She called for Danelle, just wanting to know where she was, and that she was working. When she got no answer, she padded from room to room in the spongy terry slippers that matched her robe. Tripp had bought her a pretty red silk robe at a lingerie store in a mall. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him that, like many redheads, she didn’t much like to wear red.
She found Danelle hanging sheets on the clothesline that was hidden in the corner between the maid’s tiny apartment—they never were able to find a decent live-in—and the back of the garage. Air-dried sheets were among Lila’s favorite things. Because Alta was well away from any coal plants or paper mills, the air around Devil’s Oven was always clear. Always perfect.
She left Danelle to her work. The woman was distractible enough, and Lila wanted to get some time in the hot tub before she had to meet Bud for lunch. He had told her that he didn’t think it was right to be seen out enjoying himself after what had happened to Claude, but she had convinced him it was okay. It wasn’t like he killed Claude or they were related or even that they would run into Claude’s poor wife (that shrew—Lila felt mean thinking Claude was probably better off now without her). Getting out was for Bud’s peace of mind. And hers.
She went into the backyard, balancing her plate, a decorating magazine, and a mug of tea. When she was settled, she pulled up some Sarai on her mp3 player, rested it on a towel, and put in her earbuds. Finally, there was some sunshine, and she could feel spring trying to break through. It seemed that the days since Claude’s death had been filled with fits of mist and rain and cold. She was desperate for more spring. For light. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
• • •
He saw her from the trees. She sat in the water with her eyes closed, all but a few stray curls of her red hair wrapped in a chocolate-colored towel. The breeze brought him the smell of her sweat. It was nothing like the sour smell of Claude Who Was Not Food or the stench of sickness that came off Thora. It was sweeter, like something from the woods. But as much as it attracted him, it was the smell coming from the kitchen that drew him past her and into the house.
He walked in an arc behind her, keeping to the bushes, not because he was concerned she would see him, but because it was the easiest way to the kitchen. She was what he had come for, but she could wait.
The house felt familiar. It was more than the smell of the nutty loaf he found cooling on the kitchen counter. It was the feeling of space—of tile and painted walls; rich cabinetry; vast, open ceilings; and shining floors. He recognized these things and found them pleasing. He picked up the loaf and broke it into halves. He bit into one half, then stuffed his mouth full of its sweetness. But as he ate, his hunger grew instead of faded, as though his gut were being quickly emptied. By the time he was finished and licking the last few crumbs from his fingertips, he was trembling all over. Thirsty, too. He looked around for something to drink.
“What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”
A woman—not the one he had come for—set the basket of laundry she was carrying on the floor. She was much shorter than he, reaching only to the middle of his chest. With her gray hair and lusterless white skin, she was like Thora. The tang of her fear made his nose itch.
“You get yourself out of here,” she said. He watched her eyes slip to the knives hanging above the massive stove.
He caught her in the front hallway, first grabbing her by the shoulder, then getting hold of the roll of fat around her neck. She died quickly. He had taken one of the smaller knives, and, standing over her, he thought of the other yellow apple in his pocket, of peeling the skin from it with the blade, and raising the blade with the skin of the apple to his teeth.
• • •
He could hear the teacher calling from maybe a hundred yards away at the other end of the orchard. The three of them—Anthony, Marcus, and David—made an awkward triangle around Allan. Shy Allan who couldn’t speak, and would only sign with David, or his aide, who was home sick that day.
“You’re it, Allan,” Anthony said, right into Allan’s face. “You know how to count to a hundred, don’t you?” He thought hide-and-seek was stupid and that they were too old to play it, but the field trip was boring and the teacher had left them on their own for the last twenty minutes. Anthony hated the country. There were probably killer snakes around the orchards—copperheads, the pit vipers the science teacher was always talking about, or maybe someone’s escaped pet python.
“He’s deaf, not stupid, you moron,” Marcus said.
“Bite me, asshole,” Anthony said.
