Chasing Darkness (12 page)

“I
don’t care.”

With
her hands on her hips, Whitney let out a long sigh like her mother did when
she’d done something wrong. Then, pointing a finger, she said, “You should
invite me to sit. It’s only polite, you know.”

Molly
looked up at her and frowned. “Fine. Sit down.”

She
rolled her eyes. What could she do if Molly was rude? Her mother always told
her that some people just weren’t raised right. Brushing off the step, Whitney
sat down, spreading her dress around her and then crossing her legs and
settling her hands in her lap.

Molly
pulled her knees to her chest and rested her arms on her knees.

“I
heard about your mom,” Whitney said, trying to raise the subject nicely.

Molly
didn’t answer.

“What’s
it like?”

Molly
frowned. “What’s what like?”

“Not
having a mom.”

She
shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Are
you sad?”

Molly
nodded, chewing on her lower lip.

“You
can cry if you want to.”

“I’m
not going to cry.”

Whitney
shrugged. If her mother died, she would cry. She would cry and cry and cry. And
then where would she go? She couldn’t live with Randy and her stepfather. They
wouldn’t want her. She’d probably get shipped back to her father’s house in
Michigan. She scrunched her face at the thought of living with her stepmother.
No, she would definitely cry if her mother died.

Whitney
straightened her back and smoothed her pink skirt. A small brown stain caught
her eye and she picked at it. It was chocolate—from her cousin Teddy’s birthday
party.

“Why
are you here?”

Whitney
looked over at Molly, who was watching her. “I came to see how you were doing.”

The
little girl narrowed her gaze. The streaks of dirt on her face made tiny cracks
when she did. “Why?”

“Because
I thought you might want someone to talk to.” Whitney paused. “Do you?”

Molly
shook her head. “No.”

“We
can talk about who killed your mom.”

“No,”
Molly said again.

Every
day since Molly’s mom died, Whitney’s mom had warned her to be very careful
going outside. Whitney would look out the window at night and watch the cars go
by and wonder if the killer was in each one. But once, in the middle of the
night, she’d woken up and heard noises and thought the killer was in her house.
It was only the wind blowing the screen door open and shut. That was scary.

Her
stepbrother was outside playing when Molly’s mom was last seen. He could have
been a hero if he had been paying attention. But Randy never paid attention,
especially when he was playing.

Whitney
smoothed her skirt and turned to Molly, watching the other girl frown. Her
mother always told her that her face would freeze in that position if she held
it too long. Molly’s looked frozen, but Whitney didn’t say that. She stretched
out her legs and crossed one over the other. “My mom said it was your dad what
did it.”

Molly
sat up straight and scowled. “It was not.”

Whitney
ran her hand over her skirt again without responding to Molly’s outburst. Molly
was only a few months younger than Whitney, but Whitney had always been mature
for her age. “Precoshess,” her uncle always said.

“Your
mom doesn’t know,” Molly said.

“She
knows more than you do.”

Molly
thought about that and then shook her head. “I don’t care what your mom said,”
Molly said. “She’s stupid if she said that. My dad would never do that. He
loves my mom. Your mom’s a liar.”

“Is
not,” Whitney scolded. “My mother wouldn’t lie.”

“Well,
she did.”

Whitney
crossed her arms and stood up, stomping her patent leather shoe hard on the
porch. “Don’t you say that. My stepbrother was riding his bike when your mother
came outside—he saw.”

“He
can’t even hear,” Molly snapped back.

Whitney
put her hands on her hips. “He’s deaf, not stupid, and he can see.” It was the
first time Whitney had ever stood up for dumb Randy.

“If
he’s so smart, how come he’s older than me and still in the first grade?”

Whitney
scowled. “He’s not as dumb as you if you don’t think your dad did it.”

“Did
not.”

“Did
too.”

Molly
started to cry. “Not,” she said, her voice cracking as the tears made tiny red
paths down her dirty cheeks.

Whitney
tilted her nose in the air and gave a light shrug.

Molly
stood up and stomped across the porch to the front door. “Go away,” she
screamed, as the door slammed shut.

