The Scamp (23 page)

No, I'm not retired, Couper says.

Well, what are you actually looking for? Henderson says.

I'm looking, I say. I need to find her.

No you don't, Henderson says. Jesus Christ, he says. He wings his elbows out, his hands in his hair. I don't have any information, he says. He gets up then, and goes to the door of the café.

Wait wait wait, Couper calls out. I'm just trying to make connections, he says. Please. Let me just ask you a couple of things, he says.

I'm not connected, Henderson says. He shakes his head, and he puts a hand into his jeans pocket. His body is tall, slim. Well cared for.

Please, Couper says.

Henderson sticks his head out the door. Honey, why don't you go, he says. This might be a little bit. You should
put her down, he says, and rest. His voice, different, softer and higher pitched. Leaning out the door, he becomes a domesticated version of himself.

When he sits back down, Couper says, I'm not a cop.

That's good.

I'm a writer, Couper says.

Well, Henderson says with mock respect.

Couper takes a sheet that has all the girls listed, except for Khaki, from a folder. Tell me, he says to Henderson, if any of these names sound familiar to you. He reads them off, one by one, Holly Jasper, Jessa Loy, Florida DeLaurentis.

Florida's dead, Henderson says.

I know, Couper says. All these girls are dead. How did you know Florida?

I didn't, Henderson says. Khaki did.

Did you ever meet her?

What are you asking?

If you ever met her, Couper says.

I love to watch him work. I love the way he doesn't front-load his questions with bullshit. The way he leans back and shoots straight and gets to the heart of things without looking like he's trying. I like his body in the chair, the crinkle next to his eye. Even the dead eye. Even still.

Henderson fans his fingers out on the table and drums them. Yes, he says. I met her.

When? Couper asks.

A few months before, Henderson says.

Before?

Before she killed herself? Henderson asks. That's what they say happened to her.

Do you not believe that?

Henderson shrugs. I didn't see the body, he says.

Do you not believe it was suicide? Couper asks.

She wouldn't have hurt her, Henderson says.

But, Couper says.

Henderson shakes his head.

Did you see Khaki again after Florida died? Couper asks.

No. I didn't see her after she left my apartment. I just . . . heard things.

Like what?

Rumors, Henderson says, speculations. I don't care to repeat them, he says. I wasn't there. I don't have any information.

Florida's stepfather was murdered, Couper says.

Yes, he was, Henderson says.

Any speculation about that? Couper says.

Nope, Henderson says.

How well did you know Florida DeLaurentis? Couper asks.

It's Henderson's turn to fold his lips in. I didn't, he says. Khaki did.

And when Khaki left your apartment, Couper says.

They left together, he says. She left me, he says, for a girl.

They left together, because they were there together? In the apartment, Couper says.

I wouldn't let her stay, Henderson says.

Because she was fourteen, Couper says.

Yes, Henderson says. And because I didn't want them there. I didn't want her bringing random kids home. Random girls she just wanted.

How long did Khaki live with you?

Four years, Henderson says.

Were you in South Lake before that?

I worked there summers as a lifeguard, Henderson says. Yes.

Were you there when Holly Jasper disappeared?

Yes.

Do you know where Holly Jasper is?

No, Henderson says, and his face opens with disgust. I searched for her, he says, like everyone else. But no. And at the end of June, I moved. I was starting graduate school, he says.

Isn't June early for grad school? Couper asks.

I had another job, Henderson says. Do you know where Holly Jasper is? he shoots at Couper.

She's not the only girl I'm trying to find, Couper says, and it's weird, the way he says
girl
, like I could be included. Like he's trying to solve me.

Wait, Henderson says. Then, his face lighting up with a grim realization, Did you come here because you think I did it? He waits, while Couper doesn't answer. Am I your missing link? Henderson asks. You think I took Holly Jasper and left town, and then came here and took Florida too? Because the only person I had in my car when I left South Lake was Khaki, he says. And let me
tell you something, I don't know what kind of a read you get off of me, or what you think, but one of us had a propensity for violence, he says. And it wasn't me.

