Snuff (8 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

John dialed Stacy as he walked through the hospital lobby on his way to the parking lot.  The line rang in his ear while he passed a fidgety Jack Callahan attacking his temples with his index fingers, eyes clamped shut. A relentless knee jiggled, keeping time with the elevator music playing in the waiting room. 

So that’s what love looks like
, the voice in his head said thoughtfully. 
Almost seems like he’s in as much pain as Brooke, doesn’t it?

Stacy interrupted the dialogue that wasn’t real as he pushed the glassed double doors open and headed for his SUV.  “Hey.  Sorry, don’t have anything for you yet.  I know I make it look easy, but these kinds of jobs take time.”

He pulled the keys out of his pocket and punched the UNLOCK button as the sun dipped past a layer of lavender smog behind mountains in the distance.  “Let Bob know you’re going to be logging a lot of overtime for the next few days.  I’m going to need you pretty much whenever I’m awake.”

“That would sound dirty coming from anyone else.”

“Do what you can in the next hour or so and then wrap it up.  I’ll need you in the morning at nine.  I’m heading for the hotel right now and planning to get up around five.”

“Aye, aye.  I’ll call you first thing.  How are you doing?  Are you okay? You sound funny.  We didn’t have much time to catch up this morning.”

He heaved himself behind the wheel and started the car.  “It’s jetlag.”

“Hmm.” 

Amazing how she could pack so much doubt into that small sound
, he thought.  He’d always considered Stacy smart, more so than him when it came to certain things, but until that moment he’d never known she was privy to his embarrassing little secret: like Sergeant Jennings, he too gave a fuck.  She’d known something was wrong when he’d gotten back from Arizona after his last case, but had never pressed the issue. Not that she’d said anyway, but he would hardly put it past her to hack Scottsdale PD’s firewalls or snoop through his typed reports.

He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling of being figured out.  His whole life he’d kept people at arm’s length, but he must have forgotten to lock the gates and lift the bridge of Tower Maxwell, because inexplicably, indescribably, and without permission, she’d snuck through.

She cleared her throat. “All right, until tomorrow.  I’ll call you first thing in the morning.  I envy you, getting to wake up to such a beautiful sound.  I wake up to Damian snoring.”

I
was watching her undress through the keyhole of her bedroom door.  The way her hair tangled in the lace of her nightdress.  The bruises were still fresh—perfect black fingermarks clutching her thighs.  She didn’t look scared or apprehensive, though I suppose by then she felt little at all.

Perhaps the burden was too great to carry alone, without my father, and not even my brother and I were a strong enough tether to keep her
here.  She must have left her conscience pressed between the gold pages of the bible in her undergarment drawer. 

That book never did anything for her, anyway.  It didn’t offer consolation or remedies, though I’m sure she didn’t think to ask the Good Book for such things.  She’d stopped smiling after Them, and moved through the
days that followed like a ghost; just as pale, but a little more substantial.

It’s like she orchestrated her movements, they were so fluid.  Like she’d practiced them every night since They happened.  Once across the arc of both wrists, one through the violet handprint bruises ringing her forearms. 

Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t stop her.  I can only assume her desperation for it all to be over called out to me, rolling over the air until it threaded through the keyhole where I stood, watching and understanding in a tiny vacuum of transfixed anticipation.

I had to stand on the toes of my shoes to see it all, I was that small. 

I’d seen her bleed before, when They did what they did, but this was elegant as opposed to undignified.  And her orifices were empty this time, not plugged with wrinkled bulges of male skin.

She almost looked happy when it was over.

Friday at 9:21 p.m.

IP Address: 75.84.67.69

Sent via contact form by an anonymous viewer on your website

TWENTY-FIVE

I vomit until it feels like I’m completely hollow.  No intestines, guts, or even blood.  He’s been gone for a while, but I keep dry heaving.  Abby’s light hand lingers on my back, twisting my hair around her knuckles.  She wants to, I can tell, it’s not in a drunken sorority girl
well I guess since we’re friends I’m obligated to do the hair-holding
sort of way. 

