Jericho Point (2 page)

The house sat on the beach side of the street, the choicest real estate in Isla Vista, on the cliff overlooking the Pacific. The paint was peeling off the walls. I headed for the door, hunching against the rain, smelling salt air and acrid smoke. A young man strolled around the side of the house, ribboned yellow by fire-light. Ten feet from me he pulled a full frontal, unzipping his combat trousers and pissing against the side of a car.

‘‘Hey.’’ I turned my face away. ‘‘This isn’t
America’s Rudest Home Videos
. Keep it to yourself.’’

Rain and beer spray were dousing the sofa. I walked to the door, hearing music pound, feeling my throat go dry, wondering how it had come to this.

I knocked.

It made no sense. Even given a family taste for liquor and too much time staring face-to-face with tragedy. This was wrong. Someone had made a mistake. A voice in my head said,
Denial is a river in Egypt.

The door opened. Music jackhammered from the stereo. The man holding the knob was older than I expected—early thirties, my age.

‘‘Evan?’’ He had the desiccated look of an old surfer. ‘‘I’m Toby. Thanks for coming.’’ He let me in. ‘‘Nobody at the party seems to know him, and I didn’t know what else to do.’’

The living room throbbed with dancing college students. It smelled like Doritos and tequila. We cut a path into the house.

‘‘Where is he?’’ I said.

‘‘Locked in the bathroom. Look, obviously he has issues, but people at the party want to pee.’’

‘‘I hate to tell you, but they aren’t waiting for the john.’’

He frowned, walking down a hall toward the back of the house. ‘‘Who is he, anyway?’’

A strong spirit going out like the tide. A ghost. My life.

‘‘My boyfriend.’’

He stopped at a door and knocked. Inside the bathroom, a man said, ‘‘Fuck off.’’ I felt heat behind my eyes.

‘‘Evan’s here,’’ Toby said. ‘‘Why don’t you unlock the door?’’

‘‘Go away.’’

Toby looked at me and held up a bobby pin. ‘‘This will pop the lock. I just didn’t want to have to haul him out, maybe start a fight. Want me to open it?’’

I couldn’t find my voice, so I nodded.

He leaned against the door. ‘‘Blackburn, she’s coming in.’’ He stuck the bobby pin into the lock and turned. Gave me a sad look. ‘‘Good luck.’’

He pushed the door open.

The bathroom smelled like ripe socks and mildew. My head throbbed and my eyes stung. He was sitting in the bathtub, head in his hands, dark hair falling over his face.

He turned his face to the wall. ‘‘Close the door. Don’t let them see.’’

I shut the door behind me. And shut my eyes, fighting the sting. But still I saw him—his rangy frame, his handsome features, his blue eyes. Relief coursed through me. God. I sank against the door frame.

It wasn’t him. Of course it wasn’t. How the hell could I have believed it? I felt ashamed for buying any bit of it.

‘‘Come on, I’ll take you home,’’ I said.

He put up a hand, as if fending me off. ‘‘I can’t go out there.’’

‘‘Why not?’’ I crouched next to the tub. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’

‘‘You have to promise me.’’

‘‘Are you in trouble?’’

‘‘Don’t tell him.’’

‘‘Who?’’ I said, though I knew.

‘‘My brother. He’ll go ballistic. Promise you won’t tell Jesse.’’

I put my hand on his arm. ‘‘P.J.?’’

His eyes met mine for an instant before he looked away again. Relief drained from me as fast as if someone had pulled a plug. I had seen that look in his eyes before. Years ago, on that awful day. He slumped back in the tub.

‘‘Something’s wrong. Tell me,’’ I said.

‘‘Oh, fuck.’’ He started banging his head against the tiles. ‘‘She went off the balcony.’’

Bang
,
bang
, again and again.

‘‘Over the edge. All the way down into the waves.’’

I grabbed him. ‘‘Did you call nine-one-one?’’

He scrabbled for the faucets, but I tipped him over the edge of the tub and hauled him up. I yanked open the door and shoved him out into the hall, pulling out my cell phone.

‘‘Did you tell anybody?’’

He shook his head.

I urged him into the living room, jostling through the throng, and into the kitchen. Half a dozen girls stood gabbing, making a batch of margaritas in the blender. P.J. kept his head down, as though he were a dog being punished. I opened the sliding-glass door to the balcony and pushed him outside. The wind drove nails of rain against my face. I dialed 911.

