Snitch (The Bea Catcher Chronicles) (23 page)

He grabs me from behind. His left hand covers my mouth. The barrel of the gun juts up against my ribs.

And I bite him . . .
hard
.

“Ouch, shit.” Archie throws me to the ground. He checks out his hand, sucks at the wound. I’m on my butt, looking up into the whites of his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. His clothes are soaked and ripped. Blood drips from the ragged
gash on his right forearm. Seaweed dangles in his long hair, and his Glock now points directly at my head.

I cower, cover my face, and wait for the blast.

“Drop the gun.” I hear Sergeant Daniels’s voice behind me. I turn. He stands at the side of the building with his arms straight out, his weapon pointed at Archie, flashing his badge with his left hand. “Put the gun down. Now!” he orders.

Archie flinches; his hands are shaking. He looks at the sergeant and then back at me—the gun staring at my face. “Don’t no one make a move, or the bitch is dead.”

Daniels focuses steadily on his target. “Bea, do what he says. Don’t budge.”

I’m suddenly freezing cold and start to shiver—out of control; then I see movement in the woods behind Archie. The homeless man steps out from the dark gully. “Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing to her?” he yells, and starts toward us.

“Watch out! He has a gun!” I shout out, my teeth chattering.

Everything speeds up in slow motion. Archie swings around. The homeless guy ducks, runs back into the thicket. I rush toward Archie as he fires, charge into his legs, pushing us both down on the ground. The bullet violently skids across the dirt, uprooting the foliage in its path.

“Bea! Roll to your right!” Daniels yells.

I do. Archie starts to swing his gun around at Daniels when the sergeant fires, hitting him in the right shoulder, forcing his firearm to fall from his hand.

Archie wails, thrashes around on the ground, holding his wound. “You shot me. . . . You fucking hit me!”

Sergeant Daniels holsters his weapon, runs up, flips Archie on his belly, and cuffs his wrists behind his back. He starts reading him his Miranda rights, then calls for help. All the time Archie’s blubbering, rolling around, and crying like a baby.

Daniels pulls me into his chest and drapes his jacket over my shoulders. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

I hear his voice as if I’m back in the tunnel—it’s muffled, distant. I know his arm is around me, but I don’t feel it. He lifts my chin. His eyes, shots of fire, burn through me. His lips move like an animation film, flipping through one cell, one image at a time. But I don’t hear what he’s saying. I bury my head back into his chest and listen for it: the
ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump
of his heart. I hang on to the sound, the beat, the rhythm. My breath falls in step, in time with the pounding, and I feel as if I am slowly rising back to the surface . . . to what? To where? “Junior . . .” I nod my head fast. “I have to get to him. Let him know I figured it out . . . that we got Archie.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from inside a tin can.

“You can’t, Bea. You can’t. He died. A couple hours ago. I tried to get ahold of you.”

“Oh, fuck, Junior . . .” Archie, hearing this . . . moans.

I pull away from the sergeant. “What? He can’t be dead. That’s not supposed to happen.” And then I barrel over to Archie, still lying on the ground on his stomach. I throw myself
at him and start beating his back. “He died!” I scream. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t wanna have to shoot ’im. He was my bro. I thought he woulda stayed quiet—wouldn’t have ratted on me,” he cries.

Daniels pulls me off him. “Bea, stop.”

“He wasn’t the rat, Archie. I was!”

“What the fuck?” Archie looks back at me, half of his face wedged in the dirt.

“I told the cops.” I sob.

“You fuckin’ snitch.” Archie spits onto the ground. “Then
you
killed him, not me.”

Sirens wail in the distance—getting closer. I break away from Daniels and run down the hill.

“Bea, no, come back!”

I cross the footbridge, run to my car parked at the station. My legs fly, barely touching the ground. I dig in my backpack for my keys, turn on the engine, pull away, and start driving to who-the-hell-knows-where-ville.

3 minutes

S
ecrets. Lies.
They smother. But the truth—sometimes the truth is worse. It kills. Leaves blood on your hands.

I eventually had to stop for gas in some hick town just south of Brighton. I used the restroom—totally gross—took off my drenched T-shirt, the sopped face mask, the ratted, torn jeans, and stuffed them in the trash. Of course the soap dispenser was empty, so I doused myself, saturated my wounds with the whole bottle of hand sanitizer that Willa thoughtfully gave me last week. I rinsed and wrung out the blood-soaked bandana, scrubbed my face with it, my pits, everywhere . . . and wrapped my knee and shin with a thick roll of toilet paper.

After riffling through stuff on the backseat, I found a large navy V-neck sweater of Wendell’s, and the smell of vanilla coffee beans wafted over me—a step up from rotting seaweed, for sure. I tugged the tie-dyed maxi skirt up over my hips, laced my high-tops, and finished the look with Dan Daniels’s jacket.
The woodsy eucalyptus scent trumped the vanilla beans, and of course, beat up, bloodied, exhausted, and lost, my tummy still did the flip-flop thing.

I picked up a bag of salted peanuts, a couple candy bars, and a few bottles of water from a convenience store, and I’ve been driving north on the road for hours now—driving fast in the middle of nowhere—toward nothing—blindly. Not wanting to see, not wanting to be seen.

The clock on my dashboard says it’s midnight—
happy birthday, me
. I am eighteen, going on . . . life—an adult. I can head anywhere I want. Do anything I want. Be anyone I want. I have everything I need in the car—could get jobs along the way, flip burgers, maybe earn my GED, learn the tat trade, and eventually open my own shop . . . in northern Michigan. Yeah, sure, like that’ll ever happen.

Fuck it.
I need a sign—something—telling me
where
to go,
what
to do,
who
to be. A streetlight shines ahead at an intersection. I step hard on the accelerator, speeding to get through fast, not wanting the light in my eyes.

