Children of the Earth (12 page)

He looked down and saw that he was on his knees, then looked up to find Luna smirking above him. She no longer exuded sex—in fact, she looked like she’d been sculpted from ice. His desire for her congealed into a clammy, unappetizing film that coated his skin like something you’d find inside of a Tupperware forgotten for months in the back of the refrigerator.

“What the hell just happened?” he asked, his face reddening.

Luna shrugged. “You wanted to clean my boots with your tongue. And, hey, thanks for that. They were actually pretty gross.”

“What the fuck?” Doug stumbled back, off the platform and into the crowd, searching for his friends. But everyone he passed averted their eyes, and some turned their backs to him entirely, sniggering behind cupped hands.

“Dwayne.” Doug approached him, stumbling a little, and held out his hand to steady himself on his friend’s shoulder. “What’s going on, bro?”

But Dwayne shrugged him off angrily, leaving Doug’s arm swinging in empty air. “Don’t touch me, you freak,” he muttered. He turned and stormed out, the rest of the Varley rig roughnecks hurrying after him.

As Doug watched them go, a leaden revelation sank in his stomach. He still wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, or why. All he knew was that he’d been humiliated bad—and in a way that a small town like Carbon County would never let him forget.

15

DADDY WASN’T HOME
YET.

Daddy went out a lot at night. He liked to go to a place called the bar after he hung up his sheriff’s hat and took off his uniform. He liked to spend time with women who painted their faces like clowns, with big red lips and too-blue eyes and shiny shoes that looked like they hurt.

But he always came home before sunrise.

Now the sun was up, and the big daytime trucks chugged up and down the road leaving whorls of dust in their wakes, and Daddy still wasn’t home.

Charlie’s body made a warm pocket of air under the blanket, but outside it was cold. Colder than it had been the day before, even with the sun peeking out from behind a pair of dirty gray clouds. He wanted to stay under the blanket and curl into the warmth––and since there was no Daddy around to tell him not to, that’s exactly what he did.

He had just started to drift off again when a knock came at the door. He poked his head out from under the blanket and slid down off the bed, shivering when his toes touched the floor. Then he padded in his Tommy the Tank Engine pajamas to the front door.

Outside, standing on the faded welcome mat, was a fairy. Or maybe she was an angel—Charlie couldn’t quite decide. All he knew was that she wasn’t an ordinary lady. Ordinary ladies didn’t look like this.

A swirling white skirt danced around her feet like snowdrifts. Stray sparkles caught the light around her eyes, and her lips were parted in a wide, sunny smile. Her hair was every color of the rainbow, full of toys and trinkets that jingled as she spoke.

“Charlie?”

He nodded. Her voice was like the high notes on a piano.

“I’m Luna.” She knelt so they were eye to eye. “Do you know what happened to your daddy?”

He shrugged. “He went out, and he’s not back yet.”

“That’s right.” She nodded seriously. “Your daddy’s going to be gone for a little while, and he asked me to take care of you. How does that sound?”

A twinge of fear made Charlie’s tummy turn. “Where did he go?” His voice sounded small.

Luna took his hand. Her touch was warm and soft, and there was something about her that made the air around them look like it was turning blue. “He had to go on a trip,” she said gently. “He might be gone a long time. But I promise I’ll take very good care of you and not let anything bad happen to you until you get to see him again. Does that sound good?”

Charlie’s stomach unknotted. He relaxed into the blue, a blue as pretty and easy as Luna herself.

“That sounds good.” He thought for a moment. “Are you going to come live here?”

“No, honey.” Luna gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “You’re going to come stay with me. But I’ll make sure you have lots of friends, and you’re never left alone, and you can have whatever you want.”

“Okay.” Charlie liked the sound of that. There was nothing he hated more than the nights his daddy left him with only sleepy old Eunice from next door for company.

He thought for another moment. “Are there chicken nuggets where we’re going?”

She tilted her head toward the sky and laughed.

“Not yet. But I’ll get some,” she said when she was done. “Just for you.”

“Okay.” He liked her eyes and the sparkles around them. She looked like someone who should be in a cartoon.

“Is there anything you want to take with you?” she asked. “I can help you pack a suitcase.”

Charlie thought for a moment. He thought about his toothbrush, and his Tommy the Tank Engine books, and his stuffed octopus with the big blue eyes. He thought about his socks and his blankets and the picture of Mommy on his nightstand and his little nightlight that was shaped like a soccer ball. He thought about all of that, but when he looked up at Luna he felt like none of it mattered. She was a fairy, and there were toys in her hair and sparkles on her eyes and music in her laugh. She would be enough.

