The Last Exit to Normal (16 page)

CHAPTER 21

“I
’m going to find her.”

Kim looked at me. “How?”

I’d been thinking about Billy since our last conversation, and I couldn’t get him out of my head. We sat on Kim’s front porch, and there was no moon after a Monday-afternoon scorcher. A breeze rustled the leaves on the maple tree over us. “I’ve got a buddy in Spokane that’s a computer whiz. Like a hacker.”

“A hacker, huh?”

“Yeah. He also deals smoke.”

“You hung around some interesting people, didn’t you?”

I laughed. “I guess.”

“How can he help?”

“I don’t know, but he’ll know. Everybody leaves a trail.”

She took my hand. “What if she doesn’t want him?”

“That’s up to her.” Silence folded in around us for a few minutes, and my mind wandered. “Why don’t you want me around Ron Jamison?”

She hesitated. “I just don’t like him. That’s all.”

I told her about him following us to the cemetery, then digging up the cats and leaving them on Billy’s porch. She shook her head. “Just stay away, Ben.”

“Tell me.”

She sniffed, then took her hand away from mine. “You really want to know?”

I was sure I didn’t. “Yes.”

“Ron had a thing for me. For a long time, I guess. When Greg and I dated, he . . . let me know how he felt.”

“What happened?”

“Ben . . .”

“Tell me.”

She looked at her lap, wringing her hands. “He set the whole thing up. Everything. We went to a party at the Pond one night, and Ron challenged Greg to a drinking contest. Ron won, but he wasn’t drunk. He acted like it, but he wasn’t. I could tell. He’d fixed it somehow, and Greg was so drunk he couldn’t even stand. He blacked out. Ron carried him to the Bronco and piled him in the backseat. I thought . . . I was mad at Ron, and he just laughed it off, saying it was a good practical joke and that Greg would no doubt get back at him somehow. They’re cousins, you know? And Ron always did stuff like that to people. I got in the Bronco and told him to take us home, and he did. But he stopped on the way. Greg was passed out. That’s when Ron told me he liked me.”

My stomach sunk. “He didn’t . . .”

“No. He tried, and I fought him. He didn’t get what he wanted, and he knew he wouldn’t, so he backed off. Then he told me that if I said anything, he’d hurt me.” She was starting to cry now. “You should have seen his eyes, Ben. They were crazy. I knew he’d do it.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. Threatening to gut the sonofabitch wouldn’t make anything better for her right now, so I swallowed my anger. “I’m sorry.”

She must have noticed the tone in my voice. She squeezed my knee. “Ben, stay away from him. There’s something wrong with him. Seriously wrong. He’s done other things, too.”

“Like what?”

She sniffed. “I don’t know. Just . . . things. It’s like he doesn’t know when to stop. He just pushes things way too far.” She stopped for a moment, then went on. “There’s a guy at school named Nathan Tibbs, and Ron didn’t like him. I don’t even know how it started, but they would go back and forth with each other all the time, you know? Just verbal stuff. Then things started happening. First it was Nathan’s car getting keyed. Then somebody dumped bleach in Nathan’s gym locker and ruined his baseball uniform. Then Nathan’s dog disappeared, and a month later, somebody lit the Tibbses’ barn on fire and killed two milk cows and a horse.”

“He did all of it?”

She nodded. “Greg told me Ron killed the dog, but I don’t know about the rest. The sheriff couldn’t prove anything.” She looked at me. “The Highway Patrol came in and did an arson investigation. They said whoever did it tied up the animals so they couldn’t get out.”

“Holy shit.”

She folded herself into me. “Promise me, Ben. Promise you’ll stay away from him.”

For the first time in a long, long time, I lied. “I promise.”

Back home, the van was gone and I found Miss Mae in her room. Dad and Edward were probably working on the restaurant. I’d heard something about painting. Miss Mae sat in her favorite rocker, reading. She looked up when I knocked on the doorjamb. “Can’t an old woman get a bit of peace around here?”

“No.”

She closed her book. “Well, spit it out.”

“What do you know about Mrs. Hinks?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who wants to know?”

“Me.”

“You ain’t nobody, and it ain’t nobody’s business.”

“Come on, Miss Mae. I just want to know.”

“That’s a half answer if I’ve ever heard one. I smell trouble all about you.”

“No trouble. At least not with this. I promise.”

She eyed me. “Tell me a story and I’ll tell you a story.”