Holy crap. What is that?

I slam on the brakes . . . come to a dead stop, catch my breath, and there it sits, in the middle of the intersection. A dog.

I step out of my car. My knees (what’s left of them) buckle a little. I shake my legs and march over. “What were you thinking? Sitting there, in the middle of the road, huh? I almost hit you.”

He yawns.

“Oh, right. It doesn’t mean anything to you . . . scaring the hell out of me like that.”

I hear a car in the distance and see the blurry lights approaching.

“Okay, boy, if that’s what you are, I need you to come with me now. Do you hear me? NOW.”

He doesn’t budge.

I bend down, reach out, and the dog growls. “You don’t understand; it’s not safe here. . . . I can’t help you if you don’t move.”

The car gets closer.

“God dammit. You can’t just sit there frozen, like you don’t give a shit. Come, please . . . come.” I turn, start walking away, hoping he will follow me. He doesn’t. “Ugh. Fine. I don’t care if you bite me. But no way I’m going to let you get hit by that car. No friggin’ way.”

I reach down, and the dog now places its paw in my hand, as if to shake. “We don’t have time for that.” I scoop him up and jog to the side of the road, just as the car whizzes by. He licks my nose—I can’t help but laugh.

“That was really stupid, what you did. Do you understand? You could have been killed.”

The dog looks at me straight in the eyes—his scruffy black head cocks to the right as he sighs, lying limply in my arms. I put him on the ground, and he shakes out his fur, starting with his head, all the way down to his tail. Then he saunters past me, jumps in the driver’s seat, and gazes out the front window.

I throw my arms up and walk to the car. “Okay, fine, move over.” He does—to the passenger seat—and I join him in the car.

He looks straight out the front window at the empty road and makes a whiny noise.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“You have a name?” I turn the ropy, dirty beige collar on his neck, searching for an ID tag. “You lost? No home?”

His stomach growls.

I rummage around the backseat, open the pizza box, and grab a cardboard-stiff slice of pepperoni and cheese. “I have no idea how old this is.” I offer it to the dog. He bows his wiry head as if to say thanks and gently bites the slice, pulling it out of my hand. “Glad to see you’re not picky.” I pour some water into an empty Styrofoam coffee cup and join him in taking a few gulps myself from the bottle.

He laps it up, splashing it around the front seat, all over the dash, and all over me. Then he sneezes.

“Hah. Allergies. I understand.” I wipe the fur around his face with the red bandana and wrap it around his neck. “Sorry it’s wet, but it looks nice on you.”

His ears perk up on his head, forming fuzzy triangles, and then one flops down. His wet nose shines in the dark. His eyes wide, perfect circles, like two black buttons, pools of dark, wet ink, just like . . .

A clump of emotion lodges in the middle of my throat. “Junior. You like that name?”

He stretches out his front paws, lying on the seat.

I lean down and hug him. “We’re going to be okay,” I say into his fur. “We’ll figure it out, right?” I sit up, swallow, un-lodging the clump from my throat.

I start the car, make a U-turn. I take note of the time: eleven minutes into my eighteenth birthday, and scan the empty road ahead.

“So, where to now, Junior?”

Woof.

My Junior

2000–2012

I miss you so.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The history behind Depot Town in Ypsilanti fascinated me. The tunnels, for various reasons and purposes, do indeed exist under Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, as does the courthouse and the “Tridge.” I did, however, invoke narrative license with locations and descriptions.

To learn more about Depot Town, please check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depot_Town

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

They
say write what you know.
I
say write what you don’t know, use your imagination, research, pry, and then stalk people. Eventually someone caves and shares their expertise, a glimpse through a cracked door into their world. Some of the brave souls were:

Manny Jimenez: for sharing your life story with me. You truly are a guardian angel for many, and now I’m so fortunate to be on that list. You inspired me and gave me the courage to write about a world I knew nothing about.

Mills McIlroy: for retelling your inspiring “Shawshank” cross-country experience through the tunnels—and most important, for living through it!

Dawn Roberts-Mark: for painstakingly going through the curl-scale talks with me with a fine-tooth comb (pun intended).

To the men in uniform: Retired Chicago Police Department Homicide Detective and former Investigator for the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, Gregory Baiocchi; Retired Detroit Arson Lieutenant/Investigator, Maurice Dewey; and Executive Petty Officer, US Coast Guard, Allen Hosford. Your advice and expertise were invaluable.

You can take the girl out of Michigan, but never take Michigan out of the girl, and I am indebted to my Michigander partners in crime: my mom; sisters Janey and Monica, David Guilbert, Gary and Max McIlroy, Jennifer Carolynn, and Fred Dewey. Big hugs for driving me around the ’hood,
sharing your Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti experiences, and answering my incessant texts and calls.

My bff Susan: you’ve shored me up when I was consumed by self-doubt. Kicked me in the butt when I wanted to give up. Laughed at me when I needed “to get over it.” Cried with me when I couldn’t. Thank you. (And a virtual fist bump goes to Lily for her “teen-speak” info line.)

My amazing Amazonian team: Larry, Amy, Marilyn, Timoney, Deborah, Erick, Katrina, Ariel, and Tim . . . your support and encouragement have been phenomenal. Thanks also to Sammy Yuen and Susan Gerber for the killer cover and book design. I am so grateful to each and every one of you, and feel as if you are family.

Lisa Gallagher, my agent: I don’t know of another person that works as hard and wears as many hats as you. You continue to awe me with your fast-as-lightning reads, spot-on, inspiring editorial eye, wicked sense of humor, and ability and willingness to talk me through the “crazy-insecure-as-hell” periods.

And, always, the triangle of love that surrounds me—my husband, daughter, and son. I love you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR