Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Thank you so much for your help,” Erin said dully, then looked at Arch. “You got anything you want to ask?”

  Arch just stared, like he’d put on the spot. “I can’t think of anythin—”

  “What were you talking to Sheriff Reeve about?” Hendricks asked, shoving his dick right into this. The brim of his hat was down, head cocked, and she could just barely see his eyes as he stared fiercely at the Pikes.

  “I was going to talk to him about budgetary issues,” Pike said. “About getting y’all in the watch paid.”

  Hendricks just stared at him, like he was a duelist on a Wild West street. “Is that so?” There was something real hard about the way he said it, and his hand was lingering a little too near to his Colt—

  “Come on, Hendricks,” she said, bumping up against him as she turned to leave.

  “I got questions—” Hendricks started to say.

  “You’re not a deputy,” she said, just as fiery. If he wanted to have a pissing contest right here, she’d drop trou and water the ashes at the back of the building with him. She was feeling so full of pressure right now, she would win in a heartbeat, she knew that much. He wasn’t going to be his dick self right now.

  Not in her county.

  A little flame lit in his eyes and he looked right at her. “That’s how it is, huh?”

  She stared cool as ice back, frosty as the coming winter. “That’s how it is. Let’s leave these nice folks alone. They’ve had a trying day.”

  He looked like he might whip it out and give a spray right here, but then it was like he visibly disengaged from the process, turning away, long black coat rippling dramatically behind him as he stalked off across the parking lot toward his vehicle.

  “Were he and Sheriff Reeve tight?” Mrs. Pike asked as Hendricks got in his car and started it, headlamps flaring. He backed out of the parking lot onto the road and gunned it, squealing tires as he pointed the car toward Midian and raced off.

  “Not particularly, no,” Arch said.

  “As far as I know,” Erin said, staring after him, “they didn’t really get along at all.” She shook her head. “He’s just got a burr up his ass.” She motioned to Arch, and the two of them sauntered back toward where Barney Jones and Braeden Tarley were waiting, not far away. Guthrie and Duncan trailed in their wake, joining the little circle in the parking lot once they’d come to a halt.

  “Did you find the body? Do we know for sure he’s dead?” Jones asked in a low, hushed voice. Respect for the dead. That was novel, Erin thought, compared to Hendricks’s fly-off-the-handle-at-everything reaction.

  “Yes,” Erin said, when Arch didn’t answer for her. “We …” The next words came to her naturally, like someone had handed them right to her. “We need to get the watch together. All hands. They need to know.”

  *

  Lauren was about ready to call this one a day. Not a great day, obviously, because they didn’t really have great days anymore, not since the demons had come and treated her life like a metaphorical Hummel cabinet and sent everything crashing to about a million pieces. But she lived in hope that each day would at least fall into the category of “marginal,” or maybe even “not totally shit.” Lauren figured modest goals were best for now.

  Molly had not said a word to her all evening and was avoiding any room she was in. Elise was still out, probably sitting at one of those fancy restaurants for dinner now, eating a buffalo wing lollipop or pork belly bao bun or whatever the hell the present fancy culinary trend was, and talking about awesome shoes and awesome living with her similarly unattached friends before going to a concert and listening to cool new artists perform in small venues where you could almost reach out and touch them.

  “Marginal,” Lauren reminded herself. Modest expectations. Maybe try not to be jealous of her high-flying single friends who hadn’t had children in their teenage years—or had their hometowns invaded by demons in their thirties.

  Lauren was slowly getting ready for bed. Flossing was the chore it always was, and brushing her teeth was a lot less easy since she left her sonic toothbrush behind when she refused to actually ever go home again after her mother was murdered in front of her eyes in the bathroom. It probably had blood on it anyway, but …

  She missed her toothbrush now. It was a symbol of everything that had been ripped away from her, she thought, as she stood in front of the mirror, the familiar, soothing hum of the toothbrush no longer there.

  Kind of like how Midian wasn’t there for her now. She drove the streets of Chattanooga and everything felt …

  Well, not like home.

