Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
The Luster police station is twice the size of the hospital. In a town this small, crime is an extracurricular. Either you get really good at bowling and take advantage of Six-Dollar Lane Sundays, or you start swiping sodas and candy from the gas station mini-mart.
Despite that, the police never seem all that busy. Over the past week, I’ve made it a point to fill their time. They’re lucky the snow closed down the roads for the rest of the night yesterday. Otherwise I would’ve headed straight here after getting off work early. Instead, I had to spend my one day off this week freezing my ass off on the bus stop bench.
I shove my hands into my pockets, feeling around for the switchblade I keep on me just in case. It took three trades at the group home we were in a few years back to get it. With its melted handle and dull blade, it’s not going to do much to anyone who might corner me, but it’s still comforting to know I’m not defenseless.
Officer Cartagena is easy to spot. Making his way across the parking lot, he doesn’t bother to look up from his phone, sipping his coffee at the same time. A cruiser makes a risky swerve to avoid hitting him, biting back what I’m sure was a curse when Cartagena looks up with a piercing glare.
“You drive like that when you got your kids in the back seat?” he calls out, as if he isn’t half at fault for looking at his phone instead of the road.
I hope someone punches him in the face someday.
I’d do the honors myself if I didn’t need him. Not that he’s actually made himself useful. All my calls to his office go straight to voicemail, claiming he’s out in the field “investigating.” If that’s what he was actually doing, we’d know who killed my sister. Crime is common here, but murder isn’t. Yet Cartagena would still rather spend all day handcuffing middle schoolers over petty theft than take anything I say seriously.
“Morning, Officer,” I call out, cornering him before he can get to his own cruiser.
The greeting jolts him, his hand flying up to his chest, splattering coffee across the hood of his car. But he plays it cool. “Good morning, Luna.”
I hate the way he says my name. Like we’re friends or colleagues. That’s his shtick. The older, burly lieutenant with a soft heart and hard exterior. Or, that’s what people used to think of him, at least. That soft heart turned rotten as soon as he made it to his sixties. Now he spends more time planning out his retirement in Boca Raton than he does on cases.
“Any updates?” I ask, settling my weight against the driver’s side door. He’s avoided me enough this week, I’m not letting him get off that easy.
Even through his sunglasses, I can feel the heat of his glare. He’s sick of me calling and emailing every day, showing up when he goes too long without replying. I would be, too, if I were in his position. Some teenager coming around telling you that you’re not doing your job. Wouldn’t be a problem if he pulled his head out of his ass, though.
“I told you, Ms. Flores, that I’d contact you as soon as I had anything else to share,” he replies through gritted teeth.
“Ms. Flores” sounds even worse. I’ve done a lot of growing up faster than I should have, but I still don’t feel old enough to be anything other than Luna. “You said you’d give me daily updates,” I correct. “That was over a week ago.”
“I said I’d give daily updates if there was anything to update you on.” His patience is as thin as his graying hair. He’s aged five years in the week and a half since he met me.
“You haven’t looked into her classmates,” I supply. He’s not picking up any clues on his own, so I’ll leave breadcrumbs to lead him to the trail. “I could reach out to the office of student af—”
“Again, that won’t be necessary.”
There’s that word again. Necessary. Nothing I’ve offered him has been deemed “necessary.” Not Solina’s computer, her friends, or my side of the story. They haven’t bothered contacting Solina’s school at all. He saw what was on the surface and decided it wasn’t worth looking beyond it. A small town full of reckless teenagers who loot gas stations for fun. A history of drunken incidents thanks to the ice coating the paths leading to the cliffs in Green Hills Park—broken legs and arms, or worse, snapped necks. A dead girl in the water. No signs of a struggle. The story wrote itself.
