Cold Cold Heart (11 page)

The coincidence gave Dana a chill. The memory of the feeling she had experienced last night while standing at the French doors to her patio came back to her now—the sense that something evil had been lurking in the darkness, staring at her.

Something evil
had
been lurking. It just hadn't come for her this time.

She wondered if it had followed her here, if Doc Holiday had been a vehicle, a host, and the evil had passed from him to her. Now she had brought it home with her, and it had gone out into the darkness last night to stalk another victim.

It was a stupid notion, she knew, but she couldn't shake the feeling that came with it.

She reminded herself that Shelby Mills was a growing community within commuting distance of Louisville, a big city with big-city problems. While her hometown had been a safer place when she was a child, people here locked their doors now and took the keys out of their cars. Guns and drugs were too readily available, and consciences were seemingly in shorter supply than they had been in the last millennium. Burglaries, theft, and drug-related crimes were not uncommon.

But violent crime was still rare enough to be shocking. And to have news of a sexual assault greet her on her first morning home was unnerving. The lack of sleep along with the post-traumatic stress had stirred her paranoia. Then she had spent nearly two hours reading articles about Casey's disappearance seven years past.

Even seven years ago, the sheriff's office had not been without suspects in Casey's disappearance. The making, buying, and selling of methamphetamine had become a huge problem in the area. Rumors had gone around that Casey might have crossed paths with someone in the drug trade. She had known kids who dabbled in it. A classmate of theirs had died because of crystal meth. After that Casey had talked about becoming a counselor for people with addictions.

She might have unknowingly stumbled onto a deal going down or might have simply been spotted by a ruthless opportunist from that world who had seized the moment. The drug world and the world of sex trafficking were bound together like kudzu vines. She could have been taken by one and turned over to the other for profit.

People had wanted to zero in on John Villante as the prime suspect because he was the boyfriend with a bad reputation, but singling him out also answered a simple human need for evil to have a face and a name. If her boyfriend did it, then the evil was contained within Casey's own circle of acquaintance.

Everyone feared random acts of violence, the bogeyman who struck without reason or warning. The boyfriend was the answer that made people feel safe. Better to blame someone they knew than to think evil could have pulled in off the interstate to strike like a snake and leave. But Dana knew firsthand that happened all the time.

It could have just as easily happened in Shelby Mills that summer Casey Grant went missing as it had in Columbia, Missouri, nearly two years ago when Doc Holiday had abducted Rose Reiser from outside a convenience store when she was en route to college in St. Louis. Her body had been found days later, cast into the snow along a truck route in Minneapolis.

It could have happened again last night to a nineteen-year-old waitress walking home from a late shift at the Grindstone Café. Doc Holiday may have been dead and gone, but Dana knew the world would never run out of men willing to take his place. From the dawn of time to the end of time, the world would never run short of cold, cold hearts.

What the hell
were you thinking, John? You can't just drive off in the middle of your shift! What the fuck?”

Tony Tarantino tossed his hands up in the air and turned around in a circle like a man doing a bad folk dance. They stood in the alley behind the restaurant, hemmed into a corridor by the Dumpster on one side and the Tomato Bug on the other. The smell of garlic cooking was already in the air as the kitchen started to prepare for the day's business.

John stood sideways, trying to minimize the claustrophobic effect of the tight space. Even leaving himself an exit route, he still felt trapped. Across the alley, the welding shop was in full operation; the sounds of the torch and metal on metal skated across his nerves like razor blades. He wanted nothing more than to bolt and run, but he stood his ground and took his boss's abuse.

Where he had probably once been described as a fireplug, Tony now more resembled the corner mailbox—square and stout with stubby legs and a big mouth. A steady diet of pizza and bread sticks had packed the fat on since his retirement from the Marine Corps. John had seen the photographs of his days in Desert Storm and other global hotspots. He had once been a badass. Now he was just an ass, just another pussy-whipped middle-aged guy with
a mortgage and a bitchy wife and a couple of spoiled, ungrateful kids.

“And then we get a call from Senator Mercer's wife, having a shit fit that we sent you there in the first place,” he went on, red-faced. “Why the hell did you take that delivery?!”

Because that's my job,
John thought, but he didn't say it. What good would it do him to point out that he had been the only delivery guy available and that it would have been Paula having the shit fit if he had refused to take it? Of course, now he wished he had done just that. Then the bitch could have fired him before he had the chance to embarrass himself and before he had the chance to let Dana Nolan call him a killer and dredge up a thousand memories he didn't want to have. He could have avoided going on the radar of the Liddell County Sheriff's Office, courtesy of Tim Carver.

“Roger Mercer is running for office, for Christ's sake,” Tony ranted on. “He's a fucking state senator! Do you have any idea how many fucking pizzas we deliver to his campaign office? Or how many we deliver to Mercer-Nolan Landscaping, for that matter?”

