Hunting Annabelle, page 20
From the table, my mom says, “Drink that quickly. We’re going to Dr. Beck’s.”
“Fine.” I glance at the kitchen clock. It’s noon on Saturday. I sit near her at the table. She ignores me and flips through patient files, taking notes on a legal pad in her illegible, tiny scrawl. “Who were you talking to?” I ask.
She doesn’t look at me. “Your grandmother.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No.” Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think her mouth pinches shut a little tighter. Her gaze flickers across my black T-shirt and old black jeans. “Where did those clothes come from?”
“They were in the hamper.”
She returns her eyes to her work.
I set my glass down. “Mom. Don’t you think it’s stupid for us to fight about clothes when—”
“Finish your milk.” She won’t say another word to me.
I stare at the clock and trace time backward. I haven’t been keeping track of it, but I haven’t lost it either. I don’t think I’ve lost a single minute since Annabelle’s been gone.
Why?
Chapter Twenty
Dr. Shandra’s ice-cold office feels different because it’s the weekend. She’s waiting for us in her usual chair. My mom and I take possession of the couch, sitting on opposite ends.
My mom sees no need for formalities. “Our lawyer thinks that our best option is to get in front of the correlation between these new charges and the case they’re building against Sean around this missing girl.”
Dr. Shandra taps her pen on her pad of paper. “What’s he recommending? Sean, how are you, by the way?” She awards me a warm, sympathetic smile.
“Doin’ super, Dr. Shandra.”
My mom says to me, “You’ve committed a felony. Breaking and entering, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. It’s a felony, Sean. Armed robbery? A felony.”
“I wasn’t robbing him. I was interrogating him.”
She is unmoved. “Once the prosecutor feels that Detectives Ridgeway and Benton have a strong enough case against you on this missing girl, you’re looking at another felony. You heard Ridgeway. Are they going to find your fingerprints on the knives?”
“Yes.”
It’s silent for a minute.
“I touched a lot of things in that house. The knife thing is bullshit. I just touched them, fidgeting around. I didn’t use them for anything. Jenny was on the phone, I was in the kitchen, and I was just, I don’t know. Fidgeting.” The words sound hollow and useless, like I’m telling a lie.
They exchange a look.
“Mom. Look at me. I didn’t do anything with them. They know I was in her apartment. I spoke to them myself from her kitchen! Right where the knives are!”
“You could have called them for that express purpose, so there would be a plausible explanation for the fingerprints you knew would be found in her apartment.”
“God, you’re as bad as they are. There’s no body. How can everybody be so sure I killed someone when no one knows she’s dead? There’s no body!” It sounds like I’m screaming There’s nobody!
“Yet,” she hisses.
“I did not kill her.”
“You could be looking at the death penalty. You’re not a minor anymore. With your record, no jury will find you sympathetic.”
“Well, that works out perfectly for you, then, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Shandra says, “Sean, I want you to feel heard. Would you like to—”
My mom cuts her off. “Steve Ross says our best bet is to commit Sean to an inpatient facility, or rather, for Sean to commit himself voluntarily. He says this will strengthen another plea of insanity. It’s our best strategy, our only strategy.”
I look down at my hands. I forgot to ask the cops to return my jelly bracelets. My hands look naked.
I hate my mother at this moment, hate how perfectly this is all working out for her, like God himself has come down to screw me over on her behalf.
Dr. Shandra clears her throat. “Sean? What are your thoughts about inpatient?”
“What you’re talking about—it’s permanent placement, isn’t it? We’re not talking about a couple of years.”
My mother says, “Yes.”
Just like that. No mercy.
Flashbacks to the asylum splash over me: Alfonso, wrinkling his nose at a puddle of my blood on the bathroom floor; Betty’s face turning blue under my hands; drugs like lead flowing slower and slower through my veins as the weeks blurred into months...
Dr. Shandra is looking super worried. “I want you to know that I feel we’ve made significant progress. I think you can be proud of the work we’ve done, and I hope you continue to make these types of gains in the future. Inpatient doesn’t have to be an end. It could potentially be a beginning for you. You could focus on your art and finish your education through correspondence. And who knows what the future holds? Down the road, perhaps you’ll be rehabilitated to the point that you can revisit the idea of outpatient therapy.”
I don’t know what to say. I can’t breathe at all. Dr. Shandra starts to say something, but I cut her off by getting to my feet. “I’m not going back,” I tell them.
“Yes, you are,” my mom says, her voice made of steel.
“No, I’m not!” My voice cracks. “I’m not,” I say, and then I roar, “I’m NOT GOING BACK! I won’t. I’m not your puppet.”
Before I walk out of the office, I take one more look at my mom’s face. It’s cold and placid. This is it. This is our big goodbye, and I’m no closer to understanding her than I ever have been. I push though the door and I’m out of her life for good.
The air-conditioned lobby spits me out onto the sweaty, asphalt-and-exhaust-scented street. Cars and trucks roar past me. I walk west along the sidewalk. The way I figure it, I have two choices. I can run or I can kill myself.
The sun burns my eyes. I wish I had sunglasses. I’m walking in the direction of UT, like Annabelle’s presence is drawing me there.
