by Ninie Hammon
He wasn’t aware of reaching into the grocery sack on the floor beside him and grabbing the bottle of Maker’s Mark. Ripping off the lid, he turned it up and gulped it down so fast he choked and strangled and the amber liquid dripped off his chin.
The swallowing motion calmed, the burning liquid soothed. The familiar fuzzy warmth began to return. The door in the dark no longer strained at the hinges and Fish was able to crawl slowly back up out of that place into the light.
And in the light lay the body of poor little Martha Whittiker.
He hadn’t intended to hurt her! He was supposed to be long gone before she even got home. It had been an accident, not his fault.
But she was dead!
And if you killed somebody when they caught you stealing from them …
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
If finding out he’d stolen from Mrs. Whittiker would make folks wary of him, what if they knew he’d killed her?
What could he do? Would anybody understand that he had meant no harm? Would anybody believe it had been an accident? Particularly when he was blurry on the details of exactly what did happen.
What could he—?
That’s when the brilliant idea struck him. In his usual sodden state, the brilliant ideas almost never made it all the way to the higher centers of his brain for him to consider them. He wasn’t sober now, but he was certainly not as inebriated as he would have liked and this one made it through.
Just an image. A face, but it was enough. Dylan Shaw.
The kid was stoned. So stoned that if his grandmother’s body suddenly appeared in his living room, he’d have no idea how it got there. You could march the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps through the apartment right now and he wouldn’t notice.
Most important, he was just a kid — what, seventeen maybe? More likely sixteen. Lynch mobs didn’t hang children. He was certain the code of human chivalry would frown on such behavior.
Liam Montgomery was the county’s only duly sworn law enforcement officer and it took that poor boy an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes. Would he/could he even arrest the boy? Not likely. Fish wouldn’t be consigning a drugged-out teenager to a lifetime behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. Even Fish had not sunk low enough to do a thing like that. At least not yet. But he didn’t mind at all getting the boy blamed for his grandmother’s death to ensure that nobody went looking for the person who really did kill her. Where was the harm in that if the boy would suffer no consequences for the crime? The county was without a legal system right now, and by the time it had one again, if it ever did, it’d be too late to gather enough evidence to make a case. The boy would get off.
And nobody would ever know Holmes Fischer was even in the neighborhood.
For the world to be convinced Mrs. Whittiker met her untimely death in her grandson’s apartment out back, there could be no evidence to the contrary here in her kitchen.
Fish would have to clean up the mess. And wipe his fingerprints off … Nobody in Nowhere County had a fingerprint kit.
Clean up the mess, and get rid of the body.
He screwed the lid back on the bottle of Maker’s and set it back in the grocery sack. He wouldn’t have to give it up. That alone was payment in full for what he was going to have to do next — which was sober up enough not to screw up, clean up after a … a murder.
And get rid of the body.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Judd was talking and E.J. had to tune out the agony of his leg and the screaming in his head to listen.
“… see them from there.”
“See the girls?”
“Up in the loft. Open that door and you can see down the hill to the bottom of the lane.”
“So you could climb up there, yell at Doreen, tell her—”
“She couldn’t hear me yell, not from here.” He looked like a horrible thought had just occurred to him. And it had. “Julie’s got that thing, that iWhatever thing stuck in her ears all the time, listening to music. She wouldn’t hear me yelling if I was standing five feet away!”
E.J. remembered the iPod.
“We got to kill Buster, now, right now. I keep the guns on my gun rack loaded. I get in the house, I could grab my deer rifle in ten seconds.”
A shot from a deer rifle would drop the dog in its tracks.
“I gotta get me that gun.”
That was it, then, there wasn’t any way around it.
“Is there any other door out of the barn?”
“Just the big’uns.” Two bay doors swung opened on the front of the barn, big enough to admit the tractor, farm equipment, and the occasional cow or sheep. Those doors were fastened shut now with a hasp on the inside.
“That it? Just those?” E.J. gestured toward the bay doors.
“You could jump outta the hay loft.”
“So the only way in or out—?”
“There’s a hole in the wall, over there behind that barrel. I hit it with the edge of the tobacco setter and knocked some boards loose and Buster liked to dug his way in here through it.”
“Could you get out that way?”
“Me? Crawl through that hole?”
“If you had to, could you do it?
“Yeah, I guess. I could kick out another board or two … if I had to. Why?”
“Because I have a plan — not a very good one, but it’s the only shot we have.”
It didn’t take E.J. long to explain what he had in mind and he watched Judd’s eyes grow bigger and bigger as he spoke.
“A skinny guy like me, I’ll fit,” E.J. said.
“What makes you think you can outrun—?”
“I don’t, actually. That last part is just … you know, a Hail Mary. I figure he’ll take me down as soon as I turn around and start running … well, hobbling.”
“But E.J., if Buster gets you, he’ll kill—”
“He’s already killed me, Judd. It’ll take a while, but I’m as good as dead.”
“What are you talk—?”
“Rabies. I told you — I’m not vaccinated.”
