Vicky shrugged. “Whenever you have that look, the one on your face right now, it always has something to do with Matt.”
“What look?”
“That one.” Vicky pointed at Becca’s face. “Your lips turn down, and your eyebrows knit together. It’s a puss face like that cat that used to be all over the internet.”
“I do not look like Grumpy Cat,” she protested, but the image made her smile. She swatted Vicky playfully. “Let’s get Mags ready.” She turned to leave, then turned back around. “Grumpy Cat? Really?”
“Really,” Vicky said.
Becca headed to the front of the clinic where Maggie’s owner, Stephanie, was waiting. Stephanie stood from the bench upon seeing Becca.
“How’s Maggie?” she asked. Her hair was tied in a sloppy knot, and she was dressed in yoga pants.
“The ultrasound confirmed there’s a blockage. I don’t recommend waiting any longer. It needs to come out.”
“Now?” Stephanie asked. “I don’t want to sound insensitive, but how much is this going to cost me?”
The surgery wasn’t overly expensive, but depending on a person’s budget, it could set them back. “We’ll work out some kind of payment schedule. We really need to do this for Maggie.”
Stephanie rubbed her brow. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll have to find some way to pay.”
Once Stephanie had gone, Becca rejoined Vicky. While Vicky prepped Maggie, Becca put on her mask, scoured for surgery, donned the sterile gown and gloves.
“All set?” she asked.
Vicky nodded and handed Becca the scalpel.
Becca wiped her brow. The procedure had taken a little longer than expected, but overall, she was satisfied with the results. The piece of the tennis ball had been removed from the dog’s stomach. She’d been stitched, and now she was resting comfortably in recovery.
After Becca spoke with Stephanie on the phone, she made her way out the back exit of the building. The dogs in the kennel barked their greeting. As promised, she let them out to run.
For a while she watched as they sniffed one another, marked the corner wall with their scent, frolicked up and down the runway. Occasionally, Polly, the boxer-and-bulldog mix, would stop for a pat on the head.
She watched the dogs for several more minutes until her legs grew tired from standing. She slid down the brick wall, sat on the cold cement slab. The muscles in her back ached. She never could loosen up and relax during surgery, not like some of the other vets she’d worked with in the past. They had played the radio, chatted amicably, all the while slicing and stitching.
But the tension she was experiencing now, the knots between her shoulder blades, was coming from a different source, a different kind of pressure. She pulled out her cell phone. She couldn’t avoid him any longer. When the hacking cough subsided on the other end of the line, she said, “Dad, it’s me. It’s Becca.”
Eight-year-old Becca sat next to her father in his pickup truck as they made their way down the windy country road heading toward home. It was late July, and the sun had dropped behind the mountain, but the heat was still coming off the macadam in waves. Dusk took its time, yawning across the cornfields. The windows were rolled down, and the sticky air swirled in the breeze, offering little relief. Becca’s father pinched a homemade cigarette between his lips. He was forever rolling his own tobacco, rolling and smoking the cancer sticks like a never-ending assembly line. She turned her head away from the smell that lingered on his clothes, in his hair, on his breath.
“Aw, what the hell is this?” he asked, braking at the sight of a car that was half in the gutter, the other half blocking the lane. The hood was gnarled and bent.
Becca sat up straight in the seat, peered out the windshield.
He pulled to the side of the road and parked several feet behind the disabled car. “You wait here,” he said. “Don’t get out of the truck. Do you hear?”
She nodded, not looking at him, staring at the scene ahead, her heart pattering nervously inside her chest.
A woman scrambled out of the back seat as Becca’s father approached.
“Help me,” she said, flailing her arms, the fat of her triceps flapping back and forth. Sweat stained the collar of her shirt. “It’s my daughter. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” She clung to Becca’s father’s arm.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.” He took her hands off of him. He used his police chief’s voice, the one that sounded deeper, authoritative, in charge. Although he was off duty, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, in Becca’s eyes he could very well have been dressed in his chief’s uniform, the one that made everything about him feel bigger and stronger, more powerful than an ordinary man.
“I want you to tell me what happened,” he said and ducked his head into the back seat of the car while the woman flitted about, her words jumbled and unclear, but Becca distinctly heard her say deer.
Becca pulled herself farther up in the seat, hands on the dash, straining to see what he was doing. In one swift movement, he removed a small child, a little girl, maybe four years old, from her car seat. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. Her too-short bangs were sweaty and pasted to her forehead. Becca’s father turned so all Becca could see was his back, his large arms wrapped around the child’s torso. He made one quick motion, and the child coughed and started to cry.
“Your daughter was choking,” he said and handed the little girl to her mother as though it had been nothing.
“Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.” The woman with the fat arms clung to her daughter, kissed her daughter’s cheeks over and over again. The child continued sobbing on her mother’s shoulder.
Becca couldn’t take her eyes off her father, her chest swelling, expanding far and wide as though she’d swallowed the whole of a summer sky. Unable to stay in the pickup any longer for fear she’d burst, she jumped out of the truck as her father walked around to the front of the woman’s car. Becca came to stand next to him, close, so that his arm brushed hers as he reached under the hood.
