The Lark and the Bull

by Carolyn Faulkner

  Bull reached out for her arm, but she held it away from him, so he ran his big hand over his scalp, instead, wishing, for the first time in a long time, that he had his own hair to run his fingers through.

  "Listen, Lark—"

  But she was already at the door, purse in hand. "No, Bull. I'm not going to listen. I'm also not going to continue sleeping with a man who, despite everything we've been through together, still thinks that I'm, at heart, a liar." She released the locks and pulled it open, saying, "I'll be waiting for you in the car." Then she closed the door behind her.

  Bull ran back to the bedroom, threw on a pair of jeans, grabbed his keys and headed out to the car, cursing himself the entire time. It didn't take an empath to see that she was hurt and angry at him. Who could really blame her?

  At first, he didn't say anything—he was trying to collect his own thoughts, trying to think of ways to twist and organize and damned close to lie to her about them in order to stop her from being angry with him.

  And he discovered that he couldn't. The undiluted truth was that she was right.

  Bull sighed in defeat, but he couldn't imagine leaving things as they were between them. If he was going to lose her, he was going to go down swinging.

  "Look, I—"

  She cut him off right there. "I no longer wish to discuss the situation, Detective."

  Christ, he was all the way back to that now.

  "You have to listen to me."

  "Are you going to try to lie to me and tell me that you believe me?"

  He wanted to ask her if she was…feeling him, but he knew that wasn't a good idea. "No, I'm not."

  "Then we have nothing further to discuss."

  "Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered under his breath, hands flexing into fists on the steering wheel. He wanted badly to punch it, but he didn't want to scare her.

  They got to her place much too quickly for him, but much more slowly than she wanted to. She was out of the car almost before he'd put it in park, and he followed her to her door seconds later.

  Not for the first time, Lark wondered why there wasn't some kind of automatic door unlocking mechanism, like what was on the fob for a car, as she stood there fumbling with her keys.

  Bull came up the stairs and onto the porch but no further.

  "I'd really like to talk this over with you, Lark," he said quietly from behind her, not quite willing to believe that he was losing her right now, this way. At this moment, although he prided himself on being a very honest man, he found himself severely regretting not lying to her and telling her that he believed her completely, but he had a feeling that she wouldn't have believed him, anyway, if he had.

  Finally, she'd gotten the right key and opened the door, pushing into her living room, but not feeling any better for having done so. It was just a big, lonely space where she'd be without him. Then she turned back to him rather than just closing the door in his face, because she felt he deserved better than that.

  "Thank you for—" Lark'd been able to keep it together until this point, but her voice broke there, and it was all over, although she continued to speak. "For taking care of me like you did, all those times. I know it couldn't have been an easy thing for you to do, especially early on, when you actively hated me—"

  He wanted to correct her about that, but they both knew she was right about that, too.

  "But you did it, and I will forever be grateful to you for that."

  "I don't want your gratitude." His voice was unusually dull and flat.

  "I know, but you have it anyway, Bull." She was hurting so badly that more of her thoughts came tumbling out than she wanted. "You could have had so much more than that from me." Her voice began to tremble, and Bull could barely believe his ears, "I was beginning to—" Lark swallowed hard. "I would have given you everything—every single bit of me—but I can't be with a man who thinks I'm a liar."

  With those devastating words, she did close the door. And this time, she locked it.

  "I love you, Lark," he vowed very clearly and more than loudly enough for her to hear it through the door.

  But it remained shut, and he heard her walking away—and sobbing.

  Bull stood there for a very long time, his hands on the door frame, staring down at nothing as his fingers contracted and the old, soft wood began to crumble. Eventually, he turned and walked slowly back to his car while the woman inside, who was hovering in the doorway to her bedroom, watched as he took her own heart with him.

  He didn't break down until he got home and went into the bathroom, where he saw that she had neatly folded the pajamas he'd put her into last night, with Wabbit perched right on top of them.

  Working at the station from that point on was a downright miserable pursuit, although everyone around them—everyone on the team, anyway—tried to do their best to make things easier on both of them. Holly stepped up and kept her apprised of what was happening on their end and became her liaison to the chief—as well as certain other members of the team.

  They treated each other cordially, nothing more, although Bull snuck looks at her every time he could. She did not do the same. The sight of him was more than enough to reduce her to tears, so she looked at him as little as she could manage.

  After her incident at the ball, nothing had happened in the case for weeks, and Lark was seriously considering going back up to Marblehead, where she lived. But she hadn't yet, although she really had no justifiable reason as why she hadn't.

  She just…couldn't yet, and she wasn't willing to explore her feelings any further.

  She didn't leave, even though it was harder for her to be in town. Without Bull as a buffer, she felt people's resentment and fear of her more acutely than she had before. At least at home, she was an unknown, just another face in the crowd, and the emotions that touched her constantly were the normal ones, not angry, fearful people being concerned that she was spying on them.

  It had been a few days since she'd even gone into the station, since Holly was more than happy to keep her up to date, and one morning, when she was actively trying to decide whether or not she was going to pack up and go, she got a call from her.

  "Hey! How are you? Haven't seen you around here in a while."

