Gun Shy

  I haven’t been called a kid in a very long time.

  “Yeah,” I agree, letting my eyes drop to the floor.

  “You mind if we look around?” Damon asks, glancing around the workshop again. “I mean, we can get a warrant, but that’s a lot of paperwork, and I hate paperwork. Caring for my wife doesn’t really allow a lot of extra time for paperwork, you know what I mean?”

  I put the wrench down, picking up a rag as I wipe my oil-soaked hands. “Sure,” I say, a nervous feeling spreading in my chest. “Look at whatever you want. Nothing to hide, here.”

  I think about the last time I saw Jennifer. Shit, it was so recent, they’d probably still find traces of her DNA on the shirt I was wearing when she pulled off the road and asked me if I thought she was pretty. Jesus, fuck. I could have saved myself a lot of shit by just telling her to put the car back in gear and fucking drive.

  “Anything we might find?” Damon asks, gesturing to Chris to start moving, too. I trail after them, keeping my eye on my toolbox, praying like hell that Damon doesn’t notice the photograph.

  “A lot of oil and busted car parts,” I reply, glancing outside.

  “What about out back?” Damon asks, following my eyes. I shrug. “A lot of rusted out cars.”

  My old Mustang is out there. Shit. They towed it out back here straight after the accident, and it’s never moved from its spot. I only know this because Pike told me, because old Lawrence has been stripping it for spare parts for the better part of a decade.

  Damon makes a beeline for the back door, sliding it open and stepping outside. It’s not snowing today, but the cold air that snakes inside is frigid. I want my jacket, but I don’t want to leave the police officers alone in my garage. Before, I would have had no such qualms, but these days, I don’t trust anybody.

  I forego a jacket, stepping outside in my overalls, thankful at least that they’ve got long arms to cover my skin. It’s going to be a real bitch here when summer rolls around, and I have to expose my scarred arms, burned in the accident, for all the world to see. The cold bites at me; the cold, and the reality of my situation.

  “Would you look at all these cars?” Damon says, almost like he’s impressed by the junkyard afforded by cheap land and a hoarding boss. Most of these heaps are completely useless, should be crushed for scrap, but try telling Lawrence that. Sometimes I think he was deprived of having any toys as a child and he’s making up for it now with this auto graveyard.

  “The things you could hide in a place like this,” Damon says, and there’s a painful stab in my gut. It feels like the time I got stabbed in the yard, almost bled out, and spent two weeks in the infirmary while my wound healed. Only there’s no blood this time. Just the sharp realization that I am fucked.

  They think I took Jennifer.

  THEY THINK I KILLED JENNIFER.

  I want to tell them I didn’t, that they’re looking at the wrong guy, but I don’t. Because they haven’t actually accused me of anything. The more I say, the guiltier I’ll look. Then again, if I say nothing, am I making myself look uncooperative?

  Fuck.

  “I don’t have anything to hide, Sheriff,” I say, my hands shoved in my pockets to ward off the chill, trailing behind him as he pokes his head into old, rusted out car bodies. I start to peel off, hoping he’ll follow me, but of course, he sees exactly what I don’t want him to see.

  “Ahh,” he says, his words edged with glass, “the infamous Mustang. It survived, huh?”

  “If you call that survived,” I say to the ground. “Yes, sir.”

  Damon chuckles, picking up a crowbar that I’ve been using to beat the dents out of the car so I can get on to replacing the twisted chassis.

  “The goddamn car that killed my wife,” he says, one hand trailing along her hood, the part that escaped the fire and the impact.

  I don’t say anything. Not when he touches the car, his fingers almost tender as they skate along her polished curves, and not when he lifts the crowbar up and smashes it down onto the metal, leaving a deep dent and taking layers of paint off.

  He smashes that crowbar down, and I flinch, imagining it’s my skull. I know that’s what he’d prefer.

  A few more hits and he throws the crowbar to the ground at my feet, no hint of congeniality in his expression any more.

  “We’ll bring the cadaver dogs from Reno,” he says, wiping his hands on his pant legs. “If you’ve got a body in here, you can move it, but we’ll still find the trail.”

