Friends Like These(55)

“What the fuck!”

Blinded, I try to get my footing. My gun is still in my hand. But I can’t see a goddamn thing. I blink a few times. My eyes are still burning and watering, but at least I can see again.

Laughter then. From some distance behind me. With my eyes still tearing, I make out the outline of a woman, sitting on a rock.

“Fucking turkey vulture,” she says, then laughs some more as my vision finally clears. She points to the sky. When I look up, I can see the outline of a massive bird, already soaring up near the tops of the trees. “They’ve been getting stuck in the barn ever since that deer died in there. Dumb things get in, and they can’t get out.”

My nose is throbbing. I hope it’s not broken. I tuck my gun away at my back.

“Man, that thing really nailed you,” the woman says, laughter still in her voice.

When I squint at her now, she finally comes into view. Painfully thin, she looks to be in her mid-forties, with long, dull brown hair and overly tanned, heavily lined skin, too much of it exposed in a thin tank top and ripped jeans.

“There’s blood on that doorframe,” I say, motioning to the barn, glad for the excuse to look away from her bony arms. “Any idea where it came from?”

She peers up at me like I’m the one who’s high. “Um, I don’t know, the fucking deer.” She shakes her head. “Some hunter shot it, and it wandered in there. Whole place smelled like death for weeks. Still does sometimes. Fucking gross.”

“Have you seen either of these guys?” I ask, coming closer to show her the pictures of Keith and Derrick on my phone.

She studies the screen, then looks up at me. “Seen them where?”

“Here,” I say, pointing at the ground, straining to keep my patience. “Buying drugs maybe.” Because I know that’s what’s going on here, and I could arrest all of you if I wanted to— that’s the implied threat. God knows if she even notices. “But I don’t care about the drugs. I’m just trying to find these men.”

She looks back at the screen. “Never seen them. You should ask Crystal, though. They look like her type.”

“Crystal?” I ask, playing dumb.

She waves behind her toward the outbuilding. “She likes that kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?” I ask. “Men?”

“Nah, weekenders with cash,” the woman says. “Crystal fucks them for money. I mean, not like an actual prostitute. Crystal’s not like that. She just picks them up, goes home and has sex with them, then lifts a few twenties on her way out.” She peers up at me and smirks. “I guess that is kind of like a prostitute. But Crystal’s a nice girl. Smart, sweet too.”

“Which room is hers?”

“This isn’t a fucking bed and breakfast. People stay where they stay. Then they go.”

“Great,” I mutter, looking back down the hill toward the menacing outbuilding.

“Hey, wait, I know you.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. But when I turn back and look at her again, more closely, there is something familiar.

Suddenly she pushes herself off the rock. “Wait, yeah, I definitely do.”

“Ah, no, you don’t,” I say starting down the hill, bracing for her to say something about Jane.

“We went to fucking Hudson High together.” She points to herself. “Lauren Avery? We got drunk a few times together in Promenade Hill Park— you, me, Amy, Tim, Becca. All those people.” She’s looking at me now like I’m the one who’s got the problem. “Remember?”

And then, all at once, I see her the way she used to be. Lauren with the shiny auburn curls, the big smile, the noisy laugh. She was a loudmouthed clown back in high school, at the center of a group that I stayed on the far periphery of. I faded out for good when I left for UCLA. Some of us are still connected on social media that I never look at, but I haven’t spoken to anyone from high school in years. Most people move on from Hudson. Lauren’s dream had been a job in sales and marketing with the New York Giants. She was a guy’s girl and a sports fanatic. The drugs have ravaged her.

“Oh, right,” I say, finally. And luckily stop myself short of How are you? Because the answer is obvious.

“You’re a cop?” she asks. “Here?”

She knows about Jane, of course. Everyone always did. And even in her current drug-addled state, she thinks it’s a weird choice for me to stay and work as a cop in the town where Jane was murdered. She’s got a point.

“Yeah, I’m a cop,” I say, inching backward down the hill. There is nowhere good for this conversation to go. “You shouldn’t be staying here, you know. This isn’t a safe place. Trust me.”

Lauren shrugs and smiles sadly. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I don’t have any choice,” I say, turning to leave.

“Nah,” Lauren calls after me. “Everyone’s got choices.”

Back down the hill, I rap on the first of the ramshackle doors. Move one hand to my gun, just in case. Silence. Passed out, too high to hear me— so many possibilities.

“Police, open up!” My voice sounds deep, confident.

I wait a long, long beat, then pound again, even harder this time.

“Hold the fuck on!” finally comes a muffled voice— youngish, grouchy, male.