The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XIII:
The Final Sacrifice
When I wake up, I’m not in the Fergie. I’m in a different cell, one without the letters taped to the observation wall. There’s a paramedic shining a flashlight in my eyes. He asks me how many fingers he’s holding up. I take a chance.
“Three?”
They lead me to the shower. When I come out my street clothes are folded on a bench in front of an angry-looking female deputy. I dry myself with the washcloth-sized piece of sandpaper that passes for a towel, and pull my clothes on over cold wet skin, and the whole time I can still taste the young cop’s hand on my tongue. The whole time I’m waiting for this cop to pull her riot stick and break my kneecaps, crush my windpipe, leave me choking on my own blood on the wet concrete floor.
Instead, she shackles me in an interview room for a very long time.
Finally, the door opens and Garrett P. Cannon comes in wearing one of his many tan suits and giant white hats.
“Ready to hit the road?” he asks. “You and me’re headed back to Utah. The Los Angeles Pee Dee realizes they don’t have the wherewithal to keep you safely incarcerated, so we’re going to take a little trip back to American Fork, where you’re going to stand trial as an accessory in the murder of your mother, your boyfriend, your poor little sister, Officer Miller, and your father. Trust me, Lynnette, we’ll find a way to add on some years for your foster family and the three police officers killed in the line of duty there, too. We’re going to have ourselves a fine old time.”
He winks at me.
“Was it my doctor?” I ask.
“Who?” Garrett asks, grin fading.
“Was it Dr. Carol who got that cop to take a shot at me?”
“Officer Dean Foley was a superfan,” he says. “Apparently he’s been waiting his whole entire life to get his hands on you.”
“He didn’t do it alone,” I say. “This is a conspiracy. Someone else will take a shot.”
“Guess what, Oliver Stone?” he says. “I don’t really give a shit. Let’s go.”
—
When the cop opens the door to the parking lot, the sun hammers into my eyes like nails. My ice-cold skin hungrily soaks up the warmth. This is why I moved to L.A. in the first place: no winters. My clothes haven’t been washed in a week and they’re limp and greasy, but the sun kisses me alive again and the air smells like something besides all-in-one cleaning product.
“Move your ass,” a steroidal deputy says over my left shoulder.
I shuffle forward, following Garrett, chains singing on the concrete, trying to keep my head on a swivel because Dr. Carol could have her sniper here again, but I keep getting distracted by all the colors.
I’m overwhelmed by the minivans, and the SUVs, and the Trans Ams, and the bushes, and the blue sky without a single cloud. The breeze smells like California and I feel like a human sacrifice being led to the altar.
Just when my eyes are getting used to the sun bouncing off everyone’s windshields, I have to squint again because the past twenty years disappear and there sits Garrett’s 1976 cherry-red Cadillac Seville.
“That’s a beauty,” the deputy says, squatting to take the shackles off my feet.
“First car I ever owned,” Garrett says. “It’s gonna cost me $152 in gas to drive to Provo but she’s worth every penny.”
I don’t want to get in his car. I remember being in it too many times before with his body on top of mine, his hands all over me, but when Garrett opens the back door and guides me inside with his hand on the back of my head, the way all cops do, from their first day of training till the day they die, I don’t resist. What’s the point? All I can do is go along.
—
He opens one cuff, then locks it around a restraint bar bolted to his car door.
“Comfy?” he asks, then slams the door without waiting for an answer.
I bask in the heat while he and the deputy shoot the shit. This car was Garrett’s pride and joy, but now he’s put in a restraint bar and heavy black metal mesh separating the front seats from the back. I try the door. It doesn’t open from the inside.
“—but you come see me next and I’ll be happy to take your money,” Garrett says, getting in.
He slams his door and waves to the deputy, who’s taking a picture of Garrett’s ridiculous car with his phone. Garrett makes sure to hold his head at just the right angle to tighten up the loose skin on his neck.
“Seat belt, Lynnette,” Garrett says, turning the ignition and sparking the engine to life. “Can’t have you smashing your pretty little teeth out in an accident before I’m done with you.”
