Drawn Into Darkness (16 page)

I heard no reaction from Stoat.

My sense of balance felt uncertain, perhaps because of the heightened pulse pounding in my temples or perhaps because I hadn't had enough to eat. With one hand on the top bunk's bed rail for support, I turned around as silently as I could to look at Stoat, more than half expecting to see him sitting up and grinning at me. But he still slumped sprawling with his head on the table.

So far, so good.

Feeling a little more steady, I let go of the bed rail to stand on my own and take charge of my breathing. Slow, deep. Calm down. One step at a time.

Quite literally. I put one foot forward—not too far, half a step—then shifted my weight slowly to avoid making any sound, then paused like a bridesmaid in a wedding processional. I checked Stoat; he hadn't moved. I listened as if something might be sneaking up on me. Then I skimmed my other foot forward and balanced with just my big toe on the floor, trying to remember where the creaky floorboards were so I could avoid them. Then I took another stealthy half step, and another—who would think a tiny cabin could seem so huge? By increments I crossed the floor, watching out for things that bit—spiders, scorpions, snakes—and even more, watching Stoat.

Closer, closer. I was close enough now to hear him breathing—

Damn. Breathing meant that the freaking pervert was alive.

But he seemed to be sound asleep. Zonked, conked, somnolent. I stood within arm's reach of his shotgun, but on the wrong side of the table. The shotgun barrel projected over the edge of the plank surface toward me, easy to grasp, but if I failed to wrench the weapon away quickly enough, if he woke up and grabbed his end, he could still shoot me. Even if the gun went off by accident, buckshot was likely to get me.

I had to sneak around the table to stand right next to him before I dared to lunge for the gun.

I took a long breath and a short step.

A floorboard creaked under my weight. I froze.

Stoat kept sleeping without even a hitch in his breathing.

I ventured another slow, soft step, then another. Around the corner of the crude table and bench I crept. Just one more step. Noiseless, thank all the deities. Close enough at last, I tensed to try for the shotgun—

My fingers never touched it. I never even saw Stoat uncoil; the bastard must have struck like a rattlesnake, only harder. I felt his fist impact my eye and the back of my head impact the floor, equally hard. But I was not knocked out, which might have been preferable. I could see only something like sparklers on a very black Fourth of July night, and I could hear Stoat laughing.

F
irst thing Thursday morning, early enough to avoid Birmingham's rush hour traffic, Chad set off on his drive home, with Dad in the passenger seat and Oliver standing on the backseat, his big, shaggy head thrust happily over the console, between their shoulders.

Without taking his eyes from the road, Chad acknowledged the dog. “Oliver, I wish I had half your optimism.” Amy had reacted better than he had expected when he had phoned her last night, but still, Chad didn't feel much hope that Dad's plan would help the marriage. Mostly because he didn't dare. Hope was scary.

Ned asked, “You sure Amy doesn't mind that I'm bringing the woofhead along?”

“Oliver? No problem. Amy loves animals.”

“That's a sign of a good heart.”

“You've got that right. Dad, I don't deserve her.”

Peripherally, he saw his father stiffen as if he had struck a nerve. “Now listen here, son.” The intensity with which the old man spoke would have compelled Chad to listen anyway. “You gotta stop thinking like that. Life isn't about what you deserve or what you don't deserve. Did you deserve to lose Justin that way? Do you deserve to get him back?” His father didn't pause for an answer to either question. “You take what you get, not what you deserve or don't deserve. That's just another way of being a self-centered jackass.”

Self-centered? It was the last thing Chad would have thought of himself. On the other hand, he was definitely capable of being a jackass. Trying to define what he thought a jackass was, Chad didn't say a word, but Oliver whined as if he had been scolded.

In a much more subdued tone, Dad added, “I been there. Damn martyr who didn't deserve this and didn't deserve that. Just an excuse to keep drinking.”

“Huh,” Chad remarked, processing information that was entirely new to him.

His father rumpled the fur on Oliver's head, then patted it smooth, reassuring the dog that everything was okay. And maybe reassuring himself as well. “I'm nervous about meeting Amy,” his father admitted.

“What the hell, Dad? So am I.”

•   •   •

Stoat ordered me, “Git your fat butt the hell up off the floor and get me something to eat. I'm hungry.”

I could hear him, all too loud and clear, but I could not see him. One of my eyes was swelling shut and the other had not yet made sense out of anything.

“Oh, hi, Stoat,” I mumbled.

“Hi, hell,” he barked. “I'm hungry.”

“That's good. I'm glad you're feeling better.”

“Bullshit. You were fixing to shoot me dead. Git me something to eat!”

