Teddy mutters, Don't rely on them, you're on your own.
It's been a rough day. You've learned a lot about life and your family. Your aunt is a liar who loves only, entirely, another person. Your father and mother cannot protect you. Teddy really doesn't know so much and he's got a mean streak. These lessons would wear anyone out.
You hide and you take a nap. It's the thing you do when you are angry. When your face is covered with hot tears. You find a small warm spot to curl away in.
Even a happy child can fall into a state of depression. Let's say a half hour following the trail, a couple hours of bitter, dreamless sleep in the woods, wedged between two logs, using Teddy as a pillow.
When you awake, you're disoriented, but you don't cry anymore. You've been transformed by your new world view. Teddy is jazzed up again and really chattering away. You hug him close and start back along the trail the way you've come. Another half hour.
You stand outside the mill. You see a man in the woods but you don't trust him. There's no reason for you to. He's crouched behind weeds, his handsome face is marred by self-interest. Aunt Sarah told you to walk inside and you'd be found. You don't believe her, but you haven't got many options left. You're tired and hungry. So's Teddy, and he's really bending your ear about it.
You are quiet. You like to play hide-and-seek. Your father is not here to use his commanding voice to draw you from the niches and nooks of the house. You can be in charge of the game.
So it goes like this. Your body is at ease in the shadows. There are great bulks of machinery strewn about in the long, wide room.
The man inside is asleep, or almost so. There's something wrong with him. He mumbles in his sleep and he shakes. You silently slip around him, hoping for a better view. He is a policeman. Your father has told you to trust such men, but your father may have been lying too. He failed in his duty. He and mother are at home eating ice cream and giving presents to each other, glad to be done with you. Your anger swells. Teddy snarls evil words in your ear.
There are spoked metal wheels with little cars on wires. There is money on the floor beneath them. Cash, Teddy says, there's the damn cash. It looks like the policeman tried to hide the bundles of bills, but some have slipped out, there is green paper sticking up.
You would hide behind the track that wheels ran on. You would crawl. You want the money because everyone else wants the money. Maybe you can show it to your aunt and then yank it away while she reaches for it. You'll laugh in her face. You will be able to buy many friends with the money and your friends will beat up your aunt and that man and your parents. Your friends will throw many hard things at them and your parents will cry and beg forgiveness and you'll laugh at them also.
Teddy tells you to do it. Go on, be careful, grab the cash, baby.
You carefully reach out into the wheels. It's easy, your hands are small. You stick the bills in your shirt until you're all puffed out with a big fat belly. You slide back to where there's a hole in the wall and you slip through it and quietly walk into the bushes. You leave the mill behind. The money is heavier than you expected it to be. You're dirty and sweaty and the paper sticks to your skin under your shirt. It's a warm day, you're very thirsty.
You know what you will do. You'll hide the money and then go back and demand the policeman take you somewhere safe, and for that you will pay him later. You'll come back and pick up the bills and you and Teddy will give him some of them.
Teddy goes, I like the plan, all cops are bent. They'll sell their mothers for a wad of stash.
You creep back into the mill through the hole, ready to approach the policeman. His hands are shaking. He's nervous or sick about something, probably because they don't pay him enough. She'll pay him and he will be her friend.
The door opens and the other policeman enters with his gun coming up and Teddy goes, Oh shit.
~ * ~
Crease snapped himself out of it. His heart was clattering in his chest and his pulse ticked so heavily in his throat that it felt like Tucco was tapping the point of a butterfly blade against his neck. Salt stung his eyes and it took a minute to settle down, get Teddy's voice out of his head. Jesus.
He turned and looked behind him and there was the hole that a little girl could've crawled through carrying a couple of short stacks of bills. Fifteen thousand, what his father thought would save him, spirited off by a six-year-old and a stuffed bear.