I sighed. “Okay, I want to find her. For Billy.”

She shook her head. “Trouble.”

“No trouble. He needs her. Every kid needs a mom, right? You said that when I got here.”

“It ain’t my business to let on about such things.”

I stared at her, my eyes wide. “You know, don’t you? She told you!”

“She certainly did. In order to find her if Billy had an emergency or Mr. Hinks died or some such thing of importance. A seventeen-year-old whelp sticking his nose where it don’t belong is not such a thing of importance. I still think she’s a no-account, but I gave her my word.”

I was getting mad, but I knew she was keeping her promise to Mrs. Hinks. “Mr. Hinks abuses him. He does.” I told her about the Can. “He puts him in there long enough that Billy doesn’t even know how long. He has to pee in a jar.”

She frowned. “In a closet?”

“Yes. No light, no nothing.”

She stared at me hard, then pointed a crooked finger to her dresser. “Second one on the right.”

I slid the drawer open. Ten letters lay stacked in the corner, all addressed to Miss Mae. The sender was Jennifer Lindy. “This is her?”

“Well, it ain’t Mickey Mouse. She feared Norman would come after her, but she wanted to keep after Billy. See how he was doing.”

I stared at the return address. Las Vegas, Nevada.

Miss Mae spoke up. “She moved some time back. My letters started coming back ’round six months ago, and she hasn’t written since.”

I studied the envelopes, memorizing the address. “Why’d she leave without him?”

Miss Mae’s eyes softened. “Ben, sometimes things happen that don’t give a woman many choices.”

I nodded. “What happened?”

“Norman Hinks is a hard man. Bitter. Born bitter and will die bitter. Now, mind you, I never saw that man harm his child other than work him hard and strap him every once in a while, but I did see Jenny’s bruises.”

“He beat her?”

Miss Mae winced. “She’s a tough woman, and he came away with a few himself, but when she had to go, she had to go.”

“Why didn’t she take him, though? Wasn’t she afraid that he’d hurt Billy?”

“She was.”

“Then why?”

“Because Norman told her that if she ever took his boy, he’d hunt her down and kill both of them. She believed him.”

“I’m finding her.”

“I know you are.”

“You think I’m making a mistake?”

She looked at me. “Why, I don’t know. I don’t think a boy stuffed in a closet is a good thing, though.”

“Well, if she can disappear once, she can do it twice.”

“I don’t know, Ben. You read those letters and you’ll find she has a new husband. Good man, too. He owns a restaurant.”

“Can I take these?”

“Return ’em when you’re done.”

Up in my room, I jumped on the bed. I dialed a number on the cordless. It rang four times, then someone picked up. “Hey, Quaverly,” I said.

“Ben? Is this the troubled youth of my past or a manifestation of my imagination?”

Quaverly, besides being my pot supplier, was a computer freak. Illegal computer freak. “You don’t have imagination, dude. It’s the pot cloud around your head.”

“Livin’ in the clouds isn’t a bad thing, my friend. You back in town?”

“No. I need help, though.”

“I don’t send through the mail. That’s federal stuff.”

“I gave up the smoke, Quaverly. Straight as an arrow.”

“I was correct, then. The world is coming to an end.”

“I need to find somebody.”

“Hmmm. Interesting. Care to elaborate?”

I gave him Mrs. Hinks’s new name, the city, and the name of the restaurant she gave in the letters to Miss Mae. “I need it quick, too.”

Silence on the line for a couple of minutes. I heard fingers on a keyboard. “Okay. Got the info from you, now we’ll see.”

“Can you do it?”

“As we speak, hombre. Call me back in two hours and I’ll have whatever I have.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

“My displeasure. Now hang up and leave me alone.”

After I hung up, I got my jacket on and left, my keys jangling in my hand. When Greg had come over to help with the truck, he’d said he lived on Gordon Lane. I found it without too much trouble, then eased down the street, looking for his Bronco. It was sitting in front of a white one-story house with a small front porch and a Ford F-250 sitting in the driveway. Flowers lined the walk up to the door. I knocked, and a woman with the beginnings of age lines around her eyes answered: “May I help you?”

“Is Greg home?”

She glanced at my truck, then smiled. “Are you Ben? I recognize Miss Mae’s truck.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Just a moment.” Then she was gone, leaving the door open. A flowery scent drifted from the house, and it reminded me of when my mom had potpourri in our house back in Spokane. Greg came to the door. “Hey, what’s up?”

