Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1)

by Z. Rider

  When Carl pushed open the door, sunlight hit him square in the eyes.

  The guy was still standing there as he shut it, starting to give a disbelieving shake of his head.

  Carl’s feet carried him down the steps and into the dirt. His head swirled with thoughts—no one was in there, but they had to be somewhere.

  That guy was going to keep an eye on him, no doubt, but the bar’s windows were shut up, so he was pretty sure the guy wasn’t seeing him crossing the street, pulling out his car keys. At least he hoped not.

  His shoulders were tight just the same. The back of his neck crawling.

  He started the engine when he dropped inside the Cougar. His heart beat his ribs as he pulled away from the curb.

  5.

  * * *

  Dean’s hand survived sound check. His head throbbed, though, and when he pushed out the venue’s back door to get his Tylenol from the bus, the late afternoon sun flashed off the bus’s side mirror, stabbing a headache into the back of his eyes. He hauled himself inside and took the bottle to the back lounge, where the blinds were drawn.

  As he shook out a couple pills, footfalls came up from the front.

  Nick shambled through the doorway, his hair rumpled like he’d slept on a van seat with a coat over his head—hours ago. “Hiding out? Hey, let me get a couple.”

  He dropped beside Dean with a sigh while Dean popped the top off the bottle. When Dean held two out on his cut-up palm, Nick pinched them up, saying, “You look half as bad as I feel.”

  “I thought you went for beers last night.”

  “Went for beers. Stayed for everything else they could pour into a glass. I’m a sucker when other people are buying.” He tossed the pills in the back of his mouth and swallowed them dry, his chin tipped, his throat exposed.

  Dean pushed the cap back on. The bandage at his neck crackled like insects as he moved, just below his ear. And in his ear, blood chugged—almost a sub-sound. He had the sense that he was hearing Nick’s too, just a little off from his own rhythm, a little quicker. Leave it to the drummer to be racing ahead.

  As they sat, sensation expanded inside his head, bloating until it swelled to press against his skull. He stood, irritated and unsettled. It was like an itch under his skull.

  “We could have some party with those,” Nick said.

  Dean looked where Nick was looking, toward the ceiling. One of the roof hatches was over his head, a good-sized one, not like the little squares on the last bus. Jessie’d stuck an arm with a bottle of Southern Comfort out one of those hatches a few times as they’d pulled out of venues. But these he could fit his whole body through.

  “We need to get one of the flight cases in here to stand on,” Nick said. “Pop that baby open.”

  “Overpasses might hurt a bit.”

  Nick sat forward with a grunt. “I was supposed to be coming to get you.”

  “For what now?”

  “Another interview.”

  Dean sighed.

  Nick held a hand out.

  As Dean grasped his wrist, a restlessness rose in him, traveling up the bones in his arm. A prickling, unsteady sense of some unnamed, unshaped thing.

  On his feet, Nick dropped his arm, oblivious.

  Dean fisted his empty hand, working the weirdness out of it.

  Nick was already moving through the bunk area, tapping the curtains as he passed. “This one’s over the phone,” he said without looking back.

  Dean reached for a cigarette. Lit it with a hand that trembled so slightly it was almost unnoticeable, but the flame danced more than it should in a still room. He let the flame gutter as he filled his lungs with smoke. By the time he got moving, Nick was already hopping off the bus.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Shawn asked after the interview. Dean had found a wall to hold him up in the hallway.

  “Yeah, the Tylenol’s working. Headache’s gone at least.” It had slunk away when the sun went down, or maybe as a result of things picking up at the venue. The longest parts of day-to-day touring were the late afternoons—post-soundcheck, preshow. Time dripped like syrup.

  Shawn tilted his head and touched two fingers to Dean’s neck, just below the edge of the bandage. “Are you going to be okay for a show?”

  Dean pulled back, raking a hand under his hair, dragging his thumb along the skin Shawn had touched. That fucked up feeling again, that restlessness he didn’t know what to do with. “Yeah. Fine.”

