Page 9

Bobby came. Then more deputies came. And then the sheriff.

Their cruisers filled the alley with spinning light, the rumble of engines, the choking sweetness of exhaust.

I managed to stuff Channelle’s gloves—which I’d taken from her room—into my back pocket before anyone noticed.

Everyone seemed to know what to do. Of course they did—this was their job. As Salk and Dahlberg began putting up a perimeter, Bobby helped Indira into his cruiser. Then he moved me to the end of the alley, where I couldn’t see Channelle anymore. I hadn’t realized I was shaking until he put a blanket around my shoulders.

“I know I said I was going to talk to Millie,” I said, but my lips felt numb, and the words sounded funny. “But I—”

“We can talk about it later,” Bobby said. And then he took me by the arms, the emergency blanket crinkling under his fingers, and I couldn’t tell if he wanted to shake me or if he was trying to brace himself. He swallowed. And then he said, “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

To any amateur snoops—er, sleuths out there, let me tell you: if that didn’t take the remaining wind out of my sails.

I closed my eyes, and he pulled me into a hug.

It felt like a long time before I could say, “I hate this.”

He rubbed my back.

“It’s awful,” I whispered. “It’s always so awful.”

“I know,” he said, and he threaded his fingers through the hair on the back of my head, as though he were holding me together. And maybe he was.

When I was less of a mess, I told my story to Bobby first—with some light editing to make it sound less like, um, burglary. And then I told it again to the sheriff.

When I finished, she said, “The motel doesn’t have any working security cameras, and I’m going to guess we won’t find any prints.”

After a heartbeat, I realized that was kind of a question. Face heating, I said, “I don’t think you will.”

The sheriff made an unhappy sound. “We didn’t see any shredded paperwork in the dumpster, but we’ll keep looking. Meanwhile, I’m going to call the station and have them release Keme. I want Bobby to take him home, and I want you to keep him there tonight. Understand?”

Several long seconds passed before I said, “Wait, for real?”

“Yes, Dash, for real. There’s a legitimate explanation for how his clothing came to be at that scene—JT kept the belongings of any evicted tenants in his garage. Keme’s clothes were literally at the scene of the crime. Add to that, the fact that he was at the station while the RV park’s office was being broken into and Channelle Haskins was killed, and I think there’s enough doubt about his role in events that I—and the district attorney—don’t feel comfortable charging him at this point.” Her voice softened. “He’s not doing well, Dash.”

I caught that mention of the break-in at the RV park, but my throat was too tight to speak, so I only nodded.

“Let me know if you need anything,” the sheriff said.

It sounded like a dismissal, so before she could step away, I managed to ask, “How did she die?”

The sheriff glanced back. Blue and red light chased the shadows across her face, and I thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “It looks like she was hit by a car.”

A moment later, Bobby’s hand was on my shoulder, and he said, “Let’s go.”

We split up and went our separate ways: I drove Indira back to Hemlock House in the Pilot, and Bobby went back to the station in his cruiser. I wasn’t sure how Indira had gotten out to the Bay Bridge Suites without a car, but I had a sneaking suspicion it involved a particularly plangent fortysomething who referred to their bathrobe as their “dressing gown.” On the drive, Indira was quiet. In the night’s weak, ambient light, she looked tired, and she kept reaching up to check her hair. When we passed through the woods of Sitka spruce and fir and pine, and the perfume of balsam and rich duff filtered into the SUV, there was only the light of the dash to illuminate us, and I had the strangest sensation that we were both ghosts.

When we got home, Hemlock House sat on the bluffs, its windows warm and glowing. You might expect a Class V haunted mansion perched up on the sea cliffs to look, well, spooky. And yes, the Last Picks and I had gone all out with the Halloween décor—Millie was an absolute fiend for spider webs, as I’d discovered last year, and Keme, in a rare moment of weakness, had come close to begging for the giant skeleton in the front yard. That memory—of the surly teenage boy reluctantly explaining why we had to have the giant skeleton, while I tried not to goggle at him and Bobby gave me stern looks—seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago. My eyes stung, and I took deep breaths and shoved away the image of the rage-filled stranger from the sheriff’s station.

I dropped Indira off at the front door, and as she went in, I parked the Pilot in the coach house. When I got inside, I found everyone waiting in the hall.

And everyone, in this case, included Louis.

He was standing with his arm around Millie, one foot raised, his sneaker planted on a priceless Victorian, uh, commode (I hate calling it that—it’s just a chest of drawers). He wore ripped jeans, a flannel over a T-shirt that had a logo I didn’t recognize, a gold curb chain, a backward baseball cap, and hands down the most sparkliest earrings I’d ever seen on anyone outside a drag bar. (Or honestly inside a drag bar.) He was shushing Millie, who was sobbing uncontrollably, by saying with what sounded like forced understanding, “Not so loud, babe.”

Fox stood a few feet away. They were dressed in what I could only describe as “Robin Hood for Her”—a cowled green tunic, some sort of leather vest-and-gloves combo that suggested archery, floral tights, and (vegan) snakeskin boots with little dragons on the tips of their curled toes. In that particular moment, Fox looked like they were wishing some enterprising, uh, Saxon (is that right?) would run Louis through with a broadsword. Indira’s expression wasn’t far off—she was staring at Louis like she was about to reach for her deboning knife.

