Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (8 page)

Besides, Alison wasn’t mad at him, not really. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he drove the police cruiser. She liked the Explorer, thought it was pretty nice that the sheriff had given it to Arch instead of keeping it for himself or giving it to one of the other deputies. They were all driving the old Crown Vics, and Arch was tooling around Midian in the latest and greatest piece of police equipment the department had bought. Arch had his eyes forward, thoughts bouncing around in his head so loud she could just about hear them without him needing to voice them.

She could tell the thought of the town sinking into Armageddon was weighing on him. All the stuff he’d seen so far was weighing on him, too. All the happenings had shocked the town. She’d seen the people come dragging in through the door of the supermarket now, lethargic, near dead, shuffling around. It was like all their energy had been stolen. Lately everyone knew someone who had been killed; it was unavoidable unless you were a shut-in.

Arch let out a sigh that sounded like he had about ten thousand pounds resting on his chest forcing the air out. She could see the tension etching lines in his face, setting his jaw in place like he was ready to grind his teeth. She unfastened her seatbelt, and he turned in surprise at the click and the sound of it drawing back as she slipped free and leaned over.

She unzipped his pants, and he started to protest but quickly fell silent. She moved her head up and down, up and down in sweet rhythm. He’d been sweating, but it didn’t bother her at all. It never had, not for him.

She could feel him keeping the grip on the steering wheel as she worked steadily, methodically, using her hand to support him as she went down on him. He grunted and moaned, and his knee jostled her as he brought the car to a slow, then to a stop, moving her slightly as he threw it in park.

After that he leaned back and let her work unfettered, not saying a thing. She clutched his balls and squeezed, and he moaned again and came as she pushed him to the back of her mouth until he was finished.

His breath came slow and ragged. Her hand rested on his thigh, and she could feel it unclenched now, the tension that she had felt when she started gone. She slowly lifted herself up, pulling off of him and eliciting one last gasp of something that sounded like it was between pleasure and pain before she slid back into her seat and buckled her seatbelt.

She didn’t look at him, didn’t say a word, and neither did he. He just put the car in gear and drove her home.

“Huh,” Duncan muttered in the bed next to Lerner.

Lerner shot him a sidelong glance, trying to decide if he really wanted to know or not. If it was important, Duncan would probably say more than, “Huh.” Probably. He wasn’t the talkative type, but he wasn’t a mute, either.

“Huh, what?” Lerner went for the bait. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. He was staring at the TV, hoping something interesting would come on to kill the time until Duncan gave the all clear that the sheriff was gone from the site of the collision.

“Arch just got a hummer from Alison,” Duncan said, drawing a sharp look of distaste from Lerner.

“Don’t call them by their names like they’re our friends,” Lerner said. “Like they’re coming to a dinner party next week, can we please get a big gravy boat and fresh biscuits and serve after-dinner cocktails.” He paused. “He got a hummer, huh? I wouldn’t have bet on that. Looked like they had so much tension between them you could fit a full-size refrigerator in the bed between them at night right now. Sideways.” Lerner waited. “What about the cowboy? He’s getting fucked all over that cheap hotel room right now like he’s the bull and she’s going for an eight-second ride, right?”

Duncan shook his head. “Not so much.”

“Oh?”

“Foot in mouth disease,” Duncan said, prompting Lerner to nod. Human guys were always saying dumb things. Lerner wondered if it was a genetic predisposition or something.

“Heh,” Lerner said, strangely amused by that. “Sounds like the only play he’ll be seeing tonight is the app store.”

Duncan frowned as his eyes shot skyward in a reasonable approximation of a man pondering something. “I don’t think he has a smart phone.”

Lerner sighed—another approximation of human behavior. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

Lauren Darlington’s key hit the lock a second before she heard the argument inside. It didn’t sound knock-down, drag-out, which was a plus, but it didn’t sound like the sort of thing that just resolved itself without a storm out, either. Based on the volume of the voices, Lauren figured slamming doors were in the offing in the next few minutes. She was trying to decide as she turned the lock whether to make her presence known, because depending on where she had to land on it, it could either make things better or worse.

