Skin

As soon as she got her wits about her, the drunk woman was released from the holding cell. Not long after that, the black woman’s husband agreed not to press charges and posted her bail. For awhile, it was just the teenager and I. I decided that, since I had nothing better to occupy my time, I might as well play nice.

“So your boyfriend turned you in? That sounds like a dick move,” I mused. I was sprawled out across the back bench where the drunk had been sleeping before. The bench was hard and uncomfortable; I already knew that I wasn’t going to get much sleep that night.

She shrugged, not really looking all that upset by the fact that she was behind bars. “He got me to carry his stash for him. I guess he didn’t exactly turn me in, but he didn’t take responsibility either. He just let me get caught.”

“That doesn’t make him any less of a cunt.”

“I don’t think he really meant for it to happen,” she defended him, though her eyes showed that she didn’t really believe herself. “Besides, I think I can get off without serving any real jail time.”

I held up a hand to shut her up. “First of all, he knew what he was doing. Don’t believe for one second that he thought you wouldn’t get caught. Secondly, now that he knows you’ll take the fall, it’ll happen again. Even if you don’t go to prison this time, next time will be different. Guys are scum. A lot of girls are scum, too, don’t get me wrong here. But the point is that you let him take advantage of you, and now that’s exactly what he’ll expect from you. He’s not looking out for you. You need to get out of that relationship.”

She sighed, paying absently with a thick strand of her fire engine red hair. “He was the only boy who paid attention to me when I moved out here.”

“There are better boys out there. Trust me.” I had no idea why I was trying to give her a life lesson. I was stuck in this cell for a much worse reason than she was, and unlike her I was actually guilty.

“Where’s this porn place?” she asked, looking seriously interested. “Maybe I should just go there once I get out.”

I wondered if she would really fare any better with the kinds of guys that hung around porn studios. But I knew Luann, and I knew how well she took care of her girls. Besides, Luann was tied to the club through her husband, Otto, and I knew that I could check in on this girl if I needed to.

“It’s in Charming,” I told her. “A few hours’ drive north of here. It’s called Cara Cara. If you decide to check it out, go to Luann. Tell her that you need help, and that Alexis Teller sent you. She’ll give you a job, no questions asked.”

The girl looked wary of my promises. “How do you know she’ll just give me a job? What if I’m not what she’s looking for?”

I snorted. “Oh please. Everyone can do porn. No matter what you look like, there’s someone out there with a fetish to match. And Luann would do me this favour. We kind of have family history.” I sat up on the bench, looking over at her curiously. “You know, I wasn’t really suggesting that you should become a porn star. That was when I still thought you were a hooker. I just thought it was a better alternative. I’m sure you can do better. A lot of the porn stars I know are assholes. I kind of want to bash their faces in a lot of the time.”

She shrugged her thin shoulders, then adjusted the straps of her sequined top. “It’s got to be decent money, right?”

“I guess so. But Charming is an entirely different place. You won’t find any kind of retail chain there. Everything is local. And we all work really hard to keep it that way. It’s both the best and the worst place in the state. If you like it here, you shouldn’t try to move there,” I advised.

She looked away, staring out through the bars of the cell. “But that’s where you met him, isn’t it?”

I nearly choked as I tried to hold back the sudden wave of laughter that tore through my chest. “Yeah, but there’s only one of him. And I left him to move to the big city once. I’m just lucky that he was still there when I got back.”

“Wait, so you moved away and he still took you back?” Her head whipped around so quickly to look at me that I thought it must have given her neck trauma.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Love makes you do stupid things. God knows he would be better off if he had forgotten about me, but when I came home he was right there waiting.”

“It’s almost like a fairy tale,” she gushed, reminding me of how young she really was. “I think y’all were just destined to be together.”

“It was more dumb luck than anything else. Emphasis on the dumb part.”

“Why do you say that?” She slid along the bench that she was sitting on so that she was closer to me. “He seemed like a sweetheart.”

“He is,” I nodded in agreement. “But he’s an idiot. He should have stayed with whatever girlfriend he had while we were apart. She was probably a lot nicer than me. I bet she never got arrested or was accused of murder. But in the end, I guess I’m glad he’s so stupid.”

“Is he the reason you’re here?” her voice dropped, as if the two of us were sharing a scandalous secret.

“What? No. What do you mean?”

Her brown eyes were wide, and almost a bit frightened. “Did he kill your ex and you’re just protecting him?” she asked in the same hushed tone.

“Jesus, no. As far as we can tell, the guy isn’t even dead. He’s just gone. I never really pegged him as a flight risk, but I guess that just goes to show you that you never really know someone as well as you think you do,” I added as an afterthought. I really had thought I’d known Trent at one point, but the truth about him had still managed to shock me. “Can we not talk about that? It’s kind of a stressful subject at the moment.”

