“What do you want?” I said.
“Open the glove compartment.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Open it.”
Hesitantly, I opened the glove compartment. The door dropped like a mouth, and a little orange light spilled out onto my lap. There was only one item inside, and I had to blink several times to convince myself that it was actually what I knew it to be. “I take it you don’t want an autograph,” I said, staring at the paperback copy of The Ocean Serene.
“I highlighted my favorite paragraphs,” Dentman said.
“Is that right?” Heavy with sarcasm.
I opened the book and flipped through the pages. What moonlight there was allowed me to see the highlighted portions of the text. I stopped on one of the pages and read it. Then I closed the book, pushing it back inside the open glove compartment, and stared at Dentman’s sharp profile, outlined in phosphorescent moonlight. “I’m flattered you’re such an avid fan, but where the hell are we going?”
“Tell me something,” Dentman said, his tone almost conversational as we barreled through the streets. “Whose life is that book about?”
“Huh?”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Steal people’s lives? Cheapen their tragedies for the sake of entertainment? For the sake of your bank account?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“What is it you think about me? What is it you think about my family?”
“You’ve lost your mind,” I told him.
“Reach under your seat.”
“No. Enough bullshit. What’s this all about?”
“You tell me.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at. If this is about the box I brought by your house, I thought we’d already—”
“Reach under your seat,” Dentman repeated with more than just a hint of irritation in his voice.
Reluctantly, I leaned forward and slid one hand beneath my seat. My breath was rattling in my throat. I patted around the stiff carpeting, not knowing what to expect, what I was searching for . . . and then the tips of my fingers touched something. I took it out and put it in my lap, blessedly covering the photographs with it. Looking at it, I felt something thick and wet roll over in the pit of my stomach, and I thought I would throw up. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t keep my teeth from vibrating in my head. In my throat, my breath temporarily seized up. I prayed for unconsciousness.
On my lap was my missing writing notebook.
There were a million questions—a trillion questions—shooting through my brain, but my mouth, that traitorous cretin, would not formulate the words.
Dentman maneuvered the shuddering pickup straight down Main Street and past the depressed little shops of rural Westlake, now dark and closed. Only the shimmering pink neon lights of Tequila Mockingbird were visible, radiating with a dull sodium throb in the darkness. Ahead, through the windshield, the night was a tangible thing—a black velvet cloak draped over the valley.
“W-where did you get this?” I stammered, finding my voice at last. My mind reeling, I felt the cold cloak of fear settle over me the moment I realized that I had never changed the locks on the doors upon moving into the house on Waterview Court. My God, I thought, unable to move, unable to breathe. I couldn’t pull my gaze from the notebook—the camouflaged black-and-white cover, the string-bound spine, the frayed edges.
We bumped along the roadway, leaving Westlake behind us like a distant memory; all that existed of the town was the spatter of fading lights in the pickup’s rearview mirror.
“You son of a bitch,” I muttered, lifting the notebook. It weighed two hundred pounds. “You broke into my house.”
“I did no such thing.” He gunned the truck to seventy miles an hour. I could feel the tires spinning over black ice. “Actually, you left it at my house. In that box you brought over.”
The world struggled to remain in focus.
“You been asking around town about me,” Dentman said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“I can explain.”
“You can explain why you’ve got my family’s name written in that notebook of yours?”
“It’s going to sound strange, but yes, I can explain all of it.”
“I don’t like it.” His attention was fixated on the darkness ahead. There were no houses here—no lights and certainly no signs of civilization—only the black-on-black wash of heavy trees on either side of the truck. “I don’t like you sniffing around in my private life, my private business.” He paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. “I don’t like what you did to my sister even more.”
I choked down a hard lump of spit. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
“You got her all stirred up.” Denton faced me. His eyes were hollow pits in the darkness. I could smell cigarette smoke coming through his pores. “She loved that boy. It broke her heart what happened to him. What kind of sick fuck follows her to a new town to revisit such a tragedy?”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Oh,” he countered, “I know your intention. I seen your books and how you like to exploit people’s tragedies.”
“They’re just books. They’re not real.” I gripped the dashboard with one hand. “Please watch the road.”
He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. “She told me about you. Said you talked about the boy. Told her she could have all that stuff back if she came out to the house.”
“No. I never said that. I never told her to come out to the house.”
“So you’re saying my little sister’s lying to me?”
“The road,” I groaned. “Watch it.”
Ahead, the road forked. Dentman took a right without signaling. We were nearly riding on two wheels. “The hell’s the matter with you? You sick or something?”
“It was all a misunderstanding.”
“What about the stuff in your notebook there? That all a misunderstanding, too?”
“Just let me explain—”
“Oh yeah,” David said. “I can see how that could happen. A misunderstanding. Sure.”
“Where are we going?”
“What’s the matter?” He motioned toward the open glove compartment. The paperback vibrated against the hanging mouth of it as the pickup gathered speed. “You write this scary stuff, but I guess you’re just a shitless little weasel in real life.”
“Stop the truck.”
“That makes you a coward in my book.”
“David—”
“Not facing a situation, not confronting it—that makes you a coward.”
“Stop the truck. I want to get out.”
“Get out? Now? I thought you wanted to learn all about my family. For your book.”
“I’m not writing a book. This is just—this was—it’s my private business—”
“Which involves my private business,” Dentman said, his voice rising. “Which involves my family’s private business.”
“Just tell me where we’re going.”
“I’m taking you to meet someone.”
“I don’t want to meet anyone. Let me out of the goddamn truck.”
Ahead, I noticed the glimmer of lights through the trees. Fresh hope welled up inside me. I wasn’t familiar with where we were, but at least there were other people around.
If Adam wanted proof that David Dentman was a homicidal maniac, he’d certainly have it when they found my body torn to bits on the side of this wooded highway tomorrow morning . . .
“I’ll say,” he went on, the accelerator flat on the floor now, “you’ve got me made out pretty colorful in that notebook of yours. Call me a murderer and everything.”
“It’s not you.”
“No? Used my name.”