  “I don’t have a body here — you don’t even know if she’s dead!”

  “You got her stashed away in that shithole you call a house, then?”

  “I don’t have her,” I snap. “I don’t know what happened to her, okay?”

  Damon winces, looking down at his hand. It’s swathed in a thick bandage, and I can see fresh blood rising through the white gauze.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “Your hand.”

  He frowns, wiggling his fingers beneath the bandage. “She was a sweetheart, that dog of yours,” he says, and I notice the faint shape his blood forms under the bandage, a half-crescent between his thumb and forefinger that looks like a nasty bite. A deep one. “Somebody ran her over, so sad. Can you believe they didn’t even stop? She was on her way down to your place. Must have known you were back.”

  I’m not sure whether to believe him.

  “Somebody smashed their car right into her.” He pauses. “She was in such a bad way. I had to put a bullet in her to end her suffering. You ever seen a dog die? They’re survivalists. Dogs are so fuckin’ stubborn. Takes forever for them to stop fighting.”

  My eyes are burning, and there’s a lump in my throat. I loved that dog. I loved her and he shot her. I killed his wife. I have no right to be pissed.

  “Sad, isn’t it? Cassie was beside herself. Christ, I had to sleep next to her all night. Cried so hard she wouldn’t let go of me. You remember how she can be.”

  The image of Damon sleeping beside my Cassie is a punch in the face; rage blossoms inside me, and it must show on my face, because Damon laughs, resting his hand atop his gun holster. “Hey, whoa, don’t go getting the wrong idea. She’s like a daughter to me.” His smile dries up. “She’s everything to me.”

  Something in his words disturbs me, but I can’t figure out what. Maybe I’m just jealous as fuck that he got to wipe away her tears while I slept alone.

  “Be seeing you, Bentley,” Damon says, walking back inside like he didn’t just bust my car up. “Let’s go check that well,” he says to Chris, who’s just standing there like a goddamn mute, his hands folded neatly behind his back. Let’s go check that well. I don’t even bother to address that statement. We live on state land, modern day squatters in our own town. Damon can search the well, hell, he can move into the well, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.

  I follow him through the workshop, but before I can cut him off, he’s at my toolbox, staring down at the photo, the only thing in the world that I have left of Cassandra Carlino.

  He plucks the photograph out of my toolbox and holds it up to me. “I’ll be taking this,” he says, stuffing the photograph into his pocket. “Guess you’ll have to find something else to jerk off to, huh?”

  And his tone is light, but his eyes are fucking incinerating me, they’re full of so much hate. He climbs into the patrol car, only taking his eyes off me when he’s driving onto the shoulder, signaling to get back on to the highway.

  I make a mental note to go home and burn the clothes I was wearing when I last saw Jennifer in the woods.

  “BENTLEY,” a voice barks about an hour later as I’m working underneath a car in Lawrence’s garage. Jesus, what’s with all the visitors?

  I almost drop my wrench on my face. I know that voice. Mayor Carter. I don’t want to see his fat ass today. I pretend like I haven’t heard him and keep tightening the nut on the bolt I’ve just affixed to the underside of old Mrs. Lassiter’s Buick.

  This damn car may as
well be held together with Band-Aids and honeycombed rust, but the old lady owner is practically a fossil, and she knows I’ll only charge her for the cost of the parts.

  Seems wrong to charge folks for things when they don’t have any money to begin with.

  “Hey, kid,” the voice shrills again, “my car’s got a dent in it. I need it fixed. Today.”

  I grip the wrench tightly. It takes everything inside me not to roll out from underneath the car and punch Mayor Carter’s face until it caves in, but I hold on to my rage, letting it disperse and settle back into my veins like dirty coffee grounds in the bottom of the pot.

  “Busy!” I yell, continuing with my task. Knowing my luck, the engine in this car will fall on my face and crush me if I’m under here too long. “Try Tonopah.”

  The fucker kicks my boot. Kicks it! It’s like a hotshot of rage-spiked adrenalin to the heart. I squeeze the wrench in my hand so tight my fingers start to tingle and go numb.

