Eighteen tiny American flags in eighteen identical miniature ceramic cups all bearing the Askergan County name.
A smile unexpectedly broke across the elderly woman’s thin lips.
Bert would be happy, she thought. He would be so happy.
A strange thought indeed, as emotional exchanges between Mrs. Mullheney and her husband when he had been alive had been, well, infrequent.
Thoughts of her husband caused the woman’s smile to quickly transition into an expression of sadness. But there was no time for that. Never was. There was only time for inventory before the shop opened. She shook the emotion away and checked her watch: it was a quarter to eleven. Mrs. Mullheney picked up the pace.
It was while taking inventory of the second-to-last shelf, the one on the back wall across the door, that she first noticed something out of the ordinary.
Mrs. Mullheney’s face twisted at the sight of the orange ornamental buoys with the white rope in the traditional looped pattern and the same, nearly ubiquitous ‘Askergan County’ name emblazoned in white on the front. She remembered stacking the toy buoys neatly after closing yesterday, stacking all seven of the Frisbee-sized trinkets on top of one another like a child’s stacking game, minus the protuberance in the center. Now all seven were loose on the ground
The wind, maybe?
It had been windy last night, but truthfully, wind was a common feature of her home being so close to the water. And yet today was the first day that the buoys had fallen.
Mrs. Mullheney moved closer to the scattered stack of orange buoys and then reluctantly bent to pick them up. When she eventually managed to straighten her back out again and went to put the buoys on the shelf, her hand froze in midair.
There was something hidden behind the fallen stack of buoys at the back of the shelf, tucked away nearly out of sight.
Mrs. Mullheney squinted through the thick lenses of her glasses. It was white, about the size of a small dessert plate, and flat on the top. Her lip curled into a snarl, and she slowly backed away from the shelf and toward the door, reaching blindly behind her with her left hand until her knobby fingers reached the oak cane. Feeling the hard, knotted wood in her thin hand imbued her with courage, and she stepped toward the shelf again, slowly bringing the cane out in front of her body.
She spied the thing once more: it was exactly as it had been moments before. Tilting her head, she managed to make out more of the creature from behind the orange trinkets, and thought that perhaps, based on the wide, flat, and apparently hard-looking shell, that it might be some sort of crab.
A crab? Askergan has no crabs. Crayfish, catfish, and the occasional mussel, but no crabs.
Raising one thin white eyebrow, Mrs. Mullheney reached out with the rubber foot of her cane and used it to push the closest orange buoy off to one side. She kept her eyes firmly locked on the crab as she did this.
It didn’t move.
Mrs. Mullheney swept the cane the other way, pushing two more buoys out of the way, one of which crashed to the floor and rolled a few feet to her left. She ignored it and squinted until her eyes became but slits.
The shell, which she had previously thought to be a completely smooth surface, appeared upon closer inspection to be riddled with hundreds of tiny holes. And its legs, at least the three legs on the one side that she could see, were unlike any she had seen given her limited crustacean exposure; there were knots and thick cartilaginous bulbs all the way down the length, something that reminded her of an extremely arthritic digit.
Malted? Could it be a shell from a malted crab?
Surely a living, breathing—she listened closely and convinced herself that the barely audible rhythmic puffs of air were indeed coming from it—crab would have moved by now, right? Especially after the buoy had fallen to the floor?
There was only one way to find out.
Biting the inside of her lip, Mrs. Mullheney reached out with the cane with the intent of probing the crab-thing at the back of the shelf.
The rubber foot never made contact with the shell.
A fraction of an inch before the cane reached it, Mrs Mullheney heard a series of rhythmic cracks, and the creature seemed to lower on its haunches. She pulled the cane back, tilting her head to one side in a mixture of curiosity and confusion. She heard another crack, a resounding noise that echoed off the inside of the shoppe, and then the thing flew through the air with such speed and grace that the elderly woman didn’t even manage to stagger backwards before it landed directly on her face.
She tried to scream, but the legs quickly splayed and then flattened, two of them crossing over her lips, preventing them from opening. Eyes wide, her arthritic hands reached up and tore desperately at the shell, trying to pull it from her face, trying to breathe. When she finally managed to hook her fingers beneath one edge of the shell, she felt a horrible suction on the side of her cheek where the bulk of the oval mass had landed, followed by the intense pain as the dozens of tiny teeth dug into her flesh. Mrs. Mullheney’s eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed to the floor, her wooden cane falling from her arthritic fingers and banging loudly off the oak planks.
For the first time in over a year and a half, the ‘OPEN’ sign at Mulhenney Gifts and Snacks was not hung below the window at exactly eleven o’clock.
5.
“Good morning, Mrs. Drew.”
The lady at the desk, a woman in her late fifties with iron-colored hair pulled back into a tight bun and vibrant green eyes, looked up from her computer screen.
“Morning, sheriff,” she said curtly with a nod. “There’s a fresh pot of coffee on the stove.”