  Unfamiliar. Cold, even. Which was sad, because she’d been coming to Chattanooga her whole life and always thought it was cool and fun and exciting. She would have loved to live in Chattanooga at almost any point in her life.

  Until now.

  Now she wanted to live somewhere she couldn’t live.

  The dull bristles scratched against her teeth. God, this was so much work compared to the sonic toothbrush. Sure, it sounded like an angry Waterpik rampaging across her teeth, but it was her angry Waterpik, and it was a piece of home. She looked around Elise’s guest bathroom. Everything was so finely appointed, so beautiful and artisanal and gorgeous and thoughtfully done. There was even a wooden carving of Tennessee with a heart where Chattanooga was, hanging above the toilet. It said “Home” above the heart, and it was so cute that Lauren thought she might die of diabetic shock right there.

  The heart was in the wrong place, she reflected grimly.

  She’d stopped brushing, and without a sonic toothbrush, this was a problem because now the damned bristles weren’t doing anything for her. She started brushing again, and spat, and called it quits. Brushing her teeth was not going to get her full attention. Not tonight.

  Lauren sighed, and headed over to the toilet, dropped her soft cotton pajama bottoms and did what she had to do. She wasn’t staring in the mirror anymore, but she knew she wore a grim look, filled with sad from front to back. There was no papering over how she felt. She’d been forced from her home, and now she was bunking with a friend, and her daughter flat-out hated her—

  “Mom.” A soft knocking came at the door, and Lauren scrambled for her panties and pajama bottoms.

  “Uh, just a sec,” Lauren said. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying, softly, on the toilet. How pathetic could pathetic get? Was there a natural bottom? “I’m just—” She pulled her pants up and hit the flush button (there was an actual button on the back of the tank, with one inset for pee, and one for … larger items. How eco-cool was that?). “I’m—coming—”

  Molly was coming to talk to her! For the first time in what felt like decades. She almost tripped on the tile floor trying to get her pants up as she scrambled to—

  Lauren unlocked the door and opened it to find Molly standing there, phone in hand, a look on her face somewhere between disgusted and … something else.

  “Mom …”

  Lauren felt the floor fall out from below her stomach. Something bad had happened, she could just tell. Someone had died. There was no doubt in her mind by the look on her daughter’s face. She managed to squeeze out one word, shocked, like she was pushing out a bomb: “Who?”

  Molly’s lip wobbled, but she managed to get it out. “Sheriff Reeve.” She sniffled, and the first tear ran out of her left eye, tracing a course down her cheek. “He’s dead.”

  *

  Pike watched the little meeting after they’d all shuffled across the parking lot, trying to keep that traumatized look on his face, the dusky sky overhead like a purple neon shining down on them. He stayed silent until they were out of earshot to not chance anyone overhearing. Darla rubbed her hand up and down his back, like he was a good dog.

  He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “I think we did it. I think by killing Reeve—we fucking got ’em.”

  She waited a long few seconds to reply, but when she did, she sounded as satisfied as if he’d given her th
e biggest orgasm she’d ever had instead of petering out last time. “Oh, yeah,” she breathed, deep and throaty, but low so no one else could hear. “We got ’em.”

  *

  Erin trudged into the sheriff’s station about an hour later. The sun was gone, sundown coming on quick with autumn’s arrival, so unlike those long, lazy summer days when it had been hesitant to go. Now it fled quickly; here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? And was already gone even though it was barely six o’clock.

  “Can you believe Thanksgiving is only a couple weeks out?” Casey Meacham was saying. The bullpen had a smoky smell to it, Erin realized as she came in. They’d sent out a text message to assemble as much of the watch as could come, and here it was, what they had of it. Her eyes flitted over the counter that separated the waiting area from the beating heart of the station’s operations—there wasn’t a lot of room, so the counter was all the separation there was—and saw the people haphazardly arrayed about. Brian was in place as dispatch, head down. Meacham didn’t seem too fussed, and Father Nguyen was pretty stoic. McMinn and Drumlin were there too. They were both wearing their reflective vests from the plant, their hair mussed from wearing safety helmets.

