by Judy Clemens
His ignorance, and his refusal to accept responsibility for all he’d done, all the pain he and Dottie had caused, almost made Casey forget her wrist. “Those others blamed Dottie for your daughter’s death.”
“They would have loved her. I know they would have.”
“Okay. Okay, I get it.” Where were the police?
A shrill beeping filled the air. This time Casey knew what it was.
“What is that?” Vern shrieked. “Is that your phone?”
“I’m not answering it. See?” She held up her good arm, showing him her empty hand.
“Stop the phone! Turn it off!”
He raised the gun. Casey leapt toward him, scissors out, burying them in the shoulder of his shooting arm. He screamed and threw her off, blood spurting across her face. She slammed into the shelving. He fired the rifle.
The racks of canned goods exploded, and Casey disappeared under a hail of baked beans and creamed corn. She grabbed at the broken shelving and it crashed down on her, pinning her to the floor. She cried out for Reuben, Omar, her mother, Eric…but not for Death. Not this time.
With great lament she waited for a bullet, for this raving lunatic she’d known as her friend, to finish her off.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Casey woke to Nell pounding on the freezer door, and Death hovering over her, sending ice through her veins. After a quick assessment of the situation, Death led her to the carb aisle, where Vern lay bleeding out on the ground, the bloodied scissors on the floor beside him. His rifle lay at his feet, and Casey snatched it up, her head spinning.
She needed to call the ambulance to come for Vern—hadn’t she already done that?—and retrieve Nell from the freezer. Reaching as high as she could, she slid the rifle behind the top row of cereal along the far wall, not wanting to rescue Nell with a weapon in her one good hand. The girl was blue with cold when she rushed from the freezer, but alive, unmarked by bullets. Casey grabbed a blanket and some first aid equipment and took her outside. They sank onto the picnic table bench, where Nell helped Casey strap her arm to her side with an athletic band.
It was too late for Vern, because Death was gone, but Casey still had to call the cops to make sure they were coming. She was on the phone with the dispatcher when she heard it. Footsteps.
“Who’s there? Don’t come any closer.” Casey pushed Nell flat on the bench and gave her a signal to stay down, out of the line of fire. She eased her leg over the bench and stood between this new threat and the girl, finding her balance, forcing the fuzziness of her head away. Her broken wrist throbbed, but her other arm could strike, and she could use her feet.
“Who’s there?” she asked again.
“No need to worry, Casey. It’s only me.”
She recognized that voice. She’d heard it the day before, when the girl took Casey’s photo from the cab of the truck.
Casey set her phone, still connected to the 911 operator, on the bench beside Nell. She took a deep breath and stepped away from the table, wishing she still had Vern’s rifle.
“Coop? Is that you?”
“Oh, it’s not just me.” Another shadow emerged from the darkness. This one Casey had seen too many times. Had restrained too many times. At least this time he didn’t have a can of spray-paint in his hands. He looked miserable, scared, and ready to freak out.
“Lance?” Casey heard the disappointment in her voice. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, he does.” Coop grabbed his buddy’s arm, as if expecting him to flee. “We all do.”
“There’s more of you? You and your so-called friends from the other night?”
Coop smiled a shark’s smile. “And some new friends, too. Come on out, guys.”
They slid from the shadows. Faces she last saw in the dark of the Beltmore playground. Cruel. Drunk. Stupid.
Were they drunk this time? If not, she had no chance. She couldn’t run. Not with a broken wrist and a nine-year old girl.
Dammit.
Coop crossed his arms. “These new friends of mine—well, Lance’s, too, and you know how good of friends you’ve become with Lance—they were so glad when I told them you were here.” He stepped closer, checking out the front of the store, which somehow showed no sign of the carnage inside. “We stopped over at the Dailys’ house first, but nobody was home. Not even you, down in your cozy little room, with its comfy quilt and squishy chair.”
“It was you. You were in my room yesterday.”