  A sign taped by his elbow read “Bus Rolls At 2 A.M. Whether You’re On It Or Not.” Mike’s handwriting.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Better once I get out there.”

  They’d opened the doors at the front of the house; the murmur of a gathering audience ran underneath the backstage bustle.

  Dean wanted to jump forward a few hours, be out there on stage, guitar in hand, eyes half closed, fingers on strings—quickly losing his sense of where his fingers ended and the strings began.

  He wanted to be anywhere but standing around backstage with people jostling him and strangers clapping him on the back like they knew him.

  Their support act—Thieves—scurried from their seats, chairs scraping, nervous looks casting back and forth. One of the guys grabbed a last slug from a plastic cup, swiping his mouth with the side of his hand as he followed his band through a black door that eased shut behind them, the word Stage stenciled in white on its back.

  Half a minute later, feedback sounded, an eruption of applause. The first high, fast notes of Thieves’s opener vibrated through the thick walls.

  Another night, Dean would be out by the stage entrance, checking out their support act. Checking out the crowd—were they the kind that gave their attention to the opening band, or did they go back to their conversations after their initial applause? It made a difference to the whole vibe of the night.

  Tonight, though, he just wanted to—

  What?

  Get the fuck out of here was what the heart tripping inside his chest was telling him.

  “I’m gonna hit the head.” He turned away, swerving to avoid people.

  Locking himself in a stall, he sat down. Dug his elbows into his thighs and pushed his thumbs against his eyelids.

  Maybe he should have gone to a doctor after all. Last night had fucked him up, and he didn’t know if it was the attack itself or the psychological aftershock of running a man over.

  Had he run a man over? He wasn’t even sure at this point. The fucking toilet under his ass didn’t feel quite real—how much could he depend on the shattered recollections from the night before?

  He kept feeling that ghostly thump-thump, the bounce of the truck going up and over. He could feel it right in his bones, feel it in the palms of his hands, as if they were still clutching that steering wheel.

  He eased a cigarette out of his pocket. The tip jittered as he tried to light it. When he had it going, he covered his eyes, curled his upper lip up to keep it from pressing against the dull ache in his gums, and hoped Thieves got their set over with quickly.

  Hoped, too, that he wasn’t wrong about going out on stage. That’d be just what he needed: a nervous fucking breakdown in front of twelve hundred people.

  The restroom door swung open, startling his cigarette out of his fingers. He picked it up from the floor, eyed it to make sure it wasn’t wet, and took a drag over the sound of someone’s zipper coming down.

  Piss hit water, and Dean licked his lips, the sharp tang of tobacco blooming over the tip of his tongue.

  “Are you hiding or shitting?” Nick called over piss hitting water.

  “Meditating.”

  The urinal gave a sucking gush as it flushed. An arm came over the stall door. Brown eyes appeared, peering over it. The sneakers below rose up on their toes a little.

  “Good thing I wasn’t shitting,” Dean said.

  “So how’d you manage to get bit by a dog?”

  “By going someplace I shouldn’t have been.” The cuts on his palm crin
kled as he flicked ashes on the tiles with his thumbnail.

  “Are you gonna stay in there all night?”

  “That was the latest plan.”

  “Fuck that. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a good forty minutes.”

  Dean took another drag before hauling himself up. Out sounded good. He dropped the butt in the toilet, and Nick stepped back from the door to let him out. Nick, smiling, opened his jacket. The screw cap of a pint bottle poked from the inner pocket.

  “Hair of the dog?” Dean asked.

  “Hair on my balls. Come on. I bet there’s almost no one out back now.”

  They headed up the hallway, chins up, eyes forward, like they were on a mission—Can’t talk now.

  Mike caught him by the arm, tried to tell him something. The heel of Mike’s hand pressing on him scrambled the words, and Dean nodded quickly, pulling away, following Nick, who’d stopped and turned to see what was holding him up but swung toward the door again when he saw Dean coming.

  Nick shoved it open, and as Dean stepped out, cool night air swept his face. He could almost drink it.