“I thought I told you to stay in the truck,” he said.
She looked up at him, having to tilt her head way back to see his face.
“Ma’am,” he called, peering into the engine and ignoring Becca. “You’re going to need a tow.”
Becca watched him fiddle under the hood until something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She stared into the cornfield where the stalks had been flattened. She moved slowly toward it, lured by curiosity. Behind her, the woman rocked her child while Becca’s father talked about the engine, but Becca wasn’t listening to what he was saying. The blood-splattered leaves beckoned her farther and farther into the corn rows. She couldn’t stop herself; she had to know, to see the animal for herself. The deer, a doe, lay on its side, panting. Its eyes seemed to lock on to Becca as if it knew she wouldn’t hurt it, as though it trusted her to help.
“Step back,” her father said.
Becca never heard him come up behind her. He lifted the rifle in his hand.
“No, Daddy,” she yelled and pulled on his arm. “No, Daddy, please,” she cried.
He shook her off. “Stand back,” he commanded, pushing her away, making her stand several yards back before aiming and firing. The bullet struck the animal with a thwock.
Becca stared at the doe, still and lifeless, the stalks beneath it crimson.
“It was suffering,” he said, taking her arm and leading her out of the field.
She struggled to get away from him, twisting and pulling. “Let me go,” she cried, but he held on tight. He opened the door to the pickup and put her inside the truck once again. “Wait here.”
Becca crossed her arms, the backs of her legs sweaty on the vinyl seat. The little girl and her mother played patty-cake on the side of the road while they waited for the tow truck. Becca’s father continued fiddling under the hood of the wrecked car. The mother kept stealing glances at him, the woman’s face ag
low with appreciation and gratitude.
All the while a storm brewed inside Becca’s chest, dark clouds rumbling in that summer sky she’d swallowed just minutes before, no longer clear and blue but now thundering and gray.
CHAPTER FOUR
John watched as the black smoke swirled into the fading blue sky. He was standing behind the old barn in front of the fire pit where the pile of autumn leaves blackened and burned. Behind the pit the mountain loomed, the trees covered in bright yellows and oranges and reds. A hawk circled not far in the distance.
He pulled the collar of his leather cut up around his neck. There was a nip in the air. If he were younger, he might not have noticed. The heat from the flames should’ve been enough to ward off the chill. But when he started to shiver despite the fire and heavy leather jacket, he couldn’t blame the autumn air or his age. The cold was coming from him, from the inside, from a dark place hidden so deep he wasn’t always aware of it.
Ever since he’d shot the young buck, it was as though the scars of the past had grown around his heart, their icy tendrils slowly thickening, wrapping around the muscle, suffocating whatever warmth and tenderness he had left.
“Stop being morose,” his old lady, Beth, might’ve said if she’d been standing beside him. The thought made him smile in spite of himself. He was often surprised by how much of her vocabulary he’d absorbed through their fifteen years of marriage. She’d been smart. He’d thought of her as an intellectual. She’d had her nose in a book most days, although she’d been one hell of a partier at night.
The first time John had laid eyes on her, she’d been sitting outside of Sweeney’s Bar with her feet propped on the railing, a book in her lap. The sun had started to set, casting its last rays across the top of her head in such a way he’d believed he’d been looking at an angel. She’d looked up from the page and met his gaze, creating an ache inside of him, a yearning so strong he’d thought he might explode.
A couple of the guys had walked outside. They’d started giving her shit, making fun of her for reading while her older sister, Lonnie, was inside drinking shots.
She’d closed her book and stood. “All right. Let’s drink,” she’d said and pulled the door open. “You fellas might want to try to keep up,” she’d called over her shoulder.
John had watched as she’d tossed back shot after shot like the girl in the Indiana Jones movie, outdrinking every man in the place. By the end of the night, she’d been left sitting alone at a table full of empty glasses. John had been sitting a few tables away.
“Where did you learn to drink like that?” he’d asked.
“College,” she’d said. “I majored in fine arts and minored in parties. Both of which are pretty much useless in the real world.”
He’d nodded.
“Do you want to join me?” She’d motioned to the empty seat in front of her.
He’d shaken his head. She’d looked surprised.
“What I’d like to do is take you home.” He’d crossed the room, held out his hand. When she’d touched him, every cell in his body had come alive, electric and pulsating. For the first and only time in his life, John had fallen in love.
Slowly, Beth had found her place with him and the Scions, their old ladies, their way of life. But in other ways, she hadn’t. She had a certain class about her, a sophistication that had been more than just being well read. She had grace and strength, a combination very few women possessed. But she’d never looked down on any of the club members or their women. And she could have. Hell, even John had thought, although affectionately, of some of the members and their old ladies as uneducated and trashy.
And she’d never looked down on John.
Beth had died three years ago from ovarian cancer. Since then, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t thought of her. It wasn’t that he was lonely. He didn’t mind being alone. Nor was it the frequent sex that he missed, although he did miss it more than he wanted to admit. But it was the smaller things he thought of often, how she’d toss her head back when she laughed, how she’d tuck her feet underneath his legs to keep them warm on chilly nights, how she’d furrow her brow whenever she was concentrating on something as simple as sewing a button.
