Dead Right (33 page)

“He gives me the creeps. But I’l come in rather than force you to stand there with your door open in this cold. I was hoping you could tel me a little more about Bubba, anyway. I’l be writing his obituary, and you knew him better than I did.”

“Sure, I’d be happy to. Bubba was a great guy.” He stood back and held the door for her. “Get in here, out of the cold.”

His smile widened until it showed the tobacco stains on his teeth. And his trailer smel ed almost as bad as Bubba’s.

But Madeline wasn’t planning on staying long.

“What do you like in your coffee?” he asked.

There were plates with moldy food cluttering the counters, dishes heaped in the sink and a puddle of something sticky fanning out from under the fridge. “No coffee for me, thanks. The way I’m feeling right now, caffeine would make me too jittery.”

“Tea, then?”

“Actual y, I don’t need anything. I’m fine.” She paused in front of a picture of Rose Lee that was hanging in a cheap frame on the wal . Hunter’s questions about her father’s relationship with the girl made her stomach ache with anxiety. Her father simply wasn’t capable of the behavior Hunter was wil ing to attribute to him. She prayed he’d soon learn that for himself.

“Do you stil miss her?” she asked, suddenly very conscious of how much Ray must’ve suffered over his only daughter’s death. Maybe he hadn’t always been the best father, but he and Rose Lee had been closer than most parents and children. The last time Madeline had seen her, Rose Lee had been in the passenger seat of Ray’s pickup.

“You bet I do.”

Madeline started as he reached over her shoulder to straighten the picture. She hadn’t realized he was so close.

“Nothing’s been the same without her,” he said.

“It wasn’t me,” Mike said.

“You expect me to take your word for it? You threatened Madeline right in front of me, remember?” Hunter leaned against the bumper of Madeline’s car. He knew Mike’s mother was watching them from the house. She’d answered the door, then reluctantly cal ed her son out of his bedroom. And because Hunter could sense her weary concern, he’d pul ed Mike away, out of earshot. Hunter didn’t want to send Mike’s parents into a fresh panic, assuming that Mike was in trouble again. Not if Mike didn’t have any injuries consistent with the blood found in Madeline’s house.

“I’m not going back to prison,” he said stubbornly.

“Where were you last night?”

“Here. My parents wil kick me out if I leave the house after dark. Ask them. They’re terrified you’re going to blame Barker’s death on me, that the past’l come back to bite us again.”

“I’m not here to blame anyone,” Hunter said. “I’m only interested in the truth.”

Mike pul ed out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. “No one’s interested in the truth,” he countered. “Only their own version.”

Ice covered a shal ow puddle at Hunter’s feet. He broke the surface of it with his foot as he spoke. “What’s
your
version?”

Mike took a long drag, letting the smoke curl slowly into the air. “You wouldn’t believe me, even if I told you. My own parents don’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

Squinting toward the large piles of manure, now covered with black plastic, that would fertilize his parents’ fields once spring arrived, Mike took another drag on his cigarette. “Barker wasn’t the saint everyone thought he was.”

Hunter kept his expression passive. “Because he turned you in for smoking pot?”

“No, because he was having an affair.”

“Who with?”

“I don’t know. But I heard them. In his office. And it wasn’t Irene. She was canning peaches for the poor that day at Velma Lowe’s. I know because my mom was there, too.”

“What’d you hear? Voices?”

“Moaning.”

Rose Lee and Katie had both “helped” Barker at the church. But they would’ve been dead at this point. Was it Grace Mike had heard? “How do you know he wasn’t groaning with…indigestion, for instance?”

Mike mimicked the panting and release that often accompanied sex, then scowled at him. “If you heard
that
behind my office door, would you think I had indigestion?”

he said bel igerently. “I knew what was going on, even back then.”

“Maybe he was alone, caught up in a particularly arousing daydream.”

“No.” He shook his head resolutely. “I heard a female voice, too, begging him to stop.” Mike flicked his ashes onto the frozen earth. “I think they were playing some kind of domination game.”

There wasn’t any more ice to break so Hunter crossed his legs in front of him and looked up. “Do you know who the woman was?”