A shiver
skitters up and down my spine.  Her hand strokes the back of my neck, but I disentangle it from my hair and flop against the wall.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, sensing an
are you okay?
on the horizon.  How can she worry about me when he burned her over and over?  I can’t bring myself to ask where he did it.  I don’t want to know, but it had to be somewhere sensitive, somewhere delicate and tender, because her screams had cut off abruptly when she fainted.

Now I’m glad we’re in the dark.  I don’t ever want to see what he’s done to her.

“He left us some water.”  She forces my hand open and closes my fingers around a dripping bottle.  “You need it.  You’ll get dehydrated.  You threw up everything in your system.”

I can’t be too dehydrated, since tears well up.  “Oh God, Abby.”  I slap at my eyes, but all it does is make boiling waterfalls flood my face.  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him.  I’m so sorry.”

Her voice is soft, too understanding for my empty stomach to handle.  “There’s nothing you could have done.  There’s nothing we can do when we’re blind and stuck.”  She sighs.  “I told you I always knew something like this would happen.  It’s been just around the corner, waiting for me.”

“Goddamnit.”  Her lack of outrage sparks mine.  “Nobody deserves that.”  Then I feel bad for shouting.  She’s the one bearing the brunt of this nightmare.  If anyone’s allowed to shout and rage, it’s her, only she refuses. 

“Guilt’s a part of being Catholic.”  She musters a brave laugh.

Her quiet acceptance makes me weaker and sick with fear.  Not for my sake, but hers.

And this is just the beginning.

***

The clock on the wall says its two a.m. when my eyes pop open.  It must be a cruel practical joke from God, willing me to wake after my ten-minute power nap exactly twenty-four hours after Abby died.  She’s sleeping for eternity.  My penance won’t allow more than a few minutes.

My latest and greatest walk down memory lane was a doozy.  People in scrubs converged within the room, yelling different things, changing sheets, stuffing thermometers in my mouth.  They’d ordered everyone but hospital personnel out, and Lisette hadn’t looked happy.

A sigh inflates my chest, and I try to roll my shoulders, but the Velcro freezes my wrists to the rails.  Still strapped down like a basket case.  This is getting ridiculous.  They don’t even trust me to urinate on my own—I now have my very own catheter.  And an IV, I note, examining the needle in my arm.

For a moment I do nothing but stare—why is it there?  I don’t r
emember a nurse setting it up, and I doubt I could sleep through a needle prick.  I’m not sick or injured, physically at least—it feels wrong, like it’s thrown off the room’s equilibrium.  As if it’s suddenly three sizes smaller because this needle is buried in my arm, covered with medical tape.

A light bulb clicks on in
my brain.  How could I forget?  Abby’s probably up there in heaven, frowning at me. 
Was all this for nothing, Brooke?

I crane my neck, snapping at the tube with my teeth.  It takes forever to gnaw the damn thing from my vein, and it stings like hell when it rips out.   

Liquid drips from the tubing, and I fall back against the flat hospital pillows, panting.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.  Strangely it’s not as soothing at it seems on TV, when cops tell people to do the same and put their heads between their knees.

I think about calling for a nurse, but I can’t reach to punch in the emergency button by the bed.

The clock’s struck three fifteen by the time someone comes to look in on me.  The door cracks open and Lisette slides through. 

“Hi,” I croak, struggling to sit up. 

Dark crescents tint the skin beneath her eyes blue, but she looks alert as ever despite the fact she couldn’t have slept more than a few hours.  Probably due to the jumbo cup of coffee she’s clutching.  “I thought you’d be sleeping.  You really need to get some rest.” Her gaze sweeps the bed and zeroes in on the blood dripping from my arm.  The cup slams on the counter and her eyes go slitty.

She fixes me with a deep frown and whips her phone out of her back pocket.  “What the fuck are you thinking, Brooke?  You can’t go around chewing off medical equipment like a goddamned coyote.”

“I can’t have it.”

