Follow Her Home (25 page)

My life smoothed out over time, but Iris's death changed everything about it. I lost my ideals and ambitions, my teenage optimism. I graduated without issue, but with middling grades and unexciting prospects. When Diego studied for the LSAT, I studied with him. We both scored well, but when the time came to apply to law school, I found I lacked the motivation to go back to school and build a career.

Marlowe was a man without a past—no family, no childhood, nothing to his life but what happened in his books. But we the fleshed were nothing but crippled agents, moving forward with the merciless current of time, the burden of memory chained to our ankles, dragging us every day under the water. I would never escape my little sister, her silk noose, and I'd given up hope of finding anything else with enough weight to replace that episode as the defining moment of my life.

I'd been surviving and existing for years, but now, for the first time since Iris's death, I felt an awful, momentous sense of purpose. The same people who had in all likelihood murdered Diego were also responsible for drugging and exploiting a young girl. I found, with a sense of dread, that I cared.

*   *   *

I hung up the phone and went back to the bedroom, where Luke was sitting at the edge of the bed. “So, what now?” His voice was dead.

“Ideally, I'd like to save my ass. How do you feel about selling your dad's favorite psychopath to the cops?”

Luke stood up and paced diagonally across his room, like a slow-roaming Break Out ball glancing at angles off the walls.

I walked over to the empty bed and sat on its springy corner. “You don't like that idea.”

He sat in his desk chair, a solid, vertical plop that barely provoked the wheels.

“It's okay. I didn't think it'd be that popular, just throwing it out there. Of course it would probably, you know, lower the chances that the police find me dead tomorrow, having apparently choked on some dangerous combination of chow mein and acupuncture needles.” I patted his knee, dry and stiff-palmed.

He postured arms akimbo on his thighs. “Song, I don't really know what to say to that.”

“I know. I said I was just throwing it out there.”

We sat staring at each other's ears.

“I don't want you to think— Here, let's put it this way. If I weren't confident nothing would happen to you even without going to the cops, I would call right now. But I'm not going to let anyone so much as touch you, got it?”

“My hero.” I clasped my hands together beside my cheek and swooned back on the bed.

“Can you trust me?” A warmth entered his voice like iodine spreading yellow, threadlike and fingered through water.

I looked up at the ceiling and stretched my arms straight toward the light in a pointed gun. I let them crumple and sat up again.

I thought about Luke, hiding in the shadows of his father's mansion; Luke, disappearing from my side without a whisper. I thought too of our years together, of the undeniable fact that he had just saved my life. But none of it mattered now in any practical sense. I knew I needed him. “What choice do I have?”

He bent forward and pulled me into a quiet hug. His eyes sat warm and motionless in the shelf of my right shoulder. I palmed the back of his head. His hair wanted washing.

It was just me and Luke now, and I knew that the two of us would have to see this thing through. We owed it to Diego, and without closure I would never make it out of the weekend. But Diego wasn't the only one on my mind. At the core of everything was a girl. The femme fatale. The one I wanted to save, and who might give me answers in return. There was only one thing that we could do next, that we had to do. I spoke into Luke's ear. “We have to go to Lori.”

 

Fourteen

He didn't argue with me, didn't point out what happened to the last two people who loitered about 432 South Citrus, the first murdered in the street, the second a hunted woman going back for more trouble.

It was 1:24
A.M.
when we left, and the streets were low-lit and sleepy, preparing for Monday morning. The Porsche tore through the quiet, a revving bullet, slippery, skimming the ground.

“So what are we going to do with her?”

“We're taking her from that house. And while we're at it, we're going to clarify a few things.”

“What things?”

“I haven't written it out or anything, but I have a list. I figured we'd get her first, then go from there. I mean, I don't know, don't you have some questions?”

“I guess.”

“Like—what's the deal with her and your dad? I kind of gather that they're like, you know, but how the hell did that happen? And those pictures? Why didn't she know about them? Why is her mom in on the whole thing? I sense some twisted shit, Luke.”