He moved out from behind the carriage of the trimmer and walked to the rusted flatbed with the bent spoked wheels and cut cables. The broad opening where the slabs of wood would be hauled down the incline led to a two story drop over an embankment. She couldn't have gone that way.
But down at the nearest corner rotted flooring disclosed the crawlspace area beneath the decking. It was large enough for him to climb down into. Seventeen years ago, it would've been smaller, and might've been overlooked by everyone but an angry kid looking to settle a score.
He went out to the 'Stang, found a flashlight in his trunk. It surprised him that it was there, and that the batteries still worked. Except for the spare and a jack, you never found what you needed in the trunk when you needed it.
One time, when a deal had gone sour in an apartment building in the south Bronx, Crease had seen a guy hurl himself into a wall thinking he was going to crash right through. Big guy, went maybe two-fifty of gut, but he had it in his mind he could work up enough momentum to bust out the other side. Get into the next apartment and make a run for it. Crease and Tucco watched the guy smash himself again and again into the wall—which did crack a little, a few paint chips spurting off—while the guy mashed his ribs and busted his face. It got surreal after a while, the guy trying to dig through the sheetrock. Tucco and Crease were enthralled watching him, and finally it was Cruez who came up with his Magnum and put the guy through the wall once and for all.
Crease thought of that scene as he worked to enlarge the hole, kicking out some of the flooring. It took him twenty minutes before he could really climb down, carefully maneuvering himself along the joists and beams and cement foundation built into the side of the hill.
Daylight dappled the groundwork base and rodents squeaked and rasped as he made his way down. There was hardly any need for the flashlight as he braced himself and moved from board to board. He saw Mary Burke doing the same thing, laughing as Teddy spurred her on, thinking about how her family would learn the hard lessons. The bundles under her shirt fattening her up, the bills soft but cold against her skin.
The belly of the building, this was the best place to hide.
He hit bottom and saw, by the sweeping rays of light, a clear path through which he could exit. He shined the flash around and knew Teddy would be extra sharp even now, telling Mary what to do. He'd want her to hide it, just in case.
Lots of hidey holes between the timbers. Crease hunched down, looking up, seeing this place the way someone smaller would. He let the urge to be hidden begin to overwhelm him. He wanted to stay in the shadows, allow them to twist about him and what he had brought into them. Teddy's voice would be loud under the mill, every squeak exaggerated a hundredfold.
Mary had things to do. She wouldn't be able to go with her impulse to play, to enjoy the darkness. Six years old and already so strong. What kind of a woman would she have become?
The timbers and joists and cinderblocks all looked the same. She wouldn't want to stray far. She'd need to find the money again for when she used it to reign over her family.
Bent over, Crease backed up and put his hand out where the first two beams crossed leaving a V-shaped open ledge. He touched paper. His fingertips were electrified and actually pained him. He shined the flashlight down on the area and saw red eyes reflected back at him. He instinctively snapped back as squeals retreated to the distant corners. He reached into the spot again and pulled out wads of rat-eaten, water-soaked, disintegrating bills.
The reason for the girl's death.
After Mary had hidden the cash she'd wa
lked back out around the bottom of the foundation, up the incline to the far end of the mill, and in through the open side where Sarah Burke had originally given Mary the little push to go on. The girl had walked between his drunken father and the greedy deputy busting in the front door, the two guys gunning for each other.
The last thing she would've heard was Teddy going, Oh shit. She'd have hugged him closer and maybe closed her eyes an instant before
Crease sat in the darkness, feverish. He wanted to kill somebody, but everyone who mattered was already dead.
It didn't take much to get you believing in fate.
Thinking your life was wrapped around somebody else's that you hardly even knew. For years the thread connecting you wouldn't be noticed, and then one day it started to tug and you got reeled in.
He pulled out the clumps of money and the shredded bills crumbled to pieces in his hands. He took off his jacket and threw the decaying paper in. The stacks were even smaller than he'd imagined they would be. A lot of the cash had been torn up and dragged off for nests. He knotted the sleeves together, threw the bundle over his shoulder, and climbed back up out of the hole into the mill. He went out the front door and got in the 'Stang and stomped the pedal, throwing mud everywhere.