Marcus was always out to make him look stupid. Marcus wasn’t afraid of anything because his older brother Nikko always came around to settle his problems. He had seen Marcus, his girly pink lips pressed together in a smug smile, stand behind Nikko as Nikko beat the shit out of another eighth grader who had cut ahead of Marcus in the lunch line.
“Take a joke, moron,” Marcus said. “Anyway, it’s your turn. Allan goes last. He always goes last.” Marcus wasn’t going to let him make an issue of it.
Allan folded his arms and croaked out something that might have been “yeah.” But he wouldn’t meet Anthony’s eyes.
David didn’t say anything, either, which meant he was with Marcus. As always.
“I’m only counting to fifty,” Anthony said, turning around. “And don’t even think about leaving me here, assholes.”
They had been climbing up into the trees to hide from both the seekers and the orchard staff, who had lectured them about staying close to their classmates or the farm store when they were done picking their bucket of apples. Anthony had already given his apples to Leeza, a sixth-grade girl he liked.
Anthony walked slowly through the orchard, listening, but at the same time keeping a watch out for snakes.
He found David easily because he had been dumb enough to try to hide without taking off the bright red down vest he was wearing. Sometimes Anthony wondered who was dumber: David or Marcus. He was pretty sure David’s old man had dropped him on his head when he was a baby. The two of them found Allan in a graying wooden crate the pickers used to dump the apples.
This time they heard the teacher’s whistle blow, which meant it was the last call.
“I’m done with this shit,” Anthony said. “Let’s go.”
“We gotta get Marcus,” David said. “Where’s Marcus?”
“Screw Marcus. I’m going to get some more of that cider stuff,” Anthony said.
Allan shook David’s arm, signed, and pointed to the western side of the orchard, which ended in an overgrown field.
“Allan says Marcus is over there.”
“You find him,” Anthony said.
“You’re such a pussy,” David said. “Marcus always says you’re a pussy.”
Anthony knew David was baiting him, but he bit anyway. He’d been thinking he might be able to take on Marcus’s brother if he had to. There was a hunting knife he had lifted from a sporting goods store that he’d been practicing with. It was big, though. He would have to be wearing his boots to get it into school.
David and Allan watched him go into the overgrown pasture. The grass and weeds were all at least two or three feet tall and hid everything except the top of a rusting sedan and a piece of farm equipment that was in similar shape.
“Marcus!” Anthony shouted. “Come out, you asshole!”
He looked in the sedan first. All of the glass was broken out and a bush with red, leafless branches grew up out of the backseat floor. He climbed up on the collapsing hood of the car, almost losing his footing on its pitted surface.
David yelled for them to come on. From behind them, Anthony could hear the shrill scream of the teacher’s whistle getting closer.
He saw a flash of Marcus’s yellow T-shirt against the brown grass and jumped down. He ran. He could get in at least three or four good punches before David or Allan could even get out there.
Later he would hear that the mangled thing Marcus was hidin
g under was called a haybine. He had heard of combines, but this was something different. It wasn’t his fault that some lazy farmer had left the stupid thing half taken apart out in the field, its tines and bale spear hidden in the tall grass.
Springing onto the hitch end of the haybine, he walked along the metal arm like it was a balance beam. When it shifted beneath his feet, he heard Marcus cry out. He froze.
“Shit, oh my god!” Marcus sounded terrified, amazed. “I’m dead!” Then he made a croaking sound that made Anthony want to laugh until he realized it was the real thing.
Anthony couldn’t move. The teacher’s whistle blew. He heard his name, but who was calling him? Now it came over him. That feeling of happiness. That feeling like warm sunshine that filled him when things were going just right.
Anthony jumped, rocking the busted heap of metal. Marcus was crying. Crying like a baby. He jumped again and again until the haybine shifted again and he fell off. From where Anthony lay in the tall grass, he could see one of Marcus’s arms. Finally, Marcus stopped crying and let out a burst of air like a punctured tire. He went silent.
