Free Lie Still by Julia Heaberlin

from his sister in New Jersey, the one who would glue an Apple product to her ass if they invented one to go there. She had wrapped up a tiny onesie stamped with IPOOD and another that read, GET OFF FACEBOOK AND FEED ME .
    The onesies made me laugh. That laugh, a long nap, and three small plastic cups of Jell-O chocolate pudding temporarily flicked Caroline back into the weeds where she belonged. She was nothing more than a Vegas psychic in Southern drag, I told myself. The carved box, the obscenely hot room, that giant, ridiculousportrait—her props. She had picked at our scabs, hoping they’d bleed, probably having no idea how we got them. Except for the specificity of the name “Alex,” the words on those pieces of paper could apply to thousands of people, if not millions.
    But now, in bed with Mike, Caroline the mantis was creeping back, one green blade of grass at a time.
    “I think there is something weird about Caroline Warwick,” I said abruptly. “She is really pushing the issue of me joining her little club. The one I told you about the other night after her Bunko party.”
    Mike rested his glasses on his head and put the folder down. His face wore the “You are six months pregnant so I’m going to stop what I’m doing and listen to you” look. Usually, I loved that look.
    “Did I tell you about the pink room? Her collection of diaries?” I knew that I hadn’t, but I needed to ease in. “I came across a room on my way to the bathroom the night of Caroline’s party. It was like a creepy museum to some little girl. Very … pink. Old movie posters, a teddy bear, a bunch of old diaries on a shelf. I’m beginning to wonder whether Caroline replicated the room from her own childhood. If those diaries are hers.”
    “So? We’ve all got our quirks. I still dream about a Derek Jeter–themed bathroom.”
    “Uh-huh. We’ve discussed. I’m not going to listen to a lifetime of No. 2 jokes.” I punched him lightly on the arm.
    “The club might be a good way for you to get to know people.” He said it absently, his eyes roaming back to the folder on the bed between us.
    Not that interested. Part of me was glad. The part that wanted to figure out a few things first. I reached over and placed the folder back in his hand, glancing at the name on the file tab.
    “Who’s Jimmy Cooper?” I asked.
    Mike had committed every single night to reading at least twenty old file cases from Clairmont’s criminal history. He wanted them wired in his head before they were wired into a new, high-tech computer system arriving at his office next week. The database was Mike’s first request after taking the job. He had figured it would take two years or maybe never to get approval. Instead, a big fat check to pay for it landed on his desk the next day.
    “Jimmy Cooper is a man with a lifetime of drunk and disorderlies.” He scribbled a few notes, presumably about Jimmy Cooper, on the yellow legal pad in his lap.
    I watched my stomach contort like a circus show, the baby punching out his nightly workout.
    I juggled myself over onto my side, rubbing Mike’s thigh.
    “Stop doing that unless you’re serious,” he said.
    “Does anything bad ever happen in this town?” I asked.
    “The last homicide was about two years ago. Domestic. A trailer park case just inside the city limits. The city council conveniently redrew that line two months later so it didn’t show up in their statistics. In the last seven years, the city has recorded two murders and two suicides in its jurisdiction. The man in the trailer park who beat his wife to death with a coat hanger. And an unsolved in 2002—a Jane Doe from God-knows-where dumped on the side of a county road west of town. FBI profilers came in on that one because of similarities to the murders of two young females in Boston and Philadelphia. The same ligature marks.”
    He reached for the half-empty Abita on the nightstand. “A couple of recent suicides. A local high school