“Well, what would you like?” I asked ever so politely, heaving myself to my feet and making a mighty effort to focus my one viable eye. “We have cold canned lima beans, cold canned okra, chunky peanut butter—”

He invoked his patriarchal deity loudly, at length, and by various names, while I stood watching his grotesque face come into focus, one side swollen like a football and turning black, the other side ugly enough to start with. “Jesus jumpin' on the water,” he yelled in conclusion, “I want fried eggs and grits and coffee! Git going!”

In order to show my willingness to oblige, I wobbled over to the flat boxes in which the canned goods were stored. My legs buckled just as I got there, but I guess it looked as if I was kneeling in order to get at some food. I had to act as if I were catering to Stoat; my life depended on appeasing him. “There are some canned grits,” I reported, “and instant coffee. I could make a campfire and heat some water in a can or something.”

Only a foreboding silence answered. Pain from my insulted eye seemed to radiate through my skull; my head throbbed, and I noticed the taste of blood in my mouth from further damage not yet identified. I swiveled to check my whether report: whether Stoat was going to finish the job and kill me now. I saw what looked like two cartoon eyes, round and black, until I realized they were two shotgun barrels pointed straight at me. They held my attention so thoroughly that I barely saw Stoat behind them.

“Can or something my ass,” he said. “Git over here.”

Despite feeling weak, I obeyed almost quickly. It's amazing how fear can quake a person's gut one moment yet give strength the next.

“Stand there. Not like that. Put your back to me.”

Thinking I was about to be executed, I balked, deploying my big mouth. “Why?” I asked as loudly as I could, which wasn't very.

“Just goddamn turn around!” The menace in his voice shook me so much that I shuddered. I thought wildly that the rattlesnake venom, instead of killing him, seemed to have joined forces with his own spleen.

I turned around. Yes, sir.

With one hand he seized my shoulder and leaned on me for support while with the other he held the shotgun to the back of my neck. “Move,” he ordered.

“Where?” I had to keep talking, make him think a black eye and a gun to my back meant nothing to me.

“Out the damn door.”

“But where are we going?”

He sighed gustily like a horse. “There ain't no damn eggs or frying pan here, are there?”

“No.”

“Then what do you think, dumbass? We're going to my place. You drive.”

•   •   •

By midmorning, Quinn and Forrest had filed Missing Persons reports on Mom with the Maypop police and the Florida state troopers. But doing so had made Quinn feel worse, not better, because the authorities had given the distinct impression that they would not search seriously for an adult who had every right to go missing; how did they know she hadn't shot her own dog to death?
Assholes,
thought Quinn, driving the rental car, heading toward Mom's shack for lack of anything else to do.
Dickheads.
Although Quinn hadn't asked, he felt pretty sure Forrest felt the same way. Normally upbeat, Forrie looked remarkably glum.

“It's going to be hot as hell,” he remarked dourly from the passenger's seat.

“Face it, Bro, we're
in
hell.”

“Is it that bad,” Forrest shot back, suddenly argumentative, “that we had to go on Facebook to find a photo of our mother? Or that we don't know her Social Security number? Or that we don't know her exact place of birth, or whether she has any friends down here, or a job, or a church, or a boyfriend, of all things—”

Quinn cut in. “Because we haven't talked with her for a month and a half?” He kept his tone angelic.

Slumping in the passenger seat, Forrest groaned. “Then, to top it off, we didn't open Bernie's e-mail for almost a day.”

“They don't know that.”

“But we do,” Forrie muttered.

“Okay, okay.” In a tuneless waltz rhythm Quinn sang, “We are bad, bad, sons, and we've been sent, to, hell—”

The Worst Rental Car Ever strayed off the road and onto the grassy shoulder. Forrest yelled, “Shut up and watch your driving!”

“Relax. We're almost there.”

“Yeah. As if that's a reason to relax.”

Quinn turned off the road and bumped across the sandy yard to park in the shade of the mimosa trees. Silently he and his brother went inside the pink shanty and had a look around as if their mother might somehow have turned up since yesterday. But except for where Bernie had cut a rectangle out of the carpet to carry Schweitzer to his grave, nothing had changed. The stench had abated slightly overnight, and now the heat seemed more objectionable. They went around closing windows so they could turn on the air conditioner. Mom's bed remained empty and unmade, her bathroom snowy with talcum powder, her dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink.

“These stink almost as bad as, you know,” Forrest said of the dishes. “Howsabout if I wash them?”

Quinn nodded. “I'm going to have a look around.”

Going back outside, he didn't look at Forrest, and Forrest didn't look at him. They both knew that the only trace of Mom he was likely to find might be her body.

Not about to search randomly, Quinn visualized a grid pattern of the property and set off toward the handiest perimeter.

Walking slowly between mimosa trees and scanning mechanically up and down, then from side to side, Quinn felt his mind rebelling. There had to be some way to make sense out of this mess.