Couper flips to another page. Did you live with Khaki in Tennessee? he asks.

No, Henderson says. Then, You know that, he says to me, his voice lowered. She told me what she did to you.

What she did to me? I say.

I found evidence of Khaki living in Tennessee, Couper says, possibly under a fake name. Ashley, or Ashland, Dunn, he says.

Henderson shrugs. She has as many names as she does credit cards, he says.

Do you remember any of them?

She used her mother's cards, he says.

Her—? Couper starts.

Her dead mother, Henderson says, nodding. She used her dead mother's credit cards. She dealt drugs, he says, she kept a gun. You came here, he says, looking at me, like I'm the end of the road, he says. And I'm not. I'm not even the beginning. He points at me. You're the beginning, he says. You don't know what you're getting into, he says to Couper. But unless you're getting paid good fucking money for this story, you might want to walk away from it.

I lean on the table toward Henderson. Melissa? I say. Jordan?

I don't know, he says. I don't know what she told other people. When she lived here, he says, she told people
her name was Kat. Kat Henderson. But we weren't married. Beyond that, I don't know. I can't. I don't want to. And you shouldn't either, he says to me.

I appreciate your time, Couper says. He stacks the paper with the list of girls on it back into his folder. Let me ask you this, do you have anything that might help us place her beyond here? An address? A phone number? Did you know where she was going when she left here?

I didn't know, he says. But I do have, he begins, and stops to rub across his brow with his fingers pressing hard. I have one piece of mail from her, he says. It's not signed, he says. It doesn't have a return address. I don't know if you can do anything with it, he says. I don't know why I even saved it, he says. It's not sentimental. I just— He shakes his head. I kept it tucked away.

Can you find it now? Couper says.

Yeah, I know where it is. To me, he says, You cannot find her. His voice is soft, domesticated, like when he spoke to Vera. You don't have to, he says. You can choose that, he says.

No, I say, I do.

Henderson asks for time, to go home, to check on the baby, and so we wait, and have another cup of coffee, and a grainy raisin cookie that's actually pretty good, between us.

What did she do to you? Couper asks.

I don't know.

I mean, what do you think he means? The . . . He hesitates. The sex? he says.

I don't know, I say again, louder. Wouldn't I know that? I say. I flash back on all the times in her bed. With her, dressed as Shawn, with me, in a dress that was too big for me, falling off my shoulder. Her hands, her mouth. My own mouth, open wide and gasping.

Wouldn't I have some say in whether or not that was abuse? I say.

No, Couper says. Sometimes the kids are the last ones to know.

We walk from the café to Henderson's, just a few blocks from the ocean, upstairs with what Henderson calls a minor view. If you lean to the side on the screen porch, you can kind of see the ocean.

We stop on the wooden stairs that go up to the apartment. Couper stops first, behind me, and when I realize, I stop too, the skirt of my dress moving in the ocean breeze. He comes up and puts his hand just under the dress, above the back of my knee, his warm palm against my bare skin. If he didn't disarm me so, in interrogation mode, or driving mode, or fucking divorce mode, I'd ask him what he was doing. But he knows exactly what he's doing. That's how you get four wives.

No one lets us in. We wait while Henderson comes back to the door with an envelope. There's a note inside, like he said, handwritten in blue ballpoint pen on lined paper, unsigned.

This is the rest of it
, it says.
Forget everything.

The postmark, five years old. From Summersville.

eighteen

KHAKI

I tried to tell Henderson things, about me, about home, about anything, but it never did any good. It never made me put back together, or healed. And I couldn't tell him everything.

I told Florida.

We were driving in the truck at night, the windows down. I was smoking. I thought maybe she was asleep.

I killed someone.

You killed me, she said.

No, I said. Really.

You killed every man who ever looked at me, she said.

No, Florida, I said. We slowed till you could hear every pebble of gravel under the tires, and stopped at a four corners where nothing was open. A Gulf station, a coffee shop, a Baptist church.

Who? Florida said, her voice honey and slow.