“Nah,” he said.

“Beautiful. You’re a free spirit, just like me.” Luna stood and held out her hand. “We don’t need
things
to make us happy, right? We just need each other.”

“Right,” Charlie said. He slipped his hand into hers, letting her long, warm, fairy tale fingers wrap around his. With his other hand he reached behind him and tugged at the door, pulling it shut against his house, and all of his stuff, and the memories of Mommy and Daddy, and the life he was leaving behind.

16

THE KNOC
K WAS GUNFIRE-QUICK,
rattling
the trailer’s walls.

“Now who could that be?” Karen rested her wooden spoon in the bowl where she’d been mixing pink frosting and wiped floury hands on her apron. “Probably someone from the church, wanting something. They always do.”

The knock came again, a gale-force demand.

“I’m coming!” Aunt Karen called, shaking her head as she ran to the door. The kitchen counter was covered in ingredients for the cupcakes she and Daphne were baking for the church social that evening, and the trailer was a warm oasis of butter and sugar in the unseasonably chilly afternoon.

A draft of cold air rushed in as she opened the door, making Daphne shiver into her hoodie. A pair of police detectives stood unsmiling on the doorstep.

“Ma’am.” The skinnier of the two detectives nodded grimly. He was gaunt and hawk nosed, sporting a five-o’clock shadow that dotted his face like old coffee grounds. “I’m Detective Fraczek, and my partner here’s Detective Madsen.” He indicated a pale, towering hulk of a man with limp blond hair. “Is Daphne Peyton home?”

“Why, yes.” Aunt Karen’s smile trembled, then faded. “But—well, can I ask what this is all about?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step aside, ma’am.” Detective Fraczek’s voice was cold as he brushed past Karen and into the trailer, his massive partner at his heels.

“What is it?” Daphne joined Karen at the door, putting a protective hand on her aunt’s shoulder. She didn’t like the rough way the cops spoke to her. “What do you want from me?”

“You’re Daphne Peyton?” Both detectives looked surprised, like they’d been expecting someone else.

“Yes.” She put her hands on her hips. “I am.”

“Then you’re under arrest on suspicion of manslaughter.” Detective Madsen whipped a pair of handcuffs off his belt, the icy metal jangling in the air.

“What?” Karen sucked in the word like a gasp, her hand flying to her heart. “We’ve already been over all of this. It was self-defense!”

Daphne’s heartbeat slammed in her throat as the huge blond man turned her around and slapped the cuffs on her wrists, their edges digging into her flesh. She flashed back to her arrest in Detroit, the exhausted city cop accusing her of committing murder against her abusive stepfather, Jim, and a twisted sense of déjà vu knotted her stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that when she opened them again it would all turn out to be a joke. But a moment later, the two unsmiling detectives were still there.

“What’s this about?” she choked through the dryness in her throat.

A look of pity flashed across Detective Fraczek’s eyes, but his voice stayed stern. “Last week you attacked a man and put him in the hospital. Now he’s dead.”

“He is?” Bitter bile coated the back of her tongue as she remembered her attacker’s greasy hair and creepy, different-colored eyes. Now he was dead, and even though he’d attacked her first, she still felt the old unwelcome rush of guilt and helplessness flow through her and turn her limbs to concrete.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the cop said in response. Daphne stood numbly as he recited the rest of her rights, trying to organize the thoughts ransacking her brain. What would this arrest do to her family, her community? Would her status as a prophet protect her, or would the townspeople of Carbon County turn on her yet again?

“We’re going to take her down to the station for questioning.” Detective Fraczek looked down his hawk-nose at Aunt Karen, who was practically hyperventilating, her face tomato-red. “She should be out on bail later tonight or tomorrow morning, if you want to come get her.”

“
Tomorrow
morning?!
” Karen shrieked. “You can’t do that—she’d spend the night in jail!”

“I’ll do what I can,” he replied grimly. “But if this manslaughter charge sticks, she may be spending a whole lot more than one night in jail.”

“No!” Aunt Karen fanned her face, trying to tame the color in her cheeks. “I’m calling Floyd—and Pastor Ted—and the press. You won’t get away with this! Everyone knows she’s innocent. She’s a prophet, you know! She’s been chosen by God!”

Daphne watched the detectives exchange glances.

