What Strange Creatures (35 page)

“All Kim ever told me about the guy she was with was that he was clueless about her history. She said he wouldn’t understand, because he’d never seen or done anything bad in his whole life. She said he was sweet, like a little boy.”

Dustin saw me cringe.

“I know,” he said. “Look how
that
turned out.”

“Halliday!” someone yelled. It was Dustin’s driver—she’d caught sight of us talking and was now leaning out her car window.

“Ignore her,” Dustin said. “She’ll wait, trust me.”

I thought it was odd, but I was eager to finish this conversation regardless.

“She’s not very smart,” he added.

“And about Kyle?” I hurried to ask. “Jenny’s brother? The old boyfriend?”

“She said she didn’t think she could’ve ever done this project if she was still with him.”

“Because?” I prompted, growing anxious about Dustin’s little friend.

“Because when she was with him, she was always afraid. That’s what she said.”

“HALLIDAY!” the young woman yelled again.

“Afraid of what?” I asked, trying to ignore her.

“I don’t know, exactly.” Dustin glanced toward the waiting car.

“Was she afraid he would do something to her? Physically?”

He shook his head. “She never said anything like that. She didn’t strike me as someone who would stay with a guy who pulled that kind of stuff. She didn’t take any shit.”

I didn’t think it was so easy to identify who would take what kind of shit. That was something I knew about relationships that the young Dustin perhaps did not.

The woman circled and parked in the lot, pulling up close to us.

“Trenton!” she called to Dustin.

“Why’s she calling you Trenton?” I asked.

“Insurance,” Dustin replied. “She’s so dumb she thinks the doctor in there might hear if she calls me by my real name.”

“Insurance?” I said.

“I’m using my brother’s insurance.”

I paused, thinking about this. Of course Dustin didn’t have any medical insurance. He wasn’t in school, didn’t have a job, and didn’t have any parents to fall back on. But Trenton probably had a decent plan, if he still worked at the cable company.

“That’s how my brother operates. Like I was saying about the book. Little lies are okay. As long as everybody’s either happy or clueless and no one gets hurt.”

“TRENTON!” the young woman screamed.

“She is so damn dumb. All she needs is a sparkly purse with a teacup Yorkie. I can’t believe my brother likes her.”

“Sometimes it’s best not to overanalyze a sibling’s taste,” I offered.

Dustin smirked. “I’ll say.”

“Who do you think killed Kim, Dustin?” I asked.

“It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? The guy they’ve arrested.”

The young woman had reached us now. She grabbed Dustin’s arm.

“Why didn’t you answer me,
Trenton
?” she said.

“Because that’s not my name,
Riley.
”

Trenton’s girlfriend looked stunned.

“In
most
of these cases,” Dustin said to me, “it’s the obvious person.”

“What are we talking about here?” Riley demanded.

Dustin turned and headed toward the Easter egg. “Let’s go, Riley,” he said.

Riley followed, hissing scolds at him. Watching them walk away, I felt an unfamiliar anguish settling in my core. I’d hung so many of my hopes on finding Dustin and demanding an explanation for his texts and his anger. But it was clear now that his revelations were not going to magically transform into a smoking gun. He was another wounded soul who had thought, for a little while, that Kim cared about him.

For a moment I racked my brain to come up with an idea to pursue for the rest of the afternoon. None came to me. And in the absence of ideas, there was a raw pain that nearly knocked me to my knees. I had no choice now but to let it wash over me. I sat on the cold dirt and grass of the divider and closed my eyes. I breathed the pain in and out. Not till I was used to it—as I knew I never would be. But till I was ready to stand up and go home.

As I drove back into Thompsonville, I stared up at the Whitlock’s candle and thought about Marge. There was a particular passage in the latter part of her book that I had always found surprisingly touching. When she was old, after she’d all but abandoned her husband for a life of celibacy and pilgrimages, he (by then living alone, as per an agreement with Marge) took a bad fall and thereafter required constant care. Margery was reluctant to go back to living with him, fretting that his needs would interfere with her prayers and her church attendance (and making much of the fact that he was now incontinent). But God told her to return to her husband and “look after him for my love.” And she did.

