The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (36 page)

“The poor guy? A minute ago you were mad at him.”

“I am mad at him.” Beckett slapped his hand against the dashboard. “I’m furious he wasn’t honest with Johnny from the beginning. He created this whole other father for Johnny and let him believe it.” Beckett shifted on his seat, rearranging his legs, then looked out the window again.

Jess waited a minute before speaking. “Beckett, are you sure this is about Johnny?”

“Of course,” he snapped. “Who else?”

Jess didn’t like to state the obvious, so she kept quiet and drove.

The house felt stuffy after being closed up all day. Jess went through both floors opening windows, hoping it would make things better. She found a fan in the back bedroom where she was keeping everything she hadn’t unpacked yet. She pulled her hair up on top of her head and secured it into a messy bun while she stood in front of the blowing fan in the living room. She pulled her shirt away from her back before padding barefoot into the kitchen. Shakti was lapping thirstily at her bowl. “I know, girl,” Jess said as she opened the freezer and got out the ice cube trays. It was time for a cocktail if ever there was one.

She took her vodka tonic onto the porch and sat in a rocker, a book beside her on the table. Shakti flopped down at her feet, too hot to run around in that fluffy fur coat of hers. Jess rocked slowly in the chair, enjoying the calming motion, the awareness of sweat forming at her hairline, the sounds of birds in the trees. Sparrows sat at her feeder, pecking at their meal. From the branches, a small, dark-headed bird cried
chick-a-dee-dee-dee
. Jess pressed the sweaty glass to her face and took a sip.

Out beyond the sugar maple, the door of the smokehouse swung open with a creak, then slammed against the brick wall. Jess sat upright. The ice cubes in her drink tinkled against the glass as her hand trembled. She watched the smokehouse, her heart thudding away. Jess had put a new padlock on, she was certain of it. Shakti lifted her head, her ears alert, but when nothing happened, she laid her chin back over her paws and flicked her tail against the boards of the porch. Maybe it hadn’t been locked, after all.

Jess sat back and put her glass aside. She began pushing on the balls of her feet, rocking easily back and forth. It was difficult to enjoy herself now, but she was determined to wait and see, even relax a little. She deserved some time off, and Bonnie was denying her even this one moment of respite. Her lips thinned into a tight line and her face flushed. She grabbed the armrests of the rocking chair and curled her fingers until her nails scratched the wood surface. “Dammit, Bonnie!” she exclaimed. “Give me a break, would you?”

The answer was
no
. It was as clear as anything Jess had ever felt, a sensation of complete denial, of disappointment and rage, of the unfairness of so many things, and it startled Jess.

She pushed herself up and out of the rocker, yanked open the screen door, and stepped into the vestibule. Jess stopped. In a path from where she stood, back as far as she could see into the hallway, stretched a line of bloody footprints. Jess gasped, her hands reflexively covering her heart. When her shock passed, however, she found herself angrier still and the anger allowed her to look. Jess bent toward the first set of footprints. The feet were small. The steps were narrowly spaced and uneven. The right foot, especially. Jess examined it and saw the toes curled unnaturally in, shortening the foot overall and raising the pad under the big toe off the floor. Bonnie’s feet were deformed…no. She had been hobbled and was somehow walking on a curled foot.

“Well, that’s interesting, Bonnie!” Jess yelled. She turned in the vestibule, shouting in every direction. “But how does it help me? I’ve seen these before. What of it, Bonnie?” Jess lifted her face to the ceiling to shout up into the office. “Johnny has the photo and the cowboy. He knows he’s Johnny Sykes. He knows! Isn’t that what you want?”

A buzzing noise was suddenly audible behind Jess. She turned and saw black dots streaming out of the smokehouse, forming a cloud, buzzing louder and louder as the swarm grew.

“Oh shit.”

Jess leapt onto the porch and looked around frantically. She found Shakti cowering under the rocker. She threw the rocker over and it crashed into the table, knocking it and the glass to the porch. Jess grabbed Shakti by the scruff of the neck and jerked her up. “Come on!” she cried as she backed into the house and slammed the screen door, latching its hook and eye closure just as the first of the swarm hit. Flies peppered the screen door, covering it completely, blotting out any view of the yard. She slammed the front door and bolted it, but not before a single fly slipped through a gap in the screen. Jess backed into the hallway, holding Shakti to her chest. The fly buzzed past them, circled the hall, and disappeared through the kitchen doorway. They were surrounded by a buzzing louder than the drone of cicadas in August.