“You’re what! A veterinarian and you—?”
“A long story, Judd, and we don’t have time for me to tell it.”
“But … but even if you ain’t had the vaccination … folks get bit all the time who ain’t been vaccinated and they give ‘em—”
“Medication that, to my knowledge, is not available anywhere in Nowhere County.”
“You ain’t got any at—?”
“I’m a vet, Judd. I treat animals, not people. You don’t go to a vet if you get bitten by a dog, you go to the emergency room. The rabies immune globulin is available in hospitals. Oh, the hospital in Carlisle might not have any on hand, I suppose, but they could send off to Lexington to get it if they don’t.”
“And you can’t go …?” It was beginning to settle in on Judd, but he still fought it. “The Jabberwock ain’t always gonna be there. Soon’s it—”
“We could debate this all day. It’s my opinion that Nowhere County is stuck with the Jabberwock—”
“For good?”
“Just my opinion, but it doesn’t have to stay here forever to cook my goose, as the phrase goes. The incubation period for rabies in a human is a week, maybe two weeks — depending on the amount of the virus … and Buster gave me a big dose. First shot needs to be administered within the first twenty-four hours. Once you start showing symptoms … it’s over. There’s not a thing they can do for you. Best doctors in the best hospital in the world would just have to stand by your bed and watch you die.”
Judd just looked at him, flabbergasted.
“It’s an ugly way to die, Judd.”
“So’s getting your throat ripped out by a dog,” Judd whispered.
“True that. I’d rather die in my sleep at some time after my one-hundredth birthday. As soon as Buster took a hunk out of my leg, that stopped being an option. Of the available options, I pick number two. It’s the only chance we have to save Ju
lie and Michelle.”
Judd actually backed up a step, shaking his head.
“I don’t know about this, E.J. …”
“Yes, you do, Judd. You do. You don’t like it and neither do I. But you know. If you’ve got a better plan, let’s hear it. If you don’t, you need to start that tractor and engage the power take-off, unfasten the clasp on the bay doors and then haul your butt up into that loft to watch for the girls.”
He paused.
“They might not even come today, you know that, in which case the best laid plans of mice and men …”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Just get up into that loft.” E.J. looked at his watch and couldn’t see the numbers on it. He’d lost his glasses … somewhere. “How much time do we have?”
Judd looked at his own watch and all the color washed out of his face.
“Maybe ten minutes.”
E.J. extended his hand to Judd. “Then help me up and get after it.”
Judd pulled E.J. to his feet, with all his weight on his right leg. The room swam in and out of focus as soon as he was upright, a loud whahm, whahm, whahm sound echoed in his head and he was almost overcome by a wave of nausea. He reached out his other hand to the door behind him to steady himself.
“Shoot, you can’t even stand up. How you think you’re gonna outrun—”
“My problem, Judd. Go!”
They stood for a moment, eyes locked. E.J. saw tears well up in Judd’s. He still had E.J.’s hand in his and he grasped it with the other hand, too, stood holding it in both of his. E.J. felt the calluses on Judd’s hands, a farmer’s hands. Judd shook his hand slowly, paused, then let go, resolutely turned and ran toward the tractor.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She was dead.
She was. Grandma Whittiker wasn’t breathing, which meant she was dead. But you could start somebody back breathing if you knew how and he didn’t know how, but if you did you could start their hearts and get them to breathe again with that thing — CPR, that thing — but he didn’t take the class the fire department offered because he was somewhere else, he didn’t remember where else, but somewhere, so he didn’t learn how to do the thing, the CPR thing.
If not-breathing was why they was dead, you could bring them back.
But Dylan didn’t think her not breathing was why his grandmother was dead. It was the other way around. She was dead and that was why she wasn’t breathing. She was dead, she was, you could tell, just look at her, and she felt cold, which meant even if he’d known how to get somebody to start breathing again after they’d stopped it wouldn’t do no good because she was already dead.
Stop it.
Stop it!
Dylan literally grabbed hold of his hair at his temples and pulled, like that would stop the thoughts that were racing around inside his skull so fast he couldn’t think them, didn’t have time to think them, was afraid maybe them spinning around and around in there so fast like that could cause enough friction to set his hair on fire. That was crazy.
It was the meth, that was why he couldn’t think. No, he could think. That was the problem, he could think but there were too many thoughts and he had to stop them, slow them down because he had to think them. Had to figure out what to do.
Grandma was dead. She was dead, her body cold, had been that way when he woke up and found her on the floor, and he didn’t know what she’d died of.
Except he did, sort of. He’d been snorting and shooting up, getting all kinda high after he stole that stash of Buddy’s and brought it home to party down. That had been yesterday. No, the day before. No yesterday, and he’d been flying … oooooh doggies, he’d been up there and then …
Then what?
Dylan didn’t know.
He couldn’t remember.
Think, he had to think. He had to remember.
He’d got high and then …
There was nothing there. Blank. He didn’t know what’d happed between when he got high and him waking up here on the floor beside his grandmother and her body was cold and she wasn’t breathing and he didn’t know how to start her breathing again but even if he did it didn’t matter because she was dead.
