I casually laid my cards on the table, trying to look calm, and said, “Full house.”
After that, I told Brenda and Amber to stay out of Helen’s way. I didn’t want them to get hurt. They got mad and said they weren’t going to leave me unprotected, but I tried to keep to myself and avoid them so they wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. I worked in the kitchen, did my chores, stayed in my cell, and kept one eye on the door. Most of the other inmates were ignoring me too, which was fine, and I only saw my girls at meals, where we’d all eat tense, watching Helen and her friends watching us. I was careful when I walked around the grounds, remembering the danger spots, the hidden corners. The next couple of weeks ticked by as the tension grew thicker in the air with each passing day.
Finally, she got me.
I was in the kitchen, preparing dinner, when I noticed the other inmates who were working leave in a hurry. I turned around—and a tray full of spaghetti was whipped into my face. I was trying to clear the stinging sauce out of my eyes when a sock full of batteries started hitting me in the stomach, legs, back. I rushed my opponent, dropped my head low, and hit a belly, hearing a satisfying grunt. I could see clear enough now to realize it was Helen. We slammed into kitchen equipment, knocking pots and pans to the floor. I grabbed one and hit her hard across the head, the sound ringing through the air. It didn’t slow her down. She punched me in the breast. Blinding pain shot through my body, bringing me to my knees. I thought I was about to pass out when I finally heard someone yell “Guard!” Helen took off. I pulled myself up. Tried to suck in my breath.
The guard looked at me, at the mess around me.
“Everything okay, Murphy?”
It took me a minute before I could say anything. “Yeah, just slipped on the wet floor and knocked some stuff down.” He grunted, looked around again, then walked off. He had to have realized there’d been a fight, but he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork and he knew I wasn’t going to give him any details.
I limped back to my cell, where Margaret found me later.
“You okay, honey?”
I rolled over in bed, groaning. “I’ll be all right.”
“Brought you some tea bags.” She tossed them at me. I knew how much she treasured her tea—it was something we all gave her on holidays.
“Hey, you don’t have to do that.”
“Of course I do.” Her face was angry. “You’re my daughter, and Helen just messed with the wrong family. She’s going to pay for this.”
I sat up. “Margaret, don’t do anything, okay? I can handle it.”
She looked conflicted, then said, “Fine. But we’re not leaving you alone anymore.”
* * *
For the next few days I kept out of everyone’s way. I could have asked to be put in segregation, for protection, but I hated it in there—locked up twenty-three hours a day without any windows, and only one hour in the yard. I just made sure I wasn’t alone and kept Brenda with me whenever I had to leave my cell—I knew she could fight like hell—and Margaret and Amber when Brenda had to work. We had to keep my ass covered until my suspension was canceled. I saw Helen a lot, when I was running the track or in the range, and she always gave me shitty looks, but she didn’t try anything as long as I was with the girls.
Finally, when I’d been inside for almost a month, Suzanne came for another interview. Our alibis had checked out but she wanted to assess my motivation to come back to the community and whether I’d follow my conditions. I told her all I wanted to do was live a productive life and stay out of trouble. She canceled the suspension and I’d be released the next day. Walking out of that room was the first time I’d taken a full breath in weeks. Margaret and the girls were happy for me. It had been hard on all of us, especially Margaret, whose arthritis had flared up from the tension. That night I avoided the cafeteria, the showers, and the yard. I packed my stuff and stayed in my cell. The only people I spoke to were Margaret and the girls, who made sure no one came near me.
I’d heard from Ryan earlier that week, a “kite” sent through other inmates. He must have found out that Suzanne was interviewing me. All the note said was, Are you in? I knew he wanted to know if I was committed to trying to clear our names. I’d been thinking about nothing else for the last month.
I didn’t want to live the rest of my life wondering if Shauna was going to get me sent back to prison at any moment. And Ryan was right, being on parole wasn’t a real life, everyone still thinking I was guilty. Like how I was fired for the theft, people were always going to see me as an ex-con. The second I was out of there, I was going to do what I should have done when Ryan first showed up. I was going to find out what had really happened that night, even if it meant putting my life on the line. I sent him a letter back saying, Hell, yeah.
I was walking downstairs in the morning with my girls when I saw Helen in the middle of the range, waiting for us. As we moved past her, Brenda and Margaret forming a barrier around me, Helen called out, “See you soon, Murphy.”
I turned back to look at her, but she’d already disappeared into the crowd.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CAMPBELL RIVER
JULY 2013
A couple of days after my parole was reinstated I was back at the campsite and trying to settle in, but I’d barely unpacked and had only bought a few groceries. When I had my first meeting with Suzanne, I told her I was going to start looking for a job right away and was careful not to show any anger about what had happened. But I was still pissed off, and she was smart enough to know it.
Just before she drove off, she said, “Remember, stay away from Ryan Walker and anyone else involved in your case.”
I said, “Of course.” But I had no intention of following any of my parole conditions this time. I had checked for a few jobs online, but I was going through the motions. Ryan was going to contact me soon. I was sure of it. Meanwhile, I’d been thinking about our next steps and how we could finally get to the truth.
