Bad Things Page 27

  And there was the emptiness. It was only late afternoon, for God’s sake, but it was like everyone had decided to call it a day already. There was hardly anyone on the streets, on foot or in cars, and those few who remained seemed to be scurrying home as if jerked there on long ropes. She tried calling out to a couple of them. Either they didn’t hear, or they ignored her. Went inside, shut the door, goodbye. The town hadn’t looked like a bundle of laughs the night before, but at least it had seemed open. Right now it was as if it was going into hibernation, forever—as if Becki was some pet that had been caught outside with a bad storm coming, whose owners had decided that being safe indoors was more important, and hell, they could always get a new dog.

  She tried John’s phone, again. Once more it just rang and rang. She shoved her cell back into her jeans and started to walk, taking one turn and then another onto a street she was sure she’d been down before, but that’s when she saw the strip of familiar lights ahead, and started to run.

  As she came to the top of Kelly Street she was dismayed to see that pretty much everything seemed to be shut here, too. An Irish bar— shut. Burger place—shut. What was going on? Was it some local fucking holiday she didn’t know about?

  Where the hell was everybody?

  Then finally she spotted someone. A real live person, halfway down the street, near the pizza restaurant where John had materialized the night before. Someone was standing under an awning there by themselves, smoking, not looking as if they were right about to go hide someplace. For a wonderful moment Becki thought it might even be John, but quickly realized the silhouette was far too thin, and had long hair.

  She kept running anyway, and called out. Anyone was better than nobody. The figure heard her shouting, and looked in her direction. Becki realized who it was, and called out again.

  “Wait,” she said, when she got closer, and saw that the woman was looking at her like she was a lunatic. “Please, I saw you last night. You were in the restaurant with him, right? You came out, and said you’d paid, or something, and then went away? Remember?”

  “You mean . . . John?”

  “Yes! They’ve got him,” Becki said. “They’ve got John.”

  “Who has?”

  “I don’t know.” She started crying. Didn’t want to, but couldn’t stop. “I DON’T KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING.”

  The woman put a cold hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. Just tell—”

  “It’s not okay. There’s a dead person in his room. Someone put it there and there’s this maid who doesn’t seem to care, and is, just like, insane, and they left an envelope full of stuff and John saw it and then he just took off. I tried to keep up with him but I couldn’t, but I saw where he was headed and before I got there this truck came out and when I got there he just wasn’t there”

  The woman didn’t look right. Not shocked, or freaked out. She just looked sad. And odd.

  “Look—are you hearing this?”

  “Who was the dead person?”

  “The dead . . . How the fuck would I know? I think . . . I think I heard him say the name Ellen.” Becki wiped her eyes savagely with the back of her fists, and looked directly at the woman’s pale, bony face and sharp eyes. “Why don’t you look even surprised?”

  “Forget about what’s back at the motel,” the woman said, dropping her cigarette to the sidewalk. “Courtney’s lost. She won’t tell anyone.”

  “Lost? What are you talking about? She’s the maid. She’s right fucking there”

  “I meant it differently. She won’t say anything. She can’t. Don’t worry.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  The woman pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her purse and glanced at it.

  “Have you tried to call John?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The woman tried anyway, and got the same result as Becki had, and finally started to look like the gravity of the situation was getting into her head.

  She put her phone back into her jacket, her eyes over Becki’s shoulder.

  “Friends of yours?”

  Becki turned, and saw that things had, unbelievably, gotten even worse.

  She started to back away, then realized she didn’t have it in her to run anymore, especially when she saw there was someone already in the back of the large, black GMC idling up the street toward them.

  “No,” she said dully. “But they’ve got my boyfriend.”

  The car pulled over to the curb and the passenger door opened. A wiry black guy got out, a man Becki recognized all too well. The last time she’d seen him he’d been delivering a series of sharp, clinical blows to her face and body while another man kept an eye on the road out of the window and appeared as if, all in all, he’d rather be somewhere else.

  “ ’S’up, girl,” the man said, smiling at her in the way you smile at a plate of food that’s exactly what you ordered. “Got your boy in here.”

  “Is . . . is he okay?”

  “Everything’s cool. Just want you to come for a ride, is all.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” the tall woman said.

  The man laughed. “The fuck are you going to—”

  But then he saw the woman’s face.

  And shut up.

  CHAPTER 40

  Ten minutes later I ran back upstairs. By now it was raining much harder outside. I could hear it drumming on the roof of the high, vaulted space.

  “I think we can get out of here.”

  “How?” Her voice sounded flat, uninterested.

  “Window.”

  “You’ve got it open?”

  “Not yet. But a few more kicks will do it.”

  “Hurray for you.” There was silence in the darkness for a moment. “And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like you said. Who knows who’s out there? So you stick your head out and get—”

  “Carol, it’s either that or we stay here and suffer whatever they’ve got in mind.”

  She picked Tyler up, and followed me downstairs.

