Follow Her Home (6 page)

I slid my car into its space crooked and hasty like I was stealing home. I slipped the stick to Neutral, yanked on the emergency brake, and stepped out of my seat without turning off the engine. I let myself hesitate for just a few seconds, then reached in for the latch. I closed my eyes and pulled until it popped, and the trunk was open—I gave the door enough force to rise, and I stood back as it rose, with the measured theatrical pace of an elevator unsealing, revealing.

Bile bloomed harsh and thorny at the back of my throat. I suppose I already knew what was in there. In the dark of a Los Angeles night, I had been clubbed down and left out cold—this was a new reality with new rules, and it was about time to toll the body count.

Marlowe always managed to describe every detail of a room before coolly settling his writer's eye on the petrified body with bound ankles and a knife in its face, sprawled out in a pool of gore on the middle of the musty oriental carpet that looked, forty years ago, like it had seen better days. My trunk offered little to work with, but I wouldn't have noticed the gardens of Versailles jammed into that spare space for the fact of death staring at me from within.

I grabbed my knees, turned my head to the right, and threw up. A spotted confection of brown, orange, and pink hit the pavement like spilled chunky soup. By the time it settled into a couple of motionless pools, I was vomiting again. I huffed deeply, one, two, one, two, then heaved until there was nothing left.

I spit and lifted a hand from where it gripped my kneecap to wipe the slime from my mouth on the flat of my wrist. I forced myself to look at the body.

It was a he—a strange he, thank heavens. His long, string-bean frame lay crumpled at the hips, knees collapsed and pointing to the back of my trunk. His candy-bright red hair was well kept, even after what had to have been a bumpier night than mine, spiffy with gel in a perfectly executed interpretation of bed head. He wore a close-fitting button-down shirt in white and lilac pinstripes, unbuttoned a button or two too low. The lean expanse of tan skin peeking out from underneath was unnaturally hairless. Brown Ferragamo loafers and thin, distressed blue jeans finished the outfit. His torso was contorted so that he lay on his back with his face looking up at me.

It was an unlovable face, with twisted eyebrows, meager chapped lips, and a nose so narrow it barely had a bulb. When it mattered, maybe hours, maybe days ago, he might have been somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-nine, thirty-one—it didn't matter anymore. His muddy brown eyes were open, fixed in panic and disbelief.

There was no blood that I could see, no holes, but a crude ribbon of bruises and narrow scratches spread across his neck. Strangled, if I had to guess. The fingernail marks might have been his own.

I lowered the back of my hand into the trunk space and touched it, just barely, to the dead man's cheek. I don't know what I expected to gain from this gesture, but it proved pointless. The temperature—neither notably hot nor cold—was unrevealing, and the skin felt like regular old cheek skin, only I knew it was dead, and I couldn't untouch it. I scraped the back of my hand against the skirt of my dress, but I couldn't unfeel the touch I absorbed with my skin even as the fact of sensation fled from my mind. I rubbed and rubbed, trying not to keep staring at the corpse. I stopped when it started to smart, and I shook out my hand, then popped the wrist. The sound was crisp and satisfying, and I popped the other and cracked every knuckle I knew I had. The garage echoed.

I pulled down on the lid of my trunk and squatted on the floor of the garage, my heels hovering in their flip-flops. I held it like that, not quite closed, and I buried one eye in the stretched skin of an extended arm. I whimpered like a stupid pup, and I was aware of how pathetic I looked, squatting and shivering among the splashes of my vomit.

A minute later, I closed the trunk and forced myself to my feet. I needed a phone like I'd never needed a phone. I rounded the side of my car, got in, and killed the engine. I smiled a little at my brain's use of that stock phrase—a killed engine up front, a murdered body in back. The garage held a tight silence, the type that comes between the drips of a leaky faucet. My shoes scratched the pavement like rude critters scurrying, cluttering. I left the garage and plodded to my apartment tower, one heavy shuffle at a time, trying to keep my balance while the world swirled around me.

