Headlights(37)

Movement, to our left. I turn, in shooting stance. There’s a girl there, a teenager. She throws her arms up, stumbles back from us. “Oh my god, sorry. I didn’t mean…”

I lower my weapon. “Lucy Wheely?” Tillman says. The girl steps over wearing a Lord Huron T-shirt over a long-sleeve, and jeans. She looks terrified. She’s clearly been crying.

“Hi,” she says.

I say, “Hi. We’re—”

“My dad doesn’t want me talkin’ to you, but…” She shifts on her feet, tucks her hair behind her ear. “But I just wanted to say. You don’t know us, and I know what it looks like. I get how…” She takes a shaky inhale. “A lot of people have two sides to them. People say that they never knew someone had a dark side until they snap. Until they do something terrible one day … But if there is one person in this world who’s not like that, who’s good and only good and not even in an annoying way, just like really genuine and…” She turns pleading eyes on us. “Pete would never hurt anyone, I’m telling you. Please help—”

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!

Lucy and I both jump at the same time.

Pete’s car alarm blasts through the day, sends a flock of nearby geese sailing into the sky. Tillman stands beside it, his hand on the door handle, a sheepish look on his face. “Whoops,” he says. “Sorry, didn’t know it was locked!”

Frank Wheely runs out of the house and jogs toward us through the field.





8



We spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to get the fuckin’ car alarm off without a key, then I had to apologize to the Wheelys again for Tillman’s absolute stupidity. Not to mention, we didn’t get to properly ask Lucy anything while we had the chance. We drove around for a bit after, took all the roads around the property, but didn’t find anything.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask Tillman as we head back to Denver. When I am calm enough to speak.

“Just clumsy,” he says.

“Clumsy? Are you serious?”

“That girl didn’t know anything.”

“Why do you say that?”

He shrugs.

“Well, we can’t know because we didn’t get a chance to ask her.”

We drive with the podcast playing. And as we pull back into town Tillman checks his watch for what must be the eighteenth time since we got back in the car.

“Got somewhere better to be?” I say, taking a turn for South Broadway.

“We just try and get home for dinner, no matter what’s…” He trails off as we both remember that he’s talking about my ex-wife. He’s anxious to go home and eat dinner with Josie. It’s only four thirty, so I guess they do it early. Five-thirty dinner, then back to work, or if they don’t have to, then time for a movie, time for a fuckin’ nature walk.

He starts to say, “Sorry, if—”

“I’ll drop you off after this,” I say. I turn up the volume on his stupid podcast.

Lady Justice Brewing Company sits in a nondescript parking lot off Broadway, a stretch people call the Green Mile for all the dispensaries. On the way we pass the Mayan Theater, Wizard’s Chest, Mutiny Information Cafe. My parents used to bring me to these places. I like this part of Denver, where the punk scene lived—maybe still does, I don’t know—where there’s more than sports and strip malls.

The brewery, welcoming, colorful, is decorated for Christmas already, a small fake wood-paneled living room set up with a fake fireplace, stockings, Christmas lights. Skis rest against the walls, tinsel hangs from the ceiling. By one door stands a cardboard cutout of Dolly Parton in a Santa hat and cowboy boots, hanging an ornament on a fake aspen tree. In the corner living room setup, a family plays a card game. One of the kids colors on a sheet of paper.

My mind drifts back to the playing card in my pocket. My heart pounds. I shouldn’t be carrying it. Don’t know why I can’t let it go. Why I am acting completely insane.

Kimberly Chen, the highway patrolwoman and first killer back after the five-year hiatus, has out-of-state parents and a local brother. We’re told that David Chen is here but that we’ll have to wait until the end of his shift to speak to him—another thirty minutes. Which means I am spending thirty stationary minutes with Nat Tillman after that absolute shitshow in Greeley. Which means I most definitely need a beer.

We go to the counter and get the hazy they recommend on draft. A shadow drifts in and out from the employee room. Nat explains, unsolicited, the difference between a hazy, milkshake, session, sour, West Coast. He’s still talking when we sit down at a table and I text Daphne.

Dinner soon?

I take a sip, and I get a text back almost immediately. But it’s not from Daphne, it’s Josie.

We really need to talk. I don’t feel good about this. Kinda think you shouldn’t either.

I knock back the beer. Tillman’s still talking when I stand and get us each another.

“Oh no, I can’t. Thanks though, man.” I’ve just set two glasses down on the table.

“What?”

“I’m really just a one beer kind of guy. Two, I mean, woof, you don’t want to see me.”

“You—”

“I get wild.”