The Deadly Sister (14 page)

E
rnie was behind the counter, working his way through a line of customers holding sweating gallons of milk or twelve-packs of beer. I slotted myself in at the end of the line. When he saw me, he called his coworker away from restocking ice and had him man the counter. I followed Ernie into his office. I’d never seen anyone walk behind that warped mirrored glass. It felt like I was breaking some secret law.

The tiny room contained scattered papers, a bag of spilled trail mix, a time clock, a television screen, and one chair. “So…erm, I’m glad you could come, Abby. Yah, I know you must be real occupied these days. And I’m real sorry Maya’s missing. You know she was one of my best customers. Though she probably stole more than she bought!”

He chortled. I thanked him for his concern.

“I got your number from your club card application form. Thank god we keep the numbers for all y’all. A little of abuse of power, there, ’suppose.” He smiled, so I assumed there was a joke somewhere in what he’d said. He flicked on the television screen. It showed a security image of the gas pumps outside, the image paused and quivering at the edges. “That boy, Brian? He was in here a couple of days ago, and I saw he was looking real sad and so I asked, ‘What’s
wrong?’ Right off, he started telling me about his brother being killed. Whoa. I hadn’t known nothing ’bout it—you wouldn’t believe what I don’t know. Story of my life, right? Anyway, that poor kid. So the next night shift, I had a long stretch with no one needing any gas, I guess, and I figured I’d take a look at my security footage from the night Jefferson died, to jog my memory, right? Maybe someone’d been by my store, maybe even a killer! So anyways, stop rambling, Ernie, right? Sorry, anyways, I’m playing it through until I get to this.” He pointed to the screen. I looked at the date and time. Three-seventeen
A
.
M
. on Saturday morning, a few hours after Jefferson died.

He started it playing.

Her face was turned away, but a girl of just Maya’s size—limp hair gleaming in the low-res black-and-white footage, wearing her favorite oversize hoodie with roses and skulls sewn on the back, the one she’d decorated herself and wore all the time—was at the coin-op vacuum at the far side of the gas pumps. You couldn’t really see what she was doing, but floor mats were on the ground, and you could occasionally see her arm reach into the trash can. Then she got in the driver’s seat, looked around quickly, and drove off.

In Jefferson’s car.

The car I’d come across with Cheyenne that very day, spotting Maya’s sweatshirt in the backseat.

Ernie and I sat there in silence.

“I’m glad you showed me this,” I finally said.

“So what do we do now?” Ernie said.

“Have you called the police?” I asked. “Has anyone else seen this?”

“No,” he said.

“Could I ask you,” I said, trying to keep my breathing under control, “not to turn this in to them?”

He picked through the trail mix until he found a chocolate piece and popped it into his mouth. Finally, he spoke. “I’d be happy to have nothing to do with the police till the end of my days. They’ve been trying to shut me down since I bought this stupid place. Bullies. And I have no sympathy for that boy who died. He was half the reason I kept getting in trouble, him and his pretty boy friends causing hell in here, dealing in the parking lot where I couldn’t see, then trying to charm their way out. It was…condescending, was what it was. If your Maya had something to do with his death, I’m not going to be the one to turn her in. I intend to destroy the recording, is what I intend to do, if you’ll permit me being frank about it.”

“So that’s the whole reason you called me? To tell me that I don’t have to worry?”

“I saw you and that friend of yours come by earlier today, looking nervous. I know y’all’ve been searching out everything you can about your sister. You wouldn’t want this recording getting out, I’m sure, but you should know if Maya’s been leaving a trail all over the county, right? You’ll need to be finding out where else she might have gotten to that night. Who else might have her captured on video. Stuff like that.”

“Well,” I started, plotting my words carefully, “the truth is, I’m finding it hard to get her to even acknowledge that she did anything wrong at all that night. If you’d give me the recording, I could let her know what’s on it. Maybe even show it to her, somehow. It might get her to come to terms with reality a little. In any case, I’d feel better having it in my hands.” My reasoning sounded pretty bogus, even by Ernie standards; all I knew was that I wanted to be the one in control of the recording.

“I can erase it. That’s easy enough.”

“But the police could come in and see that you have an erased section. That wouldn’t look good. And even erased files leave traces. Is it on a disk? You could just give it to me. I’d feel much better that way. I’m her sister. I know what’s best for Maya.”

He scrutinized me for a moment, then pressed a button. A disc emerged from the machine. “If you think it’s best, sure. What do I know? Here you go.”

