But she’d had a purpose. What was it?
Mark kept walking, passed an empty park beside a small lake, and then an opening appeared in the dense trees to his right. A path leading away from the road and into the woods.
His throat thickened and he felt pressure behind his eyes and heard a sound that seemed to come from inside his skull, a sound like a rubber band popping, stretched to its limits and about to snap. It was strange, disturbing. He blinked and rubbed his temples and the sensation faded and vanished. He stood there for a long time and looked at the road and the trees as if they would produce something, as if the dust would rise and swirl and materialize into a figure, someone with answers.
Not even the air moved, though.
It took him fifty paces to reach the spot. Her body had been found in a ditch just off the trail. The bamboo grew thick and tall around it, creating a jungle feel, a place of children’s nightmares, of dares to pass through alone at midnight. Up ahead, the trail curved to the right and opened up, and the world seemed brighter and welcoming and just out of reach.
The rain was falling steadily now, a silent soaking, the thunder gone. He looked at the dark water in the ditch for a long time, and he felt as if there was some gesture he should make, some words he should say. Nothing came, though. He turned from the ditch and walked back the way he’d come.
Directly across the road was a lake with a shelter house built at the end of a pier. He walked down the pier until he was beneath the roof and out of the rain. The lake’s surface was pebbled by raindrops, and trees bordered it in all directions. Close to the bank, thick layers of algae covered the water, giving it a swamplike look. Trash floated among the weeds, chip bags and plastic rings from six-packs and a stretched-out condom that looked like a sodden snakeskin. A beer can rode the water like a fisherman’s bobber.
He was leaning on the railing with his back to the road when he heard the truck. First the engine, then the crunch of the oversize tires on the gravel. The red truck from Dixie Witte’s property.
Next to the pier was a narrow ramp where you could put in a canoe or a johnboat. The lake wasn’t big enough to call for anything larger. The driver brought the truck all the way down the ramp until the front tires stood in at least a foot of water, although that didn’t even come up to the center of the hubcaps.
Mark didn’t turn away from the lake. The water was so dark it looked like a pool of oil. You couldn’t track the stems of the cattails for more than an inch beneath the surface. It was water that whispered of barely submerged alligators and slant-eyed cottonmouths curled around stumps, of rattling dredging chains, of men with badges and sunglasses working flat-bottomed boats, searching for bodies. In the rain, the lake’s surface looked like hammered metal.
When Mark finally turned to the truck, the driver rolled down the passenger window so he could see Mark clearly. Or, based on his stare and body language, so Mark could see him clearly. A big bastard with a wide jaw and a close-trimmed beard and a sleeveless shirt that facilitated the opportunity to appreciate his muscles and his tattoos. He sat there with his arm looped around the steering wheel, his triceps flexing and popping against his skin, the truck’s exhaust system growling like a tiger in a circus cage.
“Everything all right, bud?” he said.
“Just fine.”
“You want to tell me why you were walking around my property? Neighbor said you seemed mighty interested in my shit.”
Instead of answering, Mark watched the beer can bobbing among the green weeds and tried to match his breaths to it. He used to do the same thing with Lauren during sleepless nights. Match his breaths to hers until they were one. Sleep usually came fast for him then, but he never cared if it did. That was a good and peaceful feeling.
When the muscled-up man cut the engine, the loss of the big truck’s motor turned the lake quiet, the only sound the soft drumming of the rain on the metal roof of the shelter. It was falling slower now, and the air wasn’t stirring.
The driver’s door opened and then banged shut and there were twin splashes as his feet landed in the water, as if he hadn’t remembered how far into the lake he’d driven. Mark might have laughed about that, but as the big man rounded the back of the truck, he reached into the bed and grabbed a piece of rebar. It was about three feet long and had to weigh fifteen pounds. Swung with force, it would break a man’s leg.
Let’s not go this way, Mark thought, because he had worked so hard for so many years to bury this part of himself, to not be one of those grown men who fought like children for children’s reasons, almost all of them boiling down to egos in the end, and usually fueled by liquor. There had been a time when he believed he’d succeeded, that the lessons instilled by his uncles had been overridden by willpower and wisdom.
But then Lauren had died and occasionally the darkness would rise, and rise with a smile, because a taste for fighting was like a taste for whiskey-once you developed it, you didn’t rid yourself of it. Only controlled it.
The big man advanced, holding the rebar with strength and familiarity. Mark moved his hands from the dock railing, reached inside his jacket, and drew the.38.
The muscle-bound man came to a stop about two paces out on the pier, the rebar held in both hands and hovering in the air behind his right shoulder like he was a player in the on-deck circle taking practice cuts with a weighted bat.
“Right,” Mark said. “You’re already thinking maybe you should have been a touch more patient, aren’t you?”
He lowered the rebar. The free end banged off the pier. Mark could feel the shudder of impact through his feet.
“This seems stupid to you now, doesn’t it?” Mark said. “You’re thinking that it would be dumb to die just because you got all butt-hurt over someone walking around your yard and looking at your house. You’re right. But now that you’ve come this far, let’s talk. What’s your name?”
“Get fucked.”
“Your parents weren’t any more fond of you than I am, then. No surprise. Let’s try another one. How long have you lived in that house?”
This time he showed his middle finger.
“Does that mean one year?” Mark said.
“You’re lucky you were carrying today. Luckier that I wasn’t. Next time-”
“You will be,” Mark finished for him. “Sure. I believe it too. But the thing is? I wasn’t lucky to be carrying. I was prepared. Not everyone who’s passed through here in the past has been.”
The big man seemed confused by that message, but he didn’t have much room in his head for anything beyond hate right then.
“You really get that upset about me looking your house over?” Mark said. “Because to a rational mind, this seems like an overreaction.”
“I don’t know who in the hell you are. But I don’t want you on my property.”
“Duly noted. And my name is Markus Novak.”
The big man smiled, and Mark’s blood seemed to slow in his veins.
“That name amuses you?”
“You’re a little late,” the man said. “I wasn’t here when she got popped, bud, but I’ve heard the stories.”
When she got popped. Mark’s mouth had gone dry and each breath felt hot and dusty. The man was gathering confidence, pleased that he’d rattled Mark.