Blackout (35 page)

I stumble backward and Dare catches me before I fall onto my broken arm. Dark clouds swarm in my head, distorting my vision. When I gasp for air, Dare draws me into him. Graham’s dead, and my body cries out in anguish over the senseless loss of a good man.

“We’ll get through this,” Dare says in a soothing tone, his hand stroking my hair.

Remy stands behind Jimmy, yawning and swatting at mosquitos. What a cold heartless prick.

“I’ve already spoken to you,” Dare says. “I was with Jackson that night.”

“Mighty convenient,” Jimmy says. “A forty-five slug was found in him, just like your stolen gun.”

“Well, we’ve found some of him,” Remy mutters.

“What do you mean?” I scoot around Dare, wiping sweaty palms onto my jeans. Dizziness swirls in my brain. I stumble against Dare. The chainsaw, the constant buzzing in my head during the blackouts.

I rush to the bathroom, retching what little I’ve eaten into the toilet. Dare is right behind me. A memory splits my brain open. The cops catch up to us and stand just outside.

When Dare offers to comfort me, I fend him off. “I need to see.”

The blood, the body parts. Oh God. Tears sting my eyes.

“He hacked Graham up with a chainsaw,” I rasp, half sobbing. “The gun didn’t kill him, so this is bullshit.”

“How do you know that?” Remy says accusingly.

“Because that’s what the man chasing me did ten years ago.” But that’s not all. I’m missing an important piece, and it’s just out of my reach.

Jimmy scowls at Remy. “Would you keep your mouth shut?”

Remy shrugs, smirking. When Jimmy glares hard at him, Remy lowers his head.

“Who is he?” Jimmy prods.

“I don’t know. He was wearing a mask that day.” But I’ll figure it out soon. “It wasn’t Dare though. He couldn’t have done what I saw. This guy was a full grown man ten years ago, not a boy.”

“Tate wants me to haul him in,” Jimmy says. “The two murders may be unrelated, and Dare has motive. We need to talk to him.”

I pull myself off the toilet, the bitter taste of vomit clinging to my mouth. “They are related, and he’s going to come after Dare and me.”

Dare helps me up. “I want a lawyer.”

“Suit yourself,” Jimmy says, “but that’ll take longer.”

Dare hands me the truck keys before I can protest, he says, “Drive slow. You’ll do fine.” He gently kisses me, brushing my cheek with his calloused thumb. “Tell my dad.”

The keys slip from my hands from the profuse sweating on my palms.

Dare picks up his phone, locks Squeak in her cage, and walks out with them.

My heart drops to my knees. I can’t let this go on any longer. I have to figure out what happened that day now.

I don’t know if Dare’s home phone is the same as when I was a child, but I dial his old number I’d memorized years ago.

Thankfully Randy picks up instead of his father. After I tell him about the cops, he says, “I’ll call Dad. He’s at work, then I’ll call my brothers.”

I drive carefully back past the swamp, not once looking at it but keeping my eyes glued to the pavement in front of me. I stop at Miles’ office first.

I unload on him about everything that has happened and my visions, except for my mama’s voice ringing in my head. I hadn’t meant to tell Dare she was there that day, but he knows. “I have to go to the swamp. I can’t let Dare go to jail again.”

His bushy eyebrows arch upward. “You can’t be serious, Teal. It’s far too dangerous.”

“I can’t go on like this. If I return to the swamp, I should remember almost everything that happened.” From the blow to my head, I know I was unconscious for part of it.

Miles braces my shoulder. “You may not though, and I can’t have you taking that risk. Someone is trying to kill you. What part of that don’t you understand?”

I shake him off. “He’s also trying to hurt Dare, and I can’t stand by and do nothing. He butchered Graham.” I swivel around to leave.

Miles catches up to me, grasping my arm. “I won’t let you go alone, and with your history of driving, please let me drive.”

As we walk out, he picks up his phone.

“Who are you calling?” I don’t want anyone to know where I’ll be.

“The police, then your father. Someone needs to know where we are going.”

“I don’t trust the police.” Not after what they did to Dare and his brother Sam. I don’t believe Sam would use drugs, and Kami said Sam believed he was setup.

Miles calls them anyway, despite my persistence not to. After he ends his last call, he says, “I left a message for your dad. He didn’t pick up.”

I can’t imagine what Daddy’s up to.

