Mortal Faults
Page 35
“Nope.” Nick told the story again: he remembered talking to Mars on the deck. Feeling pretty good. Then looking down at the rushing water between the slats of the deck, feeling sick. “I think I was looking for a bathroom.”
“That’s the last thing you remember?”
“Until I woke up under an oil pan.”
“You were writing an article for Vanity Fair?”
“A series, actually. ‘The Reality Show Diaries.’ Not my choice for a title. I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Sucking Up for Fun and Profit.’” Once again it hit home that all of them had been killed. If he hadn’t been in the garage, he would have been killed, too.
The detective questioned him about that at length, and also asked if he knew of anyone who would want to kill everyone in the house. He mentioned white supremacists.
The room began to spin again.
Somebody in blue scrubs bustled in and told Sloan to leave.
SIX WEEKS LATER
JOLIE
2
North Florida
The pond behind Jolie Burke’s house was about two-thirds the length of a backyard swimming pool. She figured it would take her eight strokes to reach the opposite bank.
There could be snakes in the pond. Maybe an alligator. During the day, the pond was usually opaque. The shadows were deep and almost impossible to look into. Little bubbles spiraled up near the bank where decaying vegetation and cypress trees met.
Never once before today had she contemplated swimming in it.
That all changed earlier today, when she and her cat Rex took their morning walk along the waist-high chain link fence dividing her yard from the pond, and Jolie experienced a sudden and overwhelming sense of doom.
One minute it was a normal day, the morning close and sticky, the sun hot on the top of her head. Jolie’s mind still on her parents’ first house, which she’d walked through the day before.
Then she glanced at the pond.
The feeling came up fast and gripped her hard. She couldn’t get enough air. Her heart pounded. Her hands and feet went numb. She felt as if some unimaginable horror was threatening to carry her away to a place of darkness. If she moved at all, she would fall in and the darkness would close around her and she would be lost forever.
It was the pond, a dark snare, impenetrable.
Jolie forced herself to move, to turn around. She walked back to the house. The feeling of doom followed her up the steps onto the screened-in porch and on inside to the kitchen. She sat down on a chair at the kitchen table.
Jolie sat in the chair for maybe half an hour. Time seemed to expand. The clock ticked loudly. Rex begged for his food but she couldn’t stand up to give it to him.
Finally, legs shaking, she rose to her feet and fed the cat, then went to the bedroom and put on the clothes she’d laid out the night before. She got into the car. By the time she drove into the parking lot at the Palm County Sheriff’s Office, Detective Jolie Burke felt almost normal.
* * *
After dinner, she walked out onto the screened-in porch and looked in the direction of the pond. The trees were black against the sky. Between the trunks, she could see the faint glimmer where a slice of moon was reflected in the water.
Jolie made the decision then. She went back to the bedroom and pulled on her swimsuit, nosed her feet into her flip flops, grabbed a towel from the linen closet and slapped down the path and through the gate to the pond’s edge—we’re going to fix this thing once and for all.
The moment she hit the path the feeling started to build.
By the time she reached the bank, there was thunder in her ears. Her heart pounded.
Then the chasm started to open up beneath her feet.
Ignore it.
She stepped up to the edge of the pond. The world seemed to slither from view. Her legs shook. She dug her toes into the damp earth. Whether this would result in a dive or keep her chained to the ground, Jolie wasn’t sure. Just then, the phone rang inside the house.
It startled her so much, she almost sat down. Instead, she sprinted for the back door, thinking: I’ll be back later, and we’ll finish this.
* * *
The person on the phone was Lonnie Crenshaw, the Palm County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher.
“We have a report of shots fired at the Starliner Motel in Gardenia, and at least one gunshot victim. The victim is deceased. Can you take this?”
“Sure.”
Jolie held on to the phone with one hand and stripped out of her swimsuit with the other. She walked to the closet and eyed blouses and slacks on a row of hangers. Grateful for the distraction. She would put the other stuff—the terrifying notion that this weird phobia was here to stay—out of her mind. “What’s the situation? We’re backup for the Gardenia PD?”
“Negative. It’s now a crime scene. They’re asking for one of ours to work the case.” There was a pause. “The deceased is Jim Akers.”
“Chief Akers?”
“That’s right. Are you sure you want to take this?”
It took a moment for the magnitude of the situation to sink in. Adrenaline surged as she realized both the opportunity this presented, and the possible pitfalls.
“You want Louis to take it?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Who’s there?”
“Gardenia PD. We have two units of our own on the way.”
“Tell them to stay out of my scene.”
_____________
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