In Plain View

headlights; nothing but stillness and round eyes.

The SUV’s passenger windows were tinted and the early night shadows made it impossible to see more than the shape of a head behind the steering wheel. I pointed at him and then reached for the passenger side door handle. Suddenly, the asshole cut out of the waiting line of cars straight into the oncoming lanes, then gunned a U.

Gone.

The riot of horns and Ainsley waving come on! snapped my attention in line. I threw my hands in the air and forced a smile. Must have been a fairly scary-looking smile; the guy in the car next to me stared like I was some kind of zoo exhibit.

“What?”

He pulled in his chin and faced the traffic ahead.

I walked back to the Subaru and got in.

Ainsley and Jenny were giving me the same look.

“It’s fine,” I told them. “We’re fine, okay? Drive.”

“Where to?” Ainsley asked, the words clipped hard.

“Office. I got stuff to pick up,” I snapped back. I caught a glimpse of Jenny in the rearview mirror. She was staring out her window without blinking, tearing at her fingernails with fast, nipping motions.

My knee started throbbing like a son of a bitch. “Give me a sip of your pop,” I ordered Ainsley, using it to swallow another pain med. I shut my eyes and waited-for pain to pass and temper to cool.

I needed time. I needed more time than I had. As usual.

“Was it the same guy?” Ainsley asked, his voice low.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I just terrorized some unsuspecting SUV driver who happened to have an errand at the mall the same time we did.”

“How could anyone have followed us? We didn’t plan to go to Jost’s place.”

I looked at him. “I’d say they’d have to have followed us from the sheriff’s party.”

“You don’t think-?”

“I don’t know. Jack-Curzon-seemed awful hot for me to make a report, so I doubt he had anything to do with it, but his cousin? I don’t know. Too much I don’t know here.” I looked back into the back seat. Jenny was half- asleep, slumped against her door. Adrenaline does that sometimes.

“But why?” Ainsley sounded as mystified as I felt. “What do they want?”

“Hell if I know.”

After the office stop, Ainsley decided to talk to me again. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

I couldn’t resist a high drama sound. “What kind of bullshit question is that?”

“No bullshit. I’m really asking.”

“Fox News.”

Ainsley blew a gust of exasperation.

“Look College, it’s a personal-fucking-question. Ask me my cup size, I’d be more inclined to answer.”

“Really?”

“Every man in the television business I’ve ever met can estimate stats on a woman within fifteen seconds of meeting her. What’s your problem?” After five minutes, I couldn’t take the pout. “Fine. What do you mean by worst? Worst destruction? Worst suffering? Worst smell?”

Ainsley’s face crunched tighter with each question. Obviously, he hadn’t considered all the possible permutations.

“First thing that comes to mind, I guess,” he answered.

“I don’t feel like doing an ugliness Rorschach for you, College. What’s your point?”

“Okay. I’ll tell you the worst thing I ever saw. There was this guy I knew in school who used to-” he caught his breath before saying it, “-cut himself. On his hands, arms, chest, everywhere.”

“How?”

“Razor blades. Pens. Push pins. Everybody thought he was psycho. Once he did it with a fork in the lunch room.” His pretty face wrinkled with disgust and he shagged a hand through his hair, smoothing everything back into place.

“That’s it? That’s your worst?” Now he was depressing me.

“Well, no.” He got defensive. “One night, it was late on a Saturday night, I walked into the bathroom in the dorm, you know-”

“I know what bathrooms are, yes.”

Ainsley coughed. “Anyway, he was in there. On the floor. With blood. Lots of it.”

Long breath. I finally understood where this was going. “Dead?”

“Just about. He died at the hospital, I guess.”

“What did you do?”

“Puke,” he admitted with a grimace. “Then, I called somebody.”

Silence, except motor sounds and the wind, the sound of time passing.

“Here’s the thing,” Ainsley continued with a reasonable imitation of backbone, “since I was the one that found him, it always seemed like maybe, if I’d have gone to the bathroom sooner, you know? He wouldn’t have died.”

“You found him, so it was your fault?”

“Yeah.” He rolled his palms up on the steering wheel in a sort of baffled partial shrug. “We weren’t even friends. Still. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to brush my teeth that night.”

All I needed. Goading parables by innocent savants. “Who is it you think I can save, College Boy?”

He didn’t answer.

I stared out the window into the dark and the ghost of my own reflection.

Ainsley looked over at me, once, twice. Obviously, he wasn’t done.

“What?”

“Remember how you said, what we see when we look at something is ourselves? I can’t help wondering what an Amish person looks like to you.” He sounded curious, hardly flustered by my bad attitude.

We were still a good twenty minutes from civilization, such as you’ll find between a television station and suburbia. Street lights were few and far between but the autumn moon was fat and high. I could see the stumps of a broken, harvested field whip past my window and the darker ruffle of trees beyond. Farther out, almost at the horizon, I could see the glowing creep of monochrome homes, all constructed in the same shape like a Monopoly game run amok.

Empty farm land, or expanding home land, I’m not sure which image depressed me more. Without a disaster or a battle underway, I didn’t belong in either scene.

I never did answer him.

None of his damn business, anyway.

12:06:38 a.m.

Stupid bitch! What was she thinking? An open confrontation where anyone could see? Anyone could be watching?

He popped the glovebox and pulled out one of the blister packs he stashed for himself. He clutched the tablet in his hand and stared out the window at the darkened house.

What if a patrol car had rolled up in the middle of her little demonstration?

That’s all he needed. Curzon was all over him now for bullshitting his way onto the police lot to search Tom’s car. If Curzon had the slightest reason to think he was linked to Maddy O’Hara, there’d be a shit storm of questions.

He would have it out with Maddy O’Hara when he was ready.

Right now, he needed to find the things that belonged to him. He’d searched everywhere he could think, anywhere even remotely possible. He was nearly out of time.

Had he missed something when he searched Tom’s apartment? Unfortunately, that fat-assed VFD building super of Tom’s hadn’t called with the heads-up until after O’Hara and her gay boyfriend were already in there. She’d looked so satisfied, so fucking smug when she walked out. It made him itch to floor the accelerator again.