Stone Rain (27 page)

“Does she come and visit you all the time?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“Is she dead?” Katie’s eyes danced.

“Yes,” I said.

“You must be sad,” Katie said. “I don’t want any of my moms to die.”

No one could think of anything to say to that.

“Are we going to have hamburgers?” Katie asked.

“Chicken,” Claire said.

“Is it with the icky sauce?” Katie asked.

“No. It’s the sauce you like.”

“Okay,” Katie said, and ran back into the living room.

I looked at Trixie, and I guess she could sense a question. She said, “We’ve told her the truth, at least some of it. That I’m her mother, but I’m the mommy who can only come to visit once in a while. But Claire, even though she’s her aunt, is really more like her everyday mother, so she calls her that.”

“Okay,” I said. My next question for Trixie I blurted out before I considered its implications: “If your problems with Merker disappeared, would
you
become her everyday mommy?”

Claire’s head went up, and I saw something in her face at that moment. Fear, maybe. Fear of giving up a child she’d come to love as if she were her very own, in every way.

“Well,” said Trixie, “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I think, the way my life seems to be going lately, one threat just gets replaced by another. The thing is, I could never be any better a mother to her than my sister has been.”

And some of the fear bled away from Claire’s face. Maybe this was best for her, that her sister have a life of uncertainty, so that she could keep raising Katie in relative normalcy.

Trixie tapped my arm. “Let’s you and me take a walk. Claire, you okay for dinner, I take a walk with Zack?”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

Trixie motioned for me to follow her out the front door, onto the porch. We leaned against the posts that straddled the steps. I chose the one I’d not whacked my head against. We crossed our arms and looked at each other.

“I’m glad you found me,” Trixie said.

“I’m a regular Sherlock,” I said.

“Didn’t even need Lawrence’s help,” she said. “You’re good.”

“I hate to call him for everything.”

“Come on.” We went down the steps, walked around the house and toward the barn. As we passed it, I saw my car, the Virtue, parked around back, where it couldn’t be seen from the highway.

“That car of yours,” Trixie said, “has been nothing but a pain in the ass.”

“I’m sorry. I never would have let you steal it had I known. Yours, by the way, has been trouble-free, despite your bundle of recall notices.”

Trixie made a face that said
Go figure
. She pointed to mine and said, “Sometimes you try to start it, it won’t go.”

“It hasn’t been doing that for a long time. I thought it was all fixed. I’ll have to get it looked at.”

“Good on gas, though,” she said.

Two dirt ruts with a strip of grass down the middle carried on beyond the barn and into the field. I took the left rut, Trixie the right.

“How’s Sarah?” she asked.

I grimaced. “Things could be better.”

“How much of it’s my fault?”

I appeared to be doing calculations in my head. “I was going to say about seventy-five percent, but that’s not fair. The fault is all mine. I have to accept responsibility for the decisions I’ve made, including those to help you.”

“But those are the ones that have landed you in the doghouse.”

I smiled. “Pretty much.”

“I’ve told you more than once that Sarah’s lucky to have you, even though, at times, I’d have to concede, you are a bit of an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, all the polling we’ve done would seem to indicate that.”

We walked a bit further, and I stopped and looked back at the house in the distance, so tranquil.

Reading my mind, Trixie said, “I wish I could stay here forever.”

I looked up at the sky, and a large bird caught my eye. “Look at the wingspan on that one,” I said, pointing. “That’s a huge bird.”

“What is it?”

“I think it’s a hawk,” I said.

“Looking for field mice, anything else it can find,” Trixie said.

We stood out there a few more moments, not saying anything to each other. Finally, I said, “You have to come back, you know.”

“You think?” Her response was laced with sarcasm.

“The police, I’m not sure they’re convinced you killed Martin Benson. They told me he’d probably been zapped by some sort of stun gun before his neck was slit. We know it was Merker, and we know he’s got stun guns. He’s been trying to sell them to the cops.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got reasons for your actions. I’m sure, you get a good lawyer, you can work things out.”