And she wasn’t very sure which it would be.

She opened the door as the crescendo of yelling spilled out into the hot summer eve, her heels clicking as they left the old scuffed wood porch and stepped into the darkened hallway. She could smell supper on the stove, the low simmer of gravy going and biscuits baking in the oven. It was just a little sullied by the argument taking place in the same room. Kind of cast a pall on the feeling of home that she usually got when she stepped in the door.

“Young lady, you will mind me—”

“Oh, I mind you! I mind you plenty—as in you annoy the fuck out of me!”

“Watch your mouth, girl! Bad enough you show up late, but then you smart off? You’re pushing me to the edge tonight.”

“So that’s where the edge is?” Lauren could hear her daughter’s voice bubbling over with the usual sarcasm. She did it well, credit where it was due. “I haven’t seen it in a while because you people pushed me over it a long damned time ago with your rules and your bullshit and your sanctimony—”

“You sure like to throw out the fancy words when you get cornered.” Lauren could hear her mother edging closer to the actual edge. Lauren had pushed her over it more than a few times in her day—and even more recently, come to think of it. It wasn’t a fun place to linger around. “Seems like if you applied your vocabulary and smarts to your schoolwork, you might not be getting yourself into as much trouble as you’re in lately.”

“Every word sounds like a fancy word to you,” Molly said, and Lauren felt the sting from down the hall. She trudged forward into the fight, even though she didn’t want to, heels clopping quietly on the hallway floor as she edged around the corner into the kitchen. Molly stopped when she saw her. “Mom.”

“Yeah,” Lauren said. She didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. Long hours, long days, long weeks and months and years had been leading up to this. She stared at her sixteen-year-old daughter and wondered when the hell she’d found time to grow up. The answer was the same—while Lauren was going to college and medical school and doing a residency—but it was somewhat unsatisfying nonetheless. “You’re mouthing off to your grandmother?”

Molly folded her arms in front of her, dark hair shaking as she moved her head to look away. “Again, yes.” She could apply the sullen look pretty quickly, too. Probably the age working in her favor. “This shouldn’t exactly be a surprise to you.”

“That you treat your grandmother with disrespect?” Lauren could hear the quiet echo of her own voice as she dipped her head to look at her shoes. They had a trace of blood on the toe from the crime scene, and she felt a rush of disgust. She’d specifically taken them off at work for a reason, dammit.

“She’s not listening to me,” Molly said, and the self-importance oozed out of every word. “I—”

“Kid, I don’t care,” Lauren said, looking back up at her. Stern face. She wasn’t very good at it because she didn’t do it very often. She didn’t need to most of the time. Molly had been so good up until lately. She’d been a champ. They’d been like friends. She put the hammer down when she had to, but it was thankfully rare. “I’ve never been an authoritarian with you, and you’ve never acted like this so I’d have to.”

“No, because you let grandma do it,” Molly said, and again there was that sting.

“That’s … that’s true,” Vera said, shaking her head. Lauren shot her a
Whose side are you on anyway?
look.

Lauren started to open her mouth, and Molly preempted her: “I don’t feel like arguing anymore.” She turned on her heel and headed right for her room.

“You’re sixteen,” Lauren called after her as she ascended the staircase. “You’re supposed to be ready for a dramatic throwdown with your mother anytime, day or night.” She heard the slam of a door somewhere upstairs. “Well, at least you’ve got the dramatic part down.” Lauren felt the air deflate from her. “I guess I should go talk to her.”

“I’d give her a bit to settle down,” Vera said, waving her off. “Oh, Lordy, the biscuits are burning.” She went for the oven and pulled out a pan that brought with it a smoky aroma to fill the kitchen. The white doughy biscuits looked fine on top but Lauren knew from long experience that the bottoms were singed to the pan. “Well, what are we gonna do now?”

“Eat the tops of them,” Lauren said, staring at the biscuits stoically. She just didn’t have enough emotion to channel into anything else. “It’s not like it’s the first time you’ve burned the biscuits.”