• • •
It took Anthony a minute to find the refrigerator, disguised as it was to look like the rest of the cabinets. The smells from inside it rushed at him: meat, asparagus, wine, ripe cheese, sugar. Lots of sugar. He wiped his bloody hands on one of the bright green dish towels lying on the counter before he scooped his fingers into a crockery bowl of pudding topped with meringue.
The pudding was vanilla, and there were cookies and slices of banana at the bottom of the dish. Taking a second scoop, he got cookie crumbs wedged beneath his shallow fingernails, but it didn’t bother him. Then he peeled a fleshy layer of meringue off the undisturbed side of the bowl. He put a chunk of it in his mouth and closed his eyes, standing still as it melted on his tongue. Finally, the smell of banana and sugar overcame the smell of the woman’s blood coming off his clothes and skin. When the bowl was empty, he opened a jug of milk and drank, nearly choking himself with the flow.
“Red? You home?”
He had never heard the man’s voice, but his words brought the smell of him through the big front hallway into the kitchen and he knew. Still, it wasn’t time to kill the man. Not yet.
The front door shut and he heard the jangle of keys.
“Danelle?”
Anthony felt the air change. The man had found the woman. Anthony looked out the big glass door that opened onto the backyard. The other woman, the one he had come for, was still in the water.
“Red! Where are you?”
He heard the pounding of the man’s feet as he ran up the front stairs.
Anthony took one more drink from the jug of milk and set it back on the refrigerator shelf.
• • •
Lila’s first thought was that a cloud had drifted between her and the weak April sun. She opened her eyes. The sun wasn’t bright enough to put the man standing over her in backlit shadow, so she was able to get a good look at him. It seemed the two of them were locked together there—she, surrounded by water, her body bare, vulnerable, he—well, who in the hell was he, and what was he doing there? Should she be afraid? He was enormously tall, and his clothes were dirty, caked with mud and—Jesus, is that blood? Her mind froze. She wouldn’t be able to recall until much later that he had initially seemed handsome to her, like someone she might flirt with at a party to make Bud jealous enough to take her home and give her the kind of loving attention she wanted. But by then she had seen his eyes, and the smile that made her want to make herself as small as possible and hide in some safe and secret place.
Before she could speak or move, she heard Bud scream at her to get down! His voice came from above her, maybe from one of the upstairs windows.
Thank God. Thank God for Bud, who loves me.
The man was already lifting her from the water when Bud took the shot. She trusted Bud. He would never miss, would never kill her instead of the man whose sure hands were squeezing the breath out of her so that she couldn’t even scream. She kicked at him, but she was nothing in his arms, and soon he was holding her in such a way that she couldn’t land her foot anywhere on him. She knew if she let him hold on to her, let him take her, she was already dead.
She clawed at his face and neck. His skin was waxy and stiff beneath her nails. They would use a special tool to dig it from beneath her fingernails when they autopsied her. She had seen it on TV, imagined the clink of the stainless on stainless as they finished and dropped the tool into a basin. Finally, she was able to scream, but the man didn’t flinch or even try to shut her up.
Then they were moving away from the house and she was seeing the world upside down and she could hear Bud screaming after them. Poor Bud. He sounded afraid for her. But there were no more shots. Then there was no more Bud. There were only the filthy heels of the man carrying her and the sudden, cold embrace of the forest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Bud paced the kitchen, unable to sit. He could hear the troopers out in the hallway. They kept their voices low, but there was no mistaking the undercurrent of excitement. Danelle was lying out there, her blood painted in an almost perfect arch on the wall beneath the staircase. Her husband, Roy, was on his way to the house.
Bud wanted to roar into the hallway and blast them all out of there. He wanted Danelle to be alive and whistling the funny little tunes that drove Lila crazy. He wanted Claude back at his desk working the phones. He wanted everything back the way it was.
He had let Lila down. He’d had the chance to save her and he had let her down. Was she even alive? If she was, what was the bastard doing to her? Every muscle in his body tensed at the thought of what she might be going through. Lila wasn’t afraid of much, but he had seen her face as the creature dragged her out of the hot tub. The word terror didn’t begin to describe what he had seen there.
