Looking for Smoke, page 27
The room is dead quiet, like it’s filled with warm water, tugging me where I don’t want to go.
“Brody!”
I readjust my hat and compose myself before walking out the door. I force my shoulders to relax as I face her.
She’s looking at me like I’m a monster. “What’d you—why?”
“Why? What else were we gonna do, Loren?” It’s clear how this paints me to her. Heartless. Cold-blooded. Cruel. But still, I don’t regret ending his agony.
She stares at me, gaze flicking between my eyes.
I can’t handle how she’s looking at me. Like I’m . . . Like I enjoyed that. I throw my hands out to hide a shudder. “Were you just gonna keep standing there watching him scream?”
Her mouth opens and closes. “We could’ve—”
“What? Taken him to the vet? He’d have died before we got there.” My gut twists in its own agony, begging for her to understand. “He’d have suffered the whole time.”
She paces, cutting a line in the field grass.
“I put him out of his misery. That’s the most humane thing we could’ve done for him.”
“But you just . . . You did it so fast . . .”
I can’t help but laugh in disbelief. “Did you want to call Father Nielson to give him his last rites? C’mon.”
She stammers. “I— No.”
I cross my arms, steadying myself. “I had to end his torture as soon as I could. Please tell me you understand that.”
She rubs her forehead and retreats from the scene. “I just don’t know how you could stomach doing that.”
I follow her to my truck and sit next to her on the back. “Did you never go hunting with your grandpa?”
She shakes her head.
“That’s what you do. You dispatch the animal. You make it as quick and painless as you can. I have the stomach for that. What I don’t have the stomach for is sitting there watching them die in slow motion. That’s sick.”
She leans onto her knees. “Yeah. You’re right. I just can’t believe you did it right in front of me.”
“Sorry I forgot to ask you to please step away for a moment.”
“You should’ve. I didn’t know you were gonna kill him.”
My arms tense. I need her to know there’s a huge difference. “I helped him. You’re the one who ran him over.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can tell she finally understands I did the right thing, or at least the best thing in a crappy situation.
“I mean, talk about a hit ’n’ run, enit.”
Her mouth drops open, but the corners perk into a smile. “Shut your stupid face. You’re terrible, you know?”
I bump her shoulder with mine. It almost feels normal. Almost. But her smile drops too fast.
“So then what did you want to talk about?”
She stares at the cattle in the distance until one unloads. “I have a question.” She pulls her phone out and unlocks it. “You said you didn’t see Sam after the photos, but this makes it look like you’re lying.”
I take the phone and find all of us, including the two gifted horses, in the background of a powwow photo. When I zoom in, it does look like I’m watching Samantha, and it hits me that if this picture were taken a few beats later, maybe it could’ve actually caught something. I play back the moments from that day the best I can remember them.
“I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at Youngbull outside the break in the bleachers. He was watching you walk by and I was wondering if he felt guilty for never finding your sister.”
“He was?” She’s slow to grab her phone when I hand it back.
“Yeah. I bet he’s the one who’s lying. He has all kinds of claims about what he saw that day; you’d think he saw where Samantha went too.”
She stares at the rippling of the breeze in the wild, dull grass and slips her phone back in her pocket.
“Samantha was eyeing him after the giveaway, like maybe they were snags.”
She considers it for a beat. “Ehh, Sam was wild but not that wild.”
“Just sayin’.” I wouldn’t put it past either of them. Not for a second.
The silence oozes between us as she picks at a loose thread in her frayed jean shorts. There’s something else on her mind. The real reason she asked me here.
“Spit it out.”
The thread tears off the denim and she lets it flutter to the dirt. “Something’s been bothering me.”
Isn’t that the understatement of the year . . . “Yeah? Just one thing?”
She fights another smile. “I’m serious.”
“What is it?”
She scratches at some dirt caked on the edge of my truck. “That night at the party . . .”
I knew this was coming.
“I was telling you how guilty I felt about leaving Ray Bear that morning.”
I nod. “After you slapped me, yeah? And not in that good way.”
She ignores that. “You said you felt more guilt than you knew what to do with. I thought you were just talking about how we had to do the project in the morning because of you. You were pretty wasted, so I didn’t think much of it. But then . . .”
“I cried.”
“You cried. And now I can’t stop wondering if there was more to that . . .”
Loren’s gold-flecked brown eyes make it hard to think. The guilt worming into my head makes it almost impossible.
I force out a laugh. “You know, you cried first. Would you believe me if I said I was just a total empath?”
“Everyone who knows you would never believe that.”
“Would you believe me if I said I’m just a weepy drunk? My dad used to get on crying jags when he drank too much. Maybe it’s in my genes—”
“I’ve seen you drunk plenty of times.” Is it just me, or is her voice getting sharper the longer she sits next to me?
A cow moos, filling the tense air between us. I hop off the truck and pace, ready to give some voice to the guilt following me everywhere I go. She might think differently of me after this. She’ll definitely resent me for being a liar.
Her eyes track me back and forth until I stop dead in front of her.