I slid it between two pages of my planner, thanked him, and sped toward the door. “Hey, Abby,” Ernie called as I left, “stay good, okay?”

I didn’t answer, just gave him a quick wave because my phone was ringing again. I flipped it open as soon as I was outside.

This time it was Maya.

“Abby?”

“Is it really you?” I gushed into the phone, my voice quaking crazily. “Thank god. I’ve been thinking about you all the
time. I’m so glad you’ve finally called. I know you’re scared about what’s happening, and I know I said everyone thinks it’s Brian that did it, not you, but it’s not so clear anymore; apparently he was home playing video games, so you should stay put and if you really feel like coming home, make it clear that you were already suspicious of him, oh, I’m just so glad you called—”

“Shut up for a second,” she said. “What’s got you so worked up?”

“What’s got me worked up? What do you mean, what’s got me worked up? Have you been listening to me? You’re on the run from a murder investigation—is that enough for you?”

“Seriously, you have to calm down. You sound crazy.”

“I’m spinning hard right now, I guess. Where are you?”

“I’m really not supposed to say,” Maya said. “Veronica made me promise.”

“Are you safe?”

“Yeah, unless you count boredom. In that case I’m doomed.”

“Are you at someone’s house?”

“Yeah. It’s a house. The police looking for me?”

“Uh-huh. Like, nonstop.”

“I don’t think I can face them. For a while I thought I wouldn’t ever need to. But I don’t know, Abby, I guess I realized I can’t live on the run forever. What would I do with myself? I’d have to just move somewhere and wipe my
identity. I have no idea how that works. And I can’t just keep on leeching off Veronica, either.”

“It sounds miserable.”

“Yeah. So I’m not going to do it anymore.”

“It’s not a slam-dunk case against Brian anymore. But if you’re insisting on coming back, I think we should get our parents involved. Dad won’t let anything happen to you. He’ll know who to talk to, how to position things, and all that.”

She took a deep breath before answering.

M
aya crash-landed back into our lives late that night, hurtling onto the driveway from the back of Veronica’s convertible. Veronica left her on the curb and sped off before my parents could see her. Maya stood in the street for a few minutes, swaying in the dark and staring at her old home. I knew because I was watching from my window.

I wondered if she was debating whether or not to come inside. She raised her hands up to the rail of the parked boat, as if she were stretching. Her face was hidden; the only thing that betrayed her uncertainty was that she kept giving her duffel bag little kicks. It rolled with a nylon whisking sound, then reluctantly eased back to its shape, like an old abused pet. She heaved it to her shoulder and then backed down the driveway, as though she might flee and hitchhike away somewhere. But she didn’t. She went to the front door. I heard the doorbell ring, heard my parents grunt and stir. I waited to hear their gasps and exclamations.

I heard the front door open and close. But beyond that sound, the house stayed silent. I had hoped someone would come fetch me from upstairs, that Dad would show up at my door and say, “Abby, thank you! Your sister is
home
.” But
my only company remained the television flickering at the foot of my bed.
Stop being a child. Don’t sit here waiting to be found. Your little sister is downstairs. She needs you. Go find her.

I still couldn’t hear a noise as I crept downstairs, except for Cody’s sighing and panting. For a flash I imagined that Maya had killed our parents, gassed or garroted them. It would have been effortless, to execute them in stillness and then come for me.

They were all in the kitchen, Maya slumped against a door and my parents seated at the table. Dad had taken up smoking again, apparently; he leaned back in his chair until it connected with the wall, pressed his head against the wallpaper, resting on the lush bed of his black curls. He watched Maya like she was a performing animal that might start juggling at any moment. Mom rested her head on her hands, like a student lost in a lecture.

If they’d been hooting and hugging, or even fighting and yelling, I could have understood and followed their lead. But I couldn’t figure out my role in this silence. I stood at the doorway. “Hey, Maya, you’re back,” I said.

As we’d agreed, she didn’t betray any sign of having made contact with me. She just nodded in my direction.

I sort of got why our parents were paralyzed: Their daughter had returned, but they didn’t really know her anymore; she’d spun far away enough by now that she was no longer in orbit. If they acknowledged she was theirs again, they could lose her again. And they
would
lose her—for
all they knew, she was a killer destined for jail. But I couldn’t stand to see Maya alone in their presence, slumped against the door. I knew what she’d endured to get herself here, what emotional contortions she’d put herself through to face what she’d most feared. She’d never done that before, turned and faced the beast instead of dodging and bolting. I crossed through the silence and, ignoring our parents’ stares at my back, hugged my sister.