We pull out onto the street. The Caddy sounds like a tank.
“We’re going to hit the trail and it ain’t gonna be no yellow brick road,” Garrett says as he threads through late-afternoon traffic and the police station disappears behind us. “Unless getting a lethal injection needle stuck in your arm sounds like meeting the Wizard of Oz.”
Cars pass on either side of us, riding high, looking down into the back seat where any of them could take a shot.
“You know,” he says. “I bought this vehicle with the first check I ever got for that Walker brothers movie. Hell, they paid me for every day I was on set and all I ever did was make sure those actors playing peace officers didn’t hold their weapons like a bunch of pricks.”
I slink to the floor, my handcuffed arm sticking up. I’m still not protected from the sides, but at least no one can shoot me through the back window. How did it come to this? A week ago I was free; now my past has caught up with me and it’s hungry. How did Dr. Carol do this alone? She needed help, someone we wouldn’t see coming, someone like . . . Heather. Who called the cops, whose story never quite stays the same when she tells it twice, who could easily have burned down her halfway house, who was right inside Marilyn’s perimeter when I got there, who called the cops and put me where Dean Foley could try to kill me.
“I never did think the fella playing me looked right,” Garrett says. “But I guess it’s hard to nail my aura. The way I carry myself and handle situations and suchlike. An actor can’t learn that. You know what that director said when I told him I should play myself? ‘Officer Cannon,’ he told me, ‘you would bring so much authenticity to the screen it’d make all the other actors look fake.’ There’s truth in that.”
I press myself against the right-hand door to protect my torso and head from anyone coming by on the right, but I’m still wide open on the left. I slide to the floor. Why am I even trying? They’ve thought this through well in advance. They’ve been three steps ahead of me all along. I am weak and alone, and they are legion and strong.
“Goddammit, Lynne,” Garrett calls through the black wire mesh. “Quit your damn crawling and sit straight, or I’m going to pull this car over and Mace you in the face.”
Reluctantly I slide back up onto the seat, just as he pulls into a Carl’s Jr. drive-through. Something Pavlovian goes off in my stomach and I start to drool. I’m so hungry it overrides my sense of self-preservation and I gawp at the pictures on the big menu board like a hick on his first trip into town.
“Howdy,” Garrett says to the speaker. “I’ll have a Guacamole Turkey Burger, with extra cheese, small chili cheese fries, and a medium orange shake, and how about a small Diet Coke to go with that.”
“That’ll be $12.79,” the robot voice says.
“Gotta watch my weight,” Garrett, says pulling forward. “Oh, hellfire, Lynne, did you want something?”
He had to have heard my stomach.
“Yes,” I say.
“You got any money?” he asks, looking in the rearview mirror.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s nine hours to Provo,” he says. “Have some gum.”
He pushes a twenty-five-cent pack of Big Red through the wire mesh and it falls on the floor. The hot buttery smell from his paper bag makes my stomach gnaw on itself. We pull back out on the highway and I promise that I won’t beg him for a fry. I won’t plead for a sip of his drink.
“Want to know a secret?” Garrett says between pulls on his straw. “I knew that Foley boy was sweet on you. I know about every single one of your stalkers. I made sure he was first up to bat when we took you down and I’ll admit I was thrown that he didn’t take a shot at you then. But all good things come to those who wait.”
“You wanted him to kill me?” I ask, astonished that he still hates me so much. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not Dr. Carol who wants us dead.
“I wanted the LAPD to realize that they were singularly unsuited to your incarceration,” he said. “I wanted to have some alone time together, just like the old days.”
I feel weightless. We’re heading up into the San Bernardino hills. Garrett unwraps his sandwich and takes a bite, then puts it back in the bag. Like he’s saving it for later. I realize that he’d be exactly the person Dr. Carol would call.