Jess went into the living room first. Seeing the windows blacked out by an undulating screen of insects made her gag. She shut all the glass, running from window to window and room to room, rattling the panes as she slammed them down and secured the latches. When she had finished, she was covered in sweat. Jess went back to the living room, exhausted, and got onto her hands and knees. “Shakti?” She found Shakti wedged between the couch and the wall. When they made eye contact, Shakti wagged her tail and belly crawled out to Jess. They flopped onto the couch together to wait out the infestation.

Jess focused on Shakti, stroking the soft fur over the top of her head and behind her ears. She wondered if any of these strange frights would affect her, make her a nervous dog or something. “That’s all I need,” she said to the puppy. Shakti lifted her face to lap at Jess’s chin. Her smushed snout was beginning to elongate, showing the first hint of the dog she would become. Jess picked up one of her front paws and examined the black pads. Some day she would grow into these feet.

The buzzing at the windows increased, as though something had excited the flies. Jess had been trying so hard to pretend they didn’t exist, and now Shakti’s ears stood out to better pick up the sound, her eyebrows raised in a worried, quizzical look. Jess kissed the top of her head. The busily-moving swarm on the window behind them let in pinpoints of light here and there. Jess shuddered and looked at her puppy. Shakti was the only thing keeping her calm:
Pet the dog. Pet the dog
. Jess’s neck muscles stiffened like a coat hanger had been inserted over the triangles of her shoulder blades. She felt her heart beat quicken and closed her eyes.
Breathe
. She inhaled, lifting her diaphragm against the weight of the puppy, which made it difficult both to breathe and to relax.
Just like practicing with a sandbag in yoga class,
she told herself to stifle a rising panic. A wet tongue lapped her cheek and Jess opened her eyes in surprise, smiled at the puppy and stroked her head, before realizing they were not alone. Jess forced herself to lift her gaze from Shakti.

Bonnie stood in the corner where Johnny had said he remembered playing, barefoot, in her summer nightgown with the lace trim fanning out over her shoulders. Red blotted her eyes and the mark on her neck looked raw and painful. Bonnie raised a hand to point at Jess, who cringed, pushing deeper into the couch cushions and clutching Shakti tighter to her chest.

Breathe
.

Jess drew in a hurried breath. Shakti squirmed, but Jess kept her hold on the puppy. She struggled to straighten up. It was as though Bonnie’s finger pinned her to the cushions.

Breathe
.

“Okay,” she said. “There’s something else. Something you need me to do.”

The specter remained, pointing at Jess.

“Johnny knows who his father is. He knows his father is John Sykes and not Carl Copeland.”

Something changed. Jess wasn’t certain what it was. Bonnie still stood in the corner with her arm raised toward Jess. Shakti still squirmed in her arms. It was as though a filter had dropped before her eyes, changing the hue of everything around her. Jess had studied theater in college and knew that different colored gels were put over the lights to affect different moods, sometimes so subtly the audience wouldn’t be aware of the color change, though they would feel it.
Yellow-orange
, she thought, and focused on the sensation of color—it was unsettling, anxiety producing. Jess looked at Bonnie and did not recoil, but tried to be receptive. “Tell me what you want.” Bonnie opened her mouth to speak, but instead of sound, a puff of frosted air escaped her lips and the room went blue. Jess shivered. Shakti jumped out of her arms and squeezed behind the couch. Jess’s own breath came from her in a cloud of frost. She tried to stay open, to not let the panic knotting her gut take over. She watched Bonnie, waiting for something more, something coherent.

find him

It came into her mind like type on a white page, this familiar message. Jess was about to ask a question when Bonnie vanished. The flies disappeared and the room became garishly bright as the June sunlight suddenly poured in through every window.

Jess called to Shakti to let her know everything was all right again, but there wasn’t time to get down and coax the dog out from hiding. She picked up her phone and dialed Johnny.

“We need to get you to your father right away.”

