Two Girls Down(109)

Linsom shook his head quickly.

“You tell him,” he whispered.

“Okay,” said Nell, swallowing air. “Okay, well, Press came in pretty upset when he woke me up, but then we got to talking. We all want the same thing….”

She trailed off. Cap had to look at her. There were the streams of tears, one from each eye, following the bell shape of her cheekbones. Her eyes remained open and fierce, staring at Cap with a strangely familiar insistence. Don’t fuck this up, Dad.

“To feel safe,” she said, like the air had been pulled out of her. “Not to be safe,” she added. “To feel safe.”

Cap could not begin to think of how a sixteen-year-old had talked a psychopath out of killing her, but then again, this was Nell. And suddenly the true loss of them all—Ashley Cahill, Sydney McKenna, Kylie Brandt—hit him with the force of all the anthracite stuck underneath the foundation of his house. They would never get to be like Nell. They would never get to thrill and amaze and undo every stereotype of Teenage Girl for their parents. Or they would never get to torture and exhaust them, break curfew and drive drunk. But it didn’t matter—both outcomes were the tragedy.



Cap felt the tears load up in his eyes but he didn’t dare blink. And then he didn’t think he moved but he must have, his elbow must have bent, the Sig must have moved an inch left or right, because Linsom saw it, his face lit up with panic as he took the gun off Nell and fired at Cap, a wild pitch.

Nell screamed; Cap heard the round sail past his ears, cut into the wall behind him, and Linsom came toward him, waving the gun. Cap fired and got his shoulder. Linsom reared back, in shock.

“Dad! Dad!” screamed Nell, out of the chair, kneeling on the floor.

Cap was falling backward; he was losing his grip on the Sig, but why? He looked at his hand and tried to squeeze the grip and the trigger and actually thought, Why can’t you hold on to it? And then he felt the side of his head wet and cold and saw the blood, his blood, sprayed onto the old uneven panels of the wooden floor and realized he’d been hit.

Linsom ran, shoved Cap out of the way, against the back wall of the hallway, and then he kept going, slowed and disoriented by the shot in his shoulder, hurtling down the stairs.

Cap struggled to stand, and then Nell came to him and held his face in her hands.

“It’s just your ear, Dad—he just got your ear, that’s all,” she said.

As soon as she said it, Cap felt the blood surge to his ear, the whole thing humming like a harp.

“Come on,” she said, putting the Sig firmly into Cap’s hand. “We have to stop him.”

Nell threaded her arms through his and pulled him up to stand, and once he locked his legs he felt like he could walk, step-by-step, and they headed for the stairs, slow and then fast. Cap heard one siren at first and then another and another, stacked on top of one another like a symphony.

“Are you okay?” Cap said, the words muted in his ears.

“I’m fine,” said Nell. “Don’t worry.”

They watched Linsom stagger out the front door, and Cap almost fell down the last three stairs, but Nell held him up. They made it to the door and then the porch, and they saw Linsom on the lawn. And there was Em, getting out of his car with his gun drawn, aimed at Linsom, as the sirens grew louder and closer.



“Drop your weapon! Hands in the air!” shouted Em, advancing across the lawn.

Linsom didn’t react, perhaps didn’t hear him. Four cruisers and two unmarked cars came from both the cross streets, lights spinning and sirens shrieking.

“Drop your weapon, hands in the air!” Em yelled again.

Linsom raised his gun, and Em fired. Linsom stumbled back, hand on his side, dropped the gun, fell backward. Cap watched his eyes blinking once, twice. Then stop.

Nell pushed her face into Cap’s shirt. He hugged her with one arm and set the Sig on the railing, caught Em’s eye and pointed at him. You. Em pointed back, his face filled with a roiling energy. No, you.

Cars and vans kept coming. The street filled with every cop in town, newsmen and their cameras, and one ambulance.

—

Baby powder.

The overwhelming perfume of it. Vega had no emotional response to baby powder but knew other people did. It reminded them of babies. These same people talked about babies’ cheeks and thighs and their respective degrees of thickness, how these were marks of a healthy baby. The smell reminded them of this—fat little bodies rolling around in the artificial dust of baby powder, healthy and not sick. Safe.

The wine cellar was not a big room, five by fifteen, the long wall consisting of a floor-to-ceiling rack for the red next to a refrigerator for the white. Both were empty. The air was moist, a small black humidifier whirring quietly next to the door. Pucks mounted across the ceiling cast faint spotlights.

Then, in the corner, a toddler’s bed—Vega recognized the size. She remembered visiting her brother a few years back, seeing her three-year-old niece in one just like it.

But on this one lay Kylie Brandt, too big for it, curled up on top of the blankets in a white nightgown. She was either dead or sleeping.



Vega approached the bed and leaned down. The light was dim, but she saw it—the rise and fall of Kylie’s chest.

Her mouth was open half an inch. Her breath was stale, but her skin smelled sweet and floral.