The man squinted. “I see a little resemblance, now that you mention it.”
“Yeah, he got the brains, but I got all the looks.”
The man nodded, no sense of humor. “Well, if you need anything, just holler.”
Roland glanced at the man’s feet, expecting to see scuffed boots flecked with goat shit. Instead, the man wore shiny leather dress shoes.
“I’ll do that, sir,” he said, though the man was only ten years older than him.
The man turned, and Roland noticed there were no other vehicles in the driveway. The farmer must have walked at least half a mile. Without scuffing his new shoes. “All right, David, enjoy your stay.”
“My name’s not David,” Roland said. “It’s-”
He caught himself as the man turned. “Steve said he had a brother named David,” the man said.
Roland thought about lying, but he planned to be long gone soon. “It’s Roland.”
The man’s lips pursed, and then they broke into a grin. “That’s right. I was just testing you. We get all kinds of weirdos out in these parts. It pays to be a little suspicious.”
“Sounds like good advice.”
“You’ll be heading back to North Carolina soon?”
How the hell did he know? “Depends on how much I enjoy my stay.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy it too much. You might never want to leave.”
The man laughed, but the humor was off, like an inside joke he didn’t want to share. Roland watched him walk down the road, those new shoes slapping in the dirt and gravel.
He slammed the door. Soon it wouldn’t matter if he was Roland or David or the fucking ghost of Kentucky Colonel Jack Daniels.
He reached the cabinet and swallowed hard, throat stinging with the anticipated heat of the liquor. Steve’s drink was Crown Royal, out of Roland’s price range, but there would be rum, vodka, gin, and probably some brandy as well. Enough.
The cabinet was oaken, the door slightly warped by dampness. But now it was the gate to paradise.
As he opened the door, he closed his eyes, half-hoping for a final reprieve, some cosmic gesture that would gird his spirit.
The cabinet door creaked open. A warm, putrid odor wafted out with the force of floodwater.
A goat hung in the cabinet, a hemp rope tangled in its horns. Its body cavity was peeled open, red ribs exposed, offal spilling in trails of gray-green and pink.
As Roland dry-heaved for the second time that day, he realized the kill must have been recent. A strange jubilation surged through him; here was proof that he was not the killer.
On its heels came a deeper relief. He had stayed sober. Maybe through a little luck, maybe through the divine hand of that Big Bastard in the Sky.
But sobriety didn’t change reality. The sacrificial slaughter had occurred while he was in the car, on his way here. Someone must have left the mutilated carcass for him, someone who knew his destination, someone who had anticipated his moves after leaving the Cincinnati motel.
Someone who knew he’d open the liquor cabinet sooner rather than later, because the killer had left a message.
Scrawled in congealed blood were the same cryptic letters he’d observed in the motel shower stalclass="underline" “CRO.” And beneath it, “Every 4 hrs. You’re late.” The symbols were smeared as if by a callous finger.
As blood continued to drain from the goat, it pooled around the message, and Roland realized the letters would soon be obscured.
The crime techs would be able to decode it. They’d be able to match evidence with the crime scene in Cincinnati and he’d be off the hook. Of course, there was still the problem of the missing time and his new identity “It’s not my identity, damn it,” he said, the words scouring his ravaged throat.
Roland couldn’t stay in the cabin now, not while that hideous face leered from the cabinet with its strange, milky eyes. He reached past it and grabbed the only bottle there, half a pint of vodka. He twisted the lid free.
Here’s to you, you glassy-eyed fucker.
Roland turned up the bottle, craving the sweet relief, no matter what price he’d pay later.
He’d forced down three swallows before he realized the vodka didn’t burn. He pulled it away and smelled it.
Water.
The laughter hit him hard, and he leaned against the wall, air leaping from his lungs in painful grunts. He was such a fuck-up that he even fucked up getting fucked up. His sides hurt, then he punched the wall, and the pain brought him around.
Roland pulled the orange bottle from his pocket and glanced at the bloody letters on the cabinet door: “You’re late.”
The rage came over him almost instantly, and he had retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen and was about to hack into that goddamned goat, with its glassy, accusing eyes.
Who are you to fucking judge me?
Trembling, he dropped the knife and fled to the back bedroom, crawling onto the bare mattress and huddling into himself.
They were coming. They’d find out he’d drunk the vodka.
He thought of the farmer with the spiffy shoes and city hands.
The farmer’s words came back to him. “You’ll be heading back to North Carolina soon?”
And another question, maybe one from David Underwood up in the peanut gallery:
Why did you kill Susan?
He hadn’t thought of the girl in years, and he didn’t even know he’d forgotten her, but her rounded face slid into his mind, eyes wide and mouth screaming and chubby cheeks bleeding.
Roland felt the world sliding away and the black walls of the room closing in. Then Susan blended with the dead woman in Cincinnati.
Every 4 hrs.
Or else.
Or else more of this. More memories, more corpses.
He pulled out the bottle and shoved one of the pills into his mouth, wishing he had the bogus vodka to wash it down.
The fear vanished in minutes, and he found he was exhausted from the tension.
Sleep.
Then Wendy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Let me see your pills,” Wendy said.
Anita turned from the window of Dr. Hannah Todd’s fifth-floor office. After hanging up on Wendy, she’d made an appointment and caught a cab to the NC Neurosciences Hospital, where she waited in an outpatient room. Anita had finally answered one of Wendy’s repeated calls, and Wendy had hurried down to make sure her friend was okay.
And part of her wanted to make sure Halcyon wasn’t back in Anita’s life, because Halcyon should have died along with Susan Sharpe.
“Do you believe me now?” Anita asked. She was dressed in street clothes, the bandage still on her head, though she’d changed for her appointment and wore a loose white blouse and pleated slacks.
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“I thought I was freaking out, having little fantasies. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but I couldn’t remember when I met Roland.” After a pause, Anita lowered her voice and added, “Or Susan.”
“Don’t say that name.”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Show me your pills.”
Anita rummaged in her handbag and came out with the orange bottle. She read from the label. “A. Molkesky. Take one every four hours or else.”
She tossed the pill bottle to Wendy, who nearly dropped it, though they were only three feet apart. “These are just like mine,” Wendy said.
“These are just like the ones from ten years ago.”
Something tugged at Wendy’s memory, but she pushed it down. She recalled what Anita had said about “monsters in their holes.” Oh, she’d had holes, all right.
“Are you taking them on time?” Wendy asked.
“Now I am. After I figured out the ‘Or else’ part.”
“I thought you were going to turn these in.”
“I don’t think I better do that.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah. And the pills help. Because when I don’t take them, it all comes sneaking back.”
“What does?” Wendy wasn’t sure she wanted to know.