Gene noticed that Owens’ glass was empty. Tapping the bar, he asked, “Get you another one, Mr. Owens?”
“Huh?” Owens said, startled. “Oh, no thanks.”
Gene gave him a curious look. “You okay?”
“Just hungry, I guess. Is your cook any good?”
“Best in the Upper, if you ask me.”
“You think he’d be willing to whip up something special? I haven’t had a good meal in a while.”
Gene shrugged. “Sure. Any preferences?”
“Not really,” Owens said with a shake of his head. “I can’t boil water without burning it, so anything would be a treat.”
Gene turned to Celeste. “Tell Sam that a guy out here wants to see what kind of magic he can conjure up.”
As Celeste breezed through the door into the kitchen, Owens said, “One more thing. Do you know where I could find a place to stay? Nothing fancy, just somewhere to put my things and get some sleep?”
“That depends on how far you want to drive.”
“It has to be nearby,” Owens said. “I don’t have a car.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Took a bus,” the man said. “Then walked the rest of the way.”
“You walked all the way here from, what, Newberry?”
Owens slid his empty glass toward Gene. “There’s not much of a taxi service up here.”
“No,” Gene said warily, taking the glass. “I guess not.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a small place about a mile away. You can try there. But we’re talking more than a hundred a week.”
“I’ll check it out after I eat,” said Owens. “What time do you want me to start?”
Gene got the message: mind your own business, barkeep. “Nine okay with you?”
Owens nodded. “Nine’s fine.”
Celeste came out from the kitchen and set a meal in front of Owens. “Sam says enjoy.”
Bart Owens thanked her. Then he attacked his meal with such ferocity that Gene wondered when the man had eaten last.
Chapter 5
The sun slid slowly, inexorably toward the horizon.
The encroaching darkness had made it impossible to continue the search for Natalie; the deadfalls and the uneven ground were too treacherous to navigate without sunlight. Izzy was desperate, but she wouldn’t risk the lives of her colleagues. So, reluctantly, she’d told everyone to go home.
She, of course, had intended to stay and continue searching. Flashlight in hand, she’d planned to scour the ground until she uncovered some evidence of where her daughter had gone. But when Sten had learned of her plan, he’d protested strongly that she was making a bad situation worse by putting herself in danger. They had gone back and forth, neither giving ground, until Sten had pulled his trump card: he’d told the others about her intentions. After that, no one would leave if she didn’t agree to suspend her search for the night.
She’d been furious, mostly because she knew they were right. And she’d had little choice but to agree. So she had stowed her equipment in the trunk of the car and left the campgrounds, driving absently through town, relying on instinct to guide her.
When her cell buzzed, she looked idly at the screen. She’d gotten an email from the lab. Heart pounding, she pulled over. It contained test results. The blood found at the scene was type A negative. The same as Natalie’s. Her baby was hurt.
With her mind reeling and her heart aching, she barely remembered pulling back onto the road. Now, as she turned into her driveway, the car’s headlights washing across the façade of red bricks, Izzy noticed that the house was completely dark. All the lights were out, even the outside lights at each doorway and the two on the garage.
The neighbors on either side had their lights on, so power wasn’t an issue.
Which meant either the lights had been purposefully turned off—or something had happened to interrupt the power in the house.
Stanley was supposed to be home. And if that was the case, why hadn't—
Her stomach clenching, she hurried up the walkway. The front door was locked. She fumbled for the correct key on her keychain, unlocked the door, then shouldered it open. Her hand went to the wall on her right. Her fingers scratched along the surface until she felt the toggle switch. She pressed the lower half, turning on the overhead foyer light.
Nothing. The house remained dark. Thin blades of yellow light penetrated through the living room blinds, providing some meager illumination, though not enough to see by.
Her hand went automatically for her gun, but she wasn’t wearing it; she’d left the Glock locked in a metal box sitting on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. And the Maglite was back in the trunk of her car.
Shit.
“Stanley!” she called out. No reply. “Damn it, answer me!”
She strained to hear a voice, a scrape, a rattle—anything that would tell her that she wasn’t alone in the house.
Silence. Silence…and darkness.
She kept a flashlight in the nightstand drawer next to her bed, so she decided to make for the bedroom. With her hands held out in front of her, she made her way through the dark heart of the house.
She turned left into the living room, taking small, careful steps, all the time listening. After a few feet, her knee bumped into something soft. The leather recliner. Okay. Shift right. Another step, and her fingers grazed what felt like stiff fabric: the shade for the lamp next to the sofa. Carefully, she slid her hand under the shade and felt for the little plastic knob. Finding it, she gave a twist; the sharp click sounded loud in the dead silence of the house. She wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. Then, on impulse, she lifted her hand…and was surprised to discover the bulb missing.
Had someone—had Stanley?—removed all the light bulbs in the house? What possible reason could he have had for doing something so absurd?
Just off to her right were two hallways. One led to the bedrooms and the bathroom, the other to the kitchen and the dining room. She felt along the wall until she found the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She needed the flashlight, and her gun.