  And Nick was right—almost no one was out there.

  “Bus?” Nick said.

  Dean slid his gaze toward the straggle of fans in the building’s shadow—three guys, hoping to get a look at the band. One shoved another in their direction, and the shoved guy stumbled half a step, looked back at his friend, and gave him a return push.

  “Yeah,” Dean said quietly.

  Nick pointed his sneakers toward the bus, not giving the group of admirers a second look. He slipped the Jack Daniels from his pocket, unscrewed the cap. Tipped it up while Dean rapped on the bus door.

  The bus shifted slightly. The door opened.

  Wayne, their drum tech, backed up the steps, hopping into the driver’s area to give them room to get by.

  “Holding the fort down?” Nick asked.

  “Just about to head back in.”

  “Have fun.”

  Nick handed the bottle off to Dean and collapsed into a seat in the front lounge, knees splayed, Adam’s apple bobbing as he tipped his head back, eyes closed.

  The bourbon splashed in the bottle after Dean’s pull on it, and Nick lifted his hand out, not bothering to raise his head.

  Dean handed it over before taking a seat across the aisle.

  “I hate the first show of the tour,” Nick said, the bottle on his knee.

  “Why?” Blood thudded in his ears again, but the bourbon was warm and distracting in his gullet. He leaned across the aisle and plucked the bottle back, took another slug as Nick said, “Pressure. So much pressure. New songs, old songs, all in a different order than last time.”

  “I swear you were there at rehearsals.”

  “Not the same.” He stretched his arm out.

  Dean threw back another swallow before handing it off. “You do this every time.” Handing over the bottle made the blood noises rush back in.

  After a pull off the JD, Nick said, “How did you get bit by a dog?”

  Dean dropped his head. Every breath in turned the volume up on the rushing blood; exhaling pushed it back down, but not completely out. It was ready to come back the next time he opened his lungs.

  He said, “I was dumb enough to pet it.”

  “That’ll teach ya.”

  Dean drew air through his nose. Cigarette smoke and bourbon fumes, deodorant and dried sweat. Underneath, something warm and spicy, like the feel of liquor in his chest.

  His teeth throbbed, under his gums. He canted forward, arm out for the bottle. Eyes going straight for the pulse at Nick’s throat, the quick little beat against his skin. He dragged his gaze down as his fingers closed on the bottle.

  He took three long swallows, shutting up the pounding in his eardrums.

  “Maybe I should’ve brought two,” Nick said.

  “Sorry.” Once it was out of his hands again, he fumbled another cigarette out of his pack, back on his feet. Pacing. He stopped to cup his hand around the lighter’s flame, suck-started the cancer stick, and closed his eyes as he breathed in a thick lungful of smoke.

  Last night had him all fucked up. He’d give anything to be able to go backward in time, tell the guys, “Yeah, I’m game. I’ll go for a beer.” That’s all he’d had to have done. One measly meaningless fucking decision made differently and he’d be standing in the shadows off to the side of the stage right now, enjoying Thieves.

  At the squeak of the bus door, Nick sat up and Dean lifted his head.

  Teddy stepped up, looking over the railing. “Jesus. Mike’s been yelling all over the place for you, D. He said he told you not to go anywhere. WKRB’s on the line, threatening to hang up if you don’t get your ass on the phone yesterday.”

  “Shit.” He needed another interview right now like he needed a second asshole.

  Nick waved an arm without getting up: Go, go.

  “Come on,” Teddy said, “before Mike blows his top.”

  People pressed in as soon as he was through the back door—roadies and staff and hangers-on and who the fuck knew else. Teddy parted the crowd with his sheer size, leading him to an office where Mike said, “Here he is,” into a clunky receiver before shoving it at Dean.

  “Hello,” Dean said.

  “Heeeey,” came a voice through the line. “Dean Thibodeaux from Man Made Murder. How are ya?” So they were live, no quick chat with the producer before being switched over.

  “Folks want to know why you’re all beat up,” the voice said.

