forty
J
erry had parked his aging pickup along a dirt road at the back of the cemetery, out of view of the main road. The outside was a mess of caked dirt, and the inside was nearly as bad. I could see that the dashboard was coated with a fine layer of dust, and in order for me to sit down, Jerry had to sweep some empty plastic soda bottles off the seat.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Not used to having a passenger.” He seemed nervous, adjusting his baseball cap on top of his head, then wiping his palms on his jeans. This was how he’d always seemed to me—as if he was out of place, no matter where that place was.
“It’s no problem.” I reached over my shoulder for the seat belt, then had to push away some old clothes to find the holder. It occurred to me that Jerry hadn’t been in the small clutch of people gathered around Dad’s gravesite. “I didn’t see you at the service. Weren’t you there?”
He put the key into the ignition but didn’t turn it. “I just couldn’t... I’ve never been much of a religious guy. I figure the best way for me to pay my respects is when everyone else is gone, and I can drink a bottle of whiskey at his grave and think about old times.”
“I can understand that,” I said. Dad and Jerry had always had a special bond. What was it Dad had said once? That Jerry was like a son to him, his other son. Since we’d all left, Jerry had probably been more of a son to Dad than Johnny, more family than Emilie or me. “I’m sure he understands that, too. He appreciated all your help over the years.”
“We helped each other,” Jerry said, again more of a grunt of acknowledgment than actual speech. In Berkeley, people spoke quickly, glibly, ironically, and often not sincerely. Jerry would have stood out there, the way I probably stood out to him now, as good as a stranger here.
“It went both ways, I mean,” Jerry continued. “He helped me out, too, a lot.”
I smiled. There was a long silence before Jerry finally turned the key in his ignition and pulled forward. The jolt of the truck sent the plastic bottles scattering at my feet. The doors clicked, locking automatically.
“See,” he said. “It’s raining harder now.”
And all of a sudden it was, as if a massive bucket in the sky had been spilled directly overhead. Jerry kept the truck in Drive, although I looked back pointedly over my shoulder, a tiny needle of uneasiness pricking inside me.
“Um, aren’t we...?”
“I can turn around up here,” he said, and in a minute the dirt road widened out and he maneuvered a three-point turn, bringing us back around toward the main road. I relaxed.
“Drop you off at your parents’ house?”
“No, my aunt Julia’s. There’s going to be a little luncheon in honor of Dad. You know, you should come, too.”
“That’s okay.” He was holding the wheel tight, I noticed, so tightly that his knuckles flamed white against his otherwise permanently suntanned skin.
“You must have known him better than just about anyone. You probably have all these stories we haven’t heard,” I said, realizing the truth of the statement as it came out of my mouth. If Jerry was Dad’s other son, then Dad had probably been Jerry’s other dad—a sort of surrogate father to him, all these years. Perversely, selfishly, I felt a twinge of jealousy, that this man who was basically a stranger had spent his lifetime close to my dad, an opportunity I’d squandered.
Jerry cleared his throat, and I understood that he was gearing up to say something important. When it came, there was a harshness in his voice that I hadn’t expected. “You all just abandoned him after.”
After.
I couldn’t find fault with his accusation. We had abandoned Dad, even if we’d had perfectly good reasons for doing it. Johnny had left to get away from the public indictment of his guilt, and to ease the pressure on the rest of us. Mom had left because her life had become unbearable. Emilie and I—well, we were kids. I was nine years old. More to defend Mom than anything else, I said, “He could have come with us, though. The situation here—it was pretty bad back then.”
“Still,” he said. “To leave him alone like that.”
Again, I didn’t dispute this. The people of Watankee had wanted us out, and they’d succeeded in driving almost all of us away. But they had probably also needed us to stay, too, to fill the role of town villains.
Jerry was driving slowly, the rain spattering down on his windshield. He had the wipers set on an agonizingly slow speed, so that the windshield became dense with water before it was cleared. With the view out the front window obscured, it was hard to tell exactly where we were. Aunt Julia’s house was less than a mile away from the cemetery—everything in Watankee was only about a mile or so away from everything else—but the trip was starting to feel too long.
Again, he cleared his throat, and I had a feeling that he was going to say something significant, although I couldn’t imagine what it would be. Another accusation, a denunciation of my childhood behavior? Without warning, I felt terribly tired, the stress of the past few days catching up with me. “Jerry,” I said quickly, trying to cut him off. “I understand that it must seem like—”
He persisted, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Your brother wasn’t guilty, you know.”
