In the blur of confusion Tooley rushed past, and seconds later, behind me I heard scrambling and heavy, urgent breathing, some shouting—Donald’s voice—then a grunt. I turned toward the scuffle. Donald swung awkwardly at the man but missed, and Tooley knocked him aside with two hard shots to the stomach and head. As Donald fell, Rick came to his aid and fired a three-punch combination that dropped the man.
I moved to help him when someone hit me from behind. The blow landed between my shoulder blades with tremendous force, and I staggered forward. I spun in time to see that the tattooed man had regained his feet and was closing on me quickly. Struggling to maintain my balance, I threw a punch but he ducked away in time, raised a fist and hammered it across the side of my head.
I knew he had connected directly with my temple because my equilibrium was suddenly off, and a tingling feeling spread across my eyes and jaw—like a yawn that wouldn’t stop. My vision blurred, cleared then blurred again before I realized I was toppling to the floor face-first. Before my chin slammed the dirty tiles, I broke my fall with my hands and did my best to roll through it.
I scrambled to my feet, head still spinning a bit. The man laughed like a moron, and there was something so inhuman, so sick in his drug-glazed eyes, I hesitated for just a second. From the look on his face, I knew he had sensed my indecision and interpreted it as weakness. As he charged me again, I timed a punch, braced myself then threw it.
He ran right into my fist. His head snapped back and he stumbled. There was no blood, just a puzzled expression, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. While he wobbled about on shaky legs, I stepped in to finish him, but Donald came out of nowhere and hit him with a wild, arcing punch.
This time he went down. I rushed forward, straddled him and hit him again and again. He covered the back of his head with his hands and started to crawl away, mumbling something unintelligible as he went, but I kept punching him until he was no longer moving.
I fell off of him, my hands slick with blood, most of it his. He was moaning and just barely conscious, his arms still folded across his head in a feeble attempt to protect it. On the floor next to him, near his face, a trickling stream of blood was beginning to pool.
Still a bit disoriented, I watched Donald crouch and pick up the baseball bat the bartender had dropped. Over his shoulder, I saw Tooley and Rick circling each other like a pair of jungle cats. Due to the blood both were sporting, I knew neither had gained a clear advantage since Rick’s initial knockdown.
Tooley lunged and Rick countered with a combination that put him down a second time. He coughed, spat blood then slowly began to rise, but Rick pounced again, raining fists down on him in rapid combinations that made sickening sounds as they connected with skin and bone. Bloodied about the eyes, nose and mouth, the man fell again.
Rick stood at the ready, chest heaving. “Stay down, asshole.”
The man grunted and began to rise yet again.
I scrambled over to Donald and pulled the bat from his hands just as Tooley let out a defiant growl and stormed Rick in a frenzy of rage. “Rick!”
He looked to me as I tossed the bat into the air. In one fluid motion he caught it and swung it down across the man’s shins.
Tooley howled and crashed to the floor. Moaning, he rolled back and forth clutching his legs, knees pulled in to his chest.
Rick and I stood staring at each other a moment, out of breath, dazed and oddly satisfied, if not thoroughly surprised.
Donald had sunk to one knee, perhaps due to the blows he had sustained earlier. I reached down and helped him to his feet. “You all right?”
“Oh, spectacular,” he groaned.
Rick threw the bat aside and wiped a slow trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “Let’s get the hell out of here before any more of these cretins show up.”
We turned our backs on the fallen bodies, the blood and the muffled cries still coming from the backroom, and together, walked out of the bar.
Still riding an adrenaline rush, I stepped into the street. No remnants of daylight remained. A hot summer day had become a hot summer evening, and everything was heightened, sharpened and more vivid than normal.
It seemed apt that night had fallen. We’d glimpsed the wisdom of the spirits in this old city—however briefly—and after all that had happened, after all that was breathing down our necks, for now, we were better suited to the dark.
CHAPTER 23
It was still early summer. We were a few weeks away from tourist season, so the landscape had not yet changed. Though a handful of early bird summer residents had arrived and opened nearby cottages, most of Donald’s neighborhood remained in the tail end of its hibernation. We’d cleaned ourselves up, nursed our minor wounds then taken the short walk through a small section of woods behind Donald’s cottage to a bluff overlooking the ocean. The moon had turned burgundy, and was so full and bright that it didn’t look real in the otherwise clear sky. Despite its brilliance the powerful pulse of strobe lights swirling from the public beach below overshadowed it, even at this distance.
The three of us stood in the sand and beginnings of tall grass along the dunes, watching the official vehicles that were still parked at haphazard angles along the beach. A tent had been constructed where the body itself had been discovered, and several temporary stadium-like lights had been set up, giving the small area an oddly surreal look, an artificial glowing oasis surrounded by darkness. Though it was several hundred yards away, we could make out policemen and various authorities still scouring and investigating the area. Beyond the barriers they had put up along the parking lot, a small crowd had gathered to watch the goings on. Since the body had been found hours before and was long gone from the scene, I wondered what the townsfolk were hoping to see. I watched the red and blue beams pan and play about Rick and Donald’s faces, and wondered the same thing about us.
“I wonder if he came here,” Donald said. “The night he put that body there. I wonder if when he was done, after he’d buried that poor woman’s remains down there, beneath the sand, I wonder if he came here to see me. I wonder if he came and sat in my home and talked about nothing at all the way Bernard was so good at doing, the way he could do for hours. I wonder if he laughed to himself about it later. I wonder if he found it amusing.”
Rick was holding a six-pack of beer held together by plastic rings. He pulled one can free and ran it against his forehead. “Lot of FBI guys down there. They must be turning over every grain of sand hoping to find something. The local politicians were already bitching on the news about how this is going to hurt the tourist season. You believe that shit? Even the poor folks who can’t afford a real Cape Cod vacation won’t be showing up here if they think a serial killer’s on the loose. Hell, they can go further toward or up Cape and be safe.”
“Or so it would seem.” The lights painted Donald’s face. He looked so strange with a bit of dried blood along his slightly swollen lip. It didn’t suit him, the face of a fighter. “They can bring in the CIA and it won’t matter. They’re hunting a ghost.”
“Bodies popping up out of the fucking ground and all they’re worried about are summer businesses being down,” Rick said.
My hands were sore, my knuckles covered in several small cuts and gashes, but the bleeding had been minor and stopped on the ride back to Potter’s Cove. I looked down at them, flexed my fingers. “Let me get one of those beers.”
Rick held the cans out, dangled them from his grip on the vacant ring of plastic. I reached out and plucked one loose. It was cold and felt good in my hand. The heat was still high but a slight ocean wind made it somewhat tolerable. I opened the can and took a long swig. It could have been—should have been—a beautiful night.