Turning onto Peak Ave, he eyed her house at the end of the street. It stood two stories proud, the maples in the front yard bare, pumpkins placed along the sidewalk. A giant inflatable turkey floated in the yard between two inflatable pilgrims. The turkey looked terrified.
Soon as he parked, Candace flew out the front door, cursing when her Penn State hoodie snagged on the doorknob. She was a stout woman, a no-nonsense type with a pretty face as pale as his was dark. Wrestling her sleeve free, she waved him over to her garage with a frantic gesture.
“Let’s go, Karl,” she said. Her dirty blond hair was done up in a tight bun; her sweaty forehead glimmered in the morning light. “We’re taking a field trip.”
“Where to?”
“Banquet hall. I would’ve called the police from there, but I didn’t want anything on record.”
“No bear on the property, I see.”
“Wish it were that simple.”
Inside the garage she sidestepped some free weights and football pads and climbed into her Jeep. “Hop in the back. Stay low so nobody sees you.”
“Candace?” Sweat leaked along his spine. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s John MacReady. I stopped by the banquet hall to decorate and…” She shook her head. “Mac’s in his car. He’s dead.”
“Mac? No…” Karl grabbed a nearby tool cabinet to steady himself. Just last week he and Mac got together to watch the Steelers and grumble about their families leaving them behind in Hollow Hills. Karl had even invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. “How…how’d he go?”
“My guess is a heart attack.” She started the engine. “Regardless, we gotta cover it up.”
Karl rose from the floor mats when the Jeep rumbled onto the gravel lot outside the banquet hall. Through the streaky windshield, the lot looked as bare as scorched earth. They rounded the back and parked beside Mac’s faded Toyota. Before unlocking her doors, Candace checked every direction to ensure they were the only ones there.
Once she was satisfied, she nodded, and Karl stepped out. His gorge rose as he stared through Mac’s window and saw his old friend slumped sideways over the armrest, his face frozen in a grimace. A string of web-thin saliva drooped from the corner of his pale lip. Urine stains soaked his khakis, down to where his legs disappeared into the dark beneath the steering wheel.
“Good God,” Karl said.
Candace frowned. “Never should have asked him to work late. I’m a stupid, selfish bitch for making him close up last night. I just wanted extra time with my son, and look what happened.” She peered through the windshield, disgusted. “Karl, I’m sorry. I know he was your pal, but we gotta hurry.”
He thought about Mac’s wife and daughter. They’d left years ago, left Mac to waste away in town. Karl couldn’t help but wonder if he’d die the same way, without the company of those he cared about. A knot clogged his throat.
“Karl?”
“Right,” he said. “Investigating a bear complaint will only buy me so much time as far as alibis go.”
“You mind doing the messy work? I’ll grab the garbage bags.”
“What body part did he trade?”
She hesitated.
“Candace, he’s gone. You can say it now.”
“Kidneys.”
He cringed.
“Sorry, Karl. I’ll run inside and get a knife.”
“Make sure you—ugh!” He opened the driver’s door and nearly lost his breakfast. The stench reminded him of a suicide-by-hanging he’d discovered during his rookie year as a Pittsburgh cop. In death, the victim had emptied her bladder and left behind a two-day-old stink that could rip your nose off.
Holding his breath, Karl lifted Mac’s shirt to check the kidney area. Pale patches had bloomed across the small of his gray-haired back. Karl touched the soft, discolored skin and frowned. The body was too warm for someone who’d died around midnight. When he lifted the left arm, it flinched.
“Whoa, now!”
Karl blinked hard. Am I seeing things? Then it happened again. Mac’s arm moved under its own power. Fingers scratched his thigh. His throat gurgled.
Candace rushed over, covering her nose. “What’s wrong?”
“He moved,” Karl said, his heart jabbing his ribs. “He’s alive.”
“That’s not possible.” Candace pointed at Mac’s lower back. “His kidneys are gone. They’d only disappear if he died.”
“Or if he left the area.” Karl squeezed Mac’s arm. “Pal, can you hear me?”