Sheriff Paul White grinned; Mrs. Drew always made a pot of coffee in the morning, but didn’t always make it on the stove. On the stove meant that she had brought in her own beans, the ones that she roasted and ground in her house, and used a French press to produce the most ridiculously amazing coffee he had ever tried. He had once heard of a feline or rodent or some sort of creature high in the mountains of Belize or Chile or some equally exotic locale that ate only the freshest coffee beans. Farmers would follow these creatures around and root through their dung to find the beans that had undergone a fermenting process in their guts. Supposedly, these beans made for the best coffee in the world—or so it was said.
Well, the sheriff thought as he made his way to the stove and breathed in deeply through his wide nostrils, short of sifting through shit, this is the best coffee in the world.
He grabbed his mug off the counter and poured himself a cup of the thick, dark liquid. The intoxicating aroma of the fresh coffee brought a smile to his lips.
Today is going to be a good day.
His smile faded as he remembered who he had requested to come down the station for the second time in three days.
Please be a good day today. Please, today let us find him—find the boy tired and bruised, but safe and alive.
The sheriff took a sip of the coffee, but he barely tasted it. His thoughts had drifted elsewhere, and the seductive hold that the brewed beverage had had on him was lost.
Please.
Mrs. Drew’s voice drew him back.
“Gregory Griddle and his boy, Kent, are waiting for you in room one,” she informed him. “Just like you asked.”
Sheriff White nodded and took another sip of his coffee. It tasted bitter.
“Williams is in there with them keeping them company,” she added.
“We are going to have some help come in today, I—”
But before the sheriff could finish his sentence, the door to the police station swung open, the tiny bell above the door announcing his arrival.
“Speak of the devil.”
Andrew Coggins strode through the doorway, head held high. There was a world of difference in his current appearance compared to the previous night when the sheriff had collected him from the biker bar. His long red beard had been trimmed, now cropped closely to his face, which actually looked good on him, serving to fil
l out his otherwise narrow face. His hair had been brushed and was now slicked back away from his face, revealing his small brown eyes. He had changed his clothes, too, and was now sporting a pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt.
He still looked tired, and there was a hint of pink in the corners of his eyes, a lasting reminder of too many nights filled with whiskey and bathroom encounters, but he looked much better.
“Well, well, well,” Paul said, peering over the rim of his cup of coffee. “Look what the cougar dragged in.”
Coggins offered him a quick glance, but ignored the comment. Instead, he turned to Mrs. Drew at the front desk.
Mrs. Drew had first joined on with Paul after her husband, the late Sheriff Dana Drew, had gone missing during the blizzard of six years ago. Paul had to give her credit; even after he had been found—dead, murdered by a deranged psychopath, or so the story went—and her adopted daughter still pining away in a coma, she had stayed on. Mrs. Drew had been critical to getting the town back to normal after the snow had been cleared. She had be important to Paul as well, as without her, there was no way that he would have been able to simply pick up the responsibility of the sheriff’s badge after his mentor, his friend, one of the good guys, had been so ruthlessly murdered.
Sheriff White took another gulp of the hot liquid before putting the cup down on the counter. It tasted sour.
“Mrs. Drew,” Coggins began, but then stopped himself. His eyes turned downward and he cleared his throat. “Mrs. Drew, I can’t—”
The woman raised a slender hand, stopping him cold. Coggins looked up again, the expression on his face as legible as the headline on a tabloid newspaper: shame.
After the young Lawrence girl had been found—alive, thank God—Coggins had disappeared, fading into the snowstorm like just one of the many flakes that left after that horrible week. He had missed the sheriff’s funeral, and hadn’t stopped by the station since. Every once in a while, maybe once every two weeks—more frequently during the holidays—Sheriff White made his way up to the long-term care facility in Darborough and checked in on Alice Dehaust. The facility required that he sign in at each visit, and he always made a note to check the log to see who had been in to visit.
Of course, there was Mrs. Drew—or was it Ms. Drew now?—and his own scrawlings on that mostly empty sheet of paper, and once in a while there was another name or two, childhood friends, perhaps, but never in the six years since the incident at Mrs. Wharfburn’s had he noted Coggins’ name.
Yep, Sheriff White could recognize that expression from a mile away. Shame.
“Deputy Coggins,” she said, her voice calm, even. Her bright green eyes stared at the man for a long while, until Coggins was forced to break the stare.
Deputy Coggins.
“It’s good to have you back,” she finished simply, her thin lips revealing no expression. Mrs. Drew, unlike her late husband, who’d liked to joke around with his deputies, was impossible to read.
There was an awkward pause as the two remained in their position in the police station reception area but a few feet from each other, her seated, him standing.
Paul thought he could read Coggins’ thoughts as they careened through his skull.
Should I apologize? Should I tell her how sorry am I for her loss? What should I say?
In the end, saying nothing was probably the best course of action, and Sheriff White stepped forward quickly to break the unease.
“Good to have you back, Coggins.”
Coggins turned to him, his face reddening.
“Like I said last night, we need you.”
Coggins looked confused, as if he was unsure of why he was actually back here, in the station where it had all started—why he had agreed to come back to join the police force, even if only on a temporary basis. For a brief moment, Paul thought that the man might become overwhelmed and just bolt to the door, never to be seen again for another six years.