I smiled. “Listen, where does Ron live?”

He frowned. “Over on Hanscomb. Why?”

“Where’s that?”

“Take a left on Ellis Street, two blocks down from here, then a right.” He paused. “Everything cool?”

“Yeah. Everything settled. He forgot his wallet at the house when we were talking the other day, and I want to give it back to him.” I realized how lame that sounded as soon as I said it.

He nodded, not quite sure what was going on. “He’s not home.”

“Where is he? Miss Mae told me I couldn’t come back until I’d given it to him. Something about another person’s property or something.”

He smiled. “The Pond. There’s a party out there again.”

“Cool. Where is it?”

“Five miles out on the highway. East. Take a right at Road 2343. Go a mile and you’ll see it on the left. There’ll be a bunch of cars there.” He studied me. “You sure you want to go out there?”

I forced a smile. “Sure. We hashed things out. Just giving the new guy a hard time, you know? He’s pretty cool.” Silence from Greg, and for cousins, I wondered just how much Greg liked him. “Well, I’d better split. Take it easy, and thanks again for the truck stuff.”

“No problem.”

I hopped in the truck and drove east on the highway, watching the odometer until I’d gone five miles. A minute later, the headlights flashed against the marker for Road 2343. I took a right and drove down the bumpy dirt lane, looking for cars.

Five minutes later, I came to the spot. I cut the lights early and parked on the side of the road, hopping out and stuffing my keys in my pocket. The Pond was surrounded by brush and spindly pine trees, and as I walked toward it, I heard music. I stopped, circling around to the right, until I saw the glow of a bonfire. I crept through the trees. Twenty or thirty people, the elite of the Rough Butte socialites, sat and stood around the bonfire, listening to country music and partying. A couple of girls danced together in the firelight while the guys hee-hawed and laughed. The Pond was opposite me, a black hole in the moonless night.

It took me a few minutes of creeping around to find Ron. He sat on a cooler, drinking a beer and slurring his words to a guy in a lawn chair with a straw cowboy hat and Levi’s jacket on. I crouched by a tree, watching.

I knew I had to be careful. The thought of twenty or so country boys having a bit of fun with the city kid who was spying on them didn’t settle well with me. I broke out in a sweat as Ron threw his empty in the fire, stood, opened the cooler, and grabbed another beer. He opened it and swigged half of it down.

Every few minutes, I noticed the occasional guy head off down a little trail. It took me a while to figure out it was the pee area. I crept closer to it, setting myself in between the party and where a guy was peeing on a log. I could still see Ron through the flickering flames of the bonfire.

Ron drank the rest of his beer and half of another one before he stood up, loudly proclaiming he was going to wiggle the worm. Milk the cow. Choke the chicken. How original. He stumbled around the fire with the beer in his hand, then came down the trail.

I let him pass, and when I heard the splash of liquid falling on leaves, I came up behind him. “Hey, Ron.”

He apparently didn’t recognize my voice and didn’t turn, finishing his business. “Can’t a guy even take a leak without . . .”

I came at him from behind, locking my arm around his neck and yanking him to the ground. We landed with a slam, but I kept my grip. “It’s me, Ron. Benald. And we need to talk.”

He didn’t struggle, didn’t say a word. Just tried to breathe.

I whispered in his ear: “What would your cousin Greg think if he knew you tried to rape his girlfriend after you tricked him into getting so drunk he passed out?”

Ron held his breath, then exhaled. “You’re dead, man. One hundred percent dead.”

I tightened my arm around his neck, straining. “No, Ron, I’m not. You don’t have the balls to do that. You burn shit down and kill animals and try to rape girls, but you don’t face people. You slink around, right? Like the other night when you followed Kim and me to the cemetery.” I listened to him struggle to breathe. “Know what’s going to happen now, Ron? I’m going to get up and go home and pretend this never happened. You are, too, and you know why?”

He didn’t answer.

I jerked my arm around his neck. “You know why?”

“Why?” he croaked.

“Because if you don’t, this whole town is going to know what you did. And let me tell you something else. Wanna know what else, Ron?” When he didn’t answer, I jerked his neck again.

“What?”

“I don’t think Kim’s brother would take it very well, do you? Or Greg. Or the sheriff.” Silence. I tightened my grip. “Talk to me, Ron. Do you think Dirk would take it very well that you tried to rape his sister?”