  Dean pressed his fingers to his eyes. His bruised cheek throbbed. Word fucking traveled fast. “You heard about that, huh?”

  “That’s the word we’re getting from people who’ve seen you walking around over there. What happened?”

  Dean dragged out the dog story again, the “stupid enough to pet it” excuse, adding, “Dogs normally like me, though. I don’t have anything against dogs. This one, though, he must’ve had something against me. Maybe he doesn’t like our music.” Automatically switching into interview mode.

  “Maybe he just confused you for a giant steak,” the deejay said.

  “Must have.”

  “Hey, we have the new album here.”

  “All right. You gonna play it?”

  “I’m queuing the single as we speak.”

  “Just the single? Man, I hope callers light up your lines demanding the whole thing.”

  The deejay laughed. “You guys have a good show. And watch out for those dogs.”

  When Dean hung up, Mike said, “You guys are the biggest pains in my ass.”

  “As well as your main source of income,” Dean said. “Have you thought about blood pressure pills?” If they’d wanted a laid-back tour manager, though, they’d have hired one. Mike’s state of agitation got them places on time, got them paid on time, got shit done. He was a thorn in their feet ninety percent of the time, but they’d tried using people they got along with easier, and it wound up being more of an aggravation in the end than getting groused at by Mike.

  “Try not to disappear before the fucking show starts,” Mike said as Dean headed out of the office.

  6.

  * * *

  Carl circled the blocks near but not in sight of the bar, not getting more than a glimpse of the bikes out front with each pass. He’d gone to a gas station for a soft drink, a fresh pack of cigarettes, and the bathroom. He had the radio playing, a commercial segueing into Man Made Murder’s new single, the deejay announcing their tour over the intro—New York City tonight, but catch them right here in December when they end their tour back home.

  He remembered when he’d been into them, a few albums ago. Or, probably a few albums ago. He hadn’t kept up. Hadn’t kept up with much of anything the past couple years.

  He turned the volume up—“Can’t Win for Dyin’.”

  Yeah, that’s how he felt too.

  Maybe he should stop driving past the road that would take him back to the interstate. He needed a h
ot shower, a good week’s worth of sleep. The thought of catching some of that sleep in his own bed, in the cool dark of the apartment he and Tim shared, it pulled at him, making him feel the weight of all this chasing that much more keenly. I was out of my mind there for a while, he’d say, and Tim would pop the top on a cheap can of beer and say, It’s about fucking time you realized it.

  Instead, he pulled up along Main Street—different spot, different direction, different vantage point. The streetlights were coming on, weak in the lingering daylight. He shut off the engine, and the radio blipped off in the middle of the outro.

  Shops were closing. The diner had shut its lights out an hour ago. The convenience store’s windows glowed with warmth, and across from it, the bar was fading into shadow.

  Carl scooted down, bracing his knee against the dash. It was light enough out that smoke wouldn’t draw attention, and he lit up while he could, using a match from the book the gas jockey had passed him with the fresh pack. He shook it out and dropped it in the ashtray.

  With nothing but time on his hands, he thought about buying the new Man Made Murder album. You know—why not? Tim would be surprised, seeing him show interest in something. Maybe he’d go out to a movie with Tim, even one of those shitty slasher films. He’d done that once, thinking It’s just a movie. It’s not real. I can handle it. But no—as the young girls screamed and the guy in the jumpsuit came relentlessly after them, he’d had to get up and leave, and throw up in the men’s room. He hadn’t told Tim about the throwing up, just met him in the lobby when the show let out.

  But once this was done, maybe he could stomach it. He could watch it as someone who’d vanquished that kind of evil.

  It’d be a new start, when he got home.

  If he got home.

  He wondered if they allowed music in prison. Maybe inmates could have radios, or maybe they’d have one in the rec area or something. If that was the case, he could handle it.

  If his problem was taken care of, he could put up with just about anything.

  His worst fear was that he’d fuck up what he was trying to do, and go to jail anyway. Stuck behind bars for three, five, ten years while that asshole walked free. That had to not happen.