By doing so she showed an understanding of faith as something that is at least
sometimes
quiet, humble, unglamorous, and relatively egoless. It feels as if Marge may finally have begun to mature in her old age and to see faith differently. Maybe she even saw her husband differently—saw that his patience and love for her had quietly helped her to lead the unconventional life she’d wanted.

I wondered now what my later-in-life service was going to be. Would it be visiting my brother in jail for years to come, trying to throw together enough funny Boober and Rolf stories to fill a few decades of Saturday visiting hours? Being the holdout supporting his innocence? Stalking Donald Wallace into the U.S. Senate and perhaps the White House, till the FBI put me in a rubber room? Or, more humbly, simply attempting somehow to ease my parents’ suffering over whatever fate had in store for us?

I could take on any burden but acceptance of Jeff’s guilt. I prayed to the Whitlock’s candle for a sign of what was expected of me. It remained as tacky and as dim as ever. I would have to find comfort in that somehow.

I hadn’t even had time to feed the cats when there was a knock on my front door. Wayne howled once. Boober began yipping and wouldn’t stop.

Nudging both dogs aside with my foot, I opened the door a crack and saw Kyle Spicer on my front steps.

“Well, if it isn’t Margery Lipinski,” he said.

“Uh . . . hello,” I said, startling at the sneer on his lips.

“I hear your dog.” Kyle stuck his foot in the door. “Is that the one from the picture in the paper?”

“Hey!” I yelled.

“I’m coming in.” Kyle put his hand on the door and narrowed his Snake Eyes at me. “Because I need to talk to you.”

“I’m going to call the cops if you come in here.” My heart was racing.

“Really? Because I have something that I think you want. I saw that weird picture of you in the paper the other day,
Theresa.
” He emphasized my real name. “Then today I saw that thing about you breaking into Kim’s friend’s house. And it’s all been pretty illuminating. Because he doesn’t have it—what you’re looking for.
I
do.”

I touched my phone in my pocket. I could reach it if I got into trouble. Kyle could very well intend me harm, but I was willing to take the risk.
There is no gift so holy as is the gift of love.
I let go of the door, took a step backward, and let him in.

Kyle made a big show of making himself comfortable on my couch—loosening his slithery satin salesman tie and plumping the cushions. I took that opportunity to review possible self-defense tools in my home. There was the cutlery in the kitchen, of course. But was there anything closer? Maybe I could clock him with a lamp or strangle him with Boober’s leash.

“So when I saw the picture of you with your brother and your dog the other day,” he said, “boy, did I feel like the world’s biggest dumb-ass. I really thought you were Margery Lipinski, mystery dogsitter. ‘A friend of Kim’s’? I knew her well enough to know she didn’t make very close friends. Girlfriends especially.”

Wayne approached Kyle—panting, his tongue looking obscenely long. Kyle pushed his snout away gently.

“Not now, slobber boy. It finally makes sense, though. You don’t really care about Kim. You care about your brother.”

“It’s not—”

“It’s fine.” He interrupted. “Really. It makes more sense than trying to get to the bottom of Kim. Trust me, there is no bottom. I’m glad I don’t have to bother to explain that to you. Because you don’t care.”

“I actually—”

“No,”
Kyle said, and he reached into the wide right pocket of his brown leather blazer. He pulled out two DVDs in clear plastic cases, and I shut up. He put them on the couch beside him.

“So I’ll only explain the parts that I need to. How about that?”

I nodded. Wayne, seeming to sense the tension in the air, turned and left the room like a champ. Boober’s gaze followed him for a moment, and then he did the same.
Way to look out for your mistress, boys.

“I was twelve and she was ten,” Kyle began. “I was almost thirteen, I guess. Is that sick? Is that weird? Probably. If I’d had a normal life after that, maybe I would’ve felt really bad about it. Maybe someone would’ve called me out on it. But they didn’t. Because you know what happened?”

“What?” I whispered.

Kyle closed his eyes. I scanned the room for more potential weapons. There was a Banksy coffee-table book. Not deadly, but it could buy me time, probably, if I angled it just right and jabbed him in the eyes. Then I could run for the leash in the hall. Or just run.