“Of course. It’s not like it was hard to break in. That fire escape is good for more than getting out of the basement.”
Keep them talking. The cops had to be on the way. Right?
“Anyway, enough of this small talk. At least between us. My new friends have a few things to say.”
The passenger from the Beltmore playground was the first to step forward. Casey wasn’t surprised. He’d been the ringleader the other night.
“Don’t,” she said.
He laughed and looked back at his friends. “But that’s not the magic word, is it? I thought it was ‘no.’ No means no?”
“He’s wrong,” Nell whispered. “Now it’s ‘Yes means yes.’”
Casey waved her hand to shush her. She didn’t want these guys paying any attention to Nell. She didn’t trust them to pass up any female, even if she was only nine.
Casey took another step away from the picnic table, drawing the men’s eyes her way. “What do you want?”
“What do you think we want? You caused us some trouble at home. We don’t like trouble. We like things the way they were before you showed up.”
“You mean before I beat the crap out of you and left you for the cops?”
Lance let out a bark of laughter, but cut it off quickly when Coop turned on him. “You think this is a joke?”
Lance blinked rapidly, reminding Casey of the way Flower Pants flirted with Vern. She wouldn’t be doing that anymore. First, he was dead. Second, he and his murderess wife had lied to the town for years after destroying multiple lives. Casey wondered how old FP would feel about that.
Maybe not as surprised as one might expect.
“Sorry, dude.” Lance scuffed the ground with his boot. For a moment, Casey felt sorry for him. But only a moment. She’d seen flashes of brains in him during the past few days, but unfortunately he failed to use them. That was on him.
The Beltmore passenger ignored the teenagers and stepped closer. Casey shifted on her feet, staying nimble.
“So Casey…it is Casey, right? Casey Maldonado.” He spoke her last name with exaggerated vowels, stretching it out. If he thought it was sexy, or would scare her, he was wrong. He was simply an idiot who liked to intimidate women.
Not smart to make an angry woman even angrier.
Casey watched him. His eyes narrowed, and he cracked his knuckles, like he was readying for a fight. The guys behind him waited for a signal, a sign, permission from their leader. So Casey kept her attention on him. Even Coop, big man in this small town, stood a few feet behind the older man.
Older, but not smarter. Which was saying something.
If she could take down the big dog, she would be a long way to winning this fight. But Whistler and Austin would be here before that, surely?
One of the churches’ bells chimed, a solemn, held-out ring in the night, and suddenly Death stood in the midst of Casey’s attackers, again wearing a police uniform. “I’m back. Vern is not. I’m sorry. I know you kind of killed him and all, but you didn’t mean it, and he’s sort of glad, when it comes down to it. He was feeling pretty torn-up about how he’d lived his life. If it’s any consolation, he and Dottie are together, and they realize how much they let everyone down. Including themselves.”
Casey was relieved, and a little taken aback, that the Dailys had made it to the good part of the afterlife. She hadn’t been sure wha
t would happen following all they’d done.
“It’s complicated.” Death read her thoughts correctly. “They weren’t all bad, which is pretty much what you have to be to go—” Death pointed to the ground. “They’re still in shock, and I don’t think they’ll be hunting down Marianne for a while. They’re a little afraid of how she’ll react. Which is to be expected.”
Casey gave Death an exasperated widening of her eyes.
Death regarded the angry group of men, as if just noticing them. “But we have lots of time in the future to discuss this. Right now you need to concentrate.”
Duh.
Death gave her a double thumbs-up and a manic, wide-mouthed smile. “You got this.”
She shook her head. Where had she been when Death arrived? Right. Taking out the leader. “I’m surprised you’re here without your baby-sitter.”
The passenger frowned. “My what?”
“Your brother, the cop. Doesn’t he keep you out of trouble when you’ve done something stupid? Keeps him busy, I guess.”
“No one complained about anything I did. Until you.”
