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  IDENTITY

  BY

  SHAWNA SEED

  Copyright © Shawna Seed, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  PART ONE

  SHARLAH

  ONE

  Naïve.

  When the cop first said it, Sharlah wasn’t sure what he meant. It was one of those words she’d read but never actually heard anyone say. In her head, she always rhymed it with “cave.”

  “Sweetheart, if you believe that, you are some kind of naïve,” he said. “Wise up.”

  Sharlah leaned toward the wire mesh that separated her from the officer in the front of the parked cruiser. “I’m telling you, this is a mistake. Brian’s working at a construction site in Houston today.”

  Construction accident – that had been her first thought when she rounded the corner on her way home from work and saw all the cars in front of the house. She thought the police were there to tell her something terrible had happened to Brian.

  One minute she was driving along, half-listening to the news – something about President Reagan and El Salvador – and trying to decide whether the clutch in her Colt felt mushier than it had that morning. The next minute, she was met at the curb by a cop who ushered her into the back of his car.

  He said Brian was being charged with drug trafficking, whatever that meant, and they were searching the house. He showed her the warrant, but he wouldn’t tell her anything.

  Sharlah shifted uncomfortably in the back seat and tried, discreetly, to pull her skirt away where it was sticking to the backs of her thighs. It was 3:30, getting on toward the hottest part of the day, and her waitress uniform was 100 percent polyester. That was great for repelling bacon grease and ketchup stains, but not so comfortable on an August afternoon. She was glad she’d at least peeled off her pantyhose in the car and changed into her flip-flops before she drove home from work.

  She’d been sitting in the back of the stifling cruiser for 10 minutes, silently fuming after answering an initial barrage of questions.

  Sharlah Marie Webb. Yeah, Sharlah with an h on the end. Nineteen. Yeah, she lived here. No, she never saw any drugs. No, she never saw Brian with lots of cash – she wished! Guns? No. Not even to hunt? He kept his deer rifle at his folks’ house, she said, not bothering to add that Brian liked fishing better than hunting.

  Tired of waiting, she aimed a question of her own at the back of the cop’s neck. “How long do I have to sit out here?”

  “Go on up if you want,” he said without turning around. “Nobody said you couldn’t.”

  That made Sharlah mad, because if anybody had told her she could go on in, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been sitting outside all this time. She didn’t say anything, but she made sure to slam the car door extra-hard when she got out.

  A dark-haired cop with an impressive mustache and mirrored sunglasses was on her front step. He gave her the once-over, lingering on her chest, then smirked at her like he’d gotten away with something. Sharlah, who’d needed a bra since fifth grade and had dealt with worse, glared at him and pushed through the front door.

  She stepped inside the house and gasped. Every piece of furniture in the living room had been turned upside-down. The lining of the couch had been slashed and pulled back. Albums spilled across the floor. The back of the TV had been removed, exposing the wiring.

  It was a shotgun house, and all the doors were open, so Sharlah could see straight through the bedroom and into the kitchen at the back of the house. The cops had tossed every room.

  Two of them stood in her living room going over some papers. One was older, with gray hair and a soft, jiggly gut that slopped over his belt. Sharlah recognized the younger one, who came to the restaurant sometimes. Never wanted a coffee refill, 15 percent tip to the penny, didn’t stare openly at her boobs – pretty much an ideal customer in her book.

  Another cop stood in the doorway to the bedroom with a pair of her panties in his hand.

  “Hey!” Sharlah’s foot hit the squeaky floorboard in the living room, and all three cops looked up. “Goddammit! Put those down!”

  The expression on the older cop’s face soured. He said something to the one in the bedroom, who put the panties down, then sidled past Sharlah and out the door.

  “Pervert,” she said under her breath as he walked by.

  Sharlah turned to the older cop. “Are you in charge? Where’s Brian?”

  He took a few steps toward her. “So you’re the suspect’s girlfriend? I’m going out to the car to finish the paperwork. You’ll need to sign.”

  The suspect’s girlfriend. Sharlah didn’t like the sound of that. She called after the retreating cop. “Are you done? Can I start picking up?”

  “You can pick up,” the younger cop said, the same way he said, “Eggs over easy, bacon, wheat toast, coffee.” Flat. No expression.

  Sharlah knelt and gathered albums into a neat stack, unconsciously alphabetizing as she went. She slotted Def Leppard after The Clash, Joan Jett between Joe Jackson and Billy Joel, all three of them before Journey.

  “Did you guys really have to make such a goddamned mess?”

  Loverboy, Men At Work, Metallica…

  The Men At Work album belonged to her friend Missy and needed to be returned. Sharlah set it to one side.

  The cop was looking out the front door, pointedly ignoring her. He was tall and wiry, with strawberry blond hair, cut short. His neck was sunburned.

  Redneck jerk, Sharlah thought. He’d always seemed nice when he came to the diner, but now she regretted the effort she’d put into getting his orders right.

  The dark cop with the mustache and sunglasses called through the screen door. “Clearing out. See you later.”

  The red-haired cop bobbed his head once. “Later, Moreno.”