“You and me got a bond, Lynne,” Garrett says. We’re past Rancho Cucamonga and traffic is thinning out as we head up 15 into the mountains. It’s all rocks and dirt fields, mini-storage facilities with pictures of rats carrying trunks out front. I’m so hungry the smell of hot burger makes me light-headed. “We both know that sometimes you got to take things into your own hands.”
Garrett talks too much when he’s nervous, and he’s only nervous when he’s working up his courage to do something he doesn’t want to do. I try the cuffs. They’re clamped too tight. Even sweaty I don’t think I can slip them. I look around for a weapon. Nothing but my teeth and nails and the pack of gum.
“You know, when I first heard that the Provo DA had those love letters I didn’t believe him,” Garrett says. He’s not checking me in the rearview mirror anymore. “But when I went to the DA’s office and read them, I swear I could feel everything that was settled opening right back up like a can of worms. Little squiggling wormies wriggling all over, messing everything up. I don’t like worms, Lynne. I ever tell you that? It’s why I don’t fish.”
My belt, maybe, I can wrap it around my hand and hit him with the buckle. I once planned to hide a razor blade in the lining of my jeans but I never got around to it. Over the years I have gotten soft, and weak, and lazy. And Dr. Carol has gotten smart, and organized, and strong. There is no option here that doesn’t end with me dead. With all of us dead.
She got Adrienne killed and she’s already broken Dani’s heart by keeping her away from Michelle. She’ll finish off Julia, then Marilyn, she’ll take down Heather, and me, and . . .
Stephanie.
“DA got those love letters from Billy Walker himself,” he says. “Had them buried near his brother’s grave. Don’t know why he never said anything before but who knows why a nutjob does anything? I loved your daddy, you know. He and me always saw eye to eye. I know he could be quick with his temper, but he understood I was a man who’d do what needed to be done. He could rely on me to make the hard decisions.”
Stephanie Fugate. I think of her folder on Dr. Carol’s desk. Her big, dumb, hopeful, brace-faced teenaged grin. Her wide eyes peeking out from underneath her bangs. The way she looks like Gillian.
She looks just like Gillian.
We pass a lonely wind farm where the big crosses turn slow, then we fly through a little speck of country living: a red-and-white sign for Tony’s Diner, a yellow-and-black sign reading Saloon that looks like a first-grader painted it, a crumbling parking lot surrounded by a sagging chain-link fence. Then we’re alone in the dry, brown hills again.
“I don’t like anyone pissing all over my memories of the dearly departed,” Garrett says. “I resent those letters showing off your daddy’s shortcomings to the world.”
I think about Stephanie and all those files of all those baby final girls in Dr. Carol’s office. Why does she have them? She said it in the visiting room: “I have spent my life trying to build a world where women like you don’t have to exist.”
When is the cure worse than the disease?
Garrett slows the car, then takes a turn onto a narrow two-lane blacktop that squirms into the hills. We grind past some abandoned, half-built homes, and he pulls in behind one with busted-out windows, wires hanging from holes where the porch lights were supposed to go. Half the roof has been finished with red clay tiles; the other half is torn-up tar paper, ripped strips flapping in the wind.
Of course we’re pulling over. Garrett would never mess up the interior of his Caddy. He puts it in park, kills the engine, and gets out. For a few silent seconds I scan my options. There aren’t many. Maybe run for the half-finished house and try to get the drop on him?
Garrett opens my door, pulling my right arm along with it. He’s got his gun in his left hand, held down by his side. I can’t see the road from here. I don’t think he’s going to wait to get me inside the house. I’ve finally figured out the answer and it’s too late. I’m too slow. Too dumb. Too useless.
“Come on out of the car, Lynnette,” he says. “It’s time we settled this.”
“Garrett—” I begin.
“Nah,” he says. “My mind’s made up. Now turn around.”
I step out, and my head spins, and I turn around, facing the trunk, my handcuffed right arm stretched behind me. I just wish I weren’t letting Stephanie down. Once I’m in a shallow grave, who’s going to save her? Who’s going to warn her about Garrett P. Cannon and Dr. Carol? In the end, there were too many of them. In the end, I let down everyone I cared about.
