Bad Things Read online

  The door was opened. When Collins saw who it was he tried to shut the door again immediately.

  “Nope,” I said, and pushed my way in.

  “You’ve got no right,” he said, keeping his voice down. “This is my—”

  He stopped, apparently staring at my stomach. I looked down and saw all the clothing on my right side was soaked red.

  I pulled my coat aside and only then saw how lucky I’d been to get away with a only ragged gash along the side of my ribs. A couple of degrees the other way and I would now be lying facedown in the woods.

  “What . . . what . . .”

  “I’ve been shot,” I said. “The guys who did it are out there looking for me. Maybe they’ll guess I ran this way. The less time I’m here, the better it is for you.”

  “I’m going to call the cops.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Who is it?” called a female voice.

  It was Collins’s wife, a few rooms away, probably curled up in front of whatever television show the man had been happily watching before a rain-soaked and bleeding stranger pushed his way into his life.

  “Someone needing directions,” I said quietly. “Do it, or I’m going to fuck you up.”

  “Just some guy who got lost,” the man called out, closing the front door. “You . . . you want a coffee?”

  “Sure,” she said, sounding touched. “Thank you, honey.”

  I followed him down a corridor and into a large kitchen, safely away from the entrance hallway. It was the cleanest kitchen I’d ever seen.

  “I need two things from you,” I said. “First is to use your phone.” I spotted one over on the counter, and went over to it, dripping secondhand rain all over the pale limestone floor. Some of the water had red in it.

  “Who shot you?”

  “I actually don’t know. Funny old world, right?”

  I dialed directory assistance and asked to be put through to the Black Ridge Sheriff’s Department. While I waited I went to the window and watched the top of the driveway. It wouldn’t be long now before it was full dark, but I could still see if anyone appeared at the top of it looking for me. If they did, I had no idea what I was going to do.

  I heard ringing down the line and then the phone was picked up. “Black Ridge Sheriff’s Department.”

  “I need to talk to Sheriff Pierce,” I said.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “John Henderson.”

  The person at the other end put the phone down. The line went dead, just like that. I stared at the handset.

  Collins was looking at me with wide eyes. “You’re John Henderson?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing. I’ve heard the name, that’s all.”

  “I told you. I used to live down the road.”

  “I . . . I wasn’t really listening this morning.”

  “You’re supposed to be making coffee,” I said.

  He jerked, as if waking from a shallow dream, and started to get coffee stuff together.

  “The machine’s not working,” he said. “The light’s not coming on.”

  My head had started to ache badly, from being knocked out, or the running, or shock from the blood loss. It made it hard to focus. My side was finally beginning to hurt, a lot.

  I dialed another number, taking three tries to get it right, and then listened to it ring and ring. There was a strange crackling on the line, as if the power was cutting in and out.

  Finally I heard a slurred voice say: “Bill Raines.”

  “Thank Christ,” I said. “Bill, it’s John.”

  “Hey! You back on the beach, carrying plates?”

  “No. I’m still here. I need your help.”

  He laughed merrily. He sounded like he’d had more than a couple beers. “You’re a piece of work, my friend. You know that?”

  “They’ve got Carol. And Tyler.”

  “What?” Bill sounded suddenly very sober. “Who has?”

  “I don’t know. I got away but they’ve still got Carol and Tyler.”

  “What’s the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know that, either, but Carol was saying some strange things and it’s evidently serious enough for some asshole to have shot me.”

  “You been shot?”

  “Yes. It’s fine, but—”

  “What do you need?”

  “I’m coming over to your place, soon as I can. I’ll work it out then. But step one is going to be some guns.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  I put the phone down and turned to Collins. He was still hunched over the coffee machine, and it reminded me of events that had happened the previous morning. Except this guy was still alive, in his big, beautiful kitchen and his wonderful house, with his wife and kids and life.

  “Other thing I need is keys,” I said. “To the SUV.”

  “I’m not giving—”

  “Mr. Collins, I’m leaving here with them whether you give them to me or not.”

  “You cannot do this to me,” he said, turning suddenly. I realized he was now holding a large kitchen knife.

  “You’re kidding, me, right?”

  He took a step forward, waved the knife at me. “This is my home. I have . . . I have friends.”

  I knocked the knife out of his hand and stepped in tight to hit him very hard in the stomach, driving my fist up under the ribs. We were close enough that I could see his eyes bulge with the impact, and then he went down, banging his head on a kitchen cabinet on the way.

  “Let’s talk about these ‘friends,’ ” I said.

  He looked like he was going to throw up.

  “Or why don’t we talk about Jassie Cornell instead. What happened to her?” I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up to a sitting position, putting my face in close to his. “What the hell happened to her?”

  His face was full of panic now.

  “First time I saw that girl she was full of the joys of organic living,” I said. “Three days later, she kills herself in front of thirty people. Explain that transition to me or I’m going to hit you again.”

