The Falling Away (25 page)

But hadn't Krunk been killed? This didn't make any sense. He started to speak, realized his tongue was too thick.

Behind him, he thought he could hear the sound of other snowmobiles approaching. Still a ways off, but coming closer.

“You tried to—” he stammered.

“We don't have time to talk,” the woman said. “Think you can make it over the fence?”

He looked at the fence, nodded, took a step, and went down to his knees.

“So much for the plan,” he heard her mutter. “I'll have to cut the fence. You just hang tight for a few seconds while I get some snips out of my truck.”

He nodded again, closed his eyes, listened to the snowmobiles approach. Just when he was about to open his eyes again, he felt the woman beginning to drag him.

I'm gonna die, Joni
, he said as he felt his body going soft, mushy.

You're not going to die
.

He smiled, kept his eyes closed as he heard the woman opening a truck door.

“Stand up,” she ordered. “Help me out a little.”

No, I'm gonna die because she's gonna kill me, and I'm helping her by getting into her pickup
. He grinned, barely able to open his eyes.
Wonder what the VA therapist would think about that little tidbit
?

You were blown up in Iraq, and you lived through that
.

That's what I'm trying to tell you, Joni
, he answered as the darkness closed in once more.
I don't want to live through it
.

40

Dylan felt himself rising from a deep, dark place.

The crook of his left arm itched, and he absently scratched at it with his right hand.

“Don't scratch that,” a voice said. “You'll make it worse.”

He stopped, tried to open his eyes, closed them in teary-eyed pain as the light assaulted them. He tried to scratch at his arm again.

“I told you not to scratch.”

He tried to open his eyes again, managed it with a bit more success. His vision didn't come into focus, but hey, baby steps.

“How about now?” he mumbled. “Can I scratch now?”

“What the heck. Go ahead.”

His vision finally resolved enough to let him make out the crazy woman who had tried to kill him on the highway. For someone who seemed so intent on killing him, she seemed awfully worried about him scratching his wounds.

She was sitting at a particleboard desk just a few feet away, casually eating a red apple, watching some home and garden show on television.

“What—” He stopped, unsure what his question should be.
What happened? What's going on? What am I doing here? What are you doing here
? He wanted to ask all of the above, but he didn't have the energy.

She took a bite of the apple, wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “What . . .” she prompted.

“Who—” he said, but his brain was still fuzzy.

“Yeah, well, maybe the
who
question is a good place to start. Call me Quinn. And I already know who you are, Dylan. So now we've properly met.”

“Where are we?”

“Sounds like you're just gonna skip right over the
what
. Okay. Great Falls. You're a guest at the Steel Bridge Motel. Guests say it's the nicest and the cleanest. If you believe the sign out front.”

“Great Falls? How?”

“I brought you here.”

“Why?”

“That's a big one. Let's save it for later.”

“Water?” he asked.

She fished around in her backpack again, then threw him a bottle of water. He studied the label before he twisted off the top. “It's not the HIVE brand,” he observed.

“Let's just say I'm not a big fan of HIVE. You shouldn't be either.”

“You see me wearing the official hemp T-shirt?” He took a drink, trying to think. Okay, so he was dealing with yet another wing nut, the latest in a long line of wing nuts. In Iraq, soldiers driven half mad by the constant threat of death. At the VA hospital, soldiers driven half mad by being removed from the constant threat of death. Drug dealers and junkies, brains muddled by their preferred poisons. Li and his band of New-Age, let's-just-love-the-Earthers, doped-up smiles constantly present on their faces as they lectured you about the evils of all humanity.

And now, this woman, obviously hopped up on a few drugs of her own. What about meth? It fit. Meth addicts tended to invent elaborate stories of conspiracies and—

What about you
? Joni's voice asked.
Remember: you hear voices. And you split all your thoughts into sections. And—

Okay, Joni, you've made your point
.

Just saying
.

Just don't
.

“Who are you talking to?” Quinn asked, staring at him.

