by T. R. Ragan
Aria wrote down the name. “Anything else I should know?”
“No,” she said, “not really. Just that I feel sort of bad for Nick. You could tell that he needed help but didn’t know how to reach out or communicate with people. I think he had a lot of demons inside that head of his. You want to know what the worst of it is?”
Aria waited.
“When everyone in the office found out he’d been killed, I didn’t see an ounce of sadness on anyone’s face. I saw relief.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bruce Ward held a cold bottle of beer in one hand and his cell phone in the other. Using his thumb, he hit call for the third time in a matter of minutes. His wife didn’t pick up.
His recliner was so old it had a crater almost a foot deep. He set his beer on the side table and used both hands to push himself to his feet. He went to the kitchen where he poured himself a shot of whiskey. Staring out the window over the sink, he downed the whiskey as he watched a hawk dive toward the ground for a mole.
The mole got away. The hawk looked dazed.
Bruce returned to his recliner. He checked for any incoming texts or emails. Nada.
He rubbed his jaw. Every muscle in his body felt tense and sore. When Sandra got home, he’d make her give him a massage with a happy ending, of course. The thought of Sandra’s warm fingers kneading his shoulders made him feel a little less tense.
A muted tinkling noise, like silverware clinking together, grabbed his attention and held tight. He turned down the volume on the TV, listened closely for a moment, then hauled his butt out of the chair. No small feat, considering he’d put on a few pounds over the past year.
The house was small. Two bedrooms. One bath. It took him under a minute to make the rounds. Nobody was there. He walked into the kitchen, opened the door leading into the garage, and peeked inside. His old Buick was there. The car smelled like motor oil and dust. Despite the fact that the engine sounded like a dryer with shoes in it, he loved that car.
Back inside, he pulled his phone from his pocket, plopped down into his recliner, and checked for messages. There were none. He called Sandra, growing impatient as he waited for her voicemail. “If you need to talk, leave me a message.” By the time the beep sounded, he was angrier than a caged tiger. “Where the hell are you? If you’re not home in ten fucking minutes, I’m going to call your kid and tell him you’re out whoring around again. Ten minutes, Sandra. I mean it.”
The last time Sandra had been this late getting home from work was three years ago. Except, as it turned out, she hadn’t been late at all. The bitch had thought she could just pack up and leave him without saying a word. He’d gone after her. Found her and dragged her ass home.
His heart began to race.
She wouldn’t dare try that again.
Or would she?
He got up again. This time he marched into their bedroom and went straight to the closet. His heart pounded as he reached for a hanger and pushed her blouses, one at a time, to the side.
Her clothes were there.
Scratching his chest, he tried to remember what she’d been wearing when she said goodbye and drove off today. He stared into the closet as he replayed the morning in his head. Something wasn’t right. They shared the closet. Usually the clothes were stuffed in there so tight it was a struggle finding a shirt. But not anymore.
Think, Bruce. Think.
Her favorite blouse was a brown-and-black print with a V-neck and wraparound tie. He pushed the blouses to the other side, one at a time, slowly. The brown-and-black blouse was gone. He turned and went to the dresser.
Most of her undergarments were missing. Fucking bitch. She’d thought she could leave just enough clothing behind to fool him. He looked at the clock on the nightstand. He knew she’d been at work today because he’d called her at her office right before her lunch break.
His job as a highway-maintenance operative kept him busy until five o’clock. Thanks to the boys talking him into stopping at Archie’s for a beer, he hadn’t gotten home until six thirty, which would have left Sandra with little time to pack her things and run off. Unless she’d already packed and he just hadn’t noticed until now.
Every muscle in his body quivered.
And then it hit him all at once like a fucking brick straight to his gut.
She would have gone to Caroline’s place.
He yanked his phone from his pocket, then changed his mind and put it back. It would be stupid for him to call. Caroline would warn Sandra and then call the cops on him. He needed to be smart. He needed to jump in his car and drive to Caroline’s place on Old Creek Road. Surprise them both. This time, he’d let Caroline watch and learn what happened to anyone who tried to mess with something that belonged to him.
He slipped on his shoes, then went to the kitchen to grab the keys to the Buick from a hook near the sink. That’s when he saw Trudy Carriger peering through her kitchen window, looking right at him. Nosy old bitch was always asking for favors. Said her eyesight was bad. But that was a crock of shit. Every week, he took out her garbage to avoid having to talk to her. Because if he didn’t pull her receptacle to the street, she would trudge over on her skinny little legs, wearing the same old scraggly brown robe she always wore, and knock on his door. She didn’t just ask the favor and leave him alone either. That would have been way too easy. She had to comment on what he was wearing, or tell him he looked tired, or ask about his health as her bug eyes roamed over his stomach.
He grabbed the keys to the Buick and headed for the garage. The bottle of whiskey sitting near the toaster called to him, but he ignored it.
As the seconds ticked by, his vision became clouded with rage at the thought of Sandra leaving him. He pushed open the garage door and stepped onto the cracked cement floor.
