The More They Disappear (18 page)

“So do I need to worry about you taking out your anger on your wife? I don't want to get a domestic call because we talked about this.”

Jackson shook his head. “I'm not a violent man.” A strange look spread across his face and he shook his head as if remembering a private joke. “Let me tell you a story. When my father died, he left us the ugliest mongrel you ever saw. Muldoon was some sort of terrier with cataract eyes and alopecia. Anyway, our daughter said she'd walk and feed him but that lasted all of a week. Lyda, she liked the dog or maybe the dog liked her, but she didn't like Muldoon enough to walk him two times a day or drive him to the vet every now and then. So I took to putting Muldoon in the backyard to do his business. Sometimes I'd put him out before bed and forget to let him back in. Then the next morning, I'd open the door and find Muldoon sitting there scratching behind his ear or chewing on his tail. This went on for years. Muldoon wouldn't die. And all through those years Lyda would ask me, ‘Do you know where Muldoon is?' And I would say, ‘Outside.' I stopped even wondering whether or not I'd actually put him out there. She'd ask and I'd say, ‘Outside.' Like a reflex. Didn't matter if it was true or not. Then sometime last year, Lyda comes up to my office and asks, ‘Where's Muldoon?' And I say, ‘Outside.' Well fifteen minutes later, she comes back and says she can't find him. So we search, start with the house and move into the neighborhood, calling his name, as if Muldoon ever came when called. I gave up first, returned home, and damned if we couldn't find Muldoon anywhere. At some point Lyda comes back and asks, ‘Are you sure you put him outside?' I lie and say yes. Then my daughter, Mary Jane, comes back and yells at me for being negligent, which is a laugh coming from her. Next morning I wake up and reach into my closet to get some shoes and what do I find but Muldoon. Cold and dead. And you know what I did?” Harlan shook his head. “I carried him outside and hid him behind some bushes by the fence. Then I made coffee and read the paper and waited for Lyda to wake up so I could tell her I'd found Muldoon.
Outside
.”

“That's a good story,” Harlan said. “But I'm not sure I get the point.”

“In a marriage you'll do just about anything to prove you're right. You'll carry a dog's corpse past your wife while she sleeps. You'll do this as if it's normal. You get so accustomed to the lies you don't even realize they're lies anymore. I knew Lyda and Lew had a history, and maybe I learned to look the other way so long as she was kind enough to be discreet. I didn't know she was back together with him before he died, but I'm not surprised. And maybe she and I will have a talk about it, but I doubt it will change whatever understanding we have of our marriage. These are complicated matters and best dealt with in private. Of course, I'm hoping this helps put your mind at ease regarding my involvement in Lew's death. I will do what I can to help you, Sheriff, so long as you keep my private business private. Tact is the hallmark I value above all others.”

Harlan risked putting a hand to Jackson's shoulder, a soft pat to let him know he was sorry for having to ask in the first place. “One last question,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“I remember a few years ago Lew tried to join Idle Haven. The mayor sponsored him, I think. Did you have anything to do with his being denied?”

Jackson smiled for the first time since Harlan had sat next to him at the bar. “I believe the decision to deny Lew membership was unanimous, though I'm not ashamed to say I was among the nays. He didn't fit the Idle Haven mold.”

 

six

Mary Jane woke to the sound of Mark munching dry cereal in front of an early-morning action flick on TNT. She was sprawled on the couch, still wearing her clothes from the day before. Mark must've thrown a blanket over her, though she couldn't remember when. She'd returned from True Blue with a bottle of peach schnapps she convinced some creep outside the liquor store to buy, rifled through the apartment for loose pills, and proceeded to drink and snort away the pain. She remembered worrying when Mark didn't return but her concern lessened the more she drank. At some point, she must've fallen asleep. Mark must've returned.

As she sat up, her feet kicked over the empty bottle of schnapps.

“You sure tied one on,” Mark said. “You were passed the fuck out when I came back. I tried to wake you up and you just went limp.”

“What time was that?”

“I don't know. Not late.”