I walked into the entryway of my building and hit the button for the elevator. A doorman seated on a metal stool watched me from a corner, wedged between a courtesy phone and a wall of mailboxes. I crossed my arms and shifted my weight from foot to foot. The elevators in my building were in dire need of remodeling. A pressed button gave no light, and there was no telling when a car would arrive. The doorman stared at me for a full two minutes before letting me know that the elevators were down.

“Thanks. I've only been standing here since Tuesday.” I spun on a used-up heel and rounded my way through a very heavy door into the echoing concrete cave of a stairwell. The iron steps wobbled and clanged in lazy noisy baritones under my tired, plodding gait. I gripped the railing as I wound my way up.

I heard the old telephone ringing from the hallway as I approached 4J. I was the last twenty-something in the Los Angeles area who still had a landline. Even the cable guy gave me a look when I requested it, all high eyebrows and crooked smile. The phone itself was an antique—rotary dial, earpiece like a fancy black barbell, fat trapezoid body, and, of course, a ring like the angry clatter of the entire cookware section of Bed Bath & Beyond falling into the aisles at once. I loved that ring as much as everyone else hated it, and as I shimmied my keys into the lock, I was aware that I had never dreaded hearing it until now. I gave the door a shove with my upper arm and stumbled into my studio bursting with that furious tin sound.

I stood still in the doorway and let it ring, and ring, and ring, the receiver nearly jumping in its seat. The clock in the TV stand said 7:42
A.M.
in rude red dots and dashes. The ringing stopped, and I slipped out of my shoes and approached the old phone where it sat, dressing up a vanilla-wooden Ikea coffee table with screw-in peg legs. I dropped onto the couch and forgot to relax, forgot to appreciate the way the old leather cushion sank in just enough to welcome a worn-out behind. I leaned forward, propped my elbows on my knees, rested nose and chin in a two-handed finger gun, and waited for the next call.

The only person who might call me on my landline, especially at this hour, was Luke, who knew there was no other way to reach me. Even so, I sat stone still as terror churned in my stomach.

The wait was short. This time I picked up after one ring. I took a deep, quiet breath, careful not to make a sound. “Hello?” The greeting did not come out as bright and clear and cool as it had in the split-second preview that played in my head, but neither did my booming heartbeat leak into the cadence.

“Welcome home, Miss Song.” The voice was gentle, teasing. I pictured a man of medium height and unknowable age with Talented Mr. Ripley hair, smiling wryly over a cup of coffee. My murderer had good PR.

I swallowed, running my tongue across the roof of my mouth. “Can you tell me what you're driving so I can hang up and call my building manager?”

There was just the tiniest window of silence on the line, and I might have imagined that. “I'm afraid that wouldn't be in your best interest.”

“Please, tell me what is.”

“Stay out of trouble, and you might be left alone. You're just a girl, Miss Song. I don't know what possessed you to stick your nose where it doesn't belong. Bad things happen when you do that.” His tone was sweet, but cold and stiff.

I could hear him waiting, unmoved but impatient, for a response. Marlowe always had thugs warning him to keep his nose clean—it was a requisite conversation in every book. Marlowe never listened. If I had learned one thing in the last ten hours, it was that I was no Marlowe. I couldn't take violence and death with his even, evaluative stance, and danger did what danger does—it scared me.

“I will stay out of trouble,” I said, then put down the receiver with a passive click. I couldn't have delayed more than a few seconds before going for the phone again to call the cops, but the bad guy had my number.

The sugar was gone from his voice, and he enunciated like he was cutting steel. “I assume that you won't be involving the police. I will be listening.” I heard three dry taps, fingernails hitting the speaker on the other end of the line.

I hesitated, and before I could respond, he started to speak again. “My employer”—he said it just like in the movies, with utter certainty and awed loyalty—“is a busy person, but my employer is willing to take the time to meet with your family, all the way out in Texas. I've heard all about your beautiful little sister. Your poor mother. Two daughters who just can't stay out of trouble.”

