The River Is Dark (12 page)

“What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to speak with the agents in charge of the case tomorrow, see if they’ll tell me anything. Maybe you’re right, and they picked something up at Haines’s house and Nut’ll be released.”

“And if he isn’t?”

He frowned. “Then I’ll go to the council meeting and tell them they need to hold off on the vote until the real killer is caught.”

She stared at him for a long time before gripping his hand tighter. “And you won’t do anything stupid?”

“That’s a tall order for me.”

“I mean it, please don’t take any chances. I know you feel responsible, but if Nut hadn’t taken the necklace, he probably wouldn’t be in jail right now.”

“Yeah, and if I hadn’t enlisted his help, he wouldn’t be there either.”

Dani released his hand. Liam wanted to reach out to her again, to feel her skin against his own. He wanted to slide closer to her and finally attempt the kiss that hung in anticipation between them. But he didn’t. He let her open the door and step into the evening.

“Just be careful,” she said, and shut the door.

He watched her move to the hotel lobby and disappear inside. Why was it always this way? Why did he always end up opposite of what he really wanted?

“Because you’re an asshole,” he answered himself, and put the Chevy into gear.

As he drove through the quiet town, he tried to unweave the myriad clues that prodded his mind like a rock inside a boot. He felt no closer to finding those who were responsible, and the frustration burned in an internal wash of acid. He arrived at his hotel, and was deep in thought when the desk clerk stopped him as he walked toward the stairway.

“Oh, Mr. Dempsey?”

Liam angled toward the counter. “Yes?”

“Someone left this for you.”

The clerk set a dingy envelope on the counter, Liam’s name barely legible on the front. He picked it up, staring at the unfamiliar, looping script.

“Who sent it?”

The clerk shook his head. “I’m not sure. I went to the bathroom a couple of hours ago, and when I came back, it was sitting on the desk.”

“Thank you,” Liam said, moving again toward the stairs.

When the door of his room clicked shut behind him, he pulled the straight razor from his pocket and slid its edge beneath the envelope flap. The blade cut through the envelope with a hiss, and he returned it to his pocket. A single folded piece of paper lay inside. He opened it and read the few words scrawled in the same hand that graced the front of the envelope.

I stopped by but you weren’t here. Meet me at Allen’s tonight at ten. I have something to show you. —Barnes

The flaring anger that had plagued him all afternoon when his mind turned to the sheriff lessened. Perhaps he’d found something of importance, something that would help free Nut if used correctly.

Liam traced the pencil lines with a fingertip, then glanced at the clock beside his bed. It was almost time.

CHAPTER 14

The Chevy’s headlights cut through the night surrounding his brother’s house and lit up the front windows in shining squares.

Liam guided the truck to a stop before the garage and put it in park. He checked his rearview mirror and then looked at the dash. The sheriff’s car was nowhere in sight, but he was a few minutes early. He waited in the cab, the garage doors awash in the Chevy’s low beams. He reached for the stereo knob, but listening to music was the equivalent of whistling in a graveyard, and he let his hand fall to his lap. His mind began to spool through the facts again, and he wondered if he’d missed something within the house. Maybe that was what the sheriff wanted him to see.

Liam snapped the keys backward and shut the truck off, a vacuum of sound rushing into his ears. He opened the door to dispel the discomfort, letting the distant chirping of frogs and the rustling of leaves take its place. The pale light within the truck extinguished when he shut the door, and darkness overtook him. The breeze that caressed the trees felt good against his face, cool in contrast to the heat that cloaked the daylight hours. He gazed up at the sovereign blue of the night sky and saw a half moon hanging amidst the glow of light pollution from the town below. The moon looked cancerous, eaten away by the unforgiving space around it.

Liam moved to the front door, rummaging in his pockets until his hand closed over the house keys. He unlocked the door and slid his hand along the wall until he found the light switch, illuminating the room with a flick of his finger. Everything was the same as the day before. He moved deeper into the house, letting his mind roam as the intuitive side attempted to take over and shut out a voice that kept speaking to him in buried tones of the past.

He walked around the bloodstains, and saw his brother driving away from their father’s house in his beaten-up car. It was before Allen opened the clinic, and their father had handed him a thousand dollars they couldn’t spare as he left. Liam remembered watching Allen drop the money on the floor and shrug off his father’s attempt to hug him.

He moved down the unlit hall to the master bedroom, turning on the light when he got there. The bed where Allen and Suzie had slept looked comfortable and just right for the space.
Suzie.
He thought about her face, up close as he danced with her at the wedding. How happy she looked in the DJ’s flashing lights. She’d laughed as he twirled her, her gown billowing out in a cloud of opal and pearl.

