“Wondering about my decision,” he said. “That it?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s a start on it,” he said. “There are two pistols on the chair beside your bed. I’d like one of them.”
“What?”
“Seems like a fair gesture of trust to me,” he said.
Paul’s footsteps slapped off the floor, and then the door to the kitchen banged open and he was back with them, in midsentence and midstride, discussing his theories on the clock’s malfunction before he’d even gotten the case off. When he’d knelt on the floor above it and ducked his head, Arlen stared back at Rebecca Cady, a look in his eyes that said, The rest is up to you.
She turned away.
All day long they worked, speaking to each other as if nothing lay between them. All day long Arlen watched the road for Wade and McGrath, and all day long he considered the countless reasons for gathering his bags and walking away from this place.
When darkness fell, his bags were where they’d been for days.
She came for him in the night.
He was in the chair at the window, had dozed off, and the sound of the door opening woke him. He could see her reflection in the glass as she entered. The pistol was in her left hand, looking big and ugly.
“Do you ever sleep?” she said, apparently thinking that because he was in the chair he’d been awake.
“I used to.”
He still hadn’t turned, and after a short hesitation she crossed the room to him. When she reached the chair, she didn’t say anything at first, just joined him in staring out at the sea. Then, still silent, she switched the gun from her left hand to her right and extended it to him.
He didn’t move to take it.
“There are bullets inside, if they make you feel better. I can give you more if you want them.”
He stared at the horizon line. Even in the dark of full night, you could make out the distinction once your eyes had adjusted. Shades of gray.
“Well?” she said, and gave the gun a little shake.
“You intend to leave,” Arlen said, not moving his hands from his lap, letting the big Smith & Wesson float in the air in front of his chest.
“What?”
“When your brother is released, you intend to leave.”
“That’s right.”
“He’ll look for you,” Arlen said. “And you want to know something else? He’ll look for me and Paul.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“It didn’t.”
“It doesn’t now.”
“Like hell. It does now, and it will then.”
She moved the gun away, dropped it back to her side.
“So when he’s released, you’ll leave,” Arlen repeated. “And then I’ll have to deal with Wade, whether here or far away. You told me that yourself.”
She still didn’t say a word. He looked up at her for a time, and then he reached over and took the gun. He had to lean across her body to get it. When he touched the stock, his hand pressed against hers. Her skin was very cool.
He pulled the gun from her fingers and flicked open the cylinder and saw the cartridges, snapped it shut and set the weapon down on his lap.
“All right,” he said.
She didn’t move. He looked up at her and then got to his feet.
“That’s my answer,” he said. “I’ll be here in the morning again. Be damned if I know why, but I’ll be here in the morning.”
He crossed to the bed and leaned down and placed the gun on the floor beside it. She was still standing at the window, staring out at the ocean.
“When you kissed me,” she said, “I thought that’s what you wanted. That you’d make me… earn your silence.”
“I understand. You weren’t right, but I understand, and I shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake.”
“I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“I think you probably should have,” he said.
She turned and took a few steps toward him.
“Why did you do that, though? It didn’t seem like something you would do. That’s why I reacted that way. It didn’t seem to fit you.”
“Why did I kiss you? I think you had it right. I wanted to control you. I’m a brute, same as McGrath or Tolliver or Wade.”
“That’s not the truth. Why did you do it?”
He studied her for a moment and then said, “You don’t need to ask a man why he’d be moved to do a thing like that. You don’t need to ask that at all. You damn well know why.”
She’d stepped even closer, was an arm’s length away now.
Tell her to get out, he thought. Tell her thanks for the gun, honey, but go on your way now.
She took one more step forward and he reached up with his right hand and placed it on the back of her head and pulled her face to his and kissed her, just as he had the last time. She didn’t slap him tonight. She returned the kiss but kept her body distant for a moment. Just a moment. Then she leaned in and he felt the press of her chest against his, the graze of her thigh.
He broke the kiss.
“All right,” he said. “You let me have one. Thanks. It was awfully nice. Now you need to leave.”
She stepped back from him and looked him in the eye and then she reached down and took hold of her gown and lifted it, brought it up over her head just as she had that night on the beach before she’d waded into the water. She held the gown in her hands for one long second and then dropped it onto the floor, and she was naked before him.
This is how far she’s willing to go, he thought. This is how far she thinks she needs to go. You’ll get your reward for keeping your mouth shut. How do you feel about yourself now? You proud of what you’ve got her ready to do?
“Go back to your room,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “I’m a rotten son of a bitch, some days, but I’ve never been this kind of rotten. Get out of here.”
She didn’t move. The moonlight lit the curve of one breast, traced the swell of her hip and the length of her leg with white light.
“All I asked for was the gun,” he said. “You can go back to bed now. Go on and get to bed.”