Wiping
off her dress, Whitney stomped off the porch. Her mother had said that Molly’s
dad did it, but she made up the part about Randy seeing something happen. He
was
outside, though. If she had been outside, she would have seen everything. She
would be a great detective—like Nancy Drew in the stories her mom used to read
to her when it was just the two of them.

Randy
would be a terrible detective. Whitney had wanted to ask him a million questions
before he left to see his mom, but he was too busy packing to talk to her. That
was a problem with being deaf. You couldn’t talk if your hands were busy doing
other things. Plus, she didn’t think he would be much help anyway. Her mother
always said men didn’t notice anything important—the same must be true of boys.

Randy
was so stupid he probably saw the whole thing and totally forgot it.

Rob
watched Billy Jenkins slam the car door shut and carry the partly empty case of
Old Milwaukee toward the group. They usually met here. It was a turnout behind
a fire trail in the Berkeley hills and was rarely patrolled. Tall eucalyptus
trees hid their cars from Grizzly Peak, out of view of nosy cops, which made it
a convenient spot to hang out and drink. The times he’d been with girls had
been here too, on a blanket on the ground. On warm summer nights, girls thought
it was romantic to be able to look up and see the stars.

Billy
sat down beside Rob and handed him a beer.

“Where’d
you snag this? Your old man?”

Billy
grunted. “He was too wasted to miss it.”

Rob
watched his face. Billy liked to talk big, but he was afraid of his father. Rob
was, too. Billy’s father was a real asshole.

“Fuck
him,” Billy muttered, pulling a can from the box and opening it with the same
hand.

Rob
took a long, slow drag on his beer and felt nothing. It always helped to stop
feeling. He wondered why Sam didn’t drink. Maybe she didn’t need booze to feel
nothing.

Billy
dropped the can in an old pile of rusting empties and opened another.

Rob
stared out at the skyline.

“Enjoying
the view?” Billy asked.

Rob
finished his beer and took another one from Billy. “When you going to start
contributing to the flow?”

“There’s
nothing in my house.” Rob opened the beer and took a long drag.

Billy
nodded.

He
wasn’t so bad, Rob thought. They both went to Las Lomas High School but hadn’t
known each other until they got summer jobs with the stupid landscaping place.
Then that dickhead Mr. Peters had busted them for drinking. Sam was already on
his ass about finding another job. “You got a job yet?”

Billy
shook his head and tilted his beer back. “I’m working on it.”

“Yeah,
me too. Your old man still on you about losing that job?” Rob asked, without
looking at him.

“He’s
the same. He’s an asshole.”

Rob
didn’t respond.

“That
crap he pulled at the station was nothing. You should see how he is at home.”

Rob
met his eye and took another drink from his beer.

Billy
looked out.

Rob
joined his gaze. From this spot he was sure he could see the lights of San
Francisco.

“I’ll
bet Vegas is cool,” Billy said.

Rob
nodded.

“That’s
what we should do. Take off and go to Vegas.”

Rob
looked at him. “Yeah, right.”

“I
mean it. Screw school. Screw our folks. Just take off.”

Rob
finished his beer and tossed the can behind him. “Yeah, maybe.”

“What
the hell, man? What’s here for us? School is bullshit. Parents are bullshit.”

“I
wouldn’t know about parents.”

Billy
stared at Rob and shook his head. “Sorry, man.”

Rob
shrugged.

“You
don’t remember them at all?”

Rob
shrugged again, took another can of beer and opened it. “Parts of it—my dad’s
slurring voice. It comes back sometimes.” He shook his head, then raised the
beer can and chugged the liquid until it burned his throat. He coughed and
wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How
old were you?”

“Eight.”

“That’s
pretty old. Don’t you remember them?”

“Some
of it.”

“What
do you remember?”

Rob
thought back. None of it was good. “I don’t know. Mostly I remember my mom
crying and my dad screaming.”

“Sounds
like my house,” Billy said, drinking his beer.

“My
mom was really pretty, I remember that. She had long blond hair—really long.
And she wore it down all the time. I used to love her hair.”

“Your
aunt seems cool.”