Time for data assessment.

His mother's car was here.

But Mom herself was very much not here.

Neither was her purse, cell phone, or keys.

Most logical explanation: someone—for instance, a new friend—had come to the house, picked her up, and taken her somewhere.

And shot her dog, and rearranged her furniture?

Try again, Sherlock.

Okay, an intruder seemed to be indicated in the picture.

But Mom had not called the cops. Of course, with Mom there was always a chance that she'd let her cell phone battery run down. But if she'd been able to flee, why on foot? Why not take the car?

Useless question. She had not taken the car.

More useful questions: On foot, where would she go? Where
could
she go?

Mulling, Quinn completed a circuit of the property. As he passed the house, Forrest came out to walk along with him. “AC's starting to take hold,” he reported, then asked, “Find anything?”

“I hope I don't. Forrie, where would she go?”

“We've been through this with the cops. We have no idea.”

“But now that we're here, look around. Where would she go on foot?”

Both of them stopped where they were, scanning, and both finished by focusing on the bright blue shack a short distance down the road on the other side. Then they eyeballed each other.

“Come on,” Forrest said. “What are we waiting for?”

•   •   •

Amy made a cow face at the mirror she was polishing, then laughed at her own reflection and herself inclusive because she could not stop housecleaning. She knew that neither Chad nor his father nor least of all his father's dog would give a rat's sphincter whether the mirrors and drinking glasses were spotless, yet here she was trying to put a shine on every possible surface. She had already dusted the house, including every angel figurine in her large collection that spread throughout every room, but next she planned to take porcelain angels into the kitchen and
wash
them. With Dawn dish detergent. Until each ceramic face and feather sparkled.

She was being ridiculous and she knew it and she humored her ludicrous self. While not exactly afraid, she felt as nervous as a cat having its whiskers shaved, and she could not sit still until Chad and his father arrived. Chad's sudden actions, not only visiting his dad but bringing him home for her to meet, signaled a huge shift of some kind in her husband. With no idea what to expect, Amy reminded herself that the marriage couldn't end up in much worse shape than it already was.

Downstairs again, finished with all the mirrors, she had just picked up the first cloud white porcelain angel when she heard the truck pull into the driveway.

“Jesus!” she cried more in prayer than in frustration. Then she put the angel down and headed for the front door. Allowing herself no more time to dither, she opened the door and went outside to meet her husband and his father, feeling as if she were greeting not just one stranger but two.

•   •   •

Because the day was heating up like a gas-fired barbecue grill, Quinn insisted on driving the short distance to the tastelessly blue house. He parked the dinky rental car in front. As he and his brother approached the door to make inquiries of whoever was home, Quinn felt as if he were stepping into a Hollywood melodrama: Did you by any chance notice what has become of our mother? You say three swarthy men in a black Cadillac stretch limo with tinted windows took her away? Did you happen to memorize the license plate?

Quinn knocked and got no reply. Forrest made a futile effort to turn the doorknob.

“Locked,” he said unnecessarily.

“Nobody home,” said Quinn just as unnecessarily. He felt an uncharacteristic desire to peek inside, but saw that the window blinds were drawn right down to the sills.

“Maybe they're out back.”

“Taking a sweat bath?” said Quinn sarcastically. But in this outlandish area of what barely seemed to be the same country he lived in, Quinn couldn't rule out the possibility. Still, his feet felt nearly steam-cooked in their wing-tipped shoes, and he had to force himself to trudge around the corner of the blue house. Forrest, despite his heavy work boots, strode ahead, around the house and out of Quinn's sight.

When Quinn caught up, he found it easy to see that there was nobody in the backyard and no reason for anybody to be there—no aboveground swimming pool, no lawn chairs in the shade, and, for that matter, no shade. Only a rectangle of sand and/or grass. No fire pit or grill, but no need, Quinn thought. The sun might as well have been a flamethrower. Its blaze would sizzle anybody. It was sizzling him right now.

His brother stood staring at the back of the blue shack with an odd look on his face.

“What?” Quinn demanded.

“Why would anybody board up their window that way?”

Quinn stood beside him and looked. The small house's smallest window, set rather high in the wall, had been barricaded by a rank of two-by-fours so close-set they wouldn't let in the light.

“Left over from a hurricane?” he thought aloud, not convincing even himself.

Forrest said, “Don't they use plywood? Anyhow, none of the other windows—”

“I can see. I have eyes.” The blue house's rear windows looked no different from the front windows, with their roller blinds pulled clear down.

Forrest said, “If those boards are meant to keep somebody out, they're stupid. Why block the highest, smallest window? Anyhow, a guy with a pry bar could—”

“Hey,” Quinn interrupted, staring intently at a window with drapes instead of a roller blind. Kind of a picture window. He jogged toward it.