If he gives me a reason.
“A-are you l-like him?” I demand. He’s sweating, trembling and so am I. I tighten my grip on the knife’s handle and push into him with my hips. He yelps. “Are y-you like him?”
“What? Who?”
“K-K—” No, no. Not Keith. “D-Darren.”
“I—”
“D-do you fuck little girls?”
“What? No! No—” He almost shakes his head but the force of the knife stops him. He swallows, his Adam’s apple convulsing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where’d y-you meet online? In s-some sick fuck p-place?” I push again and Ellis’s moans, near unintelligible with the fear I’m putting in him. “F-fucking where?”
“It was—was—” He takes a deep breath. “Counterwatch. It’s a—it’s a game, like a, a—an online game! We were on the same team. I don’t…” His eyes frantically search the room and even in all its chaos, and with a knife against his throat, he spots the IDs and the smattering of tags on the floor. He says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I can feel my body shaking, my hand shaking against his throat and I wonder if I could kill him that way, by accident. Something about the way he said it, I don’t know what you’re talking about, is working through me in a way I don’t like because I can hear a lie a mile away, and Ellis …
Ellis isn’t lying.
“So why don’t”—he takes a shuddering breath—“why don’t you tell me.”
I shake my head.
“You’re hurt,” he says and I keep shaking my head, because I don’t want him to do what he’s doing, talking to me like I’m some wild thing, like I can be talked down with the gentleness he’s dressed his voice in.
“N-no,” I say.
He blinks, several times.
“Are you gonna kill me?”
I press my lips together and feel the tears forming in my eyes.
I’m dangerous, I want to tell him. I have a knife …
The gravity of how fucked I am hits me.
My breath catches in my throat.
“I don’t think you want to do this,” he says.
“Don’t,” I beg him because what’s going to happen to me when I move my hand. He’s going to call the cops, he’ll call the cops and all of this will have been for nothing. “D-don’t—”
“Look,” Ellis says. “Just put the—put the knife down. You’re hurt. Let’s look after that, okay? We’ll just fix up your arm and you tell me … you tell me about Darren, okay?”
“N-no.” I push the knife a little, like a promise to myself. I could do this, if I have to. I can. I will. “You’re his f-friend. You’ll c-call the c-cops and—” No, no, no. “It has t-to be me. I have t-to b-be the one—”
“Let me help you.” He looks like he’s going to cry. “Please.”
THE GIRLS
S1E5
WEST McCRAY:
Langford is an in-between sort of place. In fact, you wouldn’t think it was a town, driving through it. It’s a smattering of houses and a few businesses here and there, no real order to it. Just a stop along the way. The address Cat Mather gave me—the one Sadie was headed to—turns out to be a motel called The Bluebird. The most diplomatic description I can give it is rustic, but really, it’s holding on by a thread, the building doing a slow collapse in on itself. The siding is grimy, the roof badly in need of repair, if not outright replacement, and I spot a few cracked and broken windows here and there. It’s got no avian aesthetic to earn it its name and in sixty days, its owner, Joe Perkins, will hand the keys over to Marcus Danforth, who will begin demolition. Joe will say a final good-bye to the place he’s called home for more than fifty years. So I guess it’s lucky I arrive when I do.
JOE PERKINS: Well, it used to be called Perkinses’ Inn before I took it over. My parents owned this place, my grandparents owned it before them, and my great grandparents owned it before them. It’s been in the family so damn long, but it just got to the point where it was more’n I could keep up with. It started getting away from me. Maybe it’s more than I ever wanted to keep up with, if you want the truth. It was just handed to me, you know? I was a kid.
WEST McCRAY: You never really knew what you wanted to do?
JOE PERKINS: That’s exactly it, man! I mean, I never got the chance to think about it. I don’t want to sound ungrateful … I know it’s fortunate I was never in want of a job for most of my life. It’s just, straight out of high school, I had this and I wish maybe my parents—God rest their souls—had asked me if I even wanted it. I don’t mind it, but it was never my plan.
WEST McCRAY: Joe Perkins is fifty-five. He has a shock of white hair, a weather-beaten face and tattoos covering both his arms and legs. Each one of them means something, he tells me, but what they mean is between him and the ink.
JOE PERKINS: I’ll let you in on this one here, though …
WEST McCRAY: It’s a small bluebird on his left bicep.
JOE PERKINS: First tattoo I ever got, and that’s how the place got its new name. Everyone asks me, “Where’s the bird?” And I say right here. [LAUGHS]
WEST McCRAY: When I told Joe I wanted to talk about a girl who might have stayed at his motel about five months back, he told me he’d do his best, but the people who tend to spend the night are like a motion-blur through his life. They never stay long enough to make an impression. Still, when I show him a picture of Sadie, he remembers her instantly.
JOE PERKINS: Oh, yeah, she was here. She talked a little funny. She was looking for a friend of mine. Both those things are how come I remember her.
WEST McCRAY: The friend was Darren?
JOE PERKINS: Yeah, Darren. She came here asking if he was around, but he wasn’t, at the time. I don’t know what she wanted him for. I don’t think she ever said. I only saw her the once, though. I think she stayed one night … might’ve paid for two? I don’t know. I trashed the records when we sold.
WEST McCRAY: Tell me about Darren.
JOE PERKINS: He saved my life.
WEST McCRAY: Did he?
JOE PERKINS: Yeah. I was thirty-five, driving along the highway here, headed back to this place. Got hit by some drunk asshole. The car rolled a few times, ended up in the ditch. Drunk kept going. Still don’t know who did it but I hope that fucker rots. Well, Darren was right behind me and saw the whole thing. He pulled over … I was out cold and I’d sliced up my thigh. Anyway, the hospital told me later he kept me from bleeding out before the ambulance arrived. We been friends ever since. After that, I said any time you need a room, man, you got it.
WEST McCRAY: Where is he now?
JOE PERKINS: I don’t know. He ended up taking me up on the offer about the room. Number ten. That’s his. I didn’t let anyone else stay in it. He was free to come and go as he pleased, and he did. He was rarely here more than a few weeks at a time.
WEST McCRAY: That’s awfully generous of you.
JOE PERKINS: Well, my life’s worth more than a room. Anyway, he’d head off for a while, but he always came back. He was a great guy, just never had his shit together. One of those, you know? This is the longest I’ve gone without hearing from him … I’ve been trying to get hold of him to let him know we sold. I can’t put him up anymore.
WEST McCRAY: You have a number?
JOE PERKINS: Yeah, I can give it to you, but it’s been disconnected.
WEST McCRAY: He’s right.
I call it and nothing gets through.
JOE PERKINS: I’ve had a bad feeling about it, to be honest. Got worse when you called me, wanting to talk. A girl’s looking for him, he’s missing. You’re looking for her, she’s missing. [PAUSE] Who is this girl, anyway?
WEST McCRAY: She says she’s his daughter.
JOE PERKINS: [LAUGHS] All the time I knew him, Darren never mentioned no daughter.
WEST McCRAY: It’s what she says.
JOE PERKINS: I just don’t … [LAUGHS] If he had a daughter, he shoulda been where she was because he wasn’t the kinda guy … he wouldn’t step out on his family. He saved my life.
Jesus, the more you tell me, the worse I feel about all this.
WEST McCRAY: Could you show me Darren’s room?