While they talked, she wandered into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

“I’ll call the prison,” she said. “There’s all this paperwork, but I don’t think we have time for that.”

A single fly buzzed past Jess’s head and landed on the window. Jess stared at it as it lifted two of its hair-like legs to rub them together. She bent and grabbed a flyswatter from below the sink. She straightened up and slowly raised the swatter, hovering over the fly.

“Right. I’ll call you back as soon I talk to the prison.”

Thwak!

“That? Nothing. Just killing a fly.”

John Sykes slept in a small bed in a room decorated with calming blues. If the plain and functional room had any character at all, it was soothing. A padded rocking chair sat under the curtained window. A nightstand near the bed had a pitcher of water and a large handled cup with a bendy straw next to a tub of Vaseline. The doors were typically kept open on these rooms, and as they walked down the hospice corridor Jess had noticed walls decorated with pictures taped to them and photos propped on nightstands under bouquets of flowers. John’s room was bare of personal comforts.

Johnny approached his father’s bed. Jess noticed a chair in the corner and carried it over to the bedside. Johnny nodded a thanks and sat down near his father’s head, setting a shoulder bag on the floor next to his chair. Jess backed up so she was near the door again, ready if she was needed, but otherwise unobtrusive.

While John slept, his breathing a slow wheeze that barely roused the sheet pulled up to his shoulders, Johnny watched this man he never had the chance to know. Even in the dim light of this room, he looked sallow. Whatever fullness of face he’d had was wasted away by the cancer. His lips looked dry and he smacked his mouth, then turned his head on his pillow. Johnny extended a trembling hand and it hovered over his father’s head. At last he touched the bald pate.

John’s eyes flickered open. He stared at the man before him for a long time before parting his lips to speak. A hoarse croak came out. Johnny reached for the cup of water and offered it to John, who drank, then sank back into his pillow with a soft sigh.

He reached a shaking hand up and pressed it to Johnny’s cheek. “My son,” he said. “My son.”

Johnny nodded his head, tears flowing fast down his cheeks.

“Don’t cry. It’s all right now.” Johnny nodded again. “When you were two, you called me Daddy.”

“Daddy,” he said, finding his voice at last and nodding in affirmation of this stranger’s relationship to his life.

Jess backed out of the room. She wandered into a small café  painted a cheerful green with a few tables. The people here were  clearly visitors or staff, not patients. She wondered, as she surveyed the room, if anyone was well enough to leave their beds by the time they came to the hospice. Large windows overlooked a zen garden with a meditation labyrinth. Jess gazed out at the labyrinth and decided again that it was for visitors and staff, a means of self-care for those encountering death. She finally approached the counter and bought two coffees, then went into the gift shop and bought a bouquet full of bright gerbera daisies.

She made it back to John’s room without spilling, a victory of its own since she had the bouquet in a vase squeezed between the crook of her elbow and her chest, and a coffee cup in each hand. She stepped into the room and cleared her throat to announce herself. Johnny stood and relieved her of the coffee. Jess set the vase on the nightstand and primped the flowers so their faces turned toward the bed.

“There she is,” John said and held out his hand. “The girl who brought us together.”

Jess took his hand in hers. The withered skin clung to bones that protruded as though long deprived. She patted John’s hand gently.

He withdrew his hand to point at his son. “He’s got his mother’s eyes. See there? See how kind they are? That’s Bonnie. She was the gentlest woman there ever was. She loved birds. Kept feeders everywhere. And any stale bread, tossed to the squirrels.” John softened against the bed, drained from even that much exertion.

“You rest now, Dad.”

Jess couldn’t help a sideways glance at the sound of Johnny calling him dad. He looked emotional, but he was holding it together, smiling down at his father while he patted his leg through the bedclothes.

“Not yet,” John said. “Soon I’ll rest.”

Jess motioned for Johnny to sit again and he did, resuming his place next to his father’s bed.

“Is that big pine table still in the kitchen?” John asked Jess.

“It sure is.”

“Bonnie used to wash that real good, then she’d make bread on it. She’d knead that dough till it was smooth and round. She liked to pinch it and watch it spring back. She’d give you a ball of dough all your own,” he said to Johnny. “You remember that? You’d squish it and pat it down and roll it. Mostly it would get stuck between your fingers. Remember?”