Mac mumbled something. When Karl repeated the question, Mac muttered, “What? Who’s there?”
“It’s Karl,” he whispered, breathless. “What happened?”
“Jesus, Karl,” Candace said. “Let him breathe.”
Mac groaned, twisting his head gingerly. “Who’s there?”
Karl repeated himself. Mac didn’t seem to recognize him.
“This isn’t good,” Candace said.
“We gotta call an ambulance,” Karl said.
“Right, right.” She grabbed her phone and tapped franticly at the screen. Then she paused.
“Candace?”
“I don’t know about this,” she said. “I mean, look at him. Losing his kidneys must’ve fried his brain. Can we really save him?”
“That’s up to the doctors.”
“If they get involved, how do we explain his missing kidneys?”
He scratched his chin.
“Karl, once people figure out Mac’s kidneys are missing without any incisions, we’re in trouble.” Candace scratched her scalp. “Hell, we could have another Bobby Russo situation here. Do you want that? Want to put all sixty-six Traders at risk?”
He didn’t, but his friend was trying to shake free of death’s grip. It would require top-notch medical care, but if they gave him a chance, Mac might get to say goodbye to his family. Better yet, maybe hello.
“We can’t leave him like this.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “We’ve done worse to protect the group.”
“I know, but…”
“Do you honestly think he’ll make it?”
“He might.”
Sighing, she turned toward the banquet hall.
“Candace, where you going?”
“To get a knife,” she said. “When I come back, you’ll either have to stick it in MacReady’s back or mine.”
6
Throbbing. Stinging. Burning.
Three flavors of hell flooded Ash’s hand as the surgical drugs wore off. A headache prickled above her eyebrow. Her throat was dry, her eyes salty. Across from the cot she lay on, her guitar case sat on an exam room chair like a concerned family member. Without looking away from it, she asked the nurse, a cheeky guy named Eric, how long it would take to finish wrapping her cast.
“Almost done,” he said. “I’m being extra careful not to disturb any of the pins and screws they implanted.”
“Pins?” Ash winced. A tear fell to her check. It tickled and burned before it salted the corner of her lip. “Screws?”
The nurse cleared his throat.
Following the surgery, she’d forced herself not to look at her hand. If she looked, it would become real. Too real. At least for now she could convince herself that the nurse was kidding about the pins and screws. And maybe he was. Maybe he got his kicks by stuffing worst-case scenarios into patients’ heads. Besides, pins and screws belonged inside the Frankenstein monster, not her. All she probably needed was an ice pack and enough painkillers to tough out Friday’s gig.
“Done!” the nurse said. “How’s it look?”
Ash inhaled deeply. She shut her eyes, exhaled, and turned her head toward the hand. Then she looked.
And laughed.
She laughed until she realized nothing was funny. At the end of the long white cast was an opening. Her fingers poked through. They were bent and purple, like the heads of a dying hydra. Splotches of black blood had dried underneath the fingernails. The thumb was so red and swollen it could�
��ve passed for cooked kielbasa.
The longer she looked, the emptier she felt. Her hopes and dreams drained out of her. The Deathgrip gig, her tour dates, her upcoming recording sessions—all were impossible now. Her future became a flipping calendar full of blank white squares. No plans, no purpose, no life.
Tears stung her eyes.
The nurse handed her a tissue. By the time she finished dabbing her eyes, an oily-nosed doctor entered the room and squatted in front of her. First thing out of his smiling mouth was, “Don’t worry. That hand’ll look better after your next surgery.”
She gulped back a scream.
The doc spoke for what seemed like centuries, his words grating. The phrase “surgery and rehab” kept repeating like the chorus of an annoying pop song. All she could think about was her hand and how to fix it. She knew of one way, far from conventional. It would require a trip to her hometown of Hollow Hills, just twenty minutes away.
Something the doc said broke her trance.
“Wait,” she interrupted. “Could you repeat that?”
“Hmm? Oh, that’s merely a worst-case scenario.”