Louis switched to the saccharine voice a lot of people use with upset children. “You want to go wash your face, honey? Why don’t you go calm down and then clean yourself up? You don’t want Jordan and Erik to see you all blotchy, right?”

Fox’s eyes didn’t actually flash red, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of those little dragons perched on the toes of their boots give an angry puff.

Before anything could happen, though, Millie caught sight of me and said, “DASH!”

“Babe,” Louis said, “my ear—”

“IS HE OKAY? IS KEME OKAY? WHAT DID HE LOOK LIKE? WHAT DID HE SAY? IS HE REALLY COMING HOME?”

By some miracle, the sonic buffeting hadn’t knocked me tail-over-teakettle, but it did take me a moment to descramble my brain. I decided to answer the safest questions first. “He’s okay. And yes, he’s coming home. Bobby should be back with him in a few minutes.”

“That’s too bad,” Louis said, “because we’ve got this party—”

“He’ll be hungry,” Indira said. “Millie, why don’t you help me in the kitchen?”

Louis opened his mouth to say something, but apparently he had some brains, because he stopped himself. That was probably because Indira has this way of saying things, and you can’t argue with her. Like, she tells you that it’s time to wash all the pillowcases, and four hours later, you’re still unzipping pillows. Or one time, we’d been walking downtown, and this tourist in a ridiculously oversized pickup kept revving his engine and trying to inch forward (in spite of the foot traffic), and Indira looked at him and said, Stop .

And he turned. his engine. off.

Anyway, Louis looked like he was still experiencing some of that when Indira took Millie by the shoulders and steered her toward the kitchen.

As they left, Fox leaned over to me and whispered, “You’re on your own. If that young man talks over me one more time, I’m not responsible for my actions.” Then, in a louder voice—with a feigned casualness clearly meant for Louis’s benefit—Fox added, “Well, I must get back to my etchings—”

I grabbed their arm. “No, you mustn’t.”

Fox bared their teeth at me in what was definitely not a smile.

“You do etchings?” Louis asked Fox. I mean, Louis was technically looking at his phone—probably typing a message to Jace or Chad or some equally obnoxious-sounding guy—but the question was clearly meant for Fox. Before Fox could answer, though, Louis continued, “That’s dope, dude. You know what you should do? You should do them on the boardwalk. You know those really funny ones where they make you have a big head and you’re driving a race car?”

I tightened my grip on Fox, not that it would do any good.

“Do you mean,” Fox asked with poisonous sweetness, “caricatures?”

“Dude, you’re going to make so much money.” And then Louis looked up and shot Fox finger pistols. “You owe me a commish!”

If a commish consisted of being shot, Robin Hood-style, then I thought Louis was likely to get his commish sooner than he expected.

“Let it go,” I whispered to Fox. “He’s trying to be nice.”

“He called me a sidewalk artist,” Fox snapped. If they’d had a cape, they would have been flinging it back dramatically, but they settled for stomping one of the dragon-tipped boots. “That is an insult that cannot be ignored.”

“Well, ignore it,” I said. The sound came of the front door opening, and I added, “For at least five more minutes.”

Bobby poked his head into the hall and gestured to me. I released Fox’s arm—not without some misgivings—and started to excuse myself, but Louis was laughing at a video he was watching on his phone, and he didn’t even seem to notice when I walked away.

“Is everything okay?” I whispered to Bobby. “How is he?”

Bobby sent me a level look, but he didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “He doesn’t want to stay here.”

“What?”

“He didn’t want to come with me. And then he tried to get out of the car twice at stoplights.” Frustration tangled Bobby’s usually even tone. “And he won’t say anything.”

Sure enough, as we stepped into the vestibule, Keme was unlocking the front door.

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you going?”

He shot me a look over his shoulder.

It was hard to remember the boy from a few weeks ago, the one who had challenged me to a Sour Patch Kids-eating contest and who had laughed when I’d panicked because my mouth got too tingly after approximately eight hundred Sour Patch Kids. The same Keme who had given me a wedgie in front of Bobby. (Bobby had tried not to laugh. Notice the word tried .) The same Keme who had fallen asleep with his head propped against my knee after six and a half hours of Naruto. This Keme, the one in front of me, stared through me with dull, dead eyes, his face blank with a kind of directionless hostility. He wouldn’t make eye contact, and it made me feel like I was invisible. (Invisible, but still somehow managing to piss him off.)

So what? It didn’t mean anything, I told myself. He’d been through a terrible experience—something most people would never have to deal with. He was scared, and he was hurting, and he was barely more than a child. A lot of adults wouldn’t have handled themselves as well as he had. If anger was the best way for Keme to protect himself in this moment, then that was okay. I could deal with Keme being angry at me. Right then, he needed someone to remind him that he had people who loved him and cared about him. And even though our last encounter hadn’t gone so well, even though it had left me with doubts about how much of my relationship with Keme I had misunderstood or projected or simply imagined, I still wanted to do the right thing for him.