There’s a click by my wrist, and the handcuff opens. I close my eyes.
“What’re you waiting for?” Garrett asks. His voice is far away. I open my eyes and he’s heading for the house. “Come on.”
Garrett vanishes inside and I could run, I could be gone in a second, but I need to know what he’s playing at.
Curiosity was the faceless monster that stuck a pitchfork through the cat.
I pick my way across the rocky front yard, shaking with hunger and exhaustion, my wrist bruised. I pick up a dirty chunk of concrete. I feel better following Garrett into this dark house with something in my hand.
“What the hell is that for?” he asks, coming back outside and holstering his Colt. “You making paperweights?” He plucks it from my hand and tosses it back into the yard. “I figured we’d talk better in the sun. And let me be quite honest, I don’t have a handle on this thing yet, and until I do I’m assuming my vehicle might be bugged. ’Cause someone knows an awful lot about everything before I do.”
I eye him, waiting for his gun hand to come up fast.
“What the hell, Lynne?” he asks. “You thought I was going to jump you? Oh, hell, you think I’m going to shoot you?”
“Aren’t you?” I ask.
“Are you kidding?” He smiles. “This whole thing smelled like ratshit from the word go.”
Everything looks strange. The house, the yard, Garrett. He grins at me like we’re old friends.
“What?”
I feel thick and stupid.
“Let me tell you something, Lynnette,” Garrett says. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s how to know when I’m being played. Twenty years later, suddenly there’s bold new information? That happens in the movies, not real life. Billy Walker told the DA about those letters because someone wanted you in custody and it wasn’t a dumbass like Billy Walker. Why? You lost your looks a long time ago, and your ass is too skinny to fuck. I called my Hollywood contacts and your franchise is radioactive. No one wants to even think about it, much less reboot it. So who gives a shit about you? I figured they’d send someone out here to pick you up and bring you back to Provo and I figured at least you and me got history. So I volunteered.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say.
“You don’t believe me?” he says. Garrett licks his lips and gets angry. That’s how I know he’s not lying. “I stayed in that police station waiting for that cuckoo bird to make his move for three days! I brought you out here, I’m setting your ugly ass free; I want to deal with whatever bullshit is going on right now because I don’t appreciate someone pissing all over the memory of the one man I ever truly respected and, hell, maybe we could even get a new book out of this, maybe write it together. My agent says that if you co-authored we’d get one hell of an advance, especially if there was some current event for a peg. I got a ghostwriter who will knock your socks off.”
I can’t look at Garrett anymore. I’m so grateful he’s not executing me in the desert that I don’t trust myself not to do something stupid. Like hug him. I picture him naked, gray snarl of belly hair, flat saggy ass, cowboy hat still on. That sobers me right up.
“So who’s doing this?” I ask.
“I was hoping you’d tell me,” he says. “Someone’s gunning for you and your gal pals. Who’d you piss off?”
A plug opens in my belly and tension drains out in a cold flood. Someone is finally listening. It may just be Garrett P. Cannon, but I’ll take it.
“It’s more than one person,” I say. “It has to be. Christophe Volker went after Adrienne and then everything happened too fast for it not to be organized. Someone called Russell and told him about my book—”
“You’re writing a book?” He actually sounds hurt.
“Not like that,” I say. “I never meant for it to get out.”
“Then what’s the point?” he asks.
“It was an exercise,” I say. “For my peace of mind.”
“Hippy-dippy bullshit,” he grumbles.
“But someone got it,” I say. “Off my computer.”
“You ever heard of a password?” he asks.
I ignore him and keep going.
“They read it and they got Russell Thorn to go to Julia. She knew my address and so the two of them came to my place. Whoever shot them was waiting for us to be together. Then they burned down Heather’s halfway house. Then Harry Peter Warden came forward about Dani. Then Billy Walker told the DA’s office about those letters. It’s all happening too fast.”
“Someone who can organize communication from inside prison and outside,” Garrett says. “That takes a lot of effort.”
