Jackal, page 24
That night, Caroline finally spoke to me.
“Are you a Good Doggy?” she asked.
This was a new title for me. I hoped to live up to it. After all the Girls had taught me, after years of feeding on them, listening to their secrets, hopes, and dreams, I hoped to finally be Good.
ONE
Nothing good happens in a parking lot. Yet this is where Doug insists we meet. Puppies aren’t exchanged between cars. The upkeep of town doesn’t extend to this corner of it. Pavement cracks around old faded lines. Chris parks from memory.
“Her hair?” I ask.
“Big brown-and-gold curls,” Chris confirms for the third time. “In two…poofs.” He hesitates around the word poofs. It sounds too light and fun to describe a girl some people think is dead. He’s just confirmed that Caroline is alive. Someone has been keeping her and hiding her. A painfully nondescript white woman.
“Do you remember anything about her?” I ask.
“It was too dark. She was behind some brush. When I saw Caroline, I froze. She was scared. Terrified.” The guilt in his voice is palpable. I recognize the feeling. He saw an impossible thing. Now it’s haunting him.
Doug arrives in a dark sedan. I rest my hand on the door handle, but don’t get out.
“What is it?” Chris asks.
“I messed things up for him bad. Real bad. Even after he helped me.” He hasn’t brought the authorities with him. “He protected me.”
“From what?”
I think back to the fingerprints, the blood, DNA, all of it. “Myself.” I don’t have what Doug wants, his box, his files, his work. They are my only collateral. In the end, it’s my word against his. “I need his help,” I confess. Saying it out loud helps me get my bearings. I get out of the truck.
When my feet hit the ground, though they are covered by Chris’s flip-flops, I flinch. The wounds are starting to get sensitive. I make my way toward Doug and his car. He doesn’t even try to meet me halfway, almost like he’s content to watch me limp. I have to walk all the way across the parking lot before he speaks to me.
“Where’s my box?” Doug’s all business today.
“I’ll give the box back to you after we talk.”
Doug looks over my shoulder at Chris in his truck. “You sure you didn’t leave it with your boyfriend?”
I do my best not to roll my eyes at him. Bitterness isn’t a good look for Doug, but it feels oddly familiar on him. I start to cock my head but my burning feet stop me. “Please, Doug?” I don’t like being on this side of begging. “It sucks you got fired, but I’m not sorry about what I asked you to do.”
“That’s a shit apology. Where’s the box?” he presses. “Clearly you don’t have it. I’ll just send the detectives your address and your boyfriend’s plates. I’m sure they’ll have fun tracking it down.” He turns to get back into his car.
“Caroline is alive.” I watch his face.
He blinks over and over again. “How do you know that?”
“Chris saw her with a woman in the woods.” I make sure Doug is looking at me. “She’s alive, and she needs our help.” I’m not letting him back out of this again. Not now. “And one of the guys we’re after tried to kill me this morning.”
That stops him. “Did you get a look at him?”
“He had a mask on. White. Experienced hunter. Chased me through the woods.” I show him my palms, my arms. The scar on my wrist remains. Quickly, I roll it away. I’m not showing him my feet yet.
“You sure you saw someone?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
He nods, but still looks hesitant. His body is stiff and his sweat turns sharp and heavy; he’s nervous, or scared. I rub my hand under my nose and the sharp smell of blood makes his scent dissipate.
“Could it have been a dream? A blackout?” He’s covering his bases.
“No. This is real.”
“Stress?”
I laugh hard at that. “Who cares if I’ve suddenly become a medium if it means we get Caroline back alive? I’ll figure out how to be a witchy aunt after.” I’m trying to make him laugh, but Doug’s had enough of my sarcasm.
“What were you doing out there?”
“Sleepwalking. Thank God I didn’t use your map. Why did you give me a bad map?”
“It’s a great map!” Doug is really defensive about being called out. “Who told you it’s wrong?”
“Someone who knows the place better than you.” The moment I say that both Doug’s and my anger neutralize. We have the same thought. The killer would know that part of the woods like the back of his hand.
Instantly, I defend Chris. “No. He protected me from the guy this morning. It can’t be him. He saved me after I sleepwalked out there.”
“Do you do that often?” Doug’s concern is surprising, especially after our last meeting. He looks at my feet. I glance down and see that blood is visible now on the sides of the flip-flops.
“Never.”
He shakes his head. “That’s…” He rubs his hand through his hair. “Crazy.” He goes for the driver’s-side door.
I block him. “Look at me, Doug. Does it look like I’m lying?”
Doug does just that. I can only imagine what he sees. My hair is wild. My face and arms are streaked with blood. I have bruises and cuts on my body.
“I owe you an apology,” he says.
“Don’t apologize. Help me. We need to—”
“We are more screwed than we ever realized.” He sighs. This meeting isn’t just about getting his box back and scolding me. He’s figured something out. It’s shaken him. “I was thinking through the DNA test I did. I’m fast, quiet—I wouldn’t have been caught unless I was being watched. When the department fired me I lost it and didn’t think it through. Someone has been watching me—us—every part of this case like a hawk. I didn’t even think of it until I thought about the box.”