Mary Jane's head felt like it had been rattled by a paint mixer. Each shudder of her eyelids pierced like a needle. “You had cereal here?” she said.

“In the cabinet. But no milk.”

“I don't think I ate dinner.” Mark held the bowl in her direction but she closed her eyes and cradled her head in her hands. “Can you not chew so loud?”

“I'm having breakfast.” He turned the volume down a notch on the TV, continued to talk with his mouth full. “Why'd you get so drunk?”

“I got a tattoo,” she said, as if it was no news at all.

On the television a man with wavy hair praised his shampoo. “What's that?”

She unbuttoned her shirt and showed him. “A tattoo,” she lisped. She winced as she spoke; her tongue felt like an overgrown slug. “And a piercing.”

Mark shook his head. “Of all the things. Why would you get a tattoo?”

“Because I wanted to,” she said, and something in the way the words formed snagged the stud and broke loose the scab. She rushed to the kitchen sink to spit out a pink mass. When she closed her mouth, it felt like she was choking.

“Good God,” Mark said. “You're a mess.” He stepped into the bathroom and came out with a hand towel and hydrogen peroxide. The peroxide fizzed as it touched raw skin but Mark blew to cool the pain. “It's a woman in the woods,” he said. “And what's that French?”

She shrugged.

“Tattoos aren't really my thing but…” Mark's voice trailed off. Mary Jane's mind sharpened with each burning flash of peroxide. She didn't feel guilty about the tattoo. What had Mark been doing the day before that was so important? Where was the money he was supposed to collect? He owed her answers; she didn't owe him anything.

She reached up and grabbed his hand. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Okay.”

She turned to face him. “When are we leaving?”

“It's complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

Mark put his hands on the counter, locked his elbows, and leaned into them. “There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, and…” He started drumming his fingers. “I didn't get the money.”

“Why not?”

Mark mumbled something she couldn't hear and she told him to speak up.

“He refused,” Mark said, his voice whiny with despair. “He said I still owed him.”

“Fuck,” Mary Jane said. “Fucker. You don't owe him anything.”

Mark nodded. “I know.” He seemed less like a man than a little boy.

Mary Jane punched him in the shoulder. Hard. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“I'm figuring that out.”

The sounds of gunfire rang out from the television and she looked over to watch the Terminator lay waste to a police force. She found the remote and snapped off the television as the Terminator cocked his shotgun. She remembered the pressure of the trigger, the butt of the rifle kicking her shoulder. “Let me deal with your dad if you can't.”

Mark shook his head. “You don't know what he's like.”

“We killed someone,” Mary Jane said. The words were blunt and to the point and saying them out loud felt good. “I pulled the trigger but you aren't innocent.”

Mark couldn't look at her. “I know,” he said. “I set the fire to help you escape, remember? I helped.”

“But you weren't there,” she said. “You didn't see. There was blood everywhere. On people we know.” And even though what she said wasn't exactly true, it felt true. “His wife was there, screaming. I swear I wanted to die, Mark. Right then and there. But I did it. For you. For us.” Mary Jane's mouth burned and she swallowed a syrupy gob of blood. She ached in a way she'd never ached before and she could no longer hold it inside—the blood, the fear, the tears—and there wasn't a pill strong enough to heal her. She grabbed Mark and turned him to face her. She needed him to stand up and take responsibility. “
We
did that,” she said, her breath ragged and loud, like a train stuttering up a mountain.

Mark tried to pull her into his arms. “I didn't realize what we were getting into.”

“It was your idea,” she cried. And it was true. Mostly it was true.

It had been a couple of weeks after the incident with Lew at the docks. Mark took Mary Jane on a long drive, gunning his Mustang through hairpin turns as they smoked dope and soaked in the summer sun. They tried to forget that if he wasn't arrested first, Mark would be returning to school and Mary Jane would be left behind. Again.

