The Last Dead Girl (29 page)

I nodded. I was glad too.

“What about the other one?” Warren asked. “Luke. What happened to him?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But it's a question I need to answer.”

Interlude:
September 6, 1996

A
giant spaceship hovered over the White House.

“Watch,” said Luke Daw. “This is the best part.”

A beam of white light flashed down from the ship, and the building exploded into splinters of wood and stone and glass. An orange fireball engulfed the movie screen.

People cheered. Someone honked his horn. Jana sat with her bare feet up on the dash of Luke's Mustang. The sunroof was open to the night sky.

Luke was beside her, behind the wheel, grinning. Handsome in profile, a two-day stubble on his chin. He held her hand.

Up on the screen, people ran in the streets. Cars flipped end over end through the air. More explosions—the tinny sound of them came through a drive-in speaker clipped to Luke's window. Air Force One
taxied down a runway with flames rolling in behind it, threatening to swallow it up. It broke free from the ground at the last possible moment and rose into the air.

A pair of teenage girls sat cross-legged on the hood of the next car over. They clapped their hands and laughed as they watched the plane take off. Jana heard herself laughing too.

“See?” Luke said. “I knew you'd like it.”

•   •   •

T
he key to Jana Fletcher's release turned out to be missing her period.

On the morning of the sixth, she woke at twenty minutes after nine. She knew the time because she had a watch now, a cheap one on a plastic band. She had light too—a battery-powered lantern. She switched it on and let her eyes adjust.

She twisted the cap from a bottle of water, felt the seal break, drank half of it, and put it aside. She saw a plastic grocery bag in the middle of the room, something Luke had left for her the night before. She scooted over and opened it. Fresh supplies. More bottled water, granola bars, a box of tissues. A new tube of toothpaste. Tampons and pads.

She hadn't asked for those—though she'd been thinking about them for the past couple of days. She thought she was overdue. She tried to work it out. The last time had been after Cathy Pruett died but while her body was still in the room. When Jana counted back, it came out to thirty-two days at least, maybe thirty-four. Not good.

But there was nothing she could do. She drank some more water, then used a little to brush her teeth. She stretched and ate a granola bar and lay on the mattress with a pillow propped under her head and read by lantern light. She had a sack of paperbacks that Luke had brought her: slim mysteries with yellowed pages. Mickey Spillane and Rex Stout. Luke said they had belonged to his grandfather. Jana spent a couple of hours with
Some Buried Caesar
.

She heard footsteps on the stairs around noon. Felt a current of cool air when Luke opened the door. He came in and knelt and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Jana's got her nose in a book again,” he said.

She folded the page to mark her place and laid the paperback on the floor. Sat up and accepted the coffee that Luke offered her. He had orange juice for himself, and bagels with cream cheese.

“Sesame or blueberry?” he asked.

“Blueberries don't belong in a bagel.”

“Sesame it is.”

“What's new?”

“The Mets lost.”

“I said what's
new
.”

“Funny.”

He passed her a copy of
USA Today
. She had asked him a month ago for a newspaper, and he had started bringing it three or four times a week. Always
USA Today
. Never a local paper. Never what she wanted.

She wanted news about Cathy Pruett. She knew Luke and Eli had dumped the body, and the police had found it. That was the limit of what Luke would tell her. If she asked him, he would say, “Don't worry. We're in the clear.” And she would smile and pretend it was good news.

Maybe it was. Part of her hoped the police would find a link between Cathy Pruett and the Daws, and it would draw them here, to the farm, and they would find her. But part of her feared what might happen if the police caught up with Luke and Eli. If the two of them kept silent, no one would know to look for her. The door to her prison might never open again. The chain might never come off her ankle. She might be left behind, forgotten underground.

Jana tasted her coffee and wondered if Luke had slipped something in it. He hadn't drugged her since the night they made their bargain. He'd been true to his word. He had kept Eli away from her, and he had brought her out every night to see the sky. But she knew things could change. There could be something in the coffee now and she wouldn't taste it. She thought about it but kept the thought to herself. She couldn't afford to let Luke see it.