Her breath was sweet against my neck. She didn’t get up, so I hunched and curled with her. I let myself fall to the floor, and together we pivoted and faced our parents.

Dad’s voice was low, unusually low. “You have no idea, Maya, you have no idea of what you’ve put us through—”

“Dad, this is hardly the time,” I said. “Can’t you give her five minutes before you start—”

“I will not!” he bellowed, standing. “I won’t give her five
seconds
of peace after everything she’s done. Look at your mother. Do you think she’s slept more than a few hours any night in the last week? No one would have claimed that Maya ever behaved herself well, but this is beyond it all. The shock, the dishonesty of it all…”

“Don’t you want to know if I did it?” Maya asked.

“No!” Dad said. “I don’t want you to say the words.”

“Don’t say anything, darling,” Mom said hollowly. “We’ll always love you, no matter what you’ve done.”

Maya started shaking. Not from rage, but from something sadder and more primal. That unnamed emotion we all feel the split second before rage.

“It wasn’t Maya,” I said angrily. “They think Brian did it now.”

“What do you know about the inner workings of the police department?” Dad asked.

“So you think your daughter’s a killer?” I challenged. “Is that it?”

Mom and Dad exchanged a look. He slammed out of his chair and headed to the den.

“Where are you going?” I yelled. No answer.

Once he’d gone, my mom came to life. She pulled an assortment of herbal teas down from the cupboard. “How about a nice pomegranate chamomile?”

We all hated pomegranate chamomile. It stained our mouths red and made us look like five-year-olds who had gotten into the Kool-Aid. But Maya and I accepted, and we all sat around the table. Mom asked her, quietly, where she’d been staying. Maya refused to say. She didn’t really say anything to either of us, but just smiled each time we tried to get her to talk. A tiny smile, but a real one.

Dad didn’t return to the kitchen. I imagined him smoking in the club chair in the den, eavesdropping on our conversation, unable to face his shapeshifting daughter.

I realized how very wrong I was, though, when I heard the front door unlock. There wasn’t a key sound, just the slide of the deadbolt; it had been unlocked from the inside.

Mom, Maya, and I all paused, Maya in mid-sip. From the driveway came the sound of an engine cutting off. “Go,” Mom whispered urgently to Maya. “Out the back. Go!”

There I was, trying to empathize with Dad’s sense of betrayal, when the proof of
his
betrayal was literally at the door. Maya and I sat still for a horrible second, motionless in blinding incomprehension, then simultaneously shoved back from the table. Maya snatched her duffel and we split for the back door, through the den. But we pulled up short; Dad had dragged the heavy sectional to block the back door. We probably could have moved it, but there wasn’t time to even try. I could hear the clomp of boots coming through the front door.

Police officers. And us with nowhere to go.

I stood protectively over Maya and felt a flood of warmth surge against my cold panic as she gave under my embrace and folded into me. “Let them try to take you,” I whispered to her. “Just let them try. No need to run. I won’t let them hurt you.”

I heard my mother scream in protest, heard Dad yell at her to stay out of the way. Heard Jamison’s low voice, then saw Alcaraz at the entrance to the den. He took in the sight of us, cowering on a club chair, my body around Maya’s, and slowly shook his head.

W
e sat around the dining room table: our parents along one edge, Maya and I along the next, and then the two detectives. We were three teams, each with its own goals, each with its own weapons.

“Everyone at school says it was Brian Andrews,” I was saying.

“Abby, please be quiet,” Dad said. He’d been presiding over us, steering his daughters like a committee. “Let Detective Alcaraz speak.”

“Thank you,” Alcaraz said. His hair was ungelled; I wondered if he’d been pulled out of bed. “Let’s start at the most basic level. Maya, could you tell me where you were the night that Jefferson Andrews died?”

She’d shrieked at first, cowered at the back door of the den, refused to talk to the police. But once a few minutes had gone by and they still hadn’t arrested her, she’d calmed down some. It seemed they wanted to talk to her, not haul her in. It still didn’t look good, but it was better than we’d first assumed. “I was there early on,” Maya said. “I saw Jefferson at the Bend. We had a fight. But that was it. I spent the night with a friend down at Medusa’s Den. The tattoo place on Langdell.”

“Did you strike Mr. Andrews?”

Maya let out a guttering breath. “Yes. But lightly!”

“Lightly?” Jamison prompted, smiling thinly.

“Not hard enough to kill anyone,” Maya said stubbornly. “Look at me. I couldn’t kill anything.”

“If you surprise someone, and you’re angry, it’s very possible. I’ve seen women smaller than you take down boys bigger than Jefferson.”

“Please,”
Mom said, worrying a napkin between her fingers.

“And you’re claiming you only hit him once?” he continued.

“Definitely.”

I went rigid, then forced myself to relax. Hadn’t Brian said the police concluded that Jefferson had been struck multiple times? I tried to remember his body, what it would look like to an examiner. It looked like there had only been that one wound on his head, but it had certainly been deep.

“Were you under the influence of any mind-altering substances at the time?”

“Drugs? No. I’d had some pot, that was all.” Spoken like a true hard drug user—she tossed marijuana around like it was a multivitamin.

“And did you remove Jefferson’s car from the Bend?”

“No,” Maya said.

“Maya…” I said warningly.

“It’s clearer to me now, Abby,” she protested. “I was
confused then, but I’m sure I didn’t. You don’t just forget something like that, no matter what state you’re in.”

Alcaraz looked meaningfully between Maya and me and opened his mouth to speak. I beat him to it. “Have you guys located Jefferson’s car?” I asked.

“Yes,” Alcaraz said. I caught the warning look Jamison shot at him, glancing up quickly from his furious scribbling of notes.

“So you didn’t,” Alcaraz said, “provide the illegal substances that we detected in Jefferson Andrews’s bloodstream the night he died?”

“What?” Maya said, confused.

“Forensics have come back,” he said, “showing large amounts of heroin in his system. Anything you can clue us in about?”

Dad scratched his ear. Anyone who didn’t know him well wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But I could sense his mind firing, knew he was thinking about the drugs he’d found in Maya’s room.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maya said, staring around the table. “Does anyone here know what this is about?”

No one answered.

“Anyone want to come to my defense here? Abby,” Maya said, “I thought you told me everyone was absolutely positive that Brian did it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know anymore.”

“You’re not taking her in tonight?” Dad asked sullenly. It wasn’t really a question, and we all knew it. He wasn’t going to let his daughter be hauled away. In return for our goodwill, he expected them to allow us to keep Maya.

“No,” Alcaraz said with an unconvincing smile. “Not enough evidence. At this point.”

“Because she didn’t
do
it,” I said.

The officers excused themselves and left. Maya immediately went into the kitchen, snatched her duffel, and headed for her basement room. Dad, however, blocked the way. “Don’t you dare,” Maya seethed, “even
try
to talk to me.”

“Listen to me good,” Dad said, his voice starting quiet and gradually increasing to a roar. “You’re not calling any shots around here anymore, do you hear me? You’ve run roughshod over your mother and me for years, and now you’re going to
listen.
You’ve vanished for a
week,
and seem to think you can come back and act like queen of the manor. Well, I won’t stand for it. I just won’t. And you can sleep in your normal room, not the basement. No more of this sick subterranean life.”

“You’re my
father
,” Maya wailed. “And you called the
police
on me.”

“I’ll have you know that the only reason you’re home right now and not in jail,” Dad said, “is because we called them as soon as you arrived. Establishing our good faith is everything in a case like this. We are living in complete honesty from here on out, do you understand?” He turned to include me as well.

I pretended to be heading up to my bedroom. “Don’t bring
me
into this,” I sulked, speaking over my shoulder. “You two have enough to tackle without starting in on me.”

“Do neither of you see how important this is?” Dad yelled. “Don’t you see how much is on the line?”

“Oh yeah,
Dad
,” Maya said, “I see exactly how much is on the line. Your reputation. Big shot local lawyer. Which is why you’re taking the police’s side over your own daughter’s. Because you threw me to the wolves a long time ago, didn’t you? Who cares about that little bitch Maya? Good riddance, right?”

He slapped her. Not hard, but he caught her off balance so she careened into the wall. He clenched her chin in his hand before she could fall. “Don’t dare say that. I would do anything to keep you safe, do you understand that? Anything.”

She nodded, as much as she could in his meaty grip. The thing was, we believed him. He was the equilibrium in our lives. As cold and steady as justice. When we wronged, we could look for no compassion. When someone wronged us, he would become revenge itself.

I guess I was trying to follow in his footsteps.