Today's Promises (19 page)

Fuck, man, it just can’t come to that.

Jaynie

T
he next day, we decide to return to the Lowry property.

It’s a lazy kind of Saturday, but not for Flynn and me. We spend the entirety of the afternoon combing through the work barn and the surrounding outdoor areas.

When we find nothing useful, we search the house.

We even search the old barn again on the off chance we missed something when we were up here with Detective Silver.

It’s an easy sweep of the old barn, since the excavation crew left the interior essentially destroyed. We find the stall walls torn down, the wood piled neatly in the corner, and the trunks emptied. And though the dirt floor has remained mostly intact, it’s clear from the way our sneakers sink into the soil that several feet of the barn floor was dug up and sifted for clues.

Resigned that Allison must have covered her tracks so well that nothing will ever come to light to implicate her in Debbie’s disappearance, I sit smack-dab in the middle of the mushy dirt floor and pull my knees up to my chin. I’d like to curl up in a ball and disappear, but the best I can do right now is lower my head to between my knees and close my eyes.

Blowing out a breath wrought with abandoned hope, I quietly declare, “We’re screwed, Flynn.”

I feel his warmth as he sits down beside me. “Hey,” he says encouragingly, “we’re not out of options yet.”

I lift my head, open my eyes, and gape over at him. “Are you high? There’s clearly nothing up here to implicate Allison of anything. I’d say that equates to us being screwed.”

He frowns. “Just because we haven’t found anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing here.”

I’m at the point of near exasperation. Can’t he see the truth?

“Jesus, Flynn, there’s no evidence, okay? It’s time for us to accept it.”

He reaches around to the back pocket of his jeans, and says quietly, “Maybe there is some evidence, Jaynie.”

I watch, wide-eyed, as he pulls out a vial of blood. “Holy shit, Flynn! Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes,” he replies, turning the vial over in his hands and peering at it like it may hold the key to everything. “It’s blood.”

“Who the hell does it belong to?” I ask, even though I have a feeling I know the answer.

Flynn says softly, “Uh, it just may be a sample of Debbie Canfield’s blood.”

“
May
be
or
is
, Flynn?”

His eyes focus on me as he says, “It’s
Debbie’s blood.”

Like a thunderbolt, it dawns on me where this blood must have come from.

“Oh, God, Flynn,” I exclaim, shaking my head. “You stole one of the vials of the missing girl’s blood from Detective Silver? When did this happen? Did you take it during the car ride up the day we met with him? God, you must have. What in the hell were you thinking? And where have you kept it all this time.”

“I kept it in a little cooler in the closet where I was keeping my candy stash,” he says. “And as for what I was thinking, I was thinking it may eventually come to this.”

“What does that mean?” I tentatively ask.

“Jaynie, I think you know.”

I do, but I just don’t want to say it. Flynn is going to use this blood to plant evidence.

“Flynn—” I begin.

He cuts me off. “I told you before that I’ll do
anything
to keep you safe.”

“Even if it means planting evidence,” I whisper.

“Even if, Jaynie.”

“Shit.” I stare at the vial of blood. “How’d you steal it, anyway? I didn’t notice anything amiss that day in the car.”

I glance up at him and, and, proudly, he says, “I guess all that time as a runaway, me living as a kid who had to steal to survive… Well, I guess it finally paid off. Remember the heavy coat I left in the detective’s car that day?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Of course, I remember. Flynn was too hot, having not planned for an early spring warming.

He goes on. “Then you also probably remember how Detective Silver laid my coat on the front seat before we got out of the car.”

“Yes, I do.”

“He did that to cover the files and the blood. He even told us it was good I didn’t need the coat, that I was actually doing him a favor since he could use it to cover Debbie’s file and blood samples from prying eyes.”

“Jesus, Flynn.”

“Anyway, when we got back in the car, and I grabbed up my coat, I also managed to snatch one of the vials of blood.”

“But Flynn, Detective Silver had to have noticed a vial went missing. Funny he never mentioned it.”

I’m at a loss as to how I should feel. Should I be elated or terrified?

“I guess he never noticed.” Flynn shrugs, and we both stare at the blood. “Or maybe he thought he lost it. After all, there was a lot of opening and closing of car doors that day. One of the vials could’ve easily fallen out onto the ground.”

“But a vial didn’t fall out.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“So what happens now?” I ask.

Flynn tilts up my chin so I have no choice but to tear my gaze from this blood that may turn out to be our saving grace.

With his steely gray eyes as determined as I’ve ever seen, he says, “Let’s go find a knife.”

Flynn

I
can’t believe we’re doing this. Or, rather, I can’t believe
I
am doing this. But it’s okay; I’ll deal with the fallout if it ever comes. Jaynie doesn’t need to go down with me. No need to have her directly involved with planting evidence.

Sure, she’ll probably get in some kind of trouble if we’re ever caught, simply for being at the Lowry premises while I did the deed. But if she doesn’t actively participate, she’ll be looking at nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Not too bad compared to what will happen to me.