She never hesitated to eat or drink anything he gave her. That was part of the performance. Every move she made was part of the performance. The way she held her coffee and scanned the front page of
USA Today
, pretending to be engrossed in the lead story—a piece about a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas. The way she reached casually for a plastic knife and used it to spread cream cheese on her bagel.

The performance was always evolving. Early on, she never reached for the knife; she left it to him to prepare the bagels. But over time she realized her mistake. She wanted to convey that she was harmless, that she could be trusted with a knife, and the way to do that was to take the knife without asking and toss it down again when she was through with it. Only a desperate person being held against her will would look at a plastic knife as a potential weapon.

Jana wasn't desperate—not in the scenes she played out with Luke Daw. She wasn't being held against her will. She was glad to see him, grateful for the things he brought her. When he took her out at night and let her bathe in a plastic pool, she was happy. And when he spread a blanket on the dirt floor of the barn, she lay down on it and wanted the same thing he wanted. Because the scene demanded it.

She was going to walk away from him. That was how the play ended. She only had to make it through to the end. So she drank her coffee and ate her bagel and talked to Luke about the hurricane that might make landfall on the coast of North Carolina. No script. They improvised their lines.

The scene wound down and he gathered the cups and the napkins and the plastic knife. Exit Luke with the leavings of breakfast. Jana watched him cross to the door, where he paused and threw out a line she wasn't expecting.

“Are you late?” he said.

Decisions. She could pretend she didn't know what he meant. She could lie. But he was smart; he knew the answer already. And she wasn't afraid of him—not in the play she wasn't.

She shrugged and said, “Maybe a day or two.”

No strong reaction. He said, “Okay,” and went out. The door closed.

•   •   •

F
ive hours later. Enter Luke with the key to the padlock that secured the chain around her ankle. Jana had finished one book and picked up another. Mickey Spillane,
I, the Jury
.

Luke worked the key in the lock and set her loose. He let her walk ahead of him up the stairs, and when she opened the trapdoor at the top she saw daylight for the first time in three months. The barn against a blue sky. The pond in the distance. A heron taking flight.

“Well, this is different,” she said.

Luke Daw laughed and took her hand and they walked together down the slope of the hill, to the lane that ran past the pond. The lane cut through a grove of trees and she could see the trailer and the road and a car passing in the late afternoon. She didn't run for the road, because the Jana she was playing didn't need to get away. The Jana she was playing hadn't spent the last five hours worrying about what Luke would do if she was pregnant.

Luke took her into the trailer, and in the trailer there was takeout food laid out on a table: chicken shawarma, rice pilaf, pita bread and hummus, fattoush salad.

“It's Lebanese,” Luke said.

“It looks good.”

“Maybe you want a shower first.”

She did want a shower. The bathroom was barely bigger than a phone booth, and the window was too small even to put her head out. She wouldn't have climbed out even if she could, because Luke Daw was no fool, and she wouldn't have been surprised if he had Eli out there somewhere, watching.

And the Jana she was playing didn't need to climb out a window. She belonged here.

She showered and washed her hair and dressed in clean clothes. Jeans and a T-shirt. And afterward she ate Lebanese food that Luke warmed for her in the oven.

•   •   •

A
sweet scene after dinner. Luke Daw, bashful. He had a plastic bag from a drugstore. A small box inside, light as air. “I thought, you know . . .” he began. “We should find out for sure, don't you think?”

Into the bathroom again. She opened the box. Peed on the plastic stick. Came out to wait with him, both of them silent. Sitting on his lap with his arms around her waist. They looked at the result together, saw the plus sign.

Celebration. Luke on his feet, picking her up, twirling her around. Then his mouth on hers, eager. His hands undressing her. He carried her to his bedroom—narrow bed like a teenager's—and laid her down. This is right, Jana thought. This is what young lovers would do. She opened herself to Luke Daw and felt him inside her.