  “I let you stay in this town because you’re the only one with a fucking clue about new cars with those computerized things in them,” he says, crouching down beside the car to talk to me. “I’ve got a mind to call the Sheriff and search your property, son. We might just find us something of value.”

  I don’t bother telling him that the Sheriff is probably already at my place right fucking now.

  “Well, you already found my mother,” I reply, trying to keep a lid on my anger. “What else you need?”

  “I was thinking, the other day when I was fishing in the creek,” Mayor says, all cocky. “Seems a little odd that you find one dead girl in your well, right next to your bedroom, and then another one goes missing the same week you blow back into town.”

  I snort, sliding out from under the car with my wrench still in my fist. I stand up so that I’m taller than Mayor Carter, my frame towering over his. I was always tall, but prison changed me. It’s not the sinewy muscle from all the pushups I did beside my bed in the narrow cell I shared. I didn’t actually get any taller. It’s the way I stand. I don’t stand in front of someone like Carter anymore, I stand over them. For all the shit that happened there, prison made me ten feet tall and fucking invincible.

  “Seems a little odd that I’d call the police if I killed a girl and put her in my well,” I reply, using my tongue to shift the wad of mint-flavored gum around my mouth. “Don’t you think?”

  He stares at me with those beady little eyes, those fucking eyes that look at young girls when he thinks nobody’s looking.

  “Shit, Carter,” I say, “Maybe you’re the one who butchered Karen up. I mean, maybe she knew something she wasn’t supposed to, right?”

  “She was my cousin’s girl, you fucking cocksucker,” he spits, jabbing a finger into my chest. Phew. The rage particles rise again, like piranhas in a tank swarming toward human flesh, frenzied. I want to hit him. I can’t fucking hit him. Especially not now with Hannah needing me here.

  “Kindly remove your finger from my shirt before I rip your goddamn arm off,” I say in a calm voice. I enunciate every word clearly and slowly. A deadly voice. I wonder if he hears the rage that I feel. I wonder if he knows how close he is to being fucking murdered by a kid wearing overalls.

  “You gonna fix the car?”

  I count to five in my head like the jail psych taught me to. Onetwothreefourfive.

  “You said it was dented?” I ask.

  Mayor turns around and starts walking back to the car, a newer model Caprice with leather seats and wood trim. I know the car because I’ve been in it before. Pike and I used to sit in the backseat and play with the electric windows while Carter visited our mother. When Hannah was born, he stopped coming around, made Mom go to him instead. The inconvenience of seeing your bastard handicapped child was too much for him, I guess. Hannah stayed with Pike and me, and we made sure she was safe while my mother climbed into his car and left her little kids alone, unsupervised, next to a fucking creek.

  I can’t hit him.

  Instead, I drop the wrench, selecting a claw hammer from the tools hanging on the wall as I follow Carter outside. Maybe I’ll cave his fucking chest in with the claw-tip.

  He points to a small dent on the driver’s door. It’s so tiny you’d need glasses to see it if you were any older than me. Shit, maybe I do need my glasses. I never wear the things unless I’m trying to read engine numbers or order parts from one of those stupid supply catalogs where everything is printed in size zero font.

  “Looks like someone opened their door against it,” I say. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  He raises his eyebrows. “I want you to fix it, you stupid oaf. Jesus, what that Carlino girl saw in you I’ll never know.”

  Cassie. He’s talking about Cassie. Now I know why I brought the claw hammer with me. I smile at Carter, and he looks taken aback. “Maybe you’re right,” I say. “Here, I’ll fix it for free.”

  And I know, I shouldn’t, because I’ve been home what, a week?

  But they think I’ve got something to do with Jennifer, I just know it, and something tells me I won’t be in Gun Creek for long before either Sheriff King or Mayor Carter find a way to push me back out.

  And I’ve been in jail for all those fucking years, so violence is the answer to everything for me now.

  So, yes. I know I shouldn’t allow myself to be provoked. Try telling that to the shark who smells blood in the water.

