Waking the Dead (21 page)
Knowing that should have been security enough. But it was the certainty Lydia couldn’t realize only a few hundred miles, instead of the usual thousands, separated them that finally lulled her to sleep.
Cait welcomed the time when she finally met up with the perp responsible for killing seven victims and defleshing their bones before painting macabre scenes on their scapulas.
Thoughts of a face-to-face meeting with her mother, however, had dread pooling in her gut.
Chapter 10
The woman had cost him twenty bucks and two games of pool that he could have easily won.
Since his concentration was shot to hell, Zach handed over his cue to the next guy waiting for a game. Heading to the bar to drink the rest of his bottle in peace, he ignored the good-natured ribbing that followed. His mood had gone south in the last hour, and the reason for that could be laid squarely at Cait Fleming’s feet.
A position he was sure she was used to having men occupy.
Scowling, he tipped his bottle to his lips and took a long pull before lowering it and sliding into a stool. For a man who liked his women sexy, simple, and short term, he was spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about a female there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to lay a finger on.
Although she had sexy nailed, there was nothing simple about Caitlin Fleming. She was as contrary a female as he’d ever met, and he’d encountered more than a few unreasonable shrews on the job. Those women didn’t have much in common with the special consultant, either. Her abrasiveness came from overconfidence rather than sheer bitchiness.
The pain-in-the-ass end result was the same, though.
“Hey, Sharper.” Bill Reagen detached himself from the group of men at the other end of the bar and strolled over, taking a seat beside him. “Heard you been spending lots of time with that hot thing that was in here earlier. You screwin’ her?”
Slowly he lifted his gaze to level it at the man beside him. Something in it must have warned Reagen, because he lifted his palms placatingly. “Hey, none of my business. It’s just that I heard she’s working with the sheriff’s department and might be around for a while. Didn’t want to try my hand with her if I was stepping on toes, you know?”
The thought of the burly Reagen shooting rusty pickup lines to Cait had one corner of Zach’s mouth tugging upward. “Go ahead.” Might be worth sticking around to watch, if only to make sure the man didn’t go too far and get knee-capped for his efforts. Bill was an affable enough sort, if not too bright.
“Sure is a looker.” Reagen took a long drink from his bottle. Lowering it, he added, “My brother had a poster of her in our bedroom when we were kids. When I heard she was around here, I thought they were talking about someone else. But after seeing her tonight . . . that’s the same lady all right. Wonder what would make a woman like that want to do what she does, look at bones for murders and stuff?”
It was clear Reagen was inviting the sort of philosophical speculation that passed for conversation when someone new arrived in the area. But Sharper found himself oddly reluctant to participate. Not only because he had an aversion to gossip, having been on the receiving end of it most of his life. But he didn’t want to talk about her at all.
His silence didn’t deter the other man. “Tony Gibbs has been saying how she’s some sort of genius with them bones. Can tell all sorts of stuff like how old they are and who they belonged to. That Raiker outfit she works for? Gibbs says they call them the Mindhunters, ’cuz of the work they do catching criminals and stuff. Raiker used to be with the FBI till he got hurt chasing down that killer in Louisiana. Remember that one seven, eight years ago who killed all them kids?”
Zach let the man drone on while he silently finished his beer. The Mindhunters. He recalled Barnes saying something about it the first day he’d taken Cait to Castle Rock. Obviously she was a very big deal in law enforcement circles. At least her employer was. Maybe that explained that attitude of confidence she exuded, even when it would pay to exercise a little caution and good sense.
He gave an impatient roll of his shoulders. Not his business. She was just a job, and in a few days, weeks at most, she’d go back wherever the hell she’d come from and he’d be rid of her. She wasn’t responsible for this . . . restlessness or whatever the hell it was that was burning a hole through his chest these days. Drummy’s suicide wasn’t, either, though that sure as hell had upped the ante considerably.
If this were due to a midlife crisis, it had arrived about a decade early.
“You guys need another beer?”
Del Barton reappeared from wherever he’d been and hurried down the bar toward them. Zach shook his head. Shoving the stool back, he rose. “I’m calling it a night.” Two beers was his usual limit these days. The night he’d heard about Drummy eating his gun proving the exception to that rule.
A red-hot poker of pain stabbed through him. Alcohol hadn’t helped dull feelings when he’d heard the news of his friend’s suicide. It had only brought a tidal wave of memories that he spent far too much time trying very hard not to recall. He wouldn’t be making that mistake again any time soon. He’d seen far too many guys try to wash away their failures with booze. He turned and headed toward the door.
“Hey, did I tell you I ran into your dad in Las Vegas?”
Case in point. Zach halted midstride and turned for the inevitable conclusion to Reagen’s question. “Nope.”
“Yeah, I went with Handley and Miles on one of them red-eye junkets. Ran into him at the Hilton. I recognized him and went up to say hi. He didn’t seem to know who I was, so I said I knew you. Funny thing. He looked right at me and said, ‘I don’t have a son.’ Just like that. I would have thought I had the wrong guy, but Miles, he recognized him, too.”
Zach smiled humorlessly. “He was right. He doesn’t have a son.” And he continued out the door. His relationship with his father had always been strained, but the reading of his grandfather’s will seven years ago had severed it completely. No big loss. Jarrett Wellen Bodine III was a fuckup of monumental proportions. The best day of Zach’s life had been when he’d gone to live with his grandfather for good when he was twelve. The old man had been hard, set in his ways, and difficult to please. But that had been infinitely better than being subjected to his father’s erratic behavior and drunken rages.
Letting the screen door slam behind him, he continued down the walk and rounded the corner to the parking lot. Thoughts of his father worsened his mood.