She stabs the emergency button, one anxious foot tapping. “They have your medical records.  They wouldn’t have given you something you can’t have.  Do you think you’re allergic?”

“I’m pregnant.”

She’s stunned into silence for a moment
before she explodes.  “When the fuck were you going to tell anyone?  We should have gotten you checked out right away.  Something could be wrong with the baby.”  She pounds in the emergency button again and sticks her head out the door. 

“Jesusfuck, does anybody work here?”  She turns back to me, blonde and bouncy ponytail whipping across her cheekbones.  “I’m going to go fuck up the lobby until I find someone to examine you.”

TWENTY-SIX

Someone wheels an ultrasound machine into the room.  Lisette jitters nearby as a nurse spreads cold, thick gel over my stomach. 

I can’t look at the baby.  It’s the reason Abby’s dead.  I look at Lisette instead, and her face cracks into a luminous smile I didn’t realize she was capable of.  She wraps her hands around one of mine. 

Her voice is gushy, full of warmth and love. “You can see the heartbeat.  It’s fine.”  She nods at the screen.  “Your baby’s fine, Brooke.” 

“The fetus looks about nine weeks,” the nurse says, and Lisette’s smile evaporates.

“It’s a
baby
.  Her baby.  Not a fucking fetus.”

Technically it is a fetus—we all know this—but her meaning is clear.  The nurse gives her a patronizing stare.  “Baby.  Sorry.”

Lisette leans forward to get a better look at the screen.  “I’m going to get Jack.  I made him go home to sleep, but he’ll want to be with you.”

The nurse wipes the gel off with a rag and coils the tubing.  “Everything seems fine, but we’ll need to do more tests as it grows to see if it’s been affected by what…by what you’ve been through.”

Nothing happened except a Taser bite.

“I do
n’t want to see Jack.”

Lisette
gives me a hand-on-hips squinty-eyed scowl.  “Christ on a bike, Brooke.  This is his baby too.  He needs to know.  Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

“I’m not hurt.  I didn’t think they’d medicate me.  There’s nothing
wrong
with me.”  I shouldn’t even
be
here. 

“You still should have mentioned it.”

I close my eyes, listening as the wheels of the machine bump over the grout on the floor on its way out the door.  The door clicks shut. 

I just want to be alone. 
,l

Lisette relents
with a drawn-out sigh. “I’ll hold off calling him for a few hours, if that’s what you want.  But he’s got to know eventually.  A baby is a blessing.  You know he’ll be happy.”

That’s exactly what Abby said.

***

I’m floating somewhere on the borderline of Sleep and Awake.  I think I’ve been walking that line for a long time.  

One of those leg spasms attacks the muscles in my thigh, forcing both me and Abby into instant consciousness. 

“Are you okay?”

I wish she’d stop asking such stupid questions.  She knows perfectly well I’m fine.  He’s hardly touched me. “I’m fine.”

“You threw up a lot.” 

I hate the concern lacing through her wavering voice.  “It doesn’t matter.  I’m fine.”  I’d tell her I only vomited because the smell of her singing flesh flipped my stomach inside out and twisted it in knots, but that would only be a half-truth. 

“You’re not fine.”  Her voice gets weaker, so soft I have to bend as close as I can to hear it.  “You’ve thrown up more than once.”  She clears her throat.  “When did you know?”

I sigh.  Eventually the silence prods for an answer.

“For sure, the day he took me from the parking lot.  I must have been too busy practicing lines of what I’d say to Jack and didn’t hear him behind me.”

I can feel she’s puzzling over whether she should congratulate me.  It’s kind of difficult to say anything sincerely under these circumstances.  “This is a blessing.  I know it’s hard to be happy about it now, but it is.”

“I didn’t even think I was going to keep it.  Jack and I don’t have any money.  He’s up to his eyeballs in med school bills, and I wait tables. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Yes it was.”

“How do you figure?”

She wraps her fingers around mine, and it must be her lips brushing against them—parched and puckered skin.  “You’ll never regret your baby.  God wouldn’t give you something you couldn’t handle.”

It sounds like she’s saying that for both our sakes.