Playing Dead

CHAPTER 14

Christy King was a sixteen-year-old sent to Halo Ranch from the Las Vegas foster care system, a one-time runaway who hyperventilated every time she stuck her foot in the stirrup.

I was suddenly, irrationally consumed with guilt about her.

Had I been kind enough?

Before the state snatched her up, Christy had been beaten by a pimp almost daily for a year. She had arrived at Halo near comatose emotionally. A couple of times at the stables, when I pushed her too hard to get on the horse, she keeled over at my feet.

I think I had been kind. After ten lessons, she was able to saddle up. After eighteen lessons, she sat on the horse. After twenty-five lessons, she walked the horse around the pen with me holding the reins. After thirty lessons, she rode the horse, by herself, fifty yards and back. She never worked up to a trot, but we declared victory.

I must have been kind, because she made progress both in the stable and away from it. She hugged me goodbye on her last day, as a social worker and her new foster family waited awkwardly by a Volvo station wagon. She said that I’d changed her life. That she’d never forget me.

Yes, surely I was kind.

But I didn’t really understand. I didn’t have a clue how it felt to have her breath sucked away, her body and brain collaborating in a war against her soul.

The helplessness.

The desire to run.

Not until now.

After lunch, I returned to the house, opened the door to Daddy’s home office, and fired up his copier. In three hours, Jack Smith would be breathing down my neck again.

He promised to meet me back at the ranch with his notes and files on the Marchetti case. I promised to reciprocate with the contents of the safe deposit box.

I didn’t mention to Jack that Lyle would be joining us. Lyle wanted his own copies of the checks and newspaper articles and didn’t mind the drive over to pick them up. Neither of us thought it was a good idea to copy them in the middle of a curious newsroom. And he was eager to get a good look at Jack himself.

As for me, I wanted to spend a little alone time with the newspaper articles before either of them arrived.

I left my MacBook charging on top of the dryer and spread the seven yellowed articles out on Mama’s desk. The late-afternoon sun drifted in like the cone of a spotlight, doing its best to comfort me.

My mother was a fan of riddles. Every kid in elementary school wanted an invitation to our Halloween parties because of the elaborate treasure hunts she devised.

Blood red and dead in a bed. A clue stuck in the thorns of a withered rosebush. The only place where death comes before life. A slip of paper peeking out of the D’s of our ancient Webster’s dictionary.

I pushed away the memories. My clever mother’s mind was gone, poof, like it had been sucked out by a vacuum cleaner, leaving a few dust bunnies and me struggling to figure out the most difficult riddle of her life.

These newspaper articles meant something important to her, I was sure.

I started with the murdered girl in Oklahoma. It was hard to glean much from the faded picture of Jennifer Coogan, except that she was pretty and wore a crown. The headline was brutal and to the point: OU STUDENT SHOT, RAPED, AND DUMPED IN LITTLE RIVER, with an insensitive underline: Police Say Former Miss National Teenager Runner-up Unrecognizable When Found.

Twenty-five years ago, on the last night of her life, Jennifer Coogan was nineteen. She had just finished her freshman year at the University of Oklahoma and was waitressing back home in Idabel for the summer, living with her parents. Idabel surely was the safest place in the world for her to be that summer, except it wasn’t. After closing up after a late-night shift at a local restaurant called the Cedar House, she walked to her ’72 baby blue convertible and met the devil that her Baptist preacher ranted about on Sunday mornings.

If I’d learned anything from Grandaddy, it was that small towns were microcosms of big cities. Evil thrived quietly behind the screen doors.

The article was brief and didn’t get into a lot of detail. Nineteen-year-old Jennifer was raped, tortured, shot twice in the back of the head, and tossed into a local river. No suspects yet. The first inexplicable murder in Idabel in forty years. End of story.

I shivered despite the sun’s efforts. Was Anthony Marchetti involved in this? Was that the connection? The murder could be his work, but why would a Chicago mobster care about a young girl in the boonies of Oklahoma?

I moved on, poring over every word of every article with Mama in mind, trying to find anything that would connect her to the stories or at least something that tied them together. Most had been clipped from unremarkable newspapers from far-ranging cities in Oklahoma, South Dakota, New York. Four out of the seven contained either misspellings or grammatical errors, a sad commentary on the future of the English language and journalism in general.

My favorite wasn’t a story but a captioned picture of an ambulance driver in Boone, North Carolina, with a little gap-toothed girl who held the large bean he’d pulled from her nostril. The EMT looked about eighteen, the kind of skinny, pale kid who sat unnoticed at the back of science class until you needed a pencil and then he’d always loan you one. His sheepish grin lit the photograph with an element of wonder that he’d achieved the kind of hero status where flashbulbs go off.

Wait a minute. Staring at that ambulance driver, I suddenly saw a connection, one that seemed unlikely to be coincidental.

The picture and the six other stories each appeared on an inside page, at the top right or left corner, so every one included a dateline and the name of the newspaper. With the bean hero’s photograph, the clipper had taken extra precautions to include the date and city, making an awkward dogleg with the scissors.