I glanced at him sharply. A thought was beginning to form at the back of my mind, where I’d buried my memories of that long-ago time. I couldn’t exactly put a name to it, but I was suddenly aware that I was traveling with a man who was essentially a stranger, and no one else on earth knew where I was.
He rapped again on the steering wheel, impatient. “Not that it matters anymore, what with your dad dead.”
My mind seemed to be moving too slowly to catch up with his logic. What did Dad’s death have to do with anything? “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” I sputtered. “Are you saying that my dad was somehow...involved?”
He turned to me. Strange, how I’d never really seemed to see him before. He was just Jerry Warczak, the guy who lived just down the road.
That poor Warczak boy,
losing one parent and then another. Now, I saw that beneath his baseball cap, his dark eyebrows had grown nearly closed. It was the sort of thing a woman would notice right off the bat, but a man might not. Had there ever been a girlfriend, a woman in Jerry’s life besides his mother? I didn’t think so. His cheeks were raw from shaving, with a little knot of dried blood above his lip. There were some scraggly dark hairs on his chin, as if he was trying to grow a goatee that just hadn’t filled in yet. As if he was somehow still a boy, not yet a man.
“How could you say that?” Again his voice was harsh, accusatory.
“I didn’t say it. I was only asking what you meant.” I tried to keep an edge out of my voice, the shrill tone that tended to creep in when I was on the defensive.
“I would never say anything against your dad,” he insisted, not seeming to understand my point. His eyes were dark and unreadable, and I felt something rising in me.
“That’s good,” I squeaked, peering out the window.
Just let me off here,
I thought.
I’ll walk the rest of the way.
What would he do if I just opened the door and tumbled out, taking my chances? I felt for the seat belt clasp with my left hand.
“We’re not there yet,” he barked.
I closed my eyes, reaching deep within me for some words to pray.
No, God, no.
I knew now that it had been Jerry’s truck that had stopped at the side of the road, Jerry’s familiar face that had greeted Stacy.
“You never even realized it, did you?”
“Stop! Just stop here!” I felt sick, the bowl of oatmeal from that morning sitting heavily in my stomach. I had realized nothing. I had been a stupid girl, self-absorbed, more worried about what others believed than what I believed myself. For all these years, we had let Jerry Warczak get away with it, so absorbed in our own misery that we were blind to what was right in front of us.
He braked suddenly, and I braced myself with both palms against the dash.
“My family is waiting for me,” I said, trying to cover the fear in my voice. “They’ll be looking.”
He said nothing, but the truck slowed further, pulling onto the side of the road. I peered out the passenger-side window, saw that we were balancing on the edge of the ditch. I would have to step out into the soft dirt in my four-inch heels, the incline leading down into stagnant water. I would roll down the hillside if I had to. I challenged the seat belt with both hands now, determined to get free.
“That one’s tricky,” he said, leaning over me.
“No!” I recoiled, my head angling away toward the door. I could feel his breath against my neck and smell it, too—stale, coffee-tinged. I saw in a flash that Stacy had done this, too, had fumbled with the seat belt and the door lock, had found it impossible to break free in time.
His hand tunneled into the seat by my left hip for an unbearable moment, and then the belt clicked and sprang free.
Not taking my eyes off him, I felt along the door for the lock release and gave it a sharp upward tug.
Instantly, his hand was on top of mine, forcing the lock down. “I don’t have to let you go,” he said, his face too close to mine.
“But you’re going to,” I said, my body frozen into place. “For my dad.”
He shifted back into his seat, and I unlocked the door again.
Be cool,
I thought.
Just get out of the car, run away.
I had one foot out on the slippery shoulder of the road when he reached over, grabbing my arm at the wrist.
Please, God,
I prayed. The rain pounded against my back, soaked into my hair.
“All I ever wanted was what you had, Kirsten,” he said, his eyes holding mine.
It was too open-ended, like filling in the blank for a vague question on a test. But he seemed to expect a response, and as if I’d been preparing for it, I knew what to say. “A family,” I choked. “You just wanted a family.”
He released my wrist, and I stumbled backward, grabbing on to the open door for balance. He hit the gas, and the truck lurched away from me. I fell to my knees, somehow managing to keep myself from completely falling. The spray of mud from his tires hit me as he gunned the engine and zoomed away. In a few moments, he was lost to the rain, and I was on my feet, running.
forty-one
J
ohnny met me at the door, took in my dripping, wild-eyed appearance, and placed a hand on each shoulder to steady me. “What happened?”
“We have to call the police. We have to get them down there right now, we have to— He almost— I don’t know, but he could have—” I knew I was babbling, but couldn’t stop myself. I closed my eyes against the memory of Jerry Warczak leaning over me, his breath on my cheek.