I also thought about Captain often and hoped he was okay, but I couldn’t get him out yet, not until I knew I was safe. I called the shelter once. Stephanie got on the line.
“Hi, it’s Toni. Is Captain all right?”
“Are you coming to get him?” she said.
I wanted to cry in relief. He was still there.
“I can’t just yet. I have to take care of some things. Can you give me a little more time?” I closed my eyes, praying.
She paused and I wondered if she was going to tell me to fuck off, that I couldn’t have him back. The moment stretched out.
“Give me a call when you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Stephanie. I really appreciate it. I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
I hung up the phone, hoping I hadn’t just made a promise I couldn’t keep.
* * *
The night after my meeting with Suzanne, I was ready to put things in motion with or without Ryan, but I decided to give him one more day. Around midnight he finally knocked at my back window. When I let him in, he looked around.
“Where’s Captain?”
“Still at the shelter.”
He met my gaze, and I didn’t need to say anything else.
He paced around my kitchen. I noticed he had a fading bruise on his cheek and wondered if he’d gotten it in prison, remembered Hicks’s warning about Ryan’s reputation. Tonight he was agitated, angry. He looked like how I felt.
He said, “I’m not going back.”
“I’m not either.” I was still sitting on the bed, the covers pulled around me. He was looking at my face, a hard searching look.
“Are you in this for real? Whatever it takes?”
“Whatever it takes.”
He took a breath and let it out, his body finally calming. “I’ve been thinking about this. Cathy had a lot of friends, maybe one of them—”
“We need to talk to her dealer.”
* * *
We drove around town, stopping at a few known crack h
ouses. We always parked the truck out of sight and made sure to keep our heads down when we entered the buildings—I wore one of Ryan’s baseball caps and an old work coat. If anyone recognized us and reported it, Suzanne would suspend our parole instantly. At first no one would talk to us, but finally Ryan recognized a guy who used to hang out with Cathy. He told us that Cathy’s dealer, a guy named Boomer, lived in an old white house near the train station. We cruised up and down his street, unsure which house was his. I was getting worried, then we saw some shady characters leaving one of them. Ryan gave the door a hard rap. A skinny man wearing jeans that were sliding off his hips opened the door.
“You Boomer?” Ryan said.
“Who’s asking?”
“We want to buy some weed.”
Boomer ushered us in after glancing down the street. Inside the house, he sat on the couch, pulled out a bag and a scale, and said, “How much you want?”
Ryan asked for a gram, but Boomer just stared at us.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said. “No one asks for dope like that unless they’re in high school.”
“I’ve been in prison—I’m out of touch. You got any or what?”
“You cops?”
Ryan laughed. “Right.”
“We need to talk to you,” I said. “About Cathy Schaeffer.”
“What about her?” His gaze flicked to the door, like he was wondering if someone was going to burst in.
“We know she was with you before she died,” I said.
The guy stood up. “Get the hell out of my house.”
Ryan said, “I’m not leaving until you tell us what we need to know.”
Boomer reared back and threw his beer bottle. It shattered against the wall behind Ryan.
Ryan rushed the man, grabbed him around the neck, then backed him against the wall. “Listen, asshole, I’m not fucking around here, got it?”
The guy was nodding, his eyes panicked, his face red. I stepped closer to Ryan, saw how angry he was. He wasn’t letting go.
Shit, he was going to kill him. “Hey, Ryan. Take it easy.”
Ryan slowly released Boomer, who slumped to the floor, rubbing his throat. “You’re nuts, man,” he croaked out.
Ryan crouched in front of him. “You’re right. I am, so you better start talking.”
“Shit, dude—all I know is she showed up here with a bunch of money and bought a shitload of dope. Cathy was fucking happy, man, like she’d won the lottery.” He looked upset. “She said she was going down to the pier. I didn’t know what was going to happen to her.”
“Do you know where she got the money?” I said.
“No idea.”
It had to have been Shauna.
“Anything else?” Ryan said.
“That’s all I know, man.”
Ryan reached out and grabbed the guy by the back of his long hair, pulling it tight. “You better not be bullshitting me, or I’m coming back.”
“I don’t know anything else—I fucking swear.”
I touched Ryan’s shoulder, said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We drove away, fast, then parked down a side road to talk. My heart was beating hard from the adrenaline rush. Ryan’s eyes were intense as he stared out the window, and he kept running his hands through his hair.
“What happened in there?” I said. “You lost control.”
He looked at me, surprised. “I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“You looked like you were going to kill him.”
“What are you saying, Toni?”
“Nothing.” I stared out the window.
He paused for a moment, then said, “We both did shit to survive inside, we had to. There were times when I wondered if I’d ever be human again, but I do still have control. I wanted to scare the shit out of him and it worked.”
When we were kids and he got in fights, I’d seen that he was capable of violence and could kick some ass, but I’d never gotten the sense that he would let things go too far. Tonight, I wasn’t so sure. I thought again of Hicks’s warning.
“It scared me too.”