“I already told you, no.” He left the cigarette dangling in his mouth so that it bobbed as he spoke. “I tried to go around to the window, to climb up that tree outside his office. I didn’t want to miss what was going on in there. My hormones were pumping just hearing it. And I knew it’d be the sweetest revenge I could find—to catch the reverend doing something even worse than I’d done.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hunter saw a curtain move in one of the windows at the house. It was obviously Mrs.

Metzger. She didn’t like that he was talking to Mike, but that wasn’t going to stop him. Especial y now. “So that’s why you were at the church during the middle of the day? You were angling for revenge?”

“I was supposed to scrub down the bathroom as part of my penance for smoking pot, something suggested by my dear parents,” he added bitterly. “Barker wasn’t expecting me for another two hours. But I’d been invited to a friend’s house. He had a bag of weed—” he grinned, clearly unrepentant “—and I wanted to get the work done first. So I dropped by early. I saw the reverend’s car in the lot, but the church was locked up and I was afraid to knock in case he was praying. I didn’t need to piss him off any more, you know? He was a harsh old bastard.”

“So how’d you get in?”

“The window in the bathroom was broken and didn’t close al the way. I wrenched it open and crawled through.

Then I went to see if I could find the reverend. If he was cleaning or writing a sermon or on the phone, I figured I’d tel him I knocked but he didn’t hear me. If he was praying, I’d slip back out.”

“But then you noticed the moaning.”

“Damn right.” He flicked his ashes again.

“Did you see anything when you climbed the tree?”

“Someone was on their hands and knees behind the desk. Al I could see was a bare thigh. But he was naked and riding whoever it was.”

“You’re sure it was a woman?”

He considered Hunter for a moment. “I know a woman’s thigh when I see one.”

“Is that al you remember?” Hunter asked.

“What are you looking for?”

“Another vehicle in the area? An article of clothing that only one person in town ever wore? A driver’s license?” he added jokingly.

Mike didn’t laugh. He finished his cigarette and ground it out with his foot. “There was one more thing.”

Hunter felt his muscles tense at Mike’s somber tone.

“What’s that?”

“The person on bottom was wearing a col ar.”

Hunter felt the hair on his arms prickle. “How do you know?”

“Barker had hold of the chain, was jerking back on it.”

“What happened then?”

Mike paused, studied him for a moment. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I didn’t know the Reverend Barker.”

Mike felt for the pack of cigarettes in his front pocket and pul ed out a second one. “He spotted me almost as soon as my head rose above the windowsil . Our eyes met and I fel out of that damn tree. Nearly broke my neck in the process, but I got up and ran like hel .”

“Did he catch you?”

“Didn’t need to.” He lit up again. “He knew it was me.”

“Did you tel anyone what you saw?”

“Hel , no.”

The wind ruffled Hunter’s hair, which flopped into his eyes. He shoved it out. “Why not?”

“They’d say I was making it up because he got me in trouble the week before. And I couldn’t identify the woman.

Didn’t have any proof. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could say he was an adulterer without pointing at someone who might agree. Folks around here would’ve hung me for less.”

“Did you tel your parents?”

His jaw clenched. “Yes.”

“And what did they say?”

Mike let the smoke from his cigarette come out his nose.

“My dad gave me a beating the likes of which I’ve never received before or since.”

“And now what do they say?”

“I figure the cops finding that stuff in the Cadil ac must have them wondering if I was tel ing the truth al along, but they say it doesn’t matter. That was then. This is now. My dad just wants me to straighten out my life.”

Hunter shoved the hair out of his eyes again. “Are you going to be able to do that?”

“Are you going to let me?” he countered bel igerently.

“That depends,” Hunter replied.

“On what?”

“Rol up your sleeves and let me take a look at your hands.”

“What?”
He spoke with the cigarette stil in his mouth.

“You heard me.”

His eyes narrowed. “And if I won’t?”

“You don’t want to know,” Hunter said.

Tossing his second cigarette away, Mike unbuttoned his Tossing his second cigarette away, Mike unbuttoned his sleeves, which he pushed back to reveal wel -muscled forearms. There were plenty of snake and eagle tattoos. Ink covered almost every inch of skin. But there wasn’t so much as a recent scratch.