“You want me to go?” she said.
“Yes.” But even as he said it he felt himself step forward. It was wrong, it was all mighty damn wrong, this moment built from everything that a moment like this should not be of—distrust, power, manipulation. A flickering thought—Just come toward me a little, don’t make me go all the way there, come toward me a little, that will make it better, so much better—danced in his brain.
She leaned into him just before he reached her. She leaned into him and something broke free in his mind and floated clear and then his lips were on hers again and his hands were resting first on the small of her back and then on her hips. Her hair slid over his cheek and her chest pressed into his, her nipples tightening against his skin.
When he pulled her back to the bed, his foot brushed against the Smith & Wesson. He almost tripped over it just before they hit the mattress, the old bed frame creaking under their weight. She had both of her hands on his belt now and he was trying to help with one of his own. He twisted and tugged free from his pants, then ran his hands along her sides, tracing the lines of her body as he moved his lips to her ear.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “Quiet. I don’t want the boy hearing.”
26
SHE WAS GONE when he woke, but the gun remained.
He turned away from the window to hide from the sunlight. The sheets and pillow smelled of her. He didn’t remember when she’d left, but he remembered the night. Long would he remember the night.
He heard voices from downstairs then, hers first, then Paul’s. The sound of the boy’s voice made him squeeze his eyes shut.
Out of all the reasons you shouldn’t have done it, his schoolboy’s infatuation doesn’t rank anywhere near the top, he told himself. Not even close.
Somehow it seemed to, though. Somehow it seemed mighty near the top.
During dinner Paul mentioned how much he’d like to try some fishing. Rebecca left and came back with two beautiful rods and reels. “My father’s,” she said shortly. That evening Arlen stood on the dock and smoked a few cigarettes while the boy tried casting. He caught two black drum before the night was done, fish with high backs, steeply sloped heads, and a tangle of chin whiskers. They gave him some fun on the line, and he brought them up to the inn and made an awkward job of cleaning one before Rebecca stepped in and did the other.
“Fresh fish tomorrow,” she said. “You caught it, and we can keep it cold now because you fixed the generator.”
There was nothing the kid liked more than her praise.
She came back to Arlen’s room that night.
“I told you,” he said, “you don’t have to do this. I didn’t ask it of you.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
“If you don’t want to be here, then go on back to your room.”
“If I didn’t,” she said, “I would.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her in the dark and said, “I need to believe that.”
“You should.”
He didn’t answer.
“If you’d like me to go, I will,” she said. “But do you really want me to?”
He did not.
The wind changed early the next afternoon. It had been blowing in hot gusts out of the west for the better part of two days, but now it swung around to the southeast and the water in the inlet rippled beneath it. The change brought a touch of cool, and they were grateful for it down on the dock, until they noticed the smell.
It was coming from farther up the inlet, somewhere back in the mangrove trees. Paul twisted his face in a grimace of disgust and said, “What is that?”
“Dunno,” Arlen said, but he was facing into the wind and thinking that he knew very well indeed.
“You mean you don’t smell that stench?”
“I can smell it.”
“It’s awful. You ever smelled anything so awful, Arlen?”
“A time or two.”
They got back to work then, and the sun moved west and shone down on the inlet, unbroken by cloud. The smell intensified—a fetid, rotting stink. Arlen saw vultures coming and going from a spot in the marsh grass just up the creek from them, maybe three hundred yards away. They flicked through the trees as silent shadows, but there were many of them.
“Something died back there,” Paul said. “Wonder what it was.”
Who, Arlen thought. You wonder who it was.
Of course, it could be an animal. One of the boars they had out in these woods. Or perhaps someone’s hound had gotten loose and found its way down to the inlet and ran afoul of a snake. There were any number of possibilities.
An hour passed before Paul went up to the inn and came back with a rake in his hand, a thing with a mean-looking array of wide metal tines.
“The hell you think you’re doing?” Arlen said.
“We better check that out. Arlen, it smells like death.”
“Could be an animal.”
“Could be.” Paul gave him a long, steady look, and Arlen sighed and swore under his breath and dropped his saw to the ground, gathered an ax.
“All right. We’ll have a look.”
It was remarkable how fast the beach gave way to forest in this part of the state. Or to jungle, rather. It was more like that than any forest Arlen had ever known, choked with thick green undergrowth and snarling vines and soil that squished under your boots. They picked their way through the mud and the brush until they were walking beneath the trees—scrub pine nearest the dock and mangroves farther inland. The woods were a litter of torn leaves and branches, and it seemed half the trees had been sheared or uprooted completely during the hurricane. The vultures ahead of them watched their approach and flapped their wings, creating an eerie background as they walked deeper into the shadows.