“What is?”
“Well, if you don’t heal properly, we may have to consider…well, amputation.”
She started to laugh again.
Ash wandered out of the ER and visited the hospital pharmacy. She scored a two-week supply of painkillers, but doubted the pain wouldn’t be an issue for long. She had a plan, a solid one that involved a certain creek in her hometown. Snare Creek had to fix her. Otherwise, according to the doctor, it might take months before she could make a fist or grab an apple. That wouldn’t cut it. She needed her fingers wrapped around a guitar neck by Friday.
She took out her phone to call an Uber. Her screen popped with text messages—twenty from Cheeto, as well as some from the other bandmates, including Flanny. Everybody asked where she was, whether she was okay. Thankfully, they didn’t know the specifics about her admittance. At her request the hospital staff had kept things hush-hush. Even the detective she spoke with agreed to suppress the finer details. At first she’d kept everything private out of embarrassment—what would her bandmates think of her without her hand?—but now she needed to stay silent for practical reasons. Once the creek gave her a new hand, she intended to return to her bandmates, no questions asked.
As her Uber pulled up to the curb, she realized she herself had a question.
What if the left hand was already taken?
7
Mountains swelled thick and purple in the distance. They stretched for miles, topped with snow and flanked by highways like the one Ash traveled on now. The good and bad news was that she was heading home. Good because Hollow Hills held the miracle cure for her hand. Bad because her Uber driver drove the most rickety fucking pickup on the planet. Even the smoothest parts of I-81 North sent it quaking, and every bounce, shake, and rumble set off firecrackers inside her new fiberglass cast. Then there were the potholes and his knack for nailing them. Direct hits every time. She barely lasted three minutes before dry swallowing another Vicodin.
The ride eventually became smoother. Somewhat. With the heater blasting her face, she dozed. One minute she eyed the mileage signs and rock walls; the next she dreamed about handsome ER doctors who gushed about the amazing recovery rate of her hand.
The driver nudged her knee and broke her trance. He yipped about Hollow Hills being dead ahead. Rather than driving down the steep exit ramp, he parked on the shoulder and told her to leave. Apparently his brakes were due to give out soon.
Groaning, she grabbed her guitar case and trudged off on foot.
Beyond the exit ramp the road forked. She passed an egg-shaped sign proclaiming Welcome to the Borough of Hollow Hills in cheeky white lettering. Ahead lay Snare Creek Bridge, its guardrails streaked with rust. The metal bridge clicked under the weight of an outgoing SUV; the tremor continued as Ash crossed. She trudged through a stretch of barren forest and entered the muddy heart of her hometown.
At first she thought she’d reached the wrong place. The houses looked shorter, as if they’d spent the past ten years sinking into soggy earth. The air reeked of grime and tasted of woodsmoke. She hadn’t had anything to drink since before surgery, and her throat itched from the smoke. It triggered a series of lung-busting coughs that made her hand throb mercilessly.
Welcome fucking home.
The rough return continued as she passed her hometown’s restaurants. Seeing the How’ve Ya Bean burrito shop triggered some teenage baggage. Same with the Downhill Diner, which still dominated the street corner with its gaudy blue fluorescents. When the front door opened, she caught a nauseating whiff of butter-slathered omelets and home fries. People in the window seats leered at her neck tattoos and elbow-length dreadlocks. In cities like Philly, she looked like any other guitar freak, but here the locals gawked like she was covered in someone else’s blood.
Though she’d intended to continue past, she took a detour and approached the diner’s rear parking lot. The closer she got, the shakier her steps became. Her stomach floated up into her neck. She considered turning back. She hesitated.
At the edge of the building, she took a deep breath and shut her eyes. She pictured the lot empty and harmless, with nothing there aside from cracked blacktop and faded paint. If that were the case, she might finally stop resenting this town.
With a confident stride, she rounded the corner and opened her eyes.
Fuck.
