“Why?”
“You took her from me. I want a piece of her back.”
The twigs and dry grass crackle beneath our feet as we resume our walk.
“Fine.” It’s a single word, but to my utmost satisfaction, it comes out of him like a man’s last breath, and when he inhales, it’s with a shudder. He’s suffering. Good. Now, if only he’ll get angry. “I was already dealing when she came to Boise. When I first met her, she had come in to find a job at Club Sin. It’s a strip club — “
“You fucking think? As if a place called ‘Club Sin’ could be anything else? Like it’s a fucking skating rink?” My mouth clacks shut as the anger burns out of me. “Sorry. I didn’t know she was a stripper.” The thought boils in my gut alongside the cheap whiskey.
“She wasn’t at first. She tried to be a waitress, and a bartender, but none of them was really going to get her the money she needed. Vanessa wasn’t using at that point; she was just down on her luck and needed a lot of money. She had plans, dreams, and they’d met the reality that was Boise. Even as beautiful and bright as she was, and let me tell you, no matter how many lights they shined on her in that strip club, her smile always shined brighter, there was something sad about her. Like life had dimmed her.”
“What was her dream?”
I hold my breath waiting. Wanting. Wanting to know what compelled my sister to disappear. To know what was so important to her she’d break my heart.
Another exhale that sounds like the life leaving Reaper’s body. “I don’t know.”
“Fuck you. Don’t deny me this.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But, Adriana, I was an addict then, just as I’m an addict now, even if I don’t put that shit in my veins anymore. It didn’t matter to me what a woman said, the onlythings I paid attention to were the work I had to do to get my next fix, and how bad I wanted to fuck your sister.”
“Don’t you talk about her like that.” I turn, my feet root themselves to the earth, and I uncork a slap that snaps his head sideways.
He doesn’t wince. “It didn’t take long for Grub, the guy who ran the strip club, and my boss, Victor Moretti, to break her down. By the time she and I got to talking, she was already using, and then, well, her only dream was figuring out how to make the high last as long as possible. Our relationship started when she offered to fuck me for an ounce so she could use the whole damn weekend. She cried after. And I’ve never told anyone this, but I did, too. I’ve done a lot of reprehensible shit in my life, but the worst I’ve felt is taking advantage of that woman who started out as just a tired, innocent, hopeful girl who was down on her luck, but got chewed up by the fucking life.”
“You’re sick.” Part of me wants to kill him now, to cut short his story and go the rest of my life knowing that my sister was an addict, but not knowing just how low she sank to keep that shit in her veins.
But the rest of me knows I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I missed years of my sister’s life, and Reaper’s story is the only connection I have to my lost little sister. With every heart-wrenching word, he breathes life into the face of the woman I last saw in a morgue photo.
“I am.” He breathes again, pauses, and looks up through the forest canopy at the sky. A glimmer of something shines in the corner of his eye. “Getting clean was her idea. It was always her idea. The first time, she was living at my place, and she sobered up after a weekend of using, and…” I hold out a hand, stopping him. There are details I don’t need or want to know, including what my sister did to keep herself high. “Somehow, when she sobered up, I didn’t have any extra stashed at my house, and Icame back to find her crying in the bathroom, covered in her own filth, screaming about how she couldn’t do this anymore. That she missed home, she missed her family, that she missed feeling like a person… I held her while she cried, and I think it was then that I first realized I loved her. We quit that day. And lasted a week the first time.”
My fists are knotted into balls of rage, and my eyes scan the forest, looking at anything but him. The man who took my sister into the depths of a living hell. “Who broke first?”
“No clue. We lived around that shit. I sold it, and it was practically on buffet for all the dancers once they finished their shifts. I ended a hard day by getting high — we had to defend some of our turf against some Latin gang from northern Nevada and I’d killed someone that day, up close, and it hit me hard — and I came home to find her passed out on my couch, syringe on the floor.” He shakes his head, wiping away something that might be a tear. “We went through that cycle until near the end.”
“Then?”
We reach a clearing, and he kneels in the grass. Piercing eyes look back at me, imploring, eager. He sighs, then smiles. “She fought really hard to get clean. Found real help. Might’ve done it, too. And she brought me along with her, too, in getting clean. Though I found help from someone else. And then… well, I killed her. It’s time.”
“You’re right. It’s time.” I stand in front of him and take out my gun. It feels heavier than I remember, more solid, more real, and woefully inadequate. Too quick, too clean, not painful enough. I put it away.
“The fuck are you doing?” He says, showing a hint of a snarl. Is this the same snarl he unleashed on my sister that last night? Or the day the first relapsed, after he’d killed that rival gang member?
Is this enough to truly commit murder?
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Then use your hands. Choke me, beat me to death, whatever the fuck you want to do, just fucking do it.”
In that moment, I realize I can’t choke him. I don’t even want to touch him. I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll see the side of him that my sister fell in love with. That I’ll feel the same spark that sent my sister to her grave.
Then I bend down, and with my shaking hands, I pick up a large rock.
Ricky nods, satisfied. “Good.”
“Tell me again about Vanessa’s death. Her last night. The police report said she died in the ER of a heroin overdose. That was you, wasn’t it?”
He nods. “She died because of me.”
