Authors: Bryan Smith
Jared laughed. “Clayton?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. So that’s what it’s come to.”
“Yeah.”
“We are so fucked.”
Mark’s beer was empty. He got up and walked over to the fridge again, pulled the door open and stared inside. “Seriously, though, I think he’s got something in mind. Maybe it’ll help, maybe it fucking won’t, but whatever it is, it’s gotta be worth a shot at least. He was gonna tell us about it last night, I think, but . . . well, you know. Damn, but Clay’s got a lot of fucking beer. I think I’m gonna drink it all just for being all secretive and shit. Show his ass.”
“That’s a brilliant plan. I’ll be over in, like, five minutes to help.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
The line went dead.
Mark took a beer back to the table and sat down again, taking a deep drink of the cold brew before calling up the next number on his list and hitting the Call button again.
A woman’s steely voice answered. “Who is this?”
“This is Mark Bell calling for Fiona.”
The woman harrumphed. “This is Fiona’s mother. What do you want with my daughter?”
“Uh . . . just to talk.”
Mark frowned. Why in hell was Fiona’s mom answering her daughter’s cell?
“Is it you then? Are you the son of a bitch who violated my baby and got her pregnant?”
Mark’s heart almost stopped. “What did you say?”
Mrs. Johnson’s voice became shrill. “You heard me perfectly well, young Mr. Bell. Fiona is pregnant.
At seventeen!
And if you think you’re—”
Mark hung up.
Holy fucking shit!
The phone immediately started ringing. He glanced at the display and was unsurprised to see Fiona’s number. He turned the phone off and drank the beer down in several long swallows. Then he went back to the fridge and got another bottle. And then another.
The revelation laid on him by Fiona’s mother had rocked him.
The implications were obvious and shocking.
Holy shit
.
Holy, holy fucking shit
.
Unable to stop thinking about it, he kept drinking to calm his nerves. He kept at it until the knock on the door came. That would be Jared, showing up a bit later than promised.
He opened the door.
It wasn’t Jared.
Mark stared at Fiona in stunned silence for a moment. “Oh. Hey.”
Her hands were shoved down into the pockets of her hoodie. “What are you doing here? Where’s Clay?”
“Clay went . . . out. Not really sure where. And I’m here because I’m sort of hiding out. What’s your story? Kind of shocked to see you, you know. Just tried calling and had this fucking weird conversation with your mother.”
“I know. I heard. She wasn’t letting me answer my phone.”
Mark felt a twinge of unease at her use of the past tense. “Huh.”
She started to pull one of her hands out of the pockets. “I wanted to start this shit with Clay, but you’ll do.”
There was a gun in her hand now. A revolver. Fiona backed him into the house and thumbed back the gun’s hammer. “I’m sorry. There’s no other way.”
Mark held up his hands. They were shaking. The seriousness of her intent was obvious. He didn’t understand it, but that made it no less real. She meant to kill him. “Why are you doing this?”
She smiled sadly. “It’s the way it has to be.”
His hands abruptly ceased shaking. Anger began to displace the fear. “That makes no goddamn sense. What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?”
She laughed. It was a delicate, fragile sound. The sound of a broken soul. It made Mark ache to hear it, even as he stared down the barrel of the gun. “You know what’s wrong with me. Same thing’s wrong with all of us. But you know what? If you hadn’t come by the bowling alley last night, it would’ve been just me and Kevin and those jock fucks. But it’s a good thing you came along and fucked that up. I’ve had some time to think. We all have to die. We weren’t meant for this world.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Her expression hardened. “It isn’t. It’s something I’ve been thinking for a long time. That night in the basement just gave me an excuse. People like you and me weren’t built for this world. It’s too hard. So fuck the world. And fuck life.”
Mark stared at her and calculated. She was maybe a foot out of grabbing distance. But he was almost out of time and knew he’d have to make a grab at her anyway. He’d probably just wind up shot, but it’d be better than just standing here and taking it like a pussy.
He looked into her eyes. There was maybe one way left to distract her and perhaps give himself a little edge. “Fiona . . . did you kill your mother?”