He wondered if he would blame Coggins if he tried.
Good ones—we’re the good boys.
“Come,” the sheriff said, taking a step toward the man and gently grabbing ahold of his arm. “There is someone you need to meet.”
6.
The small apartment smelled of cumin and sweet peppers, a delightful concoction that hit Corina’s small, upturned nose even before she opened the door.
Inside, the smell was nearly overwhelming.
She tossed her keys in the small crystal bowl on the table by the entrance, and then leaned over and removed her running shoes, adding them to the pile on the other side of the door.
The apartment wasn’t much more than a glorified rectangle, with the kitchen off to the right of the front entrance and opposite the apartment’s only bathroom.
Corina headed to the kitchen first, coming up behind her mother and gently resting her hand on the woman’s shoulder as she shook the wrought-iron skillet, sautéing the vegetable stir fry as only mothers knew how.
Marley Lawrence nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Jesus, Corina, you can’t sneak up on me like that,” she said, turning to face her eldest daughter.
The woman was tall and athletic, with long brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail, revealing small ears adorned with a simple set of silver stud earrings. Despite her trim physique, she looked older than her forty-odd years, a fact that was reflected in the dark circles that hung beneath her hazel eyes and the deep grooves that lined the corners of her mouth.
“Sorry, Mom,” Corina grumbled, reaching around her mother and grabbing a sizzling square piece of yellow pepper from the skillet. She shook it in the air for a few seconds in a poor attempt to cool it before popping it into her mouth.
“You’re going to burn yourself,” her mother scolded, turning back to the stove.
So long as I don’t freeze.
Still chomping on the yellow pepper, mouth wide, breathing heavily in a further attempt to make it palatable, she brought a hand up and pushed a wayward strand of short brown hair out of her face. When her calloused fingers brushed against the top of her ear, her mood grew increasingly sour. The ear ended much sooner than it ought to, coming to an abrupt halt just above the second ridge. The blizzard of six years ago had taken more than just her leg, her father, and part of her ear; it had—
Corina shook the thoughts from her head, wondering why now, why today of all days, these thoughts had come flooding back.
“Where’s Henrietta?” she asked, trying to change the subject of her own thoughts.
“In your bedroom, watching TV. Why don’t you go get her and set the table? Dinner is almost ready,” her mother replied. .
Corina swallowed the pepper and nodded.
The rest of the apartment was pretty much the same as the entrance and kitchen: plain and ordinary. There was a small dinner table across from the kitchen, and an even smaller family room adjacent to the dining room, which housed a leather couch, a chair, and a small TV. The apartment only had two bedrooms, one for Marley and one that Henrietta and Corina shared. It was a bit strange sharing the room with her sister, who was a decade younger, but Corina didn’t mind. In fact, she didn’t sleep well when she was alone, and it helped to have the girl in there with her. It was strange that an eighteen-year-old would need comfort from an eight—‘Almost nine, don’t call me eight’—year-old, but strange was an appropriate way to describe their family.
It had taken nearly three years for the insurance to pay out after Cody had been killed, what with the still uncertain circumstances surrounding his death.
Need to rule out suicide, they had said, which was ridiculous and insulting. Just procedure.
Procedure, as if what was left of the Lawrence family were undergoing some sort of simple surgery, setting a broken finger or cauterizing a nose prone to bleeding, perhaps.
The debt that Marley had racked up during those three hard years—necessarily so, as she had trouble walking anywhere with the toes missing on her left foot, which like
most of Corina’s ear had also been lost to frostbite—had been substantial, and when the insurance money finally came in, thanks in no small part to Sheriff Paul White, the money had barely covered it.
Moving out of the city had helped curb some of the bills, as did selling their house and now leasing the apartment. But money was—and always would be ever since the paltry advances on Cody’s last book dried up—a stressor in the Lawrence household, something that Corina despised more than anything.
Corina bit her lip and tried to put on a happy face when she pulled open the door to her room. Henrietta, her long, curly, and most unruly mop of blonde hair spilling down over her shoulders, lay on her stomach on Corina’s bed, the lower bunk, her face propped on her hands.
The girl’s brilliant green eyes went wide when she saw her sister.
“Corina!”
Henrietta scrambled to her feet and rushed to her sister, wrapping her in a tight embrace. Despite their age difference, Henrietta was very tall for her age, and was only a few inches shorter than Corina, who was not short by any stretch. The girl’s enthusiasm immediately brought Corina out of her funk, and she found herself smiling despite herself.
Corina tried to run her hand through the girl’s hair, but her fingers almost immediately caught in the unruly ringlets and she pulled it out.
“Not so hard, kiddo,” she said, easing her sister away from her. “You’re gonna knock Captain Hook over.”
Henrietta looked up at her and smiled. Corina mimed a peg-legged walk, tapping the shin of her prosthetic leg for effect.
“Argh,” she grunted, squinting one eye and balling one hand into a fist and the other into a makeshift hook.
Henrietta laughed.
“Go on, little one, go wash your hands. Mom says dinner is almost ready.”
Henrietta snapped her own sock-covered feet together and raised a hand in mock salute.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 39