With one hand stretched out in front of her and the other running lightly against the right-hand wall, Izzy moved down the hallway. The darkness felt oppressive; it was like wading through a black sea. Her heart galloped in her chest.
After several steps, her right hand bumped up against a line of wood molding, and then the wall disappeared. The doorway to Natalie’s room. Her and Stanley’s bedroom was about ten feet further down the hallway.
Almost there.
She was about to take another step when she heard something. A noise of some kind. Like a whisper—or a whimper.
“Hello,” she said, still wishing she had the security of her gun. “Stanley?”
Another sound. This time the rustling of cloth—movement.
It came from Natalie’s room.
Izzy turned toward the doorway. “Stanley? This isn’t funny. Are you in there?”
When she didn’t get a reply, she stepped cautiously into the room. Then anoth—
POP!
Startled, she jerked her foot back. A light came on.
In the retreating darkness, Izzy saw her husband lying on Natalie’s bed, his hand moving away from a small lamp on the nightstand. He had the comforter pulled up around his shoulders. A wet line of snot ran from his nose and down his whiskery cheek. He had obviously been crying.
And there, scattered on the carpet between the door and the bed like tiny land mines, were a dozen or so light bulbs. As far as Izzy could tell, Stanley had removed all of them—all except the one he’d left in Natalie’s lamp. He had even removed the small colored bulbs she used in the hallway nightlights. There was a shattered bulb just inside the doorway. The noise she had heard was her foot breaking it.
She lifted her eyes. “Stanley, what’s with the light bulbs?”
His eyes twitched to meet hers. “I can smell her, you know.”
“You can what?”
“My God, what’s happened to you?”
“God?” Stanley said. “God’s got nothing to do with this. God would’ve brought my little girl home. Which is more than I can say for you, isn’t it?”
“That’s not fair.” Stepping around the field of glass, Izzy approached the bed. “I’ve spent the entire day looking for her.”
“Tell me, how did that go for you? Are there any leads? Are you ‘hot on the trail’?”
Izzy sat down on the edge of the bed, Stanley’s bent knees resting near her. Gesturing to the light bulbs, she said, “This isn’t helping. We’ve both got to keep it together. If you start losing it….” She scrubbed her face with her hands. She was exhausted and didn’t need this right now. “Look, there’s going to be a search tomorrow morning. Lots of people have agreed to help. Something’s going turn up.”
“You’re a day late and a dollar short, Iz. The search should’ve been done today.”
“These things take time. I’ve done my best to pull everything together. And even if Natalie’s hurt, we still have enough time to find her before—”
“She’s not hurt. She’s dead. I can tell.” He knuckled his chest with a fist. “In here.”
“It’s only been a day,” she said with a hint of irritation. “We need to stay positive.”
“It’s that feeling you get,” Stanley went on as if he hadn't heard her. “You know, after your child is born. That connection, like some kind of psychic tether, that tells you she’s all right. I’ve felt it every day—every single day—since Natalie was born. I felt her here, in my heart, and I knew she was okay. I don’t feel that anymore. I don’t feel anything.”
“No,” she said, her voice tight with anger. “You’re not doing this. You’re not giving up. Natalie needs you, now more than ever. You’re her father. Start acting like one.”
“I’m not giving up,” Stanley said, his red-rimmed eyes narrowing. “I’m facing the facts. She never came out of those woods. She never found her way to a road or the trail. She didn’t follow the shoreline to the campgrounds. She didn’t do any of those things.” He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “She didn’t do any of those things, because she’s dead.”
She turned to face him, anger flaring within her. This self-centered apathy was what had driven a wedge between them. “I refuse to believe that. I refuse to even consider it. Our daughter is alive, damn it! And we’re going to keep looking for her—both of us—and we aren’t going to stop until we find her.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “We’ll keep looking, but for different reasons.” He sighed, and closed his eyes.
She returned to her earlier question. “Are you going to tell me what’s with the light bulbs?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “The darkness made me feel safe. It hid anything that might remind me of Natalie. By taking away the light, it took away some of the pain.” He gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Guess I went a little overboard.”
“Couldn’t you have just turned them off?”
“It wouldn’t have been the same.” His voice was so low she had to lean in to hear him. “Don’t ask me why, but it wouldn’t have been the same.”
“Okay, then why are they on the floor?”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Natalie,” he said. “I was afraid that she would come back—a dead, shuffling, shambling thing—and that she would accuse me, the man who was supposed to keep her safe, to protect her, of failing. I was afraid she would take me away and make me suffer for letting her die.” He shivered. “The light bulbs were there to warn me.
“Now, go away and leave me alone.”
Then he buried his face into the pillow.
Izzy wanted to tell him that Natalie wasn’t coming for him, that it was his own misplaced guilt that stalked him, but decided that it would be heaping cruelty upon his own self-inflicted punishment.
She got up and started picking up the light bulbs. It wouldn’t take her long to replace them.
There was already enough darkness in her life. She wasn’t going to live in it.
* * *
Eugene Vincent prided himself on being pretty laid back. He wasn’t surprised by much of anything. But now he stood behind his bar, a look of astonishment on his face.