The balcony ran the width of the house. Beyond the railing, forty feet below, the surf pounded the cliff. It was a huge, roaring tide. The light from the kitchen petered out, but I could see that farther along the balcony a bedroom door was open, the drapes billowing out.

The dispatcher came on the line. ‘‘Nine-one-one Emergency.’’

‘‘I need a rescue. There’s been an accident at a house on Del Playa.’’

P.J. blinked. ‘‘No. You promised you wouldn’t tell.’’

Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed the phone from my ear and stumbled back toward the kitchen door, mashing buttons.

‘‘You promised,’’ he said.

‘‘Dammit.’’ I grabbed his hand and pried at his fingers, but he clenched the phone to his ribs. ‘‘We have to get search and rescue out here. Now.’’

His chest heaved. ‘‘No, we don’t.’’

‘‘Yes. Now.’’

The rain was flattening his hair against his head in stringy tails. ‘‘We don’t need search and rescue. I think . . . I mean, I think I’m wrong. It didn’t really happen.’’

Shit. ‘‘Don’t give me that.’’

He stared into the storm. ‘‘I think I just freaked out.’’

‘‘Truth. Right now. Did a girl fall off this balcony or not?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

Planting both hands against his chest, I pushed him back inside the kitchen, where I could get a good look at his eyes in the light. He didn’t resist, just shivered and stared out the door at the ocean. I backed him against the counter.

The margarita girls said, ‘‘Hey, what?’’

I wiped rain from my face. ‘‘Look at me.’’

His gaze tagged me and jumped away again. His pupils were the size of fleas.

‘‘What did you take?’’

A shrug.

‘‘Coke? Speed?’’

The girls grabbed the blender pitcher and left the kitchen. P.J. didn’t respond. I put my hands on his cheeks and held his face.

‘‘How much, P.J.?’’

His skin felt hot, the rainwater warm against my palms. He wasn’t as tall as Jesse, didn’t have his shoulders, but otherwise the resemblance gave me a punch at the thought of everything that separated the two of them.

I shook his face between my hands.

‘‘Some E,’’ he said. ‘‘And maybe a few lines.’’

Exhaling, I let my hands drop. ‘‘What happened here? Tell me.’’

He stared out the door again. ‘‘I don’t know. Me and some guys were here in the kitchen. People were everywhere. I couldn’t get a clear look.’’

‘‘What did you see?’’

‘‘Something out on the balcony, like voices. But it was so loud, the music—and that sliding-glass door was shut, and the lights here were reflecting. The rain—on the glass it looked so bright.’’ His knee began jittering. ‘‘I don’t know. It just scared me.’’

He was wired to the ends of his hair, bouncing toward hysteria, and I still didn’t know if he’d hallucinated it or not.

He began shaking. ‘‘It was freaky. So freaky.’’

I looked around the kitchen. The phone had been torn out of the wall, leaving a gaping hole. Written in marker beneath it was,
No more coffee for Alex.

‘‘Give me my cell phone, P.J.’’

He clutched it like a precious toy. ‘‘You won’t call?’’

‘‘No.’’

Slowly he extended it to me. I closed my fingers around it, waiting. It rang.

I answered. ‘‘Here. A woman fell off the balcony.’’

It was the emergency dispatcher calling back. I gave her the address. The last I saw, P.J. was running through the crowd toward the front door.

Keep it to yourself
. Prude. Priss. Got a look at it, and that’s all she could say? Frigid bitch.

Just like he’d hoped.

He walked away from the house with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face. Keeping his head down, when he really wanted to laugh and pull off his clothes and sing. The rain felt great, coming down hard now, like it
knew
, and was showering him with applause. It had been perfect.

Except for running into that woman. Ice queen. Lady
Rudest Home Videos
thought she was a comedian.

But the joke was on her. She saw what he wanted her to see. And she got a good, long, beautiful look, too. Whip it out and they never noticed your face. Wang dangling just blew their minds.

He balled his hands. They weren’t exactly slick, more sticky. He held them out and spread his fingers and let the rain lick it off. He wondered if it got on his dick when he whizzed on that car. An ache began in his crotch. But he couldn’t pull down his pants and let the sky kiss it all away. Not on the street. But that was okay; it was only blood.

He walked, feeling his hands turning clean. Perfect, yeah, it had been fucking perfect. And gone in a flash.