  The scene was a study in human misery, everyone up their own asses in thought. Erin wrinkled her nose as she passed behind the counter; she’d beaten the others back from Culver because she’d put pedal to metal and given zero fucks about speed limits or other bullshit. She’d needed to clear her head.

  Hadn’t worked.

  “Erin,” Nate McMinn said, looking up. He had a hangdog look, that motherfucker, kinda shy until you got to know him. “What happened?”

  Erin took a breath, caught that smoky aroma in the air again. Was that weed, or the smoke that was left on her own clothes? Didn’t matter. “We think another one of those fire sloths must have hit the county offices,” she said, voice about as subdued as could be without shooting a needle full of heroin right into her arm. At least that’d dull the shit out of the pain that was running through her right now like a forest fire, burning up everything of substance within. It had felt hotter a little while ago. Now she just felt hollow, like her feelings really had room to echo around. Almost numb.

  Father Nguyen did one of those long, slow shakes of his head. “A real tragedy.”

  The bell above the door jangled behind her. “Fucking right it’s a tragedy,” Hendricks said, coming in. His cowboy boots rang on the old white tile floor like he’d come in shooting. His head was down and he looked steaming pissed, hat brim hiding his eyes as he cruised along, like a shark cutting through the waters. “What are we gonna do about it?”

  That produced a moment of silence, and not the honorable, thoughtful kind. “Well, what the hell do you think we should do about it?” Erin asked, drenching the question—unintentionally—in sarcasm. She didn’t actually care what he thought, or if she did, it was buried under a six-layer cake of bitter fucking pissiness of the sort that Hendricks seemed to both inspire and use himself.

  “I think we ought to go right after the motherfucker who did this,” Hendricks said. “We go find this fire sloth, if that’s what did it, and tear that motherfucker up.”

  That produced another moment of silence, and Erin, of course, found herself speaking up again. “This isn’t the only problem we’ve got, Hendricks. There’s still a goddamned pack of those shadow cats out there, the ones that wrecked Mary Wrightson’s house—”

  “Hey, where is Grandma, anyway?” Hendricks looked around. “She disappear as soon as Arch put his pants back on or what?”

  “She went home with her son,” Brian said. “She asked Benny to put her boy on the text list.” He shrugged. “Guess she got a taste for fighting, but I assume she must have been tired or watching Wheel of Fortune or something when the call went out tonight, cuz …” He swept an arm around the place. “Of course, people are still dragging in.”

  The bell jingled again, and Erin turned. Guthrie and Duncan were next to enter, the stately black lady whistling like she didn’t give a fuck and Duncan a notch more subdued than usual. “These are some sad sack motherfuckers,” Guthrie pronounced, really leaning into the accent and almost making a joke of it.

  “Hey, show some respect for the dead,” Nguyen said, the little priest coming to life, frown heavy on his forehead and weighing down the corners of his mouth.

  “If I did that,” Guthrie said, “I’d never get a chance to be flippant, because you people are dying all the time.”

  “There are an awful lot of us dying lately,” Keith Drumlin said, his voice just dead. His eyes were fixed, staring at the floor.

  “There are a lot of you fleshy bags of farts dying every day,” Guthrie said, sidling up to the counter and plopping down her elbows. “I don’t hear you crying about it most of the time; just when it comes geographically close to you. You know why that is?” No one answered, either because they were too surprised to, or because no one had rallied the rudeness to shut down the rudest motherfucker of all, standing right in their midst. “Because your brains are programmed tribally. If it’s too far outside your little circle of trust …” She mimed a head exploding motion, even making a “Tschhhh!” sound.

  “Bullshit,” Erin said, her cheeks burning. She took that personally. “When we see a tsunami hit Japan, for instance, people donate money—”

  “Because you can see it,” Guthrie said. “On the news, on the net, whatever. It’s visible now in a way it wasn’t before.”

  “It’s not because we see it—it’s because we care for others, you dick,” she fired back.