  "Well, it's just easier to get my news from you."

  "I understand. Listen, Bull is kind of what I was calling about."

  Lark was instantly on alert. "Oh?"

  "Have you seen him lately? No one around here has seen him in a couple of days."

  "No, I haven't, because…we're not…together anymore."

  "I know. I'm sorry. I just didn't know if you'd seen him around town or whatnot."

  "No. Is he maybe at home? I know he would take some time off—the odd day or two—to be with me—but he'd usually let the chief know he wasn't going to be in."

  Holly sighed. "Yeah, but he's not heard from him. Randall, either. We've been by the house; he doesn't seem to be there. His folks have a cabin on Danbury Lake, and he's not there, either."

  "Hmm. I-I don't know him all that well. Is he in the habit of disappearing?"

  "Not at all. Can't really do that and get where he's gotten to as a cop so young."

  "No, I guess not. Well, if I see or hear from him, I'll let you know."

  "Please do. Thanks, Lark. Are we still on for lunch, tomorrow?"

  "Definitely. I'll meet you at Dorsey's Diner at twelve-thirty."

  "Great! See you then!"

  "Oh, Holly, would you?" Lark hesitated to say this, but couldn't quite resist the urge. "I'm kind of concerned about Bull now. Would you let me know as soon as you locate him? It would just settle my mind."

  "Sure thing, honey."

  Lark ended the call perplexed and worried. She had no idea where Bull could have gone, although she wondered if the two of them breaking up had caused him to want to go away somewhere by himself for a while. But it was very unlike him not to let at least the chief know about something like that.

  Early the next mor
ning, she got another call from Holly.

  "I'm sorry, Lark, but I'm going to have to cancel our lunch."

  "Oh, why? Is Bull okay?"

  "That's just it. It's been more than three days since anyone has seen him, and we're officially treating it as a missing person case, so I'm not going to have time for lunch."

  "No problem. Is there anything I could do? I'd be glad to do anything at all to help."

  "Aw, you're sweet. I don't think there is, though. I'll run it by the chief, if you like, though."

  "The chief?"

  "Yeah. You could only really ride with me—officially— if you're assigned to the case."

  "Well, let him know that it's off the clock, please. I'm volunteering."

  "Of course. I'll let you know. Thanks for offering to help. It's very generous of you, considering."

  "Yeah, but I'll owe him for the rest of my life for what he's done for me. Riding around in a car with you is literally the very least I could do for him."

  Holly laughed at that. "I'll get back to you."

  She texted an answer relatively quickly, and it was negative. Apparently, Dale thought that he might have left because he didn't want to see her anymore, and he didn't want to stir Bull up.

  Lark texted back to her that that was fine with her.

  But long minutes later, spent biting her lip and thinking, had her grabbing her keys and heading out about town. She wasn't really sure what she thought she was doing, but she wondered if she might be able to pick up on something, anything, around town. So, she gassed up and simply drove around for a while, going back to places he had taken her—the lunch spot where she'd told him he was horny and he'd protected his chocolate cream pie from her, the station, the auditorium where the ball was held, and even his place, which looked terribly empty, and got her weeping until she forced herself to drive on.

  She wondered if they had checked for signs of forced entry, or footsteps around his house, talked to the last person to see him—but then, she knew they had. They'd've done everything they could to find him, using all of their resources.

  Except her.

  Although she was really just wandering at that point, she headed out of town. Holly had mentioned the cabin at the lake. They'd headed out that way to go to dinner one night, although he'd said he show it to her another time. The truth had been that he wanted to get her home and bend her over the back of the couch. He wasn't about to waste time showing her an old, empty cabin when he could be buried inside her.

  But she went that way, anyway, hoping to pick up on something.

  She was trying to sense feelings, as was the way she usually worked. But when she was with Bull, she couldn't pick up on anything. So, she should have been looking for an absence of feeling.

  She drove a little way, looking for an easy place to turn around—she hated doing three point turns and always looked for a gas station to cut through or a parking lot to turn around in. And she hated turning around in people's driveways—sometimes the house was too close and she got a whiff of what was going on among its occupants. Whenever she broke down and did that, she always regretted it.

  Eventually, she approached a small collection of houses, a couple of off-brand gas stations and a dilapidated convenience store that was too small to actually be considered a town, turning around in the parking lot of the convenience store.

  And it was then that she realized the hustle and bustle and commotion of all of the emotions of those around her had gone eerily silent. She nearly screamed when she realized what had happened, wishing then and there—for the first time in her life—that she was clairvoyant rather than just an empath, so she'd be able to accurately discern where he was.

  Lark grabbed up her phone and called the chief directly, saying a quiet apology to Holly, but she wanted the big guns so that he could get help as soon as possible.

  "Dale? This is Lark."

  "Hey! I'm kind of in the middle of something—"

  "I don't care. Whatever it is, drop it."

  Dale's chuckle had nothing to do with mirth. "Uh, no. We think we've got a possible lead on Bull's disappearance."

  Lark sat back in her seat. "Really? Can you tell me?"