Had he said something aloud? Maybe; he'd been known to do it before. “Sorry, just—I sometimes talk to myself.”

“Plenty of people do. But I'm talking about your voice inside.”

Cue the creepy
Twilight Zone
music
, Joni said.

“That voice,” Quinn said. “Talking about the
Twilight Zone
.”

Dylan was speechless for a moment.

Uncharacteristically, so was Joni.

“I . . . you can hear that?”

“Yes,” Quinn said, sitting up straight, seeming unsurprised. As if this were an everyday thing for her.

“You . . . can read my mind?”

Quinn laughed. “Not in the least. But I'm a—some of us, yourself included, are . . . sensitive to things beyond the physical.”

“Sensitive?”

“Sensitive to others, for starters. Their emotions, their compulsions. Most people who are sensitive are diagnosed with OCD, a pretty large chunk with other mental disorders: schizophrenia, paranoia, and the like. All because they feel things most people can't. You're not really that far—not yet—but you definitely have some compulsions.”

“Like what?”

She studied him for a moment. “You're a pattern person. Numbers a little bit, but more patterns in the way you see, the way you think. You break down what you see, what you think about, into chunks. Boxes, I guess you could say.”

The kill box
, Joni whispered.

“Kill boxes? That's what you call them?”

Dylan swallowed, feeling his throat click. “Just one. The kill box. That's . . . part of it.”

“The deepest, darkest part,” Quinn said. “The place where you banish anything you don't want to think about.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“I know it's freaky,” Quinn said. “But like I said, you can sense those things, too, if you try. You can probably get a sense of my main compulsions, how my brain operates.”

He studied her for a few moments, got nothing. Then, inside, Joni's voice spoke.

She cuts. Hurts herself
.

“Started out as a cutter,” Quinn replied. “Now it's more . . . the official term is self-embedding disorder. Not just cutting, but putting objects under my skin.”

“Paper clips,” Dylan said aloud, getting a sense of the woman called Quinn. It was an odd sensation, something like standing next to a river: he caught flashes of her thoughts, floating quickly by on the current.

“Yes, paper clips. But anything, really. Well, not anything. Metal works best. Needles. Staples. That kind of thing.”

Dylan drained the last of his bottle, closed his eyes for a moment. He heard rustling, and when he opened his eyes again, Quinn was holding another bottle of water. “Drink up,” she said. “You're probably pretty dehydrated.”

She threw the bottle and he caught it. But he made no move to open it. Not yet.

He wanted to talk to Joni, but that didn't feel like an option; Quinn being able to hear those interior conversations made him feel . . . exposed. Like someone had the crosshairs of a rifle sight trained on him. He'd felt that before, after all. Too many times to count. Some nights in his dreams.

“So you sidestepped my question,” Quinn prodded.

“Which one?”

“The one about your interior voice. It's not you. It's—you called her Joni.”

“My sister.”

“She's your sister?”

“Was.”

“Little sister?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because you felt like you should be her protector. Typical family dynamic. And you obviously feel like you failed.”

He shook his head. “Not a feeling at all. Just a fact.” He cleared his throat, which was getting dryer. “Thing was, she always looked out for me growing up, you know? She was levelheaded, always the more sensible one. And the one chance I had to protect her . . .” He trailed off, his thoughts branching into well-worn paths of regret.

“Protect her from what?”

Dylan glanced at Quinn, focused his eyes on Quinn again.

You don't have to do this, Dylan
.

Yeah, Joni. I do
.

41

The cop was trying to be all Officer Friendly on Dylan. One of the two main types of officers you had on the rez. Officer Friendly, who was usually a white guy from out somewhere else, all wrapped up in social justice and wanting to go do his part for racial equality. Officer Friendly always sympathized with you, understood your plight, put himself in your shoes.

As much as a white boy from Chicago could put himself in an Indian's shoes.