Liam turned the light off and moved to Allen’s study. He stood in the black of the room, smelling the leather of the books on the nearby shelf; the dryness of paper; something tangy—old wine, maybe. The weight of residual life crashed upon him, pushed him down until he realized he was on his knees near his brother’s desk. There were tears on his cheeks but he couldn’t remember crying them. The moon looked in at him through a high window, and he wished it would leave him be. He wanted to sleep on the floor where his brother once moved and loved and lived. He wanted a part of Allen that he’d never been able to touch or know for himself. His brother was gone, erased from a negative spot in his life that Allen possessed only as a ghost while alive. And now, it was as if he had never existed at all.

He heard the faint sound of a door closing in the living room. The sheriff.

Liam swiped at his eyes and sniffed, inhaling a last odor of his brother’s study, and got to his feet. He couldn’t let the sheriff see him in this state; Barnes would think he was unfit to continue investigating. Liam stepped out of the office and walked down the hall, his feet padding on the carpet without a sound. He heard a click in the kitchen just as he came into the living room. He stopped, looking around for Barnes.

“Sheriff?” His voice sounded odd, and for a moment he wondered why, the niggling instinct in the deepest part of his brain beginning to awaken.

He stepped into the kitchen, its floors and counters awash in the spill from the living room’s lamps. Barnes wasn’t there either. Liam walked to the windows lining the living room and peered into the night, cupping his hands around his face.

The sheriff’s car was nowhere to be seen.

The lights went out.

Liam froze, the muttered warning in his mind becoming a screaming cry of fear.
Trap.
How foolish had he been to follow the directions of a letter without checking it first? Dani’s earlier question echoed in his head.
You won’t do anything stupid?
Too late.

His hand found the grip of the Sig as he tried to control his breathing. He would call for help, but his phone was in the Chevy. He could go right out the door and jump into his truck and run away, or he could face the ones that had spilled his brother’s blood on the very floor on which he stood. It wasn’t even a choice.

Liam crouched, making sure the safety was off with only the touch of his fingertip, and closed his eyes to force his pupils to expand faster. He listened, waiting for a sound of movement from the kitchen. Nothing. When he opened his eyes, the shapes of the furniture around him became malignant hiding spots, and he resisted the urge to cover the spaces they concealed with his weapon. He knew where he had to go.

The garage.

Since the house was one level and he knew no one was at the end where he had come from, there was only one place they could be. Liam sidled into the kitchen, glancing again at the counter and the empty area behind it. His heart surged into his throat and battered his eardrums as he moved toward the door to the garage. It was closed, but he could feel life behind it. Someone waited for him on the other side in the darkness, someone who was banking on him not running away. He exhaled and blinked, trying to clear his eyes of excessive moisture. He wanted to kick the door in, but he remembered it opened toward the kitchen, not away from it. With one hand, he reached out and grasped the knob, feeling it slip in his sweaty palm. He mentally counted down, tensing every aspect of his mind and body.
3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

With a jerk of his hand, Liam tore the door open and thrust the gun forward, first to one side of the doorway and then to the other, his senses firing faster than his thoughts. The garage was even darker than the house; two sloping shapes took up the bulk of the space, his brother’s SUV and a lower car on the far side. The last stall was empty.

He waited, listening as he panned the gun back and forth across the garage. He smelled something, a briny stink of sweat and feces. Liam stepped toward the Escalade, careful to keep his feet away from the underside of the vehicle. Dropping to his haunches, Liam put one hand on the floor and squinted at the space beneath the SUV. He saw no deeper shades of darkness there and stood again, turning both ways before reaching out to pull the door handle of the Cadillac. The handle moved without releasing the door. Locked.

He heard something, and for a moment he thought it was only leaves skittering across the apron outside the doors. But he listened harder, concentrating on the sound as his mind identified it.

Whispering.

It was low, the words indiscernible, but there. He tried to get a lock on where it came from, but immediately it ceased, leaving the garage in a quiet that almost hurt his ears. Crouching again, he edged around the front of the SUV, keeping low enough so he wouldn’t present much of a target. When he reached the passenger side of the bumper, he poked one eye around the corner. No one stood in the gap between the car and the Escalade. He listened, hoping to hear a soft inhalation or the scratch of a shoe on the concrete floor. The garage was silent save for the breeze outside that licked at the bases of the three overhead doors.

With the Sig held out before him, he duck-walked between the vehicles to the car’s door, put a hand on the handle, and pulled.

The door to the kitchen slammed shut.