In the middle of Nowhere, Kentucky, Mark pulled into an abandoned farm and bounced over unpaved roads until they were all alone in the world. At first she thought he wanted to get high and play the game where they pretended to die, but then Mark said he had something he wanted to show her and a small part of Mary Jane thought he'd drop down on one knee and pull out a ring. Instead he popped the trunk and showed her the rifle, asked Mary Jane if she would teach him to shoot.

She tried to convince Mark he was overreacting. If reasoning with Lew didn't work, he could run away. They could run away together. Mark said she didn't understand. There was evidence that could put him away for a long time and Lew wouldn't just let him go. “You have to cut off the head of the snake,” Mark said, as if he were some wizened master.

Mary Jane didn't want to imagine her life without Mark. Mark seemed destined for bigger things and she seemed destined to be with him. And so Mary Jane picked up the rifle and tried to remember what her grandfather taught her all those years ago. “Never assume a gun is unloaded,” she said. “This is a bolt action, so you rotate this handle up and pull it back to make sure the chamber is empty.…”

Of course she had regrets. She'd taken a man's life, but as Mark held her and promised he'd be there for her, she trusted that it had been for a reason. She reminded herself that Lew Mattock was no innocent. Mark had failed to deliver the future he'd promised and Mary Jane was afraid, but together they could muddle through. Mark was there to catch her tears, and for the moment, that was enough.

“I'm sorry,” he said as he rubbed his hands up and down her back. “I'll fix it.”

“How?”

“Just trust me, MJ. I'll fix it.”

She wanted to believe him so badly she said, “Okay.” Because okay was better than nothing at all.

“I mean it. We'll be fine.”

“Okay.” She dried her eyes on his shirt and pressed her lips into his. “No regrets.”

“No regrets.”

She felt the beginning of his erection press against her thigh and moved her hand beneath Mark's shirt and kissed him despite the flashing pain in her mouth. His hand scraped against her tattoo and she gasped. “Be careful,” she whispered and taught him to touch her new skin.

She took off his clothes and pushed him down on the couch and rode him to keep the tattoo in the open air. She felt triumphant. And when she closed her eyes, she focused on her own pleasure. And when the boy beneath her didn't do the trick, she imagined he was someone else. And after she came and came, she took Mark's cock in her hand and helped him along. One day he might grow into the sort of man who took charge, but he wasn't that man yet. She'd need to teach him. Because when they stopped talking, when all that mattered were their bodies, she spoke the language fluently and he just stuttered. And as they lay on the couch naked, the dull pain of her body throbbed like a heartbeat. And there was no pill for that.

*   *   *

Harlan received word from the crime lab that none of the Finley rifles were a ballistic match with the crime scene bullet and put a question mark next to Jackson's name on his yellow pad. Later, Del knocked on his door and handed over a list of names compiled from the gun sales at Walmart, few of which were promising. Frank followed Del in and said, “You ask him about Cynthiana?”

“Not yet,” Del mumbled in his soft drawl.

“What about Cynthiana?” Harlan said.

“Frank's buddy is a cop down there. Says they booked an illegal last night who shot a local outside a bar. The vic's on life support at Chandler, but the bigger news is they impounded an unregistered Camry from the parking lot with a brick of marijuana, a bag of MDMA, and a couple guns in the trunk.”

“MDMA?”

“Ecstasy,” Frank said. “People take it and fuck like bunnies.” He grinned wide, happy to have come up with a lead he could rub in Harlan's face, but Harlan didn't mind giving credit when it was due. “That's good work,” he said. “Why don't you two go down and check it out.”

Harlan copied Del's list of names onto his yellow pad, added a note about the unidentified perp in Cynthiana, then flipped it closed. On the front of the pad was a to-do list he'd made the day after Lew died, including a reminder to visit Mabel Mattock. Harlan told himself he'd been giving Mabel time to grieve. The truth was he didn't want to look her in the eye after finding out about Lew's affair, but the time for dawdling was over.

Mabel stood outside her house, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and staring at some needy-looking shrubs. “I saw that car coming up the road and it gave me déjà vu,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” Harlan said. “I wasn't thinking about how strange that might be.”

“Oh, be quiet. I'm just making small talk. Come on inside.”