“And until the new police chief came to town.”
He blinked. “He’s not going to change anything.”
“I think you’re in for a surprise.”
“Watch out!” Death called.
But a sudden shift in the passenger’s feet already alerted her. She was prepared when he ran forward, swinging.
An easy swivel sent his fist past her face, throwing him off-balance. Casey grabbed his arm and pulled, giving his momentum a boost. His head hit the Coke machine with a satisfying thwack, and he collapsed onto the pavement.
His audience of morons watched open-mouthed as their spokesman lay, apparently spineless, on the cold asphalt. None of them moved as they waited for him to get up. Because he would. He was too dumb to stay down.
Eventually, he groaned and used the pop machine as leverage to climb woozily to his feet. He turned and glared at Casey, swaying on his feet. If he hadn’t been drunk before, this would have put him in the same brain space. “You bitch.”
Casey sighed. “Can’t you be more original than that?”
His face tightened. He charged.
The machine’s whack on his head had disoriented him, so he was off-center as he came at her. Casey balanced on her left foot and side-kicked him with her right, the sole of her shoe hitting him square in the face. His head snapped back. Casey hopped onto her right foot, swung her left, and sent him careening onto the hood of the rusty Chevy. He hung there for a moment before sliding, slowly, to the ground.
This time he didn’t get up.
Casey heard gravel crackling. She swung around as Coop ran at her. At the last moment Casey bent over double, pain cutting through her from her wrist, and curved underneath him. His arms, meant to grab her, encircled only air. Casey straightened, using her legs to push him up and over her back. He fell with a thud, his limbs jerking, eyes widening in surprise. He gasped for breath, and went to push himself up.
Casey crammed her foot on his throat. “Don’t.” She forced her lips to smile. “What do you know? There’s that word again.”
A sound behind Casey raised the hair on her neck. She prepared to swing around punching, but a shhh noise from Nell stopped her. Nell gave a little nod, and the okay sign with her fingers.
Thank God. Casey didn’t know how much longer she could hold out on her own.
Crash, not seeing behind Casey in the dark, made fists and leaned forward. “Who do you think you are?”
“You really want to be asking that right now?”
“No.” His nostrils flared. “I want to do this.” He took two large, thumping steps forward.
Something clicked behind Casey. A gun swung into her peripheral vision.
“I don’t think you want to do that.” Whistler stood straight and still, her gun an extension of her arm. “And the rest of you? Stay where you are if you don’t want a bullet.”
But the driver, no smarter than he’d been the week before, turned to run. He stopped abruptly when faced with the barrel of another service gun.
“Hey, there,” Austin said lightly. “Thanks for coming to Armstrong. We’re always glad for visitors.”
Sirens sounded across town, and within minutes the parking lot was filled with cops and ambulances and even a fire truck, although Casey wasn’t quite sure what fire they expected to put out. Maybe they wanted an excuse to hit the Beltmore idiots with their fire hoses.
Soon Casey and Nell sat in the back of an ambulance with blankets around their shoulders and a paramedic treating Casey’s wrist. Nell’s mother was coming from the hospital, since Nell’s grandpa was home with a bucket, so until then, Casey would stand in as her adult.
Death, sitting on Nell’s other side, would have liked to help with the girl, as well, but seeing how the paramedics were oblivious to Death’s presence, it wasn’t possible. Nell, as aware of Death as she was of Casey, placed a hand on Death’s arm, but pulled back quickly when the contact felt like a return to the walk-in freezer.
“You were very brave,” Casey told her.
“You did all the fighting.”
“You did all your surviving. You kept your head and did the smart thing.”
“All I did was listen to you and Death.”
Death’s chest puffed with pride.
Casey smiled. “Sometimes that is the smart thing.”
“Yeah.” Nell looked at her toes. Casey hoped this night wasn’t going to scar her too badly.
