The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

  “But she couldn’t like Malorie because no one liked Malorie because Malorie was a know-it-all bitch. She knew what everyone should be doing and didn’t mind telling you. She even came to the rec center once and told me what programs I should be offering. Like she and she alone had some lock on all the needs of a community. Swear to fuck, about a dozen times almost burned down that locker where everyone puts their used boxes. Sick of hearing how great that is. Like that locker is single-handedly gonna save us from climate change. Seriously?”

  When it seemed he expected a response, I shook my head like I agreed with how moronic that was, although I thought every town could benefit from having a recycling center like that.

  That said, I was getting it.

  Malorie got attention. Malorie earned respect. Malorie did something people admired.

  And he couldn’t have that.

  He was the rec center community guy who got grants for kids’ programs.

  She was competition.

  My head shake was what he needed, because he kept talking.

  “So, Tony went down and got her. And Tony killed her and brought her up. I took her out on the lake.” His gaze on me intensified. “I tied her to Bohannan’s pier. That was me.”

  He was proud of that.

  He was proud of invading Bohannan’s space like that.

  That meant everything to him.

  I needed this story not to be complete with that.

  I needed more time.

  I needed to keep him talking.

  So I asked, “Did Shelly do Betty’s hair?”

  He smirked. “Put that together, did you?”

  He knew I did. That was why I was sitting right there.

  “Did you…did the people at The Joy of Joy let you borrow their boat?”

  “Now,” he started, like he was admonishing me. “Don’t be thinking bad thoughts about Mick and Zelda. They’re good people. I did borrow their boat. But they didn’t know it.”

  So he took it and didn’t ask them.

  And if it was registered, and they were questioned about it, they could in all honesty say, No, officer, it’s been parked at our shop the entire time.

  I wondered, if he thought Mick and Zelda were good people, if he understood on some level he was bad.

  I didn’t ask that.

  “Did he…did he, that is, I mean, did Tony stalk Malorie at Berkeley?” I went on.

  He stared at me like I was crazy. “And maybe get my boy caught? Fuck no. I went down there and set that up.”

  “So you hired someone to throw them off?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you pick someone who looked like Tony?”

  He didn’t like that question, so much I tensed.

  “He didn’t look like Tony. He didn’t look shit like Tony.”

  “All right. I didn’t see him,” I placated.

  “Well, he didn’t fuckin’ look like Tony,” he muttered, and I sensed he’d slept with that guy too, which could be why that guy helped out.

  But Tony didn’t know he did that.

  Further, Ray had a type.

  “Tony’s alibi for that?” I asked.

  One of his shoulders went up. “I let him play. I get it. He needs pussy. But he also needed an alibi, and she was hot, but she was kind of a junkie. Give her good dick. Give her some money. Keep her in blow. Tell her what to do. She does it. Help her disappear. See ya.”

  Easy as that.

  “So the choice of Malorie and Alice wasn’t about tying them to the situation with Audrey,” I noted.

  “Yeah, it was,” he replied. “Thought Bohannan would run around chasing his tail on that one, at least for a while. Thought that coven would get hauled in. Thought they’d look at the dads, because they’re obviously all assholes. Should have known Bohannan wouldn’t fall for that. Should have known they’d never suspect the women. Was counting on that with Betty. But, man, did that set off fireworks. Fuckin’ hell. Those bitches went for it, and they laid those assholes out.”

  They certainly did.

  “So you…didn’t know you were being taped?”

  He grinned. “No way, but I looked hot fuckin’ that ass. I mean, Bob was old, but he was fit, and he loved it. And he had a tight ass, you know what I’m saying?”

  I swallowed, and even though I didn’t know, I nodded.

  Now the grin was sick that spread across his face.

  “Almost gonna miss that guy. He wasn’t gay, not even bi, but he needed it. Would make him suck my dick to get it, and he did it. He’d gag every time, so obviously, I’d fuck his face.” He laughed softly at this treasured memory. “I’d tell Tony about it, and we’d laugh our asses off. Then he’d suck my dick, ’cause Tony didn’t like anyone but Shelly doing that to me. It was like he wanted to erase ol’ Bob, and he was good at it, so for a while, he did.”

  My lips had gone so dry, they suddenly hurt, but I didn’t dare wet them.

  “At first, I was freaked when that tape came out, but then I saw how it’d work for me. First comes the fuckwads who think fuckwad shit about shit like that, then come the social justice warriors who’ll shout ’til they’re sick how it’s my right to be the authentic me. In the end, I figured it’d turn my way.” He tipped his head at me. “You knew it too.”

  I nodded again, though I didn’t know that. I just knew it’d blow over because it always did.

  But it had turned his way.

  “So, you didn’t pick Bobby because he was Malorie’s dad?”

  He seemed confused. “Well…yeah. How else was I gonna find out what dormitory she stayed in?” He shrugged. “Like I said, he needed it. I took my time with him. I primed him. I figure the bitches he let fuck him gave him a taste, but no one fucks like a man.” He gave me another lewd look. “You know what I’m talkin’ about. Bet Cade Bohannan fucks like a goddamn freight train.”