Johnny gave my shoulders a little shake. “What are you talking about?” Behind him, I could hear muffled voices, the clatter of plates being stacked. Aunt Julia called, “Johnny, who’s out there? Why don’t you let them in already?”
I took a deep breath, tried to steady myself. I couldn’t be wrong; I couldn’t say this now and later admit to a mistake. I closed my eyes and felt it again—Jerry’s hand on my wrist, the clammy sweatiness of his skin on mine.
All I ever wanted was what you had.
My voice seemed to come from somewhere outside my body. It sounded different to me, maybe because I felt, for the first time in my life, the full importance of what I was saying. “Johnny—it was him. It was Jerry. He killed Stacy, I know it.”
Johnny stepped back as if I’d slapped him. His eyes were wide. “Jerry? No. No, it couldn’t be.”
“Johnny, I’m telling you. There’s something wrong. I know it, Johnny. I just know it.”
He swore. There was a moment’s hesitation while he looked at me, taking everything in—the rainwater dripping down my face, the mud spattered across his jacket, the dirt caking my boots. His eyes settled on mine, and I could see him considering. There was the man he had known his whole life—a neighbor, only a few years older than Johnny himself. And then there was me. Only since returning to Watankee had I realized what a stupid, dramatic little girl I had been, all those years ago. But I wasn’t that anymore.
“Johnny,” I pleaded, and he nodded twice—tentatively at first, as if he were getting used to the idea, and then decidedly. He would believe me, because he had to.
In a single move, Johnny sidestepped me, breaking into a run across Aunt Julia’s driveway. His left hand fished in his pocket for the keys.
I was right behind him, throwing open the passenger door to his truck as he was starting the engine. “You’re not going by yourself! You’re not going without me!”
“This isn’t about you, Kirsten,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “This is my business to deal with.”
I clambered onto the passenger seat. Steadying myself with one hand on the dash, I yanked the door shut behind me. “I’m not getting out!”
He swore again. A few sedans had parked behind Johnny’s truck, blocking the exit. He considered for a second, then turned the wheel hard and gunned the truck into Reverse, his wheels sliding on a stretch of soggy lawn. I lost my balance and fell back against the door.
“Johnny!” I screeched.
“If you’re not getting out, you’d better hold on,” he growled. He spun onto the road, leaving deep tire grooves across the lawn.
Johnny shifted into Drive, and I righted myself in my seat, gripping the door handle. Suddenly, someone appeared before us in the road—a dripping figure, arms waving. Johnny swore again, pounding on the steering wheel in frustration. I couldn’t help it: I screamed, as if I was a kid watching a movie that would give me nightmares.
But it was only Emilie, rain flattening her spiky hair. She had smears of black, blue and silver around her eyes like a Mardi Gras mask.
Emilie yanked open the passenger door. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she demanded. “Me, for instance?”
“Both of you, out!” Johnny ordered.
“Forget it!”
It was the only time I can ever remember saying something in unison with Emilie.
She slammed the door behind her and folded her arms across her chest. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”
I blurted, “We’re going to Jerry Warczak’s. He killed Stacy.” The more I let the idea exist in my mind and the more I said it out loud, the more I knew for certain it was true. Jerry Warczak, not Johnny Hammarstrom, had taken Stacy that night.
“What? Did you hit your head or something?”
“He picked me up at the cemetery. He was acting...strange.” I shivered, suddenly overwhelmed by the cold, the rush of memories, the knowledge that I was setting something into motion that had long been buried, and life was about to change, again.
“Did he hurt you? Did something happen?”
I shook my head. He hadn’t hurt me, but I had known the possibility was there. What if he hadn’t stopped at Aunt Julia’s, but kept going? Would I have dared to throw open the passenger door and tumble onto the road? Was that what Stacy had wondered, too, in her last living moments?
“Hang on,” Johnny ordered and floored it, his truck fishtailing for a wild moment before straightening out. Jerry’s house was only down the road, past the empty horse pastures, the barren stalks of corn, past our house, vacant now, too. The ride seemed endless, though, like running in a dream. Each second stretched long, bloated with importance. My mind was spinning, as if I was replaying a movie on an old reel-to-reel. Stacy had been walking home, her pretty boots drenched, the collar of her coat turned up to protect her face. Jerry had been driving by—coincidentally or not. He’d pulled over, offered a ride.
“You’re sure about this, Kirsten?” Emilie demanded. “You’d better be sure, because Superman here—”
I nodded furiously, my words tumbling out. “Don’t you remember? He was always there. He was there when you wrestled in the living room, Johnny. He was there that night, in our kitchen.”