He won’t say it outright, either because he’s not allowed to or because he’s worried how I’ll react if he does. That he doesn’t believe me, that this is one of those open-and-shut cases that’s kept open for the sake of appearances but closed quietly when the dust starts to gather. It doesn’t matter that she left without her wallet, or that she wound up at a park six miles away with no car in the middle of a storm. It doesn’t matter that none of the pieces we have fit together. There’s never going to be any updates. As far as the police are concerned, this story has its ending.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me …” Cartagena slides a cautious hand around me, reaching for the door handle. I shift over, firmly planting my thigh over the handle. Cartagena’s an asshole, but he’s not about to risk groping a barely legal girl in his workplace parking lot.
“You still haven’t brought in her roommate for questioning. I don’t have her number, but—”
“The case is being closed, Luna,” he blurts out before I can finish, his cheeks red with either shame or pent-up anger. I hope it’s shame. “The paperwork’s been drawn up. Should be official by next week.”
My mouth goes dry, dread creeping up my spine. The flashes come back, Cartagena’s face clouded by visions of Solina’s eyes, vacant and milky white. How could they have seen her body—bloody, broken, and bruised—and picked this ending?
Cartagena uses my shock against me, waiting until my body goes slack to make a jump at the handle. “I’m sorry, Luna,” he whispers, before nudging me aside and pulling the door open.
If he were sorry, he wouldn’t be doing this. He’d take me inside and write down everything I have to say. About how Solina was afraid of heights. About how she hated the cliffs, always tugging me to the opposite end of the park. About how pale she was when she came home for winter break, her fingertips cold even though she always ran hot. About the last thing she said to me, how I told her—
I stop myself. I’ve dwelled on that night enough.
“I wish it was better news,” Cartagena continues, one foot in the cruiser and the other on the ground. “Happy new year, Luna. I hope the next one is easier on you and your family.”
Even his well wishes are half-assed. If he listened to my testimony, he’d know I don’t have any family left.
“Please don’t do this.”
Cartagena winces, his mouth stuck somewhere between a grimace and a frown.
Vulnerability isn’t my strong suit. Solina once said my walls are made of iron. But I’m so tired. Tired of waiting for an answer, tired of wondering if there was anything I could’ve done differently, tired of leaving the porch light on, just in case Solina comes back.
Just … tired .
Cartagena doesn’t respond. He closes the door and focuses his eyes on the road as he starts up the car, my lungs burning from the bitter sting of winter and car exhaust. Before he pulls out of the lot, he stops and looks back. He gives me a grim nod, a wordless final goodbye, and takes off.
And that’s it. My sister is buried five miles and six feet under from me. Luster was never supposed to be her home for long. From the moment we came here four years ago, we knew this was meant to be temporary. A pit stop on our way to something better. She was going to change everything. Go to the best school, get into the best college. Med school on a full ride. Now she’ll never leave. She’s the girl who played with risky thrills and paid the worst type of price. Dead at eighteen with no one left to grieve but a punk sister with a bad attitude.
I grit my teeth, clench my fingers until they dig holes in the tips of my gloves. Let the chill seep through, let it hold and harden me. You can’t cry in this type of cold. Your tears’ll freeze before they can roll down your cheeks.
My mind whirs, looking for a way out, or a loophole. Something else I can say or do to make Cartagena, any of them, listen. But my gut knows that it’s done. I may have dropped out of high school sophomore year, but I know no one lets you put a comma where they’ve decided to put a period. I fall back, staggering against the wall. The jagged brick cuts at my palm where the glove has frayed, but the pain is barely skin-deep. There’s a bigger ache inside me, threatening to swallow me whole.
Every day since they found Solina, that ache grows bigger, becoming less of a feeling and more a part of me. Today it feels impossible. How one person can hold this much pain inside them, enough to fill every ocean and some to spare. Cartagena’s cruiser turns at the end of the road, the red-and-blue taillights disappearing as the snow picks up. A piece of her goes with him, abandoned like the fast-food wrappers and coffee cups on the floor of his car.
And, maybe, a piece of me too.