“It’s my fault Rayanne was taken.”
Chapter 39
Mara Racette
Saturday, July 20, 5:00 p.m.
I pause the workout video and check my texts for the thousandth time. I shouldn’t be nervous . . . Loren has been alone with Brody loads of times. They’re close friends. She sounded pretty certain that what he said to her the night of the party probably didn’t mean anything, that he just felt the same guilt she did about leaving Rayanne to take the bus because of their project. But when you pair that with the picture of him possibly looking at Samantha . . . it might.
She shouldn’t have met up with him alone. Just in case. But I’ve learned there’s no stopping her when she thinks there’s any chance of finding a hint about her sister’s murder.
I prop the phone on my dresser, push play, and copy the instructor, looping a resistance band above my knees. Now that my last moving box is empty and broken down, there’s even more space in here. My legs burn as I count out the squat holds, trying to distract myself from wondering why it’s taking Loren so long. She said she wanted to get it over with while her grandma was visiting a cousin, so she should’ve been done by now. Hopefully she’ll be wrapping it up any second.
My phone pings and a message banner covers the instructor’s face, but it’s just Eli. I smile. Just Eli.
Did you watch the relay video yet?
I did. About twenty times. He’s got some serious athleticism. I’m about to grab the phone and text back when a violent pounding on the front door booms through the whole house. My band falls to my ankles.
There’s only a couple seconds of silence before the pounding starts again. It’s urgent and each one makes me flinch. I kick the band off as I peer out the blinds and see a police cruiser the same time I hear the front door open.
No.
I tear out of my room and jog into the living room.
“You can come to the station voluntarily, or we can cuff you and put you in the back of our rig,” Youngbull says. “And we have a warrant to search your vehicle.”
Dad’s face is drained of most of his color. “I’m not talking without my lawyer present.”
“That’s your right,” Agent Staccona says. “You better call him now.”
“What’s this about?” Mom asks, voice strained. “You already asked him your questions.”
Staccona trains his gaze on Dad, who’s fumbling to unlock his phone. “We looked into your digital work calendar. On April 9, you were out in the field. You never went to the office.”
Dad doesn’t say a word as he brings his phone to his ear, waiting for his lawyer to answer his call.
“He’s in the field all the time,” Mom says. “He works for Blackfeet Fish and Wildlife!”
Dad raises his palm, shutting her up. He tells his lawyer he’s being taken in for questioning.
Mom paces between us. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
Staccona focuses his gaze on Mom now. He cocks his head just slightly and pulls out his phone. “We’ve already established MJ has a history of threatening his daughter’s friends when they treat her poorly.” He turns his gaze on me.
I can feel Mom’s eyes on me, waiting for me to say nobody here treated me poorly. I can’t.
“We also got a tip.” Staccona taps his phone a few times and turns it to face my mom. “Nobody mentioned MJ did leave the bleachers after the giveaway.”
I lean over Mom to see a screenshot of a SnapShare post. Somehow I missed it in my own scrolling.
It’s a photo of the back of the bleachers basked in golden light. The sun is getting lower over the powwow grounds, and dancers are grouped, preparing themselves for their competition dances. Dad’s face is barely visible at the edge of the arbor opening. His long hair is swinging as he peers around a group of dancers, looking somewhere past the person snapping the picture—toward the area we disappeared through to take the photos. His arm is outstretched and his leg’s in stride, either because he’s stretching to see us as he tries to stay in place or because he’s in a hurry to get somewhere.
Youngbull is in the photo too, his back turned to Dad as it was taken.
It almost looks like he’s sneaking around Youngbull.
But the picture doesn’t mean anything. He’s still basically in the arbor anyway.
Dad runs a hand through his hair, but it falls back over his face as he leans in to see the picture. “That’s nothing. I—” He stops short, knowing he’s supposed to wait for the lawyer.
“Come on,” Staccona says. His voice is sticky with arrogance. “Don’t make this difficult.”
Dad hugs Mom. “You know how often I had to go out for the chronic wasting disease research,” he says quietly. He glances at me over her shoulder. “And I just wanted to catch a quick glimpse of you with your friends after the giveaway . . . I didn’t know you had any.” His lips flatten into a tight smile.
And then he’s gone.
He disappears out the door and into the police car.
Chapter 40
Loren Arnoux
Saturday, July 20, 5:00 p.m.
Brody’s face pales, and his eyes shift between mine. It takes everything in me not to dig my fingers into his throat. “What do you mean it’s your fault she was taken?”
He slides his tongue along his lip. “I lied to you, Loren.”
The muscles in my hand seize as I squeeze my nails into my palm instead of his face.
“The night before Rayanne was . . . taken, I wasn’t busy.”
What does that have to do with anything?
“You and me and Samantha were supposed to finish the project that night. . . .”
It clicks. “You said you couldn’t because your cattle got loose and Jason needed help rounding them back onto your property.”
He glances at the cows grazing nearby. “I was with Jason, but it wasn’t anything important.”
“What were you doing?”