“What?”
“Oswald has been doing everything with these cases for years. You saw me—I run blood tests, get fingerprints—I do grunt work. I thought it was ’cause he didn’t think I could do it. Now I realize it’s ’cause he didn’t want me to do it. I thought about what you said about there being two killers? You are absolutely right. And they’ve been watching you since the night Caroline disappeared.” He swipes on his phone and pulls up a familiar face.
Lauren Bristol.
“The car is registered in her name. But she has a husband. I missed it ’cause she didn’t take his last name.” He shows me a mug shot. The face staring back at me chills me to the bone. He looks like one of the men Chris described to me. Empty eyes. “Tim Oswald. His son. Tim has been in and out of the system his entire life for violent stuff.”
I feel bad for Lauren. I ran home after almost fifteen years when I survived a man like that. But for her grief to manifest like this is terrifying.
“I need the box because I’m locked out of the system. I’m pretty sure Oswald determined cause of death for all those girls. If he did, it’s the perfect crime.”
“So you went ahead and solved this whole thing without me?” I chuckle.
“I told you. I’m about finding the answers.” Doug swallows hard. “And that’s also where I stop. It’s gonna take an army to take out the Oswalds. I need to bring everything to the department and let them take it from there.”
“What?” It’s all I can say. After everything, Doug still believes. “What if they just bury him, sweep it all under the rug—it’s gonna look bad for the department—”
“This is the right thing to do, Liz.” He makes for the door again.
I spread myself against the car. “And let them kill Caroline. Have you ever thought about why some of the girls aren’t found immediately?” I grab Doug, keeping him from leaving. “Isn’t it time someone hunted them for a change?”
“Yes.” He pries my hands off of him. “With the due process of the law.”
“Fuck the law. They have actively denied this for decades. No help is coming from them. C’mon, Doug! I’m all in. What do you have to lose?”
“I’ve lost enough.”
“We’re both at rock bottom, then.”
“You didn’t hear me.” Doug tries again. “I don’t have a job—hell, a career. That was all I had. You’re losing sleep? Take a pill. We can’t fix this by charging in to certain death. She’s alive? Great. Perfect time to bring all this to the department.”
“What if you going after him makes him kill her?”
“Do you want justice or revenge?” Doug slides me off the car door and opens it. Surprised by his strength, I struggle to stop him. He shuts the door in my face. I pound on the window with bruised and bloody hands. Doug starts the car.
I scramble for the words. “Wait! Doug, wait!” I shove my fingers through the open window and grip the glass. “Caroline is running out of time. The search party on one end and us on the other? It was enough to make him frame me and get you fired. If we do it again—if we go out there tonight—don’t you see this is the only way she comes home alive? We go to the department, they open an investigation. Who knows how many allies he has—she’s dead. If we try to get the search changed, drag them out to where he’s holding her, if the police look like they are on to him, if they change any behaviors—she’s dead. He is exploiting the system; as long as it’s running, we can use it to our advantage.” I see my words catch him. “We get to Lauren when she’s moving Caroline. That’s our chance.” I remember how I got him on my side in the first place. “If you are right about this, you’ll never have to fill a blood bag again. You’ll be a legend. A hero.” I let go of the window and wait.
Doug turns off the car. “I’m an idiot,” he mumbles. He rolls the window all the way down.
“You’re in?”
“Yes.” Doug nods. “I gotta tell you something. If we let the system continue, the department is gonna keep digging. They already sent a detective to my house. They questioned me.” The expression on his face betrays his concern. “They don’t do that for something that should be HR—admin work. They’re asking people about you. Building a case.”
I swallow. “So it looks like I really need your help.”
“If they had anything concrete, they would have arrested you by now. They’re suspicious. Don’t give them any reason to pursue you and they won’t.”
I comb over the last twenty-four hours. If they’ve been following me, I’ve already given them plenty of reason.
“Meet outside my house tonight. We can head into the woods from there, come at them sideways.”
“Aside from that, do you have a real plan, Liz?”
“I will by then.” I pat the side of Doug’s car and head back over to Chris’s truck. As I think of a way back to the woods, a plan forms in front of me.
TWO
At the end of my mother’s driveway, the silence between Chris and me rings in the air of the car.
“Liz?” His voice draws me back.
I’ve been here before. A night of passion and connection, now awake, we both are trying to figure out how to say “see you later” like adults. Unsure of what to do next, we go through the motions of a polite goodbye.
“Thanks for driving me home.”
“Am I…” he starts. “Am I ever going to see you again?” How did a line from a romance novel end up in his mouth? He sounds earnest. I look at him. He seems just as shocked as I am. The disappointment I find in Chris’s eyes nearly breaks me. He doesn’t want me to leave. The man I’d been thinking about for years is sitting right in front of me, afraid to ask me to stay.
I need to go.
I rush through the correct response. “Chris, I don’t— I can’t—” I stumble. I still don’t have the words. Giving up on speech entirely, I reach for the door.
