Bad Things (32 page)

She managed to get Kyle out of the car and more or less on his

feet. When he saw me he looked vaguely relieved for a moment, but

then his eyes slid away.

As Becki shuffl ed him over to their door I went into my own room

and washed my face and hands and stared at my refl ection for a while.

Much of me had yet to catch up with the fi ght I’d been in, never mind

what had happened since. I realized Bill would be on his feet again by

now, and that if he wanted to fi nd me, it wouldn’t be hard. So be it. I

was done running from that situation. Telling Kristina about it had

proven this to me, if nothing else. If Bill needed a pound of fl esh, he

was welcome to come and take it. He was owed.

Next door I found Becki apparently alone in the room.

“Where is he?”

“I told him to take a shower. It was overdue.”

I heard that they’d been in town for forty minutes when I found

them, plowing methodically up and down each street in turn. Becki

had decided on the way across the mountains that’s the only thing she

226 Michael Marshall

could do, given I wasn’t answering my phone. This meant they must

have made it here from Marion Beach in not much over six hours,

which required driving at speeds I didn’t even like to think about.

“I told you to go to your father’s,” I said.

“I did exactly like you said. I packed a bag and I was out of there

in under fi fteen minutes. I didn’t go
straight
to my dad’s because . . .

I needed to think, work out how to explain the whole bag of shit to

him. Also I knew if I waited an hour he’d have left for the restaurant

already. Otherwise he’d have stayed at home going nuclear on me

over Kyle and I just didn’t need that. You’ve only ever been a positive

thing in Dad’s world, John, and so you haven’t seen all sides of him.

When he goes to war, the collateral damage can be signifi cant.”

“I can believe that.”

“So I drove around, trying to get hold of Kyle to tell him what

you said, but I couldn’t raise him, so in the end I decided I’d left it

long enough, and went over to my dad’s place. And Kyle’s right fuck-

ing
there,
sitting on the doorstep. He’d said he’d fi nally gone back to our apartment, must have missed me by ten minutes. He’d guessed

where I’d go.”

“Did you tell him to go away?”

“No, John. I did not. He’s my
boyfriend
. He only hadn’t been an-

swering my calls because his battery ran out, and then he lost his

phone someplace. He broke down when he saw what had happened

to me.”

“Though he hadn’t come earlier, when you told him on the

phone?”

“He wanted to get a gun from somewhere and go talk to these

people.”

“Christ,” I said. “Which evidently didn’t happen, thankfully.”

“No. So we talked, and I got some sense out of him for the fi rst

time in days. I told him we had to fi nd a way of making everything

okay. He asked me . . . I agreed to go back to our apartment with him,

talk things through, try to work something out.”

B A D T H I N G S 227

“What was that going to be? The solution?”

“I don’t
know,
John.”

“So what happened?”

“We went home. Kyle had been up for, like, days, and I’d told him

a shower would be a good thing on several levels. Then I realized he

was taking a
really
long time about it and when I get to the bathroom and fi nd him bright and perky I of course realize just how
fucking

dumb I’ve been.”

“Because that’s where the remains of the original stash was, which

is why he wanted you to come back with him. He’d already been home

to fi nd you weren’t there and he’d lost his keys along with his phone

and didn’t feel quite up to the task of breaking into a second-story

apartment.”

Becki’s face went blank, and her chin trembled for a moment, but

her eyes stayed dry. “Yep.”

“I’m sure that’s not the only reason he wanted to see you,” I added,

feeling old and cruel.

“I’m glad
you
are,” she said. “Because I’ve been back and forth on

the subject. So I’m screaming at him and he’s shouting, too, and it’s

close to getting out of hand, when I see something out of the window.

A huge black GMC coming up the way, one of those things looks like

it wants to be a Hummer when it grows up. The people who live on

our street don’t own that kind of vehicle.”

I rubbed my temples with my fi ngers. “Christ.”

“Right,” she said bitterly. “So we split. Down the fi re escape and

over the fence into next door’s yard. Thank fuck, I had parked around

the corner instead of right outside,
but
there’s no way out of there

except down that same street, and they saw us leave.”

“They came after you?”

“First I thought I’d just tear around for a while, and they’d fall off

and we’d get a chance to work out what to do next. But no. Up the

coast, through Astoria, they’re still on us. Dude can fucking drive,

too. I am no stranger to red on the speed dial, as you know, but this

228 Michael Marshall

guy’s pedal to the metal all the way. And Kyle’s just lolling there in the

passenger seat smoking and has nothing useful to suggest, and there

was only one thing I could think of, so I spun out over to Portland

and up the interstate to Seattle, and . . . well, here we are.”

“When did you last see them?”

“I’m not sure. On the highway, that kind of car’s not so distinctive

as in Marion Beach. I
thought
I saw it behind us on 90 just before we started over the mountains. But it could just have been another car,

right? They could have given up?”

“They could,” I said. I put my hand out.

“What?”

“Your car keys.”

I went outside and drove her car out of the lot. I went a couple of

blocks until I found a tangle of residential streets and stowed the car

at the end of it, on the far side of a high-sided truck. It wasn’t perfect

but short of driving it thirty miles and sending it off the road it was

never going to be, and the night was going to be complicated enough

without me having to explain to Becki why I’d trashed her beloved

car. I found what I expected to fi nd under the passenger seat, and took

it with me. I picked up a six pack from a liquor store on the corner

and walked back to the motel through the drizzle, feeling like I was

on autopilot.