“It’s stupid.” He runs his hands down his pant legs. “He was playing video games with me, and he never does that anymore. It was like things were back to normal for a minute. I didn’t want to go do homework and ruin that.”
I can’t sit anymore. I slide off the truck and pace through the dirt. “So because you wanted to play video games . . .”
“. . . we had to go in early the next morning to finish the project. And you had to leave Rayanne alone.” At least he has the decency to look humiliated. Ashamed.
Anger brings sweat to my forehead. My arms ache to swing, to push him, to twist my fingers into his shirt and shake him.
“See, it is my fault,” he whispers. “None of this would’ve happened if I didn’t change our plans on purpose. And for what?” He shakes his head, cheeks pulled back. “I didn’t hurt her, but I played a part.”
I sink into a squat, rubbing my eyes. Sam and I could’ve finished the project without him that night . . . but I made us wait for Brody. I was immature and didn’t want him getting off easy again. This whole time I’ve blamed myself for leaving Ray Bear alone that morning, but now . . . violent shades of red blossom and clash under my eyelids. I hate him right now. I hate him so much it’s pulling my chest apart. I look up at him, seething. Tears spill over his cheeks.
Inappropriate, witty Brody, crying. Again.
He hates himself too. Probably even more than I do.
I’m halfway home, and Mara still won’t answer her phone. She was so adamant I call her as soon as I got the story from Brody, and now she can’t even pick up? Maybe that’s for the best.
The nightmare still haunts me, and that’s not any kind of medicine I want to mess with. Getting mixed up with Mara Racette is foolish. After a warning like that, I’d be making my own medicine—of the worst kind.
I pass the bus stop and hold my breath as I turn onto our street.
If Brody’s telling the truth, the pictures don’t mean anything. But he’s spit lies at me before.
I don’t know who to believe. Who to trust.
When I reach our driveway, Mara is parked on the street, sitting on her hood. The lowering sun casts shadows across her body, making her look harsh and scared.
This can’t be good.
After I park in the driveway and climb out, I get a good look at her. “What happened?”
Her eyes are swollen from crying and she’s restless. “I swear on my life, Loren, my dad is innocent.”
I step backward and repeat myself. “What happened?”
“Staccona took him in for questioning again. You didn’t know?”
“I’ve been with Brody the last hour.”
“Somebody found a picture of him watching the giveaway group from the entrance to the arbor.” She folds her arms. “I figured that was you.”
“It wasn’t. But didn’t he say he never left?”
“He left his seat. But he didn’t leave the actual arbor. He just stopped at the back of the bleachers.” She doesn’t leave her car, and I don’t walk any closer.
“That’s what he said?”
She nods. “What did Brody say?”
I give her the quick summary of Brody’s lie that led to Ray Bear waiting alone on an empty road.
“I swear . . .” Mara says again. “My dad would never hurt anyone. He’s a good person.”
A horse whinnies into the still air. I scan the distant houses along my curving street. How well do you really know anyone? Every killer is somebody’s kid. Somebody’s friend. Sometimes you might see it coming, but most of the time, you probably don’t.
Mara hugs herself so tight she’s nearly collapsing in on herself. “I was thinking about it . . . we keep finding pictures that tell snapshots of the story at the powwow. Tiny moments leading up to Samantha’s murder are captured. Maybe they don’t mean anything, but at least they’re there. Rayanne doesn’t have any moments we can search through. Nobody captured any photos of that day.”
She makes a good point. It sends those familiar feelings of hopelessness crawling through my veins. “It sure would’ve helped.”
Mara rests her hands on the hood of her car, watching me. I’d think she was looking at me with pity if it weren’t for the fresh tears welling in her eyes. I can’t find it in me to feel sorry for her though.
“Wait.” She pulls her phone out of her pocket. “There is one.”
I walk the rest of the way to her car and lean over her phone. She’s opening my SnapShare page. My last post is from that morning. Sam, another friend, and I are huddled together outside the school in front of the parking lot, jacket hoods up.
We took that picture between classes. I think we were a little late for second period because of it. Even though it was chilly, we were enjoying the sun, thinking we were getting a taste of an early spring. We didn’t know it was going to dump snow the next day, and of course, we didn’t know something was happening to Ray Bear.
Mara and I look at each other at the same time, eyes wide.
Something in the picture’s background makes my stomach drop like a sinking rock.
Chapter 41
Eli First Kill
Saturday, July 20, 8:00 p.m.
I carefully empty a jug of oil into my truck’s engine, thinking about Cherie while I wait for it to settle. Her foster family wants me to wait a week before visiting. They think it’ll help her settle in better. It’s too long. I bet the real reason is they don’t trust me yet. I guess it doesn’t look too good when a girl gets sucked into the foster care system because her brother is arrested for murder.
You’d think being released would’ve helped things.
I pull the dipstick out to check the oil level but freeze when headlights coming up the driveway glint on the shop’s metal framing.
I slide the dipstick back in and snatch a rag from my truck’s open hood. I don’t know who could be out here. Mara Racette’s been radio silent for hours. Little Bro’s been acting weird ever since he admitted to forging that signature.