“No, sir.”

“More than your fucking weight in fucking gold!”

He huffed and puffed and threw in a “Jesus Christ!” for emphasis.

John just shoved his fists harder into the pockets of his fatigue jacket and hunched his shoulders against the onslaught. He was an old hand at weathering tirades. He'd been riding out his father's since as long as he could remember. No drill sergeant could dish out what John Villante couldn't take. The army had been a piece of cake by comparison.

“So am I fired?” he asked quietly, looking down at his boots.

He had already been wondering what he might do next, where he might find someone willing to hire him to do something, anything. Jobs were scarce in general. Scarcer still for him.

Any prospective employer checking his record would find he had a psych discharge from the army. They wouldn't care what exactly
that meant. And if they dug a little deeper, they would find out he had done five months in the brig for assault prior to the psych discharge. No one would want to hear about how he had lost seventeen buddies in two tours of duty—five at once in the incident that had given him his head injury. They wouldn't want to take the time to understand the depression, the PTSD, the attempts to self-medicate, the doctors' attempts to overmedicate him. No one would care about the details.

Of the few jobs available to him, there were bosses who would thank him for his military service like good patriots but refuse to hire him for the very same reason. He was a trained killer just out of the VA hospital with a head injury and a history of psychological problems. How could they risk having him around?

And of the jobs available to him, there weren't that many he could tolerate. He couldn't be in the midst of too many people. He couldn't handle the chaos of multiple conversations going on around him. The noise was magnified and reverberated inside his skull until he thought his head would explode. He couldn't be surrounded by people, couldn't have people behind him. They got too close, moved too fast. His instinct to react, to protect himself, was too quick. His self-defense skills honed in army combatives training were too dangerous.

At least working at Anthony's he was able to come and go, to walk away from the noise. Paula was a cunt, but he could take a small dose of her, then leave. The waitresses ran interference for him as much as possible, bringing his deliveries out to the Tomato Bug so he could avoid her altogether much of the time.

Tony jammed his hands on his hips and huffed and puffed some more. John awaited the verdict, stoic in his resignation. He could already hear his old man gloating.

“Fuck,” Tarantino said, but without the bluster.

John glanced at him without raising his head.

“Paula's got me by the balls on this, kid,” he said. “I didn't know
anything about that missing girl. That was before we came here. But Paula saw it on the news last night after the Mercer woman gave it to her with both barrels over the phone. She went fucking ballistic on me!”

“I don't know what happened to Casey Grant,” John said.

Tony held his hands up. “I'm not saying that you do. I'm not saying you did anything to her. I'm sure you didn't. I think you're a good kid, John. But this is a small town. Word spreads like a fucking grease fire.” He held his hands up as if framing his new motto. “‘Anthony's: Killer pizza delivered by a murder suspect.' I can't have that.”

John didn't bother pointing out that no one knew for a fact that Casey Grant was dead, let alone a murder victim. Nor did he point out that he was an actual killer, that he had killed numerous people in two wars, yet he was being judged for an imagined death. Irony would not be his friend in this fight any more than Tony Tarantino was his friend.

“And then we see on the news this morning some waitress got raped last night leaving the Grindstone—”

Heat flashed through John, burning his face and the back of his neck. His fists tightened to stone in his coat pockets. “I'm no rapist, sir.”

“I didn't say you were! But someone attacked that girl, and now people are going to be freaked-out.”

Tarantino sighed like a man with chest pains. He pulled out his wallet and fingered out two hundred-dollar bills, thrusting the money at John with sheepish embarrassment. “Take this for now. To tide you over. I'll find you another job. I promise.”

John looked at the money with disdain. “I don't need your handout, sir.”

“Yes, you do,” Tony blustered, shoving the cash at him. “Take the goddamn money. Buy yourself a different coat, for Christ's sake. One that doesn't have your fucking name on it.”

John glanced down at the patch on the army-issue jacket he had worn to serve his country. The name tag had already begun to come loose at one corner, the broken thread twirling up out of the fabric like a tiny filament corkscrew. He grabbed hold of the tag, tore the name off in one violent motion, and threw it on the ground. Then he pulled himself to full height and looked down his nose at Tony Tarantino with his hundred-dollar bills clutched in his fat hand.

With as much dignity as he could muster, he said, “Fuck you, sir.”

And he turned and walked away.

“John. John!” Tony called.

John kept walking toward his truck. The thought struck him that he could have taken the money and gotten his taillight fixed. Behind him he could hear the scuffle of Tony's sneakers on the crushed asphalt.

“Come on, kid,” Tarantino said. “Don't be so fucking proud.”

He grabbed hold of John's arm from behind. John spun around, throwing off his boss's hold and shoving him backward all in one motion. Automatically, his left arm came up and back, cocked and loaded, fist ready. Fear flashed in Tarantino's eyes.