“I’ll be okay, Aunt Karen,” Daphne said, forcing herself to stay calm. “I’ll see you before you know it.”

“How touching,” Detective Madsen sneered, steering Daphne toward the door. The cold air slapped her face, making her shoulders shake as they stepped outside. She could hear Aunt Karen puffing and fretting behind them, already on the phone to Uncle Floyd.

“Watch your head,” Fraczek said gruffly, opening the door to the backseat. Without the use of her hands, Daphne fell cheek-first against the bulletproof glass divider, the cuffs digging painfully into her back and making pins and needles tingle in her fingers. The detective closed the door behind her and started the car, and she watched its flashing lights slash the world outside with panels of red and blue.

Owen was out there in that world, probably getting ready to go to the Vein. She stiffened as she thought of her cell phone, back on her bedside table in Janie’s old bedroom in the Peyton trailer. Owen had said he’d text before he made the trip, and she’d wanted to wish him luck. Now she wouldn’t get the chance. All she could do was hope he’d be safe. If all went well, she’d soon be out of police custody and he would come back from the Vein, and they could find refuge in each other’s arms.

The squad car pulled up in front of the Carbon County Police Station, a squat, one-story building painted a depressing green. The inside was no cheerier. Dusty venetian blinds masked the paltry light, and a pair of scarred wooden desks faced each other, both piled high with paperwork and half-empty cups of coffee. A dark hall led away from the room, its shadowy recesses filling Daphne with dread. The police station was a fraction of the size of the one in Detroit, but she still knew what was back there: interrogation rooms and holding cells. Neither of which she’d ever wanted to see the inside of again.

Her thoughts beat double-time as the officers led her down the dark hall and into a small room, its smell so thick with dust and old coffee that she almost gagged. Dead flies fizzled in the bowl of a fluorescent light fixture above their heads, and the metal folding chairs on either side of an ancient table looked greasy and discolored from decades of handling.

It seemed fishy, somehow, that they had waited to arrest her until more than a week after the attack. When Sherriff Bates questioned her in the hospital, he’d seemed to accept that she was acting in self-defense. Something had obviously caused him to change his mind. But what—or who?

Detective Madsen locked the door behind them as Detective Fraczek undid Daphne’s handcuffs and settled in across from her, nicotine-stained fingers resting on a manila folder. He regarded her with hazel eyes ringed with shadows of sleeplessness, and his voice sounded like a sigh.

“Daphne, we’re going to ask you a few questions. It would be in your best interest to cooperate and answer everything with as much detail as possible. If you can do this, we may be able to get you out of here tonight. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Daphne rubbed her wrists where the cuffs had dug in. “Sir,” she added, with what she hoped sounded like respect.

Detective Fraczek raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a start, anyway.” He opened the manila folder and slid a photograph across the table while his partner paced back and forth behind them. “Do you know this man?”

She shivered in disgust as she looked down at the greasy hair and bruise-mottled neck of the man in the photograph. One gray eye and one brown stared back at her, lifeless, unseeing. The picture had obviously been taken after her attacker died.

“Yes. That’s the man who attacked me.”

Detective Madsen stopped pacing and put his hands on the table, leaning close enough for her to see the broken blood vessels around his bulbous nose. “And you still allege that
he
attacked
you
? What you did to him there—the way you strangled him—was that in self-defense?”

“Yes, of course.” Daphne fought to keep her voice calm. She’d been over all of this before, with the sheriff. Where was the sheriff, anyway? “Why would I try to hurt him? I didn’t even know him!”

Detective Madsen opened his mouth to speak, but Detective Fraczek shushed him with a sharp look. Instead of replying, he opened the folder and took out another photo, inching it along the tabletop until it was directly under Daphne’s nose.

“How about this guy?” he asked. “Look familiar?”

The face staring up at Daphne was porky and sad-looking, with jowly rolls under the chin and a grim set to the eyes.

“That’s the sheriff.” She looked imploringly from one cop to the other. “Why are you showing me this? Where is he, anyway? Shouldn’t he be here?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.” Detective Fraczek sat back and crossed his arms. “He’s been missing since last night. And he’s not the only one. Have you ever seen this little guy before?”

He opened the folder one last time and handed Daphne a photograph. An involuntary gasp ripped through her as she took in the little boy with the sandy bowl cut, the one who had observed her with curiosity in the hospital room the night of the attack. She could tell from the sadness in Detective Fraczek’s eyes that something was wrong, and a cold certainty twisted in her gut. Something had happened to this boy, something bad.

