The Pinebox Vendetta Page 22

They should be heading to the train station by seven-forty-five. Joss should be here.

  Sam walked down to the courtyard hoping she would bump into her daughter, possibly bleary-eyed from parting with the boy.

  But the courtyard was quiet. A custodial worker moved his ladder from one arch to the next, removing Welcome Back Class of ’96! banners.

  “Joss?” she called into the night.

  Nothing.

  A little irked—but understanding how all-encompassing teenage trysts could feel—Sam left the courtyard for the coffee shop. She hated crowding her daughter like this, but the only train after the 8:32 was the 11:32, which would make for a brutal Monday.

  The counter stools in the coffee shop’s front windows were empty. So were the first tables. The pastry case looked bare.

  Sam squinted at the frost-printed store hours. It says they’re open…

  She pushed the door and it did open. A chime sounded. The barista, his back to the register, kept watching his phone.

  Sam took several steps inside, each quicker than the one before. The tables were all empty.

  There was nobody here.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a voice higher than her own. “I’m trying to find my daughter. Fourteen years old, tall? Dark hair?”

  It took the barista a moment to realize he was being addressed.

  “Huh?” he said. “Wha’zat?”

  “My daughter.” Sam had an unkind urge to shake him. “My daughter was here, she would’ve been with a boy? They’re fourteen—er, I assume he’s fourteen, or so.”

  The barista yawned and scratched underneath a skullcap.

  “Nah. We’ve been totally dead since five.”

  Sam was gripping the counter. “Nobody? Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Not a soul.”

  “She would’ve been almost my height, hair down? Skirt? Carrying a purse?”

  He wet a towel and used it to wipe down a valve of the espresso machine, as though beginning his closing-up tasks. “No persons of that description.”

  Sam felt heat taking over her lungs—that horror unique to parents, which she hadn’t experienced in years.

  Could Joss have meant a different coffee shop? Did she go to the boy’s room instead?

  Where was he staying?

  Why isn’t she calling?

  And, thoughts darkening:

  Could this involve the Pruitts somehow? The brick?

  Sam left the coffee shop adrift, buzzing, her shoes on the sidewalk feeling miles away.

  Where now? Where did she go?

  Turning around several times, she decided to return to the dorm. There she ripped open Joss’s backpack and rifled through for…what?

  A note? A receipt? Some clue.

  She was just considering 911 when she noticed the duffel bag was unzipped. She had packed the duffel herself—to the gills, not a square centimeter free—and closed it tight. Overflow items were going in the Yale ninety-six tote.

  She squatted to look inside the main compartment. At once, she realized what was missing.

  The Zoom.

  Joss had taken the Zoom.

  The rest assembled instantly in her mind. Joss’s anger at Rock Pruitt. Her rash idea of getting him to admit on tape to Derek Dickerson’s murder. With awful clarity, Sam knew just what her daughter was up to.

  She’d sneaked off to find him, to entrap him somehow.

  Sam squeezed her eyes at the recklessness of this—but there was no time for blame.

  Where would Joss look? Where would she go?

  Sam didn’t know whether Rock had been staying on campus in the dorms, or had nicer hotel digs. And if she didn’t know, Joss wouldn’t know either. A fourteen-year-old girl could not track down Rock Pruitt. Not on her own, not in a city of one hundred thousand-odd people. There was simply no way.

  But what if she did?

  The idea plunged from Sam’s head to her core, sickening, pulling every organ with it. She was on fire. She was never letting Joss out of her sight again.

  She called Jamie Gallagher.

  “Sam, hey,” he answered. “I’m glad you called because I need to—”

  “Joss is gone, she went after Rock!” Sam was knee-walking over the windowsill for no reason. “Help me find her. I have to find her. Where would Rock be?”

  Jamie uttered half-syllables over the line. “I, w—well, I don’t know. You can’t just call her cellphone?”

  Sam frowned. Apparently, her cellphone ban was as strange by African norms as by American. “No cell.”

  They quickly established how long Joss had been unaccounted for, the farthest away she could be, the belief (Jamie’s) that nothing too awful could be happening.

