Pleasantville by Attica Locke

Author:Attica Locke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Lonnie meets him at the house after dark. Jay leaves a plate of baked chicken, peas, and cabbage for her on the table. The kids ate early, with him, and went to their own rooms, Ben to his comic books and his PlayStation and Ellie to whatever her breakup with Lori King has freed her to do. Homework, he hopes. Maybe Lori’s indiscretion might actually land Ellie on the honor roll this semester. Belle Blue is playing on the hi-fi when Lonnie walks in, lugging the same beat-up cardboard box full of her old notes, this time with a six-pack of Shiner Bock resting on top. “A. G. Hats,” she says when she hears the music, the black-and-blue keystrokes. She sets the box on one of the kitchen chairs.

“You a fan?”

Lonnie shakes her head. “Amy is.”

The thought of it, any little thing about the woman she’s both in love and enraged with, makes her smile, despite herself. “She plays it once a week, I bet.”

“You know anything about him, why he quit playing?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“No,” Jay says, leaving it at that.

Lon takes off her jacket, a red quilted vest with cotton sleeves, draping it on the back of a kitchen chair. She thanks him for the food, inquires if there’s any pepper sauce or chowchow for the cabbage, tearing into half the plate while standing up. Jay cracks open one of the beers and hands it to her.

“You get it?” he asks.

“I got it.”

Then, swallowing, she tells him he’s not to quote a word of it. “You never saw this, okay? If even a period or comma is different from whatever you get from the state in discovery, I don’t want to hear it. You never saw a thing from me, understand? Resner did it as a favor. He’s pissed as hell about all of it, being pushed off the case, the way they’re playing this whole thing, not bothering to link this girl to the others.” She reaches beneath the flaps of the cardboard box. Sitting right on top is a thin manila envelope. She picks it up and hands it across the table with a piece of advice. “Take a deep breath first.”

Jay opens the envelope. Inside, he finds a copy of the autopsy report following the death of Alicia Nowell, age eighteen. The first thing he sees is a color picture of her pulpy, bruised face, swollen around the eyes. The flesh at one corner of her mouth has been torn, the flap of skin pulled back like a bloody curtain to show her chipped right incisor, covered with dirt and tiny bits of dried grass. Her eyes are open, staring out at him, the mud-coated skin above her eyebrows knitted into a tiny, woeful w. Jay stumbles back at the sight, dropping the handful of papers onto the floor. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

“I know,” Lonnie says.

“The other girls, they weren’t beaten, were they?”

Lonnie shakes her head, picking up the pages.

“What is all this?”

Jay turns at the sound of his daughter’s voice.

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