He should have gotten it on film.

The searchlight arced white across the black ocean. A firefighter stood against the balcony railing, swinging the light over the heaving water. Two Water Rescue Jet Skis cruised the surf, looking for the fallen girl. Their engines had cut back, close to idling now.

The fire captain came in from the balcony, his hat and yellow turnout coat shining with rainwater. He moved like a boulder. In his hand a radio squelched.

‘‘Ma’am?’’

I looked up from my seat at the kitchen table. ‘‘Any sign of her?’’

Music was still trickling from the stereo, but the house had emptied out. Nothing kills a party like firefighters showing up. With sheriff’s deputies.

The captain wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘‘Run it past me again. Exactly what convinced you to call us?’’

‘‘A friend told me that a woman had fallen off the balcony into the water,’’ I said.

‘‘But you didn’t see it happen.’’

‘‘No. But—’’

A deputy came in with raindrops clinging to his crew cut like dew. ‘‘Excuse me, but who are you?’’

‘‘Evan Delaney.’’

He wrote it down. ‘‘And the woman who fell, what’s her name?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said.

‘‘What did she look like?’’

‘‘I didn’t see her. It happened before I got here.’’

The fire captain set his radio on the table. ‘‘So you don’t actually know that anybody fell over the edge.’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘The thing is,’’ the deputy said, ‘‘nobody’s missing.’’

Into the kitchen walked Toby, the man who’d let me into the house. The deputy turned to him.

‘‘Isn’t that so, sir?’’

Toby scratched his nose. He was nothing but dark tan and stringy muscle, a walking stick of beef jerky.

‘‘Nobody said anything to me. If somebody went over, I’d have known. They’d have screamed; I would have heard it.’’

Spoken like a landlord concerned about liability. The deputy was nodding.

‘‘No, you wouldn’t,’’ I said, ‘‘not with the storm, the music, the blender, the couch being torched—and besides, somebody
did
know. My friend told me. If I’m wrong, I’m sorry. But a woman might be out there in the water, and I couldn’t ignore it.’’

The fire captain picked up his radio. ‘‘I’ll send the Jet Skis down the shoreline, but with this surf I can’t keep them out there for long.’’

The deputy ran his hand across his head. ‘‘This friend of yours. Was he . . .’’

‘‘Wasted,’’ Toby said. ‘‘Out of his head. Not that he got that way here at the party. I mean, he showed up that way. I didn’t know him.’’

‘‘Where is he? Can we talk to him?’’

‘‘Gone,’’ Toby said. ‘‘Out the door like a shot.’’

‘‘What’s his name?’’

‘‘Blackburn.’’ Toby took a folded sheet of typing paper from his shirt pocket. Unfolded it, peered at the text. ‘‘Jesse Blackburn.’’

I rubbed my eyes. ‘‘No, it isn’t.’’

‘‘Yeah, it says right here.’’ Toby handed me the paper.

It was an e-mail from me to Jesse, giving him my new cell phone number. ‘‘Where’d you get this?’’

‘‘He brought a guitar. Found it in the case.’’

Why had I thought I could keep Jesse out of this? I felt as though a landslide were starting under my feet. And it was going to take me down.

‘‘The man who was here wasn’t Jesse; it was his brother, P.J.,’’ I said.

‘‘P.J.,’’ the deputy said. ‘‘What’s that stand for?’’

‘‘Patrick John.’’

Thinking, Rhymes with here and gone.

Toby watched me drive away. He stood with the engine crew on the driveway, by the smoldering sofa. The headlights flicked across his eyes when I turned the wheel. His look seemed to say, Thanks for the trouble. Thanks for nothing.

I drove to the end of the street, got out, and found a path between houses to the cliff. The wind buffeted me. I could see nothing, hear nothing but the cold roar of the water. It sounded inexorable.

He knew how to tell the truth, to break the worst news. He’d broken it to me. But tonight I didn’t know whether his tangled story came from fact, imagination, or cocaine.

Getting back in the car, I drove to his apartment building a few blocks away. The Don Quixote Arms, student squalor at its finest. It took three minutes for P.J.’s roommate to answer my pounding. His eyes were gluey with sleep, and he hadn’t bothered to remove the stud from his lower lip before bedtime. His T-shirt said,
If I gave a shit, you’re the person I’d give it to.
When I asked for P.J., he scratched under his armpit.