  I swallowed.

  I didn’t want to answer that, but as his stare started to turn into a glare, I sent him another nod.

  His expression cleared, he smirked, and whispered, “Bet he hits you every night. Doesn’t even give that first shit he’s banging super-famous pussy. That’s his due. You were put on this earth to get fucked by Bohannan.”

  He got his earlier nod, this time, I decided I wasn’t going to respond.

  He didn’t mind, he had the floor and was enjoying his performance.

  I knew this because, without missing a beat, his voice resumed its chatty tone and he kept talking.

  “By the time I let ole Bobby have another go, he’d be gagging for it. Ready to do anything. That meant he didn’t even blink when I asked about his girl, if she was coming home for Thanksgiving, where she stayed down there. Stared at my crotch the whole time he told me all about Malorie and her dorm in Berkeley. So desperate for it, I got what I needed, and the only way to shut him up was to pull my dick out and stuff it in his mouth.”

  My stomach twisted.

  Bobby led his daughter’s killer right to her.

  “Why David?”

  He smiled, huge, and if he wasn’t so fucking crazy, it would have been beautiful.

  “You were so riled up. Tearing after Tony like that.” He chuckled. “That was gorgeous. Fucking amazing. I saw you show, called him in just to see if he could creep you. And yeah, he definitely creeped you.” He shook his head, but there was still humor in his face. “That wasn’t exactly planned. I mean, yeah, we were workin’ on something. We picked you to fuck with your head, rather than the daughter. Tony had a block about her. Probably ’cause she’s fucking magnificent, and he thought one day, when she was older, he might be able to get in there. ’Cause, like I said, I let him do that, you know. A man needs good pussy.”

  I tried not to glare at him, talking about Celeste that way.

  “Though, he didn’t know he’d be sharing Shelly’s with me, and eventually that was all I was gonna let him have. But anyway, we picked you to start dickin’ with. Then we had so much fun with you
running after Tony like you thought you were Wonder Woman or something, we decided to dick with you a little bit more.”

  And proof positive, it really, really, really was so damned stupid I chased Tony like that.

  But…

  Dick with me by shooting someone who meant something to me?

  “That’s not what he was doing when he went to Cade’s house that time?” I asked. “Trying to creep me?”

  “When he what?”

  “When he…he…” I trailed off because he looked genuinely confused.

  “When he what?” he bit off.

  “I saw him, out my window,” I whispered.

  For a second, he seemed thrown, tense, then he relaxed.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Right. No, he was casing the pier for later. You saw him?”

  I nodded.

  “Wondered why things went wired around that time,” he mumbled.

  And yes, he’d been paying close attention to the players.

  He picked up the threads of his story.

  “By the time we creeped you at the coffee shop, we were actually kinda done with the whole killing thing,” he shared, like killing people had become a chore. “I mean, I was down for it again, if that was needed. But Bohannan was obviously stumped. He hadn’t even looked at me. Sent his hotshot, big-man-in-town son to have a chat, dude didn’t even blink. I mean, props to him. I know he saw me fuckin’ some ass. He didn’t give me a whiff he had a problem about it. But he didn’t come close to making me.”

  And Jess was going to suffer for that.

  I knew it.

  And I hated this man.

  I hated him with everything that was me.

  But thinking Jess stood and talked to the man who killed Alice, and he didn’t sniff anything on him…

  That made me hate him so much more.

  And the fact that it was me that led to Jess doing that.

  That made me hate him most of all.

  “And it was getting old. I mean, everyone freaks out about a murder for, like…a week. Then all they care about is Dale Pulaski’s ex showing her skill with a strap-on. Or that the sheriff is a racist, misogynist blowhard. They voted that fuck in, like, six times, and they just figured that out? Bullshit. Half don’t even fuckin’ vote, so straight up, they should shut the fuck up. Half of the other half are racist, misogynist blowhards, but they’d be super pissed you called them that. Dern was just ‘tough but fair’ and ‘the kind of man our town needs.’ Yeah, he’s that until you figure out what he really is, is incompetent. You just saw you in him, and you liked it. And the last half.” He blew out a breath. “Well, they were just plain screwed.”

  Now I hated that he was right.

  “I mean, seriously, if we were gonna do this, and obviously we were, we couldn’t have picked a better guy to do it on his patch. It only got interesting when the FBI got involved.”

  God, this was such a mess, this man was so unnervingly narcissistic, I didn’t know if I was trembling with fear or fury.

  “So it was time to fuck with Bohannan another way. And I ask you, what’s worse? Dead bodies? Or livin’ for weeks, even months, maybe even years thinking another one is gonna show unless you figure shit out, and when it does, it’s on you?”

  He asked me, but he didn’t wait for my answer.

  He told me.

  “Waiting. Waiting is always worse.”

  I wasn’t sure he was right about that, but I didn’t contradict him.

  “So, in the meantime, we dick with you, and hype him up, make him think maybe we’ll turn to his daughter, or fuck up his boys.” The next came in the tone of someone rubbing their hands together with glee. “It was gonna be good.”

  He grew silent, reflective, looked off in the distance again.

