Gun Shy(34)

She got high more days than not.

Karen Brainard wasn’t a very nice person, truth be told. She was kind of an asshole.

But she had a pretty face, a newsworthy face, and so in death, she is a hero, she is tragic, she is perfection.

People will be talking about Karen Brainard today.

The report switches back to Jennifer, urging the public to call a special hotline if anyone knows anything. 1800-JENNIFER. I feel sorry for the operators. I feel sorry for Karen. Karen didn’t come from a rich family. Karen didn’t get a hotline. Karen didn’t even get a poster with her face on it until she’d already been missing for days, and by then it was too late.

“Are you looking for her?” I ask Damon. He scowls at me. “What do you think? I’m the Sheriff. Of course I’m looking for her. Whole town’s looking for her. Where have you been?”

He looks me up and down. “You keep doing you, darlin’. The rest of us’ll look for your friend Jennifer.” He reaches across and snaps the dial on the TV to off, the screen going black as a familiar silence settles around us once more.

She’s not my friend, I want to say, but I don’t, biting down on the tip of my tongue instead.

I lick my chapped lips and drink more coffee.

“Do you think she’s dead?” I ask.

Damon gets up, deposits his empty bowl in the sink, and turns to me as he collects his keys from the counter.

“We’ll be late,” he says. “Get your things.”

I make the mistake of using the back door to leave the house, and that’s where my worst nightmare springs back to life. My dog is still dead. It wasn’t a dream, it really happened, but I can’t bury her myself and I’ve got nobody to help me. I stop beside her stiff body, kneeling to pat her snow-dusted fur.

“Hey,” Damon calls out, already in the car.

I have to swallow down a sob and walk away from her, to the car.

In the passenger seat of Damon’s police car sits a stack of colored posters. Jennifer beams from her yearbook photo, high-definition and full of pep.

I pick up the stack of posters and balance them across my thighs as Damon drives through the snow littering our driveway, my eyes only for Jennifer, the worst parts of me imagining how she died, what they did to her first, and by whose hand. I do not look up again. I don’t want to see the outline of my dog, dusted in snow, her blood frozen in patches around her, a hole in her skull the size of a nickel.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN





CASSIE





The center of town is teeming with reporters when we arrive. The mood is somber, self-conscious, even. Can an entire town be collectively self-conscious? They’re shy, that’s for sure. We don’t get a whole lot of visitors in Gun Creek. Certainly not ones who stick microphones in your face and blast you with questions while you’re still half-asleep.

Damon parks the patrol car right across the front doors of the police station, his face drawn and tense. It must be a fucking nightmare, being in charge of an entire town like this. Especially when something like this happens.

I can only imagine how bad things are going to get at home if they don’t find this girl soon.

“These people are fucking vultures,” he mutters, and I make a noise signaling my agreement. He gets out, opening my door for me.

I muster up a plastic smile as Damon holds out my purse, the strap dangling on his outstretched finger.

“Thanks,” I say, taking the bag and slinging it over my shoulder. I put my oversized dollar-store sunglasses on my face, the day already too bright for me to bear.

“You okay?” Damon asks.

“Always,” I reply, walking away from him before he can say anything else. I should ask him if he’s okay, but that would mean pretending that I care.

I have something important that I need, something immediate.

I’m an asshole because I know I should care about the fact that a girl I’ve grown up with is missing, but I have more pressing personal matters.

I need to take care of myself, first. I head for the diner, fifty feet away, already late for my shift. I push past reporters, hanging eagerly at the doors they’re forbidden to cross. They have to hover outside in the snow for their pound of flesh, their soundbites, their newsworthy quotes from Jennifer’s distraught friends and family.

I see Casey Mulligan, a girl I went to school with, twirling a strand of long blonde hair around her finger as she musters up a couple of fat tears for a news camera, and it strikes me, just like last time, that the people who get the most attention in this world are the ones who least deserve it.

Still, I’m glad it’s not me. Last thing I want is a camera in my face. I slip by, unassisted, unseen, an invisible girl with a hollow spot inside me. I notice the crates of milk that get delivered to Dana’s every morning are still stacked out front and I grab one as I approach, throwing my purse on top and bracing my stomach muscles to carry the thirty-odd pounds worth of liquid weight. One of our regulars holds the door open for me and I smile in thanks, lugging the milk crate through the diner and toward the cold storage out back.

I’m making my way down the main entrance, past rows of tables and customers talking feverishly about Jennifer, my arms full of milk bottles when it happens.

I see him. Him.

I stop.