“Dr. Carol,” I say. “Process of elimination. She’s the only one who knows how to press all our buttons like this.”
“Motive?”
“I think she’s sick in the head,” I say. “I think she believes that the only way to cure us is to kill us.”
“A crazy headshrinker,” he marvels, then he tries out a tagline. “The doctor is in . . . sane.”
“Maybe there’s more to it than that,” I say. “Maybe she wants to write a new book and needs a peg.”
“That’d be cold-blooded,” he says, but I hear respect in his voice.
“It’s a cold-blooded business,” I say. “Right now I think if someone looked at the visitor list for Billy Walker and then for Harry Peter Warden they’d find her name on both.”
“Someone would have to be a genius to check those visitor lists, wouldn’t you say?” Garrett asks.
“Not really.”
“Well, this genius already has,” he beams. “I haven’t paid Mr. Warden a visit quite yet, but there’s one name that’s all over Billy Walker’s list like shit on a hog. And it ain’t your lady doctor. She sent someone to run her errands. It’s one of you girls.”
I know who he’s going to say before he says it.
“Chrissy Mercer,” he says.
I was expecting Heather.
“Oh,” I say, but I’m relieved for a moment that maybe Heather’s back on my side again.
“Makes sense,” he says. “Your lady doctor loves collecting final girls. She just didn’t tell you she had the complete set.”
My relief disappears and I feel sick again but that doesn’t matter. It’s possible, and if it’s possible I have to see if it’s true.
“Mr. Warden and I are going to have a little come-to-Jesus while you engage in some girl talk with Crazy Chrissy,” he says. “I even brought some of your topless pictures to help flush her out.”
Of course he still has those pictures.
“What about Provo?” I ask.
“Hell,” he says. “I was never going to take you to Provo, Lynne. Your daddy would come back from his grave and kill me dead if I did that. Come on.”
He crunches across the construction rubble and unlocks his trunk. Inside is my go bag and fanny pack. My pistol is still in it, my cash, my cell phone.
“I charged up your phone and helped myself to five hundred dollars,” he says. “Finder’s fee. I’ll give you an invoice later. You can deduct it as a business expense. A ‘thank you’ would be the appropriate response. I know you got a hard time with social cues.”
“What about you?” I ask, changing the subject.
“What about me?” he tosses back. “I figure I pulled over because you were complaining of cramps and then you had some associates jump me. I’m thinking two, maybe three Black males, five-eleven to six-two, two hundred pounds apiece. One of them with a sawed-off shotgun. Maybe throw a skinhead in there, just to make it less racist.”
“A skinhead and two Black guys?” I ask.
“All you got to do is pop me in the eye, scuff me up a little, handcuff me to my vehicle,” he says. “Then you hike on back to that diner we passed. It’s about a forty-minute walk. You can call yourself a cab from there. You’re resourceful, Lynne. I’ll keep in touch with you about Warden and keep an eye on your doctor and you go hunt down Crazy Chrissy. Right now you got a hunch. If our book is going to be a bestseller, we need proof.”
“Why don’t you punch yourself?” I ask.
“I can’t bring myself to damage a work of art.” He grins. “Now, come on. Enough fooling around.” He secures his pistol in its holster with the snap. “I don’t want my reflexes kicking in and shooting you. Aim for my right eye, and see if you can raise a bruise with those bitty little hands of yours.”
And I realize that Garrett P. Cannon has saved my life for a third time.
“You think it’s more believable if it was two Black guys and two skinheads?” he asks.
I knee him in the balls as hard as I can.
“Oofff!” he says, and goes down sideways, hands cupping his crotch too late.
“Just tell them it was one pissed-off girl,” I say.
I pluck his keys out of his hand and get in the Caddy. I make a big loop around him as he struggles to his feet. I floor it and raise a brown dust cloud, and then I’m on the blacktop heading for the highway. I crank the air up high and punch the gas. I’ve got an emergency stop to make before I track down Crazy Chrissy.
Even though it’s cold, that Carl’s Jr. burger is the best thing I’ve eaten all week.