Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) (21 page)

“It’s quiet on the other side, by the way,” Brody’s head tilted toward the neighbor’s backyard.

“You’re right about that, in fact, I haven’t heard her in a day or two,” he took a sip from the cold bottle warming in his hand, water droplets running down its neck.

“Heard the dog died,” Mary said casually walking past them on her way back to the house for a refill of food. Wayne coughed suddenly, wiped his mouth, and in one smooth move grabbed Mary’s shoulder before she’d gone too far away from them.

“What are you saying?” he shook his head and noticed his voice stuck in his throat halting a scream of despair over a dog he’d learned to love.

Mary’s dainty feet stood firmly on the ground, her hand picking food pieces off the almost empty plate in her hand. “Yeah, she died yesterday. Some type of animal roughed her up, and the owners found her next to the dog house in the back of their yard. Too bad, she seemed to enjoy life to the fullest, that dog.” Her hand kept picking slices of cucumber and carrots off the plate.

Wayne’s eyes blurred slightly, and without thinking he handed the bottle to Brody and climbed up the side of the fence until his eyes reached above the top boards and noticed the yard empty. “Damn,” he muttered and put his feet back onto the spot that had always held the least potential of survival, and looked over at Brody.

“You know crime, Brody, what type of animal can take down a dog that size? And you were home,” he pointed at Mary, “and you didn’t hear anything?”

Her head shook while she kept on eating then turned to walk away up the slight hill to the back porch of the house. The porch where he’d admired the heavy dog as agile as a butterfly, a dog with whom he’d shared his food scraps, and occasionally whispered to through the fence at night when the hours seemed too long and too dark.

“Maybe a bear, or a mountain lion. Can’t be really sure. Depends on in what way the body was destroyed. Want me to go over and ask?”

“Oh, please don’t, Brody. I can handle people who get hurt, but animals, no. That’s on a whole other level. A level of innocence and vulnerability to their surroundings. I may talk to the owners later this week if I see them, I don’t want to barge in if they’re mourning.”

“You really liked this dog, didn’t you?” Brody asked, finishing off the last of his bottle, just to check the time on his watch and reach for a bottle of water at the closest table.

“More than I thought I did, apparently.”

The grass crunched behind them swinging them around in curiosity. “Are you boys telling secrets?” Christine smiled and slipped an arm under Wayne’s and leaned in to his chest, sighing pleasantly. 

Wayne caught Brody’s eyes, then answered, “No secrets here, babe. How are you doing? Having a good time?” His lips touched her forehead.

“I’m actually feeling a bit sick, if I could be honest. I came over to let you know I’ll be leaving.”

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. You need me to drive you home? Or you can always stay the night.”

“Thanks, but if something is catching on I’d rather be at home than spending most of the night in your bathroom,” she smiled, and pulled herself slowly away from his embrace.

“I’ll drive you,” Brody interrupted, and screwed on the bottle cap to his water bottle.

“It was a great evening, Wayne, I will call you tomorrow.”

*              *              *

“Did you enjoy the evening?”

“I did, thanks for asking. I hoped you liked it too, Mary?”

“It was an introduction to all your friends and what your life looks like. It was interesting,” she answered.

“Yeah, just bad timing with the news about Bauser next door. I had no idea that had happened.”

“Right,” her fingers rinsed underneath the water in the sink.

“How did you know?”

“They told me when they came out crying, carrying her to the car yesterday morning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know, you always seemed bothered by the dog when we were eating dinner. Didn’t seem like you liked it too much anyway.”

“Not
it
,
she
. And I enjoyed her very much, just not in front of people. Mostly talks at night, through the fence.”

“Well, now you have to find yourself another nightly hobby. She’s not there anymore.”

He stared at her erratic washing of utensils under the tap, and for the first time she seemed oddly careless.

“Plates are done,” she turned and smiled into his face, then wiped her hands on the towel by the stove. “It’s been a wonderful day and I’m tired. See you in the morning.”

He heard the door slam to her bedroom upstairs before he moved himself from the bar stools and over to the stairs making sure she was not anywhere else but in her room.

The towel dangled by the stove as he walked over and ran his fingers across the ridges of the fabric, thinking. The house lay quiet, and he found himself used to walking outside in the backyard at this time of the night. Not so much anymore. Not at all. Now the night smelled of death, and an inability to halter any despair Bauser might have felt right before the attack. His finger nibbled at the towel until he noticed his nail was scraping at something resembling old food particles and he found it impossible not to grab it for the laundry room.

The hamper was overflowing and he smiled recalling the sounds he had heard earlier in the evening walking by the very same laundry room, noticing not only one female voice in pleasure, but two, resembling Jayce’s and someone he hadn’t heard before. In wishful thinking it was one of the two girls Bryce had brought over, and he smiled at the idea that Bryce had no clue one of them not interested in him at all.

He remembered how it had made him smile knowing his small laundry quarters could become the most erotic and secluded paradise someone might need. It hadn’t made it any worse when one voice had tried to quiet the other, a hand over a mouth is what his mind imagined.

He had then imagined a woman laying a very possessive hand on a luscious breast in the tight confinement of the room, and noticed himself suddenly getting hard. He’d heard whispering. Whispering of mapping a body with the use of nothing else but a mouth and a very investigating tongue, and his mouth had smiled at that. If he could save someone a trip out of town for pleasure he gladly provided the room for the night, even it being his very small laundry room.

Now the only thing left was the quietness after the evening, and his throat swallowed a sadness trying to escape. Festivities and pleasure, for some, was now emptiness. His hand searched the wall for the switch and moved it several times up and down but his movement didn’t turn on the light bulb. He grabbed a stepladder standing against the wall, went up to tighten the bulb, and tired the switch again with no success.

