“No,” Jolene said. “It’s Charity’s. Come on, we have to go.”
But he just sat there. Confused.
“Bud,” she said. His aura surged a passionate red through all the murk that had collected around him. He was ready, she knew, if he would just let himself act instead of think.
“What if Lila’s dead?” he said. “What Dwight told me…I think he’s lost it. None of it makes any sense.” His face sagged with helplessness.
She touched his hand. Her strength was fading, but she closed her eyes to try to pass some of what she had left to him. She felt his sadness. His fear.
“Not dead,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Tripp sat in the truck watching the drunks go in and out of The Twilight Club. Trouble always seemed to come back around to this place. No one had wanted the club here when he was a kid. The Cornerstone Baptist Church had organized a letter-writing campaign to the county supervisors and the big state newspaper to stop it from being opened. They had even bought space on a billboard out on the highway and put up a picture of a sweet little girl with an unshaven man looming behind her. The sign asked what kind of life would she have when her daddy started to “drink himself to death and fall at the door to hell.”
But the land had been unincorporated, the club builder’s brother-in-law on the supervisor’s board, so nobody could stop it. Tripp’s own father had never gone inside. In fact, his parents hadn’t been back to Alta in twenty years, preferring to stick close to the tiny condo they had bought on a southern beach. But there were plenty of other men who made the club their home.
Jolene had almost talked him into trusting her, but now just picturing her face caused a slicing pain deep inside his head. She was poison. But she was also the key to finding Lila, and she would lead him to her if he had to break her head off her skinny shoulders to look inside it to see what she knew. If Lila was dead—and he was truly afraid that she was by now—Jolene was responsible, no matter if the creature had killed her with his own hands. But all would come full circle when Tripp gave Jolene what she deserved. She had some kind of kinship with the creature. He had felt it on the mountain.
Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with me?
He took a long drink from the liter bottle of water he had picked up at the Git ’n’ Go, and unzipped his coat. He had begun to sweat, his body burning with energy. The mountains were barely visible against the black sky, but he felt like he could get out of the truck and run the miles between him and them without tiring.
It was her. Jolene had done this.
There’d always been talk of witchery on Devil’s Oven, and now he felt it inside his body, like death itself had taken up residence there. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes to relieve the sting they had developed staring at the club’s entrance. He was falling apart.
He came back to himself when something smacked against his window. Dwight’s sickly white face looked back at him, his eyes bloodshot behind the thick lenses of his glasses. An awkward white bandage covered one of his ears.
It’s got him, too.
“Open the G.D. window!”
The glass between them muffled Dwight’s voice, but Tripp heard him clearly enough.
“What the hell?” Tripp said. Dwight was a particular flavor of crazy, and he wasn’t in the mood.
Dwight hit the window again with the side of his fist and bounced away on his toes like a deranged bantamweight.
Tripp shut off the truck and took a good look at Dwight before getting out. For a second, the malaise that had gripped him for hours lifted, and he thought he might laugh. Dwight looked the fool—so like Dwight, but funnier. Tripp opened the door.
Dwight rushed at him, his greasy head bent, ready to butt his chest. Tripp responded automatically, turning sideways to aim a kick at Dwight’s oncoming shoulder. When it landed, Dwight fell, skidding backward onto his ass and ending up on his side, curled up like a baby.
Damn, it feels good.
Tripp dragged the stunned man to his feet by the front of his windbreaker.
“You really don’t want to mess with me tonight, buddy,” Tripp said. “Let’s keep this friendly.”
Dwight’s glasses balanced awkwardly on his nose and a thick bubble of blood hung on his mustache. “You screwed her,” he said. “You screwed Bud’s wife, you hillbilly sonofabitch. I saved him and you screwed everything up.”
Tripp shoved Dwight away, causing him to stumble again on the asphalt.
“Get away from me, douchebag,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sheryl Dixon and her big-ass mouth.
A man and a woman on their way into the club stopped a few yards away.
“Bud knows, you asshole,” Dwight said.
“What’s your point?” Tripp said.
“They’ve got him locked up.”
“Not my problem,” Tripp said.
“You know he didn’t do anything to Lila.”
Tripp, breathing hard, addressed the couple staring at them. The woman—a girl, really; he would have bet a hundred bucks she had a fake ID on her—was leaning forward, obviously more interested than the guy, who had a forefinger in his mouth, digging something out of his teeth.
“Law enforcement,” Tripp said, letting his wallet drop open to expose his badge. “Just go on in.” The girl seemed reluctant, but the man nodded, unperturbed, and started for the entrance. Tripp was pretty certain the girl winked at him before she turned around.
“You owe him,” Dwight said. “You owe me!”
“Right now, I’m just looking for Jolene,” Tripp said. “I don’t have any business with you.” The guy was out of his mind. Tripp started to walk around him to get to the club.
“You’re screwing the kid, too?” Dwight said. He spat blood onto the asphalt. “Figures.”
“I swear to God, Dwight. Shut the hell up! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
How is it possible that it’s suddenly all about Jolene?
“I thought you were a human being, not just another randy asshole.” A chunk of gelled hair fell down into Dwight’s eyes.
