Not Quite Dead Yet, page 4
Jack removed his cap, held it by his side.
“Who found me?” Jet asked him, not this stranger with her file. “Was it Mom and Dad?”
Jack coughed. “Billy found you.”
“Is he OK?” she asked. A strange thing to ask, for someone who was much less than OK. But Jet was tough, everyone said so. Billy was soft. Used to cry when Jet stomped on spiders.
Jack didn’t answer.
“Margaret—sorry—Jet.” The detective pressed closer, bringing her attention back. “Can you think of any reason, any reason at all, that someone might want to hurt you?”
She wanted to make a joke, to trick that drumbeat in her head, cobbled together with wire mesh and screws. Who, me? I’m fucking delightful. But she couldn’t this time, couldn’t drown out the dread.
“No,” she said, voice almost failing her. “I can’t think of any reason someone would want to kill me.”
But someone had had a reason. You didn’t smack someone three times in the skull if you didn’t. The why almost as confusing as the who. Would Jet ever know the answers? Not if she chose the surgery and the percentage played out as percentages tended to do.
The detective clicked his tongue and Jet wanted to rip it out.
“Can you tell us where your ex-boyfriend is?” He paused to read out the name from his notes, finding it with his finger. “JJ Lim. Know where he is?”
Jet clicked her tongue too. “I dunno if anyone’s told you, but I’ve kind of been unconscious in the hospital.”
Ecker raised his eyebrows.
“No, I don’t know where he is, Detective. Why?”
“We’ve been unable to reach him. He’s not answering his phone. We’ve spoken to his brother—Henry—who doesn’t know where he is either. Says he left town suddenly on Friday night, on Halloween. Didn’t say where he was going.”
Jet straightened up, peeling away from the pillows.
“You don’t think he’s a suspect, do you?”
But by the looks on their faces, they clearly did.
“How long were you together?” the detective asked.
Why was that relevant?
“Almost two years,” she answered. “Look, JJ didn’t do this.”
“But you didn’t see your attacker?” the chief chimed in now.
“No. I didn’t. But…” Jet didn’t know where that was going, left it dangling in the stale room.
“One last thing we need to ask you,” Ecker said, turning another page. “Your cell phone is missing. Do you know what model it is?”
“They took my phone?”
“It wasn’t on you and it’s not at the scene.”
“iPhone. A 14, I think.”
“That’s what your father guessed.” Ecker made a note. “And—finally—you were wearing an Apple Watch during the attack. We have it now. Can you tell us the passcode, so we can access the data? It would help speed the process along, so we’re not waiting on telephone records.”
Jet glanced at her bare wrist. “Yeah. It’s 0709.”
“You sure?” Ecker eyed her.
“Yes, I’m sure. My passwords didn’t get knocked out of my head.”
The detective sniffed awkwardly, and that’s when Jet knew, realized why he was double-checking. If she chose to have the surgery—if she died on the table like chance said she would—then this was their final chance to speak to her. That’s why they had to be sure. Because they were talking to a dead woman.
“0709,” she said again.
He wrote it down, Jet’s eyes following the swish of his pen. He nodded, glancing over at Chief Lou and Jack, closing the file.
“I think that’s everything we need from you now, Jet,” he said.
“No, wait.” She sat up, brought her knees closer to her chest. They couldn’t be done, because if they were, that meant it was time for Jet to decide, to make her choice. And maybe, maybe she could put it off just a few minutes more. Not right now. Later. Later. Let her choose later.
“It’s OK, Jet,” Jack said, voice gruff and raw, like it had been overused since she last saw him. But his eyes were kind, glittering with the threat of tears. “I promise you, kiddo. We will get the person who did this to you. I promise. I will do that for you.”
Jet locked onto his eyes, blinked. Didn’t he know? She couldn’t let people do things for her, because what did that prove? That her mom was right; that Jet was born useless and would die that way too? Now she had no time to prove anything at all. This wasn’t fair, it couldn’t be happening.