“Right, sorry.” The girl did look genuinely apologetic, which wasn’t really something that I was used to. Of course, I also wasn’t used to being this talkative toward someone who hadn’t even told me their name. “I’m just curious about how it all works. I mean, you’re old enough to be in a real relationship with someone, but young enough that I feel like it’s okay to ask you about it.”

“I’m not really sure if you meant that as a compliment. But I’m also not sure that I’m really in a normal relationship, either. There’s a lot of history between us. And no, I’m not going to talk about it. That particular discussion isn’t as harmless as the ones we’ve already had,” I said with finality in my tone.

There was movement in the hallway, and the guard approached the cell. I was saved from any more of the girl’s questions. The guard looked tired and bored, almost as if he were counting the minutes until his shift was over.

“Madison Crew,” he barked. The girl leapt to her feet, prepared to do anything he asked of her. “We’ve got you a public defender.” He jangled his keys and unlocked the cell door. I lay back down on the bench, finally alone.

I let my eyes fall shut, and at some point I must have drifted off. The hours drug on, and sleep didn’t last. The clock on the wall in the hallway told me that it was just past nine. I’d been here all day. And, without anyone else here with me, I found that I was growing a bit lonely. I thought wistfully of Juice’s bed, and I felt that its emptiness was made all the worse by the fact that he was probably still sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the lobby.

I had about ten hours to go. I was past the halfway point. There was a silver lining, I supposed. I wondered if the cop was on the verge of finding anything yet. But what could he possibly find?

Shortly after, a new crowd began invading my cell. A woman in her late twenties joined me at half past ten. She, too, looked like a prostitute, but I’d learned my lesson about assuming such things. She was soon followed by a girl who looked to be around my age, and had clearly just been in a fight. A trail of dried blood ran from a cut in her eyebrow down the side of her face, and her lip was swollen. Her left eye was bruised black, and her shirt was torn. She hobbled over to the nearest bench and sat down, immediately burying her face in her hands.

Finally, as the hour neared one o’clock, the middle-aged drunk from the night before came stumbling back in. She didn’t even look at me, she simply made her way to the toilet in the corner and threw herself down in front of it before she began heaving. I inched away, now understanding why that morning she’d had this bench all to herself. Anyone in their right mind would want to put as much distance between her and themselves as possible.

It was almost six when my sleep was interrupted for the last time. I heard the sound of keys in the lock, and I looked up drowsily. The guard noticed that he had my attention, and he nodded at me and beckoned me forward with his free hand. This was a different guard than had been around all day, but he seemed to be a bit kinder. He could have made a ruckus and woken up everyone else, but he chose not to.

“I need my heart meds,” I whispered as he secured a pair of handcuffs around my wrists.

He nodded. “Yeah, I know. I’ll bring them to you with some water. You’re needed in questioning.”

I was too exhausted to think about what his words really meant. I let him lead me along, nearly falling asleep as I walked with him down the hallway. He brought me into an interrogation room, and as soon as he’d chained me to the table I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes fall closed.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Clement said with a malicious grin as he walked in.

“Barely,” I grumbled, peeling my eyelids open. “Where’s my lawyer?”

“She went back to Charming for the night. If you cooperate, you could be heading there soon enough.”

I waved a hand, indicating that he should get started. The guard came in, setting a tall glass of water in front of me and placing a familiar plastic prescription canister next to it. I dumped the proper dosage into my hand and dropped the pills onto my tongue, then washed them down with a few large gulps of water. I looked back at the officer expectantly.

“We found some hairs in his apartment. I couldn’t get the DNA results back in time, but I’m betting they’re yours,” he said, as if the information were intended to incite panic in me.

“They probably are,” I said, finishing off my water and pushing the empty glass aside. “I did live there for two years, no one is refuting that. I did all the cleaning when I was there, I have no idea how good of a job he did once I left. Hell, he might never have vacuumed the carpet since I took off. The place is probably covered in my hair.”

“They were found on the blanket on his bed.”

I faltered for a moment. Juice and I had sat there for a long time after I’d killed Trent. It was more than likely that he was right, and the hairs did belong to me. I swallowed. “It was a duvet. He probably doesn’t even know how to wash it.”

The smug, pompous smirk on the officer’s face told me that he thought he had me now. My excuse might have sounded flimsy, but it was perfectly plausible. I doubted that Trent had ever washed the blanket, but the fact that I hadn’t lived there or slept in that bed in months seemed like a glaring error in my story.

“Who were the men that the witness saw with you?” he carried on, now cocky and calm.

“My brother, Jackson Teller, and some of his friends.”

