Consumption (8 page)

In her kitchen, Bunny wiped away the mess from breakfast. It was nice to have visitors. Nice to see someone besides her own reflection. Even when Bob had still been around it had been lonely, but now that he was…Well, now that he wasn't around, it was lonelier still. There was a sticky spot in the center of the table where someone had spilled a big drop of peach preserves. Bunny pressed the sponge down hard against it and rubbed until the sugar dissolved and the spot disappeared.

It was lonely, yes, but she wasn't really alone. The name, like a song, or a single line from a prayer, rang out in her mind. Over and over it played itself, the name that had given her life meaning these past few weeks.

Today was a special day. Today, for the first time, Bunny might actually be able to see this person from somewhere other than out her front window. She might, finally, be able to see him up close, at the Festival.

Bunny found a new spot on the table and rubbed at it so hard that the sponge tore. She'd waited so long. Too long, dammit. Waited and slaved and been a fool to society's stupid rules. But no more. No one was going to tell Bunny what she could do but herself. And today she was going to talk to him. Do more, maybe. A lot more…

There. The table was clean. Bunny whisked the last of the dishes into the sink and began to hum a tune as she ran the water. Like a jewel fitting into a crown, the name fit itself neatly inside the song. Bunny ran the water, scrubbed a plate, ran the water, dried it. Over and over, the tune and name creating a rhythm to her movements. Two words. Two beautiful words, repeated.

Javier Martinez.

Javier Martinez.

Javier Martinez.

Bunny scrubbed the dishes to the most beautiful sound in the world—the name of her paper boy, Javier Martinez.

Today was going to be a glorious day.

In just a few short hours, her life would change forever.

Riley entered the police station at eight
A.M.
to find Anita sitting primly at her desk, the Scotts' dog tucked under her feet like it owned the place.

Riley had been at the Williams' house until three o'clock last night, and he was beyond exhausted. There had been a body, all right, one nearly beyond
identification.
They could only tell it was a woman by the body, and that it was not a teenager by the gray hairs that sprouted between the dye job in the scalp. But the face…

Christ.

What little sleep he'd had was spiked through with nightmares of that face.

Riley took a swig of the gas station coffee he'd laced with enough sugar to cover the burn and tried to focus on the here and now. He'd have plenty of time to fret about the Williams case just as soon as he got through with his one pleasant task of the day. The state police from Billings were already back at the house with Sam. They had basically taken the case away from him, though they hadn't said it outright. “A murder of this scale, Sheriff Riley, it becomes a state matter.”

The Billings boys had even suggested Riley take today off. “Come back fresh tomorrow. Monday, even.”

They'd been respectful. Even flattering, saying that they'd heard a lot about the good work he'd done back in the day. But the respect had only gone so far. What they really wanted, Riley knew, was to get on about their business working this case without the interference of an overweight and quickly aging man whose best days were past. And he didn't blame them. As a younger cop in homicide he'd have done the same.

Anita, who'd taken the Scotts' dog in for the night, was already in her Festival finery. Her silver curls were newly washed and rinsed blue, and she wore a crisp, red T-shirt with enough rhinestone pins of various shapes and
colors—including
an American flag and a pink poodle—to decorate a float. Around her neck hung a pair of cat-eye glasses, also covered in rhinestones.

“Morning,” Riley said.

On a normal day, he loved coming to the station. It was an old, 1920s house that had been converted into the Cavus police station, but its beautiful built-in wood cupboards and pretty wood trim remained. Someone had even put gingham curtains up. It felt like home to Riley, had felt like it ever since he'd come in here as a kid when his dad was sheriff.

Anita looked up. “Watch yourself. I've had a lot of coffee this morning and it's making me go twitchy.”

“I see you've got the dog all clean and pretty,” Riley said. Maxie scooted herself under his hand as he bent to pet her. Perched on her head was a ridiculous pink bow, roughly the size of a football.

“I did what I could,” Anita said. “Poor thing looked like she'd never seen the inside of a groomer's before.”

“Any news from the Billings boys?” asked Riley, pulling out the leash Erma'd given him back at Bunny's and snapping it onto what, he did not doubt, was a new collar. It was white with pink hearts on it.

“Nothing,” said Anita.

“All right. Guess I'll be going, then. Thanks, Anita.” He stepped toward the door, trying not to look like he was rushing.

From behind him, Anita cleared her throat. “The woman, though…there sure was something funny about her.”

Riley stopped, but did not turn around. “What woman, Anita?”