  He said, “What’re the chances she actually did it? Actually found him someplace?”

  Sam considered. Imagining her only child out in the world—choosing and reacting, moving from one location to the next—was a near mystical thought exercise. Sam felt herself stepping off curbs, could smell odors rising from sewer vents.

  “I just…think…she did,” Sam said. “And I have to figure out where.”

  Over the line, Jamie allowed a pause. He didn’t challenge her dubious conclusion. He didn’t reassure her Joss was going to be fine, or tell her worrying wouldn’t solve a thing.

  Finally, he said, “I can think of one place.”

  Chapter 19

  Joss didn’t believe him. Alcohol romped through her head and it’d gotten really hot, the ceiling seemed sorta sweaty, and his hand was a tarantula on her knee—but through all this, she didn’t buy Rock’s claim that he hadn’t killed Derek Dickerson.

  “I saw the brick—the brick you hit him with,” Joss said. She shouldn’t tell him this. Didn’t he know already, though? “So what if you stole it, doesn’t matter. We all know the truth!”

  He looked at her funny. “Old Johnston must’ve slipped something into that cup.”

  “You’re lyING,” she hiccuped. “It’s what you do, Pruitts, you make it up. Make up whatever facts you, urm…”

  She lost what she wanted to say. She tried propping her chin in her hand and missed, hitting herself in the cheek.

  “This is what you came for?” Rock said. “To accuse me of murder?”

  “No,” Joss said by reflex. “I just came to t—talk. I…I try to decide for my own, with politics—”

  “And so you sought out the dastardly rival of your mother’s friend?” Rock cut in. “To have a nice, reasoned chat. Yep. Makes perfect sense.”

  Joss gulped.

  He said, “Why don’t you gimme that bogus story of your friend taking a header off the cliff again, too?”

  He shuffled into her space, smelling like grease and flame and ten kinds of evil.

  She couldn’t hold a thought.

  “You killed him,” she said.

  Rock shook his head, slow, satisfied. “You’re wrong. I’m 78 percent sure you’re wrong.”

  “Wh—what? How could…what does 78 percent—”

  “I drank enough whiskey to set the state of Kentucky back six months, but I’m awful damn sure. I never touched him.”

  “We heard—my mom heard the story of Dickerson pushing you into a fish tank. The witnesses, all the witnesses saw you fight, and that German poet—er, guy, told us how they tampered!”

  “Henrik Schumer,” Rock sneered. “Always had it out for me. Now there’s one I would kill, gladly.”

  Joss looked at the door. It was still closed. She could hear the group in the next room—a lacrosse team, or squash team?—but barely. And they were probably yelling and singing.

  Should she yell? Who would hear?

  What would she yell?

  Rock continued, “He did push me into the fish tank—just like we planned. Poppy Johansen, what a pair of tits. I lured her over by the fish—wasn’t so drunk yet. Then Dicks drenched us both. We made a show of it. Damn, was it ever brilliant. Those nips shining right through.”

  His face glowed at
the memory. Joss’s insides frosted over. From those pig eyes—boastful, superior—she knew the story was true.

  There was no way, in his state, that he could’ve faked those eyes.

  “The fight was, um, bogus?”

  “Course. I said so after—nobody bought it. Not even my heartless parents. Dicks was the only one who coulda backed me up. We’d been wanting to see those boobies all semester.”

  He licked his lips. So. Gross. He seemed to get excited, crowding her, their thighs brushing, his eyes thirsty down her body.

  Maybe worse than the physical threat was the mental shock. He didn’t kill his roommate?

  So…had Derek Dickerson really just fallen against their coffee table, like Rock claimed all those years ago?

  “What’s that?” Rock said, sitting up suddenly.

  Joss thought he meant her butterfly necklace. She went to lift it off her chest, but his hand shot past to the next chair over.

  “A recorder?” He grabbed the Zoom in one fist. “You’re taping me? Taping me? Why, you dirty—”

  As he unleashed a string of foul names, he slammed the audio recorder to the ground. The casing cracked and a bad-sounding beep fizzled.

