As I Die Lying (27 page)

“
So what if it is? Jesus,
did you think we’d be going steady or some corny high school crap
like that?”

“
I can’t deny my
feelings.”

“
Richard, I like spending
time with you. I like what we did...what you did to me. I would see
you again just for that, if nothing else. But I’m warning you, I’m
a player.”

“
Player?” I didn’t want to
tell her, but I was a one-man clusterfuck. She could cheat on me
without ever leaving the bed. Loverboy and Little Hitler would make
sure of that, and the Insider was sure to get its
jollies.

“
I like to get around. I
told you that. I’m not ready for anything serious.”

“
You said love—no, pardon
me, I didn’t mean to use that word—you said good things take
time.”

“
I also said good things are
worth waiting for. And good things are worth a little risk. And
probably a dozen other stupid little things. That’s bedroom talk,
you dummy. You should try it sometime, you might get lucky more
often.”

The sun threw shadows from the sky plow
across Beth’s face. Her eyebrows scrunched, and her fine cheeks
were tight. Something stirred inside me. I hoped, grimaced, tried
to fight, but the door opened and Loverboy walked out on the porch
and stretched, enjoying the view.

“
The oven’s warm,” he said,
working my lips. “Why not let Loverboy be your bakerman and tart
your pastries?”

“
Richard, I honestly can’t
believe you. I thought you wanted to talk. Can’t we leave sex out
of it?”

“
I want to put sex in it,”
he said. I could only watch, horrified, from the living room of the
Bone House while Mister Milktoast and Bookworm conspired over a pun
involving “King Lear.”

Beth turned away. Loverboy put his/my/our
hand on Beth’s knee and squeezed the flesh that spread so
temptingly under her denim jeans, sweet as a sausage in its casing
or ready-to-bake cookie dough in a plastic sleeve. Beth grabbed
Loverboy’s hand and pushed it away.

“
This is getting awkward,”
she said.

“
Or aardvark,” Mister
Milktoast said. That little fellow needed to get out more
often.

“
You can’t change
me.”

She didn’t know that her life had already
changed. It had changed the moment the Insider had used Loverboy to
lure her into the pasture. She had mistaken the lush green for an
idyllic playground. But the fences were closing in, the barbed wire
was encircling, the butcher was sharpening its steel.

Fatted
calves
, Mister Milktoast noted, seconded by
Loverboy.

“
I wouldn’t want you to be
anything but Beth,” said Bookworm.

“
Good. Then let me
breathe.”

Breathe. Live. Hope. Yes, do all those
things. So Richard can see how human you are. So Richard can feel
for you. So Richard can care. So Richard can la-la-la . . . you
know.

It was the Insider, flexing its dark majesty.
No longer was the Insider content merely to direct from the wings.
Now it wanted to act, to wear its meat, to walk the human stage,
the Orson Welles of spiritual possession.

I cringed as the Insider reached out and
brushed a hand under Beth’s chin. It grinned, black and cold,
letting me wallow in its cruel dominance.

Its hunger lingered and tingled, a sweet
passion that was all the sweeter for being delayed. And my
helplessness hit me like hammer strokes, a thousand Lilliputians
crawling my skin, but I seized control of my tongue and spat a
Gulliver’s roar.

“
Go away,” I shouted at the
Insider.

“
I am, Richard,” Beth said.
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“
I’m sorry, Beth,” said the
Insider. “I want you to trust me. I would never, ever, do anything
to hurt you.”

Beth wasn’t sure if she should be flattered
or angry. She put her hands on her hips, but didn’t push the
Insider’s hand away. I was aware of the Insider drinking the light
from her eyes and stowing the vision in my memory. It buried the
tender moment like a bone, something it could dig up and worry
later, work into the book as a descriptive passage.

“
Listen,” Beth said with
what Bookworm dismissed as a Nora Roberts sigh. “There’s a
Halloween party. Xandria’s band is playing.”

