Chapter 45
I arrive fifteen minutes later.
Zane is chronically late, so I didn’t need to rush, but on the other hand, he also drives like chaos incarnate, so it seemed possible that he might show up on time or even early. I need to beat him to the playground.
As expected, the playground is completely empty.
It’s officially “closed after dusk,” as if any children would come here to play at one in the morning.
It’s a medium-size play area with tire swings, a play structure with a green plastic slide, and wood chips covering the ground that threaten to enter my shoes with each step.
Last night before bed, I went out and bought a six-pack of beer. It’s not the sort of thing we ever keep in the house, because Cooper and I don’t care for beer, but I need it tonight. As soon as I get to the playground, I crack open a can.
Then I add the opium. Enough to knock him out.
I certainly would never drink from a mystery can left on a playground, but I’m not Zane, who is eighteen years old with a penchant for getting in trouble. I place the beer in a prominent location on one of the benches lining the playground. Then I position myself behind a set of bushes. And I wait.
Zane is ten minutes late. When he arrives at the playground, he looks around, expecting to see Lexi waiting for him there. From my hiding place, I can see a flash of annoyance over his gaunt features. He might not wait for her.
Thankfully, I brought along Lexi’s phone for just this reason. I type out another message to Zane:
My mom got up to use the bathroom, so I got out a little late. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.
He reads the message, frowning. Is he going to wait for her? I have to do something to seal the deal. So even though it kills me, I type:
I want to do it right on the bench in the playground.
The message serves a dual purpose. First, it will ensure that he waits for Lexi, even though she’s not actually coming. And second, it gets him thinking about the park bench.
Sure enough, he walks over to the bench and sits down. I squint at him in the moonlight as he messes with his phone. I imagine he’s looking at the photos of Lexi, and I want to wring his neck.
Most of the time, I am able to push what happened that night with Hutch out of my head. But right now, it’s like he’s whispering in my ear: Don’t worry. This will be over in a minute.
I will not let that happen to my daughter.
It takes Zane a few minutes to notice the beer can. He glances at it a few times, then finally picks it up. He seems surprised that it’s nearly full. Then he sniffs it.
Opium does have an odor. It smells sort of sweet, with an earthy overtone to it.
It reminds me a little of the smell of maple syrup.
I’m hoping that the yeasty odor of the beer will mask the opium.
I watch Zane contemplating the can. Hopefully, I’ve taught my own children better than to drink from a random container left in the park, but I have a strong feeling Zane will have no qualms about it if he thinks it’s alcohol.
Drink it. Come on, drink it, you piece of shit!
And then he does. He’s drinking it. He downs the entire can of opium-laced beer in what looks like five gulps.
I stay poised with my phone in case he looks like he’s going to take off, but after about five minutes, he doesn’t seem as fidgety as he was before. Fifteen minutes later, he is yawning and rubbing his eyes.
Half an hour later, he is out cold.
I wait another ten minutes, just in case.
In the meantime, I make sure to delete the entire conversation between Zane and my daughter’s phone so she’ll never find out we met tonight.
While I’m at it, I also block his number.
I shove Lexi’s phone into my purse and walk over to where he is lying strewn across the bench.
He had been messing with his phone, and it fell out of his hand and is lying on the grass below the bench. I pick it up.
Unlike Coach Pike’s phone, which I opened using his fingerprint, this is the type of phone that unlocks by facial recognition.
This generally means that your eyes must be open to unlock it.
However, during the summer, I walked in on Lexi and Zane in my kitchen, and he was complaining about how his phone wouldn’t unlock if he had his sunglasses on.
I overheard the conversation and told him that you could turn off the “Attention” function on the phone so that it does not require you to be looking at it in order to unlock.
When he seemed confused, I offered to do it for him.
He handed me his phone, and I changed the settings personally.
That’s how I know that when I hold the phone up to his face, it will unlock, even though his eyes are closed.
I step back into the shadows in case Zane wakes up, although it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
After deleting the conversation between his phone and Lexi’s that led him to the playground, the next thing I do is scroll through the photos on his phone and find the ones that Lexi sent him.
I delete them all. It’s entirely possible he has them saved somewhere else, but deleting those photos is not my primary purpose.
I’m here to do something else.
Lexi told me that he had done this before. During his sophomore year, he dated a girl whose picture he sent around the school. Considering he was a sophomore, that girl was likely around fifteen years old. Which means that legally, he was distributing child pornography.
Now I must find the digital fingerprint of what he did.
It’s not fun searching Zane’s phone. I have to scroll through a lot of conversations with his friends involving my daughter, none of which are flattering. I find one from yesterday that particularly raises my blood pressure.
You still dating that Lexi chick?
Ya but she sucks at going down on me. Will probably dump her soon.
She needs lessons from Yvonne.
I think she’s too stupid to learn.
At some point, I put down the phone and just stare at Zane, who is still lying unconscious on the park bench.
I’m going through all this trouble to find incriminating photos, but it doesn’t have to be this difficult.
I’ve got a Swiss Army knife in the glove compartment of my car.
I can walk over, get it, and chop off his dick.
That would be justice, and it would certainly solve the problem!
I suppose it would create other problems though.
It takes me nearly half an hour of searching before I find what I’m looking for.
The photo of that poor girl is still in his camera feed, because of course he’d be too naive to ever delete it.
She looks only fourteen or fifteen. She’s completely naked, and she appears so deeply uncomfortable, I almost really do get that Swiss Army knife.
He has shared this photo multiple times, and the evidence is all there.
Right on his phone. He never deleted any of it.
And he called my daughter stupid.
I screenshot everything, then I create an anonymous email account. I send everything to both the high school administration and the local police department, noting the approximate age of the girl.
I allow myself a smile. Tomorrow will be interesting.