The Butterfly Clues (24 page)

“Lieutenant Flack’s not in today,” a thin, long-nosed, redheaded cop says, glancing briefly up at me over her stack of papers. A gold pin on her lapel reads:
GRAHAM
.

“But I—I need to talk to him. Now,” I choke out. Fire is running down my throat. I hate the cops. I hate looking at their starchy blue uniforms and their smug, tired faces.

I know cops are supposed to help, but ever since that day— when they came, when they told us about Oren, and the world unraveled and fell apart and they just said,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news
—seeing a cop gives me an itchy feeling. A twitchy, not-right, off-balance feeling.

Bad news is a cancelled picnic. Bad news is a credit card bill. Bad news is not my brother, my only, beautiful brother, gone forever.

“Your name?”

My hands curl into fists beside my legs when I finish tapping, trying my hardest to muffle the word
banana
. But she hears me. I can tell. My face radiates heat.

Graham says: “Uh—sorry. Didn’t get that,” like she thinks I’m crazy. Totally nuts.

“Penelope Marin,” I say, and then two more times, under my breath as I squint:
Pen-el-o-pe-Ma-rin Pen-el-o-pe-Ma-rin.

“Well, Penelope, Officer Graham and I are on duty right now. If this is pressing, I suggest you tell us,” says the man beside her. His nameplate reads:
PIKE
. He’s slightly rumpled-looking, with little button eyes.

“It’s about Sapphire, the girl who was”—I tap quickly nine times, right palm against my thigh so that the word will bounce, not stick—“killed. In Neverland.”

“That case is closed, Penelope,” Graham pipes up. “Did you hear? We’ve arrested a man in connection—”

“No.” I shake my head. “No. No. Not closed.”

Pike eyes me wearily, then looks at Graham, and rises from his desk. “Okay.” He crosses to the front of the desk with a legal pad, pen, and a Snoopy mug full of dark brown coffee until he’s standing, towering, beside me. “Let’s go somewhere more private, and you can tell us what you know.”

The Cleveland Police Department is square and beige and mauve. It is itself a kind of prison cell: painted-over brick and linoleum floors with touches of metal and glass, and filled with nonstop ringing and beeping and buzzing. Pike leads me, humming something under his breath, through a halogen-bright hallway to a room with a slide-in plastic panel marked:
OFFICER MITCHELL PIKE
.

Tap tap tap, banana.
I whisper it, pulse quickening, praying his humming will be loud enough to cover my
banana.
He says nothing.

Inside is sparsely furnished: a long, solid wooden table, more blank mauve walls, four plastic gray chairs, one wooden picture frame (happy family), Christmas tree, big furry dog. We sit, and Graham follows right behind, a mug of steaming tea in her right hand, a folder in her other. She places it in front of me. “Hope you like Lipton black. It’s all we’ve got.”

Pike sits back in his flimsy chair, crossing his legs. Graham leans forward, resting her elbows upon the table. Pike clears his throat. “Try to relax, okay?” He uncrosses his legs, crosses them again, left leg on top this time. “We’re here to listen,” he continues, taking a sip of his coffee, fiddling with his pen. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I pull the mug of tea to my lips, taking a cautious sip. Still too hot. They both scoot forward, closer to me, waiting. They brought me tea. They want to listen. The walls blend into each other, the corners smoothing around us in this blank, static-less room, and so I tell them—about being pulled into a room in the back of the club by the bouncer, threatened—the cat, the acid. About Mario, the Westwood Center. All of it.

Graham looks at Pike and back at me, fingers smoothing the surface of the manila folder on the table in front of her. “What I’d like to know is—what were you doing in the strip club in the first place?” She rubs her chin, raises her eyebrows. “Do you work there?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t work there.” I tug my coat more tightly over my amateur night outfit. “I told you, I went to try and find out—”

“Listen. Unless you’re under eighteen, it’s really none of our business,” says Pike, folding a piece of paper from his legal pad four times. It makes me cringe, four. Four means double-bad. “We’ve seen more of you Neverland kids than you can know— getting caught up in that lifestyle—doing things to support … certain habits.” He shakes his head, whistles softly. “You’re all so young, you think you’ll live forever. And then …” He snaps his fingers.

I imagine what I must look like—garish makeup smeared across my face.

