Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(90)

“We don’t talk about it. But things we don’t talk about still happen.”

“I know they do.”

“They released him, didn’t they, Nik? He was paroled, right?”

I didn’t answer at first. “Yeah. I guess they did.”

“And then?”

A longer pause. “I guess he went back home.”

“I tried to find him, you know. A few years ago, I finally got the nerve. He was from Hercules. Just up the road from here. I don’t know what I would have done. I always told myself I’d try to kill him … but I don’t know if I could have. Part of me hopes yes, part of me hopes no. Maybe I would have punched him, or tried to hit him with my car. Maybe just yelled at him. Maybe just cried or gotten beaten up. Who knows? But he’s gone, so it doesn’t matter.”

“I guess it doesn’t.”

“It’s funny, though,” my brother continued in that same quiet, reflective voice. “That day that I went looking, I couldn’t find out anything at all about Jordan Stone. No one seemed to know a thing. Like he went home and disappeared into thin air.”

I held my brother. I felt his sweat, his body, his breathing, against me. I felt him so closely it was like I was inside his body, feeling in my own body the sluggish sickness of withdrawal, in his mind, the tremor and sensitivity of his thoughts my own. I’d never felt closer to him. We had come from the same place. Out of the world’s billions, only us two, no one else.

“Nik?”

“Yeah, Brandi?”

“Can you tell me a bedtime story? Like you used to when we were kids?”

“A story.”

“Yeah, a story. Tell me a story.”

I breathed very slowly. My eyes were closed and my voice was quiet. “What should the story be about?”

“Tell me a story about what happened to Jordan Stone after he went back home.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. Just lay there with my arms around him, watching the cracks of lightness seep out from behind to frame the curtain. “You mean it?”

“It’s just us, Nik. Just me and you. No one else. So tell me a story. Tell me that story.”

Some of the thoughts hurling through my mind found purchase, steadied.

“Okay. If you want me to, I will.”



* * *



When they paroled Jordan Stone in the spring of 2005, he moved back to his parents’ house in Hercules. A small city of about twenty-five thousand on San Pablo Bay, just north of Berkeley. He had just turned twenty-eight and was dead broke. Heading home was logical. Not that Jordan Stone had a choice. Living at home was a condition of his parole. There weren’t many conditions, but that was one of them. Federal and state laws were remarkably tough if you were, say, a sex offender. If Jordan Stone had been convicted of even a crime such as having sex with a seventeen-year-old girlfriend when he was eighteen, he would have faced all kinds of harsh restrictions. Register as a sex offender for life, check in with the local police station anywhere he moved, no living near schools or parks, name and address permanently in a publicly accessible database. But a convicted murderer? Society was more trusting. Sure, he wasn’t going to be voting or buying guns, but beyond that, his only real responsibility was to meet with a parole officer once a week and avoid trouble.

Back at home in Hercules, Jordan Stone seemed to live quietly. His whole release had been quiet. No media attention. No stories in the papers about the reformed killer returning home. No op-eds thundering for or against his release. Nothing.

His family was middle class. His father owned a small contracting business. He had two siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, now both married, with kids of their own. The sister in San Diego and the brother in Richmond. They didn’t seem close with their middle brother.

Not many businesses made a habit of hiring felons, especially those fresh out of prison for murder, but Jordan Stone was in luck. His father knew a painting crew that either wasn’t too particular or was willing to do a favor. He got a steady job almost right away. Spent Monday through Friday on job sites and enrolled at Contra Costa, a local community college. Courtesy of the State of California, which had already paid about $50,000 a year to lock him up, Jordan Stone now began working toward a college degree.

His days were simple. Work, check in with his parole officer, sleep at home. As part of his parole he couldn’t drink. He didn’t hang out at bars or clubs. He didn’t have many friends. Occasionally he met up with a few guys he’d probably gone to high school with, played pool or went bowling. He usually went to the arcade once or twice a week at least. Spent hours and hours in the NASCAR simulator or battling zombies. Beyond that, his life didn’t seem to have much else.

With one exception. Jordan Stone loved comic books.

There was a comic book store in town. He went in at least three or four times a week. Most of the customers were regulars. They hung out. Knew each other. Almost all of them boys, men, ranging from preteens to middle-aged. A community. There was a back room where Magic: The Gathering tournaments took place on Friday nights, and there was a section with Dungeons & Dragons games and another for Japanese anime and manga. But mostly comic books. And Jordan Stone loved them. He hung out in the store for hours, flipping through old issues. The few times he smiled seemed to be when he was staring deep into the vivid pages of a comic book or graphic novel.