  “Then they saw Tony,” he whispered.

  Yes.

  Then they saw Tony.

  He took a breath and let it out in a nonverbal Welp! Anyway! and turned back to me and gave me the final thing I didn’t know.

  That being, instead of using his skills to cross the border unseen, why Tony stayed local.

  “When he got seen, Tony knew they wouldn’t let up. He knew if they found him and tied him to me, his dad would know he wasn’t a ‘real man.’ So he called…we got phones no one knows about, not even Shelly…Shelly doesn’t know anything. But he called and told me all that went down. Took it on himself to end it. The ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate show of love. He gave himself so I could be free. Then you show at Joy,” meaningful pause, “and here we are.”

  There we were.

  And I was very, very worried.

  Because I had a feeling that was the end of the story.

  Fifty-Eight

  The Hunt

  Bohannan got two things wrong.

  Foremost, there were two killers.

  It was a team.

  And secondary to that, but no less important, the ringleader had sexual issues, though probably not ones anyone would suspect.

  Still, outside the fact Ray was totally unhinged, they were the crux of everything.

  Putting a fine point on it, he thought his dick had superpowers.

  And sadly, too many people along the way made him think he was right.

  Bohannan got an added thing right.

  When Ray thought he’d bested Bohannan, he found a new challenge.

  I discovered this after it seemed story-time was over.

  When this appeared to be the case, I wanted to know, I also didn’t want to know, but mostly I wanted to keep him talking, so I asked, as if to confirm, “Was it about Bohannan?”

  He touched his nose and winked at me.

  That meant yes.

  Even if he’d answered, he answered again.

  “I told him that in my letters, didn’t I? I mean, in a roundabout way. But I knew he’d figure it out. That was the most important thing. So that was the only thing meant to be easy.”

  I had not read the letters.

  But I’d guess he did make it easy.

  “Why?”

  “The best in the league doesn’t play the worst in the league in the Superbowl.”

  I faked confusion. “Are you a profiler?”

  He scoffed.

  “We all are. You gotta be if you’re gonna get through this life,” he educated me.

  I didn’t tell him clearly Shelly wasn’t.

  And I had a number more examples, considering we needed profilers at all.

  For instance, seeing as I was sitting there with him…me.

  “See, that Al Catlin, he was one sick fuck,” he told me one thing I knew. “But he had it going on. I mean, seriously. How they found him…” A grin. “Bohannan was how they found him. Most those women didn’t even remember he called them poodle, they were too busy with other things. Preliminarily, only three, in all of them, three in thirty mentioned that. So it took fucking years for them to realize it was one guy doing all that. And then, all they had was what Bohannan said. And Catlin, he left nothing. Still, Bohannan locked him down. Locked that motherfucker down.”

  I thought he was going to hoot with admiration.

  He didn’t.

  “I read that book about it, and I thought, this…now, this guy is the guy.”

  He said nothing more.

  Not finishing with, to beat.

  Or, to match wits with.

  Not throwing his head back and unleashing a maniacal laugh.

  Not anything.

  Just this guy is the guy.

  That was it.

  It was just a game.

  It was just a senseless, foul, despicable may the best man win.

  I didn’t know what to do with that.

  I didn’t know what to ask next.

  But even if I did, he was done with me.

  I knew when he looked at his watch and murmured, “I gotta go get Shelly.”

  Then he reached in his pocket and took out a penknife.

  My mind raced, mostly with the sudden and
gripping fight to stay present.

  To stay there.

  Not to retreat.

  Not to check out.

  Not to become invisible.

  Which would only make me stop existing.

  Literally.

  But like I had before in times of extreme stress, I felt it happening.

  So I focused.

  I focused with everything that was in me.

  My hands and ankles were tied.

  We were in the middle of a forest with nothing around us.

  The day was waning.

  It was getting cold, the mist was…

  The mist!

  He opened his army knife and looked at me.

  “So, this is the thing. I’m gonna be cool and give you two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. That’s what you got.”

  He yanked the strap of the shotgun off his shoulder, held it by its forearm, pumped it one handed and concluded.

  “Then, I come hunting.”

  And with that, he cut the rope at my ankles, cut the one on my wrists, I was already poised for flight, and I flew.

  I had no idea, but probably at least sixty of those seconds, I just ran as fast as I could.

  But then I remembered.

  There was mist.

  The air was cold.

  The ground was also cold, it was January.

  But the lake was hot.

  Wherever we were, with that mist, I knew we were close to the lake.

  If I could get to the edge of the lake, I could follow it.

  Follow it home.

  So I ran into the mist.

  And I kept running.

  I wished I did not slide.

  I wished I did not fall.

  But I slid, repeatedly.

  I also did a slipping fall down an incline, slamming into my hip and descending into the fog, falling so far, I thought I’d hit lake in the end.

  I slammed into some rock, my ankles buckled, and I fell to my knees.

  I felt nothing.

  I just surged up and kept running.

  The problem with the mist was, you couldn’t see anything. I had visibility maybe five, six feet in front of me, then it was obscured.

  I didn’t know if I was running to the lake, from the lake, beside the lake, deeper into the forest.