“Here’s my card, Erin. You can call me any time if you have questions, and we’ll keep the case open as long as it takes to catch the person who did this. Maybe someone will come forward with information. You never know.”
I will never know. Someone has carelessly gotten behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated, and I will never even know who to hate.
“Come on in,” Ken said.
Erin looked up to see Kristy standing in the door, her shoulder-length black hair slightly damp as though she’d just gotten out of the shower.
“Kristy!” Erin began crying again.
“I’ll leave you for now. Call me if you need to.” Ken started to leave, and then paused in the doorway. “Her personal effects,” he said. “Her clothing, well, I don’t think you would want it — but we have her purse. I can drop it off at your house if you like.”
“Yes,” Erin managed to get out. “I’m not going home. I’ll come and get it tomorrow.”
Ken closed the door behind him as he left. Kristy took Erin’s hands. “What happened? The nurse said your mother died!” Kristy was shaking. “I knew something was wrong when you didn’t show up today.”
“Oh, Kristy, it’s awful. My mother was run over by a drunk driver. She’s gone.” Great, heaving sobs wracked Erin’s body.
Kristy knelt down beside Erin’s chair and took her hands. “Oh, man, that’s awful.” Kristy began crying, too. “Do they know who did it?”
Erin shook her head and extracted another handful of tissues from the box. “Will you take me to your house?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse from crying.
“You bet.” Should she ask Erin for the details? Maybe it would be best to just wait, and let Erin tell her when she was ready.
“I saw her after it happened,” Erin said, staring vacantly at nothing in particular. “She was just lying there, and there was blood everywhere, and I just collapsed, and they brought me here.”
Jennifer knocked on the door with a handful of papers. “Sign here,” she said, “and you’re free to go. Here are your prescriptions.” She turned to Kristy. “Pick these up and make sure she stays on them for a few days, until she’s feeling better.”
Kristy helped Erin to the car. After a short stop at the drug store, they went to Kristy’s house. “I’m going to go by your house and you can sit in the car while I get some of your things,” Kristy said. “I don’t want to leave you alone right now.”
Kristy owned a small brick house in an older area of town. She was a freelance photographer with her own studio in a nearby strip mall. To help support herself, she took occasional clandestine photos of visiting musicians, which she sold on the internet or to news magazines. Her home was comfortable, and familiar to Erin. Right now, it just felt like a safe place to be. Kristy had no family. Her mother had deserted the family when Kristy was two years old. Her father, who had raised her, died while Kristy was a senior in college. Kristy was like family to Erin and Liz.
Kristy called the funeral home and spoke with a representative who promised to take possession of the body until Erin could focus on funeral arrangements. Erin was surprised that Kristy, who tended to be somewhat disorganized, was able to take charge in such a serious, responsible manner. The two women had been friends since the third grade and Kristy was the closest Erin had ever come to having a sister.
Kristy made a couple of fried egg sandwiches. At her insistence, Erin ate half of one of the sandwiches with a cup of green tea. Kristy gave her one of the sedatives that had been prescribed.
Kristy built a fire in the fireplace and refilled their tea. They sat in front of the fire, talking and crying.
“You know what I liked about Liz?” Kristy said. “She was so much fun. Remember that time she had the Christmas dinner at her house, and she hired us to work as waitresses?”
“And we sat in the kitchen and ate the leftovers.” Erin was smiling at the memory.
“Remember when the three of us went to Mexico, and Liz insisted on parasailing?” Kristy said. “And she kept flirting with the man driving the boat!” Erin could remember it like it was yesterday. “He tried to kiss her, and she pushed him off the boat.”
Kristy stoked the fire and they shared more of their favorite stories about Liz. It was painful, but it also felt comforting to remember the good times.
Eventually they turned to the reality of the terrible decisions that needed to be made. Erin was contemplating a simple graveside memorial service with a few close friends. Kristy would call the pastor of her mother’s church and find out if he could conduct the service. Liz would have wanted it to be simple. Kristy called her uncle Dan, a lawyer specializing in tax and estates. He would help them figure out what needed to be done to take care of Liz’s estate. Erin had a copy of Liz’s will in her safety deposit box. They would go to the bank the next morning and fax a copy to Dan. Liz maintained a stash of emergency cash in an account in Erin’s name — more than enough to pay the expenses of Liz’s funeral. Kristy would go to Liz’s house every day and pick up her mail and water the plants and make sure everything stayed in order until Erin had the courage to go there herself. Kristy would take Liz to the police station to find Ken Malone, and get Liz’s purse.
The details had been a welcome distraction, but it was getting late. Erin didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to wake up again to the horrible realization that her beloved mother was gone forever. It was too much. When she had awakened in the hospital, it was as though the whole nightmare happened for the first time, all over again.
Toward midnight the warm fire and the sedative took over. Kristy brought out blankets and made a bed for Erin on the sofa. “I don’t have to work tomorrow,” Kristy said. “Sleep as long as you need to.”
Erin fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
3
She shook more than she thought she would’ve. This was her first job since coming back, first attempt, first kill. It satisfied her in almost every way, just as she’d envisioned, except adrenaline still shot thorough her fingertips as she replayed it in her head. The single malt scotch slid around her tongue like smooth fire.
“Let me guess …Eastern Europe?” The balding man droned on, his plump head haloed in the distant TV light. ESPN was on, as it always was at any hour in any bar around the world.
She shook her head ‘no.’ Her eyes bore into his, while flattening him into the scene behind. It was a look that some men mistook for simmering capitulation, but in truth, it was a form of self-hypnosis that could make even the most unbearable situations tolerable.
He’d bought her her third drink, and she’d enjoyed toying with him.
“Hmmm …” He studied her in perfect x’s. Left eye, right chin. Right eye, left chin, finger slowly coming toward her nose, “Russian!”
She was tiring now. “No.” She allowed the last of the scotch to linger in her mouth long enough for him to imagine. “South America-actually.” She slid from the stool and slipped her coat on.
“Oh now …wait! I thought that maybe we-”
She did not hear the rest of what he said. She could do that, turn off her ears. She’d been doing that since she was a child. She did not look back at him as she walked towards the glass door. She owed him nothing, and she was suddenly yearning for a soundless hotel room.
His mouth continued to move behind her. She took no notice. She was done.
Another man on the way in held the door for her. She didn’t acknowledge the act. She didn’t need to. This is the reward for being classically beautiful and wretchedly dead. You use. You walk. You sleep—soundly.
4