Maybe I could go down to Mexico. I could get some money out of my mom’s bank account. I know where she keeps her checkbook. I try to form plans, try to figure out how long it would take me to learn Spanish. The thoughts are stupid and fizzle out. I can’t keep any of them straight. Ridgeway’s words haunt me. Am I a serial killer? If I had killed Betty, that’s exactly what I would be. The only thing separating me from that title are the orderlies who interrupted me.
The thought sends spiders up my spine, and I shudder from head to toe. Am I like those guys you hear about who keep pieces of their victims’ corpses around their houses? I can’t be. Am I? The idea makes me want to throw up and crawl out of my skin. Is this what all serial killers feel like? Are they horrified to be themselves?
The afternoon takes me in circles, each with a memory of Annabelle at the epicenter. I wander the UT campus, trying to imagine Annabelle wandering under these trees, sitting on a bench, studying for a test. I walk the five miles to pace the outskirts of Four Corners. As the sun sets, I stare at the place in the fence where the hole has been patched and am flooded with memories of the dented white truck speeding away, Annabelle’s scream ringing in my ears. I stay there for a while, just standing on the side of the road, staring at the fence. This is the spot where all this began, ground zero for what will ultimately prove to be my undoing, and I can’t help but wish with all my might, and against the painful love for Annabelle that eats me alive, that I had never met her. After a long time, I begin walking around again, enjoying the darkness as it sets in. I sit cross-legged on the dirty gravel for a long time, until my butt falls asleep and my legs stiffen up. It’s only when I can’t stand to sit still with myself any longer that I get up and resume my wandering.
My circling eventually takes me downtown. The air is warm and humid. College kids and tourists clog the sidewalks, celebrating the weekend with booze and fried food. Clubs leak electric guitar solos onto the street; oversized bouncers stand at doors with hands outstretched for IDs. For just a moment, I feel like I’m back at Four Corners, lost in the crowds of tourists, and it makes me feel safe and alone.
I pause outside the club where the bartender had recognized Annabelle. On a whim, I walk through the door. The bar area is packed and the dance floor is half empty. It’s still relatively early for a nightclub; people aren’t quite drunk enough to let loose. I squeeze between people and am relieved to see that the fifties greaser bartender is working again.
When he makes his way to me, he does a double take. “Hey!” he cries. “You found your friend yet?”
“Not yet.” The music changes from loud to soft. The lights dim so that everything glows blue.
“You drinking?”
“I guess I’ll have a beer?”
He retrieves a bottle and waves my wallet away, which is nice of him. I lay down a dollar for a tip and sip my beer. If only I had been able to figure out who had taken Annabelle. I could have redeemed myself. It’s driving me crazy, the not knowing. It just doesn’t make sense. It should be Rob, but it’s not. I know he was telling the truth. I’m as sure as I’ve ever been in my life. I’m never wrong about these things—but he has the white dented truck. It’s the truck, it’s the one I searched for all over Texas. How else...it just doesn’t make sense. Could someone else have used Rob’s truck to kidnap Annabelle? Why would they do that?
I suppose there could be any number of reasons. First, they could just have needed a truck. If they’re someone who drives a particularly recognizable kind of car, they might have looked through Annabelle’s acquaintances for someone with a larger vehicle, one that would be easier to load a struggling girl into.
But Rob fits the profile. It makes sense. He has a motive. Deadly Annie killed his cousin. Could someone be framing Rob for Annabelle’s kidnapping? That doesn’t make sense. If someone’s getting framed here, it’s me.
But why would someone be framing me? No one here knows anything about me. I’ve made no friends. I don’t talk to people. Before Annabelle, I don’t think I’ve even told anyone in Texas my name.
My beer is empty. The bartender—Johnny, I remember—approaches me from his spot behind the bar. “Hey again! Another?” he asks.
I nod and pass him a five-dollar bill. He gives me a beer and again waves the bill away. I slide it toward him anyway as a tip.
Johnny pockets the five dollars and gives me a toothy grin. “You from around here? You look like you’re not.”
“San Francisco.”
“I knew it! I totally called it!” He leans even closer. “Let’s hang out after work. I get off at two thirty. You’ll be up. You look like someone who stays up late.”
“Sorry. I can’t.” I try to smile, which probably looks like gloomy pity. It’s all I can muster.
See? I think as he walks away to help another customer. I still haven’t told him my name. Until Annabelle, no one in the entire state of Texas has known my name except my mom and my psychiatrist. I’m completely antisocial. No one knows me. No one except Dr. Shandra, and what motivation could my doctor have to frame me? It’s not like she needs me out of her hair, locked up neatly in jail or an institution where I can never contaminate her world with my messiness again.
A group of people next to me laughs loudly in unison. They’re doing shots; the other bartender is lining them up in colorful rows. I frown down at my beer, not in the mood for festivities. One of them jostles me and I move my body sideways, putting my shoulder between us. I chug the rest of my beer, ready to get out of here. Johnny rematerializes as I set my empty bottle down on the bar. “Another?” he asks.
“I’m good. Thanks.” I pat my pockets, looking for a last tip for him.