Nell spoke quietly. “There wouldn’t be horror movies if people listened and did the smart thing. Because then they would never go into the dark basement or out to the woods or maybe even to Halloween parties.” A sad smile flickered on her face.
Casey put her good arm around the girl’s shoulders and squeezed. She was going to be all right.
Chapter Forty
The sky was a mixture of navy and purple and pink, with a few clouds striated across the horizon. A perfect evening, after a not-so-perfect day.
Vern was dead.
Dottie was dead.
Marianne, Amelia Barrios, Anne Marie. All dead.
Casey, however, was alive. Nell’s lips had regained their pink hue. The idiots from Beltmore, along with Brian Cooper, were spending time in lock-up, while their case was being investigated. Assault. Public drunkenness. Driving under the influence. A whole mess of charges for a whole mess of morons. Lance, being the only one to hang back from attacking anyone in Vern’s parking lot, got off with a warning.
Idiot.
The cops kept Casey all day. Forensics, along with Nell’s testimony, backed up her story of Vern’s attack. The cops accepted her timeline and what she’d discovered during the past several days, including the fake carnation and the photo of the women tied up in chairs. Tara gave a statement also, recounting how they found both of those items. She was quite shattered. Casey felt both sorry and guilty she’d dragged the librarian into it all.
Casey was so weary. Could it really be only since Thursday all this had happened? Since she had left Eric? Left home?
The one good thing that came from Armstrong was her friendship with Nell. The girl made Casey promise to keep in touch, and even helped Casey create a social media page where they could connect. Plus, the girl insisted Casey keep her dog-eared copy of Carrie.
“I’m sorry.” Death plodded beside her, wearing a sackcloth, like those from the Bible, or that movie The Ten Commandments. “I let you down.”
Casey wasn’t sure what to say, because it was true in some ways. In others, she knew it was her own fault. She trusted Vern and Dottie to tell the truth. She based her belief about Armstrong and its tragedies on rumors and conjectures. She hadn’t considered the possibility that what seemed to be fact simply wasn’t.
Death
sighed heavily. “I should have known. I’ve given up too much control. Had my underlings shouldering too much of the work.”
Casey kept walking, gazing at the expanse of the horizon. “It’s a lot to be responsible for.”
“Yes, but I am the Grim Reaper. I am not a human. No matter how much I fit in.”
Casey didn’t argue, although the statement was far from reality.
“I don’t really help anybody anymore. I might as well quit. I’m a waste of space and time.”
Death moved slower and slower, until Casey realized she was on her own. She stopped and turned around.
Death sagged on the berm in a wrinkled, gray heap, exuding such despair Casey felt it from ten feet away. She walked back to her nearly constant companion of the past two and half years. “You’re not a waste.”
Death moaned. “What have I done?”
“You haven’t done anything.”
Death’s moan grew louder. “Exactly. I’ve done nothing. Nothing to make the daily life on this Earth even one iota better. I should give up my robe. Let my deputy Reaper take on my duties.”
Casey let out a short laugh. “You have a deputy?”
“Of course. What responsible boss doesn’t have a second-in-command?”
“I thought you were immortal. Why would you need a second?”
“Didn’t this past week prove that?”
“Come on. Let’s keep walking.” She continued down the road. Death soon caught up, burlap flowing like a sheeted Halloween ghost. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Not I. I’m not supposed to make mistakes.”
“I didn’t realize. Are you God now?”
Death’s mouth opened. Closed.
“That’s what I thought. So doesn’t that mean you’re fallible?”
Death didn’t speak for a few moments. “I didn’t used to let things go so far.”
“The world is a different place now. Death isn’t so cut and dried. Death with a small ‘d,’ I mean. Not you.”
They went a quarter of a mile before Death said, “I may not be able to accompany you as much anymore. Not while I catch up, see what I’ve been missing.” Death swirled in front of Casey. She stopped before accidentally stumbling through the chill. “I don’t want to let you down again, but I don’t know how else to fix things.”