“I meant about your daughter,” Vera said in a huff. “She’s getting—”

“Worse,” Lauren said, nodding slowly. She thought she could almost feel the color draining out of her face, but it was probably her imagination. “She’s getting worse. I’d ask if I was this bad at her age, but I think we both know the answer is—”

“You were hell on sixteen wheels, girl,” her mother said, now positioned by the stovetop and working a wooden spoon through the gravy. “At least she hasn’t come home pregnant yet, unlike some people in this kitchen I could name.”

And there was the color returning to her face. It was still a slightly raw spot to Lauren after sixteen years that she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen. Now she was thirty-two, and her daughter was where she was when she’d had her. Not an appealing thought when you were watching your daughter veer off the road. “I should go talk to her,” Lauren said again.

But she stayed right there in the kitchen and worked her way over to the pan of biscuits sitting on a towel on the table. She nibbled from the top of one and just kept thinking, because at least if that was all she did she wouldn’t stir up another storm in the house.

Mick was hanging out on the town square. Place was quiet as quiet could get, like a thousand other towns in America, time passing them by and moving all the shops out to the freeway.

He’d seen that a lot lately. Or maybe he was noticing it a lot lately. He’d been around long enough to remember when it was the other way, when everything happening in a town was on the square. There’d maybe be a malt shop, with a buzz of conversation at this time of night, where you could get a tall glass of sweet malted chocolatey goodness slid in front of you with two straws so you could share. Sipping it while you were looking at the person across from you, eyes meeting while you drank it all in.

Mick missed that. It was an easy setup, and a great way to get a girl loose and ready for the finale. He remembered doing that back in the fifties and it had worked really well.

It had been a while since the last time he’d done it. Probably at least … thirty years? Something like that. Some town in Alabama, if he remembered right. The thing about Mick was, he didn’t need it that often. He saw the human men in the carnival, and they could go a couple-three times a night, some of them. That was almost obscene to him. Like rabbits to humans, he figured. No, once every thirty years was good for him, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

But when he let it all go, boy, was it a doozy.

Mick was swinging his arms as he walked, just a natural rhythm he barely noticed anymore. He’d learned to adapt when he first got here, learned to watch the natives so he could blend in. You walked with your arms straight at your sides, you looked weird. Weird got attention. Normal let you blend, let you fade into the background.

Which was not a bad place for a demon to be.

It was a pretty warm night. Mick had been up north a couple times during the winter for winter carnivals, which was a damned asinine idea in his mind. Staying south during the winter was a winning idea to him, but he just worked here, he didn’t run the show.

The light was fading in the western sky, purple and orange kaleidoscoping together for a fantastic view. Mick wasn’t exactly a connoisseur of sunsets—he tended not to notice them when he was working—but this one was pretty amazing. The town was so quiet that the only thing he could hear was the sound of one other person walking just across the square.

He caught her eye as he made his way around. She was young, a pretty thing. Porcelain face like a little doll and big eyes. She just screamed with innocence. It was dripping off of her in the way she wore her jeans just a degree too loose for her body, in the way she averted her gaze after she caught him looking.

He sped up and changed directions. If she noticed, she didn’t panic, which was good. This was small town America, right? Nothing to fear here.

At least not yet.

“Hey,” Mick announced himself once he was within a half dozen feet of her. He’d crossed under some statue in the middle of the green space in the square just to get to her. She had been eyeing him warily as he’d approached but pretended she wasn’t. Mick caught it anyway.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, still wary. She’d stopped, but her whole body was held at an angle, like she was about to jackrabbit if he took another step toward her.

“My name’s Mick,” he said, nodding. He’d updated his wardrobe just for this. He always looked young, but some ragged skinny jeans from a thrift store in the last town coupled with a tight t-shirt and some black nail polish gave him a look he figured might appeal to a girl of her age. He called it his tortured-soul look.

“Okay,” she said, and he could tell she either wasn’t instantly impressed or she was a little too stunned to fall into the rhythm of a proper conversation.