Her breath hitched.
Mark made his move.
Fiona pulled the trigger.
T
HIRTY-SIX
The garage door rattled up on its tracks and Clayton Campbell backed the old Cadillac out of the garage. The engine sputtered and stopped about halfway down the driveway. He cursed the old car and took a moment to hit a button on the garage door opener clipped to the visor over his head before attempting to start it again. The garage door clanked back down. That done, he shifted his attention back to getting the car properly started. The Caddy had once belonged to his father and was more than a quarter century old. It could be temperamental at times. He twisted the key in the ignition. The engine made some of those annoying grinding noises before finally sputtering and catching again. He revved the engine several times. When it sounded like it was running smooth, he put it in gear again and backed the rest of the way out of the driveway.
He drove away from his house, which actually predated the Wheaton Hills development. It was one of a handful of homes built by an earlier developer who went bankrupt. The Wheaton Hills people came in several years later and began building around them. It was crazy how many homes there were in the neighborhood now. It used to seem so lonely out here, like living on the edge of a frontier. But now he was surrounded by young professionals and their families, none of whom much liked him.
Not that he could really blame them.
And with that thought, melancholy threatened to descend. There was only one certain cure for that—some vintage tunes. Local radio was crap, so that was out. What he needed was a serious jam. There should be something appropriate in the CD player. He switched inputs and began to click through the selections in the CD changer as he pulled out of Wheaton Hills onto Weakley Lane. Pink Floyd. No. Too mellow. Television. No. Too art punk. Not really the right vibe. He knew he should catch up with the rest of the world and get an MP3 player. All the music you could ever want housed inside a little square of plastic and microscopic gizmos. Crazy. The Ramones. Closer, but still not quite what he wanted.
He clicked over to the last selection.
Here we go
.
The scrape of a guitar pick up the length of a string, followed by the slam of power chords.
And then again. Scrape, slam.
Clayton shook a fist and banged the base of it against the rim of the steering wheel in time to the song.
“Shout!”
Scrape, slam.
“Shout!”
Clayton indulged in a bit of old-school headbanging as the tune continued. The old Mötley Crüe track was too absurdly appropriate and he had an unexpected attack of the giggles.
Shout at the devil, indeed. I’ll get right on that, Mr. Sixx
. Still giggling, he reached across the seat and opened the glove box. The car weaved a little as he rummaged through the assortment of junk inside, but Clayton of course corrected by instinct. He had a lot of practice at skillfully driving like a maniac, a legacy of his hard-partying youth. In those days, he’d had friends his own age. His own group of like-minded comrades and kindred spirits. He had lost touch with them all long ago. Best not to think of that. It was another surefire route to depression.
“Aha!”
Clayton’s fingers closed around the thing he was looking for. He flipped the glove box shut, put the slightly mangled old joint between his lips, and stabbed in the dashboard lighter. As he waited for it to heat up, he reached the traffic light at the end of Weakley Lane, where it intersected with Luke Harper Boulevard, the long, looping road that fit like a mangled horseshoe around the approximate center of Ransom. The lighter popped out as the light changed. He accelerated, turning to the left as he applied the glowing lighter coil to the joint. He puffed it to life, then coughed a little and thumped his chest. It was good weed and not too old. He’d have a good buzz on here in a few minutes.
He groaned, abruptly remembering the need to keep his head clear.
Whatever. Too late now
.
The sprawling new industrial complex loomed on the left as he took the Caddy around a wide curve in the road. This was the home of Stanton Manufacturing, Ransom’s vaunted economic savior and the reason most of his young friends had come to Wheaton Hills. People like his dad had tried to woo a company on the magnitude of Stanton to Ransom for years and now here it was, his dad’s dream come true. The Stanton complex was vast and sparkling and very modern-looking. It didn’t look like it belonged in sleepy old Ransom at all. Except that Ransom was becoming less sleepy all the time. A time was coming when he wouldn’t much recognize the place he’d grown up in at all.
He soon slowed and turned right off Luke Harper down a narrower side street. This route would cut straight to the heart of the commerce district and the place he had to visit. The joint tumbled from his fingers as he worked the wheel one-handed.