“The woman. Thad's wife, Holly Williams. Sam told me this morning you put in orders to have her dug up. Which, I might add, sure don't seem a Christianly thing to do. The Lord our God said—”

“What about her?”

Silence. Behind Anita, a big box fan churned steadily. Cavus hadn't ever found it in their budget to put in an air conditioner.

“Did they exhume her body already?” Riley asked, though he knew it wasn't possible. There was no way, short of a miracle, that the court would have even gotten the order across, let alone someone out there to dig the body up and run tests.

His temper flared. It was just like Anita to make something up to get him to stay and talk with her. “Anita, goddammit, quit your stalling and tell me!”

Anita cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter, making sure that Riley saw the hurt look in her eyes as she put on her glasses, but finally, she spoke. “Now, don't you go saying where you heard this from. It isn't public knowledge, and I believe that the woman deserves a decent rest without a bunch of folks gossiping over her. And no, of course they haven't had time to dig that poor woman up yet. God willing, they never will.”

But of course they would, Riley knew. The Billings boys were already convinced that Thad had killed his wife, too, and made it look like an accident.

Anita crossed herself before going on. “No, she's still buried beneath God's green earth, right where she belongs. But”—she paused for effect—“it just so happens that Alice Bosman is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and
her
son, little Archie Bosman, took over Wakeman's Funeral Parlor last year. You might remember, the Wakemans never did have any children.”

“I remember,” said Riley, trying to keep himself calm. “Go on.”

“Little Archie Bosman—and mind you, I'd be the first to say that boy grew up with too much mommying, even if Alice is one of my dearest friends. But that don't hurt him none with the dead folks, I guess. They don't know the difference. Little Archie told his mother—now, I don't think that's healthy, do you?”

“What?”

“Telling your mama everything at forty years of age?”

“No,” said Riley. “I guess not.”

“He told his mom that when he was fixing up the body that he found…” Here she paused and lowered her voice to a whisper, even though it was obvious that there was nobody else in the whole goddamned office. “…she had a tail!” Anita finished, sounding triumphant.

“Excuse me? What do you mean a tail?”

“I mean,” said Anita, “she had a tail. That's what Alice told me Archie told her, so don't shoot the messenger. I Googled it, though. I've gotten real good at the Googling. My granddaughter showed me. And guess what? It isn't that uncommon, that's what the Google said. Sometimes people are just born like that. Besides, it wasn't a full-blown tail, just a little nubbin.”

“Holly Williams had a nubbin.”

“That's what I said,” said Anita. She crossed her arms over chest. “What, you think I'm just making all this up? Let me tell you, young man, I have more important things to do than—”

“All right, Anita, settle down. I believe you. It just doesn't do me a whole lot of good, you know, finding that out. I feel sorry for the woman, but that's just her shit luck, huh?”

“Riley! You watch your unholy mouth, boy. You're not too old to bend over my knee.”

Riley smiled, despite himself. That was a picture he hoped he'd never see come to reality. “Okay, okay. Thanks for the information. Anything else, 'Nita?”

“There was one other thing,” she said.

“Yes?” Riley waited for Anita to tell him that Holly Williams also had some kind of piercing in an inappropriate place or something else equally distasteful. Anita was a good woman, but a damn bit of a gossipmonger, too.

“Sam called in to say they found a couple more bodies.”

“What!” Riley forgot that he was holding the dog's leash, and in his excitement he jerked on it. Maxie issued a loud bark of protest. “What?”

“You said any news from the Billings boys. It was Sam who called this in.”

Anita bent complacently in her chair to scratch Maxie, as if she'd said nothing more interesting than the weather report. “You need me to keep this dog an extra night?”

“No. What about the bodies?”

“Because I can. I don't mind keeping her at all.”

“Forget about the damned dog! I'm taking her back to the owners.”

“Hmph,” said Anita. “I don't know that you should. Personally, I don't think they're taking care of her as good as they should. Her poop was a little runny. You tell those folks that they need to think about what they're feeding her. Ask them if it has corn in it, because dogs—”

“Anita!” The headache he thought he'd conquered yesterday reappeared loud and strong, thrumping like an insistent lead-weighted finger at the center of his forehead. “Tell me about the bodies.”

“You going to ask them about the dog?”

“Yes,” said Riley. He took a deep breath. It was a meditation technique his ex-wife, New Age wannabe that she was, had taught him. It wasn't working.

“What are you going to ask?” prodded Anita.