  A look of confusion passes over his face as I pull the hammer back and swing as hard as I can, turning the tiny dent into the size of a small suburb.

  “Shit!” he says, stepping back. “You wait till I tell your momma about this.”

  I swing again and find purchase. It feels fucking good. “Don’t talk about my mother,” I growl, moving my aim to the driver’s side window and shattering the glass in one motion. I hope he sits his fat ass on the shards of glass and bleeds out through his femoral artery.

  “You’re gonna pay for that, Bentley,” he says, backing up another step.

  I can’t hit him.

  “Get the fuck out of my garage,” I say, even though it’s not my garage at all. “I told you, we’re all booked up.”

  “Maybe I’ll just take it off your momma’s bill next time I visit her,” he says, his eyes flashing with something akin to menace again.

  I can’t hit him.

  I hit him.

  Luckily it’s with my fist and not with the claw hammer, because if it were the hammer, he’d be dead at my feet right now and Sheriff King would be on his way to gleefully escort me back to prison for the remainder of my natural life.

  “Listen, you piece of fuckin’ shit,” I say, taking him by the scruff of the shirt and pinning his fat ass to the car. His nose is bleeding and I have to be careful that it doesn’t get on me. “I know you’re Hannah’s daddy. Ain’t nobody ever said a word about it, but I know. She’s got daddy issues so bad, she’s going around fucking anything in this town older than her. Getting pregnant? What the fuck is that?”

  He doesn’t say anything. His face pales a little, but he doesn’t say a thing.

  “I forgot to tell you, Hal. I got a real nice lawyer from LegalAid. Some hotshot from a big law firm in Reno who grew up in these parts. She’s the only bit of luck I’ve had in this fucking life. So you go and buy a fucking crib for my sister and her baby, and you have it delivered anonymously, and I’ll pretend we didn’t have this talk.”

  His face blanches. “You’ll be back in prison soon anyway, you loser,” Carter says, holding his broken face.

  I lick my lips, grinning as I run my fingers along the sharp tip of the hammer’s claw.

  “You got a dog, Hal?” I ask.

  He raises his eyebrows. “What?”

  “One of those yappy poodles,” I say, staring him down with every ounce of intimidation that I can call up from inside me. “I bet this hammer would take the head clean off a dog that size.”

  I’m bluffing, of course. I’d never touch a dog. Never h
urt an animal. People are an entirely different story.

  “Are those dogs good security, though, Hal?” I ask. “Seems they wouldn’t provide a wealth of protection. I mean, the teeth on this hammer are bigger than the teeth on a lap dog.” To prove my point, I press the tip of the hammer into the center of my palm until I break the skin. Blood wells up and I hold my wound up for the mayor to see. He balks. He probably thinks I’m completely fucking crazy, but that’s not a bad thing. You don’t mess with crazy people. You leave them well enough alone. You definitely, absolutely do not threaten their mothers or abandon their sisters.

  “Seems this wound wouldn’t take down an intruder, would it, Hal?”

  He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his liver-spotted throat. He sickens me. Everything about him sickens me, and I have to remind myself that at least I know for certain he’s not my father. That Hannah is simple enough to be kept away from the reality of the man she came from.

  “You ain’t ever getting out of this town, boy, unless it’s a one-way ticket back to Lovelock,” he says, wiping blood on his shirt sleeve. “You remember that.”

  I stare at the back of his balding head as he walks back to his wife’s car and imagine how much better it would look if I shattered it with my wrench into a mess of pulpy blood.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CASSIE

  “I need your help,” Damon says, cutting through my daydream.

  I’m drawing up Mom’s evening tube feed into a large plastic syringe, making sure everything is sterile, making sure everything is lined up right. On the other side of the kitchen counter, Damon drops a stack of paper in front of me.

  The posters. Jennifer stares out from her yearbook photo. I never noticed before how similar she looks to her brother. They have the same eyes, the same slight upturned noses. Their front teeth are the same shape.

  “Cassie.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, setting the syringe down and wiping my hands on my jeans. “You need my help?”

  “Can you put these up for me?” he taps his finger on the stack of posters. “And ask your friends to help, too.”