Complicit (21 page)

I pause and blink. Bunched up and wadded into a corner by the wheel well is a crumpled plastic garbage bag. Inconspicuous enough, only … only it's not
mine.

I lean forward onto my stomach to grab for it. My guess is that those auto body guys left their trash in here. Or more likely, given the way they sneered at me, it's a bag full of fecal matter or used hypodermic needles. But when I look inside, what I find is an assortment of prescription pill bottles, a handful of jewelry, including gold, pearls, what look like the-real-deal diamonds, some work gloves, a crowbar, an empty box of M-80 firecrackers, a book of gas station matches, and two articles of clothing—my missing khakis from my Friday-night date with Jenny and a faded Sayrebrook jazz band sweatshirt, both carrying the strong stench of gunpowder and smoke.

I grab onto the bumper and twist around to lean my butt against it. The plastic bag remains gripped in my left hand.

I stare at it, disbelieving. Someone put this here. Someone broke into my car and put this here.

Right?

I take gulping gasps of air.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

FORTY-EIGHT

My decision's made in a split second. I leap from the Jeep, slam the trunk closed with everything inside, then bolt across the road again. This time, I run right up the Ramirez ranch drive, past the horses and the rebuilt barn and straight on toward the guest cottage. I'm not worried about being seen. I'm worried about Cate and I'm worried about me, and there's only one person on this earth who knows my sister better than I do.

Danny.

I want to talk to him.

I
need
to.

My lungs burn, but I push on.

This is either a fool's errand or a hero's quest.

 

 

As I approach the guest cottage, a whimper of relief escapes me. The lights are on and Danny's white pickup's parked up against a redwood tree. I run faster. It's not only the thought of help that overwhelms me. It's the not being alone in all this.

The rain's tapered off but water pools along the night-darkened ground. The combination of poor vision and damp stiff clothes means I barely make the leap from the ground up the narrow stairs to the redwood deck without falling ass over teakettle. I skid, steady myself, then rush to the French doors and pound on the glass.

No answer.

I pound more. I press my nose against the pane. The entire living space is visible, lit up by a wagon-wheel chandelier that hangs over the center of the room. Each of the individual bulbs glows like a lit torch, sending multicolored flares through the rain-streaked glass, but there's no movement from inside. Gritting my teeth, I yank the door handle.

It opens with a low creak.

I take a tentative step in. I cup my hands together and stage-whisper, “Danny?”

Nothing.

I say it louder. “Danny!”

My voice echoes back at me, but nothing else. I gird myself and walk all the way inside, skirting the unfolded futon and plush cream rug. My knee knocks against an end table. It wobbles, but manages to stay upright.

In the kitchen area things are more puzzling. A cracked ceramic plate with crumbs on it sits beside the sink, along with a half-empty bottle of Corona. I grab the beer. The bottle's almost full and the glass is still cold.

Strange.

I take a quick look in the bathroom, which is the only space that's separate from the rest of the cottage, but the door's open and the light's off. Danny's simply not here.

But he can't be far. Perhaps he's visiting up at the main house or got called down to the barn.

Thud-whack!

I gasp and twist around.

Thud-whack!

I jump again, but it's only the French door. I didn't secure it when I came in, so now the black night wind's pushing it around, banging it against the frame, like something outside wants to get in real bad. Air slides from my lungs in relief. I steal a glance at the thick white rug. And freeze.

Large wet footprints cover the floor. Brown, sopping ones. Ones that weren't there before.

They definitely weren't.

Heart pounding and hands tingling, my gaze follows their path. They go all the way across the room, past the rug, the end table, the futon.

Straight to me.

I look down.

At my own mud-caked boots.

I start to tremble. A creeping sense of doubt crawls up my spine to nest in the darkest of my cortex. It's a familiar feeling, dizzying and homespun and irrepressible. Like an itch I can't scratch. Like a thought I can't silence. Like a—

A sharp buzzing gets my attention. My head swivels to see Danny's phone—it's on vibrate, which makes it jitter around on the kitchen counter where he left it. I reach over and grab it.

The screen informs me that there's a new text from someone named August. I don't know if that's a guy or a girl. The message reads,
look asshole you coming tonight or what?
so my instincts say guy, although I always thought girls were the ones named after months.

I scroll through the other apps on the home page, eager for information, for anything. Other than the fact that his wallpaper is a photo of him and Cate from high school, the only thing out of the ordinary that I see is in the call log. Danny's made a ton of outgoing calls to the same number recently. More than a ton. Ten times in one hour.

I hit redial.

The phone rings and rings and rings. No voice mail picks up. Nothing.

I hang up.

I stare at the call log some more. Then I pull my own phone out and dial the exact same number.

Cate answers on the first ring.

“Hey, little brother,” she says. “Guess I know where to find you now, don't I?”

FORTY-NINE

I lock my knees to keep from falling. The tone in Cate's voice is so on the nose it hurts. It's sprite or tart or any of those words people use when they mean to say a girl's astute, but don't want to give her too much credit. But I don't underestimate my sister. Not one bit. In her brightness and cheer, what I pick up is threatening undertone and the final arrival of a long-brewing storm.

Cate's all about subtext.

“What's going on?” I ask, as my gaze darts from the stormy night to the swinging French door back to my dirty boots, that triad of dread I can't yet piece together.

“Why, hello to you, too,” she purrs.

“You—you're setting me up, aren't you? You're trying to get me in trouble.”

It's like I can hear her smirking through the phone. “Are you
mad
at me, Jamie?”

“No! I'm not mad. I'm confused. The cops want to talk to me about some fire. They think … they think
I
did it.”

“Did you?”

I take a deep breath and think back to the bag in the Jeep. The firecrackers. The stolen jewelry. My own smoke-stained clothing.