  "Well, I suppose so. It seems that Helen—the waitress at McGuffy's—has been gone for pretty much the same time as Bull has." He very carefully didn't say anything more.

  "Okay…" She couldn't really think that it meant much, but then she didn't think she knew Helen. "But, Chief, you know the weird thing that Bull can do for me when he's relatively near me?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sitting here in, well, I have no idea where I am, but I'm somewhere outside of town on route 32 South, and I can't tap into anyone."

  "You're sure about that, Lark?" Dale asked, sounding more skeptical than usual. "I don't want to send a slew of people over there on a hunch."

  "I'm sure, Chief." She looked around her. "And I'm at Ledbetter's Get Gas."

  "I know right where that is. Hang on, and let me know if anything changes. We'll be right there."

  It took them forever to get there, as far as Lark was concerned, but it was really only about twenty minutes. She had spent the entire time trying to tell him that they were on their way, that he would be rescued shortly and to hold on, although she didn't think she was getting anywhere with it.

  She was surprised when they arrived—she'd thought they'd come in, sirens on and guns drawn, but instead, all of a sudden, she was surrounded by non-descript cars and Dale, driving his personal SUV.

  He got out and got into the car with her, schooling his face to be calm and friendly, when that was the least of what he felt.

  When they'd realized that Helen was gone, too, they'd poked around the restaurant. Seems she had been alone, working the night shift the last night anyone saw Bull. And everyone knew that he ate there all the time, rather than cooking for himself. They'd found chloroform in a bottle behind all of the spices, as well as the rag that had been soaked with it.

  Randall and some uniforms had been sent to her tiny apartment, and they got an eyeful. There were pictures of Bull everywhere, mostly taken surreptitiously at the restaurant, sometimes at crime scenes, and she'd set up some kind of weird altar to him above her bed, where the murder weapons, which had never been found and were all enormous kitchen knives she'd stolen from the restaurant over time, were arranged in an artful display, dried blood from her victims still on them.

  "So. Tell me all about what you're feeling. Or not feeling."

  Using her, driving her around in one of their unmarked cars, they mapped out where they thought he was—either the rundown farmhouse, with its unkempt lawn and jalopy cars rusting away out front, or the equally dilapidated barn behind it.

  "I can't…I can't be any more specific for you. I wish I could. Frankly, I shouldn't have been able to feel him where I was, either. When he and I tested his range, we only measured about a twenty-foot radius. This is more like a hundred or more. Maybe it's not him—maybe it's someone else in there who can do what he does for me."

  "Nah. It's him. Maybe he's trying to project his abilities towards you or something." Dale didn't much go in for this stuff, but he was trying. And she'd gotten them this far. As the evidence finally came rolling in on this case, one thing right after the other, he became less and less convinced that it was likely he was still alive. It seemed as if she'd bagged the big one—literally—and that she'd done to him what she'd done to the others.

  But if Lark was still in whatever weird kind of contact she was with him, then maybe there was a chance.

  They stormed the house and then the barn, and of course, she was held back with the uniforms—in the car with Donna, who was wonderfully—terribly— chatty, and seemed only too willing to tell her about everything they'd found out this morning, making Lark's blood run cold.

  The only thing she could hold onto as she sat there crying was that she still felt him, and this time, she wasn't ignoring him. She could feel how horribly scared
he was and knew that he was in terrible pain, although she didn't know how or why.

  She just hoped it wasn't because he was dying.

  The sound of a gunshot made her jump and scream, and it seemed like an eternity before she heard Dale's voice on the radio, saying for her to come to him—that he was hurt, but all right.

  This time, she was the one who ran to him for a change, the officers pointing her way into the very dank, dark barn, up against the back wall.

  He was held in chains, which someone was in the act of using bolt cutters to get through, but he lunged towards her as she came into sight. Bull was covered in blood from head to toe but she launched herself at him just as the chains gave way, and she hit him like a tiny ton of bricks as he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet to hold her against him, rasping just one word into her ear, "Kitten."

  And she replied right back, her voice choked with emotion, "Daddy."

  As much as she wanted to hold onto him and never let him go, she leaned away from him, her hands roaming everywhere over him. "Are you bleeding? Are you okay?" Worried for him, she tried to get down, but he wouldn't let her.

  "I'm fine. I'm wounded, but not badly. I never thought about how she always knew what I wanted at the café, bringing me things without me having to ask. She had a crush on me and was just playing with me. I don't think she would have killed me. She killed women she thought I might want." He cupped her cheek. "I'm sure you were somewhere on her list, too, babygirl.'

  "But they got her, and you're all right!" She hugged him as tightly as she possibly could, whispering, "I love you, Bull. I love you. I love you. I don't give a fuck whether or not you believe in me. I love you."

  He almost laughed but stopped because it hurt him to do so. "Ah, but I do, honey, I do. Ever since I woke up, I've been scrunching up my face and humming loudly, trying to get your attention."

  She chuckled through tears. "You did! You did! It was kind of dumb luck, but you did."

  The chief had hustled everyone away from them as much as he could, but he sidled up to them awkwardly. "Uh, the EMTs would like to do their thing and get him to a hospital."