  Tears started to roll down his face, as if they’d been trapped inside his head for days and now couldn’t be held there any longer.

  “I liked her. I did, but, Christ, I’ve got a family.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “She was pregnant,” he said. “She told me she was on contraception. She did. And then, I mean, Christ, you know? What else am I going to do? I told her to get rid of it. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t get rid of it. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I really didn’t. I lo . . . I liked her.”

  I dropped him. “What did you do?”

  He buried his face in his hands. I kicked him in the side. He muttered something that I couldn’t hear.

  “What did you just say?”

  He said it again, the words little more than coughed breaths, but this time enough of it escaped through his fingers for me to make out a word.

  Sadness.

  He was slumped against the cabinet, rubbing his face with his hands feverishly, smearing tears and snot all over his cheeks. His eyes were open, staring straight ahead. Maybe he was seeing a pool of blood spreading over the sidewalk on Kelly Street. Maybe the soft, plump stomach of a young girl who had lain on motel beds beside him, but was now dead. I ought to have felt some compassion for him but all I wanted to do was kick him and then kick him again.

  “Keys.”

  I followed the movement of his eyes and found a wicker basket with three sets of keys. I took all of them.

  When I turned to the door I saw the man’s wife. She was leaning against the door frame, her arms folded, face composed.

  “My husband was quite correct,” she said. “You had no right to do this.”

  “How much did you hear?”

  Her husband was staring at her, with the flat, blank gaze of someone who knew their world was never going to be the same.

  She
glanced coldly at him, then back at me.

  “Nothing that was any of your business,” she said, and slapped me hard across the face.

  It was still pouring down. The SUV opened with the second set of keys I tried. I dropped the other two to the ground and climbed in the car. Reaching around for the seat belt sent a spasm up the whole of my right side, but when I turned on the reading light and checked, it didn’t seem to be bleeding too much anymore.

  It took six tries to get the engine started. I drove down to the road with the headlights off, and stopped. It was dark in both directions. I didn’t have any choice. If I wanted to go anywhere but deeper into the woods, I had to go left.

  I drove to our old house and pulled over. I had to check. I got out of the car and ran up the drive and around to the front of the house, covering the last of the distance close up to the house.

  The truck was gone.

  The front door was hanging open.

  I went inside, but there was no one there. I ran back up to the road, got in the car, and started to drive fast back toward Black Ridge.

  CHAPTER 42

  Bill was waiting on his porch when I pulled up, and trotted straight down the steps to the car.

  “Christ,” he said, when I got out. “You look like shit. Is it serious?”

  “No. Though I wouldn’t want it happening twice.”

  Indoors it was warm and there was music playing and he led me straight into the kitchen, poured a big cup of coffee from the waiting pot, and handed it to me. He noticed that my hands were shaking and asked if I wanted something in my drink.

  I shook my head. “Where are you on that?”

  “Few beers. Don’t worry. Not like it used to be.”

  I knew what he was talking about, how in the army it’d be a strange old day when most of us weren’t at least a joint and a few beers to the wind when something kicked off, and Bill had always taken it further than most.

  “Long time ago,” I said. “Younger heads.”

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  I looked him in the eyes and saw that was true, so I quickly told him what I knew. That someone had murdered Ellen and was trying to pin it on me—an attempt that might yet be successful, given her body was presumably still in my motel room. That someone—maybe the same person or people, maybe not—had abducted my ex-wife and child and held them in my old house until they could round me up to go with them. That they’d been taken somewhere after I got away.

  And that Carol had known about Jenny and me.

  “Huh,” he muttered. “She could have told me.”

  “Carol said some very weird things while I was with her,” I said. “Okay, she’d been locked in a dark house for a while and seemed kind of odd in general but . . . she claimed . . .”

  I didn’t really know how to put it.

  “What?”

  “She said she’d done something to Jenny.”

  “Done what?”

  “I’m just—look, this is what she told me, and I don’t know if it means anything. She said she’d had something called a “sadness” put on her. Half an hour later the guy I took that SUV from used the exact same word, and far as I know the two have never met. Carol said . . . she said that it was this thing gone wrong that led to Scott’s death.”

  Bill was looking down at the floor, chewing his lip. “So, what— like a “spell” or something?”

  “I know how it sounds.”

  “Who was the person Carol said did this thing for her?”

  “Brooke Robertson. Bill, if you know anything about this, now’s the time to tell me.”

  “I don’t,” he said quietly. “Not specifically. Thing is, I’m from here, but also not. My parents aren’t local. They moved here in the 1960s and when I was a kid we lived down in Yakima. I was at school with the Robertsons for a few years, like I told you, but then I transferred, and at eighteen I was hell and gone out of here and into the army. I lost track of all these people until I got back, and never became close after that—because I was spending most of my time down in Yakima again working my ass off.”

