Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (99 page)

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I’m coming to get you if I don’t see you soon. Get over here, okay? There’s somebody here I want you to meet.”

The weight of Kate’s gun in my jacket pocket banged against my hip, reminding me that I wasn’t really going in alone. It made me feel better, even if I hadn’t been to the shooting range in a while.

I headed up the walkway, hoping April was home.

CHAPTER 48

Logan opened the door.

He let out a long alcohol-infused sigh when he saw that it was me.

“Hi,” I said, my voice a little too high. “I was looking for April. Is she home?”

It was the first time I had seen him since that night at the Center. His hair was long and stringy, hanging just past his shoulders. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his feet were bare. He had on a pair of jeans, the top button undone. He appeared to be in the first trimester, just starting to show signs of a beer belly. Otherwise, was skinnier than I remembered, his ribs poking through the pale skin.

His eyes were shiny and glazed over. He leaned up against the door as he gave me the once over.

“April?” he said, rubbing his chin.

“Yeah, is April home?” I said again with more authority.

He had been drinking, the strong smell of hard booze mixing in with the icy air in front of me. He opened the door wider, so I could see in. It looked as though a small tornado had gone through the living room.

“April!” he screamed. “You here?”

He waited a minute and then leered at me again.

“Guess not,” he said, smiling. “Guess she’s gone.”

“So do you know when she’s coming back?”

“April doesn’t live here anymore,” he said.

He broke into a crazed round of laughter, holding his bare stomach with one hand while hanging onto the door with the other.

“That was good, wasn’t it?” he said. “But really. Come in, Abby from the soup kitchen. Let’s have some words.”

He fell back into the apartment, leaving the door wide open. I stood for a moment, not knowing what to do. Time was running out, but it wasn’t midnight. April was still alive, somewhere. But then the strong image of me lying in the alley, blood flowing out from my neck, flashed in my head. I stood paralyzed there, not sure what to do.

Then I thought that maybe Logan wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe April was home, but was being held inside against her will.

I felt Kate’s gun in my jacket pocket, telling myself I could use it if I had to, and then headed inside.

***

“Go on, have a seat,” he said, pointing at a chair covered in empty potato chip bags and Coke cans. I made room and sat down at the edge of the cushion and glanced around. 

The room smelled of mold and stale beer. I kept my hand in my pocket.

I stared at Logan and studied his energy. It was gray, moving around him faster than the last time I had seen him. But it wasn’t as dark as I was expecting.

“I know about you,” he said, his eyes closing slightly.

He reached over and grabbed a can of PBR and downed the remains. I didn’t say anything, waiting.

“I know about you and that contest scam you’re running. I think maybe it’s just your way of making friends. You saw me and my girl and wanted to get in on the action. I get it. Girls get like that with me. So how about we go get friendly in the bedroom right now, you and me? I’ll give you a test ride and see how you do.”

He rubbed his stomach and let his tongue hang out of his mouth, making me want to vomit. But I held steady, reminding myself why I was there.

“So where did April go?” I said finally.

He leaned back and exhaled loudly.

“Who the hell knows,” he said, throwing the empty can across the room. “She took off this morning. Packed up a suitcase. Said she’d be back tomorrow for the rest. Suits me. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

He wasn’t looking at me.

“I got a job. Cleaned myself up. Making my way back. But no. It still wasn’t good enough for the bitch, all high and mighty.”

This was going nowhere. I stole a glance down at my watch. It was almost 10:30.

“I know I haven’t been the best boyfriend,” he said. “I admit that there’s room for improvement. But at least I was the faithful one. I should get credit for that at least.”

I let the words sit for a moment.

“April was cheating on you?”

I saw the anger in his eyes. And the pain.

“Not was.
Is
.”

I nodded.

“That’s why she dumped me. I confronted her this morning. I knew all along, but last night I found the proof.”

“Proof?”

He scratched himself and stumbled over to the kitchen table. He picked up a small book with a fancy looking cover. He stared at it for a moment and then threw it at me. I ducked and heard it hit the wall behind me.

It was a copy of
Romeo and Juliet
.

“It was in her backpack.”

He wandered back to the sofa and flipped on the television.

“You know, she was supposed to be going to school so she could get a better job and help out around here. What a load of crap. Go ahead. Read the mumbo jumbo on the first page. Like I said. Proof.”

I opened the book, keeping one eye on Logan. There were only two lines.

But in those two lines, I realized how very, very wrong I had been.

Logan wasn’t the killer.

“Go on! Read it out loud!”

My heart raced and I cleared my throat, my hand still on the gun as Logan’s energy turned darker and angrier.

“To April. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

I got up and put the book on the table.

“I have to get going,” I said.

He opened up another can of beer.

“Give her a message for me,” he said as I walked out the door. “Tell her she and Romeo can rot in hell!”

The clouds hung low, heavy with snow. It was just a matter of time now.

I walked quickly to the Jeep, wondering if I should stop over at the Community Center. But I knew that by now, even on Christmas Eve, it would be closed.

There was only one place left to go, one place where I knew I would find her.

The place that had been calling out. The place that was waiting for us. Waiting for April, waiting for me.

CHAPTER 49

As I sat in the cold gripping the steering wheel, I wondered if I should call the police. But there was really no point. April’s death wasn’t a crime, at least not yet. And as for Sutter, being a creep wasn’t a crime either.

I couldn’t believe it was him. He struck me as obviously unstable, but in a harmless kind of way. And he sure didn’t seem April’s type either. He was at least 20 years older than her. And that was the least of it. I couldn’t believe that April would leave Logan for him. But maybe this was exactly the type of man she was drawn to. Maybe it was low self-esteem, maybe it was something else. Whatever it was had her trapped in a vicious circle. A vicious circle that would kill her.