Breathe, two, three, four. Imagine yourself on a river. A motherfucking river with two dead bodies and a corpse with a tail. Hallelujah.
“I'll ask them if she eats corn,” said Riley. “Tell them dogs shouldn't eat corn.”

“That's right,” said Anita. “But not just eating corn, if it's in its food. Anyway, about those bodies.” Her voice changed immediately to professional. Despite everything, Anita was extremely competent, which was why he kept her around. “There were two, like I said.”

“Gender?”

“Female.”

“Identified?”

“Weelll…not exactly. But I've got a pretty good guess. Sam said they were women, and their hair, what was left of it, matches the description of two prostitutes that used to work the truck stop but haven't been seen around there lately.”

“How the hell did you find this out?”

“I called down there and asked them. Nancy, the truck stop manager, is my cousin Crystal's daughter. You'd be surprised how much they see at the store.”

“God bless you, Anita.”

“He does indeed,” said Anita. “Anything else, Sheriff?”

“Not now. Just let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will, and you make sure—”

“I'll tell them about the dog.”

“I guess I'll just be here all alone, then.” Her voice perked up. “You need any company at the Festival?”

“I doubt I'll even go, what with all this going on. But if I do, I'll be sure to call you.”

“Don't forget.”

“Scout's honor.” He had no more intention of taking Anita to the Festival than he did of growing wings out of his ass. “Have a nice afternoon.”

“I will. Just as soon as I get off work I've got to go home to get my pies ready for the Feast Dinner. You're coming to that, aren't you?”

“Wouldn't miss it. You let me know if anything else comes through on the Williams case, okay? I'll keep my walkie on me.”

“I will. And you tell them folks about the corn.”

He stood to leave and whistled for the dog, who followed him out the door obediently, pink bow and all. Riley opened his cruiser door and Maxie hopped in, looking quite at home riding shotgun.

Riley sat in the car and mulled over his conversation with Anita.

Two bodies, unidentified except by Anita's nebulous second cousin, but he would bet the woman's instincts were spot-on. Anita was a gossip, but she rarely got her information wrong. So what did it all mean, exactly?

He ran over the facts again. Thad Williams, a stand-up Cavus citizen, loses his wife to what seems to be a freak accident and then, a month later, disappears, along with his daughter. Three female bodies, probably prostitutes, are found on his property.

Could grief do that? Make a man crazy enough to kill?

Maybe, but Riley didn't think so. Not a man like Thad. He guessed there was still a chance that it hadn't been Thad who killed the women, but Riley knew in his gut that they'd find out he had. There was no other way for it, especially with all the reports that had come in from around town about Thad still driving his police car. A few of those calls had mentioned a passenger. At the time, Thad had assumed that passenger had been his daughter, but now…

The daughter. Riley reached into his pocket and pulled out an empty Tums packet, its wrapper coiled like a shed snakeskin. He searched among the lint for a straggling white soldier, but found none.

Was the daughter dead, too? They hadn't found her body yet, so there was still a chance she was alive. Maybe even with her father.

But why?
Why
had Thad killed those women?

When he'd gone out to the Williams place and seen the dead woman, the Billings cops had offered a neat explanation for all of this, and it was one, Riley knew, he should probably swallow and then let the case go.

“Seen shit like this before.” There were two Billings cops, a fat one and a skinny one, like some kind of goddamn Laurel and Hardy. It was the skinny one who spoke. Brown, Gray. Riley couldn't remember the man's name. Only the ever-present toothpick he kept twirling around in his mouth.

“Like this?” Riley asked, and gestured to the woman's body where it lay slumped against the chair.

She wore a white dress, a small and intricate piece with lace ties at the shoulders. It might have made her look delicate, like a woman dressed in an old Victorian nightgown, if not for two things: one—the full sleeve of tattoos along her arm, a mixture of skulls, dragons, and goldfish; and two—the fact that she no longer had a face. Her hair hadn't been touched. It hung in perfectly curled blond pieces, the color obviously out of a bottle, but pretty. Could have been a princess wig like they sold to little girls on Halloween. And underneath that, not a scrap of flesh left. Just a raw, gaping hole of red meat and gristle, a bit of white cheekbone peeking out from between the red. The center of the face was the worst. There, there
were…indentations.
Like something had been gnawing on it. The dog, maybe.

“You're telling me you've seen shit like
this
before,” Riley repeated.