I walked forward, speaking softly as I closed the distance between us. “Why don’t you come in and clean up? Take a shower, change clothes. Indira’s making you something to eat, and I bet you need a good night’s sleep—”

I reached out to touch his shoulder. He moved so fast he was a blur, slapping my hand away. Then he drew in on himself. He wrapped his arms around his chest, and his shoulders curved inward. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. My hand stung, and the sting was already growing into a throbbing pain that told me Keme had hit me as hard as he could. It ran up my arm, into my brain. For a moment, I stood there, my hand still outstretched. Then I drew it back toward me. I realized with something like shame that my mouth was still open.

“Keme,” Bobby said, and it was about as harshly as I’d ever heard him speak to anyone. “What was that?”

“It’s okay,” I said, but my voice trembled. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s not okay. You can’t hit people. And Dash is trying so hard to be kind to you. What’s wrong with you?”

Keme didn’t look at either of us. I thought, if he’d been able to, he would have run out the door right then, but he only shrank in on himself more.

“It’s okay,” I said again, a little more believably this time. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten in your space. Listen, I know it’s been a hard couple of days for you. Why don’t you stay the night? If you still want to go somewhere else in the morning, Bobby or I can give you a ride.”

He didn’t relax, not exactly. But some of that wire-tight tension loosened, and when I nudged Bobby toward the hall, Keme followed us.

Fox saw us first, and they let out a gasp that from anyone else would have been way too dramatic. They reached Keme before I could stop them—or warn them—and opened their arms for a hug.

Instead of the whip-crack blow I expected, though, Keme stood still and let Fox embrace him.

“My dear, dear boy,” Fox said, and to my surprise, their voice cracked. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay now.”

It should have sounded trite. Or melodramatic. But instead, it sounded like heartbreak, and like someone who was too old and too wise to believe what they were saying—and yet, somehow, still hoped it might be true.

When Fox released Keme and stepped back, Louis looked up from his phone. “What up, killer?” he said with a grin. And then he held out his fist. “Dead man walking on the green mile. Did you get any prison tats?”

Keme stared at him. You’ve heard the expression, I’m sure, if looks could kill . Well, if looks could draw and quarter and then drag behind a truck on a bad stretch of road. After a moment, Louis’s grin faltered, and he dropped his hand.

“Louis,” Bobby said, “why don’t you help me get everybody a drink?” He shot me a glance. “If that’s okay.”

“We’re fine,” I said.

Bobby didn’t look as convinced as I’d hoped, but he directed Louis into the living room—and, in the process, probably prevented a murder.

“Do you want to shower first?” I asked. “If you need some clean clothes, I can grab something from Bobby—”

Before I could finish, Millie tornadoed into the hall. Barefoot and sopping wet, Millie is five-feet flat and weighs a hundred pounds. She’s blond, she always has flyaways, and her general vibe (on a good day) is caffeinated manic kindness. Right then, though, she was like a force of nature.

“KEME!”

I swear to God: an irreplaceable Ming vase wobbled on its stand.

She charged toward him, and she must have slowed down at the last moment, otherwise it would have been like when they fire neutrinos into other neutrinos. Or into atoms. Or however they make atomic bombs explode. (It’s science—look it up on Wikipedia.) Instead of a mushroom cloud, there was just Keme’s surprised—and slightly pained—grunt, and the crack of bones and flesh colliding. Millie’s arms wrapped around him, and Keme rocked backward. It was a small miracle they somehow managed to remain on their feet.

“OH MY GOD, KEME! ARE YOU OKAY?”

The boy stood rigidly, arms at his sides. He made no effort to hug Millie back. For that matter, he made no effort to look like he was enjoying the embrace. Millie might as well have been a stranger who had grabbed him on the street, instead of—well, Millie.

“WE’VE BEEN SO WORRIED ABOUT YOU!” Millie leaned back to get a look at his face. “ I’VE BEEN SO WORRIED.”

She paused, as though Keme might say something. But Keme was pulling his now-familiar trick of not looking directly at her, and if anything, he seemed even tenser.

When it became clear Keme wasn’t going to respond, Millie looked around. She seemed only to realize then that the rest of us were there, and with what must have taken an agonizing effort to lower her voice, she asked, “Can we talk? I really need to talk to you.”

Keme mumbled something I couldn’t hear. Then he wriggled out of Millie’s grasp and padded toward the stairs. Millie stared after him. Her eyes and nose were still red from her earlier crying, and now fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. That, more than anything else—her silence—cut me to pieces.

Indira entered the hall as Keme took the first step up the stairs. In that instant, the mixture of happiness and relief in her face was so sharp it was painful to look at. And then she must have noticed how the energy in the room had changed, and the fact that Keme was on his way upstairs. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, and with something like shock, I realized I’d never seen Indira in the clutches of uncertainty before. When she finally spoke, her voice had an unfamiliar note somewhere between good cheer and desperation. “Dinner is almost ready.”

Keme continued up the stairs without looking back.

“I made your favorite,” Indira said. Pain gleamed in her face as her voice trailed off.

In the silence that followed, from upstairs came the sound of a door thumping shut.