Brighter Than the Sun
Page 16
I’m gone all day. Amador and I are almost finished with the car. We just need a fan belt, but the parts store nearby is closed.
It’s okay, though. I’ve decided I need to see Dutch in the flesh one more time. I have to find her. I have to at least try to explain. But the one thing I never did in my dream was pay attention to her address.
I go to the library. Use a computer there to look her up. Everything is real. Her name. Her mother dying at her birth. Her sister. Father. Uncle. Crazy-ass stepmother. It’s all real.
They live in the Heights. I know that. I know every nook and cranny of her house. I know her neighborhood and where she learned to ride a bike. I know who her friends are. What her favorite foods are. Who she’s dated. Who she’s gone all the way with. But I don’t know her fucking address.
I finally find one, but something is wrong. The entire day has been wrong, as though there has been a shift in the universe.
I feel an urgency. I close my eyes and seek out Dutch. She is with her friends, and she’s fine until I show up. She catches sight of me out the corner of her eye and tenses, so I leave her to it. But if not her, then what?
Kim. I straighten in alarm. He wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.
I run out of the library and all the way home. When I get there, they are gone. Earl has packed up and left with Kim. The landlady is pounding on the door, her abused hair—so bleached, it’s almost white—in tangles around her head. She turns toward me, but I duck back. She doesn’t see me. She unlocks the door. I wait for her to enter before walking past. It’s empty except for the usual suspects. Trash strewn about. A sock here. A T-shirt there. I stop. There’s a hole in the wall. The pictures from the latest encounter are in there. They are bad. Some of the worst. It took me almost two weeks to heal after that one.
Bile burns the back of my throat. He took her. A hundred times, he’s threatened to kill her if I defy him. I never believed him.
I leave out the back of the building before the landlady finds me. I don’t get far before falling to my knees. Before doubling over as my chest heaves. As my eyes water. I wrap my arms around my head and do something I rarely do. I cry. Deep sobs overtake me for several long minutes. I want to yell. No. I want to kill.
My body shudders with emotion. But I resign myself to one thing: murder. He is going to die. If he touches her. If he does anything to her, he’s going to die.
I’m not sure where to go first, but I know Earl’s haunts like the back of my hand. I start with the pool hall. From there, I go to his two favorite bars. His girlfriend’s house. Nothing. By the time the sun dips low on the horizon, I’ve exhausted almost every stomping ground I know of.
I decide to try his friends. He actually has some. Well, two. Maybe three. More than I have, I guess.
I am walking in the worst part of town, headed for a dive hotel off Central, when I feel someone following me. I don’t turn around. I can recognize the sound of a cop car a mile away. I contemplate running, because the cops inside are excited. I feel adrenaline rush through their veins like quicksilver. They were looking for me. How the fuck they know me, what I look like, who I am—it’s beyond me. But that whole uneasy feeling I’ve had all day begins to solidify. Something is definitely wrong.
I am about two seconds from taking off when another cop car tears out of an alley in front of me. The same alley I was going to run into.
I slow and almost head in the other direction when another one, an unmarked sedan, heads toward me, tires squealing, from a parking lot on my left. Before I know it, there are seven guns pointed at me.
I am furious. I don’t have time for this shit. I need to find Kim.
With jaw clenched so tight, it aches, I raise my arms. Fall to my knees. End up on my face as I’m tackled by Dudley Do-Right. Anger wells up inside me.
A detective arrives on scene. It’s Dutch’s uncle. Robert. Bob. Whatever. He’s the one who interrogates me at the station. I say nothing. I neither confirm nor deny any of their charges. They give me a public defender who cares more about the ass he has on the side than he does about his clients. He lost respect for them years ago. Works, literally, for the weekend, when he can get shitfaced and fuck his latest achievement.
He was slotted for hell two years ago, when he was driving while intoxicated and hit an elderly man. It wasn’t a bad hit. The guy could have been saved, but he left him to die in the street. I want to snap his neck. To send him down early. I don’t. Only because as much of a fucker as he is, he’s the only shot I have at freedom.
I’m up for murder. Earl Walker was beaten to death with a baseball bat, stuffed into the trunk of the junker he drove, and set on fire. Along with eyewitness testimony by way of Sarah, his fiancée-slash-ATM, who was more in fear of him than in love, and the discovery of Earl’s ring, which they found in my jacket pocket, the same jacket Kim handed me through the bars, it’s a pretty easy conviction.