  “I’m going to have to go first,” I said, when we were back by the window. I flicked the lighter and showed her what we would be dealing with. A window around three feet square. “Carol.”

  She wasn’t looking at the window, but at the empty shelves back in the utility room.

  “I can still smell it,” she said.

  “Smell what?”

  “Wild strawberry and something. Some other berry. That weird woman, remember, who set up a stall one Saturday down by the market in Roslyn?”

  “Carol . . .”

  “And you liked it so much and you don’t even eat that kind of stuff, and she wasn’t there again for months and so when she finally turned up again we . . .”

  She trailed off. I couldn’t smell anything but dust and I doubted that she could, either, in reality. But I recalled the day the woman had reappeared with her ramshackle stall, me slapping down a handful of bills and buying every damned jar she had—and us carrying the box back to the car together and how all the way home we were laughing about how we were jam millionaires now, this was the start of a preserve monopoly the like of which the Pacific Northwest had never known. I remembered, too, how when it came to clearing out the house after we’d sold it, there was not a single jar left, though I didn’t recall finishing it, or anything like.

  “What happened to it?”

  “I threw it all away,” she said. “A week after I found out about you and Jenny. Put the jars in a bag and carried them into the forest and threw every single one against a tree.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but for just a moment then, I thought I could smell it, too. Not in the house, but in my head. A sweetness.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Shh.”

  I shut up, and heard what she’d heard. It was hard to make out against the rain, but it sounded like a vehicle heading up the drive toward the front door, around the corner
of the house from where we stood.

  “Take him,” Carol said.

  “What?”

  “Take Tyler with you.” She held him out toward me. “There’s no point me leaving. Just take him!”

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Then we’ll die together,” she said.

  “Die? Carol, what is it that you think is going on here? Why won’t you tell me?”

  She put Tyler gently down on the ground, kissed him on the forehead, and ran back upstairs into the house. Tyler tried to follow her, but I grabbed him. He started to cry louder, to call out for his mother.

  “Tyler, shh.”

  But he wouldn’t, of course. Left in the dark with a man who meant nothing to him, what else was he going to do but cry?

  I pulled him farther up my chest and clamped my hand over his mouth. He kicked, and tried to strike out, surprisingly strong and heavy, as boy children are. I heard the vehicle come to a halt outside, the sound of doors opening.

  I tried to whisper into Tyler’s ear, but he was having none of it. I waited until I heard the sound of at least two sets of footprints head around toward the front door.

  “Tyler,” I said firmly. “Listen to me. Your mom’s gone outside. We’re going to go find her. But we have to go through this window, okay? We’re going to find your mom. Do you understand?”

  He stopped struggling. I felt him nod.

  “I’ve got to put you down. You stand right here, okay? Stand right here, and I’m going to open the window and get out and then get you out, too, okay?”

  Another nod. I could feel his breath hot and wet against the palm of my hand. I put him down, removing my hand from his face as the last thing.

  He stood there, not moving.

  I knew this was only going to work if it happened fast, so I pushed straight out with my foot, planting it hard and square in the middle of the window.

  It gave six inches, and I did it again, and then stopped and planted both my palms on it and gave it a slow, steady shove. The bottom half came away, letting in a sudden blast of cold air and revealing blue fading light outside—but the top portion didn’t budge. “Fuck,” I said.

  Tyler watched, his head tilted slightly back, apparently transfixed by the sight of light.

  I put one leg over the sill and lowered it to the ground outside, pushing up against the board with my back. It gave, a little. I pulled my other foot up onto the sill, stayed bunched up there.

  “We’re going to have to do this very quickly, okay? Come closer.”

  “You’re not my daddy,” he said.

  “Yes, Tyler, I am.”

  “You don’t smell right.” He raised one hand and pointed to the window. “My daddy’s out there. In the woods.”

  I heard the sound of footsteps entering the house above, and then Carol’s voice carrying from the main room.

  “He went upstairs,” she said, far more loudly than necessary. “God knows how he thought he was going to get us out from up there, but that’s guys for you, right? All action, no thought.”

  I knew there was no time left, and shoved my foot as I hard as I could against the sill. The board came away, all at once, dropping me flat on my back into long, wet grass.

  I jumped straight back up and went back to the window. “Tyler,” I said. “Come to—”

  But he was gone.

  Gone back to his mother. He hadn’t believed a word I’d told him, just waited until he could get away from the stranger, and back to the woman he loved.

  I swore but knew it made no sense to go back in, so I turned from the window and made my way toward the front of the house, keeping tight up against its side. When I got close to the corner I dropped low, and ducked my head around.

  A small white truck was parked outside the front door. There was a man standing by the side of it. I realized I knew him. He was Brian Jackson, the mechanic who’d tried to fix the salon woman’s car the other morning on Kelly Street.

  I saw also that he had a gun, at about the exact same moment that he caught sight of me.

  He shouted. I turned and ran, trying to lift my feet high enough to clear the grass and get up speed. I headed straight down the side of the house at first, then realized I should try to bank out toward where the woods started, on the left-hand side.

