Liars table, p.9
Liars' Table, page 9
C.J. shrugged. “We’re going to have to come up with something sooner or later if we’re going to call the cops.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t told them what I was planning to do because I knew what their reaction would be. “Not if I just take it back.”
“You’ll what?” C.J.’s face reddened. “Are you nuts?”
“If it’s my car, why not? What were we going to do yesterday if we found it? Were we going to call the sheriff? Or were we going to take it home?”
“Just going to take it, but that was Miller County. People know us there and know your car. No one would have thought anything about us getting into it and driving off.” C.J. leaned forward and rested his arms on the front seat. “In case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t home here. If someone in those apartments sees us, they might think we’re stealing it and call the police.”
I gestured toward the graffiti spray painted on the walls, the boards over the windows, the litter in the grass. “Does this look like the type of place where people call the police? I bet people who live here mind their own business. The last thing they want are cops poking around.” When I didn’t get an answer, I turned back to lock eyes with C.J. “It’s one of those places where no one ever sees a thing. Or don’t you watch those TV shows?”
C.J. nodded in resignation and shrugged, his shoulders nearly touching his ears. “You’re probably right, but what are you going to do? Walk over there in broad daylight, look inside, and then hot-wire that car?”
“I don’t have to.” I dug into my pocket and extracted a key ring. Holding it high in the air, I said, “They stole my car, not my keys.”
C.J. slumped into his seat. A quiet “oh” was all I heard.
“No one over there is going to question a guy getting into a car with keys in his hand, cranking it up, and driving away. If the cops do show up, I’ll say everything you said earlier.” I pushed open the passenger door and asked, “Are we done arguing and ready for action?”
I swung my legs out of the car, but Wyatt’s hand gripped my arm to stop me. He was holding me back, his eyes wide. I tried to shake off the hand. “Now what?”
Wyatt pointed toward the apartments. “Him.”
The lot was no longer empty.
14
A shirtless man emerged from the dark interior of the first apartment. He yawned, revealing gaps in his brown teeth, and stretched. His bony arms and skinny chest were covered in tattoos. His greasy hair was thinning on top but hung long over his shoulders. Several days of patchy, unshaven facial hair spread over his gaunt cheeks and chin. Baggy, camouflaged shorts hung low enough on his hips to reveal a lack of underwear, a detail I really wished I hadn’t noticed. He wore unlaced high-top tennis shoes and carried a stained T-shirt wadded in his hand.
He plopped down on the top concrete step and tapped a cigarette out of a crinkled pack. With a flick of a lighter, he inhaled deeply, held it for several seconds, and blew a thin cloud of smoke in a stream over his head. He draped his arm across his knees and leaned his head forward onto the makeshift cradle.
Probably nursing a hangover, I thought as I slipped my foot back into the car. As quietly as I could, I pulled the passenger door shut. “Maybe I should wait. He looks like a pretty rough character.”
Wyatt answered with a quiet and rattled voice, his eyes never leaving the man. “He does.”
The nervousness in his voice was obvious. His face drained of color. His hands trembled on the steering wheel.
“Do you know him?”
“No. I’ve never seen him.” A slow shake of the head, though his eyes never veered from their target. “But I know the type.”
Wyatt had developed his bravado growing up in such an unstable environment. He had to bluff his way through many dicey situations, so he was usually confident, rarely frightened as he appeared now. I didn’t think he had lied about knowing the man but sensed something bothered him more than he was letting on. “What about him then? Something has you freaked out.”
Wyatt looked down at his feet, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to answer. I waited patiently until he finally replied. “The ink.”
“You mean the tattoos?” I studied the artwork crisscrossing the man’s body. “He does have a lot of them.”
“It’s more than the number.” Wyatt ran his hand along his lower arm, his fingers tracing the colorful rose tattoo done on his eighteenth birthday in memory of his mother. “It’s the look of them. That’s the homemade crap guys who’ve done time have. Mom dated a guy for a while with a bunch of those. Nasty dude.”
I had been so focused on how much of the man’s body was covered, I never noticed the lack of quality in the work. The lines of the images were shaky and unprofessional. The ink was mostly blue with only an occasional splash of color. Tattoo artists, like the one who had done Wyatt’s arm, prided themselves on their craftsmanship, the beauty of their work. The designs on this man’s body looked more hurriedly done without the tools a professional would use.
I didn’t have any tattoos myself but knew plenty of guys who got them, particularly back in my military days. Most of the artwork hadn’t aged well. As the skin sagged and muscle morphed into fat, the images became stretched and bloated. I tried to explain that to Wyatt when he expressed his plans to get one, but the boy was determined. He wanted to have a visible memory of his mother. I respected that sentiment, even if I didn’t agree with the tactic. After the work was done, though, I admitted it was beautiful in its own way.
This man’s tattoos appeared to have been made with anger instead of love. They added to his menace. “So, we know he’s been in jail. Does that make it a decent bet he’s the car thief?”
C.J. grunted in interest and leaned forward. “Looks to me like he wouldn’t be too bothered taking another man’s property.”