The killer is that Detective Bob knows I didn’t do it. He knows, but the evidence is too overwhelming. Too stacked against me.
I want to ask about Kim, but I don’t dare. If she’d been with Earl—if she’d been killed, too—I would be up for her murder as well. So I bring out Alexander. Eyes down. Mouth shut.
I sometimes wonder who did it. Who killed the monster. Not that I give a shit.
I am in jail for a week before Amador comes to see me. He brings Kim and I almost pass out, I’m so relieved.
Good girl. She did as I told her.
They are both worried. I feel tension pulled tight in Amador’s gut. Kim’s lids are almost swollen shut from crying. That, combined with the blue under her eyes from lack of sleep, makes her look like a victim of physical abuse. The guard on duty eyes Amador, wondering if he’s been beating her.
She puts one hand on the glass as she holds the phone with the other. I do the same. Tears fall freely down her face.
“I didn’t do it.”
She scoffs and does her best glare. It’s not that great a glare. “I know, shithead. You have to tell them.”
“The detective on the case knows, but the evidence says otherwise. There’s nothing he can do.”
Her heart speeds up. “What do you mean?”
“Kim, they don’t know about you. They don’t know I have a sister. They asked about my family. About any other children. I told them it was just Earl and me, so Sarah must not have said anything about you. And you can’t tell them. You can’t come back here.”
“What? No. No.”
“Give the phone to Amador, sweetheart.”
“No!” she yells. She is coming unglued. It’s unusual for her. She is always so quiet. So painfully shy. “Reyes!” she says as Amador wraps an arm around her shoulders. Not to comfort her, but to hold her down. To keep her from getting them kicked out.
He pries the phone out of her hand. She immediately grabs the counter in front of her, her knuckles as white as the Formica covering the surface. Amador knows the score. We’ve talked about it.
“Give her everything,” I say to him.
He nods. “The place is already set up. She’ll be fine.”
Again, I’m flooded with such a sense of relief, I almost lose my composure. I’m shaking and cursing myself for it. I don’t want Kim to see the emotion running rampant through me.
It’s okay, though. I’ve decided I need to see Dutch in the flesh one more time. I have to find her. I have to at least try to explain. But the one thing I never did in my dream was pay attention to her address.
I go to the library. Use a computer there to look her up. Everything is real. Her name. Her mother dying at her birth. Her sister. Father. Uncle. Crazy-ass stepmother. It’s all real.
They live in the Heights. I know that. I know every nook and cranny of her house. I know her neighborhood and where she learned to ride a bike. I know who her friends are. What her favorite foods are. Who she’s dated. Who she’s gone all the way with. But I don’t know her fucking address.
I finally find one, but something is wrong. The entire day has been wrong, as though there has been a shift in the universe.
I feel an urgency. I close my eyes and seek out Dutch. She is with her friends, and she’s fine until I show up. She catches sight of me out the corner of her eye and tenses, so I leave her to it. But if not her, then what?
Kim. I straighten in alarm. He wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.
I run out of the library and all the way home. When I get there, they are gone. Earl has packed up and left with Kim. The landlady is pounding on the door, her abused hair—so bleached, it’s almost white—in tangles around her head. She turns toward me, but I duck back. She doesn’t see me. She unlocks the door. I wait for her to enter before walking past. It’s empty except for the usual suspects. Trash strewn about. A sock here. A T-shirt there. I stop. There’s a hole in the wall. The pictures from the latest encounter are in there. They are bad. Some of the worst. It took me almost two weeks to heal after that one.
Bile burns the back of my throat. He took her. A hundred times, he’s threatened to kill her if I defy him. I never believed him.
I leave out the back of the building before the landlady finds me. I don’t get far before falling to my knees. Before doubling over as my chest heaves. As my eyes water. I wrap my arms around my head and do something I rarely do. I cry. Deep sobs overtake me for several long minutes. I want to yell. No. I want to kill.
My body shudders with emotion. But I resign myself to one thing: murder. He is going to die. If he touches her. If he does anything to her, he’s going to die.