His carry piece sat empty on the kitchen table under the watchful eye of the patrolman guarding the patio door. Bud wanted to grab it like a lifeline and run out after Lila. She was somewhere on Devil’s Oven, but the troopers weren’t letting him leave, and they weren’t doing anything to find her. The way they had talked to him, he wondered if they thought he was involved. He would be damned if he was going to sit around any longer. He took out his cell phone to call Dwight as he headed for the front hall.
“Mr. Tucker?”
Detective Johnson made a hard stop in the kitchen doorway to keep from running into Bud. “I need another minute of your time.”
“I want a hell of a lot more than a minute of your time,” Bud said. “Do you know what could be happening to my wife while you people are screwing around down here? Where are the damn dogs? Is someone bringing dogs?”
The detective gave a look to the trooper by the door, and the man nodded. He went outside to join the technicians near the hot tub.
“Detective Burns is on his way. We’re putting a team together,” Johnson said. “Let’s you and me sit down for a minute.”
“I want your people to get their asses out there and find my wife.”
“If they’re on foot, they’re not going to get very far, very fast. You said the guy was barefoot?” Johnson said. “The Dixon woman said the man who took her husband was barefoot.” He absently bit at a thumbnail and studied it. “Hell of a thing to be running around the woods in your bare feet.”
“My wife didn’t have any clothes on, Detective. Her hair was wrapped in a towel!” He didn’t like the guy’s attitude. Johnson was a pissant downstate trooper, but he carried himself like he had a camera trained on him twenty-four/seven.
Bud could smell peppermint on the detective’s breath as he pressed in close. He knew there was a chance he could get the guy’s 9mm in his gut, or—if another officer happened to see them arguing—a state-issued, .40-caliber piece pointed at his head.
“A fucking towel,” Bud said. “I’ll be damned if I see any humor in that.”
Johnson’s left eye twitched.
<
br /> “The aggrieved husband thing only buys you so much patience,” he said. “You need to step away.”
Before Bud could respond, they heard shouts from the hallway. Roy cried out his wife’s name.
“Wait here,” Johnson said.
Bud didn’t much appreciate the detective’s tone. He followed him into the hallway, unwilling to be pushed around.
A pair of troopers held Roy by each arm. He strained forward, his face red and twisted with pain, trying to get to his wife’s body in the middle of the floor. He wore his farm coveralls and greasy ball cap, and looked as crazed as any drunk that Bud had removed from the club on a payday Friday night. Only, Roy didn’t drink. It was a picture that would stick in Bud’s head for a long damn time.
Roy and Danelle were good people. Claude Dixon had been good people, too.
Seeing that Detective Johnson and the troopers had their hands full with Roy, Bud backed slowly into the kitchen, then turned and ran up the back stairs two at a time, his footfalls masked by the thick carpet.
The troopers hadn’t yet gotten to the second floor of the house, and the bedrooms were all empty. The master suite opened onto the gallery overlooking the foyer, so he had to take care to prevent them from seeing him go in and out. It wasn’t like he was easy to miss, either. Fortunately, they were still dealing with Roy, and Roy wasn’t getting any quieter.
Bud found the 9mm in his bedside table, just where it was supposed to be, and made his way back downstairs.
With troopers and technicians in both the front and back of the house, the only safe ways out were the garage and the side door leading to the yard where Danelle hung the laundry.
The garage was closer to the woods.
• • •
Bud bent forward as he climbed, carefully negotiating the muddy incline that was glutted with trees from some long-past storm. The loafers he wore were no good for a run up a mountain, and after ten minutes they were caked with mud and leaves. He kept his eyes open for a sturdy branch or limb to brace him, but everything he tried to pick up crumbled in his hand. All he had was the gun, and it was more of a hindrance than anything at this point. But he couldn’t leave it behind. He had to be ready to take the shot.
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