The Kill Box

by Nichole Christoff

  And to my way of thinking, that was impressive.

  No sooner had I turned this over in my mind than the sound of something heavy slamming into something soft drew me on. Where the bins stopped, a wide-open area began. A wooden wagon, as old as the hills, balanced on three tires and a jack. Behind it, a hulking tractor seemed to sleep in hibernation. Other equipment crowded close. One contraption looked like the kind of bucket lift electricians climbed into when they needed to reach power lines. And ahead, with its hood up as if waiting for a mechanic to come back, was a blue-and-white Chevy pickup that looked to be from Elvis’s era.

  Past these things, on the far side of the barn, I could see half a dozen stalls for livestock. They were empty. Still, I could detect the faint, dusty scent of long-gone horses and the sweetness of alfalfa hay. On the wall beside the pens hung every kind of weird and wonderful pruning hook designed by the mind of man. Each item gleamed in the low light as if they had been recently oiled and put away for the season.

  But the implements that dazzled my eye couldn’t hold it when I heard that heavy thumping again. Massive double doors at the end of the barn had been rolled open. A brisk wind, suggesting winter was encroaching on autumn’s territory, whistled past. Outside, night was coming quickly. I could see the orchard’s majestic trees only as charcoal smudges in the gloaming.

  And there, framed in the doorway, was Barrett.

  He raised a mallet high, slammed it down on a tire mounted on some kind of turntable in front of him.

  He’d rolled his sleeves to his elbows, unbuttoned his shirt entirely. Muscle corded in his forearms, sweat slicked his chest and beaded his brow, and it was no wonder. He hammered the tire again and again as he tried to work the vulcanized rubber onto an unforgiving wheel rim.

  “I’ve got to get this finished,” he said as I joined him. “I should’ve done it last spring.”

  I glanced at the three-wheeled wagon I’d passed, looked again at Barrett, saw the fevered gleam in his eye.

  He said, “When my granddad was alive, he made sure we always offered hayrides during apple season. It was a solid moneymaker. I should’ve made sure Gram could do that now.”

  He grabbed a crowbar from an assortment of tools at his feet, went at the wheel with both hands and a vengeance.

  “That truck hadn’t had a tune-up in so long, she couldn’t remember when. I took care of it this afternoon. I should’ve done it sooner.”

  At last, under Barrett’s ministrations, the inner edge of the tire slipped into place.

  But I wasn’t sure he noticed.

  “Do you know why there’s an apartment over the garage?” he demanded as he wrestled with the wheel.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s housing for a full-time farmhand. Because at one time, this orchard brought in enough money, my grandparents could hire full-time help. Now Gram can’t do that. She’s getting older, there’s more work around here than ever, and she can’t afford help. I should’ve helped her more. I should’ve—”

  “Adam.” I touched his shoulder. He jerked away as if I’d stung him. “Why don’t you take a break for a second?”

  He dropped his crowbar onto the tire, pulled off a heavy leather glove, and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

  I said, “You left Charlotte’s café pretty quickly.”

  “There was too much to do here.”

  “I see. While you were doing things, did you happen to call Shelby?”

  “I forgot.”

  Maybe he had.

  I said, “Well, I want you to know I had a conversation with Luke Rittenhaus this morning. I think he’s pretty torn up about Eric’s death.”

  “He should be,” Barrett growled. “Vance and I told him Eric was in trouble. We told him, Jamie. That makes Eric’s suicide as much Luke’s fault as it is my…”

  Was Barrett going to say own?

  I drew a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  “Eric’s death wasn’t your fault, Adam.” I swallowed hard. This was difficult to say. Because I knew it would be difficult for Barrett to hear. “Eric didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.”

  Barrett snorted, picked up his mallet again.

  As succinctly as possible, I reminded him of the condition of the wall above the bathtub—and of the specifications of the shotgun.

  Barrett pounded the tire like he was driving nails through concrete. “Who’d want to kill Eric?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Exactly. Because there’s nothing to know. He killed himself.”