“Sure.” The fat one answered him, looking bored in his perfectly pressed uniform shirt. Riley didn't trust a cop whose shirts were that clean. It meant you weren't doing your job, weren't trucking the hot streets and stinking and stewing in the messy interiors of perps' houses or your car. “I seen it plenty of times.”

A desk drone. No doubt about it. “Okay,” Riley said. “Then please, by all means, tell me.”

“Drugs,” Fat Man said. “You mean to tell me you never seen a drug case gone bad?”

Riley had. Of course he had. Missoula was rife with its own horror stories of fighting and fucking and pure pissed-away lives full of drugs, but he had never seen anyone chew someone's fucking face off before.

“Not like this,” was all he said.

“The stuff they got out there now, it isn't clean,” Gray said. “It's nasty. Home-brew shit. The meth's the worst. I seen a man cut his own dick off 'cause he thought he had worms eating it.”

Riley guessed he had seen a few cases of self-mutilation himself, even one where a wife high on angel dust had taken a tire iron to her husband's head, but what was in the Williams' kitchen…No, he'd never seen anything like that before. The woman looked like some kind of goddamned monster.

Riley dug a hand between the seats of his car, searching, having to move Maxie aside to do so, and then grunted with satisfaction as he pulled free a loose Tums. He popped it into his mouth.

Maybe Gray and the Fat Man were right. Maybe it was drugs. Thad had gotten himself into something heavy, a meth ring, maybe, and everything had gone to hell from there. Riley should go with the easiest answer, and let sleeping dogs lie. Focus on finding Thad, and his daughter if he could, and stamp a big
Case Closed
on the matter.

Except…

Except before he left, Riley had lived in Cavus a long time, had grown up there. He'd known it and its people well. And none of it fit with this new Thad Williams, who was starting to look like a pretty sick fuck indeed.

Years ago, when Riley had first started out as a cop, he'd worked with his own dad, who'd been sheriff. Riley was a newly minted deputy, and he'd been full of the honor of being a policeman, had been eager to do all the community outreach his dad had thrown his way. One of those jobs was at the local high school. Thad was a junior there back then, and on the football team. Riley'd come to the school to give a pregame pep talk speech about honor and teamwork. He'd always liked to think that him giving that speech and meeting Thad had something to do with the boy's later decision to join the force.

That teenaged Thad had been a stand-up guy, had waited in the gym to shake Riley's hand after the pep rally. But people could change. Obviously. He looked down at his thick gut, where a spot of syrup remained from his breakfast. People could change and most often it wasn't for the better.

He sighed.

Thad was probably long gone, running from this whole mess, but maybe the daughter wasn't. That was what was bothering him most about the Billings boys. They were acting like she was already dead and were just going through the motions of locating her.

But Riley wasn't so sure. She might still be alive.

And if she was…Riley couldn't just let it go at drugs. He knew if he turned this mess over to the state cops, they would do little to look for other explanations. But if it had been Riley, and the girl were Izzy, he had to hope that somebody would try their damnedest to make sure his daughter was okay and then make damned sure that her papa was guilty before telling her any horror stories.

Maxie ducked her head under his free arm, seeking a scratch and Riley obliged.

Technically, he'd scheduled himself to stay near the office today, field any calls about the case and act as a glorified secretary while the state boys figured the rest of it out. But Riley didn't think that was what he was going to do.

No. He thought he'd go to the Festival. Because that was something the other cops wouldn't pull their heads out of their asses far enough to do. They'd be spending all their time at the Williams house, just waiting to dig up Star's body.

But if she wasn't dead…If she wasn't dead, then the Festival was as good a place to find her as any. Her or somebody who might know something about her.

And if Riley didn't find anything there, he'd let it go. Get back to what he'd planned on as a quiet life here in Cavus. He'd start refinishing the old house he'd bought on the outskirts of town, go down to Lowe's and buy that can of pink paint he'd been eyeing for Izzy's room. It was the exact same color as the strawberry milkshakes that were her favorite.

Riley pulled the car out of the station's driveway, and hit the window button to allow Maxie to hang her head out. He'd do what he could today. And he knew he'd get a lot more out of Cavus folks if he talked to them as one Cavusite to another. Not a cop, just a hometown guy out at the Festival enjoying a good time. Riley turned onto the main road, and picked up speed. He looked over to see Maxie's head so far out that her gums were blowing in the wind.

“A fucking tail,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. He stomped his foot on the gas pedal and pushed the car up to sixty. “Welcome home, buddy boy. Welcome home.”