“Do these friends have names? I’m going to need them.”

I sighed. “Kip – no wait, Kip wasn’t there,” I cursed myself for slipping up. Sure he’d been there when I’d actually moved out, but the day that the cop was referring to, and what the witness would have seen, was the day that he was in the hospital with a gunshot wound. “Harry Winston, Juan Carlos Ortiz, Filip Telford, Bobby Munson, Clay Morrow, Piermont Winston, and Alex Trager.” I had no idea why, but I felt that using their real names instead of their nicknames gave me some kind of foot to stand on.

“And they can all confirm their presence?”

“Yes, they can. Look, we both know that my hair being in his house means nothing,” I reasoned. “I’d bet that if your wife left you, cleaning your house wouldn’t be too high on your list of priorities for a little while.”

“I’m not married,” he corrected me. His reply seemed to be reflexive, as if he’d had to say it far too many times when trying to pick up girls after work.

“Shocking,” I shot back, straight-faced.

His jaw clenched at my attitude. “So that’s what you’re banking here? The idea that Mr. Isaacs was so hung up on you that he just stopped cleaning his house?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”

“I’m sure it is,” he snapped, looking more angry by the second. “I suppose that you’re using the same excuse for the amount of dog hair everywhere, even though you claim that you took the dog on the same day that you moved out?”

“Yeah, I am. Funny how it all seems to fit together, like it’s the truth or something,” I said in agitation. I was running on too little sleep to have the patience to put up with him right then. I knew that being a smartass probably wasn’t the best route to take, but it was all that I could manage just then.

“So you’re telling me that he just ran off, even though his family swears that he wasn’t the type of guy to do that?” He was on his feet, his hands flat against the table top. He leaned toward me, his demeanour threatening. “Tell me how that’s supposed to make sense!”

“You think it makes sense to me?” I yelled back. “I lived with him for two fucking years! I thought I knew him. I never would have guessed he would run off like this. But from everything that I’ve heard so far, that’s the only thing that fits.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know!”

“Where’s the body?”

“What body? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The accusations were flying so rapidly that I lost track of all that was being said. My sleep-deprived brain was fighting to keep up. I realized then that that had been his plan all along. He hoped that if I was too overtired, I’d slip up and reveal something incriminating. That was the last thing that I intended to do. I fought even harder to stay one step ahead of him, and most importantly to sound coherent. I needed to appear to be of sound mind so that my answers came across as reliable and honest.

“Get her out of here,” Clement said in exasperation, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and squeezing his eyes shut.

“To the holding cell?” the guard asked, suddenly standing at attention like a soldier.

“There’s no point. It’s almost seven. Let her go home. She has a crew waiting in the lobby.”

I didn’t smile as I was led from the room. I knew that would hurt me in the end. It wasn’t until I saw my mother, Juice, and Half-Sack sleeping awkwardly in the stiff lobby chairs that I felt a grin on my lips. The guard removed my shackles for what was hopefully the last time and gave me a stiff smile.

“Hope I don’t see you back here,” he said in farewell.

“You and me both,” I agreed. I turned my back on him and approached my slumbering family. Jax had probably sent Half-Sack after he had gotten back to Charming. At least Mom and Juice had had someone else here to entertain them and keep them company.

I gently shook Mom awake. She jumped, but as soon as she did her hand flew to her neck. She was well into working out a kink when she finally looked up to see who had woken her. She smiled, getting to her feet.

“Tell me about it on the way home, baby,” she said as she hugged me tightly. She slung her purse over her shoulder and left the room without another word.

I grabbed each of the guys by an arm and woke them up. They were both grumbling immediately about how terribly they slept, but then grew much happier when they saw who was standing in front of them. Juice lurched to his feet, catching me in a bear hug and kissing me roughly. Sack watched the exchange without emotion. When Juice released me, I gave Kip a quick hug and thanked him for coming to stay with Mom and Juice. It really was touching that he was here, even if I already knew that it was just because my brother had told him to be.

“Do they have anything new on you?” Juice asked as we walked out into the parking lot together.

“No, not really. Just some hair of mine in his house. I lived there for two years, Juice, there’s bound to be a few hairs around.”

He kissed my temple as we walked. “Want to ride with me?”

I shook my head. “As nice as that sounds, I’m far too tired to ride on a bike right now. I’ll go with Mom. Meet you at home in a few hours.”

He waited until I was safely in Mom’s Cadillac before he strapped on his helmet and started up his bike. As we all pulled out of the parking lot together, the two bikers formed a sort of convoy. Sack drove ahead of us and Juice pulled up the rear, ensuring that we would be safe the whole way home.

“Okay,” Mom said as we left the city behind and hit the highway. “Tell me everything.”