But the Officer Friendlys were always much better than the alternative: Officer Rez Boy. The Officer Rez Boys, they got drunk on the little bit of power their uniforms gave them.

So Dylan should have been happy he got one of the Officer Friendlys, a guy who insisted Dylan call him Steve rather than Detective Chambers. That's what the Friendlys did: they wanted you to call them by their first names, so you could, you know, rap with them.

“So tell me what you remember, Dylan.”

“Nothing to remember.”

“Lots to remember, if you just go through the details. This is important; we have to get it all now, you understand. We don't get a second chance at any of it.”

Steve was giving him an earnest look, a look that told Dylan he was being sincere, and expected the same kind of sincerity in return.

Dylan sighed, leaned back in his chair. “I was at a . . . party.”

“What kind of party?”

“Just graduated.”

“Okay.”

“So . . . some of us, not like it was a big kegger or anything. But, you know, we got together at Kenny's house.”

“So you were drinking?”

“Yeah, a little. But I don't usually drink.”

This was true, but Dylan could see the doubt in Detective Chambers's—Steve's—eyes. A young Indian kid, just out of high school in Hardin? Of course he drank. It was the Curse of the Red Man, part of the reason why people like Detective Steve Chambers worked on the rez. Because it was their chance to reach out to troubled Indian youth, get them off drugs and alcohol, help them find better lives.

Yeah, a real Officer Friendly, this one.

“And how long were you there?”

“You asking when I left?”

“Yes.”

“I was supposed to pick up Joni at eight. I . . . guess I lost track of time, and she called . . . I don't know . . . quarter after eight.”

“From?”

“Violin teacher's house. Violin instructor, whatever you call it. I . . . we share a car. She'd told me to just take the car and come pick her up at eight. So when she called, it was—”

“A reminder to come get her.”

“Exactly.”

“You left right away?”

Dylan nodded. “Within . . . two minutes. She said to meet her at the Minit Mart. The violin guy lives just a few blocks from there, and she wanted to get a lemonade for the road.”

“So what time did you get to the Minit Mart?”

“Maybe . . . eight thirtyish.”

“She was gone?”

“Nowhere. Billy inside the Minit Mart—I know him—said she never came in. He didn't see her hanging in the parking lot either.”

Detective Chambers made a few more notes on his pad, looked at Dylan again. “She's only been gone a few hours now,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “Usually, someone ends up missing, they show up in the first twelve to twenty-four hours. Matter of fact, that's why we usually wait twenty-four hours before investigating any missing person report. But I'm not waiting twenty-four hours in this particular case. I'm on it now. We're gonna find your sister.”

Detective Chambers stood, patted Dylan's arm, a gesture that said,
I'm ready to be your hero
.

Dylan just nodded, feeling oddly numb.

“Your parents will be here soon,” Detective Chambers said. “You can go home, get a good sleep. By morning, I bet we'll find out where Joni's gotten off to.”

Detective Chambers didn't know it at the time, but he was wrong about both of those things.

Dylan wouldn't get a good night of sleep.

And he'd seen his sister for the last time.

42

“What happened to her?” Quinn asked.

“It was like . . . I don't know . . . one of those stories off
48 Hours
or something. She . . . just disappeared.”

“How long ago?”

“Three years.”

“So when did she start speaking to you . . . inside?”

He uttered a sharp laugh. “When did I start hearing the voice? Not long after. Had to get off the rez, you know. Thing of it is, it's hard to get off the rez. Lot of people never leave, and it's both a curse and a blessing. But you're the guy who didn't show up to get his sister, you're kind of an outsider. Parents never said anything to me, but really, what was there to say? If I'd been there on time, she never would have headed to the Minit Mart. She'd be here today.

“Anyway, I was kind of like Typhoid Mary in just a few weeks. Needed to get out. Needed to get away. So I signed up for the army, and in basic, when I was on one of those long runs, Joni's voice just . . . popped into my head.” He looked at Quinn, tears forming in his eyes. “She's been there ever since.”