He nodded.

“Did you know your dad's been paying Lori's mom to keep quiet?”

“What?”

“Yeah. But it's fishy. I'd feel more comfortable if she at least acted hostile towards him. Like, if she were blackmailing him.”

“What do you mean, ‘if'?”

“I mean I don't get the sense that she is. She went straight to him when I showed up, and you should've seen how incredibly deferent she was in his presence. Like a goddamn courtesan.”

“So?”

“So, I don't think she's blackmailing him. I think she's pimping her daughter.”

“That's kind of sick, don't you think?”

“Absolutely. It doesn't make it impossible. The woman drugged Lori along with me, and it wasn't the first time she'd done it, either.”

“In any case, what's the difference? Isn't that just another way of phrasing
blackmail
?”

“It's more friendly. I don't like the friendship.”

We drove up to the corner of Fourth and Citrus and parked on Fourth by the Stop sign. We got out and rounded the corner on foot.

Lori's house was in the middle of the block, vaguely awash in dusty yellow light. The Lexus was perched up the driveway. The Jetta was parked on the street. My roving Volvo was nowhere in sight.

We whispered, windlike on a windless night.

“If I'm not back in fifteen minutes, ring the doorbell. It won't be ideal, but you are the crowned prince. You can at least get me out of there.”

“This feels shady.”

“And what world have you been living in all weekend?”

“Be careful.”

I stared at him and crossed my arms.

“What, are you kidding me? You're helping. I don't have the hops to clear that fence alone. Not without making a lot of noise, anyway.”

We walked up the driveway, past the nose of the gleaming Lexus. A wooden gate with peeling paint separated us from Lori's backyard. A quick, tight push satisfied us that it was locked. Luke made a platform of his palms and with that lift I climbed over the top of the gate, clutching at all possible supports, pushing my feet to the adjacent wall and belaying myself with the care of an amateur mountain climber down to the other side.

I stepped onto a mossy patch of garden growth trickling over concrete. The backyard was several shades darker than the front, and I waited, breathing with my mouth open wide, for my eyes to adjust to the cut light.

The yard was deeper than it was wide, fenced in by three walls running the perimeter in sallow boucléd plaster. Dark grass followed the wall by the fence in a narrow stream that overflowed its banks, and halfway into the yard fed into an undecorated expanse of lawn, kept glistening and inky by a rogue sprinkler swirling with lopsided rhythm under the moon. I walked to the border of the grass on plain concrete and turned to face the back of the house.

The view startled me, and it took a few moments for me to realize why. Except for the absence of warmth and light and the smoking of a brick chimney, the back of Lori's house looked just like the house every kindergartner learned to draw. Sloping roof, centered door, and two small, square windows peeking like unblinking eyes at the back-door visitor in the yard. Both lights were off.

I chose the one with the princess curtains, approached it on cat feet, and knocked. I rapped gently and took it on a slow crescendo, but Lori came to the window faster than I'd hoped, and pushed aside the curtains. She opened her cell phone and shone the faint light on my face. I pushed a finger to my lips with urgency and indicated her bedroom door with the other hand.

She looked back through the halo of light with wide eyes asking questions. I pointed a finger forward and then left, indicating the path from her bedroom to the front door of the house. I fanned out the fingers of my shushing hand to make a megaphone and mouthed,
Outside,
slow, wide, three times. She pointed at her heart and mouthed,
Me?

A few more volleys of gestures and mouthed words and one final warning to hush and I watched her flit soft and easy to her door. I made my way back to the gate and went through it the old-fashioned way, with a latch and both feet on the ground. Luke was waiting on the other side, watching the front door open.

Lori appeared in a long, plain gray T-shirt that reached a few inches down her thighs. I couldn't tell if she was wearing shorts underneath. Her face was clean and pretty without a spot of makeup. She closed the front door behind her with a degree of care that shot me through with gratitude. We padded toward each other, Luke treading lawn behind me, and she bounded into me with her arms wrapped like an infant koala's around my neck. I stooped over, moved her hair aside, and whispered in her ear.