“Tel your parents you have nothing to fear from me,”

Hunter said and started toward the driver’s side of his car.

“Damn! You do believe me, don’t you?” Mike said incredulously.

When Hunter didn’t answer, Mike fol owed him and caught his door before he could shut it. “You believe I’m tel ing the truth about the reverend.”

Oh, yes, Hunter believed him. But that was no woman Barker had in his office. A woman was too much of a risk. If Hunter had his bet, it was a girl. Probably Grace.

But he wasn’t happy to learn that his instincts had been right.

“He was worse than an adulterer,” he said. Then he pul ed the door out of Mike’s grasp, closed it and drove away.

Ray could feel the Viagra and ecstasy he’d taken juicing him up like a rechargeable battery, and he felt invincible.

He was rock-hard, if Madeline cared to look. It was titil ating to think she might. For a man of fifty-five, he was impressive, he told himself. And if she wanted him even bigger, he had an extender.

He had anything she could want.

But her eyes never wandered south. She was too absorbed in taking notes for that obituary she planned to write for Bubba. And weeping.

How dare she! It was her fault Bubba was dead. If she could just leave the past alone instead of digging, digging, always digging. And now she’d brought that private detective to town, that guy who was causing so much trouble, asking too many questions about Rose Lee. Ray had heard something about it last night, when he’d stopped by the bar for a few drinks while building up the nerve to visit Madeline’s house.

That bastard detective had better keep his mouth shut
about Rose Lee….

“I guess that’s it.” Madeline closed her notebook.

“Thanks for your help.”

“It’s the least I can do.” He adjusted his sleeve to make sure it hid the Band-Aid covering the gash on his arm. “I’m shocked by what happened. But you seem…extra distraught.”

distraught.”

“I know. I’m not handling this very wel . Bubba and I weren’t even close, but—” she sniffed “—it seems like I’m taking everything harder than I ordinarily would.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress,” he said sympathetical y.

She stood and moved toward the door, avoiding the table where he’d put the tarantula, and he had the sudden impulse to stop her. He could do it. If she went missing, there’d be no one to pay the investigator, so he’d have to go home, right? Of course, the police would search for Madeline, but he’d hide her body so wel no one would ever find it.

Maybe they’d blame the Montgomerys for Madeline’s disappearance, too.

Ray wanted to laugh at the thought. But kil ing wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. Last night, he and Bubba had gotten into a scuffle, during which Ray had bruised his leg on the corner of the coffee table. Then the cat, frightened by the violence, had pounced and scratched him, and he’d thrown it against the wal . If Bubba hadn’t tripped when he saw that, if he’d reached the phone he’d been hoping to grab, Ray didn’t know how it would’ve ended. Even after the big man fel and lay unconscious, and Ray had pressed that pil ow over his nose and mouth, it seemed to take him forever to die.

Bubba Turk had a stronger heart than everyone believed, that was for damn sure.

But Ray had won.

Then he’d burned the pil ow out back in the woods and stood in his shower for twenty minutes at least, whimpering and crying as he washed off the blood. He’d been terrified that someone had heard the ruckus and cal ed the cops, so terrified that he hadn’t returned to bury the cat he’d dumped in the shed. And now it was too late. They’d already found Bubba. He didn’t want to go back there. He wanted to stay as far away as possible.

So far, no cops had knocked on his door to take him into police custody. So far no one seemed to have seen or heard anything. And so far, in the wake of Bubba’s death, no one acted too concerned about the darn cat. He wanted to keep it that way.

To celebrate his victory—and take the edge off his fear

—Ray had popped some ecstasy and gone on a porno binge. The image he found the most erotic, a woman who looked a great deal like Madeline being raped by three men, was stil on his computer in the other room. It’d shock her to see it, he knew, make her gasp in horror.

Longing to watch the blood drain from her face as recognition dawned, he blocked the door. He needed something more visceral than he’d had in the past twenty-eight years. Pornography was no longer as satisfying as it had been only a week ago.

He imagined tying her up and letting Bubba’s tarantula crawl over her bare body as he tightened the garrote—and found it strangely compel ing that he’d violate Barker’s daughter the way Barker had violated his. To Barker, Rose Lee had been expendable. But not Madeline. Madeline was too good.