  “With two shots? How?”

  “Autonomic reflex.”

  Barrett meant Eric’s dying body had spasmed with the kill shot—and inadvertently fired the weapon again. I was willing to admit it was possible, but it was also extremely improbable, because the butt of the gun hadn’t been braced against Eric’s shoulder when the Smith & Wesson went off. If he’d shot himself, it wouldn’t have been braced against anything while he aimed the barrels at his face. With nothing to stop the recoil, the force would’ve wrenched the gun from his hand. To assume anything else had happened without investigating was foolhardy—and risked letting a killer walk away.

  When I said as much, Barrett abandoned his hammer. He dropped his gloves where he stood and stalked outside. I caught up with him in the barnyard as he glared at the rising moon, taking one deep, cooling breath after another.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine him standing in this same spot as a teenage boy, seeking peace after the unjustified and unsolved death of his dad. Likewise, it wasn’t hard to imagine a sweet and sensitive girl like Pamela Wentz had seen in him then all the qualities I saw now. Without even trying, I pictured her cutting across the fields that fateful spring evening, her fine blond hair loose around her shoulders and her silky nightgown clingy with dew, to find Barrett here, heartsick and handsome. Worst of all, in my mind’s eye, I could hear her begging him to take her for all she was and all she was worth. And strangely, in my head, her voice sounded a lot like my own.

  I shook off the sensation as Barrett said, “You just don’t want to face facts.”

  He could’ve been speaking to the roiling clouds, since he didn’t turn to look at me. Without my jacket, the night wind driving those clouds sliced through me like a knife. Or maybe it was witnessing the depths of Barrett’s sorrow that cut me to the quick.

  “What facts are those?” I asked.

  “Regardless of what happened today, I still owe my old friend,” Barrett replied. “And you and I are still through.”

  Barrett turned to me then. I couldn’t make out his expression. The cloud cover hid his face as surely as it hid the moonlight.

  “Forget about me, Jamie. Forget you ever met me.”

  “Why?” I challenged. “You haven’t forgotten a thing since Eric’s little sister caught up with you in this barn.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t. Nothing’s changed in that regard. Nothing’s going to change and that’s all the more reason for you to hit the road.”

  But that wasn’t true.

  He’d changed.

  Since the night Vance McCabe had forced his way into my home, Barrett had transformed from a guy looking forward to the future to a man whose past hurts held him hostage. He was a soldier, and for once in his life, he couldn’t see his true enemy was the regret he carried. To watch him suffer so willfully was grinding the broken pieces of my heart into dust—and I couldn’t take the pain anymore.

  I turned on my heel, walked toward his grandmother’s little shop.

  “Jamie? You don’t have to leave tonight. Daylight’s soon enough.”

  But I couldn’t answer him. Not with the sudden tightness that had seized my throat. And had taken up residence in my chest.

  I left him alone to think his misguided thoughts, ducked beneath the pretty plastic chain, and stumbled into the greenhouse. It was dark, but I found my way to the door Mrs. Barrett had left unlocked for me. I tripped along the drive and in
to the house.

  “Jamie?” Barrett’s grandmother called.

  “I’m sorry, I…I…”

  Sorrow made my speech thick. I was close to tears and I didn’t want her to see me like this. But then I remembered I had an excuse to go out again. Because a special agent with the DEA was waiting for me at a watering hole called the Roadhouse. So I could evade Miranda Barrett and my own feelings, and if that agent could shed any light on the goings-on in Fallowfield, I’d listen to him talk all night.

  Chapter 17

  With a sharp eye and a heavy foot, I drove hard and put as much distance between me and Adam Barrett as quickly as the country lanes of upstate New York would allow. The night was dark. The wind was brisk. It buffeted my car as I took the turns a little too fast. Watching the Jag’s speedometer rhythmically rise and fall with each twist in the road, however, offered a kind of solace, albeit it a small one—but I was willing to accept any comfort I could find.