A shadowy movement in the far corner of the semidark room caught his eye. His gaze settled there for a moment and then roamed over his workbench with its rows of jars filled with washers and screws. Anger continued to bubble up inside him. Made his nostrils flare and his breath quicken. He couldn’t remember a time, not one damn moment, when he hadn’t been angry.
His entire life had been a shit show from the very beginning. At four years old, he was left with a dog collar around his neck and the leash slipped over the spoke of an iron fence. People he told the story to didn’t believe he could possibly remember anything that happened at such a young age. But he did, and he would never forget trying to reach high enough to pull the leash from around the spoke. He also tried to remove the collar from his neck, but the harder he tried, the tighter it got, so he gave up and just stood in the cold for hours and hours until someone finally found him.
His mom could have left him anywhere, but she chose to leave him at the far end of a cemetery where the only sound was the howling wind. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear it, sounding like the cries of dead people, all contorted bones trapped beneath a block of cold stone, whimpering and moaning. An old man with a crooked back and a long, pointed nose found him and brought him to the hospital to be checked out.
Nurses and doctors kept asking what his name was. He told them Buddy. That’s what he’d always been called. They wanted to know his dad’s and mom’s names too, but he’d never met his dad, and his mom was just “Mom.” His picture was put in the paper, but it didn’t help. For a while they called him the invisible boy.
A crunching noise like someone stepping on a wrapper snapped him back to reality. “Who’s there?”
He stepped that way, straining to listen.
Something shot out from beneath the Buick and grabbed hold of his leg. He looked down and saw a hand clasped around his ankle.
He screamed, but it came out sounding like a squeak of a mouse as he tried to shake loose. A hard yank brought him to the ground. Desperate to get loose, he tried to jab the hand with the pointy end of his key, but it was no use. His shoe and sock were pulled right off his foot, and then he saw a needle stab into the flesh between his
toes. He let out a string of expletives, and just like that, the hand disappeared. Afraid he might get stuck with another needle, he scooted back away from the car.
Bruce pushed himself to his feet and squinted into the semidarkness. “Come out here where I can see you.”
The intruder appeared, standing near the back of the garage. It was a woman. On the tall side, slender, and dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, she stood near the trunk of the car. Her hair was black, cut straight at the shoulders. She wore red lipstick.
Shaking off a sudden bout of dizziness, Bruce reached for the shovel leaning against the wall nearby and knocked over a jar filled with nuts and bolts. Broken glass and screws scattered across the floor. He held the shovel in the air like a weapon. “Get on out of here before I kick your ass.”
“Go ahead and try,” the intruder said.
Was that a smirk on her face? “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but you picked the wrong time to—”
“The name is Cockroach, and today is the last day of your sorry life.”
“Cockroach?” Between the ages of four and ten, Bruce went from one foster home to another. No one wanted to keep him. They didn’t like when he caught a beetle or a butterfly and ripped it apart. It was just a bug. What was the big deal? Tossing the cat in the pool had been the last straw. He finally ended up in a home for troubled kids. By his sixth birthday, the anger within had begun to churn and wouldn’t stop. By the time he hit puberty, he was enraged. Every time he was yelled at, slapped across the face, or whipped with a belt, he turned his anger on a smaller kid. A kid named Cockroach. “Why are you here?”
“Why do you think?”
“You can’t hurt me, dipshit. I’m bigger and stronger, and I’ll flatten you like I should have done years ago. And then I’ll put a hammer to your ugly face.”
“You’re already dying. It doesn’t take much fentanyl to kill someone. You’ll go to sleep and never wake up. Not a big deal. It’s not like you make the world a better place. Sandra won’t shed a tear for you. Nobody will. And what do you think the stepson you treated like garbage will do when he learns of your death?” A pause. “I think he’ll smile.”
Bruce stumbled and dropped his keys. The shovel fell to the floor. He reached for his car to stop himself from falling. His other hand went to his throat. Every breath was a struggle. Wet foam dribbled from the corners of his mouth as his substantial weight caused his legs to give out. He dropped to his knees and then fell backward, his head cracking against the cement.
A few seconds later, he felt Cockroach pulling him by his feet, dragging his body toward the front of his car. His arms and legs were useless. Cockroach tried to lift him into the front seat, but his deadweight was too much. She gave up and dragged him toward the back, then turned his head so that his face was inches from the tailpipe.
Bruce closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he could hear the familiar knocking of his Buick’s engine as fumes spewed into his eyes and nose.
“Sandra should be back in a few days. I used your new credit card I found in your mailbox to send her flowers, along with a note to her office, letting her know that reservations had been made at the Spa Solage in Calistoga. She should be enjoying a deep muscle massage as we speak.”
Footsteps sounded. The door leading to the kitchen opened and closed.
Sandra hadn’t left him.
Bruce should have been glad to know the truth, but he wasn’t. It only made him angrier.
He coughed, gagging on his saliva.
The bitch didn’t deserve a day at the spa. If she had been home where she belonged, none of this would have happened.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After work, Aria drove to Stockton and parked next to a cemetery across the street from Christina Farro’s apartment building. If she was one of the Black Wigs, maybe she would drive to a secret headquarters or meet with one of her team players for coffee.