“Flynn.” Jaynie sighs. Her frustration with me not allowing her to handle the knife or the blood we’re about to plant is showing as we get underway with our crime…or rather,
my
crime. “At least let me hold the knife while you pour the blood on it,” she practically begs.

No way
.

We’re standing in the middle of the kitchen in the Lowry house. Or, more accurately put, we’re in what remains of the kitchen. This room, like all the others in the house, has been ransacked. The table and chairs that once sat in the middle are busted to small pieces. Their scattered remains lie about, along with cabinet doors that have been ripped from the hinges. All the drawers have been pulled out as well, their contents strewn all over.

This cluttered mess made finding a good, sharp knife easy enough. There was one particularly lethal-looking blade wedged behind a broken chair leg. I picked it up and wiped it off, hopefully leaving it devoid of fingerprints.

But now I’ve reached the hard part—making this kitchen knife look like a murder weapon.

“I’m good,” I insist as Jaynie once again asks if I need assistance.

As I hold the handle of the knife with one hand that I’ve wrapped in an old dishrag, a measure taken to prevent transfer of my own prints, I balance the vial of blood in my other hand.

“I’m just going to pour a little bit of Debbie’s blood here and there,” I murmur.

“That should work,” Jaynie says, nodding encouragingly.

I tip the vial to pour the blood, but then I re-think my strategy.

“Hey, maybe I should pour a lot, and then wipe the blade off. That’s probably what someone would do with a bloody knife they’re planning to hide, right?”

Jaynie sighs. “I don’t know, Flynn. Just hurry, okay?”

Her eyes flitter about, like someone might walk in on us at any moment. I’m pretty certain that’s not going to happen, but there’s no telling her that. Now that we’re in the commission of a pretty major crime, she’s a nervous wreck, convinced that the police are going to do some random property check and catch us red-handed.

“I think I’ll pour and wipe,” I decide, at last.

“Whatever. That’ll work.”

I kick out the edges of an old towel I placed on the floor earlier to catch any dripping blood. “We should probably plant this towel with the knife,” I muse, more to myself than to Jaynie. “It’ll look like Allison used it too, seeing as it’s hers.”

Jaynie found the old towel up in Allison’s bedroom, kicked under what remained of her bed. I recognized it right away as belonging to Allison. The bubblegum pink color, her signature shade, gave it away.

Beyond the nauseating hue, however, I remember all too well from the days when Allison would prance around in front of me wearing only this towel, or one like it. Once she called me in to the adjoined bathroom and asked me to hand her what could’ve been this exact one. She was standing in the shower buck-naked, propositioning me with her eyes.

Allison was always hitting on me when I lived here, but to no avail. I despised that skanky bitch from the start. I couldn’t even bring myself to hate-fuck her. Though I sure am fucking her now, and my actions are brimming with hate.

Yes, it’s pure hatred I feel as I pour Debbie Canfield’s blood all over the knife, the excess dripping to the towel beneath in big crimson globs. When I pick up the pink towel and start to wipe the excess blood from the knife—as I imagine Allison would’ve done with the real items, if they exist—I murmur, “I know you killed her, you bitch. This may not be real evidence, but it’s going to be just as good.”

With the deed completed, Jaynie and I head out to the new barn, the one we used to work in, to plant the knife and the towel.

The plan is to hide these two items in a hidey-hole I once dug in the ground. It’s the only spot in the barn where one of the concrete slabs covering the floor ever came loose, which was kind of odd in a new structure. No matter. I noticed it last year and utilized the space beneath the slab as a hiding spot for food.

Five minutes later, I’m lifting up one end of that loose cement slab.

A centipede takes off as I quietly say to Jaynie, “The hole I dug is still here.”

“It was always a good hiding spot,” she replies.

“It was.”

I carefully place the knife in a hole that’s about two feet deep.

I then toss in the bloodied towel and quickly replace the concrete slab.

Standing, I turn to Jaynie and say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Jaynie

I
have so many mixed feelings regarding what Flynn and I did in the barn at the Lowry house. Planting evidence would surely land us in jail, if we are ever caught.

Hopefully, though, our plan will go off without a hitch.

“When should we call Detective Silver?” I ask as soon as we return to Lawrence. “I’m just ready for this thing to end.”

We’re trudging up the stairs to our rented room, but the hour is late.

Flynn stops on the step above me. He turns to me in the darkness, his face cast in the long shadows of the stairwell. Even in the dark, it’s clear he’s also struggling with what we did.

Closing his eyes, he leans back against the wall in the narrow corridor. “I don’t know, Jaynie… Soon, I guess.”

He seems exhausted, though I suspect it’s the effect of the mental toll that comes from what we had to do to stay safe from Allison. I wish I could bear more of his burden. I hate that he wouldn’t allow me to be more directly involved with the planting of the knife and towel. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that by accompanying him every step of the way, even if I didn’t handle the evidence directly, I’d still go to prison.