I’m not sure where to go first, but I know Earl’s haunts like the back of my hand. I start with the pool hall. From there, I go to his two favorite bars. His girlfriend’s house. Nothing. By the time the sun dips low on the horizon, I’ve exhausted almost every stomping ground I know of.
I decide to try his friends. He actually has some. Well, two. Maybe three. More than I have, I guess.
I am walking in the worst part of town, headed for a dive hotel off Central, when I feel someone following me. I don’t turn around. I can recognize the sound of a cop car a mile away. I contemplate running, because the cops inside are excited. I feel adrenaline rush through their veins like quicksilver. They were looking for me. How the fuck they know me, what I look like, who I am—it’s beyond me. But that whole uneasy feeling I’ve had all day begins to solidify. Something is definitely wrong.
I am about two seconds from taking off when another cop car tears out of an alley in front of me. The same alley I was going to run into.
I slow and almost head in the other direction when another one, an unmarked sedan, heads toward me, tires squealing, from a parking lot on my left. Before I know it, there are seven guns pointed at me.
I am furious. I don’t have time for this shit. I need to find Kim.
With jaw clenched so tight, it aches, I raise my arms. Fall to my knees. End up on my face as I’m tackled by Dudley Do-Right. Anger wells up inside me.
A detective arrives on scene. It’s Dutch’s uncle. Robert. Bob. Whatever. He’s the one who interrogates me at the station. I say nothing. I neither confirm nor deny any of their charges. They give me a public defender who cares more about the ass he has on the side than he does about his clients. He lost respect for them years ago. Works, literally, for the weekend, when he can get shitfaced and fuck his latest achievement.
He was slotted for hell two years ago, when he was driving while intoxicated and hit an elderly man. It wasn’t a bad hit. The guy could have been saved, but he left him to die in the street. I want to snap his neck. To send him down early. I don’t. Only because as much of a fucker as he is, he’s the only shot I have at freedom.
I’m up for murder. Earl Walker was beaten to death with a baseball bat, stuffed into the trunk of the junker he drove, and set on fire. Along with eyewitness testimony by way of Sarah, his fiancée-slash-ATM, who was more in fear of him than in love, and the discovery of Earl’s ring, which they found in my jacket pocket, the same jacket Kim handed me through the bars, it’s a pretty easy conviction.
The killer is that Detective Bob knows I didn’t do it. He knows, but the evidence is too overwhelming. Too stacked against me.
I want to ask about Kim, but I don’t dare. If she’d been with Earl—if she’d been killed, too—I would be up for her murder as well. So I bring out Alexander. Eyes down. Mouth shut.
I sometimes wonder who did it. Who killed the monster. Not that I give a shit.
I am in jail for a week before Amador comes to see me. He brings Kim and I almost pass out, I’m so relieved.
Good girl. She did as I told her.
They are both worried. I feel tension pulled tight in Amador’s gut. Kim’s lids are almost swollen shut from crying. That, combined with the blue under her eyes from lack of sleep, makes her look like a victim of physical abuse. The guard on duty eyes Amador, wondering if he’s been beating her.
She puts one hand on the glass as she holds the phone with the other. I do the same. Tears fall freely down her face.
“I didn’t do it.”
She scoffs and does her best glare. It’s not that great a glare. “I know, shithead. You have to tell them.”
“The detective on the case knows, but the evidence says otherwise. There’s nothing he can do.”
Her heart speeds up. “What do you mean?”
“Kim, they don’t know about you. They don’t know I have a sister. They asked about my family. About any other children. I told them it was just Earl and me, so Sarah must not have said anything about you. And you can’t tell them. You can’t come back here.”
“What? No. No.”
“Give the phone to Amador, sweetheart.”
“No!” she yells. She is coming unglued. It’s unusual for her. She is always so quiet. So painfully shy. “Reyes!” she says as Amador wraps an arm around her shoulders. Not to comfort her, but to hold her down. To keep her from getting them kicked out.
He pries the phone out of her hand. She immediately grabs the counter in front of her, her knuckles as white as the Formica covering the surface. Amador knows the score. We’ve talked about it.
“Give her everything,” I say to him.
He nods. “The place is already set up. She’ll be fine.”
Again, I’m flooded with such a sense of relief, I almost lose my composure. I’m shaking and cursing myself for it. I don’t want Kim to see the emotion running rampant through me.
