The Familiar Dark(22)
“No.” Although I was pretty sure I did.
Land sighed. “I got a call from Hallie Marshall’s mama. Said you were harassing her girl outside of school today.”
I turned toward him. “I was not harassing her. I asked her a couple of questions, that’s all.”
Land mirrored my position, one beefy hand coming up to clutch the top of the steering wheel, sunlight glinting off the wedding ring he still wore, although his wife, Mabel, had died two years ago. Probably sick of looking at his smug face every day. Even across the car, I could smell stale coffee on his breath. “Since when is it your job to go around asking questions? You got a police badge I don’t know about? You need to let us do what we’re trained to do, Eve.”
“Okay, then,” I said, heat rising in my chest. “Have you talked to Hallie?” Land shook his head, and before he could say anything more, I plowed on, “Well, you should have. Did you know Izzy was involved with an older guy? A lot older? That could have something to do with the murders. If I waited for you all to fig—”
“We already know that,” Land said.
All the air went out of my tirade, my mouth left hanging open in the middle of a word. “Know what?”
“About the older guy. Cal heard it from Junie.”
It should have relieved me, Hallie’s words about Cal making sense now. She wasn’t pointing me toward Izzy’s older man, but toward someone who might know more about him. But I couldn’t wrap my head around it, the fact that Cal had known about Izzy and hadn’t told me. And I hated that Land was a step ahead of me. Always. “Who was it?” I demanded.
Land shook his head. “We’re still figuring that out. But I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew for sure. You don’t have any business getting involved in this.”
“She was my daughter,” I burst out. “How can you say it’s not my business?”
“I heard you went and confronted Jimmy Ray, too,” Land said, like I hadn’t even spoken. “That’s a bad idea, Eve. Don’t need to remind you how that turned out for you last time, do I?” His eyes flicked toward my wrist, his hand following the movement, and I snatched my arm away.
“Don’t touch me!”
Land pulled back, a smirk chasing its way across his face. “Jesus, calm down,” he said. “Every time you see me you’re like a cat on a hot tin roof.” He lowered his voice even though there was no one but me to hear him. “It was only a blow job. Can’t believe it’s still got you worked up after all this time. Know for a fact it wasn’t the first one you’d ever given.”
My throat burned at his words; my never-healed-quite-right wrist bones ached under my skin. My stomach heaved as if it were all happening right now instead of on a rainy October night almost a decade ago. It had been the end for Jimmy Ray and me for a while. We’d both known it, me because I wasn’t going to let him keep on hitting me in front of my daughter and him because it had reached the point where the fun of smacking me around was outweighed by what a pain in the ass I’d turned into. Calling the cops. Not fighting back, exactly, but resisting him just the same, no matter what he threatened. But with Jimmy Ray everything had to be on his terms. Even the leaving. And he wasn’t quite ready yet. Even after he’d split my lip and blackened my eyes, snapped my wrist bones between his hands, he hadn’t been ready to let go. Had told me he’d see me soon, winked as they’d loaded him into the back of the police cruiser, the spinning lights making the world tilt and whirl in front of me.
Land had taken me to the hospital because Cal was watching over Junie, tucking her back into bed and telling her lies about what had happened to her mama. Land had stayed with me until they’d wrapped my arm and told me to come back in two days for a permanent cast. And then he’d led me back out to his cruiser, parked on the dark edge of the hospital parking lot, and told me the drill.
“You’re causing me a lot of trouble,” he’d said. “This business with you and Jimmy Ray.”
“Me?” The word coming out smushed and garbled between my swollen lips. “I just want him to go away. We’re over. I don’t understand why you can’t make him leave me alone. Isn’t that your job?” I wasn’t worried about myself. What was one more beating in the scheme of things? But Junie, every day she was growing older, cataloguing more of the world around her, remembering. And I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep Cal contained, promising him I could handle it, swearing I’d never speak to him again if he put himself in the middle, risked his job over an idiot like Jimmy Ray. Secretly, I worried he’d try something and end up dead. Cal was smart and strong, but Jimmy Ray didn’t care about anything except his own survival, and that made him the more dangerous man.
Land had sighed, his default expression of choice, and turned toward me. Both his mustache and his belly were smaller then, but he still had the outlines of the same man. One who’d worn his authority for so long, and with so little resistance, that he took it all for granted. “Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “I can’t do my job, not the way I’m supposed to, when you’ve got me at odds with Jimmy Ray.” He spread his hands in the darkness. “He and I, we do for each other. You understand?”
I’d heard rumors about the arrangement between Jimmy Ray and Land. Hell, everyone had. That they scratched each other’s backs. That whatever they had worked out was the reason Jimmy Ray might get arrested for beating a girlfriend or drunk driving, but never for anything more serious. And never for anything that wouldn’t quietly go away the next morning.