Jack wiped his eyes, following the other officers to the door. He thought she was going to choose the surgery, didn’t he? That this was goodbye.
“Goodbye, Jet,” Detective Ecker said, leaving no room for doubt.
The door swung shut, taking them away, Jet’s last hope with them.
She was out of time.
Alone for less than four seconds before the handle twitched again, Mom in first, followed by Dad and Dr. Lee.
“Luke, come on,” Mom barked, beckoning him into the room too.
Dr. Lee stood there, holding her own hands, arms crossed in front of her, watching the family assemble around Jet’s bedside. Luke was breathing so heavy that Jet couldn’t think, and she needed to think, they were here for her choice, and she needed to think.
“Luke, shut up,” she snapped.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s time, Jet,” Dr. Lee said, quiet and serious. “We would need to get you prepped for surgery right away. Do you know what your choice is?”
“Of course she does,” Mom said, running her hand over Jet’s shoulder, gripping on. “The surgery. She’s choosing the surgery. It’s the only choice, the only hope.”
“Jet?” Dr. Lee pushed.
Jet looked up at her mom, that drumbeat doubling in her head, tripling, her heart throwing itself against the cage of her ribs. The song building to its end.
Mom looked down at her, eyes unwavering.
Jet blinked.
“Come on, sweetie.”
“I don’t…”
“She’s choosing the surgery. We all are.”
“Mrs. Mason, please.” Dr. Lee raised her voice. “Jet. What do you want?”
What did she want? She wanted her life back. She wanted to go back two days and unbreak her head, make sure none of this ever happened. She wanted what she’d always wanted. To do something, achieve something big, something undeniably great, to prove that she could. So that life could finally begin. Jet had played the waiting game too long, and now she was out of time.
She’d run out of road, and she’d run out of later.
Someone had taken them from her.
But not all of it.
Die now or die in seven days.
Jet didn’t have hope, but she could have that week.
To do what?
Jet swallowed, stared straight ahead, turning her mom’s face into a blur.
“I’m not choosing the surgery.”
Dr. Lee looked almost relieved. Mom did not.
Her face cracked open.
“What are you talking about?” Voice grating against her throat, against her teeth. “Doctor, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. She must be confused. We’re doing the surgery.”
“No, Mom, we’re not.”
“Yes, Jet. We are.” Her eyes were wet but full of fire. “I just knew you would try to pull something like this. Scott, tell her!”
Dad didn’t move.
“Luke.” Mom tried again. “Tell your sister. Tell her she can’t do this to us.”
“I’ll die in the surgery, Mom.” Jet fired up at her. “Everyone else knows that.”
Dr. Lee had known it, the way her shoulders had slumped, the weight of Jet’s death gone from them.
“There is no hope. And if it’s die now or die later, I choose later.” Jet kicked off the sheets, baring her legs.
“Jet, no!”
“It’s my catchphrase, isn’t it?” She swung her legs out, toes dropping to the cold floor. “That’s what you always say, huh? I’ll do it later. Why change a habit of a lifetime? I’ll die later.”
“Jet, you can’t do this! Scott?!”
Jet stood up, unsteady on her feet, taking one step, legs firing up.
“Luke.” Jet pointed. “Go catch the cops. Tell them to wait up.”
“No, Luke!” Mom shouted at him instead, snapping her fingers.
“Luke, I’m the one that’s dying. Do me a favor, huh?”
Luke didn’t say anything, slipped out the door before anyone else could yell at him.
“Stop it, Jet. You’ve made your point. Get back into bed.”
Jet ignored her.
“Doc, my skull is all stitched back together, right? Brain’s not gonna fall out if I walk out the door right now?”
Dr. Lee nodded, a glint in her eye, ignoring Dianne too. “Just change the dressings every day.”
“Where are my clothes?” Jet looked at her dad.
“Evidence,” he coughed, almost too scared to speak.
“Jet, stop!” Mom screamed. “Please stop!”