The dumpster was still there, parked between the diner and burrito shop. Thirty years strong and counting. Aside from some fresh graffiti, the scuffed brown exterior hadn’t changed. No new paint, decals, nothing. Its slanted plastic lid hung partway open, leaking a stench that burned her sinuses even from the sidewalk. That stench, in a way, always lingered with her.
She backed away, wishing she hadn’t looked.
Her stomach in knots, she returned to the main road. It snaked through the forest and spat her out at Candace Lapinski’s banquet hall. Ash missed Candace. The woman had been like an aunt to her, sometimes even like a mother.
Beyond the banquet hall parking lot was a dirt trail that climbed into the woods. The trail made for a slippery, painful hike. Ash’s combat boots were built for image, not traction, and she spent more time stumbling than standing. The wind flung her around like a tattered flag until she somehow reached the cover of the barren oaks above.
Her phone buzzed.
Cheeto again.
She ignored it.
The second level wove deeper into the woods. Bone-pale tree trunks blocked out the sun. Melted snow dripped from overhead, splashing her neck with shocking cold. Dead leaves crunched underfoot. The terrain steepened. Her sides ached, and her stomach roiled from the lack of food and excess of pain meds.
When she topped the final hill, she heard the creek. Its crackling was magic to her ears, like hearing Hendrix for the first time. She spotted its sloppy banks and followed the direction of its flow. Candace had once mentioned that her Traders followed the creek to a bend where the oaks met the pines. Ash picked her way through leafless oaks, staggered past an enormous tree stump, and spotted a wall of evergreens.
Her heart rate tripled.
Hand throbbing, she pushed through the thicket until she popped out in a muddy clearing. To her right, the creek wove around a jutting rock cliff.
This had to be it.
The bend.
She set her guitar case down and hurried over.
Light poked through the treetops and shimmered over the surface of the water. Where it wasn’t shining, she saw her reflection. The waters were supposed to reflect your ideal physical self, yet right now they mirrored the same baggy eyes, janky teeth, and stiff shoulders as in reality.
Carefully, she peeled off her jacket, her hand exploding with every movement. The November breeze triggered gooseflesh along her tattooed arms. She stretched her hand over the water. Nothing ideal appeared in the reflection, just her mummifie
d hand and ballooning purple fingers.
This wasn’t working. Maybe she’d done something wrong.
“My left hand,” she said. “I want to trade it.”
The creek trickled along.
Nothing.
There had to be a way. She tried remembering what her father said about the creek. Something about the water tugging him under. If that were the case, he had to have been partially submerged.
Kneeling, she dipped her purple fingers into the water. It swallowed them cold, relaying icy jolts of pain. Gritting her teeth, she submerged her arm to the elbow.
“Trade me a new hand.”
She pushed deeper.
“C’mon, trade.”
Still nothing.
“Trade already!”
The creek sped up. It whirlpooled around her arm like bathwater around a drain. Her hand ached and pounded from the pressure. She tried pulling her hand free.
It wouldn’t budge.
“The fuck? Let go!”
Something tugged on her cast. Some force in the water she couldn’t see. She tried tugging back, but, like a Chinese finger trap, it only made things worse.
She shrieked in pain, louder and louder, until her face smashed the surface.
8
Karl parked his patrol car beside St. Raphael’s Church. Not for police work, but because he didn’t know where else to go. Candace might’ve been right about Mac being brain-fried and them having to protect the group’s secrecy, but it didn’t make Karl feel any better. Of all the no-good, shaky decisions he’d made throughout his police career, both in Pittsburgh and Hollow Hills, none were more unforgivable than this. He should’ve called it in. Requested an ambulance. Played dumb until doctors guessed where Mac’s kidneys had gone.
Instead, he let a friend die. Murder by omission. Then he and Candace had bagged the body and dragged it through the woods, where it would soon be buried.
Happy Thanksgiving, Mac.
Karl slumped in his seat. Wind gusts struck his patrol car, making noises like ice cracking. Eventually he’d have to contact Mac’s family, ask if they’d seen him. The thought tightened his throat.
Bad Parts Page 3