Devil's Oven (17 page)

Maybe he was as bullshit crazy as she was, but he kept himself present enough to listen to her. She’d said something had happened to Lila. It didn’t matter to him if Lila was at home with Bud. He just wanted her to be
safe
. But he was having trouble focusing on Jolene’s words because the voice was scratching at the back of his brain, like an animal trying to get to the other side of a closed door. How long would it be before it demanded to be let in? Would he have to let it in?

“She wouldn’t nurse the baby for more than a couple minutes at a time,” Jolene said. “He screamed and screamed and I had to take him from her because she would just stop talking, stop looking at him. Like he wasn’t even there.” Her voice was agitated. The face she showed him was that of the young girl he had seen fleeing through the woods, her hair flying behind her, threatening to tangle itself on the low-hanging branches she passed. Even from far above her, he had been able to smell her fear.

Far above her.
He couldn’t expel the images she had put in his mind. He didn’t want them, damn it. He wanted to grab her and shake her and make her stop lying. He squeezed his fists tight, willing himself not to hurt her.

“Why are you telling me this? You’re telling me I screwed a corpse? A corpse that comes back every so often to ruin people’s lives?” he said. “I don’t know what bullshit you pulled on me, but it stops now.”

 The voice had a sound like the hiss of burning coals:
The little slut drove her mother mad. Her own mother!

“You saw,” she said. “You saw what she did to them!”

“I saw what you wanted me to see,” he said.

“Have you ever watched a child die?”

How many animals had Tripp seen, their lifeblood feeding the dirt? Injured bucks, fawns dying quietly from shock. Bodies from the last two plane crashes, dead already. Was Lila already dead? If he had to, he would kill this girl—
this liar
—to find out.

 “I begged my father to dig up the money he kept buried in the woods, and go down and buy a milk cow so the baby could live.” She looked down at the floor like she was ashamed. “At least for a while.”

“You’re screwing with me,” he said. “Drugs. You gave me something. It was at the diner, wasn’t it?”

“Believe whatever you want,” she said, tears nearly choking her words. “What you saw was as real as you are. But there’s something else here. It’s kept me here, kept me safe. It’s not like the other. It’s not like the thing that destroyed my mother, killed my family.” She tried to touch him, but he jerked away as though she had burned him.

“Get away from me,” he said.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I live. And then I don’t,” she said. “You saw it. You saw
me
.”

“I had a goddamn
dream
,” he said. “You drugged me and I had a goddamn dream.”
Lila. Lila.
He had to stop being angry. He had to find out about Lila
.
He closed his eyes a moment to get a grip.

“Living it was like a dream,” she said. “I could see it in her even before she did it. All around her was black. Black like
she
was already dead. As black as the stupid crow.”

Here, she looked at him, accusing. So if she was any kind of angel—even he had thought she was, seeing her up on the stage, bathed in light—she wasn’t a true one. She had no real compassion. But he wasn’t going to let her know she was getting to him.

Ask the slut what she let her father do to her. Ask her who the baby really belonged to. Make her tell you how they shared a bed. All of them.

The voice was trying to distract him. He tried to focus on Lila, but he couldn’t hold her face in his mind. It kept slipping away. “You know, it doesn’t matter what you did to me, or anybody else,” he said. “You know something about Lila, and I don’t give a flying shit if a talking raccoon told you what’s going on.” He pushed his face into hers. “You’re going to tell me.”

If she felt threatened, she didn’t show it.

Dead. Lila could be dead.

She’s going to let your woman die, her eyes open to the snow and rain and my children, the insects. Just like her father. Just like her brother. Just like Ivy Luttrell’s father. She did that. The slut did that!

Her shoulders dropped. She finally looked defeated. “I didn’t stop my mother. And I didn’t stop Ivy’s father, either. I was a coward. I had two chances,” she said. “Two chances to change things.” Her voice trailed off.

She stared, taking all of him in. “All around you,” she said.

The voice was louder now, and he could feel the scratching at the back of his brain intensifying.

“The darkness—it’s all around you,” she said. “You’re going to let it in.”

The answer screamed in his brain, but he wouldn’t speak.

“You can kill me and bury me on the mountain. You can go on and kill your Lila—which you
will
do—if that creature doesn’t kill her first. But I’ll come back,” she said. “I can’t help it. I always do.”