Fierce and gentle. She looked up into his eyes. He kept them open. Dark eyes. Sometimes they seemed empty, but not now. There was something in them that might have been love.

She closed her eyes and let herself surrender. As the part required. And when she cried out, he cried out a moment later, and she wrapped her legs around him and held him inside her. He'd been bracing himself up with his arms, but now she felt his weight settle onto her. She felt the heat of him, the brush of his lips against her temple. She felt the rhythm of his breathing. She heard him whisper, “This changes everything.”

•   •   •

A
t dusk they went for a drive. Fast in the Mustang around the bends of Humaston Road. Jana put one arm out through the passenger window and the other up through the sunroof and felt the wind on the palms of her hands. Eric Clapton playing on the radio. They flashed by a trailer on a gravel lot at the roadside.

“That's where Eli lives,” Luke said.

They left Humaston and drove east. There were houses and a few businesses. Luke paid more attention to his speed. The road ran long and straight, lots of cars, a few semi trucks.

“Do you want ice cream?” Luke said. “There's a place up here—my grandfather used to take us.”

The place was called the Frozen Cow. A tiny building with picnic tables in front. You walked up to a window under an awning to place your order. Luke parked and stepped out of the car. Jana got out too—barefoot on the warm asphalt. The
thunk, thunk
of the car doors shutting. The voices of a family at one of the picnic tables: mom and dad, daughter and son.

Luke paused to tuck something into his waistband and cover it with the tail of his shirt. The revolver. He'd pulled it from a drawer before they left the trailer. Because not everything had changed. Jana was tempted to ignore the gun, but that seemed wrong. She went around the front of the car, shaking her head, amused, indulgent. She slipped her arm through his and said, “Come on, killer.”

They walked to the window and a woman came to take their order. She looked to be in her forties and wore a spotless white apron. She recognized Luke, called him Mr. Daw.

She worked the levers of the soft-serve machine, filling two cones. Jana got chocolate. Luke got a twist. The woman tapped the cones on the counter so the ice cream would settle in, then turned them upside down and dipped them in a pan of melted chocolate. She brought them out and righted them again and passed them through the window.

Luke paid with a twenty-dollar bill, and the woman made change. She winked at Jana before they left.

“How's this fella treating you?”

Jana smiled. “He's holding me against my will.”

“Is he now?”

“But at least he feeds me.”

Laughter all around. Jana felt Luke's hand resting easy on the small of her back.

The counter woman pretended to scold him. “Next time, you buy this girl a sundae.”

“I will,” he said.

They ate their ice cream in the Mustang with the sounds of traffic behind them and the sky growing darker. The family at the picnic table departed, and another came to take their place.

Cut to an image of Luke Daw with sticky fingers and chocolate on his face. Jana left the car and jogged to the counter for napkins and brought them back. An experiment. She wanted to see how far she could go.

Then they were on the road again, heading east. A Walmart store and a Fashion Bug. A Sears outlet. Then flickering pictures against the blue-black sky—on a movie screen a hundred feet wide. The marquee in front read
WEST ROME DRIVE-IN. NOW PLAYING: INDEPENDENCE DAY
.

Luke paid the admission and they passed through the gate. Three dozen cars inside and more coming in. Luke parked in the back row. The feature had just started.

Friday night at the drive-in: Teenagers shouting. Kids running between the rows of cars. The smell of popcorn. Jana and Luke tilted their seats back and held hands and watched the aliens blow things up.

•   •   •

N
ear the end, when Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum flew up to the aliens' mother ship, when they saved the planet with a laptop and a computer virus, Luke brought Jana's hand to his lips and kissed it.

“You can go if you want,” he said.

She kept her eyes on the screen. “Hush,” she said.

“I mean it. You can go. I won't stop you.”

It could have been a trick, a way to test her. But it sounded true. And it tempted her. She could picture it: easing open the door of the Mustang and climbing out. A slow walk to the concession stand, where there would be a crowd of people. There would be phones. She could call her mother, and her mother would come and pick her up. It would be over.