“I can’t, Mom. I don’t want to die now.” She was listening to her head and her heart, and they both said the same thing, throbbing in tight, panicked couplets: Not now, not now, not now. “I choose the seven days. I want that time. I need it.”
“For what, Jet?” Mom snapped, and it wasn’t the words that hurt; it was the spaces between them: what Mom really meant. That Jet had had twenty-seven years of time and done nothing significant with it; what difference would a week make?
All the difference.
“I’m finally going to do something, Mom. Something important. And I’m going to see it through to the end. This time will be different. It has to be different, because it’s my last chance.”
“Do something?” Mom cried. “What do you mean? Do what?”
Something great.
Something no one had ever done before.
“I’m going to solve my own murder.”
Four
Yellow and black and striped—angry wasp colors—from one hedge to the other, blocking off the driveway, only a glimpse of the house beyond.
CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER.
A cop was posted in front of the tape, screwing his eyes to stare at the approaching cars.
The chief and Jack Finney pulled up ahead, lowering a window to speak to the cop. He nodded, unhooking one side of the tape, letting it fly free, slithering against the road before he rolled it up.
Jack stuck his arm out the open window, beckoned them to follow.
Luke did, releasing the handbrake and rolling forward. Silent. Silent the whole way. Jet had ridden with him from the hospital, couldn’t face the way Mom wept and the way Dad stared, carrying a guilt that wasn’t his. Luke was never the better option, but today he was, and Jet met his silence with her own. He could learn to breathe quieter, though.
Their parents were following behind, too close, pulling up and parking beside them. A driveway this big and there was hardly any space, white vans and dark vans and police squad cars all boxed around Jet’s blue truck, trapping it there.
The red-and-white front door was wide open, a rectangular mouth mid-scream, burping human shapes in white plastic suits, blue gloves and blue masks and blue shoe coverings, only a band of flesh around their eyes to prove they were people at all. In and out. Paper and plastic bags marked up with thick pen that Jet couldn’t read from here, passing them over to disembodied gloved hands waiting inside the vans.
Jack Finney stepped out of the squad car, so Jet did the same, avoiding her parents’ eyes as they emerged too, the twin slams of the car doors burrowing into her chest. She looked ahead. The house Dad had built with love and hard work and a fuck load of money, and now another daughter had died here too. Could it ever be a home again, now that it had been a murder scene?
Jack sidestepped the narrow pathways between vehicles, walking back over to Jet. She pulled the toggle tighter on her gray sweatpants, the cuffs rolled up but still dragging on the ground. Luke’s. The spare gym stuff he kept in his car: sweatpants and a hoodie that swamped Jet. Smelled a little stale too.
“The crime scene techs will be finished soon,” Jack said, looking down the line of Masons all the way to Luke, back to Jet. “About an hour or so. Then we can get the cleaners in. They’ve already been called, waiting down the street until we’re ready. Get your house back.”
Mom sniffed, her eyes red raw.
Jack looked at her, opened his mouth, but nothing came out, just a glimpse of his bottom teeth. He turned back to Jet.
“You said you wanted to see it? You sure?”
Jet nodded, jaw tight and creaking.
“It’s…” Jack hesitated. “There’s a lot of blood. Even some of the officers can’t—”
“—I want to see it,” Jet said, rolling up her sleeves to uncover her hands. “Please.”
Someone was walking over to them. A person with a face not made of white-and-blue plastic. Detective Ecker, already here, pulling off his shoe coverings.
“Jet. They said you wanted to see the scene before it’s cleared. I really would advise against that, but if you want, I can take you around now.”
“I want Billy’s da—Sergeant Finney to,” Jet said, standing taller, still the shortest person here. Jack knew her and she knew him, so maybe he’d tell her more than this stranger would, protocol forgotten because he’d known her since she was in diapers. He couldn’t even escape the crime scene when he went home, his front windows facing it. Maybe that’s why he looked so tired.