Tripp hit her across the cheek with the flat of his hand. She didn’t flinch.

“You’ll be gone, Tripp. You’ll die. She’ll die,” she said. “Haven’t you done enough to her already?”

The scratching quieted some. He’d seen how afraid Lila had been up on the mountain the morning he chased her through the woods. All he had wanted was to be with her the way they were meant to be. Was she really in danger from him?

He knew the answer

“We can help her,” Jolene said. “We can help her and no one else has to die.” Now she pressed his hand. Her palm and fingers were warm. Real. He felt the thing inside his brain jump, lunging one more time at the door of his resolve. He started to pull away from her again, and the thing seemed to get stronger, but Jolene held on tight.

Tripp squeezed his eyes shut, witnessing the battle inside. It wasn’t the bird itself inside him. Whatever it was, it was putrid. Cruel. Desperate to live. The strength in Jolene’s hand was overpowering it, driving it back. It snarled, clinging to him. He knew he had to make a choice. He thought of the blackness suffocating Lila. Tripp laid his other hand on top of Jolene’s. The scratching thing backed away, its oily protrusions retreating from the pathways it had made in his brain. The voice was quiet.

Tripp opened his eyes. Jolene’s soft eyes looked back at him. They both knew the thing wasn’t gone completely, but it was enough. For now.

Jolene looked tired, and so young. In that moment, he felt more sorry for her than he did for himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Dwight pressed the Answer button on his phone earpiece, barely pausing as he stacked bar towels and aprons on a kitchen rack. “Twilight Club,” he said.

“Hey there, buddy.” The call disconnected, but he knew the voice well enough. A car door slammed out back.

Shit
. He shoved a pile of aprons onto the shelf and hustled out of the kitchen.

His first thought was to grab the coach gun from behind the bar, but he hesitated, hoping he was mistaken about the call and who it might be. Maybe it was a wrong number. Maybe he was just jumpy, what with the cash in the supply closet and Claude Dixon’s murder, and the two girls who had already called in sick for the night. He hadn’t been able to reach Charity or Jolene to see if they could work, either. Charity almost always was willing to pitch in. She was the most professional dancer he had on the call sheet.

By the time the kitchen door buzzer rang, Dwight was tucking the 9mm from the office safe into the back waistband of his jeans. He shook out the hem of his loose Leon Redbone T-shirt to make sure it covered. The video screen monitoring the kitchen door showed a man there, his back to the camera. But Dwight knew him by the hunch of his meaty shoulders and the way he dropped his spent cigarette, stubbed it out, and picked the burned end away before putting the used filter in his pocket.

Pat was always very tidy.

Dwight would’ve liked to relax, knowing that Pat had come all the way from up north to see him, but he knew this visit was nothing to relax about.

•  •  •

 I’m worried about you, D,” Pat said. “When I see your brother at Knights meetings, I seem to know more about what’s going on with you than he does.”

“You’re the one doesn’t look too good,” Dwight said, pouring daiquiri mix into a shaker filled with ice and two shots of rum. They didn’t speak while he shook the drink and strained it into the glass.

“Since when do you drink at lunchtime?” Dwight tried to keep his real worry out of his voice.

“Same shit, different day,” Pat said. “Only more of it than usual.” He sipped the daiquiri and flicked his tongue over his lips, tasting. Then he drank it down.

Dwight watched, surprised he could see Pat’s Adam’s apple working in his fleshy neck.

“Nice,” Pat said. “You always could make a decent drink.”

Dwight waited while Pat dabbed at his mouth with the cocktail napkin, folded it, and put it in the empty glass.

“What I need to know is why you’re doing me wrong, Dwight. Making my life hard.” He sighed, as though emphasizing what a shame it was. “I’ve got a wife for that.” He kept his voice friendly. They were indeed friends.

“How is Marie?” Dwight said. He had the money Pat was after. Most of it, anyway. If Bud showed up while they were negotiating, there might be a problem. But if he could keep Pat reminded of their friendship, Pat was likely to settle for the fifty grand. For now. It felt good to be shooting the shit with him, just like they did when they had worked together at the same bar before Pat met Marie.