“I know the woods,” he says. “I can help. I know where I saw them. If you are trying to find them again, you’re gonna need help—backup.” Chris has guessed my plan before I’ve even said it. He saw Caroline at night. After days of police searches, using dogs, that means she’s being moved, using darkness as cover. He unlocks the glove compartment, pushes aside his registration. Beneath it is a folded knife.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“My father told me to keep a weapon on me at all times, ’cause it doesn’t take much for people to lose their humanity.”
I know that now. I always did, but I have a habit of finding only the best in people.
“Someone is kidnapping girls in this town, then killing them out in the woods. Taking their hearts,” I say. It feels freeing to finally tell him the whole truth. I watch him put our previous conversations together.
“Do the police know?”
“They’re years behind on this. I can get them caught up or I can get Caroline.” I search his face. A steady blank expression is all I get. I know I’m right about time. From the moment I first lost sight of Caroline, from the moment Keisha and I met eyes in the dark, I’ve been playing catch-up.
“I’m sure the cops know something. They’re keeping things close so they don’t tip anyone off.” As he talks, his words lose their speed and assuredness. Excuses drying up, he knows I’m right. “Liz, you have a good heart. Don’t go breaking it over things you can’t control.”
“What happened to Keisha wasn’t an accident.” That’s what all this boils down to. I’m tired of hearing why Black girls go missing. I know why. I’ve learned the reasons. The girls are still gone. I don’t want to have to tell Chris why he’s deflecting or looking for excuses. I want him to intuit it for himself. I need Blackness to exist as it always has and not be conveniently brushed aside for his comfort.
I wait.
Chris doesn’t respond.
In his silence, I find what I truly sought in him, in myself. I don’t need Chris. I need his belief. I need his desire for me to move him more than thoughts and prayers and a knife. He’s wrong. I came here to figure out who or what I could trust. In doing so, I looked for it in everyone except myself. Because trusting myself means admitting the pain I’m in, not just now, but before. Trusting myself means doing things that are hard and dangerous. Trust means I have to face how I’ve lived and ask myself if it was good for me or for someone else. Here’s a start. I don’t have a good heart. I have a broken one. Finding Caroline, solving this, is how I start to put it back together. That’s why the trees that once terrified me are calling me.
“I need backup.”
Chris shifts around in a way that I’m not familiar with. He doesn’t want to let me down. It’s a fear I’m not used to seeing in someone else. I take a second to memorize this dance in his body, for reference, so if I ever see it again, I’ll know. I take the knife and get out of the car.
“Liz!”
I don’t turn.
“I’m not letting you go alone. You’re looking for her tonight?” Chris confirms. “Where should I meet you?”
“Here. After dark.”
“Okay.” He nods. “I’ll be here.” He looks more scared than I do. That’s it. There’s the help I need.
As Chris pulls away, I look at the knife he gave me. It looks old and well used. I open it. The blade is black. The fine edge surprises me. It’s been well cared for. Also, the teeth. It has a serrated edge, like a saw. Little hooks. The edge looks paper thin. A knife this sharp would cut through flesh like butter. With extra teeth, it would make quick work of bone too.
THREE
I’m old enough to remember the importance of a phone call. I remember calling Mel’s house, getting her parents, and asking for her. I remember talking about the dumbest things for hours. We’d hear Nick click in and yell him off the line. A warm ear has always reminded me of Mel. Every friend after her has been measured against Mel. Since returning home, I’ve learned so much about the town I grew up in. And about Mel. I came back to connect with her but we’ve only gotten further apart. I never questioned our friendship because we were young and grew up together. And because, years ago, when everyone else left me in the woods, Mel saved me.
After all my calls went straight to voicemail, I head to Mel’s house. She needs to know that Caroline is alive and that I’m going in after her. When I arrive, I see one police car in the driveway, but that’s it. I check up and down the block and watch the front door. The cruiser must be Nick’s.
I get out of my car and slowly approach the door. I knock and get nothing. I knock again. Just the echo of a hollow house. There’s no way I’m doing this without Mel. In the end, it should be her who brings Caroline home. I give it one more knock. The door gives.
“Liz?” It’s Mel. She opens the door fully and looks at me. In our time apart, her eyes have become like Denise’s, impossibly bright and hollow at the same time. Her hair is still in the same bun it’s been in for days. She grips the edge of the doorframe in her hand. She’s not ready to let me in yet.
I need to tell her. “Deer guts. It was deer guts in the tarp. Not Caroline.”
“They told me. How did you know?”
“The rest of the deer ended up on my mother’s dining room table.”
“Is she okay—are you okay?”
“I will be,” I admit. “Mom handled it like a pro. She was cleaning and…” I can’t keep my face up in front of Mel. “I’m so scared for her. Someone is setting me up—which is bad enough—but they got to her. Her.”
“Because of the questions you’ve been asking? What you found out about those girls?”
“Yes.” I know this doesn’t explain everything. I know she’s still justified in her anger about me accusing her father. But I hope she sees that this is destroying me too.
“I’m sorry.” I can’t tell if she’s apologizing for leaving me in the woods, or if she is sorry for me discovering what I have. She lets the edge of the door go and lets me in.