Hot-diggety-double-dickmeat,
whispered Loverboy from the coal shuttle of my brain.
Brown and serve, eat ‘em while they’re hot. Just
don’t go fucking it up with all that sensitivity crap, Richard. If
you say the word “love” right now, I won’t let you jerk off for a
week.

The Insider smiled. I could feel its
pleasure, with the warm sun on its face, with the human race at its
fingertips, with me to taunt and probe and consume. A rich banquet
of emotions to pick through and a host of hosts from which to
choose. You’d think an ancient, soul-stealing entity would have
developed a little humility along the way. But this bastard was an
aspiring writer, after all, so all bets were off.

“
Three days,” I
said.

Beth half smiled. “Sure. Come by and pick me
up.”

“
I dream about your brown
hat.”

She laughed. “You dream about head.”

“
Head is where the house
is,” Mister Milktoast said, basking in the approval of the Insider,
who had set aside his loathing of language and developed a fondness
for wordplay. I wondered what games he and Mister Milktoast had
been playing in the back room. Scrabble, Boggle, hangman, Russian
roulette with a dictionary.

“
You’re funny,” she said. “I
guess I forgive you.”

“
Sorry I put the squeeze on
you,” the Insider said.

“
No promises.”

“
Cross my heart and hope to
die.”

Beth glanced around at the passing crowd and
gave the Insider a quick peck on the cheek. The Insider walked back
into the Bone House and climbed the stairs to the attic, leaving me
with her saliva evaporating on my skin.

“
You okay, Richard?” Beth
asked.

“
Never better,” I said,
swallowing. “This book I’ve been working on—”

“
Got to run.” She adjusted
her brown hat “See you Friday?”

“
I already have an idea for
a costume.” Life was a come-as-you-are party, and I already had the
masks.

“
Great. And
Richard...”

“
Yes?”

“
Things always work out for
the best. In the end.”

I watched her walk away. It seemed like I was
always watching her walk away. And I hoped I would always be able
to watch her walk away.

My hand unclenched Little Hitler’s grip on
the knife in my pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A man came into the Paper Paradise the next
day. He wore a rumpled charcoal suit and his quick dark eyes seemed
to read every title in the store at one glance. He was as thin as
the cigarette he put in his mouth. He grimaced around the cigarette
and came to the counter, looking like he was tempted to disobey the
“No Smoking” signs.

“
Is the manager in?” he
asked out of the side of his mouth. He was about forty, and the
circles under his narrowed eyes made him look as if he had slept on
a bed of nails and fucked a raccoon.

“
Miss Billingsly’s off
today,” I said. “Can I help you?”

He pulled out his wallet and flashed
something brass-colored. “Detective Randolph Frye, Pickett County
Sheriff’s office.”

Bookworm blinked for a moment, then Mister
Milktoast took over. “What can I do for you?”

Frye dug in one jacket pocket for a moment,
then the other. He pulled out a crumpled card. “You Richard
Coldiron?”

“
Among other things.” Mister
Milktoast was a natural-born liar. I had to practice.

Frye flipped the card on the counter. “Did
you fill out this card?”

It was a Paper Paradise discount card.
“That’s my signature,” Mister Milktoast said.

“
You remember the customer?
Shelley Birdsong?”

“
Hmmm. Birdsong. Isn’t that
the girl who’s missing?”

“
You read the papers.” He
glanced at the rack that held the locals, as well as the New York
Times and Washington Post. Then he looked out the window at the
highway. His eyes kept moving, as if they might get dusty if they
rested for a second.

“
We give these out to
students,” Bookworm said. “Kind of a ‘good customer’
card.”

“
This is dated the day
before she disappeared. One of those things we have to check
out.”

He fished in his pocket again and brought out
a photograph of Shelley, probably taken in the summer. There were
the green eyes, the freckles, the faint vacant look, the shiny
copper hair. She was pretty and full of life, the opposite of the
last time I had seen her.