  Meanwhile he kept shouting. I didn’t know how many men had gone into the house, or if they were armed, too. It seemed likely, which meant there wasn’t any other option but to keep running through the rain.

  I made it into the trees about thirty seconds later, heading for the area where the path had started. Three years had all but erased it, tangling the ways with ferns and dogwood. I plowed along the ghost of it nonetheless, not bothering to glance behind. It only slows you down.

  After fifty yards I saw the slanted shadow of the abandoned homestead, and broke from the path to head over to it. I dropped around the far side, chest thumping. When we’d lived here I’d entertained ideas about renovating this structure, putting a new roof on it and using it as a study or den or summerhouse. Like a lot of things I’d assumed the future held, it didn’t happen. I was glad it was here now, though, and pulled myself up to the side and stuck my head up over the top.

  The man from the truck was advancing down the slope of the lawn, still outside the trees, gun held out in front of him. I saw the shape of another man joining him from the direction of the house. It was too far, and getting too dark, to see who this man might be. I still couldn’t understand what the hell the mechanic might have against me, or how he could be a part of this, whatever it was. It didn’t matter. He was a guy with a gun coming in my direction, which put him on the wrong side of all useful alliances I could imagine.

  A shot cracked out.

  I wasn’t sure whether it was the mechanic or the other man, but whoever it was had some idea of where I was. A beat after the flat slap of the gun, a bullet swacked through foliage only ten feet to the side of me.

  Someone shouted out, to me or about me I couldn’t tell.

  I turned, looked into the forest. From my current position it stretched into the growing dark, for mile after mile into the mountains. If I headed that way, nothingness was all there was to find. No houses, no roads, no logging tracks, just trees and rocks.

  If I pulled up the slope then I’d be coming back around to the point where the driveway looped in front of the house. Maybe I could get to their vehicle first and derail whatever they were supposed to be doing next—but I doubted they’d left the keys in it, or that I’d have time to start it before they got to me. If they had two people looking, it likely meant at least two more were back up at the house. With nothing in my hand there was nothing I could achieve against four guys. I hated the idea of leaving Carol behind, but getting off the field of play was the only plan that made sense right now.

  Which meant going down the slope, trying to cut across the bottom there and make it out to the road. It was only fifty yards across the base of the lawn to where the other copse of trees started, and another hundred or so up to the fence. If I could send the two visible men in the wrong direction, just a little, I should be able to do it.

  They were now at the tree line, walking ten feet apart, advancing slowly. I bent low and headed away from the ruined wooden cabin, banking into the trees in the hope that the trunks would obfuscate what I was doing. It seemed to work, as no one shot at me. When I’d put a little more distance between us I altered course radically and headed down toward the lake instead, moving faster until I was twenty yards from where the trees ran out.

  The lake was long and gray and pocked with falling slices of white. I was going to stand out against it, even in this light. That just meant I had to do it fast. There was nowhere else for me to go.

  I couldn’t see the men now. They were back in the trees somewhere. I heard one of them call out to the other, and got an impression of where and how far away they were. It sounded like they were acting on the assumption I was heading deeper
into the woods.

  I gave it another minute to commit them a little further, and then broke cover.

  My foot slipped as I kicked off, and I didn’t get up to speed as fast as I hoped. The grass was just as long here, too, and wet. But I ran, upright, selling caution to get up as much pace as I could. Halfway across I heard a shout. I kept going.

  I was just yards from the trees when there was a distant clap, and it felt like someone had punched me in the side from behind. It knocked me off balance and I spun into the copse and crashed into a tree.

  I was back on my feet quickly, albeit in an involuntary crouch. The stinging high in my side told me it hadn’t been a punch. Didn’t mean anything except I had to keep going, and fast. There was distant shouting behind, and it sounded angry now.

  Once I was into the trees I straightened up and ran as fast as I could. I knew exactly where I was going because this used to be on my jogging trail, wearing a shirt which was now in the manila envelope I’d lost when I’d been taken out in the bank parking lot. I scrambled up the slope and finally had to break out of the trees again and into the pounding rain for the final stretch.

  Nobody shot at me again before I made it to the fence and swung myself over, grunting at the way this made my side feel.

  I landed more or less on my feet on the other side, and finally looked back. One of the men was down by the lake. I couldn’t see the other and didn’t wait to find out where he was. There was no way I could make it all the way back to town on foot, and there was only one alternative I could think of.

  I took a couple of big breaths, and started to run up the road.

  CHAPTER 41

  When I made it to the end of the driveway I saw there was a light on over the door of the house. Didn’t necessarily mean anyone was in, but all three cars were still parked by the barn, and I was soaked and hurt and was determined to try regardless.

  I stumbled up to the door and leaned on the bell, peering in through the cobbled glass panel in the top half. It was murky beyond, but after a few minutes I saw an interior light go on and a figure approaching.