  Sharlah couldn’t believe the way the cops went about their business like it was no big deal to make a mess of someone’s house. She spotted a library book – Mistral’s Daughter – sprawled under the coffee table, her bookmark a foot away. “You lost my place in my book,” she snapped at the redhead. “Thanks a lot.”

  “What’s the red stain on your steps?”

  “Grenadine,” she said, which was basically the truth. “It’s hard to get out.”

  “It smells bad. You should try bleach.” The cop turned around and studied her for a minute. Then he walked toward the couch. “Take the other end,” he said.

  Working together, they righted it. He glanced toward the front door.

  “Morgan’s coming back. Don’t cuss in front of him. He’s born-again. It’ll just make things worse.”

  “Worse than this?” Sharlah said, sweeping her hand around the room. “Must be nice to be a cop and get to bust shit up whenever…”

  “Your boyfriend’s in the county jail.”

  Sharlah had been working up a head of steam, but she stopped. “Can I go get him now? Or will they keep him overnight?”

  The cop shook his head. “He’s looking at felony charges. If he can’t afford a lawyer, they’ll give him a public defender in time for his arraignment. That’s when they’ll set bail, but it won’t happen until Monday.”

  Sharlah’s shoulders slumped. “Not until Monday?”

  As soon as the papers were signed and the last cruiser had pulled away, Sharlah locked the front door, sat on the sagging couch and considered her options.

  She didn’t know how much a lawyer cost, but she suspected the $65 she had in savings wasn’t enough. She didn’t even know where to start. Pick one out of the phone book?

  She hated to admit it, b
ut she was going to need help, and that boiled down to two choices. She could call Brian’s older brother, Kevin, or she could call his friend Cliff.

  One advantage to calling Cliff was that he lived in town, and Kevin was an hour away in Houston. Cliff was pretty much an honorary brother, anyway. He grew up on the same street and was right between the two Lowry boys in age. The way Brian told it, after divorce tore through their neighborhood in the early '70s like one of those plagues in The Ten Commandments, Cliff practically lived at their house.

  The disadvantage to calling Cliff was that he didn’t have a regular job, which made him hard to track down.

  Kevin, on the other hand, would be easy to find. He’d be at his desk at the family business, where he was his dad’s right-hand man. And that was the problem with calling Kevin – he would probably tell their parents.

  Brian had a rule about not asking his folks for help, because he figured if he didn’t take anything from them, they couldn’t boss him around.

  Sharlah walked through the bedroom, willing herself to ignore the mess the cops had made, and into the kitchen. It was a disaster, too, but she couldn’t focus on that yet. She headed straight to the phone mounted on the wall next to the back door.

  Deciding that Cliff was the better bet, she called the condo he shared with his girlfriend, Missy, but the phone just rang and rang. Then she called the restaurant where Missy worked, to see if she knew how to get Cliff, but the bartender said Missy wasn’t due in until 5.

  The clock on the stove said 4:35. It was Friday afternoon, and it seemed to Sharlah that if she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late to do anything before Monday.

  She ran her finger down the list of numbers taped next to the phone. Brian was terrible at numbers, could never keep them straight.

  The last two entries were for his parents’ house and the family business. Sharlah had added them, though she really shouldn’t have bothered. One visit to the Lowrys’ house in Houston had made it obvious they wanted nothing to do with her.

  Sharlah took a deep breath and dialed.

  “Lowry Marine,” a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hi, I need to speak to Kevin Lowry, please.”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “My name’s Sharlah Webb,” Sharlah said, hoping the woman wasn’t going to wave down Brian’s dad as soon as she heard the name.

  The woman paused, just for a beat, then said, “I’ll connect you.”

  In the stories Brian told about growing up, he and his brother were always getting into mischief together, and Kevin specialized in finessing things with their folks afterward. He could talk his way out of trouble when the boys got caught wrapping the neighbor’s house in TP or breaking a window playing ball in the street.

  Now that they were grown, Kevin was still the one who knew how to please. He graduated with a business degree and married his college sweetheart. He and his wife, Lynn, had bought a house near his parents and were about to produce the first Lowry grandchild.

  The hold music stopped abruptly. “Sharlah?”

  “Hi, Kevin. I hate to call like this, but Brian…”

  “Is in jail. Yeah, I know. He used his one phone call on Dad.”

  Until Kevin said that, Sharlah had been holding onto the idea that maybe Brian wasn’t in too much trouble. She thought it might be like the time a friend got hauled in for drunk and disorderly. He was out the next day, fined $100.

  If Brian called his dad, though, it had to be bad. Really, really bad.

  “Sharlah, was that all you wanted to tell me? Things are crazy here, and I need to get going.” Kevin’s voice began to fade, and Sharlah pictured the phone receiver on its descent to the cradle on his desk.

  “Is Brian OK? The police who searched the house wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Kevin snapped to attention. “They searched the house? Did they find anything?”

  “They didn’t take anything that I saw,” Sharlah said. “They said something about drugs? What’s going on?”

  “Brian got pulled over this morning, and like a moron he let them search the truck,” Kevin said.

  Sharlah bristled at “moron” but let it go. “Did they find a joint in the ash tray or something?”