But what John missed most about his wife was the easy rhythm of their days. Since she’d gone, he couldn’t settle his thoughts or find a routine. It was as though he was constantly wandering, searching for something, not realizing he was the one who was lost.
He was still thinking about Beth and watching the leaves burn when the sound of a motorcycle’s engine rumbled. In another moment Hap walked up behind him.
“Getting rid of the evidence?” Hap motioned toward the fire pit and smiled. Nothing amused Hap more than pulling one over on law enforcement.
“Nothing but ash now,” John said. Buried deep in the burning leaves was the sack with the young buck’s clothes.
“Your dad taught you well,” Hap said, put his hand on John’s shoulder. “He would’ve been proud of you. Damn proud.”
John nodded. He’d taken an oath to the club, the Scions, twenty years ago, and if there was one rule he lived by, the rule his old man, Russell, had drilled into him ever since he was a small boy, it was that he put the club before himself, always, even if it meant giving his life.
“How long do you think it will take before they connect this one with the other one?” John asked.
“Don’t worry. We’re covered,” Hap said, then added, “The boys are unloading a shipment as we speak.”
“Where?”
“Frank Lars’s place.”
John nodded.
They both stared at the fire pit, watched as wisps of smoke curled through the air, until nothing was left of the leaves or the clothes but ash.
John leaned against the side of Frank Lars’s farmhouse. A pickup truck was backed up to the front door. The guys were carrying duffel bags in, stomping through the kitchen to the trapdoor that led to the root cellar.
Hap and Frank stepped onto the porch. Hap pulled a large stack of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, handed it to Frank.
“How long do you need to store them here?” Frank asked. He smelled like manure and a little bit of body odor, having spent the day working his dairy farm. In the barn, the cows fussed, mooed.
“A couple days,” Hap said. “Now that our little problem is solved, it shouldn’t be too long.”
A car approached, the headlights shining on the house, the porch, the men. It was a marked cruiser. One of Chief Toby Bryant’s captains stepped out, put his hat on as he made his way over to them.
“Everything okay here, Frank?” the captain asked.
“Everything’s just fine,” Frank said.
John stayed tucked in the shadows on the side of the house, not moving from his original position, as though he were unfazed by the captain’s presence. Underneath the leather cut, he could feel himself sweating.
“What can we help you with?” Hap asked.
“I was wondering if anybody here has seen a black bear hanging around the last few days?” the captain asked. “We think it’s coming down off the mountain. Some folks in town are complaining about trash cans being knocked over, rummaged through, that sort of thing.”
The guys standing behind the truck shook their heads. A couple of them muttered that they hadn’t seen it, barely pausing as they lifted more bags, carried them inside.
“Okay, well, give me a holler if you do,” the captain said.
Chitter pulled a rifle from a bag, one with a bump stock. He aimed it at the field. “Why don’t you let us take care of that bear for you.”
“That would be good of you.” The captain looked around, stared in John’s direction, paused. “Okay,” he said. “Let me know when you get it.” He tipped his hat, turned to go.
After the captain had gone and the last of the guns had been unloaded, Hap said, “How about a drink?”
John got on his bike, Hap on his hog. The men headed to Sweeney’s Bar.
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If there was one thing John could use, it was a drink.
CHAPTER FIVE
Becca sat on the hardwood chair next to her father’s bed. The room was ripe with a medicinal smell. The heat was cranked up to the point of stifling. Romy lay just outside the door in the hall, her head resting on her paws.
Becca couldn’t bring herself to think about the reason she’d been summoned. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the shrunken man underneath the sheets and blankets. Instead, she looked at the white dresser her mother had picked out nearly two decades ago. The corners were scuffed where the vacuum cleaner had brushed against it. The knob on the lower drawer was missing. Overall, it wasn’t in bad shape, but to Becca there was something sad about it. The dresser faced the bed, a constant witness to the people who slept here, but Becca didn’t want to think about that either. She turned her head toward the window where the curtains drooped in the stagnant air.
Her father’s raspy breath came and went in spurts. The clock ticked off each painful second at a time. She stared at the water stain in the corner ceiling and a dangling paint chip that was certain to fall if there were the slightest breeze.
Her father’s lady friend, the label he’d given to all the women who’d come after Becca’s mother, was downstairs. Jackie had been his lady friend for a little less than two years, and she was fumbling around in what used to be Becca’s mother’s kitchen a long time ago, but not so long in Becca’s mind.
Becca rubbed the tops of her legs, smoothing the wrinkles on her jeans. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement under the sheets. She was pretty sure her father had moved his arm. He was waking up. Look at him, she told herself. Look at him, and stop being a coward.
She forced herself to turn her head and gaze at him. His shrunken and distorted body looked no bigger than a child’s. His face was drained of color. His once-black hair had turned white and stuck up in sparse patches around his head.
“Becca,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse, strained.
River Bodies (Northampton County Book 1) Page 3