I called April, finding the number from when she had called about the survey. No answer. I called Ty, but it went straight to voicemail. I didn’t bother leaving a message. I then remembered him saying something over breakfast about a party he was thinking about going to tonight. As far as I knew David was still out of town, so I couldn’t count on him for any help either. And I wasn’t going to call Kate. I wasn’t going to put her in danger. I had decided to start my New Year’s resolution early. After all, I might not be around for New Year’s.

I had sent her a text apologizing that I wasn’t going to make the party after all. I said I was meeting Ty. She would be mad but I would deal with that later. If there was a later.

I hadn’t heard from Jesse. I guess he couldn’t help me either.

I stepped out of the Jeep, zipped up my parka, and pulled on the hood. It wasn’t all that cold for late December in Bend, maybe somewhere around 30 degrees. But I knew that you couldn’t always measure the cold with just a thermometer. There were many different kinds. It was almost as if the cold had fingerprints, each instance unique. And as the cold wrapped its fingers around me now and squeezed, I knew I had never felt colder.

I was starting to feel a little like Gary Cooper at the end of
High Noon
. All alone. I reached inside my pocket and fingered the gun, nervously humming the theme from the movie.

Time couldn’t be stopped. And it couldn’t be turned back. And once something happened, that was it. You had to live with it. If you could.

I had just over an hour now, the minutes flying by on the wings of a hummingbird.

I wasn’t so sure about fate. Or if there was such a thing. Was it Jesse’s fate to die up by that lake? Was it mine to drown and come back to life and see ghosts? Was I destined to die here tonight? Maybe it was foolish to think that I could stop something that was written in the stars.

The stars. I looked up. I couldn’t see them through the clouds. But they were up there. Out of reach.

I walked down the alley and stopped at the spot where it would happen. I swallowed hard, my throat still intact. And then my legs suddenly turned to rubber. How could I be so stupid? Sometimes I had trouble making a cup of coffee. How could I think now that I could change something this big? I couldn’t save Ty and me. I couldn’t save April. And I couldn’t save myself. Not if I stayed here in this horrible place, this place of blood and death.

All I could think at that moment was that I didn’t want to die.

I would never see Kate again. Or Ty. Never find out if we could overcome our problems and find love again. Never another Christmas. Or see the sun again and feel its warmth on my face on a summer day. Or kick a soccer ball and watch it ripple the net. Never hear David wheeze again. Or Mo curse. Never see if I had what it took to follow my dream.

Never.

I didn’t want to die.

Forgive me, April. God, forgive me.

“I want to live,” I said out loud.

“I want to live.”

And then I started walking. On wobbly knees, slowly at first and then faster, leaving the alley behind. And then I started running. I ran and ran and ran. I ran past the library and my dentist’s office and the Old Mill with its three smokestacks. I ran past the movie theater, through the parking lot, down Brookswood.

I ran fast and hard, down side streets and neighborhoods I had never been to before, the black and white Christmas lights dancing at the edges of my vision.

I finally stopped, blown out, at a small park overlooking the dark Deschutes. The water moved fast here. But not as fast as the tears rolling down my face.

I felt the gun in my pocket, useless, weighing me down, leaving a bruise on my hip, and pulled it out. I didn’t need it anymore. I reached back and flung it into the black water like the stones Jesse would skip.

I stood there crying for what felt like forever. Until the snow started falling.

CHAPTER 50

The snow began to stick to the ground at my feet. April must only have minutes to live now. Maybe she was already dead.

I had failed her.

For a moment all I could feel was a great emptiness inside. And then I felt it begin to grow. Slowly at first and then in waves. The shame. The guilt. It came flooding in like the water behind a broken levee. I would have cried then, again, for April. For myself. But I was all out.

I called her number again. Maybe she would listen. Listen to this final warning. Again no answer.

At that moment I wished I could take it back. Take it all back. All the running away. I would stand there in that alley and face it.

But I knew it was a lie. A coward’s lie. I was safe here. Miles away. It was easy to wish things that could never be.

I wiped my face and pulled up the sleeve on my jacket, checking the time.

11:32.

The snow had come early.

There might still be time.

***

As I ran back toward town, through the falling snow, I thought about how sometimes it snows in one place and not another. It could be snowing up on Pilot Butte and not down in the city.

I hoped that was the case here. That somehow it wasn’t snowing yet in Tin Pan Alley. I sucked in the cold air and fought the urge to check the time again. I focused instead on going as fast as I could and finding the most direct route back.

My chest ached and my knees throbbed from the effort. But I didn’t have time for the pain. At one point the snow, instead of coming down harder like in the vision, let up and then stopped. Maybe I was staying ahead of it. Maybe there was still time.

Hurry.

I was getting closer now. Back past the smokestacks, lit up with lights. I prayed I wouldn’t hear those bells. Not yet. Hurry.

Hurry, Abby.

Hurry.

CHAPTER 51

I turned the corner. There it was. The alley.

I checked my watch.
11:58.

I had made it. Somehow, I had made it. There was still time.

I walked now, couldn’t have run another step.

The snow began to fall again.

I stumbled toward the theater seats, still breathing hard. A thin layer of snow was already beginning to cover them. I sat down anyway.

And then I heard her. Her screams.

“Fire! Help! Fire!”

It was smart. They say people are more likely to react to a fire than to help a woman being attacked. It was smart, but it wouldn’t save her.

Suddenly she was running toward me, like in the vision, coming down the alley. And then I saw him. Sutter.

“I only stopped by for a drink!” she shouted, her words bouncing off the bricks. “I told you that already. Get away from me!”

“Come on, April,” he said sweetly, grabbing her arm. “Come on back. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I could only make out his silhouette, but I could imagine those eyes and the sick thoughts behind them.