Graham opens the folder in front of her carefully and produces a handful of pamphlets, sets them on the desk between us, her eyes pitying. I don’t look at her; I don’t look at the paper folded in fourths. I count scuff marks on the first six tiles of the floor to the left and right of me, to the back and front—eleven; better than eight, but still not good.

“There are
many
treatment programs in the Cleveland area,” she tells me in a feathery voice. I feel my body start to go numb, my knees knobbing in toward each other; “NA, AA, not to mention a whole host of smaller groups that we can help connect you to if you’d like. They work. It just takes time.”

I grip the front of the desk to stay upright in my chair. “I
don’t
do drugs,” I burst out, and then, trying to stay calm, “I don’t even
live
in Neverland.” In the front room, everything buzzes and
riiiiiiiinnnngs
and statics and
nine-one-one, what-is-youremergency?
s.

“We’re not judging you here. Okay? Can I make that extra clear?” says Pike. “But you’re the
only
one who can save
your
life, and so you’ve got to learn to help yourself. You’ve got to
want
to help yourself, or, and I’m sorry to say this, but”—he picks up his Snoopy mug and blows into it. Twice.
Bad
—“you’ll end up just like her.”

I scratch my arms. Nine times.
Scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch.
Again. Nine times. Again. It’ll only be worse if I don’t, I know this, and screaming in the middle of this blank, soulless office full of dumpy plastic furniture would be a whole lot worse than the embarrassment of scratching my arms in front of two don’t-give-a-shit cops.

“No,” I say, my voice raw. “You’re wrong. About Sapphire. She wasn’t a drug addict, either. She wasn’t like what everyone thinks. This wasn’t—this shouldn’t have happened to her. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.
Wrong
.” And then another three times—
wrong wrong wrong—
because six is even better.

“Miss,
please
calm down,” Pike says, extending the
please
far too long. “Of course it shouldn’t have happened, but, around here … these things—”

“No,” I sputter. “I—I think your
story
is wrong. I—I know that the vendor at the flea had Sapphire’s stuff, and I know he lied to me about where he found it. And now he’s dead, too. He’s dead because he knew something, and somebody wanted him dead. And now
I’m
in danger.”

The phones buzz and whir, reverberating through the hallway, pressing into the room like a hoard of angry bees. Graham puts her chin in her hands and stares at me pointedly. “Look, I have no
doubt
that this guy—Martin?”

“Mario.”

“Right, Mario—I have no doubt he was lying. He probably got the goods illegally. But that by no means indicates that his death and this girl’s murder are at all connected. That’s not exactly how it works.”

Pike fiddles with the Bic ballpoint pen. “Besides, your word alone isn’t sufficient. You might have thought about calling us when you first
discovered
these stolen goods.” The way he says “discovered” makes it seem like somehow
I’m
a criminal. He moves the pen around in his hands, back and forth. “And as we told you earlier, we’ve already arrested someone in connection with Sapphire’s death.”

“The bouncer. I know. But he didn’t do it. Or if he did—he was hired by someone. Mario’s death proves it. And I think—I think I know who it is.”

Graham heaves a deep sigh, meeting Pike’s eye and looking back at me. “Okay, Miss Marin. So, what’s your theory? Who’s responsible for this death?”

“Deaths,” I correct her. “Mario’s
and
Sapphire’s.”

Graham twirls a pen in her hand. “Right. Deaths. So,” she says, raising her eyebrows, “what is this person’s name?”

“I—I don’t really—I’m not sure exactly. What his name is. But Sapphire, she called him Bird.”

“Bird?” Graham leans back in her chair, crossing her arms, like I’ve just told a joke that isn’t funny.

Pike rubs his face. “Uh-huh. Got it. Should we send some officers into the trees to scout out murder weapons?”

My hands move to the table, tapping—right, left, right—three times. They’re making fun of me. They don’t believe me. “I know, it sounds ridiculous,” I plead. “I know that, but—he’s after me, now, too, because he
knows.
He knows I’m on to him or something, and so he’s been threatening me. Stalking me. I swear. He—he wants to kill me.”

“I think you’re being slightly paranoid.” Graham exchanges a look with Pike. I see her hands move again to the pamphlets, inch them slightly forward. “Have you ever experienced delusions? Hallucinations of any kind?” She pauses, asks in the gentle singsong voice of principals and priests. “Have you ever heard any voices?”