Outside in the parking lot, Miles opens the door to his vintage MGB.

“I know, I know,” he says. “It’s my midlife crisis. I always wanted an old sports car. It’s mostly in the shop, so I usually drive my trusty Camry.”

The closer we get to the refuge the more my nerves fire, snapping and popping like a frayed electrical wire in water.

Miles glimpses what my eyes are focused on—the swamp. “We can turn back. We still have time.” He pulls into a parking spot in the refuge.

I shake my head. “No. I need…to remember.” Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply before getting out of the car.

“This isn’t as scary as I thought,” Miles says, stepping out of the MGB. “It’s impressively beautiful.”

It’s what I loved about this place—the ancient trees, the plant growth wild and untamed, the song of the woodcocks. I’d lie on the bank, fishing with Dare, watching the clouds scroll by. “You’ve never been here before?”

“No. I hang on the beach and burn, but I’ll make it a point to come here and hike the trails some time.”

Miles has a delightful sense of humor that momentarily lifts the weight from my shoulders.

After picking the trail that leads close to the clearing, I weave through the spiny plants and thick moist pocosin. Yellow and deer flies buzz around my head, waiting for the chance to drain my blood. Just off the path, fresh prints are impressed into the mud.

“What are those?” Miles asks, his voice slightly quivering.

“Bear.” Dare and I had spent hours tracking wild animals in the refuge, and sometimes we’d come upon them. Once, we saw cubs being born. Dare had startled me by taking my hand as we watched in silent wonderment.

“Bear?” he whispers. “Should we be out here?”

“We’ll be fine.” I don’t know why I haven’t felt any nausea or any vertigo. I lead us through the maze of tall loblolly pines.

We stay on the path for a while before I veer off into the long thin blades of sawgrass. My pace quickens. We’re almost there to where that day took away my life and my memories.

Miles hurries to catch up to me. “Where are you going?”

In the ten years since I’ve been here, not much has changed. Moss and lichen climb up the alligator-hide bark of the black tupelos. Their thick trunks and roots fan out into the tannic swamp water fed by the bark of the nearby trees. Vines strangle the greenbrier and honey cup bushes.

I hike into the brush. “Through here.”

The brier has grown thick along the once worn-down path. I fight my way through the brush that snags at my jeans and bare arms.

Dare was right about that day. The rangers had been clearing out the undergrowth. It had been a dry year, and if a fire had started, it would take out the refuge and its inhabitants, so Fire Management performed controlled burns.

Within a short walk, we come to the place where I’d found the people wearing masks. Deer and small animals lying down have worn circles into the grasses here. They came here to drink and hide from predators.

That day comes sweeping back into view. I let out a whoosh of air. I close my eyes and inhale the humid oxygen into my nose—the smell of peat and decay strong.

“Is this it?” Miles asks in a low voice, like he may disturb the ghosts of my buried memories.

“Yes.” Instead of the black spots dotting my vision. I clearly see the two men and the woman. One man has a mulberry or port wine stain blossoming on his abdomen that dips down to his exposed crotch—the bushy patch of hair presses against the woman’s buttocks.

Shock steals my breath. I know this man. I’ve seen his birthmark when he’d sunbathed at the beach. Mama had introduced me to him and his wife, and I recalled the scraggly hairs growing from the birthmark. She’d told me how handsome she thought he was. I’d said Daddy was better looking.

“I’m going to give it to you good,” Judge Kirkland says to the woman he’s poking, the port wine stain twitching on his belly.

When he’d interviewed me during my testimony, he had a nervous tick in his eye. He’d tried to disguise his voice, but at the restraining order hearing, it had sounded like it did on that day in the swamp, deep and commanding.

I swallow down the horror stuffing my throat. I was eight. At the time, I hadn’t known what they were doing. Other than a science book, I’d never seen a man’s privates.

Kirkland stabs her from behind with his penis—a short stubby thing. I gag at the sight of it. He’s hurting her I’d thought.

From my hiding spot in the greenbrier, I watch them, too frightened to move, too scared to run. The woman with the long, flowing coppery hair has a lilting laugh, much higher than Mama’s. She sucks the penis of the man in front of her while he drags on a cigarette.

He shouldn’t smoke in the woods. He could cause a fire, I’d thought.

He tightens the collar around her neck, yanking hard on the leash. She cries out but continues mouthing his penis. It’s hard and stiff and looks like it’ll choke her, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

I know I should go. That I shouldn’t look. This is wrong.

Their masks sparkle in the sunlight, and both men groan. The man in the front jerks repeatedly on the chain attached to the collar around her throat. He slaps her butt with a riding crop. Slobber gushes from her mouth while the man moans.

“You’re so good,” he says.

I recognize his voice. Oh God, it’s him. He’s quit smoking and taken up chewing tobacco.

I spin toward Miles, interrupting the memories pouring from my mind. “Whom did you speak with at the sheriffs’?”

He screws his lips in thought. “I think his name was Tate.”

“Oh no.” Panic shoots up my throat, cutting off the life-giving oxygen. “He was one of the men I saw.” He could be here any minute. My knees wobble, threatening to give out.

“We should go.” I grab onto Miles’ wrist, pulling him forward.

I start for the car, and Miles chases after me.

“What did he do?” he asks.

My breathing comes in short gasps, my heart pitter-patters jackrabbit fast. “He cut her up into pieces.” But that isn’t all.

We haven’t gotten even halfway back to the parking lot when I almost run headlong into Tate.

“I wondered how long it’d take you.” His gun is drawn, and I stare down the barrel. “I thought you’d recognized me when you wrecked your car, but you hadn’t. Why has it taken you so long?”

I back into Miles, my blood pulsing in my ears. He’s going to kill us, like he did the woman.

Tate’s fingers comb my hair, and I shudder. “You are so much like your Mama, amazingly beautiful, and that hair. I always loved her hair.”

“Let us pass,” Miles says, he tries to brush past Tate.

The distinct click of the revolver cocks and fires. The explosion rings in my ears. Clouds clutter my head and short the wiring in my brain. I wobble backward and stumble over legs—Miles’ legs—falling back onto the damp peat.

My hand dips into blood—his. It blossoms on his starched white shirt, like a red chrysanthemum.

“No,” I cry, sobs swelling in my chest.

The cold expression on Tate’s face reminds me of my Mama. The swamp spins around me. My world goes black while images scatter in my mind.

I don’t want the nasty people to see me. I don’t want those men to hurt me, like they hurt the poor woman.

A twig snaps and the masked woman sees me. She stops what she’s doing. From Tate’s belt, she snatches his Billy club and comes at me. I can’t move. Mama screams at her, but the club comes down on my head with a sickening thud. Where did Mama come from?

Mama brushes past me where I crumple in the bushes. She’s dressed like a woman shopping couture in Paris, stilettos that sink into the bog, a backless silk dress the color of chartreuse. A wild red, yellow, and black scarf swung haphazardly around her throat. Instead of helping me, she struts into the throng of their orgy. My head feels like it was opened up with an axe.

“What is she doing here?” the woman says who strongly resembles Mama and is pointing at me.

“I’m going to kill you, Lilly.” Mama’s voice cuts the cottony thick air so heavy with moisture it dews my skin. “You always want what I have.”

Through my tears and the haze of my damaged head, I hear Mama’s voice. “Run, baby. Get up. Go now.” She’s startling calm while my heart rate has jetted to the moon.

I wake from my blackout being hauled over Tate’s shoulder. “In the swamp, your mama promised me she’d come back for me, but you’re here now. I told her I wouldn’t hurt you as long as she came back, but she never did.”

“Put me down, Tate.” Blood is spattered all over my cast. It belongs to Miles. I swallow down the sickening rush of acids swirling in my belly.

“I will eventually. You’ve been so much trouble lately. If I could trust you, then we could be friends—good friends. Since your mama ain’t here, you could replace her. You’re so pretty, just like she was.”

Sweat stains the back of Tate’s shirt and puddles into mustardy pools under his armpits. Mama had sex with this man. I remind myself that this man had hair on his head and a slimmer waistline ten years ago, but how could she have cheated on Daddy?

“She may c-come back,” I sputter. “She’s in Paris.”

“No, she won’t.” Sadness edges his words. “She’s had ten years.”

He’s right. She doesn’t even want me.

Tate plops me down into the clearing. I scoot back and ram my back into the trunk of a black tupelo, my butt soaking up marsh. He’ll finish what he started the other night—raping and killing me. I shake uncontrollably.

“Did you like what you saw that day?” He loosens his tie and unbuttons his shirt, exposing his gut that spills over his belt and the thick tufts of hair that cover his body.