A kid, I said. A girl.

A girl like me, she said.

No. Not at all like you.

I didn't know her name. I knew her movements. Where she was allowed on her own and for how long. Where she walked with her friends. I knew the way her knees knocked together, that she liked ice cream with sprinkles. That after eight thirty she walked home alone from a friend's house, across the bridge that went over the canal.

Henderson, working as a lifeguard since May, watching, but not the way I was. I'd spent the early summer either on the beach with him or shuffling the midway with Rayelle. I stayed with her, or I stayed with Henderson, and I tried not to go home. My father was alone in the house, without me, without my mother.

I didn't remember what she was wearing. I was surprised when I saw the poster and the picture. Last seen wearing a yellow T-shirt, denim shorts, white sneakers.

I remembered what she smelled like, heavy with the scent of caramel corn from the midway. A burnt buttery smell on her fingers and in the tips of her hair. The top of her head gave off that metallic outdoor smell that kids have. Sun and sweat and grass and water all mixed up in their skin.

She had a kid's mouth, with small lips and big front teeth that had a gap. Her hair felt like horsehair, long and dry and rippled with summer heat.

I had cut my own hair, sharp bob to my chin, and lightened it to a white blond. I looked different, suddenly older. After my mother died in March, I got thinner. My clavicle hollow, my hipbones sharp.

I saw her walking the bridge over the canal. I said, Hey, I want to show you something, and touched her hand.

We walked down the sidewalk, alongside the canal, and by the time we hit the sandy path through pine trees, she'd put her little hand in mine.

I had nothing to show her but white-hot rage.

The moon was over the lake, not a hazy summer moon, but a cold hard circle moon. I felt the cold creeping, the way it does, in crystalled fingers, through my blood.

You shouldn't walk by yourself, I said. You should have a girlfriend with you. I was barely taller than she was, and even though I was older, I was still another kid to her, not an adult. And not a man.

I told her all the things my mother had told me. Have your girlfriend walk you halfway home. Carry a flashlight. Don't look at the drivers when they slow down. Walk fast but not like you're scared. Put your shoulders back. Hold your chin up so you look confident, but not your nose in the air so you look stuck up. Sit with your legs together. Don't shave too high. You only kiss people you really really like with your mouth open. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to. Change your underwear, you smell like a whore. Your pussy is your
own business, so keep it clean. Why do you think dogs smell you there? That's how they identify you.

About halfway down the path she let go of my hand. She could have run. Her spindly nine-year-old legs booking back toward town, back to where cars were going by, where she could flag down help, another kid, an adult. Another girl, barely taller than she was, who told her not to walk alone.

But it was too late. Before she moved again, I broke her neck.

Don't be fooled. It's easy to break a kid's neck.

Her whole body was like a willow tree. Thin, wispy. She had little bird bones, in her neck, her wrists, her ankles. Her little ribs, still like a baby's. Her shoulder blades, unformed wings on her back. Her clavicle, a string you could pluck for the most beautiful tone.

I held her awhile. When I discovered how soft and green she was, I broke more bones, just to see if I could. Both wrists. A finger on each hand. I wanted to make something of her, an instrument I could play, strung with tendons. Her bones, hung in the trees for the wind to move through, the sound unlike anything anyone had ever heard.

But I needed to get rid of her. By that time, my fingerprints were all over her. I was sure I'd left stray hairs from my own head. I was less than a mile from home. It
had gotten dark. I left her, in the shelter of a fallen tree in the forest, like she was a nymph, sleeping, like she might rise up in the dark, phosphorescent, dancing, her wings sprouting, her eyes on fire.

I crawled up the hill toward home and took things from the shed. Heavy pieces of cut pipe, duct tape, a kickboard we took to the beach sometimes. The pipes were wide enough that I could slide them over her arms and her ankles. I might not have needed to secure them, but I did, with duct tape. Wound and wound around her skin, around the pipes, her body, at first across my lap and then flat out in the leaves, the leaves in her hair. There was dirt on her lip. I wiped it off with my thumb.