“Get out of my way,” Tripp said.
“Jolene’s not here.”
“Bullshit,” Tripp said. “She said she was coming in with Charity.” But the words sounded false in his ears. She had lied to him. Everything she had said about wanting to help him, about how she actually cared about Lila, was total bullshit. He had been fooled once, and now she was playing him all over again.
Watching Dwight rub his shoulder where his kick had landed gave Tripp a faint twinge of regret.
“Stay the hell out of my club,” Dwight said. “I don’t want to see your sorry ass here again.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s going to matter much what I do,” Tripp said. Over Dwight’s shoulder, he saw three cruisers come around the highway curve and slow to enter the club’s parking lot, their lights strobing against the mist-laden clouds that had begun to slide off the hills and into the valley. “You’ve got company.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Hey, you think they’ll find me? Pat sounded like he was playing hide-and-seek and it was all a great joke. I don’t think they’ll find me. I think I’m going to rot in this plywood piece of crap you’ve got me in, buddy.
Dwight stood with his back to the stage, wishing Pat would shut the hell up so he could concentrate on the conversation with the cop who was standing way too close to his face.
The customers had all been shepherded out to the parking lot, and the dancers, except for Charity, were back in the dressing room packing up their gear. Charity and the two waitresses stood at the bar looking pissed off.
So the cop wanted to get cozy? Dwight got right back in his face.
“What you don’t understand is that you scared the shit out of all my customers when I already told you Bud didn’t come by here today. Not at any time. Why don’t you people listen to me?” he said.
The detective nodded. “We appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Yarbro.”
“So why the G.D. rush, then? Couldn’t this wait until morning?”
“That’s the thing about warrants, Mr. Yarbro. They’re like money to us, burning a hole in our pockets. Especially when someone’s dead, like Danelle Pettit, or missing, like Mrs. Tucker. We like to use them when they’re fresh.”
Pat snorted. Fresh, he says. Wait until they get a whiff of my tighty-whities. It’s a damn shame what a man who’s about to die does to his undershorts. I’d be embarrassed if it had been anybody else but you. A man can relax around his friends, if you know what I mean.
Inside his head, Dwight screamed for Pat to shut up, but he tried to keep his face neutral for the cop.
“Well, good luck with that,” he said, stepping back. “I don’t know what you think you’ll find lying around here.”
Good one, man! ‘Lying around’!
“So you haven’t seen Mr. Tucker at all today?”
How was he supposed to answer that? Jim Fowler would be up shit creek if he told the truth. Then again, there were video cameras all over the courts building. They would know sooner or later.
“I might have seen him for a few minutes tonight over at the jail. We just talked about the club. Business.”
The things you do for that Bud guy, Pat said. What’s up with that? When did you get to be Mr. Sweetness and Light?
“Business?”
Business about how he had cut up and buried the guy who’d come to collect on Bud’s debt, and how that dead guy, Anthony, had managed to kill several people, up to and probably including Bud’s own wife. It was a bad business. Business that made him feel like he was losing his shit.
“This is part of the man’s livelihood,” Dwight said. “A lot of other people’s, too. A fact about which you people don’t seem to care.”
The overhead lights came on, causing the waitresses to make complaining noises, and at least one of the cops to shade his startled eyes. With the lights on, the club looked naked and vulnerable, like a classy woman without her makeup. Despite the chaos in his head, Dwight felt bad that so many outsiders were there to see the faded carpet and gash marks on the long, varnished bar. The catwalk needed polishing and the ceiling tiles were dingy with antique smoke.
And me the untidiest of all, Pat said. How long do you think this stupid tarp is going to keep my juices in?
“Hey, sir?” One of the uniforms was shouting across the room. “There’s a locked storeroom back here. Can we get a key?”
The detective looked at Dwight.
“Screw me,” Dwight said under his breath. He dug his keys out of his pocket. With the detective and officer following behind him, he tried to think of what all he had done after he killed Pat. His hand tightened around the key ring until it hurt.
Forgot about the cash, huh, buddy?
• • •
They were back in the office, Dwight sitting on a chair between the two detectives. All they needed was a bare bulb swinging from the ceiling to make the picture complete. They were even letting him smoke a cigarette. He noticed that the older detective, Burns, kept glancing up at the Pole Dancers’ Association calendar tacked on the wall. A brunette Miss March was in full splits, hanging from a silk scarf tied around one ankle, her breasts and ass snuggled into a tiny pink athletic bra top and boyfriend shorts.
Time to give him up. Maybe you can get out of Podunkville before they find me under here. You owe that guy nothing.
“So far as I know, there’s nothing illegal about keeping money in a closet,” Dwight said.
“That would depend on where that money came from,” Detective Johnson said. He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. It was, after all, close to one in the morning. Dwight guessed the detectives weren’t used to working so late. Unless, of course, Detective Johnson had scheduled this visit for the benefit of the girls in the club. Dwight could see that his face was carefully shaved, like he had done a midnight touch-up before stopping in. “I’d say a hundred and fifty thousand bucks is a pretty large amount of cash to keep in a briefcase in a storage room.”
