“You want some?”
Brenna stood backlit in the shaft of light of a tent, a bag of tiny donuts in her hand. The paper translucent with grease. She popped another one in her mouth and licked her fingers clean.
Travis took one, wolfed it down. “Cinnamon. The best.”
He had ridden through the fair grounds a bazillion times, wondering if she’d show. And when she did, she had a bag of greasy treats. Relieved and grateful. Not only had she’d shown, but the donuts provided conversation. Most times, he felt tongue-tied and stupid around her.
Brenna wasn’t his girlfriend. That was just a lie he told sometimes. Most days she barely seemed to know he existed. In a way, it was almost easier. The few times he managed to be around her, Travis felt his brain go blank and stutter for something, anything, to say. But here they were, just the two of them standing in the wattage between tents.
Cinnamon sugar speckled her lips. It was distracting. “You go on any rides yet?”
“All of them.” She slapped his hand when he reached for another. “Easy piggo.”
A shrug. “This stuff’s like crack.” He didn’t know where to put his eyes. Everything sort of fell out of his brain if he looked at her eyes too long but then his gaze drifted down to her bare shoulders in that little tank top. Her legs were bare and a thin wedge of belly showed where her top rode up. He turned away until his brain cooled.
“Looking for somebody?” She followed his gaze.
“Nah.”
But he should have. Brenna stepped back, eyes sharp to something behind him. “Watch out,” she said. Just as he turned, something smacked the back of his head, hard and sharp. Clocked by an elbow.
Brant flew past on his bike. “Faggot!”
Travis ground his teeth together, anger so hot and fast he felt his eyes tear up in humiliation. Brenna standing right there.
“Are you okay?” She reached out to touch his hair.
If he spoke, he’d blubber. He grabbed his bike and shot after the asshole. He heard Brenna call his name but didn’t look back.
Brant had stopped near the bandstand. Straddling his bike, elbows leaning on the handlebars. Talking to some girl over the sound of the band sawing out a tune onstage. Brant was bigger than he was, stronger too. Travis didn’t care anymore. He dropped his bike, reached into his pocket and came up behind the bastard. His footsteps masked under the drum beat, letting him get close.
The girl glanced at him then Brant swung his stupid head around and Travis gave him everything he had. The brass smashed his nose with a crack. Brant pitched over, feet caught in the bike, and keeled to the grass.
Travis landed hard on the asshole’s chest, pinning his arms. Twisting a handful of hair with his left hand, Travis went to town with his fist. Cracking that stupid fucking face with the brass again and again.
The girl was screeching and then everyone was yelling. The band stopped playing. Hands slammed onto him, yanking him up by the collar. Travis was thrown to the ground and someone dropped their knees to his chest. He didn’t care. Craning his neck, he clocked Brant still under the bike. He wasn’t moving. Travis looked at his hand, fingers swelling in the rings. The brass slick with blood.
21
A GIDDY WARMTH carried them through the fair grounds. Tapping their feet to the musicians at the bandstand, sneaking a kiss behind the war monument. Jim trying to show off at the shooting gallery. In the movie version, he would have won a big teddy bear but as it was he was a lousy shot and blew in five dollars hitting nothing but backdrop. They elbowed into the beer garden, got a drink and squeezed to the fence where they could watch the Ferris wheel turn.
Emma touched her plastic cup to his. “This is nice. Like a date”
He slipped a hand around her waist. “Been a while.”
“Keep this up and I might just take advantage of you.”
A schoolboy’s grin. One part blush, two parts anticipation. When was the last time they got friendly anyway? Ragged busy during business hours, near exhausted by nightfall. Whole days ripping down with little to distinguish them. “Aren’t you supposed to buy me dinner first?”
An elbow jostled her, spilling her cup. The tent filling up fast. “I don’t want to be stuck in here.” Emma dodged another tippler who’d lost his sea legs. “Drink up.”
“Let’s take ‘em with us.” Jim ducked under the railing, held it up for her.
She laughed and limboed under. “Now we’re just being bad.”
They strolled past the bandstand again, the shooting gallery, looking for Travis. Jim shrugged. “Maybe somebody adopted him.”
“That’s not even funny.”
They walked on, nodding at the few people who said hello. There was still a chill, ignored by some and no more than a nod of recognition from others.
“What’s that?” Emma pointed to a crowd clustered under a chestnut tree just outside the main run of the fair. Away from the ambient patio lanterns, people backlit from two tall tiki torches.
“Wasn’t there before,” he said. “Must of just popped up.”
They came up behind the crowd, leaning over shoulders to see what the fuss was about. Emma squeezed his arm. “Oh my God.”
A body hung from a chestnut limb, twisting on a lynch rope.
Swaying in the humid breeze, its legs swinging crazily. Jim blinked until he realized it wasn’t real. A straw man on a noose, dried stalks stuffed into a mechanics coveralls. A head of packed burlap. A cardboard sign hung from a string around its neck. Emma squinted at the words.
Who killed the Corrigans?
“Oh Christ.” About all that Jim had to say.
Beneath the swinging man were two card tables, lit up under the flicker of the tiki lamps. Photographs lay on one tabletop, reprints of photos taken a century ago. Two young men in waistcoats and caps, one serious and the other flashing a sly grin. A tintype of a family, stiff posed and grim faced. Another of a familiar looking house from a bygone era.
The other table held what appeared to be tools but a card laying below it read: murder weapons. A broad axe with a brittle haft. A shillelagh with a lethal looking business end and an antique pistol. Black gunmetal and a handgrip of burled walnut. The cylinder removed and placed upright showing six chambers bored for 44 calibres. The maker’s mark, Colt.
Straddling both card tables was a crate of rough milled cedar, lined with yellowed burlap. Resting atop this was a long sooty bone, its porous surface carbonized black. Without its sister bones for context, it could have been anything. A leg bone from a horse or cow. Anything.
Above it all was Corrigan. Arms folded across his chest. Contempt set into the line of his mouth and blooms of red in his eyes. Drunk, belligerent.
A man in the crowd pointed to the bone. Belly tipping over his belt, his accent screaming Yank. Michigan maybe. “You telling me that’s an actual bone from your murdered family? Come on…”
“The crime scene was walked through and picked over by half the town before the constable dragged his drunken hide to the site. The locals took souvenirs.” Corrigan lifted the blackened bone from its nest. “Now their descendants are searching their attics and cellars, digging out these trinkets of their guilty past and returning them to me.”
“That’s just some old cow bone.”
Corrigan offered it up to the man. “It’s a femur. The leg bone from one of the men. James, John or maybe Thomas. Go on, touch it. See if it’s real.”
The man backed off, as if the bone was diseased. Others grumbled, calling him a liar. Scolding Corrigan to put that nastiness away, there’s children about.