The detective studied Jack for a moment. “OK, Sergeant,” he said. “No need for full PPE, everything’s bagged. They’re just taking the last photos now. Shoe coverings only. And don’t touch anything until the scene is released.”
“Detective.” Jack bowed his head once. “Come on, Jet.”
“Luke.” Detective Ecker turned to her brother. “I know you must be tired, but I didn’t get a chance to take your statement at the hospital. Can I talk to you now?”
Luke coughed but didn’t catch it, something Mom hated. “Sure,” he said, burying his hands in his pockets.
Jet followed Jack, winding around the vans and cars, up to the front door. The tallest trees in the backyard swayed over the house, leaves jeweled in amber and ruby, the colors that brought the tourists and leaf peepers to Vermont every year. Forests of fire. And Jet’s final time seeing them.
“Here.” Jack pulled out two fresh shoe coverings and Jet slipped them on over Luke’s gym socks, staring back at the pumpkin on the front step—a mean grin. Jet lost the staring contest, eyes trailing to the front door, to the splintered wood around the lock, catching on the plastic box mounted above.
“The doorbell cam,” she said suddenly, grabbing Jack’s arm. “Did they check? Does it show who—”
Jack shook his head, cutting her off. “We’ve checked. It doesn’t show. Just you coming home, then later Billy finding you, kicking the door in. Whoever attacked you, they got in the house another way. Come on.”
Jack stepped over the threshold and Jet followed. It didn’t smell any different, still smelled like home. She thought it wouldn’t. That it would smell like decay and dead things somehow. But there wasn’t a body rotting inside. Nope, she was rotting right here, on the Welcome mat.
A white-and-blue man passed them in the hall, out of place against the Moroccan runner rug. Jack veered left, through the door into the living room. Jet followed, her covered feet shushing against the pale polished oak. She looked down to take a breath, before entering the room, before seeing…everything. But she saw something worse instead.
A trail of blood. Shaped into little paw prints.
Jet gasped, leaned back against the door to catch herself. “Reggie?” she said, her heart crawling into her throat. “No. Is he OK? Is he—”
“He’s fine.” Jack steadied her, arm under her elbow. “The dog is fine.”
Jet still couldn’t swallow, not past her roving heart.
“Billy brought him in the ambulance, refused to leave him behind,” Jack said. “The dog is with your sister-in-law now, at their house. He’s fine.” Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
She had to. How could she work out who killed her if she couldn’t even stomach seeing the place where they’d done it?
Jet nodded.
Blinked and held on to it, then stepped out and opened her eyes.
Not her living room. Not the place where she cuddled Reggie and watched Netflix too late. Not where she once dropped spaghetti and stained the rug and begged Dad not to tell Mom. Not the extra-long couch, one corner that belonged to teenage Luke, the other to Jet. It used to be Emily’s, until Emily hadn’t needed it anymore. Jet had left it a few years, just to be safe. The TV was now just an empty black mirror, trapping Jet inside it. This was a different room, no longer living. It wasn’t even the red she saw first; it was the yellow.
Little crime scene markers, black numbers printed on them, placed around the room, counting up and up.
The red was next.
More paw prints in panicked circles.
Jet’s eyes followed Reggie’s ghost feet to a pool of blood, drying but not yet dry, winking the afternoon light back at them. Thick and spread out, half on the wood, half soaked into the corner of the rug. Well, forget spaghetti sauce—that stain was never coming out.
It was more blood than Jet thought a person could lose.
Hers.
Instinct moved her hand to the bandage at the back of her head. She stopped it before her fingers touched the dressing. So much blood it needed four markers of its own: 6, 8, 9, and 11.
“You OK?” Jack asked. “We can stop anytime.”
Jet took a breath, looked up at the ceiling for air that wasn’t tainted by blood. That was a mistake too. Two more yellow markers, stuck there on the white ceiling. Numbers 31 and 32. Droplets of red dashed in a strange pattern up there, across one of the LED lights, caking the glass.
