Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(51)
He considers. “Okay. But if you don’t get anything for tomorrow’s deadline I can’t justify expenses, or keeping you out of rotation.”
“I know,” I say, thinking, is this when people like Jayson Blair started making shit up? “I’ll get something.”
I follow my GPS through Cairo’s “main street,” which consists of a feed store, a combination lawyer/real estate office, a hair salon, a sandwich shop, and a post office. There are many more storefronts, but they are all vacant. Outside the post office is a folding table manned by a man and a woman who look sixty-ish. Draped over the table is a carefully hand-lettered sign that reads IMPEACH THE DISHONEST LIAR OBAMA. I wonder if they bought a gun from Connie or Hank Hall recently.
I turn left just past a Dollar General and come to a stop at a two-story apartment building with moldy white vinyl siding and a handful of cars parked on the grass where the landlord was apparently too cheap to create a parking lot. I call Kaitlyn and tell her I am outside. A moment later a girl with a phone to her ear opens a ground-floor door and waves. I tuck my notebook and pen in the pocket of my jacket, lock Saul’s car, and greet her.
Kaitlyn is barely five feet tall; she probably weighs less than a hundred pounds. One side of her head is shaved and the other is dyed a faded pink over blond. Her apartment is shabby—a low ceiling and cheap Berber carpet—but like Mellie’s place, well taken care of. A vanilla scented candle is burning on the kitchen counter, and a futon and two fold-out camping chairs face the TV, which is tuned to E! Joan Rivers is making fun of someone.
“You want something to drink?” asks Kaitlyn.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“You’ve kinda got me nervous,” she says, sitting on the futon, leaning forward. Her left arm is covered with a sleeve of flower tattoos. “When did Pessie die again?”
“March fourth.”
She thinks a minute. “That’s right around when Sam stopped coming to work.”
“You guys work together?”
She nods. “At a big nursery outside Catskill. It’s kind of seasonal. We’re out on a crew doing gardens and stuff May to, like, October. Then we do shifts at the store in the winter, but the hours are erratic. Sam’s been sorta … different since he got back from prison. Gina—that’s our boss—she took him back, but he kept showing up late. And sometimes he’d be high. I thought she fired him but she said he just stopped coming in.”
“Why was Sam in prison?”
“We all got arrested—him and Ryan and me and this other girl—about four years ago. It was really stupid. The neighbors called in a noise complaint and the cops found all the pot we were bagging for Ryan’s dad. Plus a couple guns, which I didn’t know they had. I got lucky ’cause it was my first arrest. I just got probation and the landlord even let me stay here, thank God. But Ryan and Sam had priors and they both got jail time. Ryan got out after like six months and he totally straightened out. He stopped working for his dad and got back in school. Now he’s doing vet tech work in Hudson. Sam was in for a lot longer, though. He just came back around Thanksgiving.”
“Why was Sam in longer?”
“Something happened in there. I don’t know the details, but they sent him up to state prison. Which is a whole other ballgame.”
“Do you know where he was living after he got out?”
“I think he has a sister in New Paltz.”
“Aviva?”
Kaitlyn shrugs. “Maybe? I didn’t know her. I think he was back and forth between her place and Ryan’s.”
“How long have you known Ryan?”
“Since we were kids. My mom and his mom were close. Ryan had it really rough. It’s a miracle he turned out as normal and nice as he is. His dad was in prison for a lot of his childhood. And his mom killed herself while he was gone.”
“Wow.”
“It was really f*cked up. She shot herself and Ryan found her. He was, like, eleven, I think. Him and Hank pretty much ran wild out there. Their grandma and grandpa took care of them until Connie—that’s their dad, Connie for Conrad—came back. The grandpa was from the South, I think. He was in the KKK. I heard he moved here because he’d, like, killed some black guy down there. He died of a heart attack or something before Connie got out. And the grandma … she drank a lot. Got both legs amputated from diabetes or something.”
“I think I met her.”
“I can’t believe you went out there,” she says. “Connie used to come to Little League games and yell at people and start fights with the other parents. My mom totally blamed him—and the grandma—for Beth’s suicide. She said they treated her like a servant. I think she had a couple miscarriages after Ryan and Hank and they were, like, pissed she didn’t make more Aryan babies.”
“Aryan babies?”
“I told you, they’re crazy. Hank dropped out in tenth grade but Ryan graduated and they always gave him shit, saying he thought he was better than them. He got a job at the hardware store but it was just part-time, not enough for rent or anything else. He ended up going to work with his dad to make enough to move out. Ironic, right? That’s how him and Sam met. Sam worked at a place on Connie’s route.”
“Connie’s route?”