The way I forget things.

“I d-don't know,” I whisper.

She laughs. “So naturally you want to blame me. Figures. How's Danny, by the way? You can tell him to stop calling. I'm not interested.”

“Danny's not here.”

“But you have his phone?”

“Yeah, I do. I have
your
stuff, too, you know. I went and dug it all up this afternoon.”

“My stuff? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The messenger bag you hid in the tree trunk after the fire. Remember that? With your journal and those books from Dr. Waverly's office and our mom's stone tiger. And
your
phone. I have that, too.”

There's a long pause. “Hold on.
You
have all that?”

“Yeah. And Cate, the owl in Dr. Waverly's office. That was our mom's, too, wasn't it?”

“Of course it was.”

“How did she get it?”

“Maybe I gave it to her as a fucking Christmas present. Maybe I didn't want to keep it hidden in a box in the back of my closet just to preserve poor Angie's sobby feelings any longer. Hold on, did you say there was
a phone?
What phone?”

“The phone you used to lure Sarah Ciorelli into the barn that night.” I shake my head. “You tried to
kill
her.”

Cate sputters. “Where the hell did you find all of this?”

“What do you mean where? I'm the one who buried it.”

“
You
did that? Why?”

“For you! So the cops wouldn't find it. So you wouldn't get in worse trouble than you already were! But I shouldn't have bothered because now you're trying to ruin me!”

“Oh, God,” she says. “Oh, no. This is like … I don't even know. Wow.”

“
Wow?
Are you drunk or something?”

“No, I'm not drunk. That is not what I am.”

“What are you, then?”

“I'm sad. I'm really fucking sad right now.”

“I don't get it. That's what the thing with the conversion disorder was about, right? You knew I felt guilty about hiding evidence and that's why my hands go numb when I get upset.”

“Is
that
what you think?”

“Um … yeah.”'

“No, no, that's not right, Jamie. Your conversion disorder isn't about burying my shit.”

“It's not?”

“Well, when did your hands first go numb?”

“They went numb when I was at school. With Scooter. It was when I heard about Sarah Ciorelli and the fire.”

“Was that before or after you buried those things in the woods?”

I start to tremble. My whole body.

“Before,” I say softly.

“That's right.”

“I don't understand.”

“I know that. We need to talk. In person.”

“Why? So you can send the cops after me?”

“No. Not that.” She tells me where she is.

I can't hold back any longer. “Did you kill her, Cate? Our mom? Is that what this is about?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Why would I
not
? You tried to kill Sarah. You gave me that play.
Electra.
The one where the girl ends up killing her own mom. It's like, you want me to know but you don't want to say it!”

There's silence.

“Cate?”

“Did you actually
read
that play I gave you?” she asks.

“Part of it. Enough.”

“Well, no, not enough. Because Electra doesn't kill her mother, dickhead.”

“She doesn't?”

“No. She's an accomplice, but she doesn't do the actual killing.”

“Then who does?”

“Orestes,” Cate says. “Her goddamn brother.”

There's horror and then there's this moment.

There's right now.

No. Don't listen to her. She's crazy. She hates you. She's luring you in for the kill.

“You still sure you want to know the truth, Jamie?” Cate asks.

Do I?

Is there still a choice?

FIFTY

Two years ago, on the day my hands first went numb, when the feathery wind catchers and weather-aged copper bells guided me through the woods and brought me to the clearing where my sister used to put schoolgirls into trances and smoke from a hookah, I'd felt the strangest sense of déjà vu.

Like a premonition.

Like I was chasing fate.

Tonight, however, as I scramble through the same clearing under the cover of night, in an effort to avoid anyone who might be out searching for the intruder who broke into the Ramirez family's guest cottage, I don't know what I feel.

Fear. Confusion. Betrayal.

Helplessly, hopelessly lost.

Spying a human-sized hole in the underbrush, I wedge myself between fallen branches and a few wet saplings. My breath comes in sick urgent heaves. In the distance, I make out what sounds like the Doppler wail of police sirens. Or maybe that's my paranoia again, playing tricks on my mind and crafting perception into whatever form will torment me the most.

I don't
have
to go to Cate, I tell myself. I don't have to do what she says. That's in my control. I could just go home. Stop taking her calls. Pretend the never existed. It's not like I've ever learned anything from her anyway. She's cryptic. She's maddening. Ambiguity's the devil's emotion, and it's all I feel around Cate. It's like wearing my skin inside out, being near her. I am that raw. That vulnerable.

I could walk away. Stop looking for answers. Go to Jenny, sweet Jenny.

Who's waiting for me.

I whimper, thinking of Jenny's warmth, her dry spark-on-tinder touch. The way I'm bolder and happier and freer when I'm with her.

The thing is, in the same way I can't stop questioning miracles, I can't stop looking for answers. That's my fatal flaw, I think.

I want to believe in answers.

I
need
to believe in whys.

For the second time today, I pull my hands from my pockets and hold them in front of my face. They're tingling something crazy, but whether that's from cataplexy or conversion or cold, I can't be sure.

“What's really wrong with you?” I whisper. “If it's not burying Cate's stuff in the woods that made you do this, then what is it?”

My hands still don't answer.

But deep down, I think I know.

After waiting for what seems an eternity, with sharp twigs jabbing into the seat of my pants and Cate's sense of urgency burning into my soul, I make my move. I creep from my hiding spot back toward the road, hidden beneath the clouds of this moonless night. I arrive at my Jeep unseen.

I slip behind the wheel.

I head off in search of answers I may not wish to find.

4

EPISTROPHY

FIFTY-ONE

Driving Dr. No up the dark winding Mount Diablo roads to where my sister waits, I feel more like an impostor than ever. Only I'm not sure whether I'm playing at being the good guy this time.