didn’t think we
would
find you,” he confesses, voice a sway of wind, rain drumming on a roof. “I got your note. I—Lo—I … I should have been with you—I should have helped—” He kisses the top of my head—my scalp shivers. “The Prophet. He gave me your message.” His voice sticks in his throat.
He knows I love him.
“I went to Tens to find you, but you weren’t there anymore. That psychopath must have already gotten you at that point. I found your book bag.” He swallows. “I had no idea where to look. I went outside of Tens, and that’s where I saw Officer Gardner. She’s been on to Jones for a while. I drove with her in the cop car,” he says.

Flynt pulls the blanket more tightly around us, hands moving gently to the back of my head, weaving softly through my hair. I reach for one of the mugs of hot chocolate Officer Gardner brought us, blow into it, feel the heat rush into my face, feel his long fingers brush against my scalp, my ears, the soft skin of my temples.

Shut her eyes, Frank.

“Gardner told me she started looking into Sapphire’s case because of you,” he continues. “She didn’t tell me details, just that she’d become convinced Jones was involved. She had to beg the lieutenant to send in officers to his warehouses. Finally got clearance today, even though the case was technically closed. They found things tonight—photos he kept locked away in office files—photos of Sapphire’s body, records of text messages he’d sent her… . He was completely whacked. A total power junkie. I told her Sapphire had talked to me about him, briefly. I knew some guy at the club was creeping her out, but that’s all. She never mentioned names.”

I look at his face and notice it’s paler than normal, his bluegreen-gold eyes angled downward, full of grief. He moves a hand to my back, runs his fingers down it gently. I tighten the blanket around us again. I count his eyelashes,
seven
,
eight
,
nine
. Stop at nine. Nine is enough. Nine fills my vocal cords, pushes words from my lips.

“Sapphire told you about him?”

Flynt nods.

“So … she was your friend? This whole time.”

He swallows hard. “Yeah. She was,” he says, words rushing from his lips. “She became kind of like a sister. A surrogate sister, I lost mine—left her when I left home. I always felt completely awful about abandoning her.” He grabs for his mug, holding it in his hands a whole minute before drinking from it.

“I didn’t know you had a sister,” I say quietly. “How old is she?”

“She was nine, when I left. She’s fourteen now.” He shakes his head, swallowing hard. “I wrote her letters every week, so I knew my stepdad had started again with his bullshit—drinking and hurting her, and”—his voice breaks and he looks down, at his clenched fists—“I don’t know what else. But I knew it was bad. ”

Flynt moves closer to me, puts his nose against my right shoulder, kisses it. I turn my head and kiss the other one, and he almost laughs and kisses right again, so I kiss left. And he kisses right. And I kiss left and put my hand out so he won’t do it again. Because six is what I need. No more.

“So, what happened to your sister? Couldn’t you have told someone, like a cop, or a social worker or something?” I ask.

“My stepdad
is
a cop,” he says, his mouth setting into a line. “I knew I needed to get her out of there on my own. I wanted her to leave—to come here—I needed money to send to her so she could start saving up.” He shifts a little in his chair, rubs a hand against his scruffy cheek. “And then a friend at Malatesta’s introduced me to Mario, who said he’d buy pretty much anything off me for a fair price. So, at first, I was begging or busking for change, or digging through Dumpsters for stuff, but it wasn’t enough, so I—I started stealing. Just a little bit. Small stuff, mostly.”