  “But—but I wasn’t…” She struggled for some lie but came up blank. “Well, why does it matter?” she tried. “If you’re innocent, what’s the difference? Why would you care?”

  “It matters,” Rock said. “When you come after me. When they come after me?” He thrust a finger out the window, then up at the ceiling—jerky, like he was tracking invisible enemies. “That’s an attack, and attacks must be answered.”

  Joss held her butterfly pendant tight, wishing now that she could fly.

  Chapter 20

  Mory’s was halfway between Silliman College and the Latham Guest House. Jamie told Sam to meet him there, then grabbed his rucksack and dashed down two flights of stairs, through the inn’s lobby and past its blackberry-infused water, and hit the street running.

  What might Rock do? That the girl was fourteen wouldn’t bother him at all. The rumors about his exploits in Southeast Asia—working for Pruitt Capitol in his early twenties—were abhorrent.

  As Jamie sprinted up Dwight, he burned imagining that wisp of a kid, just becoming comfortable with herself and the world, at Rock’s mercy. Because he had no mercy.

  Jamie burned, too, at the thought of Sam finding her daughter—in whatever state—and blaming herself. Because he knew she would. From their rushed conversation just now, from the sacrifices she’d undertaken throughout her adult life. Sam would hump all the blame, every ounce of it. Even though, by rights, it belonged to Jamie.

  He ran through stoplights and between dog walkers. Rucksack slamming against his back, he knocked over a bike leaned against a tree and ripped his pants.

  He skidded up to the Mory’s entrance almost simultaneous with Sam.

  “Are they inside?” she asked.

  “I just got here!”

  They pounded up a short flight of steps and through the front door.

  Jamie felt cheered at first by laughter coming from a side room, sounding like a typical Mory’s gathering.

  Nothing much can be happening, right? With a big group nearby?

  Then he saw the bartender, an elderly man with hair like fine silver thread, cut his eyes nervously toward the Governors’ Room.

  Jamie bolted without looking back to Sam, without considering the danger or forming one conscious thought. He didn’t bother with the pocket door’s handle, barreling through with his shoulder.

  The door splintered and took one jamb down with it.

  Rock Pruitt towered over Joss, froth in his face. Her chair, the old-style cane variety, looked ready to buckle under her shrinking form. Her eyes were glassy, which probably had to do with these empty silver cups, but she was clothed and seemed unhurt.

  Thank God.

  Pruitt and Gallagher eyes locked. Jamie barely registered Sam rushing past him and pulling Joss away.

  “You sent a kid?” Rock gestured to an oblong device—smashed—on the ground. “To get me on tape? You’re garbage. You know that? Pure garbage.”

  Jamie heard the words but wasn’t processing meanings. He wasn’t processing anything but hate for Rock Pruitt. His rucksack slipped to the floor.

  He lunged for the bigger man.

  “Oooof,” Rock groaned as the crown of Jamie’s head hit his midsection.

  They crashed to the ground. Jamie smelled body and sour booze and felt fists slamming his shoulder blades.

  “Nobody sent her!” Jamie said. “She wanted to stop you—people want to stop you.”

  He was talking into Rock’s neck as they tumbled over and over, crashing against table legs, toppling chairs.

  “People are idiots. You’re an idiot.”

  Rock dug an elbow in Jamie’s side—a sword piercing a pillow of nerves.

  Jamie gasped and, shutting his eyes against the pain, punched Rock’s mouth. Teeth gave with a satisfying crunch. Jamie’s shirt was flecked with blood and spit. He didn’t know whose.

  “We’ll bury your side,” Rock said. “When we drop pinebox on you? Finito. There won’t be another Gallagher in politics.”

  He’d worked himself on top of Jamie. His words came out with a whistle, owing to the fresh gap in his mouth.

  Jamie bucked him off, knowing the fight was only competitive thanks to Rock’s impairment.

  “That’s urban legend,” he said. “There is no pinebox. No Revolutionary-era secret floating around out there.”

  They were on their feet again, crouched, circling one another.

  Rock said, “Keep believing that.”

  Jamie stepped into a back kick that caught Rock square in the chest. The impact traveled up Jamie’s leg, a pressure wave rippling from knee to hip.

