Hidden behind her back was a length of wire she had snapped off the bed. It was coiled, but ended in a kinked, three-inch piece that would serve as an adequate weapon with which to buy her time, if it became necessary for her to do so.
The Sheriff was limping, she noted. This too might give her an advantage if it came to a chase. The gun in his holster, however, kept the odds firmly in his favor, and abruptly, she wished Pete hadn’t abandoned her. Not that she blamed him. She had hardly given him a reason to stay.
“My name’s Sheriff McKindrey. I assume you’re Claire?”
“You assume right.”
McKindrey continued to pick his way along the debris-filled hallway, occasionally glancing with distaste at something on the floor. The flickering cruiser lights made his shadow large and jittery on the hallway wall.
“Your sister sent me to fetch you,” he told her. “She’s awful worried.”
“I’ll bet she is.”
Back in the car, Danny’s phone stopped ringing as she snapped her own cell phone shut and slid it into her pocket.
“Why do you have my boyfriend’s phone?” she asked him as he cleared the hall and with visible relief, stepped into the gloomy room.
“What?”
“My boyfriend. The people who lived here killed him. I was looking for his phone so I called it. It rang in your car.”
“Of course it did,” McKindrey said, with a wide smile, which showed a slight gap between his front teeth. “Papa-In-Gray gave it to me.”
Claire frowned. “Who?”
“Papa-In-Gray.” He nodded his understanding. “Of course, you probably don’t even know their names.”
Claire felt her chest tighten. “Names?”
“The names of the people who hurt you and killed your friends.” He stepped closer, but it took work, as he gingerly set the bandaged foot down to gauge how much it was going to hurt to put his weight on it. “Papa-In-Gray’s the daddy. Momma-In-Bed’s the Momma,” he said, indicating the bed. “She’s dead now, good riddance to the ’ol bitch. Gave me more than a few nightmares. And of course you met the kids, Isaac and Joshua and Aaron. Matt’s the one you killed. Luke’s the oldest. They’ve had a bit of trouble with him. Said he’s got notions. Seems more like good sense to me.”
“So you know what they did?”
“Of course. Papa gave me your wallets and jewelry and phones and such after it was all done.”
Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Why?”
“Call it a tip for keepin’ my big ’ol mouth shut.” He grinned. “Hell, the one question folks keep puttin’ to me is why I stick around here when there ain’t nothin’ to stick around for. Usually I just shrug and say ‘everyplace needs the law’ but that’s bullshit. Truth is, and this is between you and me, I stay for the watches, rings, billfolds, gold teeth, radios, all of which is pretty easy to offload if you know who’s buyin’. But the best money comes from cars. Oh yeah. They give me a bunch of those. I send them to my stepbrother Willard in Arkansas. He’s a bit slow, you understand, but he can move a vehicle in record time. I give him a percentage and enjoy the rest. Makes workin’ here quite a treat when you know all those goddamn suits are lookin’ at you like you ain’t got nothin’ when in fact you could buy and sell ’em if you was of a mind to. Been buildin’ up quite a nest egg, and while I hadn’t figured on retirin’ for another few years yet, you getting’ away has forced me to rethink things. Kinda annoyed about that to tell the truth, but I know it ain’t your fault.”
“Jesus Christ… they kill people,” Claire said, backing further into the room.
“Exactly. They kill people. I don’t.”
“But you’re gonna kill me.”
McKindrey stopped in the middle of the room. He looked genuinely offended. “Look here, Missy. I ain’t never killed nobody and I don’t aim to neither.” He brightened as he took another small step in her direction. “Take a look at this…” He rolled up his sleeve and held out his right wrist. “What do you make of that?”
It was Stu’s wristwatch, a Rolex his father bought him for his graduation. Claire clearly recalled him showing it off, turning the back of it up to the light so they could read the inscription on the back: To my boy. There’s no stopping you now, kiddo. Love Dad.
“That isn’t yours,” she said, choked with sorrow.
“Hell, the owner don’t need it. Better on my wrist here than in a hole or stuck on some dusty shelf somewhere.”
“You have no right to do this.”
“Probably, but that’s the way the world turns, ain’t it? No such thing as fair anymore. But hell, you’re actin’ like I did the killin’ myself and I ain’t no killer,” he said around a smile. “I’m a collector.”
Claire moved back until she was pressed against the wall, her shirt stuck to her skin with sweat. Dust rained down around her, turned to fireflies in the beam from her flashlight. “You’re a fucking psycho, just like the rest of them. You might as well be the one cutting people up.”
McKindrey raised his hands in a gesture of placation. “Look, all I’m goin’ to do is take you for a ride that’s all.”
“A ride where?”
“Into Mason City, to the state police. They’ll make sure you get home.”
“You expect me to believe that you’re going to hand me over to the police after just telling me you’ve been profiting from the murders of all these people over the years?”
McKindrey shrugged, his smile wide.
“If you touch me,” Claire said. “I’ll kill you.”
“Oh c’mon, Missy. I’m the one with the gun.” As he spoke he unclipped his holster, pulled out his weapon and drew back the hammer. “Now it’s been an unpleasant enough day for me already. Don’t make it worse. My foot’s killin’ me, my nose feels like it’s full of fire ants, and all I want is to get home and get drunk, all right? So you’ll be doin’ me a nice favor if you just come along.”
There was less than six feet between them.
She didn’t move.
He leveled the gun at her.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Well, if you don’t, someone else’s just gonna come by and be a lot less pleasant about it.”
“Like your friends, those killing fucks you’re working for?”
“Honey,” he said sweetly, and closed the distance between them. “I’m done talkin’. Now you’re gonna move, and that’s all there is to it.”
“What did they do with them?”
“With who?”
“My friends.”
“You know that well as I do. Scattered ’em around the doctor’s place.”
“What did they do with the rest of them?”
McKindrey sighed. “Buried ’em.”
“Where?”
“Different places. Some parts here, some in the woods, some out in that field with the dead tree.”
That gave Claire pause and for the briefest of moments she experienced a blissful absence of any kind of feeling at all. Sound itself seemed muted, the room blurring as an image of the field with the wisps of cotton floating upward in the breeze superimposed itself over the present.
Everything isn’t dead, she thought then. Only gone.
-39-
Finch was dead.
Beau knew it as soon as he woke and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. The man’s skin was icy cold to the touch, and a search for a pulse yielded nothing. Beau shook his head and expelled a ragged breath. He had let Finch down, though of course Finch would never have seen it that way. To a man like that, culpability would always be directed inward and everything that happened in his life would be a result of his own failings. Finch had existed to suffer, driven by a burning rage he had never understood, a cold engine that drove him toward his own inexorable death without ever revealing its motives. It was like this for some people, but not for Beau, though he considered himself equally directionless. Born into a poor but nurturing family, he had depended on his instincts to survive on the cruel streets, and his fists had seen him through. He was a walking cliché—kid born in the ghetto made strong by necessary violence, and yet he shared none of the characteristics of his brothers, who walked with an attitude, their shoulders low, eyes frosty and darting from face to face as if searching for one that required punishment. Anger had never been a driving force in Beau’s life, only sorrow, but the origin of that sorrow was as much a mystery as Finch’s rage. It had felt as if he were grieving for people who had died long before he’d come into the world, and had found himself forever unfulfilled, as if he’d been born without some vital component necessary for total happiness. He’d drifted, seeking people more emotionally deficient than himself, for in them he found a kinship. The shared unhappiness did not cancel either out, but neither did it exacerbate it, and this was how he lived. In Finch he found a carnival mirror, a distorted reflection of himself that bound him to the man.