  Such speed was freeing and I meant to be freer yet. Marc had said I’d find the Roadhouse halfway to Syracuse. That meant highway driving.

  I’d nearly reached the highway when, on a lonely stretch of state route, headlamps appeared behind me out of nowhere. The car was suddenly too close to my bumper, and the glare of its lights lit up my rearview mirror and filled the interior of the XJ8 to bursting. I squinted into the reflection, tried to pick out a rack of rooftop strobes. Cops of all kinds zoom up on speeders. Admittedly, I deserved a ticket, so if I was about to receive one, I wanted to get it over with.

  But the vehicle’s headlamps went black abruptly.

  And trepidation took hold of my insides.

  Because no legitimate law enforcement officer would douse his lights like that.

  A sense of self-preservation had me stomping on the gas. But in the moment before the car could respond, the driver behind me did the same. The car on my tail hit me—and it hit me hard.

  The impact yanked me back before throwing me forward. The seatbelt cut across my chest. It tugged at my hip. I gritted my teeth, gripped the steering wheel. And I heard the whine of my assailant’s overtaxed engine as he roared toward me again.

  But Jaguar’s engineers hadn’t installed all these horses under the XJ8’s hood for nothing.

  I shoved my foot to the floor, my car jumped with the burst of speed, and I saw the haze of sodium lights ahead. They beat down on the interchange to the interstate. A second more and I spied the on-ramp I needed arcing off to the right. I glanced in my mirror again, spotted the outline of a sedan fighting to keep pace with me. Through its windshield, the driver was nothing more than a silhouette, but I knew, given half a chance, he’d slam into me again.

  Like when I slowed to take the ramp.

  Or when I had to stop at the end of it.

  But I wasn’t going to let either of those things happen. I accelerated along the straightaway—and without warning, jerked the wheel at the last possible moment. I sailed up and along the concrete ribbon that connected one road to the other.

  I looked back, looked left. The sodium lights illuminated the car that had rear-ended me as it bypassed the on-ramp altogether. The vehicle shot into the enveloping darkness on the far side of the exchange.

  I didn’t get a glimpse of the driver. I didn’t catch the license plate before it flashed out of sight, either. Then again, I didn’t need to.

  In the hot light spilling from the fixtures high above, I got a good look the car.

  And I was sure it was Eric Wentz’s silver Mercury.

  I didn’t stop to call the State Police until my Jag and I were safely obscured behind the eatery where Marc had invited me to meet him. The dispatcher chalked up the incident to road rage. I didn’t bother to tell him the car belonged to a dead man.

  But I did tell Luke Rittenhaus. At least, I told the deputy who had the misfortune to be manning the desk at Fallowfield’s Sheriff’s Office after hours. He promised to relay my claim that Eric’s car had tried to run me off the road—but I silently vowed not to hold my breath until he did.

  Then, with my eyes on everything in the parking lot, I got out of the car. The rear bumper of the Jag had been smashed. The damage was cosmetic—but that was more than I could say for my sense of security. The bump-and-run wasn’t coincidental. And the fact it had been done with a dead man’s car gave me the creeps.

  Obeying Deputy Dawkins’s advice to the letter, I watched my step and headed for the Roadhouse’s main entrance.

  The place was a long log cabin, built in the days when two-lane routes like State Route 691 were high-traffic. Addition after addition had been tacked on over the years to accommodate hungry travelers, but from the dealership names on some of the license plate frames in the parking lot, plenty of folks from the Syracuse suburbs came here to chow down, too. Out front, across the way, the skeletal remains of a gas station glowed under a security light. But only one other establishment drew business this far from other towns. And that establishment, I noted, was the Cherry Bomb, the strip club where Barrett and his buddy Vance reportedly got soused before returning to Fallowfield to argue with Luke Rittenhaus over Eric’s well-being.