“Expensive as ever,” Pat said, smiling at the mention of her name. It touched Dwight’s heart to see that true love could stay true.

“She did that teeth-whitening thing they do with lights at the dentist. Cost me three hundred bucks, but she looks like a movie star.” He plucked a few nuts from a nearby bowl and popped them into his mouth. “You should try it.”

“Yeah, probably,” Dwight said. He didn’t like people giving him shit about his teeth. Even Pat.

“So, where’s your boss?” Pat said, looking around the empty bar. “Time for me to meet him. I didn’t come here to this hell hole to bring you a box of Yummy pies.”

“You always were a selfish bastard,” Dwight said.

•  •  •

Pat followed him down the back hallway.

“So, this Bud didn’t mention anything about someone coming down to see him a couple weeks ago? I’ve never met the Anthony guy, but I hear he’s pretty hard to miss,” Pat said.

“Bud usually tells me everything,” Dwight said. “Must be the stress of the situation made him uptight. He’s a good guy. An honorable man.”

Behind him, Pat snorted. “Yeah, what a guy,” he said. “Putting a friend like you in this kind of position. Messes with our relationship, you know? I hate that, man.”

Pat’s words touched Dwight. He stumbled in his response, tried to laugh it off.

“Yeah, I’m everybody’s sweetheart,” he said. “I got a whole harem of admirers here in Bugtussle. I’m a G.D. pushover.”

“You’re such a shit,” Pat said. “I never should’ve let you talk me into this deal. And I definitely should’ve asked them to send down someone else to follow up on this Anthony. They’re looking for more than money, Dwight. You don’t know how it is. Things are tight.”

Dwight unlocked the supply closet door. He turned back to Pat. The dark circles beneath his friend’s eyes were mushroom gray, and he had put on forty pounds since they had last seen each other.
Sad
. Pat looked seriously stressed. Maybe he should’ve made his daiquiri a double.

“You did me a solid,” Dwight said. “We’ll get this straightened out.”

He gave Pat a smile of genuine gratitude. Maybe they weren’t screwed after all. It meant a lot that Pat was on his side. When it was all over, he would have to tell Bud what a good guy Pat had been. He turned back to the closet to dig out the briefcase.

It was only dumb luck that made him stand up again so quickly that Pat’s gun came down hard on his right shoulder rather than at the base of his skull. As he lost his footing, he got a look at Pat’s face. It had transformed into something ugly and fierce.

“Shit a G.D. brick!” Dwight said. The 9mm cut into his back, reminding him he didn’t have to go down helpless. He grabbed for the vacuum cleaner to right himself. But Pat’s pearl-handled derringer—a prissy-ass piece for a gangster, Dwight had always thought—was pointed at his face.

“Why did you make me do this?” Pat’s face was screaming red. Spittle flew from his mouth onto Dwight’s cheek. “You’re such an asshole!”

Dwight felt his bowels start to loosen, but he held on.

“It was a mistake, man,” he said. “You’re right. It was business.”

“Even Marie,” Pat said. “Even
she
thought it was a suck-ass idea and I didn’t listen. She’s smarter than you are. You had to go and screw me over.”

Pat was genuinely upset. Dwight could see that now. He regretted that part.

“I said, you’re right.”

The big advantage he had over Pat was Pat’s own ungainliness. Dwight kicked the wheeled mop bucket into Pat’s legs, causing Pat to stumble forward. He didn’t fall, but dropped the gun onto Dwight’s stomach as he tried to catch himself.

Dwight pushed up off the floor and launched himself at the larger man. When Pat went down, Dwight rolled on top of him. His shoulder hurt like hell, and he didn’t like what he was doing. Pat was the innocent party here. Pat, who had only tried to help.

Pat grabbed hold of Dwight’s hair with one hand and landed a wobbly punch in his side. But Dwight just took it as he worked to get at the 9mm. Getting his hand on the grip, he tried to pull away to get a shot at Pat, but Pat suddenly pulled him close, like a lover. Dwight could feel Pat’s soggy breath, his lips on his ear. The warm tingle that spread through the bottom half of his body scared the hell out of him, and his mind answered it with a blank wall of rage. Then Pat had his ear between his teeth.

Dwight felt the cartilage tear as Pat worked to get the ear loose. He roared.