“Ah, damn.”
He peered down at the floorboard between his feet, searching for the fallen joint. The Caddy weaved a little and he heard the stuttering, high-pitched burp of a police siren.
Oh, no
.
Clayton glanced at the rearview mirror and saw flashing blue lights.
Damn
.
He thumbed down a power-window button as he pulled over to the shoulder of the road at the edge of a quiet three-way intersection. Traffic was lighter here than on Luke Harper, so there were stop signs in place of a traffic light. He waved his hand in discreet little motions, hoping to dissipate some of the pot smell before the cop came up to his window. Probably a futile effort, but he didn’t know what else to do. The police cruiser pulled up behind him and parked. Clayton’s heart raced and he began to panic. In the old days, this would be no big deal. The cop would see who he was and let him go. Or Norman Campbell would have the ticket torn up and the cop reprimanded. But this wasn’t the old days and he was still hurting from his last run-in with an officer of the law.
A blue-uniformed cop stepped out of the cruiser.
Clayton’s heart nearly seized.
It was the same fucking pig who’d beaten him almost to death.
Christ, come on, what are the fucking odds!?
“Oh, man, this is so not fair. Fuck you, God. Seriously.”
The cop approached the Caddy and bent slightly at the waist to peer in at Clayton. “You.”
His voice dripped acid. His hate was palpable.
He pulled his gun, aimed it square at Clayton’s head, and backed up a few steps into the road. “Out of the car, asshole. You’re under arrest.”
“For what?”
“OUT OF THE GODDAMN CAR!”
Clayton cringed. The cop was out of line. He had no reason to arrest him at this point. Maybe when he found the joint, but there was clearly no just cause yet. There were procedures, steps to follow, but none of that was happening. That couldn’t be a good sign. And yet Clayton knew any disobedience or contrary statements on his part would just make things worse.
He was reaching for the door handle when he caught a glimpse of the big red pickup truck at the edge of his vision. It came whipping out from the side street just ahead of where he was parked, rear end fishtailing, its tires screeching as the driver ignored the stop sign and tromped the gas pedal to the floor again. The cop turned toward the truck just in time to see its big grille bearing down on him. Clayton felt the crunch of the impact down to his bones. The truck’s big tires thumped over the cop’s body before skidding to a halt.
Clayton craned his neck to peer out his window and saw scared young faces looking down at the body in the road. There were a few of them in the cab of the truck and a few more in the bed. Local redneck kids out joyriding. He heard the clank of a beer bottle rolling down the trunk bed. Drunk. Of course. He saw the terror in their faces and felt sympathy for them. They were just dumb kids out for some fun. They’d done a stupid thing, a thing that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. He could almost imagine the thoughts racing through their heads. How would they explain this to their parents. How—
The truck sped off.
“Huh.”
With great reluctance, Clayton got out of the Caddy and shuffled closer to the body for a look. Maybe he could administer CPR or . . . nope, dude was completely fucking dead. No doubt about it. His neck was twisted at a hideous angle and the back of his head had impacted the asphalt in a really rather resounding way, essentially crushing it. The big truck had driven right over his midsection, undoubtedly rupturing many vital organs. So, yeah . . . totally dead.
He glanced at the empty cruiser and thought about footage he’d seen of traffic stops on television news shows. Usually the nonroutine kind where something had gone horribly wrong. So this cruiser might have some kind of onboard surveillance technology. Of course, any footage would show he wasn’t the responsible party here, but the law might take a dim view of him just driving off while one of their own lay bleeding in the road.
He cleared his throat and pointed an unsteady finger at the fallen cop. “For the record, this man is no longer alive. He is as dead as it is possible to be. I have important things I have to take care of, like life-and-death important, otherwise I would stay, I swear. If there were any chance he might be saved, again, I would stay. Such is not the case. Therefore . . . oh, fuck it. You’ll want to be looking for a red Ford F-150. Bunch of kids. Local tags. First part of the license is LCX. Uh . . . good-bye.”