Maybe the stories weren’t important. Maybe the places and dates were. I ran to the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer that used to hold our school supplies.

Way at the back, I found what I wanted, an old but extra-large map of the United States, last used for a weekend-killing geography project assigned by Mrs. Stateler, known less affectionately in the halls of Ponder Middle as Mrs. Hate-her.

I grabbed the newspaper articles from the desk, along with a black marker, and spread the map on the kitchen table. I attached a number, 1 through 7, to each of the articles, organizing them chronologically by date. Then I wrote the corresponding number for each town and city on the map. With an unsteady hand, I drew a crooked line on the map, connecting them.

1. Norman, Okla. (Oct. 7, 1986)

2. Idabel, Okla. (June 22, 1987)

3. Austin, Tex. (August 1, 1987)

4. Boone, N.C. (Dec. 24, 1989)

5. Boulder, Colo. (March 25, 1990)

6. Sioux Falls, S.D. (Sept. 7, 1992)

7. Rochester, N.Y. (Jan. 17, 1996)

Could this be the path of a serial killer? If so, why wasn’t every story about a murder? Was it another of Mama’s clues, the answer encrypted in the words? Or in the numbers? I stared at the map, trying different approaches, before total frustration kicked in.

Then I piled the newspaper articles onto the map and carried the whole mess back to the utility room. With random tacks from Mama’s drawer, I stuck the map to the wall above the desk and tacked the newspaper articles near their cities of origin.

I still couldn’t see a pattern.

I turned to my laptop with the idea of researching the newspaper stories further, but the internet refused to connect despite the twenty-year-old technician who assured me this morning that it was up and running like a jackrabbit.

What the hell.

Was someone messing with that, too?

Lyle’s T-shirt read: “My Kid’s an Honor Roll Student at CHHS.”

Lyle didn’t have any kids at CHHS. He didn’t have any kids.

“Jack Smith seems to check out,” he said, without preamble, as soon as I opened the door. “The switchboard operator at the magazine did direct me to a voicemail box for a Jack Smith. I’d feel better if I’d been able to talk to my friend who works at Texas Monthly, but he’s out of town.”

I pointed to a gray Buick sedan speeding up the road. “Let’s wait here. It will take him one minute and twenty seconds to reach the driveway.”

Lyle raised an eyebrow.

“Daddy exacted a curfew. In high school, Sadie and I put a stopwatch to almost every route we traveled.” Seconds mattered. Another of Daddy’s life lessons.

I was wrong. Jack made it in half my time, kicking up a long tsunami of dust. He slammed the car door, striding up to the house with one hand empty and the other still encased in a sling.

“Damn GPS,” he grumbled. Then, rudely, “Who’s this?”

“Lyle, an old friend of the family’s,” I answered. “A journalist, just like you. An editor at the Fort Worth newspaper. Where are the files you promised me?”

Of course he wouldn’t live up to his word, I realized furiously. What was I thinking?

“Nice to meet you, Lyle.” Jack stuck out his hand, surprising me.

He stared at Lyle’s manic hair, the T-shirt that advertised him as a proud papa. “What’s your kid’s GPA?”

Lyle grunted something unintelligible.

We settled into three chairs near the fireplace in the living room. I didn’t offer the standard glass of iced tea, a requisite for any guest in the McCloud household when it was under Granny’s thumb, even those guests we harbored ill feelings toward. Love your enemy and all that. Offer extra lumps of sugar.

“No files,” Jack said. “My source started to freak out.” Before I could protest, he added, “However, I want to share what I can. Do you remember someone named Angel Martinez?”

I shook my head.

“He was one of the federal marshals on the case when you were a kid. Your grandfather trained him in one of his recruiting classes and then handpicked him years ago to protect your family one summer.”

“I don’t know an Angel Martinez,” I insisted. But apparently my grandfather did. How many other people had lied to me? His days as a federal marshal were well behind him by the time we played the horsey game on his knee.

“Angel spent three months here at your place when you were little. It was the last time your mother accepted official witness protection.”

“You mean Martin?” I asked, numbly. Martin, the beautiful Mexican migrant worker, the beneficiary of my first crush. The dark stranger who showed up, just like Granny promised after she read my cards, with the word deceit attached to him.

In my mind, I was right back there at the kitchen table, wearing my best demure nightgown after a cool shower, twisting my wet hair into a long braid while Mama and Martin played chess by a dim lamp. At night, Mama always liked the lights low and the shades drawn. The radio blared tinny Tijuana brass, Spanish radio’s Saturday night special.

Martin stayed by Mama’s side for three months. Somewhere in the back of my brain I always wondered why it didn’t make Daddy jealous, even though she called Martin mi hermano pequeño-my little brother. After all, I was jealous. Martin drove Mama everywhere-to the grocery store, to the Dallas symphony, even to church choir practice.

“She told me she was teaching him English,” I said softly. “And he taught her Spanish. That’s why he didn’t work as much in the fields.”

“Angel was born in America. He has a criminal justice degree from Berkeley. He wrote one of the old reports my source gave me. I’m trying to reach him. Where’s the stuff from the bank?”