“I’ve got one,” Trixie said. “Guy named Niles Wagland. He’s pretty good.”

“Okay,” I said. “I mean, look at your situation. You were scared for your daughter’s life. Running away, making sure she was safe, it’s not totally unreasonable. And there’s got to be plenty of evidence against Merker. The note he wrote, for one thing. They’ll test it for prints, do handwriting analysis, who knows, but they’ll be able to figure out it was him. And once they’ve got him in custody, they’ll reopen those murders in Canborough. The guy’ll spend the rest of his life in jail. And then you’ll be able to get on with yours.”

“I don’t know, Zack. There’s a small matter of five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Is Merker going to tell the cops about that? Could he even prove it’s his? That you took it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Trixie, you can’t keep running. From Merker, from the police. You need to face these things, sort them out. You need to do it for Katie.”

Trixie stepped over the grass median and into my rut. “Maybe,” she said, “if I could spend my life with someone like you, I’d think about it.”

I said nothing.

“All I’ve ever known are bad men. My father was a bad man. Even Katie’s father—he tried, you know? There was a lot of goodness in him. But he was no poster boy for stability. If he hadn’t ended up getting killed by Gary, he’d have died some other way before long. You can’t live that kind of life and expect it to go on forever. My sister, she got a good one. But my luck, it doesn’t run in that direction.”

“I’m sure there’s someone out there for you. Someone who’d treat you right. Treat you with the respect you deserve.”

“What can I really expect, Zack? Look what I do. I’m a step up from a hooker. I torture men. You know why I think I do that?”

Again, I said nothing.

“I think it’s my way of taking it out on all the men who’ve treated me like shit all my life. My father, Merker, the others. When I abuse those men, when I demean them, when I hurt them, I’m getting even.”

“But,” I said, “they like it.”

“They have their fantasy, and I have mine.”

Back at the house, we could hear Katie laugh about something in the kitchen. Trixie glanced back, and the wind blew a lock of hair across her face. She looked beautiful, but in a more natural, almost innocent way.

“So what about you and Sarah? How bad is it?”

“Not so bad that I’ve given up on it,” I said. “I love her.” I took a breath. “I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

Trixie studied me. “I’ve thought about you a lot since I left you in my basement. I’m sorry. I’d like to make it up to you.” She took a step closer, and for a moment, I felt dizzy. “Did you like it when I kissed you? When you were handcuffed to the railing?”

“It took me somewhat by surprise,” I said. “A simple peck on the cheek would have sufficed.”

Trixie smiled. “Always with the joke.” The wind caught her hair again, and she reached up and tucked the lock behind her ear. “There’s something I really need to tell you,” she said.

I had a feeling this was not going to be good. At the very least, it was going to be awkward. Was she going to tell me she loved me? Was she going to ask me to leave Sarah? That seemed unthinkable. She was enticing, Trixie was. No doubt. She was beautiful. Exotic, even. She’d have no trouble fulfilling almost any man’s wildest fantasies. I’d be lying if I said none had ever crossed my mind.

But no matter how beautiful, how sexy Trixie might be, there was something she could never be.

She could never be Sarah.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “Whatever it is.”

“No,” Trixie said, her hand reaching up and touching my shirt. “I think, before we go any further, that you need to know my secret.”

I waited.

“That night,” she said. “When Zane Heighton, and Eldridge Smith, and Payne Fletcher, when the three of them got shot at the Kickstart?”

“Yes?”

“I saw it happen.”

My mouth felt very dry. “You saw it?”

“I was there.”

“Then you
are
a witness. If you tell the police what you saw, you can—”

Trixie touched a finger to my lips. “Zack, you don’t understand.”

“What?”

“I killed them, Zack. I killed them all.”

“Where was that place,” Leo wanted to know, “where we got pizza the other night?”

Sometimes it bugged Gary that, even though the Kickstart served food—some burgers, wings, fries, basic stuff—Leo always wanted to get something to eat from someplace else. The novelty of it, he guessed. The kid could eat, but he never got fat. Just stayed tall and stringy.