While keeping an eye on the door to the apartment, hoping Farro would go somewhere so Aria could follow, she opened her laptop, figuring she could multitask. She wanted to search matchmaking sites to see if she could find the woman Brad Vicente had mentioned, a woman named Li.
Aria was glad to have something to keep her mind engaged because for some odd reason she couldn’t stop thinking about Corey Moran.
It boggled the mind.
Not once since leaving her hometown of River Rock after being subjected to her uncle Theo’s sick perversions had she ever imagined that she would develop any sort of relationship with a man, intimate or otherwise. But something about Corey Moran had flipped a switch inside her, made her want to get to know him better. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her.
Feeling the need to tell someone, she grabbed her cell phone and called Sawyer.
“Hey,” Sawyer said.
“Hi. Is this a good time?”
“Derek is picking me up for dinner, but I have a few minutes. What’s going on?”
“I met a guy. Average height, boyish, midthirties, I’m guessing.”
“Okay . . . and—”
“And he found a dog on the street and brought it to the shelter. No pets are allowed where he’s living, otherwise he probably would have kept the animal until someone posted a flyer.”
“I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” Sawyer said.
“I have his name, address, and phone number. It’s part of the procedure at the shelter when someone brings in an animal.” She drew in a breath. “Do you think I should call him?”
“What?”
“Do you think I should give the guy a call?” Aria repeated.
“Why?”
“I thought maybe I’d ask him out for coffee.”
“I thought you didn’t like people?”
“I don’t,” Aria said. “But what am I supposed to do? They’re everywhere.”
Sawyer laughed.
“I can’t explain this connection I felt, but I was definitely intrigued by him.”
“I know exactly why he intrigued you,” Sawyer said.
“You do?”
“Yes. He brought in a lost dog. You probably had an instant connection with the dog and therefore transferred that awareness to the man at the other end of the leash.”
“Ha! Very funny.”
“If you’re serious about calling him, give me his name and address and let me check him out first.”
“Check him out?”
“Yes. See if he’s married or has a record,” Sawyer said.
“I don’t really think that’s necessary,” she said, then quickly thought better of it. “How long would that take?”
“Not long.”
“Okay.” She gave Sawyer all the information she had on Corey Moran, which wasn’t much.
“I’ll get back to you.”
“How about on Sunday when you come to the house to take Lennon for a driving lesson?” Aria asked, inwardly scolding herself for being overly eager.
“Perfect. We’ll talk then.”
After Aria hung up, she realized she’d forgotten to tell Sawyer where she was or about her conversation with Mr. Panfili, the guy named Adam, and Nick’s one friend, Felix Iverson.
She might have called her sister back if she hadn’t glanced up and seen Christina Farro walking straight for her. Not really walking—marching. She wore jeans and a tank top. Aria saw well-defined arms, muscles flexing under the fading light. Her mouth was turned down. Her eyes slightly narrowed. There was no doubt she was angry, but what Aria wanted to know was how did the woman know she’d been watching her?
Aria didn’t bother rolling up her window. The woman was intimidating to look at, bordering on scary, but dangerous?
Christina Farro leaned low and rested both elbows on the window frame so that their noses were only inches from touching. “What are you doing here?”
Aria’s stomach rolled. She wished more than anything she had turned on the engine and taken off the
second she saw the woman coming her way. But something told her Christina Farro would have jumped on top of her car and found a way to stop her. “Er, um, I was going to visit a grave—an old friend is buried here.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Um, Cyndi Lauper.”
Christina Farro sighed. “The one who sings ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’?”
Sweat dripped down Aria’s spine. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this line of work, after all.
“Let’s start over,” Christina Farro said. “Did your sister send you?”
“My sister?”
“Okay, I’m going to give it to you straight. Your sister, Sawyer Brooks, came to see me. I answered her questions, and I figured that would be the end of it. But then I see you, Aria Brooks, sitting in a car for the past thirty minutes, staring at the apartment building where I live. So I want to know why you’re watching me.”
“For the record,” Aria said, “Sawyer doesn’t know I’m here.” The woman’s anger, Aria noticed, seemed to simmer, coming off her in waves. If she was a part of the Black Wigs, there was no telling what she was capable of, and worse, what she would do to Aria if she said the wrong thing. Aria decided to tell her the truth. It felt like the safest route. “Brad Vicente said one of the Black Wigs had scars all over her body, mostly her neck—” Aria’s gaze fixated on a scar above Christina’s collarbone.
“Ah, so you came to . . . what? Ask me a few questions?”
“To follow you,” Aria said. “If you were involved with the Black Wigs, I thought you might go to meet the others at a secret location.”
“Like a bat cave?”
“Sort of,” Aria said under her breath. If this woman didn’t pull her out of the car and beat the shit out of her, Sawyer would do the honors when she found out what Aria had done.
Christina Farro unfolded herself from Aria’s car window. She stood tall and raised her arms high over her head as if to get the kinks out. Then she was back in her face. “I know all about you and your sisters. I know about your dad and Uncle Theo and all the other creepers hiding out in the woods where you came from. I know you shot your own mother—”