Friends Like These(56)

Noises follow: shit being hidden, thrown out, evidence destroyed. Not that I care if it’s only related to drugs, but there are other possibilities. I knock again. “Come on, open the damn door!”

“I said I was fucking coming!”

I take a step back as heavy footsteps approach, hand still on my gun. Finally the door snaps open.

“What the fuck?” The young guy in the doorway is shirtless, his chest concave-skinny, wearing faded boxer shorts with a sagging elastic that barely clings to his bony hips. His ribs look like they’re about to tear through his pasty skin. There’s something, someone, moving in the room behind him under a pile of blankets on the floor.

“Who is it?” A woman’s voice.

“That Crystal?” I ask, pointing.

“What?” He asks like he’s never heard the word crystal, much less of a person named that.

“Crystal!” comes the muffled voice again. “She wants to know if I’m Crystal.”

“Crystal?” he says, kind of disgusted. “Crystal’s not fucking here. Why would she be here?”

I take a deep breath. Patience. This is going to be a long conversation. “How about the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t fucking know. Check the Falls. She’s always hanging out there, trying to pick up weekenders so she can shake them down.”

This is the second time I’m hearing this. Maybe Crystal tried to rob Keith and Derrick, and things unraveled? But even if Crystal is a thief, it seems unlikely she could have taken out two grown men on her own. With Luke Gaffney’s help on the other hand?

“Have you seen either of these men?” I hold up Keith and Derrick’s pictures on my phone, swiping between the two of them a couple times. When the guy leans in to peer at the screen, he reeks of cigarettes.

“Nope,” he says finally.

I have to step into the room to show his girlfriend, who rises onto her elbows but otherwise stays prone on the floor, naked it seems under the blanket. She is pretty but her skin is sallow and her short, pink-streaked blond hair looks unwashed.

“Me neither,” she says finally, flopping back down. “Cute, though. You find them, you can tell them where to find me. By the way, it was Thursday.”

“What was?” I ask.

She waves her toothpick arms in the air like a marionette. “When we last saw Crystal?” She gestures to her boyfriend. “Remember, Tommy?”

“No, I don’t remember.” Tommy snorts. “How the hell do you know what day it was?”

“That guy came here and got her. And then we went to the Cumberland Farms for the Powerball. Powerball is Thursdays. We asked Crystal and the guy to give us a ride, and he said no.”

“Do you remember the guy’s name?” I ask.

“Oh, wait, yeah.” Tommy smacks a palm against his forehead. “I remember that fucking guy. That dumb accent, talking to everybody here like they went way back. Meanwhile, did you see that huge fucking watch he had on? Fucking hate guys like that.”

“His name was like a word that means something else,” the girl says. “It wasn’t like a regular name. Like Birch or Pine or something.”

“A tree?” I ask.

“No, not that,” she says. “But like that— ”

“A bird!” Tommy snaps his fingers at her. “It was a fucking bird. See, I remember shit, too.”

“Finch,” I say. “Was his name Finch?”

“Finch! That’s it!” Tommy flashes a gap-toothed grin. “Birdman, that was what I called him. I was trying to piss him off, but he didn’t seem to give a shit.”

“That must have been Friday or Saturday, though,” I say. “It couldn’t have been Thursday.”

“It was Thursday!” Now it’s the girl’s turn to yell. “Because of the Powerball! We got the fucking tickets.” She flaps her hand toward her boyfriend. “Didn’t win because we never do. Tommy’s got luck for shit.”





ALICE


I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. And each day the weight pressing down on my chest gets heavier. My friends are all fine, though. Only four days later, and it’s like they’ve already moved on.

They aren’t monsters, but it’s just so weird to me how they can put it aside. It’s not a thing that can be erased. It happened. And we did it. We are responsible.

Last night we were all together in Jonathan’s room before we were going to the Mug. A little pre-party, like the good old days. Or that’s the way everyone else was acting. Beers in hand, drinking, joking. Like that guy never even existed. Meanwhile, the whole time I felt myself sliding deeper into some dark hole.

I never went to the Mug with them. Instead, I went back to the Dutch Cabin. I wanted to see if the bartender knew where Evan was from, or even just his last name. The news had been keeping it quiet so far. And it had seemed that night like the bartender and Evan were friends. The bartender said straight out that he’d tell me, but only if I came back with cash. Fucked up, but what could I do? So I found Jonathan and he lent me the couple hundred the bartender wanted.

I didn’t tell him what I needed the money for. And, typical Jonathan, he didn’t ask. My friends wouldn’t like it at all that I went back to the Dutch Cabin, asking questions.