“Did you witness Mr. Tucker putting the cash in the storage room? Did he tell you what it was for?” said Detective Burns.
“He didn’t need to tell me because it’s my cash,” Dwight said.
“Bullshit,” Johnson said.
“That’s enough,” Burns said, nodding the Johnson guy off. He leaned forward in his chair. “But I tend to agree with my colleague.”
“That’s your problem, then,” Dwight said. “It’s my money. Legal. Prove that it’s not.”
Burns sat back. “Given that the building is owned by Mr. Tucker, and his initials are on the briefcase, I would have to conclude the cash belongs to Mr. Tucker. And that much money—well, a person would want that kind of cash if they were, say, thinking of getting out of town for a while.”
Or saving his own ass. Which it certainly didn’t.
Dwight mashed out his cigarette. Smoking didn’t calm him like it calmed other people. It stressed him out even more. There was so much he could tell these assholes, like the name of the ghoul—wasn’t that the old-fashioned name for zombies?—who was doing all the killing. And had Lila Tucker.
“What I don’t get is why you’re not out looking for the sonofabitch who snatched Lila. Bud saw him, and Bud wouldn’t lie to me. She’s probably dead out there already.”
“You know this?” Burns said.
“You people are so fixated on Bud, you don’t see what’s going on around you. That thing’s out there now, probably killing someone else, and all you want to do is ask me stupid questions about my play money.”
Johnson barked a laugh.
“You’re wasting our time, Mr. Yarbro. When did Bud Tucker bring that money here?”
“Am I arrested or something? I can stop answering questions anytime, right?” It was a rhetorical question. He knew what his rights were.
“Of course,” Burns said. “But we’re going to have to take that briefcase in for evidence.”
Now you’re screwed. Pat, who had been quiet, was back.
The office door opened.
“Detective Burns?”
“Yeah.”
“I got a call from Kenny at the jail. Bud Tucker walked out of there about half an hour ago.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Lila woke to a draft cooling her face, opened her eyes to the same tenebrous quiet in which she had fallen asleep. As the horror of the past day flooded over her, she felt herself slipping back into that empty place where she was safe, that place where nothing could touch her. But the sound of heavy footsteps in the next room broke the silence and she lifted her head from the pillow, alert.
He’s going to kill me this time.
She knew this room. When Ivy was still working from the trailer, she’d had her change in here sometimes. There were two small windows in the wall, but being in the front of the trailer, they opened onto nothing but air. It was easily fifteen feet to the ground.
Wouldn’t it be better to die that way? If she doesn’t die, what then?
Pushing the quilt away, she tried to get out of the creaking bed without making too much noise. Despite the adrenaline rush in her veins, it wasn’t easy to get her arms and legs to respond. The unfamiliar clothes aggravated her wounds, her tender, bruised breasts. She lodged a thumb sideways in her mouth and bit down to keep from screaming aloud.
Ivy. Why is Ivy doing this to me?
She didn’t have any more time to think. She had to get out. She could hear him lumbering around in another part of the trailer. Ignoring the raging pain, and her subconscious, which begged her to let herself come away into that sweet, empty place, she made it to the door of the bedroom and peeked out.
Outside the door, the air smelled foul, like rotting meat and urine. She saw him in the light from the kitchen—the first good look she had gotten of him since he to
ok her from her backyard. Instead of being half-naked, he now wore khaki pants and a pale blue sport shirt that made him look like an over-muscled golfer. Still, he was barefoot. He stood in profile, upending a peanut can, trying to shake something out of it but it wasn’t making any sound. Frustrated, he hissed and tossed it into the sink. It clanged around several times before it came to rest.
She felt a flush of satisfaction when she saw that the right side of his face was rent with four deep scratches. But there was no sign of blood, only grotesque, plum-colored flesh that looked like rotten meat. He went to the counter and picked up an open bag of pretzels, scattering several on the floor as he poured some into his hand. He turned around. Seeing her, he dropped the pretzel bag.
He rushed toward her, his feet pounding on the trailer’s shaking floors, but she was able to slam and lock the flimsy bedroom door before he reached her.
She pressed her back against the door and looked around for somewhere to hide. She couldn’t let him touch her again, couldn’t survive those brutal hands. His neck also has the stitches. She couldn’t bring herself to think about what that meant. Even if he didn’t kill her physically, her mind, her soul couldn’t survive much longer. There were things worse than death. Things that had already touched her.
Out in the living room, he was trying to work the handle out of the door, whining like a frustrated dog.
If she dropped the fifteen feet to the ground, there would be more pain—a lot of it—and her body and mind resisted the thought. She made herself run to the window and push aside the blind. The glass was filthy, but she could see down the hill to a car passing on the highway. She pounded at the glass, screaming, and fumbled at the lock. Its lip was jammed tight, rusted to its bed. Down in the house, she saw movement at a window, a flicker of light, shining white hair. She screamed for Ivy. Ivy couldn’t let her die.
No!
Now the figure moved away from the window. Toward the door, maybe?
Please, please, please, Ivy!
The light down in the house went off.
Devil's Oven Page 20