“Kim came over a lot, to see my sister. But after a while we started kicking Jenny out. We’d lock her out. Well—
I’d
lock her out. To be with just Kim. I’d only done it a couple of times when Jenny decided one day to go walking by herself. Probably to the store to buy Bazooka gum. They’d sell these big boxes of Bazooka for a dollar. Jenny thought it was the best deal. And she didn’t like to wait once she had a taste for Bazooka. She banged on the door a couple of times, asking Kim to come with her. But we didn’t answer. And then Jenny never came back.”

Kyle tapped his knuckles on one of the DVD cases.

“I can’t watch this. I tried one for a few minutes. Kim is so young in it. Too young. She was a little
kid.
”

I could feel myself breathe now. I had the distinct feeling I would not need to strangle this man with a dachshund’s leash.

“If it was Andrew who killed Jenny, then it wasn’t our fault. If Andrew was a sick kid who had set his sights on Jenny, it was only a matter of time. If it was Andrew, then it wasn’t about that one day. It wasn’t just about the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t about what we did or didn’t do that day.

“I believed Kim when she told everybody Andrew was messing with Jenny. I was so angry. What a sick fuck. I didn’t think those words when I was twelve, thirteen, but that’s how I put it for years after that.

“It was only when I tried to watch this that I asked myself where she might’ve gotten that material. Did Jenny really tell her all that? I couldn’t remember Jenny acting that different, in those last days, from how she had before. I couldn’t remember her being troubled. I couldn’t even remember her being all that close to Kim. She was better friends with Missy. Kim was the outlier. Kim was the maverick. Can you say that about a kid? That’s what I liked about her.

“I don’t know if these things matter.” Kyle tapped the DVDs again. “I don’t know if Donald Wallace has much to answer for here. I don’t know if he’d care enough. But it seems to me awfully convenient for him that Kim died right before she could do anything with it.”

Kyle’s gaze met mine, and I tried to hold it. Then he glanced down at the DVD cases.

“You’re trying to save your brother. I don’t know if you can. But I don’t want to get in the way. Just because I couldn’t save my sister doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a chance to save your brother.

“That’s like what we did to Andrew Abbott. We put it on the easiest person. I don’t know what your story is. I don’t know what your brother’s is. But I’m not going to be a part of doing that to anyone else.

“The day before she drove to Rowington, Kim dropped these at my place. For safekeeping, she said. But I don’t want to be responsible for them.” Kyle gently tossed one of the DVDs to me. “I don’t want to be responsible for any of this. When Kim and I broke up, it was supposed to be over. I want it to be
over.
”

Then he tossed the other. It missed the couch and fell at my feet.

“Thank you,” I said, bending to pick it up.

“You’ll leave me alone now, Margery Lipinski.” Kyle stood up.

“Okay,” I whispered, unsure if I should get up, too.

“See you, Wayne,” Kyle called down the hall. Wayne came running, giving a confused
woof
in Kyle’s direction, but Kyle was gone by the time Wayne reached the door.

I ran to the window and watched Kyle get into his car.

Once he was gone, I opened up my laptop and put in one of the DVDs. I held my breath as the player began to load.

The shot was grainy, but the two figures sitting at the table together were clearly a young girl and a young woman. The girl had pretty dark hair, pushed back with a rhinestone headband. Her hands were folded primly before her, and her face was arranged in a sweet smile. The woman was a younger Colleen Shipley with a fluffy perm.

“You did a great job talking to Officer McCarthy, Kim,” she said. “Now we want to go over a few things you said, okay?”

“Okay.” Miniature Kim nodded.

“We’re going to start with the week
before
Jenny disappeared and some of the things you said about that.”

“Sure,” said Kim.

I was struck by how self-possessed the young Kim was.

“So you said that Andrew would try to kiss Jenny. When would he do that? Did you
see
that happen?”

“Um. Mostly she just told me about it. Because it was in private?” I noticed the question in Kim’s voice.

“It was in private. Okay. But did you ever actually
see
it?”

“Once. In the basement.”

“Whose basement?” Colleen asked.

“Jenny’s basement.” Kim’s voice lowered slightly.

“Andrew came over to Jenny’s house? Who else was there?”

“Oh. I meant, Andrew’s basement.”

“Andrew’s basement. Are you sure, Kim?”

“Yeah. We were in his yard drawing the horses and the unicorns, and it started to rain. And we went into Andrew’s basement.”