“No—no!” The words push forth, my fists pound the table. “I’m
not
paranoid. I need your help. You—you have to help me.”

“Well, Miss Marin,” Graham says, curtly, “we’ve been trying to help you this whole time, but if you don’t want our help, then I think this meeting is over.”

Pike takes a sip of coffee, swishes it around his mouth, clicking the edge of his legal pad against the table and lounging backward in his chair with the kind of calculated gusto that says:
We’re done here. You can go.

I get up from the table, dig my nails into my thighs, a desperate, lonely feeling sinking through me. The tea, the expressions of concern: it’s all an act. I feel Sapphire’s butterfly like a leaden weight within my pocket. Failed. I’ve failed her.

“Did she—” I pause; desperate; a shot in the dark. “Did she have any lipstick in her pockets when they found her? Blue lipstick?”

Graham looks up sharply. “Excuse me?”

“Blue lipstick,” I repeat. “I know she had blue lipstick. She wore it all the time. She would have had to have it on her. I know it. I know her.”

Graham looks at Pike, leaning forward again in his chair, and back at me. She blinks slowly, eyebrows knitted together. “You
knew
her?”

My breath is short and fast. Wrong. Again. Idiots. “No,” I respond, quickly, my throat tight and sharp. “I didn’t
know
her, I just …”

Pike’s fake smile is now mingled with a look of disappointment. Graham’s frown has deepened. It’s official: they think I’m completely and utterly insane, or a drug addict, or both. One of the lost children of Neverland.

“Okay, Miss Marin. I think we’ve heard all we need to hear. You’ve wasted enough of our time around here.” She stands from her chair, tenting both hands on the large manila envelope full of pamphlets. “I’ve got to inform you that if we catch you messing around in this business any more, you
will
be charged with obstruction.”

Pike ushers me to the door and through the stark, cold hallway, the buzzing and ringing and thick gurgle of voices, back to the front of the station, straight to the front doors. “We better not see you here again,” he says. “Be good and stay off the streets, okay?”

I don’t answer—just turn away;
tap tap tap, banana
as I push out the door. I try not to scream. I try not to pound my fist into the glass until it breaks, shatters in flying shards toward them. I stand there on the front steps for another minute—too angry to move, even.

I stare up into the sky, into the light cutting through the trees.

It’s the same with Mario as with Sapphire: they’ll put his case at the bottom of a ten-foot stack.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I feel a pulse, a growing storm shooting through my body as I stand there on the cold concrete steps and stare through the tinted glass.

If the cops won’t take care of this, then I’ll have to. Somehow.

CHAPTER 21

My crash pad—the basement of this barbershop—corner of Grover and Miles …
Flynt’s mumbled words from yesterday swim through my head as I wander the streets of Neverland, certain I’ll never find the place, never make it back out of Neverland alive. It has started to pour and I’m soaked. My clothes hang on me like heavy skin, my hair is streaming, dripping into my eyes.

And then, I round a corner onto Grover Street, and there it is. An old sign says
T. MERONI
’
S: BARBER
.

I pound on the door three times. Fifteen seconds later—not the worst number but also not the best—Flynt opens it, eyes wide, mouth falling open when he sees me. “Lo—holy crap.”

I can’t speak. I tug on my hair six times.

“Well, get in here,” he says, reaching for my hand and pulling it gently; his skin is warm, soft; his big hands, his long fingers, his right palm streaked with yellow paint. I
tap tap tap,
hiccuping through my
banana
and step inside into a wide, cold room full of mirrors and old swivel chairs, a checkered tile floor, counters lined with a few cloudy Barbicide jars, an old radiator in the corner. I let him lead me downstairs. His hands are so warm.

A thin orange cat meows as we hit the landing, rubs his head against my legs, purring. “Moby,” Flynt says, clicking his tongue, motioning to the cat. He opens a door at the other end of the raw, drafty basement—there’s a big unplugged refrigerator inside, insulation and piping peeking out of the half-stuccoed walls. “My wardrobe,” he explains, opening it and pulling a T-shirt from within a pile of clothes. He walks back to me, his feet padding softly on the tapestry of carpet samples spread over the concrete floor, and hands me the shirt. “You’re soaked,” he says. “Put this on.”