“Half of Watankee was in our kitchen that night,” Emilie pointed out. “I mean, it would be nice to know for sure before Johnny here does something stupid and—”
I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “It was him! He reached over, he grabbed my wrist. He said we hadn’t treated Dad right. He said he knew you were innocent, Johnny. He said he’d only wanted what we had.”
“It makes sense,” Johnny said, his face like stone.
Emilie swiveled in her seat to look at him. “It does? Why, because he lives alone? Because he’s kind of creepy? I know a lot of men who fit that description.”
I said shakily, “I thought he wasn’t going to let me out of his truck.”
Emilie looked hard at me and swallowed. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. Are we thinking he’s going to welcome us into his house and serve us a cup of tea? I mean, it’s one thing to play girl detective, but it’s another thing to barge into a man’s house—”
Our house slid by in a blur on the left, and in the surreal way everything looked right then, I could have sworn it was moving and we were standing still. I glanced at Johnny. His jaw was set, his eyes full of an icy determination I hadn’t seen in ages but still recognized. This was the Johnny who had taken down his opponents on the mats, who had strategized and planned and looked for an opening.
This was his opening.
I put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “She’s right. We can’t just show up there. We could call the police—” But I trailed off here, because this brought back another memory: Johnny ducking his head to enter the back of a patrol car. Never charged, but always the only suspect.
Johnny said, “I told him. He’s the only one who knew.”
“Told him what?” I asked, gaping.
Then I spotted the mailbox tilting to one side, as if it had been bumped once and never righted:
J. Warczak.
How many years, I wondered, my thoughts running unrestrained, had Jerry lived here alone? How many years had passed since that night, how many months and weeks and days and seconds had he lived with his guilt?
Johnny didn’t bother to ease down Jerry’s driveway but took it full force, spraying a mixture of mud and gravel everywhere, taking the turn at the end recklessly, tossing me onto Emilie’s lap. I’d seen Jerry’s property from the road only yesterday, on my early morning jog. From that vantage point, it had looked slightly run-down—lacking, I remembered thinking, a woman’s touch. Behind the house, though, his property was a hoarder’s dream—jumbled piles of rusted truck parts and the skeletal remains of farm implements, with weeds growing tall between them. A chicken strutted by, its head bobbing nervously.
“Whoa,” Emilie muttered, taking it in.
Jerry’s truck was already there, and I half expected to find him waiting on the porch, but there was no sign of him outside the house. He’d only had a small head start, so I knew he couldn’t be far.
“Johnny—” I tried again.
“And all that time he never said anything. I figured he was just being decent, not repeating everything I’d said....” The look on his face was equal parts wonder and horror.
“Johnny? What did you tell him?”
Johnny opened the driver’s door and stepped out into the rain.
“Now, this is incredibly stupid,” Emilie huffed, as if her good sense was offended by our folly.
But Johnny wasn’t in a hurry anymore. He stood there for a long moment, staring at Jerry’s house, letting water drip into his eyes without blinking it away. “I told him,” he said simply. “I told him Stacy was pregnant.”
“Shit,” Emilie whispered.
When he took a step, I reached for him, catching only a handful of fabric.
He jerked away. “I’m doing this, Kirsten.”
I stepped out of the car, screaming after him as he charged across the weed-choked lawn. “What are you going to do? Johnny, you can’t just go in there!”
“Johnny, get back here!” Emilie pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her skintight black jeans. “I’m calling for help.”
Johnny was heading up the porch steps. Some were rotted, I noticed, the boards buckled and splintered. He hesitated for a half second over the broken screen door, as if he were deciding whether to knock.
“Oh, God...oh, God,” I said over and over, not being able to form any more words. I saw Johnny turn the knob of Jerry Warczak’s back door. It was open, and in a second Johnny was inside, closing the door behind him.
“We’ve got to stop him,” I cried, seizing Emilie’s arm.
She shook me off. She was waving her cell phone over her head, trying to catch a signal. “All that time, that dirty son of a bitch,” she muttered.
I put my head in my hands, trying to still my thoughts. Was this where it had happened, where he had brought her? Was her body here? Not a body, I realized—not anymore. After all this time, there would only be remains, bones and fragments, the sort of thing you saw in television crime labs, pieced together by white-coated professionals. And then I gulped an uneven breath. What if she had been here all along, prisoner in this dilapidated hellhole? I turned to Emilie. “What if—”
We both heard it at the same time, the sound reverberating through the house, blasting through the roar of the rain that was now seeping into everything.
A shot.
One single shot.