Kisscut

  She let a full minute pass before asking Mark, “Tell me what happened.”

  He shook his head. “It’s so wrong,” he said. “It all just went so wrong.” He leaned forward, his chest almost to his knees, his face contorted in pain as if someone had kicked him. He covered his face with his hands and started to sob again.

  Before she knew what she was doing, Lena was down on her knees beside the boy, holding one of his hands. She put her hand on his back, trying to comfort him. “It’s okay,” she told him, hushing him.

  “I love her,” he whispered. “Even after what she did, I still love her.”

  “I know you do,” Lena told him, rubbing his back.

  “She was so mad at me,” Mark said, still sobbing. Lena pulled a Kleenex out of the box and gave it to him. He blew his nose, then whispered, “I told her we had to stop.”

  “Why did you have to stop?” Lena whispered back.

  “I never thought she needed me, you know? I thought she was stronger than me. Stronger than everybody.” His voice caught. “And she wasn’t.”

  Lena stroked the back of his neck, trying to soothe him. “What happened, Mark? Why did she end up hating you?”

  “You think she hates me?” he asked, his eyes searching hers. “You really think she hates me?”

  “No, Mark,” Lena said, pushing his hair back out of his face. He had switched to present tense, something people often did when they could not accept that a loved one had died. Lena had found herself doing the same thing with her sister. “Of course she doesn’t hate you.”

  “I told her I wouldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  He shook his head no. “It’s all so pointless,” he said, still shaking his head.

  “What’s pointless?” Lena asked, trying to make him look up at her. He did, and for a shocking moment, she thought he might try to kiss her. Quickly, she moved back on her heels, catching herself on the arm of the chair so she wouldn’t fall. Mark must have seen the shock in her expression because he turned away from her, taking another tissue. Mark looked at Jeffrey as he blew his nose. Lena looked at neither of them. All she could think was that she had somehow crossed a line, but what that line was and where it had been drawn she could not figure.

  Mark spoke to Jeffrey, and his voice had more authority to it. The kid who had broken down moments ago was gone. The surly teenager was back. “What else?”

  “Jenny liked to study?” Jeffrey asked.

  Mark shrugged.

  Lena said, “Was she interested in other cultures, other religions?”

  “What the fuck for?” Mark countered angrily. “It’s not like we’re ever gonna get out of this fucking town.”

  “That’s a no, then?” Lena asked.

  Mark pursed his lips, almost as if he was going to blow a kiss, then said, “Nope.”

  Jeffrey crossed his arms over his chest, taking back over. “Around Christmas, you stopped being friends with Jenny. Why?”

  “Got tired of her,” he shrugged.

  “Who else did Jenny hang around with?”

  “Me,” Mark said. “Lacey. That was it.”

  “She didn’t have other friends?”

  “No,” Mark answered. “And we weren’t really even her friends.” He laughed lightly. “She was all alone, I guess. Isn’t that sad, Chief Tolliver?”

  Jeffrey stared at Mark, not answering.

  “If you don’t have any more questions,” Mark began, “I’d like you to go now.”

  “Do you know Dr. Linton?” Jeffrey asked.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “I want you at the children’s clinic tomorrow by ten o’clock to give that blood sample.” Jeffrey pointed his finger at Mark. “Don’t make me come looking for you.”

  Mark stood, wiping his palms on his pants. “Yeah, whatever.” He looked down at Lena, who was still on the floor. She was at his crotch level, and he smiled, more like a sneer, when he noticed this.

  Mark raised one eyebrow at her, his lips slightly parted in the same sly smile he had given her before, then left the room.

  Monday

  8

  AROUND SIX O’CLOCK in the morning, Jeffrey rolled out of bed and fell onto the floor. He sat up, groaning at the pain in his head as he tried to remember where he was. The trip to Sylacauga had taken him six long hours last night, and he had tumbled into the twin bed without even bothering to take off his clothes. His dress shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up well past his elbows. His pants were creased in four different places.

  Jeffrey yawned as he looked around his boyhood room. His mother had not changed a thing since he had left for Auburn over twenty years ago. A poster of a cherry-red 1967 Mustang convertible with a white top was on the back of the door. Six pairs of worn-out sneakers were on the floor of the closet. His football jersey from Sylacauga High was tacked to the wall over the bed. A box of cassette tapes was stacked high under the room’s only window.

  He lifted the mattress and saw a stack of Playboy s that he had started stockpiling at the age of fourteen. A much-loved copy of Penthouse, purloined from the local store down the street, was still on the top. Jeffrey sat back on his heels, thumbing through the magazine. There had been a time in his life when he had known every page of the Penthouse by heart, from the cartoons to the articles to the lovely ladies in provocative poses that had been the focus of his sexual fantasies for months on end.

  “Jesus,” he sighed, thinking some of the women were probably old enough to be grandmothers now. Christ, some of them were probably eligible for social security.

  Jeffrey groaned as he slid the mattress back into place, trying not to push the magazines out on the other side. He wondered if his mother had ever found his stash. Wondered, too, what she must have thought of it. Knowing May Tolliver, she had ignored them, or made up an excuse that allowed her to block out the fact that her son had enough pornography under his mattress to wallpaper the entire house. His mother was good at not seeing things she did not want to see, but then most mothers were.

  Jeffrey thought about Dottie Weaver, and how she had missed all the signs with her daughter. He put his hand to his stomach, thinking about Jenny Weaver standing in the parking lot at Skatie’s. The image was like a Polaroid etched into his eyelids, and he could see the little girl standing there, the gun in her hand trained on Mark Patterson. Mark was more defined in Jeffrey’s memory now, and he could pick out details about the boy: the way he stood with his arms out to his sides, the way his knees bent a little as he stared at Jenny. The whole time, Mark had never really looked at Jeffrey. Even after Jeffrey had shot her, Mark had stood there, staring down at the ground where she lay.

  Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to push out this image. He let his gaze travel back to the Mustang, taking it in the way he had every morning of his teenage life. The car had represented so much to him when he was growing up, chief among these things being freedom. As a teenager, he had sometimes sat in bed, his eyes closed, imagining getting in that car and taking off across country. Jeffrey had wanted so much to get away, to leave Sylacauga and his mother’s house, to be something other than his father’s son.

  Jimmy Tolliver had been a petty thief in every sense of the term. He never stole big, which was a point in his favor, because he always got caught. Jeffrey’s mother liked to say that Jimmy couldn’t break wind in a crowded building without getting caught. He just had that look of guilt about him, and he liked to talk. Jimmy’s mouth was his biggest downfall; he couldn’t stand not taking credit for the jobs he pulled. Jimmy Tolliver was the only person who was surprised when he had ended up dying in prison, serving out a life term for armed robbery.

  By the time he was ten years old, Jeffrey knew practically every man on the Sylacauga police force by name, because at some time or another, one or all of them had come to the house, looking for Jimmy. To their credit, the patrol cops knew Jeffrey, too, and they always made a point of taking him aside whenever they saw him. At th
e time, being singled out by the police had annoyed Jeffrey. He had considered it harassment. Now, as a policeman himself, Jeffrey knew the cops had been taking time with him as insurance. They did not want to waste their time chasing down another Tolliver for stealing lawn mowers and weed whackers out of his neighbors’ yards.

  Jeffrey owed these cops a lot, not least of all his career. Watching the fear in his father’s eyes that last time the cops had come to the house and slapped the cuffs on Jimmy, Jeffrey had known then and there that he wanted to be a cop. Jimmy Tolliver had been a drunk, and a mean one at that. To the town, he was a bumbling crook and a sloppy drunk, to Jeffrey and his mother, he was a violent asshole who terrified his family.

  Jeffrey stretched his hands up to the ceiling, his palms flat against the warm wood. As he padded to the bathroom, he noticed that even his socks were wrinkled. The heel had slid around sometime during the night. Jeffrey was balancing on one foot, trying to twist it back, when he heard his cell phone ringing in the other room.

  “Dammit,” he cursed, bumping his shoulder into the wall as he turned the corner to his room. The house seemed so much smaller now than it had when he was growing up.

  He picked up the phone on the fourth ring, just before the voice mail came on. “Hello?”

  “Jeff?” Sara asked, a bit of concern in her voice.

  He let it linger in his ear before saying, “Hey, babe.”

  She laughed at the name. “Less than ten hours in Alabama and you’re calling me ‘babe’?” She waited a beat. “Are you alone?”

  He felt irritated, because he knew part of her was not joking. “Of course I’m alone,” he shot back. “Jesus Christ, Sara.”

  “I meant your mother,” she told him, though he could tell from her lack of conviction that she was covering.

  He let it pass. “No, they kept her overnight in the hospital.” He sat on the bed, trying to get his sock to twist back into place. “She fell down somehow. Broke her foot.”

  “Did she fall at home?” Sara asked, something more than curiosity in her tone. He knew what she was getting at, and it was the same reason Jeffrey had come to Alabama himself in the middle of a case instead of just making a phone call. He wanted to see if his mother’s drinking was finally getting out of hand. May Tolliver had always been what was politely called a functional alcoholic. If she had crossed the line into hopeless drunk, Jeffrey would have to do something. He had no idea what this would be, but knew instinctively that it would not be easy.

  Jeffrey tried to redirect her interest. “I talked with the doctor. I haven’t really seen her to find out what happened.” He waited for her to get the message. “I’ll see her today, see what’s going on.”

  “She’ll probably be on crutches,” Sara told him. He could hear a tapping noise, and assumed she was at her office. He looked at his watch, wondering why she was there so early, but then he remembered the time change. Sara was an hour ahead of him.

  “Ms. Harris across the street will look in on her,” Jeffrey volunteered, knowing that Jean Harris would do whatever she could to help a neighbor. She worked as a dietician at the local hospital, and had often waved Jeffrey over after school to make sure he had a hot meal. Sitting at the table with her three lovely daughters had been a bit more enticing than Ms. Harris’s chicken pot pie, but Jeffrey had appreciated both at the time.

  Sara said, “You need to tell her to be very careful not to mix her pain meds with alcohol. Or tell her doctor that. Okay?”

  He looked at his sock, realizing it was still backward. He twisted it the other way, asking, “Is that why you called?”

  “I got your message about Mark Patterson. What am I pulling a sample for?”

  “Paternity,” he told her, not liking the image the word brought to his mind.

  Sara was silent, then asked, “Are you sure?”

  “No,” he told her. “Not at all. I just thought I should look at everything I could.”

  “How’d you get a court order so fast?”

  “No order. His father’s sending him in voluntarily.”

  She was still incredulous. “Without a lawyer?”

  Jeffrey sighed. “Sara, I left all of this on your machine last night. Is something going on?”

  “No,” she answered in a softer tone. Then, “Yes, actually.”

  He waited. “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Sarcasm came, because that was all he could muster in light of her question. “Other than waking up knowing I killed a thirteen-year-old little girl, I guess I’m just peachy.”

  She was quiet, and he let the silence continue, not knowing what to say to her. Sara had not called him in a long time, not even for county-related matters. In the past, she had faxed him documents on cases, or sent Carlos, her assistant, over with sensitive information. Since the divorce, personal calls were out of the question, and even when they had started back kind of dating, Jeffrey had always been the one to pick up the phone.

  “Jeff?” Sara asked.

  “I was just thinking,” he said, then, to change the subject, he asked, “Tell me a little bit more about Lacey.”

  “I told you yesterday. She’s a good kid,” Sara said, and he could hear something off in her tone. He knew she was feeling responsible for Jenny Weaver, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Sara continued, “She’s bright, funny. Just like Jenny in a lot of ways.”

  “Were you close to her?”

  “As close as you can be to a kid you only see a few times a year.” Sara paused, then said, “Yeah. Some of them you connect with. I connected with Lacey. I think she has a little crush on me.”

  “That’s weird,” he said.

  “Not really,” Sara told him. “Lots of kids get crushes on adults. It’s not a sexual thing, they just want to impress them, to make them laugh.”

  “I’m still not following.”

  “They get to be a certain age and their parents can’t be cool anymore. Some kids, not all of them, can transfer their feelings onto another adult. It’s perfectly natural. They just want someone to look up to, and at that point in their lives it can’t be their parents.”

  “So, she looked up to you?”

  “It felt that way,” Sara said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice.

  “You think she would’ve told you if something was going on?”

  “Who knows?” Sara replied. “Something happens to them when they get into middle school. They get a lot more quiet.”

  “That’s what Grace Patterson said. That they keep secrets.”

  “That’s true,” Sara agreed. “I just chalked up the change to puberty. All those hormones, all those new feelings. They’ve got a lot to think about, and the only thing they’re certain of is that adults have no way of understanding what they’re going through.”

  “Still,” Jeffrey countered, “don’t you think she would’ve talked to you if something was wrong?”

  “I’d like to think so, but the truth is, she’d have to have her mother drive her here. I can’t kick the mother out of the room without causing some suspicion.”

  “You think Grace would have been reluctant to leave y’all alone?”

  “I think she would’ve been worried. She’s a good mother. She takes an interest in her kids and what they’re doing.”

  “That’s what Brad said.”

  “What does Brad have to do with this?” Sara asked.

  “He’s the youth minister at Crescent Baptist.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Sara said, making the connection. “He must’ve been on the retreat.”

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey told her. “There were eight kids from the church: three boys, five girls.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a lot of kids.”

  “It’s a small church,” Jeffrey reminded her. “Plus, skiing is expensive. Not a lot of people have that kind of money to begin with, especially around the holidays.”

  “That’s t
rue,” she agreed. “But it was just Brad chaperoning?”

  “The church secretary was supposed to help out with the girls, but she got sick at the last minute.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “She had some kind of stroke. She was only fifty-eight years old,” he said, thinking that when he had been a kid, fifty-eight had seemed ancient. “She moved down to Florida so her kids could take care of her.”

  “So, what did Brad say about Jenny and Lacey?”

  “Nothing specific. He said Lacey and Jenny pretty much stayed by themselves while the rest of the kids were off skiing and having fun.”

  “That’s not uncommon for girls that age. They tend to form tight little groups.”

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey sighed, feeling yesterday’s frustrations settling into his gut. “Brad went over to Jenny’s house when she stopped coming to church. She pretty much burst into tears the minute she saw him and wouldn’t talk.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Left with his hat in his hands. He asked Dave Fine to check in on her, but Dave got the same treatment.”

  “Did you talk to Dave about it?”

  “Briefly. He was about to go into a therapy session.” Jeffrey felt a flash of guilt, thinking about Lena. He should not have allowed her to use her therapy appointment to interview Fine. Jeffrey had given in too easily because it was convenient.

  “Jeffrey?” Sara said, her tone indicating she had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Jeffrey apologized.

  “What did Fine say?”

  “The same as Brad. He offered to come in tomorrow and talk some more, but neither one of them seem like they’re going to be much help.” Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to think of any straw he could grasp. “What about Mark Patterson?” he finally asked. “Does he seem kind of weird to you?”

  “Weird how?”