  And just in case I couldn’t read the hot-pink neon letters spelling CHERRY BOMB on the bar’s dusky-blue rooftop billboard—or determine what goods and services were on offer inside—a gigantic neon cherry blinked across the sign, transformed into a bomb Wile E. Coyote would’ve recognized, and bounced into a curly-haired cutie outlined in argon. The dancing lights made it look like the bomb blew off her bra, exposing her magnificent fluorescent bosom. This happened over and over as I made my way toward the Roadhouse’s entrance, but the cutie didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed by this turn of events.

  I left her to her exploding clothing, bracing myself in case the Roadhouse, too, turned out to be a real dive—but it wasn’t. Sure, a bar ranged down one side of the dining room, but the thick glass mugs hanging overhead, hand-painted with patrons’ names, wouldn’t have looked out of place holding root beer. An honest-to-goodness jukebox jangled in the corner, pumping out the soulful strains of Patsy Cline. And all the while, families with children laughed and dined at tables decked with red-and-white checkered cloths. Deep banquettes of navy blue vinyl snuggled under cheery stained-glass lamps—and in one of them, I found Marc waiting for me.

  I slid onto the bench across from him, just as a waitress materialized at our table. With a smile as wide as Niagara Falls, she placed a chocolate martini in front of me. When Marc thanked her, I realized he’d ordered the waitress to be on the lookout for me, and to have the bartender mix the drink the moment I arrived.

  “I’ve ordered appetizers as well,” Marc said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I was grateful for his thoughtfulness. As he had so often since we’d met, Marc had gone out of his way to be kind to me. Because despite his hard edge, Marc was a kind man. He was nice out of habit.

  But I didn’t miss the fact that niceness was also dating behavior. And Marc had made his intentions clear in that regard. Not that trying to date me would get him anywhere.

  For better or for worse, I was interested in dating someone else.

  And as much as I wished I could flip a switch and shut down my feelings for that someone, I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

  Still, I thanked Marc for his consideration, took a long sip of my martini.

  “You know,” I said, and licked a bit of the luscious liquid from my upper lip, “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you in the café this morning.”

  “I was just as surprised to see you,” Marc countered, “especially given what’s been going on in Fallowfield.”

  “Fill me in. What’s been going on?”

  “Let’s just say it’s one little town that’s been on our radar lately.”

  By our he meant the DEA.

  Not that Marc needed to say it.

  “Fallowfield’s only a couple hours from New York City,” he explained
. “Boston and Philadelphia are a short drive, too. Cleveland and the Midwest are a brief ride to the west, and Canada’s just a ferry ride across the lake. In locations like that, you can buy any kind of illegal drug you want.”

  “And you think drugs are flowing into Fallowfield from these larger metropolitan areas?”

  “No, I think drugs have found new routes into the larger metropolitan areas through Fallowfield.”

  With Vance McCabe and his obvious substance abuse problem in mind, as well as Charlotte’s assertion that Eric was an addict, I said, “What kind of drugs are we talking about here?”

  “Mainly heroin,” Marc replied, “and I’d give my right arm to stop it.”

  Heroin is a ruinous drug. Related to morphine and old-fashioned opium, it’s highly addictive and attacks everything from the brain on down. It can even make a body forget to breathe.

  “Heroin’s making a comeback,” Marc told me. “Too many of our soldiers got a taste for it in Afghanistan.”

  I nodded. You didn’t have to be a general’s daughter or have a father in the U.S. Senate to know portions of the Afghan population had farmed opium poppies for generations. Too often, it was the only crop that put food on the table season after season.

  And Vance had been to Afghanistan. Eric had served there, too. So maybe all roads did lead to Fallowfield.

  When Calvin had mentioned goons had jumped Charlotte’s cook, Rittenhaus had told me there’d been a boost in illegal drug usage in town. So Marc’s theory held water. And if Fallowfield had indeed become a pipeline the DEA intended to shut down, it meant I’d wandered into one of Marc’s investigations again.

  When I admitted as much, he grinned.

  And covered my hand with his.

  “Actually, Jamie, I like it when you show up in the middle of my cases.”