Finding the cash wouldn't allow his old man or Mary to rest any easier. He couldn't even give it to Reb to show her how little it was. Finding the cash just didn't mean a damn thing.
He never should have come back to Hangtree. He should've marched down to the club where Tucco and Cruez were in the back getting lap dances, walked into the place and shot them both in the face. He would've got his medal and gone on from there.
Chapter Sixteen
But at least it was done.
He drove over to the sheriff's office, parked, walked in with the bundle, and saw Edwards at his desk in back. Edwards spotted him coming and started shouting orders to the deputies, who all looked terrified at getting yelled at. You could tell it wasn't that kind of police station. Nobody laid a hand on him.
Crease unknotted his jacket, threw the decaying cash on Edwards' desk, and said, "Here it is."
"Here what is?"
"Mary took it herself. Her own ransom. She was a smart kid. She knew what was going down. She hid it under the mill."
Edwards' expression went from joyful surprise to complete despair in half a second. "This isn't money."
"Yeah, it is."
He looked closer. "No it's not, it's some kind of clothing, isn't it? But—"
"Modern paper cash isn't so much paper as it is cloth. That's what's left of it. After rain and mudslides and rats and birds have been at it. You never searched the mill?"
"We searched all over it, the grounds, everyplace."
"But not under it?"
He sat and picked up some of the wads, trying to piece them together. "I don't remember. Yeah, we must've. Most of it. Some of it."
In other words, no. "You put in a call to the Sinclair Mayridge Home for the Needful?"
"Yeah. Sarah Burke died this morning. She'd swiped somebody else's medication. Turns out she was allergic. She must've been taking the wrong pills for a while. Weeks. That's the only thing that lets you off the hook, in case you were wondering."
Crease nodded. "The right meds wouldn't have helped anyway. It went down the way she wanted it to."
"You talk like nothing matters to you, you know that? That an act, or do you really not care?"
You had to let some things slide. "Make sure you tell Sam Burke. He needs to know about this soon, so he can find himself in the mirror again."
"What?"
"Just tell him."
"Sure. Of course. What's this about a mirror?"
"Forget it." Crease turned to go but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
"What happened to Teddy?"
"Who the hell is Teddy?"
"The bear."
"What bear?"
"Mary's doll. The one she was holding when she got capped."
Edwards stared at Crease like he couldn't believe what he saw. "How the hell should I know? What are you talking about now?"
He wasn't sure. Out of everything, it was Teddy that had somehow gotten under his skin.
Sneering, Edwards threw down a handful of the clumped, dusty bills and a cloud rose around his head. "You still think this is all I cared about, don't you."
"It doesn't matter—" Crease said, and he realized Edwards was right. He really did go through the world like nothing mattered to him at all. How much worse off did that put him than the rest of the mooks?
"You think I shot her. That's what you've been back here for. You want me to admit I did it. But I didn't. It was your old man."
"I always thought it was."
"You want me to confess."
"Confess to who?"
He stared at Edwards trying to see the man and not see his father, but it was just too difficult keeping them separated now. This had been his father's office, his father's chair. That wet, round alcoholic face was looking more and more like his old man every minute. He wanted to crack him across the nose again or maybe just shake his hand, get it out of his damn system once and for all. He hated the sheriff with the same deep, relentless, meaningless fury he'd reserved for his father. He felt it swarming up inside him once more. Crease struggled to tamp it back down.
"You finish up with that big son of a bitch yet?"
"You heard him. Tomorrow."
"Good. Don't let me know where. Keep it out of town."
"Why don't you ask Reb to marry you again?"
"What?"
"You've got nothing to lose."
"You of all people is gonna say that to me? She nearly caved your head in for a bird's nest. She's crazy!"