“You’re upset,” Detective Fraczek said bluntly. She raised her eyes from the photograph just in time to catch the two officers exchange knowing glances. “What are you feeling right now, Daphne? Sadness? Regret?” His eyes probed hers, a glimmer of triumph sparking in their hazel depths.
“Guilt?”

“No!” The word erupted from her, unnaturally shrill. “I’m worried. You have to find him!”

“That’s what we intend to do.” Detective Fraczek said quietly. “We’re asking you.”

“Me?” The word echoed off the concrete walls. “Why?”

Detective Madsen sighed. “Because of this.” He tapped a police file. “We found it on the sheriff’s desk after he went missing. It’s an investigation into the murder up at the drifter’s camp, and it implicates you as the number-one suspect.”

Blood thundered in Daphne’s ears. The room around her felt airless, like it had been stuffed with wet cotton and was being slowly jammed down her throat. Everything she thought she’d escaped, the very crime she’d been finally absolved of once the town of Carbon County accepted her as a prophet, came rushing back at her, threatening to drown her. She wanted to bang her head against the table, to scream at the officers that they were wrong, to find the sheriff and shake him by the shoulders until he agreed to take it back.

Instead, she allowed herself one long, shaky breath before fixing her eyes solidly on Detective Fraczek. Her only chance, she knew from the past, was to get as much information as possible and hope that a good lawyer and an understanding jury would take care of the rest.

“Why me?” she asked with as much dignity as she could muster. “What makes him think I’d try to kill a man I’ve never met?”

Detective Fraczek twiddled a pen between his scrawny fingers, tapping it rapidly against the table with a clicking that made her want to jump up and bite his hand. She forced slow breaths through her lungs, trying not to panic.

“First of all,” he said, “we have no evidence that you didn’t know him. It’s suspicious that you were up at the drifter’s camp in the first place, and your coworker’s story that you were quote-unquote ‘acting weird’ beforehand doesn’t help your case. People often ‘act weird’ when they’re about to commit a murder, don’t you think?”

“But—” Daphne sputtered. “But there were witnesses! People saw him attack me first.”

The detectives shook their heads in slow, perfect tandem, like a pair of hound dogs following the trajectory of a biscuit.

“Not so,” Detective Madsen said. “We were up there earlier. There were witnesses all right, but what they saw were two people on the ground—and you had your hands around his neck. Nobody saw him attack you. They heard a scream, but they say now they’re not even sure whose it was.”

“But that’s crazy!” Images from that night flashed in quick strobes through her mind: the knife glinting in the moonlight, the crazed look in the man’s different-colored eyes, the greasy stench of his stringy hair and rancid breath, and the terrifying visions that overtook her when she thought all was lost. “He had a knife against my neck. I didn’t even know what I was doing when I strangled him . . . I was seeing things, it was like I was in another world . . .”

She trailed off, suddenly realizing what her words implied.
Seeing thing
s. In another world.
She sounded like a schizophrenic. In a flash, the line between being a prophet and being straight-up crazy narrowed until, seeing it through the detectives’ eyes, she could barely discern it at all. In the religiously charged valley of Carbon County, her visions were accepted as truth and proselytized as gospel, but in other places, like police stations and courts of law, she’d be medicated and locked up. She needed to stop talking before she gave the cops more ammo to convict her for a crime she didn’t commit.

“Were you seeing things when you murdered your stepfather, too?” Detective Fraczek leaned in for the kill. “What about when you murdered the sheriff . . . or his son?”

“I didn’t murder anyone!” Daphne’s words thundered through the tiny room, bouncing off the sweating stucco walls.

“Come on.” Detective Fraczek laughed. “You have to admit, it’s pretty suspicious that Sherriff Bates disappeared as soon as he started investigating you.”

“But what about Charlie?” Anger blazed in her cheeks. “You really think I’d kill a child?”

Detective Madsen shrugged. “According to some, you already have. I’m sure the name Jeremiah Varley means something to you.”

Daphne felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. The mention of Janie’s stillborn baby always brought tears to her eyes, and now she wiped them away furiously, glaring at the detective’s doughy face and suspicious eyes. “How could you even—you know that’s not true.” She struggled to draw a breath, but the pain had a stranglehold on her. It was like the detectives had found all the most horrible and agonizing moments in her life and laid them in front of her on the tabletop. Now they were burying her face in them, trying to smother her with the memories.