“No, I think you recognized it. You’ve got the same anger in you, Toni. You’re just not letting yours out again yet. But you will.”
I had been violent in prison too, and whenever I thought about Shauna and her friends my body would get tight and agitated and I had to fight the powerful urge to make them suffer. I always stuffed it down, but was that self-control or fear of what might happen if I released all that rage? Maybe Ryan was right, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
Instead, I said, “The next step should be to talk to Kim—she broke away from Shauna before, so she might be willing to do it again. But I’ll go alone. She might open up if it’s just me.”
“Okay. What’s the plan?”
“I’m not sure yet. I need to think about it.” What I wasn’t sure of was how much I wanted to reveal to Ryan. He’d changed, we both had, but I didn’t know yet what that meant, just that something was telling me to be careful. I looked at him now, his face blurred in the dim light, and saw the shadow of the boy he used to be. He looked sad, and I wondered if he sensed my distrust, or was just seeing the same thing as me, who we were once.
“Do you have a cell?” he said.
“Yeah, but the cops can trace that shit.”
“I’ll call from a pay phone for now if I have to reach you, but get one of those pay-as-you-go phones and I’ll get one too.”
I gave him my cell number and he gave me his. We agreed to buy new phones as soon as possible.
“How are you going to find Kim?” he said.
“I think her mom still lives at the same place.” She’d had a party there once when we were in high school, before she started hanging out with Shauna.
“Be careful,” he said. “These girls are scared, they’re not going down without a fight.”
“Neither am I. They’ve fucked with us long enough.”
He smiled, hearing the old tough-Toni talk, but there was also recognition in his eyes. He knew this time I meant it. We held gazes for a little while longer, the energy in the truck changing as I became more physically aware of his presence. His hands on the wheel, his arms hard, his jeans tight on his thighs, the dim light making hollows and shadows on his face, his chin still unshaven. I wanted to feel it again, scraping against mine. I remembered how we used to make out for hours as teens, our hands greedy for each other, then later how sometimes we’d have sex in his truck, my hands and feet pushing against the dash or the window, anything to get him closer, deeper. My face flushed warm, and I looked away. I could feel him studying my profile. I glanced back at him.
“I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he said.
I caught my breath, holding his words close to me for a moment, savoring what they meant, then whispered, “Me neither.”
There was something else in his face now, relief, as though maybe he hadn’t been sure of my feelings. He hesitated for a second, then shifted his weight and leaned forward, bringing his face close, at an angle. There was a questioning look in his eyes. I could have pulled away, could have gotten out of the truck, but my body leaned toward his. Our mouths touched, soft at first, testing, like we were trying to remember what we liked, then we grew more confident and the kiss deepened. I gave over to it this time, and Ryan cupped the back of my head, pressed his body closer. I lifted my arm, wrapped it around his back, kneading the hard muscles along his shoulder blade. He groaned into my mouth, “Toni.” And I felt an answering ache in my body, a desire to be even closer, skin against skin.
His hand caressed my lower back, the cool summer air making me shiver as he lifted my shirt slightly, his hand now coming around to the side of my ribs, stroking up toward my breast, his thumb grazing the underside. My body broke out in goose bumps.
I shifted my weight, pushed him back against the seat, and straddled him, grinding my hips forward, pressing against him. He moaned again into my mouth, his warm hands
around my waist. Then he slid them up and covered my breasts. I caught my breath, grabbed the back of his hair, tilting his head back, getting rough with my kissing, feeling angry all of a sudden, a violent urge in my body. He reached up and grabbed some of my hair, pulling my head to the side, kissing my neck and my ear, whispering, “God, I’ve missed you.”
I covered his mouth again with mine, shushing the sentiments, the affection, but the words echoed, and I thought about all the years we’d been apart, and then there were tears all of a sudden because I remembered the last time we’d been together, in the woods, while Nicole was being murdered. I couldn’t stop the tears now and had to pull away, covering my face with my hands.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Ryan tugged my hands away, but I couldn’t look at him.
“I was thinking about the last time…” I couldn’t get the rest of the words out.
He gently cupped the back of my head and pushed my face toward his shoulder. I gave in to the sobs, in to the comfort of leaning against another body, solid and real. No one had held me for seventeen years. One of his hands was resting on the back of my neck, the other arm wrapped around my back, holding me close, safe and secure. Finally my sobs eased, and now embarrassment settled in. I lifted myself off his lap, and his arms let go, but slowly, reluctantly. I sat on the passenger side and wiped my face on my sleeves. We were both quiet for a moment, staring out at the dark night.
“I don’t want it to be like this,” he said, “in a truck like we’re still teenagers hiding out from our parents.”
I turned to face him, not sure what he was getting at.
He said, “When this is over, I want to take you out for real, on a date.”
“I don’t know, Ryan, so much has happened. Maybe we can’t get past it.”
“We can, and we will.”
I remembered how much hope he’d had when we first went to prison, how none of those hopes had ever come true for us. I wondered if anything would be different this time. And just like back then, I was scared to let myself go there in my mind. I needed to focus on the moment.