Liam jerked around, moving to aim over the Escalade’s hood, but the darkness in the garage was complete. The meager light provided by the open door was sealed away from him, and the garage was now a tomb. Scraping footsteps ran away from the door, and he fired in their direction. In the muzzle flash he saw a short figure duck toward the rear end of the Cadillac as a shadow detached itself from the front of the car to his right and lunged toward him.

Liam spun and cried out, trying to step back as he aimed. Something hard struck his gun hand, making his fingers burn as he squeezed off another shot. The gun flew free of his grip and over the car’s roof. He heard the Sig clatter to the floor on the opposite side. In the bullet flare he saw an impossible face oozing with deformity, head much too large, eyes full of hatred. He fell backward and landed hard on his ass, sparks of impact popping behind his eyes in the darkness. A whooshing sound filled the air above his head, and something collided with the door of the SUV beside him. He heard the rending of metal and saw flashes of steel biting through paint and aluminum.

Scrambling back, he nearly collapsed with the pain of his hand, aware that the other person was behind him. With a rolling motion, he flipped his feet back over his head, kicking out with his right leg. His shoe connected with flesh and he heard a grunt of pain as the assailant behind him fell back and bounced off the garage door. Liam kept his momentum and turned fully over so that he landed on his feet. The hulking mass in between the cars lurched, and the shriek of steel on steel filled the garage as the weapon sprung free of the Cadillac’s door.

Liam rolled to his right, onto the car’s trunk. As he twisted away, he heard the same rush of air, and a jagged line of fire streaked across his exposed back. He screamed as the pain hammered his brain. There was nothing else besides the burning in his back. He gagged under the weight of it and tried to catch his breath as he crashed to the floor, his arms almost dropping him onto his face. The concrete tilted beneath him, and he bit down on the side of his cheek, knowing he would be dead if he passed out now.

Heavy footsteps rounded the rear of the car, and he crawled forward, his knees skinning open through his jeans against the rough floor. He heard the now-familiar sound of the weapon cutting air and tucked his legs close to his body. A hollow crack of steel meeting concrete resounded in the close air of the garage, and Liam felt chips of the floor pelt his pant legs. He crawled forward again, wetness running down his back, into his jeans, and around his sides. His hand fell on the polymer handle of the gun, and he tipped onto his shoulder, firing as he did so.

The garage flashed into brilliance, and he heard the whining song of a ricochet and saw a shower of sparks a few feet in front of him. He pulled the trigger again, the muzzle spitting fire, and caught a glimpse of the hunched form skittering toward the kitchen door. A rage, distilled enough to cut through the pain in his back, encompassed every inch of his body. He thrummed with its energy and flung himself to his feet.

Rounding the end of the Cadillac, he saw the smaller figure dive through the door into the kitchen. He jerked the trigger twice, sprinting forward, the empty cases flying past his face and over his shoulder. An animalistic sound barreled up from within him as he leapt through the door. The two figures sprinted across the living room toward the picture window. He fired again, shattering the glass, and the attackers jumped through the falling shards.

The window exploded into the night, catching moonlight on each edge as it fell in a million pieces around the two bodies. Liam tried to run forward but stumbled, his vision dipping unnaturally. He caught himself on an easy chair and raised the Sig again. The two people were only outlines now, running full speed for the safety of the woods. Liam braced the pistol with both hands, concentrating on the larger figure, and fired twice more before the gun locked open, empty. Smoke hung in the air, and cordite burned his nostrils as he stepped to the window and searched the yard, hoping to see a slumped form at the edge of the woods. The light of the moon revealed nothing as the floor surged again beneath his feet.

Liam steadied himself on the empty window frame and took a few deep breaths, willing his vision to stabilize. When it did, he moved to the door and flung it open, the outside air molding to the beating pulse in his face. He jogged to his truck, yanked the door open, slid into the seat, and twisted the keys in the ignition.

The moon guided him down the side of the bluffs, his headlights sometimes wandering to the high grass beside the road and then across the centerline. It was years and only minutes before the parking lot of his hotel came into view. With a last rallying effort, he focused on the parking space near the entrance and slid the Chevy to a stop, keying the engine off without putting the truck in park.

The air inside the cab throbbed in time with the wound on his back. He sat in a sticky wetness that reminded him of falling into a mud puddle as a child. His hand groped for the door handle, but it eluded his aching fingers. He felt himself tip back until his shoulder met the center console.

Liam grabbed at the steering wheel, but it was too far away now. The phone. He could use the phone to call for help. His fingers twitched along the console until they found the familiar rectangular shape. Just as he raised it in front of his face, it slipped from his grasp and slid away at almost the same time as his consciousness.