“Rocco’s,” Gary said.

“Yeah, it was good,” Leo said.

Miranda listened to all this as she counted up the night’s receipts. The Kickstart had closed half an hour ago, everyone had gone home, including the girls. Now it was just her, Gary and Leo, and Payne and Eldridge and Zane. Those three—sometimes Miranda thought of them as the Three Musketurds—were getting into the booze again. A good night would do that to them, prompt them to raid the bar’s fridge for free beers. And Payne had some coke, and was willing to share.

“We’re going out,” Gary said. “Get some fucking pizza. Anybody want some?”

The others said sure, yeah, bring back lots. Gary and Leo left. Miranda stayed at her desk, working.

She figured this would be the week. She was ready. She had enough put away. About half a mill. It seemed unbelievable, that she’d been able to skim off that much. But so much money went through that joint, and when you didn’t pay the legitimate bills, or paid just enough to keep the creditors off your back, and used the money you actually did have to pay invoices that you’d manufactured yourself, well, it all started to add up.

She’d already emptied out most of the accounts where she’d been squirreling away cash. She’d pulled together some fake identification. She’d come up with a new identity, for someone she’d decided to call Trixie.

Miranda was as ready as she’d ever be. She just had to pick her moment. To go when it felt right. Maybe just after a shift that was followed by a couple of days off. She’d have forty-eight hours’ lead time before Gary started to clue in to what was going on. By then she’d be far away, already be establishing her new life with her baby daughter. She’d change her hair color, do her makeup differently, whatever she could to distance herself from the woman known as Candace.

The guys were getting a bit rowdy. The hairs went up on the back of Miranda’s neck
. Don’t let them try anything,
she thought
. Not now. Not when I’m so close to pulling this all off.

And then there was Payne Fletcher, standing right next to her, a beer in one hand. And touching her hair with the other.

She recoiled.

“Hey, come on,” said Payne. “I’m just being friendly.”

Yeah, said the others. You got something against being friendly? But Miranda told them to leave her alone. She was working. Payne didn’t move away. He put his beer down and placed both of his hands on Miranda’s head, tried to turn her toward him.

“Stop it!” she said. Still in the chair, she tried to pull away, but Payne, standing next to her, was pulling her face toward the zipper of his jeans.

“How about a lollipop?” he asked.

Miranda had sworn to herself that she would never let this happen again. It was this promise to herself that allowed her to keep coming to work at the Kickstart, to share space with the men who’d assaulted her a few months earlier. It was part of the plan.

But she knew, if she was to be certain that it would never happen again, she’d have to be ready. Which was why she now always carried the gun that Eldon had taught her to use. The one she swore she’d never carry. She didn’t like guns. Too dangerous to have on you, she’d thought.

But you had to adapt.

“Come on,” Payne said, still holding on to Miranda’s head. The other two were making whooping noises. Someone said, “Me next.”

“Okay,” Miranda said. “But you have to let go of me.”

That sounded promising to Payne, and so he did. Miranda pushed back with her feet, the wheels of her computer chair sailing her over to the far end of her desk, where she’d left her purse.

Miranda reached into it, her fingers hunting for the weapon. She slipped her hand around the gun’s grip, felt the trigger under her index finger.

“What you doing?” Payne said. “You don’t need no condom for this.”

No, she thought, bringing the gun out of the purse. She didn’t.

I GUESS I WAS NINE YEARS OLD
when my friend Jeff Conklin, who, two years later, would find a dead guy, stole two Milky Way bars.

Most days, walking home after surviving another day with our Grade 4 teacher Miss Phelm (we referred to her as Miss Phlegm, given her habit of clearing her throat every twenty seconds), we would pop into Ted’s, a small corner store. We’d buy a bottle of Coke, maybe split a package of Twinkies. Ted had an excellent variety of snack foods. Potato chips, Fritos, licorice, dozens of different candy bars.

One day, Jeff told me to go over to the shelf of Hostess cupcakes, then call over to Ted at the cash register, and ask whether I could buy just one cupcake, even though they came in packages of two.