I sensed Frye’s oiled ball bearings of eyes
on me. I hoped my expression was neutral. But, after all, it wasn’t
my expression. Loverboy’s pupils might have flared involuntarily
and Mister Milktoast might have winced in recollection. “Yes, I
remember her now. I showed her a few books, but she ended up buying
a magazine, I believe.”

Frye grunted. “Was she with anybody at the
time?”

“
Not in the store. There
could have been somebody waiting in the parking lot, I
suppose.”

“
Do you recall what time she
was here? We’re trying to put together a sequence of events from
the last days she was seen.”

“
I think it was morning, but
I couldn’t be sure. We get lots of students in here on the
weekdays.”

“
A pretty girl like that and
you don’t remember? Anything else you might have noticed? Anything
out of the ordinary?”

No, you gray-skinned gumshoe Columbo wannabe.
Just little old me, with daggers in my eyes and a flesh torpedo in
my pocket. Just a killer clown with a bat-filled belfry and a
winning smile. Just an age-old psychic spirit with an appetite.
Just a figment of my own dark imagination, a Stephen King wet
dream, a ludicrous leap of logic. All perfectly normal, nothing to
see here, just move along, folks. But buy the book first.

“
No, nothing that really
stood out.” Besides her nipples that poked out like number two
Eberhardt pencil erasers, Loverboy noted. “She was just another
college girl...”

...who happened to have a little bit of light
that needed to be eaten. Another girl who happened to be cursed
with the affection of Richard Coldiron. Another piece of taffy that
just happened to come between the five or six of us. A dollar’s
worth of candy.

“
...nothing
special.”

Frye picked up the card and tapped it on the
counter. He studied me as I pretended to check on an elderly couple
in the Psychology section. I turned back suddenly, trying to catch
him off guard. His eyes flicked away, as elusive as gnats.

The Insider enjoyed the game. What did it
care if I were caught? It could always find another collaborator.
Bookworm wasn’t nearly as talented as he thought, and some of his
literary references were too obscure.

“
I just remembered
something,” Bookworm said, insulted. “She mentioned a boyfriend
named Steve.”

Our eyes finally locked in an invisible
tug-of-war. Little Hitler came out, determined and cold, on lizard
feet, his tongue like a dagger.

“
Steve?” Frye said, acting
as if he were only half-listening. “Yes, we checked him
out.”

“
Is he a
suspect?”

“
Not at liberty to say,
Mister Coldiron. No evidence of foul play as yet. Just a mystery at
this point. I hate mysteries.”

“
Too bad. I was just going
to recommend the newest Margaret Maron.”

Frye must have seen something stirring in my
eyes, clouding my irises. Spirits, maybe. Ghosts. Multiple
personalities. Psychic vampires. He pulled the unlit cigarette from
his mouth and then put it back. The butt was crimped and soaked
with his saliva.

“
A babe like that, it’s a
real shame,” Loverboy said. “I hope she turns up.”

“
And beets and rutabagas,”
Mister Milktoast said.

“
What’s that?” Frye said,
biting harder on the cigarette.

“
Turns up, turnips.
Root-crop reference.”

“
Hanging out here all day, I
guess you get funny ideas.” Frye asked. “Anything else?”

“
Huh?” I came back, from
miles and rooms away. “No. Nothing that I can think of.”

Frye faked a smile with one side of his
mouth. Wrinkles made arrows around his lips. “Call me if you come
up with anything.”

“
Always happy to
help.”

“
Thanks for your time,
Mister Coldiron.”

Hey, got nothing better to do, Shit For
Brains. Come on back any old time and mess with Richie’s mind.
Greatest show on Earth, right here. Step right up, come one, come
all.

I watched the door close behind him.

“
Nice job, Richard,” said
Mister Milktoast. “You were as cool as a cucumber before the salad
daze.”

“
No thanks to you guys. You
nearly blew it.”

“
Passing the buck again,
Dicksquiggler?” taunted Loverboy.

“
You’re the one who called
Shelley. You’re the one who got her to the house, however you did
it. Candlelight dinner compliments of Mister Milktoast? Or did you
borrow some poetry from Bookworm?”