When I got back I knocked on room 10 and said my name. Becki

locked the door again behind me.

“I still don’t hear any movement from in the bathroom.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Maybe he fucking drowned.”

I set the beers on the bedside table and handed one to Becki, who

twisted the cap and drank a third of it in one swallow. She was too

tired to stand but too wired to sit, and she looked young and unhappy,

too, like a child who’d realized she’d wandered into a playground game

that little kids didn’t win.

“We’ll work it out,” I said.

“Glad to hear it. So what’s up in your life?” she said. “Who was

B A D T H I N G S 229

that chick? What happened to
your
face and hands? We going to cover

that in the debriefi ng?”

“No,” I said.

“Shame. I could do with some light relief.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“Are you pissed at me for coming up here?”

“No. I just don’t know what I can do for you. Kyle’s dug his own

grave and he’s still digging.” I reached into my coat and took out the

package I’d removed from her car. I held it up in front of her.

Becki smacked her hands up against the sides of her face, and

turned toward the bathroom.

“You ASSHOLE!” she shouted. “I swear,” she said, turning back

to me. “I didn’t know he’d brought it.”

“I believe you. But there’s lots you don’t know about him now.

Like that he would manipulate you back to your apartment, against

all common sense, just because he wanted his drugs. Like there’s not

just cocaine in this bag, but crystal meth.”

“No fucking way,” she said angrily. “He’s never . . .”

But she wasn’t sure. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.

“What am I going to do?”

I shrugged, put the package back in my jacket.

“I’m sorry I came,” she said miserably. “I was just
so
fucking scared and I didn’t know where else to go. Once I got the idea of you in my

head it was like there was something to aim for. It was dumb.”

“You did fi ne,” I said. “It’s what I would have done.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

I walked through the room and opened the bathroom door. Kyle

was slumped on the fl oor, head back against the wall. His mouth was

open and he was snoring quietly. I noticed that the bathroom door,

like the one in my own room, had a key. I dropped my pack of ciga-

rettes in his lap, removed the key from his side, and left the bathroom.

Then I locked the door and put the key in my pocket.

230 Michael Marshall

“Get some sleep,” I told Becki.

“You going to give me that key?”

“No,” I said.

Back in my own room I lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. My

head was full of things I did not want to revisit. The sight of what had

happened to Jassie that afternoon. The memory of Bill’s face, as he

looked at me in his hallway, realizing what I was implying and what

he was going to do about it. What I had not managed to do in that

whole fi asco was to get a sense of whether Bill had known about me

and Jenny, and thus if Ellen’s harping on about punishment was likely

to have a bearing on my life. Even if I had been sure about that, the

next step required believing in things in which I did not believe.

I could not get my thoughts to go in straight lines, and unless I

concentrated they all ended up collecting in the same cul-de-sac: the

image of my hand resting on a woman’s, on a table in an empty pizza

restaurant, how large and three-dimensional that hand had felt, and

how warm. That and the fact that when Kristina left, she’d said
we

were paid up, rather than “I.” Big deal, and probably I had achieved

nothing except complicate the only positive relationship I had left in

this town, but as I drifted toward sleep I did not regret what I had

done. Sometimes the things you do without thinking are the closest

to the truth you’ll ever come.

Just before I went under I reached into my pocket, took out my

phone, and laid it on the bedside table, where I would be sure to hear

it, if anybody called. I wasn’t thinking anyone necessarily would.

Nobody called, but I did dream.

In the dream it was the middle of the night and I was walking

alone through the streets of Black Ridge. There was something about

the way the main east–west drag curved through the town that was

B A D T H I N G S 231

working at me, and I didn’t realize I was close to the motel I’d used to

meet Jenny Raines in until I was upon it.

The entire building was dark, no cars in the lot. As I stood look-

ing, feeling bitter regret for the things I had done in those rooms, I

saw the curtains of one move aside.

It was too dark to see who or what might have opened them, but

I thought I saw a pale oval shape refl ecting moonlight, just above the

level of the sill.

I turned stiffl y away and walked through town in a series of jump

cuts, ending up on Kelly Street. The window in the Write Sisters was

whole again, though badly cracked—lines jagging across the middle

in a pattern I nearly recognized, a blood splatter across the middle in

a shape that looked a little like an animal. When I got back to Marie’s

I stood for a while in the road. Here every light was on, every curtain

open, though all the rooms beyond were empty.

I heard something behind me, and turned.

When I saw nothing I walked across the road and into the for-

est, as I had in reality a few nights before. The farther I went into

the trees the more I felt I could hear noises from between them, the

murmur of distant conversation.

This scared me but I started to run, heading in the direction of

the sounds.

I ran faster and faster, threading between the trunks, convinced

that I could now not only hear voices ahead, but smell wood smoke or

something like it. Something strong.

I missed the shape of a large tree root in the darkness, tripped,

and went sprawling on the ground. All the air was knocked out of me

and for a moment my vision went white, as if I was about to lose con-

sciousness. I don’t know what would have happened if I had. Would I

have woken? Died?

I rolled onto my back, and pushed myself upright.

There were people standing back in the trees, looking at me. Two

tall, and three smaller.

232 Michael Marshall

I couldn’t see their faces, or tell how far away they were. I tried to

push myself backward, pathetically, getting no purchase on the fl oor,

feet scraping and scrabbling.

Suddenly the group was spread out, with the two taller fi gures

much nearer to me. A man and a woman, exhausted, bony, wearing