I could tell from the lilt in his voice that he smiled with just the corners of his mouth as he spoke. He knew he was dealing in clichés, and he knew that the clichés would do just fine. Worse, he knew about Iris, and he was taunting me, knowing it wouldn't matter. The strongest poker hands never change, never lose. There was no need for cleverness. The bald, pulp threats glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and when the dial tone sounded a minute later, I realized I had no conception of when, cat-footed, he had disappeared from the other end of the line.

*   *   *

I waited a full day to approach Iris after I talked to Paul. She had been avoiding me since I came home, though not in the physical sense. We shared a room, after all, and she accepted my gentle attentions, my shy, open-ended inquiries as to her general state of mind. It felt strange to be home, knowing that for the first time, I was not in tune with my sister. She'd had experiences, important life moments, without reporting them in whispers before we fell asleep. I had moved away, left our room, and lost her confidence. Now that I was home for the next three months, I needed to win her back. I decided to let her get used to me, let her recall my smell and the sound of my voice without the filter of telephone wire. I spent those first days blending back into the space that we had shared for years.

On my fifth night home, I turned our light back on twenty minutes after we went to bed. I didn't need to ask if she was still awake.

I cleared my throat. “Iris, do you trust me?” My words hung in the air, cold and without echo. “You trust me, don't you?” I could hear her holding her breath, lying still, hoping I'd let her pretend to sleep. “I know you're awake. We have to talk about this sometime.” I sat up and leaned on one elbow, facing her. Our twin beds were separated by less than three feet of carpet. Iris lay in fetal position, her head down, knees pointed toward me. “This is important. If you won't talk to me I'm going to have to tell Mom.”

The threat tasted dirty leaving my mouth, but I knew as it did that I meant it, and that I was in the right. Iris and I had buried each other's secrets since we were children. As much as we loved each other, we were siblings born two years apart—until at least middle school, our fights were routine and sometimes furious. Still, we never stooped to tattling. Our stern mother wasn't a last resort so much as a nonoption.

She opened her eyes but kept them averted. “You can't tell Mom. I will die if you do.”

“I have to do something, Iris.”

“No, you don't.”

I collected my words. I avoided landmines like
keep
and
baby
. “What's your plan?”

She melted into herself on the other bed, shivering with tears. I got out from under my covers and sat beside her, stroking her unwashed hair. Comforting Iris came naturally, like it was something I was born to do. I waited for her sobs to subside.

Minutes later, she whispered, “I can't keep it.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don't know. I want it to come back in ten years.”

She was finally talking to me, and I figured out fast that she would stop talking about her health, her pregnancy, and her state of mind if I said a word about the father. I stroked her back until she fell asleep, and I drifted off as I held her.

A few days later, she rested her hand on mine as I drove her home from the clinic. Iris, who had never had a job or a large allowance, paid for the procedure with a small number of clean bills. I waited another few nights to ask more questions.

*   *   *

Iris's teenage face spread across my mind like a picture coming into focus. I lowered the receiver into its cradle, letting it drop gently with a slow uncurling of my fingers from around its waist.

Marlowe would've picked it back up and called the police. Even he didn't mess around too much when a corpse was involved. But Marlowe never spoke of a family, or close relationships. There were few threats that could stop him cold.

I let myself linger on the edge of the couch for a few seconds before bolting upright and marching to the bathroom. I peeled myself out of my dress, unhooked my bra, and stepped out of my underwear. I picked up each article of clothing in turn and passed it inch by inch over the flat edge of my sink, scanning the cloth with two fingers. I didn't know how high-tech criminals were these days, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but it made me feel better to do something, so I settled on checking for bugs. I satisfied myself that I was clean, at least as far as I could tell, and grabbed a coarse milk-and-coffee towel and set it on top of the closed toilet.

I turned on the hot water in my bathtub and lifted the pull for a shower. I cupped a hand in the path of the spray, which this morning seemed much too limp to scour me clean. I waited for it to get warm, then I stepped in, facing away from the showerhead. My scalp stung, but I shampooed twice, conditioned twice, soaped twice, and stood soaking in the hot pour for minutes after, breathing in the antiseptic, lemon vapor before it washed down the drain with the emulsified sweat and fatigue of my body. I pondered my next move, and whether I even had a turn coming.