Maybe he just needed to get laid. He gave brief consideration to driving over to Shellie Mayer’s place. Thought better of it. A woman who’d called him an emotionally unavailable bastard just a couple weeks earlier probably couldn’t be counted on to roll out the sexual welcome mat, even if he’d agreed with her description.
Especially
since he had.
Especially
since he had.
He unlocked his Trailblazer and got in. It wasn’t Shellie Mayer on his mind, at any rate. He had a mental flash of Caitlin Fleming’s expression before she’d walked out the door. Mocking. Daring him to . . . what?
Zach started the vehicle and shoved it into gear with a bit more force than necessary. It wouldn’t do to start reading things into her expression. Into her words. Wouldn’t do to start convincing himself that she was the kind of woman he could take to his bed and not end up with a truckload of regrets afterward.
But knowing that didn’t stop him from nosing his Trailblazer in the direction of Ketchers. Just to be sure she hadn’t done something stupid and headed over to the tavern despite his warning.
He didn’t see her vehicle in the rutted gravel lot around the tavern. But as he was passing by, a body flew out of the front door. A stream of men followed, trading blows and curses he could hear through his rolled-up windows. The thought of Cait mixing it up with the lame heads in there was difficult to picture.
What was getting increasingly easy to picture was the image of her stretched out in his bed. Beneath him. Over him.
He shifted uneasily. Because that train of thought wasn’t going to make it easier to spend the day with her tomorrow. Wasn’t going to make it easier to ignore the way she moved or the unwilling fascination about her lodged in his mind that he couldn’t shake loose.
Zach clenched his jaw and drove in the direction of home. He had a feeling sleep was going to be a long time coming tonight.
He’d used duct tape to shut her up, and he didn’t feel sorry for it. Not one bit.
There were still faint noises coming from the locked room, though. Metal clanking against stone. She must be using her feet somehow to slam the lawn chair against the wall.
Gritting his teeth, he adjusted the light and peered more intently at the sketch he was making. Barb Haines was a horrible, nasty woman. Unappreciative and foulmouthed. Never had it been this difficult to wait. To do things right.
Respectfully
. She wasn’t making things easy for him. For herself.
Respectfully
. She wasn’t making things easy for him. For herself.
But the easy way wasn’t necessarily the right way. He’d learned that for himself when his mother had died.
Get a shovel boy. Start digging.
He flinched. He could still hear his father’s voice. Still feel the sting from the careless blow that had accompanied the words. But the old man couldn’t hurt him anymore. Couldn’t hurt anyone. He’d made sure of that.
But far, far too late to help his mother.
The memory burned, so he thrust it away. Tried to concentrate on the pleasant fifties melodies on the iPod. His mother’s favorite music. When his father wasn’t around, they’d listen to the radio for hours while they worked in the garden or did chores. But whenever his father came home, the music always stopped.
The night they’d buried his mother had been a night much like this one. Clouds covering the moon and stars, as if their glow had been doused out of mourning. He hadn’t been allowed to mourn. Tears were another excuse for a beating. And digging his mother’s grave in the middle of the night had left him too exhausted to feel anything at all. At least at the moment.
When his hand trembled, he paused, took a deep breath to calm himself. He needed absolute steadiness for the close work of the sketches. The sooner he got done, the sooner he could be rid of the woman in the next room.
But the sneaky slivers of memory wouldn’t be banished. He was nine again, shivering in the night air despite the sweat that slicked his body. Watching in the dim light let by the lantern as the old man rolled his mother’s body into the shallow grave.
Fill it in. And not a word to anyone about this. Remember? What’s the story?
The shovel handle had caught him across the back hard enough to leave a bruise that would last for weeks.
She ran off. She ran off and left us.
And uttering those words had been the ultimate betrayal to the woman who’d shielded him as best she could until then.
Don’t think about that. He drew in a deep breath. Blew it out slowly. He had all her best qualities. Hadn’t she always said so? He was sensitive and artistic and perhaps too compassionate for his own good.
The thought steadied him, so he picked up the pen again. Began drawing swiftly, surely, the final panel for the woman in the next room. It wouldn’t do to draw what he wanted, what best depicted his impression of Barb Haines. That would be an image of a she-demon, horned and fanged, complete with monstrous features. It might be true, but it wouldn’t be
respectful
.
respectful
.
The drawing soothed him, as it always did. But it would be good to get done with this last guest so he could return to the sketching he most enjoyed. He flicked a glance around at the superhero comics he’d drawn and taped to the wall. An artist needed his space to create. And he never felt closer to his mother than when he was engaged in the drawing she’d always encouraged.
That sound came again. Metal against stone. Faint but unmistakable. And fury bubbled up with a startling intensity.
“Shut up, you fucking bitch! Shut up shut up shut up!” The pen snapped in his grip, and he hurled the pieces across the room to bounce harmlessly off the door. He tried to draw a breath through a chest that had gone tight. His vision had grayed at the edges. He couldn’t hear his mother’s voice whispering in his ear anymore. But he could hear his old man laughing. Louder and louder until it echoed and rang in the small space, hurting his ears and filling his brain until there was nothing but that painful sound.
Moaning, he clapped his hands over his ears and rocked back and forth, battling to push the noise from his head.
He didn’t know how much time passed before the voice subsided and he took his hands away. The silence in his head was reflected in the next chamber. The woman had gone silent.
Calmer now, he got up to gather the pieces of the pen he’d thrown. He liked to keep his area neat. Tossing them in the trash, he sat down at his worktable again. Got out another pen and resumed sketching with a renewed sense of purpose. He’d finish the sketches tonight no matter how long it took him. Then the scalpel would need sharpening. He’d noted that last time but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
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