“You have to come with us.”

I felt her breath move as if to say something, but she nodded instead, her head rolling against my chest.

We walked back around the corner to Luke's car. The house remained blissfully dark and quiet, and we kept our tongues stuck on Mute until we were well inside the Porsche with all doors locked. I installed Lori in the front seat and sat behind her.

Luke started the engine. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can talk,” I said. “Your car isn't ideal.”

“My apartment?”

Lori was leaning forward in the seat, her head facing the empty street. “My mom will look for me soon,” she said. “She's a light sleeper.”

“Then we should avoid the Marlowe,” I said. “I don't think she'll spend a lot of time guessing who took you, and she knows more or less where I went.”

“Okay, then where?” Luke asked.

“Just drive. We'll figure something out.”

*   *   *

Over the last two days, my life had taken an unlikely turn. I, Juniper Song, was a chased woman.

I couldn't say for sure, but my guess was that zebras didn't stop to graze with lions and hunters on their tails. But at one forty on this particular Monday morning, I found my stomach was pained and hollow. Bars and coffee shops were closing, and once I gave it some thought, I told Luke to take us to Canter's.

We pulled into a dreamboat parking spot in the neon glow of the green-and-yellow letters marking Canter's Restaurant Bakery Delicatessen, Open All Night. The clean, consecutive thuds of shutting doors rang a percussive triplet clear and solo in the humming street. We went inside and a bored, pretty blonde just a shade too bland for the big screen gave Lori and her pajamas a once-over before leading us into the main dining room.

Canter's had the self-assured air of an institution, with black-and-white photos hanging like diplomas and accolades on beige walls. Light came filtered through kaleidoscopic colored glass fixtures in a grid on the ceiling. Cylindrical lamps hung at intervals about the room cast white light on nut-brown Formica, but the space was washed with the warm old yellow of nicotine stains and well-read books.

Even at two in the morning on what was technically a Monday, Canter's was at 90 percent capacity. I couldn't say what slice of Los Angeles made up the clientele, but it was generously cut, with patrons ranging in age, respectability, wealth, and sobriety. We passed a drunk, noisy table of three boys, the one quiet one sitting with curly head hung limp and hands stuffed into the marsupial pocket of a USC hoodie. I put them at twenty years old, sophomores or juniors, enjoying a nameless night in a summer of undifferentiated unemployment. The sentient two looked at us. One was Asian, likely Korean, with thick-rimmed plastic glasses and a beginner's scruff of a goatee. The other had solid charcoal eyebrows and an olive tint to his skin that made him ambiguously ethnic despite a long, pointed Anglo nose. Eyebrows nudged Goatee and waved to us as we walked by.

“Can we get that table, please?” I pointed to a booth in a deep corner pocket of the room. The waitress nodded with a swing of her hips. We sat on squeaking sepia leather and took our menus. I sat next to Luke on the inside, across from Lori.

“Order whatever you want. It's on Luke's dad.”

She looked at Luke. He smiled with one side of his mouth and nodded.

“What're you guys getting?” she asked.

“I'm not really hungry.” Luke shrugged.

I looked up from my menu and jutted my chin out at him. “You've got my life in your hands, and I know you didn't eat dinner. Have a fucking sandwich.”

He flapped his menu, pulling it taut, plastic and nylon whooshing with the sound of sheets relieved of dust by strong arms.

“Fine. Do you just get to boss me around now?”

“I kind of think that's fair.”

“The sins of the father?”

The waitress came back with a pad and a ballpoint pen. “Are you guys ready to order?” The shadow of a southern accent lay chastised under her measured speech.

As soon as she left our table, Eyebrows slid into the booth next to Lori.

“Mind if I sit here?” He addressed Lori but turned to Luke and me in afterthought.

“Your ass moves faster than your mouth,” I said.

He cocked one gnarly eyebrow. It bristled with living energy.