Rob
shrugged. “She’s okay. Everything has to be just right. You think your father
gives you a hard time, at least you’re his kid.”

“You
see how she handled my dad that day?”

“Yeah.”

“That
was cool.”

Rob
thought about it. Sam had always been like that. He never really thought about
it as cool or not. “I guess.”

“I
wish my dad would die.”

Rob
glared at him, furious. “No, you don’t. Don’t say that.”

“The
hell I don’t. Son of a bitch doesn’t care about me.”

Rob
waved him off, then ran his hand through his hair, watching the other guys joke
around. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t wish your parents
dead. Even lousy parents. At least you’ve got them.”

Another
car pulled up, and Billy lowered his beer as he looked back, checking for cop
cars. The door opened and three junior girls got out. “Those chicks need to
find their own hangout.”

They
watched Derek get out of the car. “Damn,” Billy said.

Rob
ignored him, reaching for another beer.

“Now
I’ve got to give a beer to your gimp brother, too,” he muttered.

Rob
felt the anger rush to his cheeks. He dropped the beer and reached for Billy.
“What’d you say?”

Billy
pulled Rob’s hand off his shirt and raised his voice. “I said, I’m probably
going to have to give some beer to your gimp brother, too.” He grinned at Rob.
It was his don’t-screw-with-me grin.

Jumping
to his feet, Rob took Billy by the shirt and tossed him to the ground, then
came down on top of him.

Billy
fought to loosen Rob’s grip but couldn’t. “What the hell are you doing?”

The
buzz of alcohol in his brain, Rob raised his fist and brought it down hard on
Billy’s face.

“Get
off me,” Billy yelled, twisting his hips below Rob in an effort to throw him
off balance.

“You
dipshit.” Rob cursed in a low, angry stream as his fists connected with Billy’s
body.

Rob’s
right landed in his gut and Billy moaned. “Get him off me,” he screamed,
kicking and fighting.

Rob
continued to pound on him. Billy took hits to his chest, arms, and shoulders.
His left eye was starting to swell shut.

Derek
had moved to Rob’s side and was screaming. “Let him go, Rob. Let go of him!”

Two
guys grabbed Rob from behind and were trying to pull him off.

With
Rob’s weight finally off him, Billy hurriedly got up. Derek tried to help him,
but Billy shoved him away. “Don’t touch me, you freak.”

Derek
gave him a stare and shook his head. “You didn’t have to do that, Rob. It
doesn’t matter what he says. He’s an idiot.”

Rob
looked at Billy and straightened his shoulders. Then he lunged at Billy.

Billy
jumped back and tripped, landing on the ground again.

“Fucking
loser—just like your dad,” Rob said. “Let’s go, Derek.”

Billy
got up quickly and wiped himself off. He touched the back of his hand to his
lip and felt the warmth of blood.

Rob
walked away.

“What’d
you say to piss him off?” he heard Joe ask Billy.

“Shut
the fuck up,” Billy snapped.

Rob
didn’t look back. His arm over Derek’s shoulder, they headed down the hill
toward the car in silence.

Sam
parked across the street from the theater at Jack London Square and followed
Nick’s directions to Yoshi’s restaurant on the next block. Though she hadn’t
intended to have dinner with just Nick, it sounded like fun. Carefree, adult
fun.

Something
people actually did. Something as foreign to her as the families she saw
laughing together over pizza in a restaurant or playing a game of softball in
the park.

She
couldn’t remember an evening she would describe that way. Brent had never been
fun, certainly not carefree. He thought he was fun, but he was too serious
really. Uptight. And now, with no practice, no skills, in the middle of a crazy
case and some ridiculous taunting at work, she was supposed to have an evening
of adult fun.

The
thought terrified her. Sushi and jazz, Nick had said, as though they were two
totally normal things for adults to do. Two things, aside from fun, that Sam
knew nothing about.

Somehow
she had thought maybe they would end up in a sports bar or something. Now the
evening was beginning to sound like a date. Her stomach made foreign flutters
and she found herself tempted to turn around and retreat to safety. Already the
day had been exhausting—Corona’s scolding, the picture in the file.