John pulled himself back, pulled his anger inward. He lowered his arm. “I don't have much to be proud of, sir,” he said, “but I'll hang on to it.”

He climbed in the truck and coaxed the engine to life. As he pulled out and headed down the alley, he glanced in the rearview mirror to watch Tony Tarantino standing there with his hands on his hips, growing smaller and smaller along with his opportunities.

He didn't know where he was going. God knew, he didn't have anyplace
to
go. He drove around town trying to organize his thoughts, trying not to wonder how much shittier his life could get, trying not to let the anger take control.

The truth was, he knew exactly how shitty life could get. Life could blind you, maim you, take your legs, take your arms, blow your face off your head but leave you alive. He'd seen all of those
things. He knew more broken people than whole ones. Even most of those who appeared intact were shattered inside.

Sometimes he thought the men whose seventeen names he had tattooed down his back were the lucky ones. He had had their names etched into his skin to carry their memories with him. Many times he had wondered if they would have rather he hadn't. Hadn't they suffered enough in their own lives? Now they had to be witness to his failures and to the rejections of the people they had all signed up to serve.

He drove past the elementary school and the high school, unable to call up a single good memory from his time in either place. He had been a good athlete and had known success in several sports, but in his present state of mind he could remember only conflicts and betrayals and disappointments.

His senior year, he had been offered a football scholarship to Indiana State at Terre Haute. But then Casey had gone missing and the cops had been all over him. Suddenly he had been a villain in every newspaper and on every television in the state. He was the troubled loner boyfriend of a town sweetheart, the kid with a history of violent run-ins, the son of a bully, abandoned by his mother. There was clearly something wrong with him. Who knew what darkness lay in his heart?

The scholarship offer had been withdrawn. The military had been presented as his only honorable option. Better to get the hell out of Dodge before the detectives could pin something on him.

Truth to tell, the army suited him. He liked the structure of it. He had felt a greater sense of family with the men he served with than he had ever known at home. Nobody in his unit cared who he had been. They had all come there to reinvent themselves in one way or another.

He missed it. He missed it badly. Not the war, but the rest of it. When the army had cut him loose, he had lost everything—his career, his family, his home, his future, his sense of self-worth. The
sense of betrayal and rejection was like a deep bruise that never healed. He had given everything, had done everything asked of him. He had been awarded medals for his bravery and his valor. He had been wounded in his efforts to give his all, and because of that, because he had sacrificed for the cause, the very organization that had asked that sacrifice of him had turned its back on him. He was broken because of the army, and the army didn't want him because he was broken.

His head injury had been misdiagnosed for a long while after the IED incident. He hadn't appeared to be that badly hurt. The damage was hidden inside his skull and had manifested itself in blackouts and bad decisions, outbursts of rage, debilitating headaches, frightening mood swings. His efforts to self-medicate with alcohol had only magnified the problems.

An altercation with a superior had landed him in the brig for assault. The headaches had moved him from the brig to the hospital. In the hospital, a psychologist had diagnosed him as bipolar, and that had been the end of his career. The hill had continued to go down from there, and here he was, back in Shelby Mills, starting over at less than zero.

It was a wonder he was alive, considering. Most days he wasn't sure life had been the best choice. And then he would think of the names on his back and the fact that those men had had no choice at all.

He drove away from downtown, past the picturesque old water-mill complex that had given the town its name. The original Shelby Mill building had been transformed years ago into a posh restaurant with a hotel adjacent in a setting of wooded gardens. He had eaten in that restaurant once in his life: on the night of his senior prom with Casey, an awkward double date with Dana Nolan and Tim Carver. He had worried the entire time he would use the wrong fork or spill something or say something stupid.

The memory of that awkward apprehension came back to him
now to mingle with the anger and the frustration and the shame and all the rest of it that constantly simmered inside him; a flood of emotion, all of it angry and bitter and dark. Every time it came, he thought he would drown in it. It swamped his brain and swelled in his chest, the rage building and building. The faces swam in it—Tony Tarantino, Paula, Tim Carver, Dana Nolan, Casey—their expressions masks of disapproval and disdain.

Goddamn them all. Who were they to judge him? They didn't know him. No one had ever known him. No one had ever taken the time to see who he really was. No one. Not the people he worked with, or the people he went to school with. Not his father—least of all that wretched son of a bitch who had called him a loser and a quitter his whole life. Not his mother, who hadn't stuck around long enough to know him past the age of eight.

The emotions in full boil now, he pulled into the driveway of his house and got out of the truck, breathing hard, his heart pounding. He went into the garage via the side door, stripping off his coat and casting it aside, not caring where it fell. He pulled his sweater over his head, balled it up, and flung it. His pace quickened as he crossed the floor until he was running at the old heavy leather punching bag that hung from a ceiling joist.