“That’s not really the question.” I chewed my lip. The whole situation continued to bother me. “Why my car? Why would a man like that—or any man—drive all the way over to Millerton just to steal an old car? Why not steal one from around here?”
Silence reigned in the back seat as C.J. puzzled over the question. Finally, he hesitantly answered. “I don’t know. Maybe he figured if he stole one from farther away, the odds were better he gets away with it.”
“I’ll buy that. But maybe he goes to Sevierville or Pigeon Forge a half hour down the road and steals a car from a motel parking lot. Or maybe he goes up to Morristown or over to Newport. But Miller County? Almost two hours away and all the way across the mountains.”
C.J. shrugged. “The farther, the better?”
I turned to face my friend. “Think about that. You’re saying to avoid arrest, he’s going to steal a car not just ten or twenty miles away, but in the next state. And not just that, but he’s going to go way off the interstate out into the sticks on some back roads until he runs out of pavement. Then he just happens to pick my house and steals an old car that doesn’t have much value. Does that make sense?”
“Well, not when you put it like that.” C.J. slumped back into the seat and crossed his arms. “How else do you explain it? I mean, unless I’m crazy, that is your car. And it is here. Do you really care why?”
The pit in my stomach continued to twist and grow. I started to ask Wyatt his opinion, but the apartment door swung open again. A little girl, maybe three or four, came running out the door. The man’s face brightened as he tossed his cigarette into the dirt. She plopped herself into his lap, and he draped an arm around her. We couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was animatedly telling him a story. He smiled and laughed with her.
I heard C.J.’s seat squeak as he leaned forward again. “He doesn’t look quite so menacing anymore, does he?”
They sat like that, talking and laughing with each other, until the door opened again, and a woman emerged, squinting against the bright sun. With her left arm, she held a squalling infant propped against her hip. A third child, a toddler in a saggy diaper, clutched her leg. She waved her right hand, smoke trailing from the cigarette it clutched, and yelled at the man. The words carried across the vacant lot, too muffled to make out, but her anger was clear from the distance.
The man kissed the little girl on her head and then helped her up from his lap. He stood and faced the woman, nodding as she talked. He retreated down the walk, his hands held up, palms open and fingers spread. His lips moved, the words too quiet to hear, though they appeared to be an attempt to mollify her.
She marched forward, driving him into the parking lot. With an extended finger in her cigarette-clutching hand, she jabbed his shoulder to emphasize her words. The cigarette glowed red, and ashes floated to the ground as she hurled her words.
A blind parted in one of the other apartment windows but quickly snapped shut again. No one was coming to the man’s defense. He continued his backward walk, shrugging and talking as she continued to match him step for step. When his butt tapped against the side of the Nova, he reached into his pocket, extracted a set of keys, and opened the car’s driver door. Seconds later, the engine roared to life, and he backed hurriedly out of the space. He shifted gears, revved the engine, and spun the tires as he escaped down the street.
“So much for any doubt he’s the one who took the car.” C.J. clucked his tongue as they watched the woman standing in the empty space, yelling invectives after the disappearing car. “Hey, how did he start the car so easy?”
“With my keys.”
“I thought you had the keys.”
“I have mine, but I leave the spare above the visor.”
“The spare? Above the visor?” C.J. groaned. “That doesn’t sound too smart.”
I shot him a look. “You’re saying I won’t find a spare set of your keys above the visor in your truck?”
“No.”
“In the glove box?”
“No.”
“In a little box attached by a magnet under the wheel well?”
C.J.’s face reddened. He looked away and sputtered, “That’s better than the visor.”
I snorted and turned my attention back across the vacant lot. The woman retreated to the top step and sucked deep on her cigarette before flicking it out toward the road. With her now-empty hand, she peeled the toddler off her leg and shooed him inside the apartment with a swat of her open hand on his diapered butt. He ran squalling into the shadows, and she followed with the infant. The little girl was the last to disappear into the darkness of the apartment, and the door slammed shut behind her.
C.J. muttered, “Poor guy would probably have more peace in jail. We’d do him a favor getting him arrested.”
“Well, we can’t lose him now.” I slapped Wyatt on the shoulder and pointed at the fading cloud of smoke. “Follow that car.”
C.J. groaned and settled back into the seat. “I’ve seen that TV show too.”
15
We drove for several blocks, well behind my Nova but with it in view. My mind raced, trying to understand the theft of my car and how this man was involved. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense that he was the one who stole it. He clearly had it, but that didn’t mean he’d taken it. And if he hadn’t, then who had? My suspicions grew about what had really happened. I needed to confront Wyatt about it. I had no choice but to ask. Apparently, Wyatt was going through the same debate because we spoke at the same time.
“I need to ask you something—”
“I have a confession to make—”
We exchanged glances, and I said, “I’m thinking the tattooed man didn’t steal my car.”
C.J. mumbled from the back seat, “Tattooed man. I like that. Very secret agent.”
Wyatt ignored him and shook his head. “A friend of Noah’s did.”
My throat tightened, and I clenched my fist. “You mean Noah did.”
The car was silent for a few seconds. “Noah was with him, so… yeah.”
I rubbed my jaw. “If he… they… took it, how does this guy have it?”
“I’m guessing this is the dude Noah owed.”
