Ink and Bone(79)

“I don’t know what that means,” said Finley.

She turned back to Eloise, but the woman was gone, her seat empty, her drink tipped, leaving a dark stain on the sand.


*

Finley had blood on her hands, and a long dark streak marred each leg of her jeans as if she’d tried to wipe it off there. Far from being warm, basking on some unnamed beach, her body felt rigid with cold, shivering from her core. Where was she? Awareness came in pieces. She was alone in Rainer’s car, engine running, sitting in the driver’s seat. The car didn’t have heat, and her breath plumed out in great clouds. She gripped the steering wheel hard, as if she were bracing herself for a crash.

She was parked on a tree-lined street—Jones Cooper’s street. A light came on in an upstairs window. Shit. Her heart thumped; there was a big blank space where her memory should be. Panic beat its wings in her chest. What was the last thing she remembered? Think. THINK. A text from Alfie. Abigail in the mirror. Rainer’s hands on her body. The old maps of the iron mines.

Rainer. Where was he?

She felt around for her cell phone, finally fishing it out of her jacket pocket. It was a block of ice, and her hands were so chilled that she couldn’t get the touch screen to work. She blew on her fingers, rubbed them together, and then tried to call. It rang and rang. Then he finally picked up.

“Rainer?” she said. “Where are you?”

But there was only static over the distant sound of his voice.

“Down here—” That was all that she could make out, or something like it.

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

Then the line—infuriatingly—went dead. She tried again, then again. But the call wouldn’t go through. Why were they not together? Why did she have his car? Had she taken it? Was he back at the tattoo shop and cell phone reception was just bad because of the weather?

The snow fell in big fat flakes, powdering lawns and the trees. The world was a hush, a breath held, her own coming out deep and ragged.

How could she have driven to the Coopers’ and not remembered it? It was troubling. She rubbed her eyes hard, willing the last few hours back. Ironically, they’d just been discussing this in abnormal psychology class, about cognition in fugue states. Though the subject is functioning—even as in Finley’s case, driving—information that is assimilated during that period is generally not accessible once the state has passed. Finley couldn’t think of what she’d experienced now, or the first time with Jones, as anything but a fugue. A separate part of herself was conscious. Last time, she’d remembered. Why not this time? She might never get the last few hours back. Why was there so much blood? A sweet, gamey smell sat thick on the air, sickening and yet oddly familiar.

The porch light came on, and the front door to the house opened. Jones stepped out onto the porch wearing jeans and a Georgetown sweatshirt under a barn jacket. He looked up at the falling snow, nonchalant, as if everyone popped out onto his stoop at three in the morning to check the weather, then he dropped a steely gaze across at the car.

Finley remembered the dark-tinted windows, the general condition of the vehicle. She opened the door and stepped out, waving her hand.

“It’s me,” she called. Her voice bounced down the street, sounding high and weak to her ears like the voice of a child. “Finley.”

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, then looked up with a deep frown. He moved down the path and up the drive.

When he reached her, “What the hell are you doing out here, kid? Whose car is that?”

“I—” she started. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s Rainer’s car.”

“You almost got yourself shot.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, still disoriented and confused. “Why would you come to the door with a gun?” she asked. She looked for it, and saw the hard edge of it pressed against his sweatshirt.

His assessing gaze made her feel stupid—really stupid.

“Strange, beat-up old car, dark-tinted windows pulls in front of your house in the middle of the night? Cops never stop being cops, I guess,” he said. He peered inside the car, then back at her.

“What’s all over you? Is that blood?”

She tried to keep herself from shivering, but she couldn’t.

“He killed someone,” she said. It came back in a rush then—the raised arm, the heavy flashlight, the revolting sound of metal on flesh and bone. But why was the blood on her? Had she been there, too?

“Who did?” he asked, alarmed. His hand on her shoulder now was warm and steadying, a bolster. In that moment, something about him reminded her of Eloise. He was someone who fixed, who helped.

“The boy who was in the woods, the one I saw,” she said. “He killed someone tonight.”

“You witnessed this?” A simple question without a simple answer.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. Then, “I don’t know.”

“Whose blood is that?” Jones said. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.” She could hear the screaming. Momma! Momma! “No, I’m not hurt.”

“That’s a lot of blood,” he said, lifting her hands and looking at her palms. “Where were you just now?”

There was a flash. She fought for it. Where? Where?