  “It’s worse than that,” Kevin said. “Look, Dad’s down there trying to straighten this out. Mom’s losing her mind, and I promised to get over to the house. I’ll get Dad to call you, OK? I don’t really know anything else. I have to go now.”

  With that, he hung up.

  Not knowing what else to do, Sharlah started cleaning up the mess the cops had made of her kitchen. She put the lid back on the Folgers can and swept the spilled coffee into the trash. She did the same with the flour and sugar. She shut all the drawers and cupboards that had been left standing open.

  Sharlah picked up a bottle of tequila from the counter and eyed the golden liquid left at the bottom. Uncapping the bottle, she tipped it back and drained it.

  Eyes watering, she tossed the empty bottle in the trash.

  Nothing anyone said squared with the Brian she knew. She’d known bad guys, and Brian wasn’t like that.

  That had been one of the things that drew her to him when they met, right after she’d moved to town. She’d come because a girl from her hometown talked up how great it was. It was only after Sharlah arrived that she realized the girl was just talking big. She didn’t want Sharlah to room with her – in fact, she didn’t even want to be her friend.

  Sharlah found a job waiting tables at a beach joint where Brian hung out. She liked his blue eyes, his easy smile and the way his Levis hung on his hips. But mostly she noticed that he was a good guy, always getting keys away from people who shouldn’t drive, heading off fights, steering drunk girls away from guys who were trouble.

  Brian wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t trouble.

  She moved to the bedroom, where all of their clothes had been tossed from the dresser to the floor. The sheets were pulled off, and the mattress was askew. Brian’s guitar was dumped on the bed; the case was sitting open on the floor. The cops had slit the lining.

  “OK, that just pisses me off,” Sharlah said out loud in the empty room.

  There weren’t any drugs in the house, she was sure of that. She did all the cleaning – Brian was basically a slob – and she’d never seen so much as a joint. She sure as hell hadn’t seen any big stacks of cash.

  It had to be some kind of mistake.

  Didn’t it?

  Sharlah sat down on the bed with an armful of clothes.

  Brian had been different lately. He was tired and grumpy, and he never wanted to go out or see their friends. Cliff and Missy had been over the weekend before, but that was the first time they’d all hung out since summer started, even though Cliff was Brian’s best friend. And Brian had hardly seen Kevin at all since Lynn got pregnant.

  Sharlah had noticed the drifting, but she didn’t know what to make of it. When they were growing up, the boys were so close that people called Cliff and Brian and Kevin the Three Musketeers. In high school, they had matching T-shirts made with a picture of the candy bar, kind of an inside joke.

  Cliff had been wearing his Three Musketeers shirt the week before, when he and Missy showed up with a pizza and the new Men At Work album. They also brought beer for the guys and all the ingredients for Tequila Sunrises for the girls. Brian, who never got mad about anything, seemed annoyed at Cliff over the shirt.

  It should have been the kind of night the four of them had shared hundreds of times: listening to records, drinking, laughing, just hanging out.

  But something was not right that night, and it wasn’t just Brian’s mood. Missy drank way too much and started needling Cliff. When they were leaving, she threw up all over the front steps and Cliff’s shirt.

  Brian carried Missy to the car while Sharlah cleaned Cliff off with the hose. He didn’t even try to save his shirt. He just stuffed it in the trash can at the curb.

  By the ti
me Sharlah had cleaned the worst of the mess off the steps, Brian was asleep.

  She should have known right then that something was very wrong, because when had Brian ever just gone to sleep on a Friday night without wanting to make love?

  TWO

  Brian’s parents were coming to town to meet with his lawyer, and Brian’s dad said they needed Sharlah to be there. Needed, he’d said. Not wanted. Sharlah wasn’t sure which was better.

  Of course her manager was being a pain in the butt about letting her out of work early, because Saturday was such a busy day.

  Sharlah had been worried about explaining the situation to her boss, and she even considered making up some kind of cover story. But everyone at work seemed to have heard about Brian’s arrest.

  The diner’s worst gossip pumped her for information to round out what she’d already heard: Brian had a million dollars’ worth of pot in his truck, more arrests were coming, supposedly some cops were in on the whole thing.

  Everybody acted surprised she hadn’t called in sick, an idea that hadn’t even occurred to Sharlah. She didn’t really feel like being at work, sure, but she couldn’t afford to skip. She needed the money.

  Usually Sharlah didn’t mind her job. Oh, sometimes the customers stiffed her on tips, and sometimes the cooks yelled if they couldn’t read orders. But mostly it was just the same thing day after day – running around like crazy during the breakfast and lunch rush, then refilling ketchup bottles and rolling napkins until it was time to clock out.

  She’d been at the diner almost two years, ever since she left the beach place where she’d met Brian. That job hadn’t really worked out. She was 17 when she started – not old enough to serve alcohol, which was where the big tips were. The assistant manager had said he could let her work the bar when the manager wasn’t around, but from the way he made the offer, Sharlah could tell he’d want something in return.

  So she quit and went to work at the diner. Starting at 5 a.m. wasn’t fun, but it put her on the same schedule as Brian, and Sharlah usually liked the job OK.