“Go on,” Arlen shouted at the birds. “Go on!” He reached out and grabbed hold of a large banyan leaf and gave it a vigorous shake. A few of the birds took to the air then, but others stayed. Arlen could see now that the object of the scavenging was actually down in the water, which was why the vultures were perched in the trees instead of clustered around the find; they had to make quick passes and snatches with their beaks because the carcass was floating and they weren’t waterbirds. Just death birds.
“Arlen,” Paul said, “that looks like…”
“Yeah,” Arlen said.
The carcass was on their side of the creek but still thirty feet away and mostly underwater. Even from here, though, a stretch of fabric was visible. It was covered with mud and water, but even so you could see that it was a pale yellow.
“Give me that rake,” Arlen said, and the words didn’t come easily. Paul traded him the rake for the ax, and Arlen ran his tongue over dry lips and then stepped forward. The boy hung back, watching. Arlen had his eyes locked on the floating object and didn’t see the snake in his path until he’d nearly stepped on it. There was a flourish of motion that froze him with one foot hanging in the air, and then the water parted almost soundlessly and the snake slid off. Arlen stared after it for a moment and then continued on.
When he got closer, he yelled again and banged the rake through the leaves and sent the remaining vultures into the air. They didn’t go far, though. Only to a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where they could monitor their prize.
He knew by then what he’d suspected since the wind shifted and began to carry the smell to them. The vultures and the fish and the heat had combined to do dastardly things to this remnant of human life, and when he stood over the body he felt his stomach clench and had to take a quick glance at the treetops to steady himself. The stench was hideous, and he’d pulled his shirt up over his nose with the hand that didn’t hold the rake.
She floated upside down, and he could see one hand just beneath the surface of the water, some of the flesh picked clean, bone remaining. He remembered the way she’d traced his palm with her fingers.
It’s happened now, hasn’t it? she’d said, watching his face after her own had gone from flesh to bone in the darkness. He’s told them. It’s done.
Arlen had let her go. He’d seen death on her and he’d let her go and now her remains floated in the marsh, picked upon by forest creatures and vultures. Yes, there’d been armed men inside, but he’d let her go, he’d let them take her.
They’ll find me, she had said. And it will end the same for me, only it will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won’t initiate such things.
“Arlen,” Paul called. “Is that—”
“Shut up!” Arlen shouted, and his voice nearly broke. The boy fell into a stunned silence.
You can’t run from them, she’d said. I hope you understand that. You’re going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.
Now he reached out with the rake, leaning off the bank and extending it as far as he could, and hooked one of the tines into the dead woman’s dress.
It took four tries to drag her all the way over. Her flesh was so decomposed that the rake went through it like soft butter, so Arlen had to keep catching the dress as best as he could. The clothes had held up better than the body.
He dragged her back, out of the dark waters of the creek and toward the bank. He bit down, squeezing his teeth together and tightening his lips, and then he held his breath and used the rake to turn the body over. More flesh slid off the bones when he did it, and a burst of putrid gases rose. The dead woman’s head rolled crookedly, turning to face Arlen. Only traces of skin remained, and they were swollen and discolored. Not even the dearest loved one would be able to look at this face an
d recognize it. Arlen felt his stomach clench again and his throat burn warningly, and he pulled the rake free and turned from the body, heard it slide down into the water. He walked back to Paul, cold rage in his veins.
“That’s a woman,” Paul said softly. “Isn’t it? That’s a dead woman.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d she come from? How’d she die?”
Arlen looked away. “She’s been in the water for a time. Probably dumped in upstream and drifted down and snagged here.”
“The body wouldn’t have sunk? They float?”
“Yes,” Arlen said. “They float.”
Paul stared at him. “Who was it?”
“Too late to tell,” Arlen said, and that was almost the truth.
27
ARLEN TOLD THEM they’d have to call for the sheriff, and both Rebecca and Paul stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“He’ll likely want to arrest us for it,” Paul said nervously.
“You’d let her sit there?” Arlen said. “Pretend we never found her?”
“No,” Paul said, but he still looked uneasy, and Rebecca was watching Arlen with confusion and wariness, reading something in him that the boy did not. He turned from her so she could no longer stare into his eyes. There was another reason Arlen wanted Tolliver down here, all right. He wanted to watch the man face the corpse. To see her as she was now, and remember her as she had been. He wanted to see if it made any impact, if the man would feel the weight of murder or if that ability was gone from him. Arlen had an idea that it was.
They got in the truck and headed out just as they had so many days earlier, when Sorenson’s body still smoldered in his twelve-cylinder Auburn and Arlen expected to be gone from the Cypress House by sundown.
Back to the same store, and this time they all went inside. The little shop was jammed with rows of shelves, and a dark-skinned, dark-haired girl stood behind a counter lined with jars of penny candy. She was an Indian, Arlen realized when she looked up at them, an absolutely beautiful girl.
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