“You getting phone numbers?” he asks.
I look up at him, confused. He points to a folded white paper at my elbow. “Getting numbers?” he repeats, teasing me.
“It’s not mine,” I say.
“It wasn’t there a minute ago.”
I tap the guy next to me, a young Latino with a long, jet-black ponytail. “You dropped something,” I tell him, indicating the paper.
He glances at it. “Nope. Not mine.” He returns to his friends, who are now daring each other to do tequila shots.
I take the paper, exchange a confused look with Johnny and unfold it. Immediately, I realize it’s another note, written in the now-familiar block handwriting on plain white paper cut into a neat square. “Oh, shit,” I gasp, unable to focus on the writing. I grab the shoulder of the ponytailed guy. “Did you see who left this here?”
“Naw, man. People have been coming through, buying drinks, I don’t know. I’m not keeping track.”
“Did you see what any of them looked like?” I’m desperate, reaching.
He frowns. “How many times I got to tell you? No.”
I let out an exasperated groan and return my attention to the note. Johnny leans forward to read it, obviously interested in my reaction. “Is it a phone number?” he asks.
“No.” I feel my face go white as I read the printing.
“A love note?”
I look at him blankly. “No,” I say at last.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.” I push myself back and away from the bar. “I have to go,” I mumble. I fold the note up, shove it in the back pocket of my jeans and stumble for the exit. All indecision has deserted me, leaving me cold in my fingers and chest. I know where I’m going, but I don’t know what I’m going to find there.
The note feels heavy and hot in my pocket, like the words are burning through the paper and denim, working their way off the page and worming into my bloodstream like a parasite. They’re burnt into my retinas. I don’t know who wrote it, but I know exactly what I’m supposed to do next.
THIS GAME ENDS WHERE IT BEGAN.
COME ALONE. I’M WATCHING YOU.
SHE’S STILL ALIVE. FOR NOW.
I hadn’t thought of this as a game before, but it’s clear to me now. This is definitely a game, and I am not some lover-turned-detective. I can’t win the game; I was never even playing it. I’m being played—I’m just a chess piece—and the knowledge fills me with hopelessness.
With or without hope, I’ll push forward. I don’t know what else to do.
Chapter Twenty-One
It takes me almost an hour to get to Four Corners. I catch a ride down the highway for a few miles with some college guys, and those ten minutes in the back seat of their car, surrounded by their laughter with Duran Duran pounding an insistent beat, mark a surreal contrast to the darkness inside me. The word why keeps echoing around my head, singing a useless refrain. Why me? Why Annabelle? Why bring me here? Why kidnap her at all? I understand violence, but why draw out this complicated game? What do I have to do with anything? It feels so random, so pointless. I harbor no illusions that I’m being brought here for any reason except for someone to kill me, but why? Why not just shoot me in my bed? Why bother leaving these notes? Why drag me down here on a fruitless rescue mission? For all I know, Annabelle is already dead and I’m a lamb to the slaughter.
Here I am, though, on my way. This guy knows me well enough to know I’ll risk my life to save Annabelle, which in itself is strange. I haven’t known her long. How does he know I’ll react this way? What’s to stop me from bringing the note to the detectives and washing my hands of the whole thing?
Yet here I am.
The guys let me off at the junction of the two-lane country road that borders the park.
I have no plan. I’m no hero.
I suppose every villain is the hero of his own story.
I jog through the Four Corners parking lot. It’s midnight; the park has been closed for hours. The lot is empty except for some of the Four Corners golf carts lined up at the front end. I run around the corner, following the two-lane highway that runs alongside the back of the park, searching for the place Annabelle had been dragged through the fence.
Rob’s white Explorer is pulled up alongside the chain-link fence. It hadn’t been there earlier, and the sight turns my stomach in a nervous somersault. The car is dark. I walk around to the front and put a hand on the hood.
Still warm. I’m not far behind.
I move around the Explorer. Next to the passenger’s side door, the chain-link fence has been cut into a door-sized opening. I inspect it. Sure enough, this is the same part of the fence that had been cut before; I can see the joints in the surrounding chain-link where it’s been patched onto the posts.
Something shiny catches my eye on the dirt near the passenger’s side front tire. I approach it.
It’s a little card. It looks like something laminated.
I pick it up. It’s sticky with blood.
It’s my Four Corners season pass, my old one from last year. I keep it in my desk at home. I hold it pinched between two fingers. I don’t like the fact that it’s bloody. I don’t like it at all. The blood is tacky but still wet. I don’t know how long blood takes to dry; this blood could be an hour or a day old for all I know.
I stare at it for a long moment. This is no accident, the fact that this is my season pass. Am I being framed? Is that possible? But why? I tuck it into my pocket with the folded note, blood and all, unwilling to leave it here for anyone to find.
When I’d been about to get released from the institution, my mom had sent me a letter. It was the one time she’d written to me. It read, The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Sean, I’ve secured a position at a hospital in Austin, Texas. You’ll be joining me upon your release. —Mom.
It had taken me a few minutes; the language was so poetic and pretty and unlike her. Was she finally going to really love me? Was she saying she forgave me?
