The Quarry Girls(72)
The memory of being safe and giggly in Brenda’s bedroom wrote itself across my brain, clack clack clack, the sound of a big typewriter going to town, trying desperately to distract me from the bottom of her feet, one sole clad only in nylons we never wore nylons, not ever, especially not in the summer with this thick marshmallow air, the other in heels you can’t run in heels I’ll never wear heels we’d laughed while watching Peyton Place reruns because you see, just by looking at her feet, even though they weren’t dressed like her feet, I knew they belonged to Brenda.
they haven’t even covered her with a sheet please God she can’t be dead don’t look at her face don’t you’ll lose your mind This couldn’t be how it ended, not with a girl I’d grown up with, a girl so close she was like a sister. Our families grilled together, went out to eat, took trips to Minneapolis back when Mom did that sort of thing. I’d spent endless childhood nights playing fort in the Taft living room while the grown-ups bellowed over bridge and rummy at the dining room table. At sleepovers, she’d ask me to trace my name across her back, a gentle trail that led her straight to slumber. Brenda, like Junie, had never met a stranger. I’d been the quiet one.
Dead quiet.
Something broke deep down beneath my ribs.
I would never look at that dead face, but I knew it was her.
It was Brenda Taft lying on her back in the middle of the circle of police officers. She was wearing scratchy-looking schoolteacher clothes that were not hers. She was laid out on display like the body of a gunslinger.
It was Brenda.
The scream didn’t start with me.
It had been trapped in Brenda’s body, cold and stiff, but when I arrived, when Brenda’s terror recognized someone familiar, someone she’d loved, it ran to it, coursing through the ground like rotten mercury. It slithered up through my feet and pushed at my throat, too big, it was going to rip my neck open, but it had seen the light and demanded to be born, that death scream.
It came out a keening howl, so unexpected and elemental that the police officers flinched, one of them jumping away, hand to his gun, all of them noticing me for the first time.
“Get her outta here.”
They shuffled me into the ambulance. I didn’t fight them.
I didn’t stop howling, either.
CHAPTER 44
The ambulance driver gave me an injection. I didn’t think that was standard operating procedure, but I was out of my mind. That soothing liquid crept along my veins like a blanket. When it reached my brain with a sweet it’s all right whisper, I finally stopped screaming.
My ears rang with the silence.
A deputy bundled me out of the ambulance and into his car, I suppose to make room for Brenda’s body ssshhhh, baby, it’s all right. He dropped me off at home along with my bike, which he left on the front porch. After he drove away, I sat on the living room sofa, fuzzy-headed and dry-mouthed, not a single thought in my head, until Dad burst through the door a few hours later.
His face was so tired it looked inside out.
“Jesus!” he said when he noticed me on the couch. “I didn’t see you there. Where’s Junie?”
I considered the question. The blankets in my veins weren’t so thick anymore. I could connect thoughts now, though it took them a while to find my mouth, lost hikers searching for the entrance. “Libby’s.”
He nodded, looked about ready to say something, and then he crumpled next to me, head in his hands. He made snuffling sounds that I realized was him crying.
I should pat his back.
I was gratified to see my hand appear near his shoulder. When he felt the heat of it, he leaned over, into my arms. He was a good-size man, five ten at least. I held him while he sobbed. Mom had said this was a wife’s duty, but she wasn’t here. Why did Dad break so easily?
“Brenda’s dead,” he said when his weeping subsided. His voice sounded left over. Discarded.
“I know.”
“Jerome took Ant and Ricky in for questioning right away,” Dad continued, ignoring me. Or maybe I hadn’t spoken. “They swear they don’t know anything. Ricky says he hasn’t seen Brenda since she stopped by work to see you Saturday. Ant says he saw her that same morning, but not since. Does that sound right?”
I lifted one shoulder. Dad either didn’t feel it or didn’t care.
“They agreed to a polygraph, and their parents signed off on it. Both boys passed.” He pulled away from me, ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m so sorry, Heather.”
“What about Ed?” I asked. “What does he say?”
“We can’t find him.” Dad shook his head like he couldn’t believe his bad luck. “We really messed this one up.”
We both sat in that for a while. My fingertips started tingling, so I stretched out my arms. Then I cracked my jaw. It felt luxurious.
“She was strangled,” Dad said.
That pierced my protection. I tried to press the visual back, but it kept at me, a hand searching beneath my covers. “Brenda?”
He nodded. “There were no defensive wounds. Jerome thinks it was two perpetrators, one restraining her, the other killing her.”
I blinked. Blinked again. I could see Brenda’s legs covered in nylons, the scratchy skirt that looked like it came from the bottom of a yard-sale free box. “Why’d they change her clothes?”