  “But?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve heard stuff, over the years. You know how it goes.”

  I did. Snippets, tangential information. Things that bore no direct relevance to the case you were working, muttered by the guilty as mitigation or misinformation or time-fillers, and that collect like dust in the far recesses of your head.

  “And what did you hear?”

  “That there were people who you could go to if you had a problem, or a need. That things could be done, sometimes, people could be made to do stuff. I didn’t take it seriously. You know how small towns are. It’s like staying in high school your whole life. A lot of people talking a lot of bullshit. Walking the same halls, using the same locker room and cafeteria. People build their own little spooky stories out of nothing, right? Join the dots?”

  “I’m not sure that’s all this is. And you said yourself that people whispered things about Brooke a long time ago.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “And actually I talked to Jenny about that this afternoon.”

  “You did?”

  “After you left, I thought shit, call and see how the woman is. We got onto the Robertsons because I mentioned Ellen was having problems—she and Jenny had got to know each other a little, it turns out—and we didn’t really get into it, but I received the impression there was more to that story about Brooke and the teacher than I ever got to hear.”

  Brooke’s ancient history was not something I cared about at that moment, and I suddenly remembered other things that might be happening in the world. “I need to use your phone.”

  “Sure,” he said, heading out of the room. “I’ll find you a dry shirt, too.”

  “Another thing,” I told his back. “I tried to talk to the sheriff after I got away from these people. Whoever answered hung up on me.”

  “Huh,” he said.

  I couldn’t remember Becki’s cell-phone number, even after numerous tries that landed me in dead ends or irritable wrong numbers and a conversation where neither I nor the person on the other end appeared able to hear the other. My head was throbbing badly now. I took a look through the kitchen drawers and eventually turned up a bottle of Advil. I took four.

  Bill came back with a gray sweatshirt that you could have squeezed two of me into. I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m built for comfort these days. But it’s dry and has no bullet holes and is not covered in blood. Your call, Mr. Armani.”

  As I was reaching out for it I had another idea, and called directory assistance for the number of the Mountain View. The bartender guy answered and put me through to Kristina quickly enough.

  “Where the hell are you?” she said. There was a strong crackle on this line, too. “Are you okay?”

  “I need you to do me a big favor.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Friend of mine, that girl who arrived in the car last night? She’s—”

  “Right here,” Kristina said.

  "What?”

  “But it’s complicated.”

  “How—” I started, but she was gone, and another voice came on the line.

  “Been calling you,” it said angrily. “You ain’t fucking answer.”

  “I lost my phone. Who is this?”

  “Little D. We got your boy.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Look—”

  “No, you listen. Only reason we ain’t long gone with the job done is your woman.”

  “What woman? I don’t have a woman.”

  “Skinny bitch here with the black hair.”

  “She’s not . . . look, okay, what?”

  The timbre of the man’s voice changed, as if he’d turned away from the others and brought his face closer to the phone.

  “Listen, yo. We find your boy on the street and we’re on the way to do the thing, when we see his girl. The blond one. Switch pulls over, gets out to grab her
, do two for one and make it all clean. That’s how he be. But she’s with your woman here, and the tall girl just looks at Switch like he’s a little ’un and starts talking. Switch don’t listen to nobody once he’s started, but now . . . now he got some whole other idea from her.”

  “Which is?”

  “We ain’t whack your boy yet.”

  “Thank—”

  “But we double on the price. Because now we got him in the hand, yo.”

  For a second I considered telling the guy to fuck himself, and his friend, and to fuck Kyle while he was at it.

  Then I caught Bill’s eye, and realized what was playing on the stereo in the living room. An old Creedence song, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” One of the tracks Bill always used to play on his Walkman in the bad old days, another little joke about his name. And off the back of that, and flash memories of those times, I had another thought entirely.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Deal. But I have a better one if you want to hear it.”

  “What is?”

  “I’ve got another problem right now, and I need some soldiers. Tonight. Twenty-five each.”

  “You shitting me?”

  The anger or fear bubbled up out of me. “Do I sound like I am? When you’re already holding two friends of mine? You met me. Did I look like someone who fucks around?”

  “Wait up,” he said.

  The line went muffled for a full thirty seconds. Bill looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

  A different voice came on the line. The matter had evidently been handed up the ladder.

  “Fifty between us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Up front.”

  “Can’t be. You think I’m holding that much right now?”

  “Up front or no deal.”

  “Have it your way, asshole. You do this, you get paid what I just said. You don’t, you can drop the little shithead right there in the bar and I don’t give a fuck.”

  There was silence, then a chuckle. “You a cold motherfucker.”

  “That a yes?”

  “Where you at?”

  I told him and asked to be put back to Kristina.

  “What have you just done?” she asked.

  “Somebody killed Ellen.”

  “I know. Becki told me.”