“Mary, are you up?” his question echoed the walls of his home, only the cold answer of his own voice returning back to him. “Mary?” he tried again, hoping to hear her voice. He tried the light switch in the hallway next the front door. A faint click and he remained in darkness. He took a few steps into the house, large feet moving across the hallway rug muffling the sound of impact just slightly.

The kitchen lay just as quiet. Just as dark. If this wasn’t his own home he would turn and walk back the way he’d entered, not knowing what the night may disguise: furniture casting shadows of monsters, trees outside reaching through the windows grabbing what they can. But this was his house and he knew every turn of walls and rooms, where doors opened and closed, what sounds didn’t belong to the house. So, in the darkness he was safe. If anyone was inside the house they knew he was here as well, as he had just erased whatever cover he might have had by yelling for Mary.

He moved himself smoothly across the kitchen floor until he reached the panel of drawers at the side of the stove, opened one slowly, and used his hand to search for a flashlight hidden among the other items. His hand grabbed something cold and hard just before an excruciating pain broke out at the back of his head, and he sank slowly down the side of the counter until he felt his knees hit the wooden floor boards, bruising them.

Suddenly his fingers crushed in the drawer above him, and without enough consciousness his hand took a long time to find the handle to open it back up. As if lifting a heavy weight, his hand fell onto his lap before he tumbled forward onto the floor, face down, away from the world. Something pounded at the back of his head, something ran, something trickled. Yet, his body couldn’t respond more than to acknowledge the sensations, telling his body the only thing he could do not to worsen the situation would be to stay still. Don’t move.

His eyes couldn’t see, but his ears against the floor heard the shuffling of shoes. Slow shuffling, until it stopped and his nose caught a whiff of wet leather. He imagined riding boots, well-worn hiking shoes, or maybe a cowboy had entered the house and these were part of his attire. His mind was waiting in space; between reality and unconsciousness, a place pleasant enough to stay in as he felt no pain, yet he still noticed his surroundings.

The boot then nudged his body in different ways, rolling over him, pushing down, kicking him like he was a dummy for testing. His mind held him there, in the space in between.

Then it whispered, “heard your dad said you were a piece of shit.” Then nothing again, the voice swept around his ears, entered his brain, but was gone just as fast. It wasn’t a voice, they were mere words draped in fog. “I wouldn’t disagree,” it swooped by him again, but was gone the same. Something trickled slowly by his ear, ran down the skin of his cheek and disappeared from his senses. “You’re ruining the floor, unless you want to stain it in red,” there they were again, the words of fog.

Something touched the back of his head moving him further into darkness, the skin moved, pulled, and pinched. Darkness secluded him, drew him in deeper, until nothing else but his own heartbeat echoed inside him. Was he alive? Was he dead? He didn’t know.

A puff of air pushed into his lungs and his body welcomed him to the reality of a very dark kitchen. He wasn’t sure how long he had been gone from the world, but was thankful to notice himself breathing once more. The floor pushing back against his lungs as his chest stayed flat against the wooden boards. The smell of leather seemed gone from the periphery of his nose, and a while later his ears caught the slow ticking from the old winding clock in the living room.

With consciousness he noticed the pain return, a pain he knew he wasn’t able to describe on a scale. It was there, it wouldn’t go away, and it didn’t subside. For long he just lay there, acclimating his body and mind to the pain that sat like a knife at the back of his head. And suddenly it hit him - maybe it was a knife? Maybe a blade was in fact chiseled in through the bone of his skull, waiting until he bled to death, or died from the pain itself.

With anxiety building, his arm made an attempt to move so that his hand could brave a touch at the back of his head, but as the muscles trying to lift his shoulder started to cooperate another pain so extreme blurred out his newfound consciousness and he was back in the shadows once more.

“Wayne, can you hear me?” a whisper from space circled the inside of his head. “Wayne, can you hear me?” Its sound stronger this time. Until his ears popped and a finger pried open his eyelid, letting the light from the kitchen ceiling blind him. “Wayne, thank God you’re awake! Who…” His voice started to rumble inside his chest but didn’t have time to reach the top of his lungs and come out of his mouth before his eyes witnessed what had earlier given his nostrils a taste of wet leather.

He watched the figure swing something at the woman next to him, feeling her fall onto the imaginary knife he guessed was sitting at the back of his head, and once again darkness engulfed him and in quietness he left the two figures around him. Left the kitchen behind, left the smell of leather and pain for a nothingness he had grown to know through the night.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The quiet darkness that had engulfed him seemed to disintegrate ever so slowly, only to be replaced by rows and rows of bright lights from above. They moved fast, he noticed, almost making him drowsy and lulling him back to sleep. But every time his eyelids felt droopy and he felt the need to close them something would nudge his shoulder or pinch the skin of his arm, and his eyes would once more witness the lights. Bright lights. Nauseating lights.

“Blood pressure low,” words made their way through the drowsiness and entered his ear, yet he didn’t quite here. Like being underwater. Like drowning. Maybe he was drowning, he thought. Unfortunately, if this was it, it felt surprisingly good.

Another flash of light shone closer to his eye this time, fingers prying it open. Like a toddler he attempted to shake his head in discomfort without success.

“Wayne, stay with us,” another dull noise trying to invade his space. His mind tried to push it away, he was tired and wanted to sleep.

More voices, more disturbance, more lifting and tugging at his body. His body a butterfly in a cocoon trying to spread his arms and fly away to something new, something beyond this.