“And how do you know that?”
Wyatt looked out the window and chewed on the inside of his cheek. His answer came quietly. “Noah came to Millerton and asked me for money.”
I studied my fingernails, and I counted to ten before answering, “So, you have seen him?”
The reply was barely above a whisper. “Just this once.”
C.J. leaned forward, clasped a hand on each of our shoulders and squeezed. He spoke in a steady, calm tone. “Wyatt, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us what you know?”
Wyatt’s face reddened as he gritted his teeth. He looked up into the rearview mirror at C.J. and hesitated. I nodded to him to let him know it was okay. We needed to stop with the secrets. With a loud sigh, he explained, “To understand, you have to know he was the only true friend I had back then. He was a runaway from some little farming town in Arkansas. He had a drunk old man who knocked him around and a mother who didn’t stop it. He told me they probably never bothered to look for him when he left. He lived on the streets, earned his money doing whatever he had to do—and you really don’t want to know those details.”
I heard C.J. gulp. No one liked hearing these things. I asked quietly, more because I really wanted to know than to ferret out another lie. “So, he really wasn’t a school friend?”
“I caught him rooting through the dumpsters behind the school, but I think that was as close as he ever got.” A sly grin crossed Wyatt’s face but then faded away. “He was scrounging for food. He was starving, and I felt sorry for him, so I split my sandwich with him. I got free lunches at school, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, you know?”
Honestly, it sounded like a big deal to me, but I wasn’t going to interrupt again.
Wyatt continued, “We were squatting in some vacant house at the time, so I let Noah tag along and crash there. Mom didn’t always come home—sometimes for days—and she didn’t mind that I had someone I could trust with us.”
He licked his lips and looked away from us. “One day, we had broken into a house, and a cop car pulled up. I guess they had one of those silent alarms or something, but we hadn’t noticed. Or maybe a neighbor called. Whatever, the cops were there, and we scrambled out a window and split up. The cop had to choose which of us to chase and picked Noah. I figured he would narc me out when he got busted. Anyone else would have. I mean, honestly, I probably would have ratted him out if I had been the one caught and it would get me off the hook. But he didn’t. He never said a word. From then on, we were tight. If we stumbled on food, we split it. If one of us got money, the other got half. And, yeah, when we scored drugs, we shared them.”
He looked over at me and said quietly, “I know you don’t like hearing all the things I used to do, but you don’t know what it was like. Both of us starving but sharing a piece of moldy bread. Craving drugs so bad you think your body is going to rip itself apart, but you split it with someone else. Being able to go to sleep and wake up and your stuff isn’t stolen, and you aren’t stabbed because your friend was watching over you. Yeah. He was my friend.”
I caught Wyatt’s eyes and tilted my head back toward C.J. “I won’t pretend to understand everything, but I do respect friendship.”
Wyatt nodded, his eyes filling with tears. His voice was unsteady when he resumed. “The last day I saw him was the day we came home and found her. It was obvious the second I saw her she was dead. I can’t chase the image out of my head. Her lips were blue. Her eyes rolled back into her head. Vomit dribbled out of her mouth.”
He sniffled. “I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t think straight. I shook her. Shouted at her. And when that didn’t work, I held her head in my lap and begged her to wake up.” He ran the back of his hand across his nose and sniffled. “Noah heard the cops coming. He tried to get me moving. I couldn’t. Or maybe I could, but I didn’t care. He jumped out a window and ran.”
I leaned back in the seat. “That was the night they called us and told us about you. So when you threatened to run, you were going to go find him?”
“I knew where he’d be. In that house. He had nowhere else to go. I was worried about him. I really struggled with what to do. I had abandoned my friend.”
“But you stayed in touch?”
“Not exactly. One of the guys in my last rehab had a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing. I was able to pass my cell phone number over. He would call when he could, which wasn’t often. Last week was one of those times. He said he was getting his life back on track. Had gotten clean. Worked some real jobs. Then he told me another friend who had gotten out of the life had called him and said there was a job in Raleigh if he wanted it. Even would let him crash in his apartment until he got enough money saved up to get his own place. Noah said he was leaving everything behind—not that it was much—and driving from Knoxville to Raleigh, just passing through Millerton, and wanted to see me.”
I asked, “You believed him?”
Wyatt shook his head firmly. “First rule of drugs—an addict will lie about anything. I hoped it was true, but no, I didn’t just believe him. I agreed to meet but not at the house. I said we’d get a cup of coffee out at the truck stop by the interstate. For the first time since Mom died, I saw him.”
“Did the job not work out or something?”
He sighed and tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. “The second I saw him, I knew everything he said was made up. First, he had some guy riding with him. Claimed it was his friend in Raleigh, but that made no sense if he was driving there to meet him. I didn’t even have to ask because one look at them told me neither one of them was clean. Their eyes were wild, clothes were filthy, and they both stank as if they hadn’t had a bath in weeks.” He grunted in disgust. “I can’t believe I used to be like that.”
“What did he want if he wasn’t going to Raleigh for a job?”
“What every addict wants—money. He told me he owed some guy big. Claimed the guy would kill him if he didn’t come up with the green.”