Crease shrugged. "Maybe you two can work it out. You make a good couple. Really."
"You're crazy too," the sheriff said, his breath thick with wine. No longer golden or handsome, his hand trembling with the need for more drink. The women in his house were ready for him, his puzzle dog was waiting. "Now go on and get yourself shot. Do it close to a gutter so no one has to clean up after you."
~ * ~
Crease thought it was a pretty good line. Close to the gutter. He didn't think Edwards had it in him, but anybody could fire off a lucky one. He found another motel and spent the night practicing with the knife, working out some kinks, getting his head as clear as he could. He settled into a deep, mostly dreamless sleep punctuated by Teddy giving him advice on the drug trade, telling him who he should wipe out next to widen his hold. You had to wonder when the bear was becoming your new best friend.
In the morning he called Morena's cell. "Where are you?"
"Driving around, looking at boys' schools."
"What road?"
"Who knows? I think we're lost. We've been searching for the llamas. That was some goddamn comment you made. You started him on this whole thing to find llamas. He's obsessed with it. Every morning, seven a.m., we leave the motel and go looking for the llamas all day. He's bought seven of those big bulky sweaters." Her voice shifted, grew very tight and hard. "He killed an old woman."
"What?"
"Because you told him not to. I think she was a teacher at one of the military academies. Maybe a nurse or just somebody's mother, I don't know. She was walking across the parking lot and Cruez pulled up slow. Tucco asked for directions to the llama farm. I thought he was serious. Then he pulled his knife and stuck it in her head, jabbed it through her temple. I didn't have any time to warn her."
A shard of ice worked against Crease's neck before turning to fire. The voice became even more ancient, like another ten thousand years had been piled into it. "Are you okay?"
"I'm wishing you hadn't decided to come back to this place, you know? I really think you were stupid to warn him the way you did, playing cowboy. You starting to pick up on that yet?"
"Yeah." She was right, but he couldn't change anything now. He had to ride it out to the en
d. "Put him on."
"He's sitting across from me, pretending to be asleep. I guess that means he doesn't want to talk to you."
Pretending to be asleep to avoid conversation, the same thing Stevie did. "Tell Cruez to figure out his way back to town. I'll meet you on the outskirts, right before the highway. There's a pull-off there, he'll see it."
"You're being dumb again," she said. "You shouldn't play it out like this. Haven't you learned anything?"
He supposed not. "Does it matter? Just tell him."
"You want to die, don't you? It doesn't have to be that way. You can make a better choice."
"Don't you worry about me, baby."
There was a moment of silence and then a very brief sigh, like Morena didn't want to waste any more breath on him. "You saying that makes me worry most of all."
~ * ~
The Bentley pulled up and slid in beside the 'Stang at one-thirty. Cruez must've really been off the map or else Tucco wanted Crease to wait, just so it felt like he was the one calling the shots. Crease was leaning against the driver's door, his .38 on the hood in plain sight. Tucco got out of the back wearing a black llama wool sweater that looked three sizes too big. It swallowed him.
Man, one off the cuff comment and you could regret it forever. A woman, dead, because of Crease's big mouth. Morena had been right about everything, and yet Crease felt himself caught in the riptide, being dragged along with no way to stop himself.
"We looked, man," Tucco told him, "but we didn't find any llamas."
"Forget it."
"You sure they got farms? Like, they milk them things? The cowboys, they rope them? Run 'em across the country in llama drives, like cattle? Them we saw, the cows. Lots of cows up here. I think Cruez fell in love with one. He likes their eyes, you know? On a woman it's sexy, but we're talking cows here. He can't tell the difference. They got skiing. You didn't mention skiing."
"I've never been skiing."
"Those boarding schools, these military kids . . . after they learn all about rifles, becoming snipers, if it was me, first thing I'd do after graduation, I'd go home and waste my parents for sticking me in there."
The Fever Kill Page 15