  “Maybe,” Guthrie said. “I wouldn’t exactly call that an evolutionary adaptation, though. In a state like the one we’re in, you’re going to get a lot farther by thinking tribally than trying to go into a fight worrying about the puppies of Cambodia and the poor unfortunates of the Oregon coast.”

  Brian blinked. “What … what happened on the Oregon coast?”

  Guthrie looked at him. “Have you been there lately? They got a homeless problem you wouldn’t believe. All these small towns, filled with bums …” She quieted for a second, pausing for dramatic effect. “… smoking weed all day, not doing a damned thing.” She loosed a quicksilver smile at him.

  There was a silence where you could have heard pants drop. Well, Guthrie had sure shown her ass. A second, it lasted, and then McMinn let out a snicker, followed by Drumlin, both looking sidelong at Brian, who was red as a USSR flag.

  “Hilarious,” Brian said from behind that suffocating crimson on his cheeks.

  The bell above the door dinged again, and in came Ms. Cherry, not a hair out of place, her makeup Grade A, wearing stilettos and a coat that kept her rack under wraps. Erin felt a little tiny surge of envy, because every man in the room looked as she came in. “I just heard,” Ms. Cherry said, coming up to the counter and leaning over on it. Every man’s eyes widened, watching, but the coat thwarted them.

  “Let me ask you a serious question,” Guthrie said, peering at her. “Do you look like this all the time? Because I’m guessing it takes some serious effort to put on a face like that. Like an hour or better. Am I right?”

  “It takes effort, yes,” Ms. Cherry said coolly, “but this is hardly the time for makeup tips, darling.”

  Duncan laid a hand on Guthrie’s arm, and Guthrie said, “What? I’m asking, okay? Curiosity didn’t kill any OOCs that I know of, just pussies—y’know, cats. So don’t be one.”

  “I think curiosity kills boners sometimes,” Casey Meacham said, just drifting right out of his lane and into that conversation. “Lucky thing hard-ons get produced on an industrial scale.” He arched his eyebrow, and Erin looked away.

  “What do we do now?” McMinn asked.

  “Well—” Erin started to say.

  “Revenge,” Hendricks said.

  The bell rang out, and Erin turned. Here came Arch, with Barney Jones and Braeden Tarley in his wake. Arch didn’t look too happy.

  “Grandma finally
got here, kids,” Guthrie said, looking at Barney Jones. “What, were you traveling at three miles an hour the whole trip?”

  Jones wasn’t swayed. “It wasn’t an emergency, so I didn’t figure on risking our lives just so we could listen to y’all chew the fat for a couple more minutes.”

  Arch sauntered up to the counter, a real heavy air about the man’s personality. “What’d we miss?”

  “Guthrie being a cunt,” Hendricks said, head still a little low under that hat brim. A few people gasped, and Jones looked at him with stern disapproval, shaking his head. “What?” Hendricks looked like he didn’t give a shit, which, to be fair, he probably didn’t. “She’s not even a real she, you dumbasses. Don’t go getting all offended for her sake.”

  “I was more offended for my own,” Ms. Cherry said, shooting him a smoldering look that Hendricks shrugged off.

  “We got a lot of people disappearing under mysterious circumstances in this town,” Arch said, getting back on track. “Seems like somebody ought to look into that.”

  “Another precinct heard from,” Guthrie said. “I swear, you people and your opinions.” She looked around. “What? I’m black now; I get to say ‘you people.’ Anyway, you people—you fleshy bags of feelings—this is just crazy. You should really invest in some anti-depressants, stop feeling so fucking much, and do more.” Guthrie shot a look at Duncan. “Do you remember the human race being so emotionally incontinent when we first showed up? Because I feel like they had their shit together a little better before. I don’t know what happened, but it’s like the idea of being stoic and getting shit done fell by the wayside in favor of having tantrums and doing jack diddly shit while basking in your sad feelz became in vogue.”

  “The demon commentary on the human condition is super helpful, but—” Brian said.