Owens had plugged in his guitar—an expensive-looking Martin acoustic with custom pickups—into the amp. The Music Man wasn’t intended for an acoustic guitar, but Owens had fiddled with the knobs along the front casing until he was satisfied. After tuning up the guitar, he’d started to play. And the man played well. Very well.
He’d opened with Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame.” But instead of the usual upbeat, swing rhythm, he’d slowed it down, added breaks that weren’t in the original, and gave it a bluesy feel.
The next five songs were also classic oldies hits. Again, they were transformed by the fingers and voice of Bart Owens into something deeper, more emotional.
Then the man shifted to rock songs. He changed the tuning on his guitar and slid into a slow, soulful rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song.” After a Stones’ and a Beatles’ tune, he launched into a jumping, rockabilly version of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight.”
When he finished the song, Owens took a sip of water from a bottle sitting on the amp. He talked to the crowd for the first time that night.
“Thank you all for being here tonight. Hope you’re enjoying the music. I’m going to take a brief break. Be right back.”
He walked off the stage and headed for the restroom.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gene said, mostly to himself.
“Can’t you get some real music in here?” came an unexpected reply.
Gene looked down at the end of the bar. Denny Cain glared back at him.
Denny had wandered into the Lula early that evening. Gene had wondered why the man was here and not home with his wife but figured it was none of his business. He’d given Denny two drinks and all the food the man had wanted, on the house. But Denny—having found his drinking buddy Chet Boardman—had downed one scotch after another, matched by Chet’s bourbon and cola. Feeling sorry for the guy, Gene had let the drinking go on longer than he should have; after all, the man had just lost his only child. But both were now pretty plowed and he’d cut them off.
Gene walked down to Denny and Chet. He stopped in front of them and put his elbows on the bar top. Leaning in close, he asked, “You got a problem, Denny?”
Denny blinked slowly. Grief and alcohol had etched red lines into the whites of his eyes. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble gave his face a haggard, sunken look.
“Problem?” Denny replied. “Yeah, Gene, I gotta problem. You see, my son’s dead, all ripped to shreds and lying in a morgue. I ain’t never gonna see him again. So hell yeah, I gotta huge fucking problem.”
“Fuckin’ problem,” Chet chimed in drunkenly.
Other customers looked over at them. Gene said, “Keep your voices down, okay? Now, can I get you guys something else to eat? Some coffee, maybe.”
“Don’t want nothing,” complained Denny. He glanced over to the stage. “But you can tell him to stop squawking.”
Gene frowned. “Who, Owens? Come on, the guy’s good. Easily the best musician I’ve had in here. Not my fault if you don’t like the music.”
“It ain’t the music,” clarified Denny somewhat blearily. “It’s him.”
“I’m not following,” said Gene. “What’s your beef with Owens?”
Denny glared at Gene. “You saw that mark near his eye. That teardrop thing. I ain’t stupid, Gene. I seen stuff like that on television, on those cop shows. That’s a prison tattoo. The guy’s been locked up.”
“You don
’t know that,” countered Gene, though he’d had similar thoughts earlier in the day. “And even if it’s true, that has nothing to do with him working here. As long as he minds his own business, I’ve got no problem with him.”
“I knew he was trouble,” said Chet, “from the moment I saw him.”
“And you,” Gene said, jabbing a finger at Chet, “can quit stirring the pot.”
Chet sat quietly, sliding his empty glass back and forth across the bar, first to one hand, then to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. His eyes followed the glass. “I thought you wanted a real musician. I didn’t think you was gonna bring in one of them.”
So that was it, Gene thought. And I thought I’d left that garbage behind in Chicago. “Chet, you don’t need to go there.”
Then Denny Cain finished it. “You brought in a nigger.”
“My kid’s dead and what does that asshole do? He throws me out!” Denny shoved one hand down his jacket pocket, fumbled around, and came up empty. His other hand was no more successful than the first. “Where the fuck are my car keys?”
“Gene took ‘em,” Chet replied. “Yours and mine, remember? We’re walkin’ tonight.”
Denny didn’t remember. Truth be told, after he’d gone to see his boy, he didn’t remember much of anything. His day in hell had started late this morning with the visit from Chief Morris. The woman had broken the news about Jimmy’s death. Then things got worse. Maddie, after learning that her boy was dead, had taken down every dish, plate, saucer, glass, knife, fork and spoon from the cupboards and washed them—every single damn one of them. And when she was done with them, she’d piled that crap on the floor and proceeded to wipe down all the cupboards and counters. Then Denny had gotten the call: could someone come over to the hospital and positively identify the deceased’s remains? He’d asked Maddie if she wanted to go. At the time, she was scrubbing the ceiling with a brush and a bucket of undiluted Pine-Sol. With a flick of her wrist, she’d nailed him point blank on the top of his head with the brush. Well, having gotten his answer, Denny drove alone to the hospital. And when the doctor pulled back the sheet, when Denny saw what had been done to his son, he ran to the nearest sink and threw up until he got the dry heaves. After that, the rest of the day was a smudge of memory.
Forever Man Page 5