Page 65 of He Hate Me

Her mom shrugs. “I’m sorry; it slipped my mind.”

I watch them walk to the garage, Devin’s hand on the small of Tanisha’s back.

Deja chews on her lower lip, wringing her hands. She swears and stomps into the kitchen, pulling out a small cucumber and biting the top off. She seems to take satisfaction in the loud crunch of the vegetable as she devours it. She opens a can of sparkling water and guzzles it down, banging the empty can on the counter when she’s done.

“Let’s go to the basement,” she says, decisively.

“Why?”

“There’s gotta be something down there to confirm once and for all if they knew each other. You found that stuff. There’s got to be more. ”

I should see this a spark of luck, the opportunity to search the basement without drawing suspicion, but I’m worried about Deja’s state of mind. Her eyes appear almost feverish.

“Why don’t we order something to eat and then we can go to the basement after dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten anything since lunch.”

“I just ate a cucumber and literally cannot choke anything else down right now. Go ahead, if you want, but I’m going down there.”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll grab a couple flashlights from the garage. It’s not that well-lit down there.”

I flip the switch on as we enter the unfinished part of the basement. Two naked bulbs turn on, one near the furnace and the other above the area where a random assortment of items are stacked together. I point Deja to the boxes I’ve already gone through, and I look through some plastic bins that turn out have nothing more interesting in them than Christmas decorations.

“I found something,” Deja says, barely five minutes into our search. She shows me a photograph of Devin and her dad wearing fraternity sweatshirts. She keeps digging through the box and pulling out photos. She compresses her lips and shakes her head before speaking.

“Both of them were in this fraternity. Don’t people usually keep their frat memorabilia? Paddles and whatnot?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“All of these, Brandon,” she says. “This is my mom and dad with Devin. They look really close, right?”

Both men were embracing Tanisha. David had his arm around her shoulders and Devin’s looked like it was resting in the small of her back. Could the three of them have been more than just friends at some point? Could that be the motivation for hiding this from Deja?

“This one’s weird,” she says, handing me a photo of Devin and David dressed like characters from Pulp Fiction. They did bear a passing resemblance to John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.

“Do you have a phone?” I ask. “Can you look up the name of those two guys from Pulp Fiction? The characters, not the actors.”

She opens a browser window and looks at me, impressed.

“Travolta played Vincent Vega and Samuel L. Jackson played Jules.”

I point my fingers in triumph. “That’s where Jules came from.”

“You know I’ve heard my mom call Devin, Vinnie, before, but I thought it was a weird nickname De-Vin, you know. But if they kept calling my dad Jules, then it’s probably short for Vincent.”

“Those guys were murderers, though,” I say. “Who would want to be like them?”

“They were cool, Brandon. They had all those badass lines. A lot of girls wanted to be the Bride from Kill Bill, but that didn’t make them serial killers.” Spree killers, technically, I think, but don’t say out loud.

“I didn’t say they were murderers, just that they seemed to identify with them.”

I find an empty envelope on top of a stack of boxes and give it to Deja to put the photos in. I turn back to the boxes, my subconscious nudging me to look for something my conscious mind missed. There are two stacks of boxes. One, the one the envelope was on, has a thick layer of dust. The other is dusty, but not evenly or as thickly as the box next to it. I move the dirty box onto the slightly less dirty box and see a fuse box. I’m a little disappointed, but my brain is trying to help me again. Something feels not right, and it takes some careful observation to put it together. The handle of the fuse box looks shiny, the paint right under it rubbed off. Someone has opened this box often. I beam my flashlight across the room to double-check, but I’m remembering correctly. There is a much larger and newer fuse box over there, so what is this one for.

I pry it open easily to find a large metal lockbox jammed into a little alcove that’s been carved out of the wall. My heart pounds with excitement. It’s about a foot long, maybe one or two inches more on one side, and four inches high. It looks sturdy, but the padlock keeping it closed is flimsy. It will be so easy to open I wouldn’t say it even qualifies as lock picking.

“What’s that?” Deja asks, shining her flashlight towards me.