  Rock was flattened. He looked up with a smirk. “Learn that from the Africans? What else you pick up over there, AIDS?”

  Jamie stood astride his rival. “More slime, more filth. That’s how you play when you have no ideas.”

  Rock swung his knee through Jamie’s ankles, sweeping him to the ground.

  “Ideas.” He gripped Jamie around the neck. “The idea is a given—slime goes around the idea. You gotta fight for it. You Gallaghers think you draw it on a chalkboard and everybody should bow down. Bow down before the elites.”

  “Ah, shut up.” Jamie squirmed free and punched Rock again.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw faces crowding into the busted doorway. Not Sam’s and Joss’s—they must’ve gone—but men’s faces. The group from next door.

  Ruddy. Rapt. Intoxicated. Some had their cellphones out. None were stepping forward to stop the fight.

  Rock hit Jamie back, a sloppy blow that Jamie turned around into a half nelson.

  “Pussies,” Rock said, snapping his head against Jamie’s forearm. “Can’t take the ground fight. Without all little sister’s tech money, those ad buys, big air war? You all’d be out of the game already…”

  As Rock spewed nonsense, Jamie felt himself rising to the conflict. With his fists first, and then his mind. And now with his whole heart.

  Guilt and rage had started him down the path, but he’d traveling the last leg on his own. He was ready to hate—Rock, all the Pruitts. He was ready to follow Charlotte into the pit.

  “We’ll win because we’re right.” Jamie clenched his biceps, bending the beefy neck underneath. “We’re on the right side of history: the side of progress.”

  When Rock again called them pussies, Jamie added his second arm to make a full nelson. He thrust his joined knuckles forward.

  Rock’s neck bowed dangerously. “Man, you wanna snap it? You wanna kill me, is that it?”

  Jamie didn’t answer, firming his grip. He did want to. He’d been born to want it. He’d been raised and educated to want it.

  For two decades, he’d tried not to want it—but he had failed.

  “What would you have done if we hadn’t gotten he
re?” he hissed. “How many others? How many girls?”

  Rock looked sideways out of the hold, a gleam in his eye.

  The men glared at each other. Every muscle in their torsos and arms was flexed—half for escape, half to prevent escape.

  “I should send you to hell,” Jamie said. “For Owen and Joss. For all your victims.”

  “Do it, yeah.” Rock smiled, his remaining teeth smeared with blood. “Snap it. Snap my”—he swore—“neck, you spineless wimp!”

  Jamie muscled up and squeezed. Was he trying to end Rock’s life? Maybe. Maybe he was only shutting him up.

  Rock gasped and sputtered, but nothing dramatic happened to his neck.

  “They’re g—” Rock broke off, coughing. “Gone, you know. Your chicks. They left.”

  Jamie waited out his own breaths, which had become frantic as bellows. He looked around, keeping his grip, and saw Rock was right. Sam must’ve taken Joss someplace safe.

  “What’re we fighting for? Them?” Rock moved his head the tiny bit he could toward the gawkers. “Like gladiators? This is dumb.”

  Again, Rock was right. There was no point to this fight. Should Jamie detain Rock and call the police? What could they charge him with? Jamie didn’t know exactly what had transpired with Joss before they’d showed up.

  Even if he had bought her alcohol or worse, what prosecutor was going to bring penny-ante charges like that against a Pruitt?

  Jamie released Rock and exhaled at length.

  Rock slugged him.

  “Damn, are you thick.” Rock advanced on Jamie, who wobbled but kept his feet. “We’re always going to fight. Every time. Every time I see you.”

  He slugged Jamie again.

  Jamie slugged him back.

  The fight spilled into the main dining room, the gawkers spinning out of their way. Chairs crashed. Tablecloths flew, sending place settings clattering across the floor.

  The elderly bartender cleared his throat.

  “That’ll do, gents.” As he approached, he took a towel off his shoulder. “Nobody wants to involve the authorities.”

  Jamie had Rock pinned under his knees. “No, it won’t do! He’s got this coming. Everything I’m giving him now? He’s earned.”