“You aren’t exactly living up to your part of the bargain. Is this all you have for me?”

“What do you want to hear? I don’t know why your mother needed the services of WITSEC. I’m sorry. It’s completely blacked out in the documents.”

I stared at him, exasperated. Angry.

“Give him the contents of the box,” Lyle said calmly.

“I was beginning to think you were some kind of mute,” Jack said to Lyle, “but it turns out you’re a very smart guy.”

“Mute does not mean you are stupid,” I spat at him, seething. “Children can go mute at a young age after a trauma. Sometimes for life. But they are still in there. You can reach them.”

Lyle whispered in my ear, “Trust me. Give him the stuff.”

I stalked to Daddy’s office and retrieved the manila envelope with Jack’s name on it. I tossed it at him like a Frisbee despite his sling, hoping for at least a paper cut.

Jack caught it easily. I had to comfort myself that he still had a small purple spot under his left eye from the pacifier bandit.

“This is it?” he asked, feeling the envelope. “All of it?”

“Yes.”

He pulled out the contents and laid them in his lap, disappointed. “Newspaper articles. Weird. And checks. From the Shur Foundation. That’s an old sham company the government set up to provide monthly allowances to witnesses. This kind of financial aid usually ends after two to five years.”

“In that case, there would be no reason to keep the checks,” I said. “Especially since she didn’t cash them.”

“Maybe it was a very mundane reason. My uncle stored ten boxes of canceled checks in the attic in case we were ever audited. People don’t trust the government.”

This wasn’t going anywhere helpful.

“Would you guys like a drink?” I moved toward the kitchen, both of them trailing after me. I popped open the refrigerator, sticking my head inside.

I heard Jack mutter, “What the hell is this?” and I banged my head on the top shelf in my hurry to get out.

Jack and Lyle had halted by the door to the laundry room, mesmerized by my map display. “I’m plotting my next vacation,” I said sarcastically, thrusting two bottles of water at them.

My phone, abandoned during my research frenzy, suddenly vibrated impatiently on Mama’s desk, rattling the smiling Hummel girl. I brushed past Jack and Lyle to grab it.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, letting it buzz away in my hand. “Please don’t follow me.”

I strode out of the room and down the far hall, through Mama and Daddy’s room and into the master bath, which smelled like the cloying “vanillaroma” air freshener the maids had plugged into the wall. Unnatural. Mama would have hated it. I snapped the lid of the toilet shut and plopped on it. The call had already gone to voicemail. Actually, I had two voicemails. I punched in my code.

“How ya doin’, honey?” The drawl was unmistakably Hudson. “My job is taking me a little longer than I expected, but you can reach me at this number anytime, even in the middle of the night. I hear from my friend Rafael that Marchetti wasn’t too forthcoming in your little session. But I’m not sure that’s why you went. I’ll check back in tomorrow. Remember, night or day. Program this number into your speed-dial. You hear me? Now.”

The phone automatically rolled into the other voicemail, a female voice chirping away, and I hastily turned the phone around and stuck it up to my ear.

“… ummmm, you don’t know me but I’m Charla Polaski?” She squeaked it out, a question. “I’m in prison out here in Odessa. I’m innocent, though. I like people to know that right off. I’m accused of shooting my asshole of a husband, but if I would have done it, I’d have used that knife he used to gut his deer and I would have gone real, real slow, startin’ with that ugly callus on his big toe that bugged the hell out of me during sex. You could have named that thing. Long story short…”

Then nothing. Empty air. She’d been cut off.

The phone buzzed again. Another call coming through.

“Hello,” I said.

“Whoa, I didn’t expect you to answer.”

Her voice was unmistakable. It had the squeaky, grating quality of a seven-year-old’s first attempts to play the violin. Or a duck with a Texas twang.

“Charla?”

“That’s creepy. How do you know who I am?”

“You just left a voicemail,” I said impatiently.

“Oh, you got that. Sorry I hung up, but Bitchy Becky was walking by and I couldn’t risk her overhearing. She’s in the cell two over from mine and she’d rat out anybody for a bag of Skittles.”

“I think you have the wrong number-”

“Nope, I don’t think so. He wrote the number right here on my hand in impermable ink. You’re Tommie, right?”

Impermeable, I thought, but she didn’t wait for me to answer.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes. Is anybody with you?”

“Yes. I mean, no, not right with me, I’m in the bathroom.”

“Oh. I haven’t had a private poo for two years. I’d die for one. I’ll be quick. It’s probably best if you just answer yes or no anyway, in case someone is listening. They were real picky about you and me not telling anybody.”

Her voice started to quiver. “This badass guard from the G Unit came into my cell last night. He told me I had to use my one phone call today to give you a message from a new prisoner here. He said it would be very bad if I didn’t.”

“This is insane,” I muttered, my finger poised over the button that would end the call.

“Your father,” Charla said. “Your father says to tell you to trust no one. And that he is protecting you. Who is your damn father? And why the hell did I get picked to call you?”

A pause, an “Oops,” and a click.

“Charla? Charla??”

The line was dead.