Dead!
Dead with blood. Blood everywhere. Her blood or his or maybe somebody else’s altogether but there was blood and her hair was all matted with it so she didn’t just die in her sleep, have a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it was that old people did who went to sleep and didn’t wake up. That wasn’t it. She had died of something violent and Dylan couldn’t remember what it was.
But somebody’d killed her. Killed her. Murdered her.
Somebody.
Who? And if they killed her, maybe they were still here, waiting, lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting …
Dylan dropped to the floor and put his arms over his head to shield it and screamed, “Please don’t, no, don’t!”
But there was no sound after that except his own ragged breathing and he looked up and there was nobody standing there with the axe about to chop into him with it. Or a knife about to stab him. Or a gun about to shoot him. Wasn’t nobody there at all. Except his sweet little old grandmother. And she was dead.
She was dead and her white hair wasn’t white anymore but red and not from red hair dye. It was red from the blood that’d come out of a — head wound! — after somebody hit her or hacked her or stabbed her or something!
He had rolled away from her as soon as he realized she was cold because she was dead and now he was huddled in the corner of the filthy room, looking at her body on the floor and knowing that the blood was hers and that’s why she was dead.
Somebody was screaming, wailing. Crying out in terror.
And he realized it was him. He was the one screaming, huddled there in the corner of the filthy room with Grandma’s bloody dead body on the floor, and what was Dylan going to do?
He clamped his hands over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. Shook his head as if to clear it, but that was like shaking the pieces of a puzzle in a can and thinking that’d fit them all together again. It only made the random firing thoughts fire faster.
Dead. She’s dead.
And …
And …
Then his thoughts slowed. He’d ridden a carnival ride once with a rollercoaster that went faster and faster until you were screaming even though you didn’t mean to but the scream was ripped out of your throat and then at the bottom the rollercoaster car hit water—
The car hit water and slowed down.
Hit the water, splashed water everywhere and slowed down.
His thoughts slowed down like that now. Felt like some of them slammed into the backs of others of them, the ones behind that were still going fast hitting the ones in the front that had hit the water and slowed down.
Grandma was dead.
She was dead because somebody had killed her.
He thought that last thought so slow it seemed to take a hundred years to think it.
Somebody had killed Grandma.
Somebody had … what? Didn’t shoot her, he didn’t think. He couldn’t see the wound on her head but he’d bet it wasn’t round like a bullet made the hole. What then? An axe? A machete? A meat cleaver? Hacked Grandma in the head with an axe and got pieces of her skull and hair and brain on the axe and that had killed her.
Who killed Grandma?
Who hit Grandma with the bloody axe?
Then the slow thoughts stopped altogether. He sat cowering in the corner of the room not thinking anything at all. Maybe you had to be thinking something to think you weren’t thinking anything but his mind appeared to be totally empty. Hollow.
It was empty, like the gym at school after they turned off the lights and you walked across the floor in the dark and your steps echoed off the bleachers.
Like that. Empty. Echoing.
Dylan did not remember killing his grandmother. He didn’t remember hitting her in the head with an axe. Or a machete. Or a meat cleaver? B
ut somebody did.
Someone had been here with him and Grandma. Someone who hit Grandma with … something, had killed her.
Or he imagined somebody else was here and it had really been him who killed her.
Dylan could almost feel an axe in his hands, a meat cleaver, slippery because it had blood on it.
And then he was running. Across the room, out the door, down the gravel road to the old pickup truck Grandma’d got him — Grandma Whittiker, who was dead. He leapt behind the wheel and only then thought to wonder if there were keys in it. But there were keys.
He started the truck, slammed it into gear, pulled out of his grandmother’s driveway and went flying down the street, no destination in mind. Driving too fast to keep the truck between the curbs, bounced up into somebody’s yard and hit a mailbox, bounced down into the street again and kept going. Then he was out of town and he didn’t know how he’d made it down the streets but he was on the highway now and the world passed by the windows in a green smear.
He wasn’t going anywhere. Just going.
He had to get away. Just away. Anywhere away. He’d go to Lexington or Cincinnati. Get a bus to … somewhere. Anywhere. He had a debit card in his wallet … if he had his wallet. He had enough money for a ticket to—
The world suddenly turned black, shiny, sparkling black, and his head filled with buzzing static.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
E.J. heard the rumble when Judd cranked the old John Deere tractor to life, heard the squee sound and then just the whirring of the spinning shaft when he engaged the power take-off. Judd’s was a small barn and he had arranged its limited space to maximum storage. The tractor was jammed up against the far wall, not five inches of clearance between the big wheel and the wall. On the other side was a stack of hay bales six feet high so that Judd had to maneuver the tractor just right so it would fit.
Judd climbed down out of the driver’s seat and ran to the bay doors on the front of the barn. He unhooked the hasp. Buster could get into the barn now with the hasp unlocked. If he lunged at the door with the force he’d thrown himself into the side door, the bay would fly instantly inward.