Cold Cold Heart (21 page)

She did know that truth better than most people. But she also knew her story would have ended very differently if she hadn't kept fighting for herself. If she had quit, she would have been dead now.

“Put it away for tonight, Dee,” Tim said, getting up from the ottoman. “Get some rest.”

Dana went to the door to let him out.

“Lock up behind me,” he said, stepping out to the patio.

“I will.”

He watched her turn the deadbolt, then gave her one of his aw-shucks smiles and pointed to his temples.

“I'm hugging you up here,” he said.

Dana waved him away and closed the drapes against the night and whatever might be lurking in it.

You're not my dog.
Do you get that?” John said as he pulled half a cheeseburger from the takeout bag and put it in a bowl he had brought out from the kitchen.

The young shepherd tipped its head sideways, dark eyes shining bright with curiosity. It licked its lips and whined a little, dancing in place, wanting to come forward and take the food but too afraid to do so.

John went to the end of the pickup's box, sat down, and leaned back, watching the dog stick its nose in the direction of the bowl and sniff, then whine and dance and lick its lips again.

Knowing his old man wouldn't bother to wonder where he was, John had parked behind the garage, where the pickup couldn't be seen from the driveway. He had heard his father's truck pull in some time ago, heard the truck's door slam, then the house door slam. Home from the bar, drunk and well fed, the old man wouldn't come back outside. He wouldn't check behind the garage. He wouldn't notice the security light on at the back of the building. There wasn't anything back here of interest but a couple of dead 1950s vintage car carcasses he never got around to fixing up and the dilapidated shed where he kept his yard tools and assorted junk car parts and other crap that should have been thrown out two decades ago.

John watched the dog crouch down and stretch its neck out as far as it could, then snap up the half-eaten cheeseburger, bun and all. It carried its prize back to the old blanket John had put in the corner of the truck box, up behind the cab, out of the wind, and ate it in three gulps. It never took its eyes off John.

This was the stray's second meal of the evening. John had gone through the local drive-through and picked up a bag of ninety-nine-cent cheeseburgers to feed both himself and the dog, and a large order of onion rings for himself. Leery of letting the dog gorge himself, he had doled out the first burger in two halves. He pulled another burger out of the crumpled bag and took a bite out of it, not caring that it was now cold and tasted like grease and old leather. He'd eaten enough army rations that anything tasted better.

He tossed the other half to the dog.

“There you go, trouble,” he said, pretending he hadn't just named the animal.

Trouble was a description, not a name, he told himself.

What the hell was he going to do with a dog? He had nowhere to keep it but in the back of this pickup. If he took it to the county shelter, it would probably get put to sleep. If he let it loose somewhere, it could be picked up by Animal Control or hit by a car or shot by some farmer protecting his chickens or by some stupid yahoo out for drunken kicks.

He remembered a night from high school, drinking with some of the guys from the football team after they'd lost a game and spoiled their perfect season. Young men pissed up on liquor and anger and disappointment, howling at the moon. They had parked behind a falling-down barn out in the country to drink and curse and have their tantrums. Someone had produced a .22 target pistol, and a couple of the guys had taken turns shooting at rats and rabbits for no other reason than that they thought it felt good to make something hurt worse than their wounded egos.

All the commotion had scared up a raggedy calico cat out from
under a rusted abandoned piece of farm equipment. They had shot that too, wounding the poor animal with their drunken piss-poor marksmanship. They had laughed at John when he expressed his disgust at their behavior.

Carver had handed him the .22 and told him to finish the job then—which he had done with one merciful shot to the head to end the cat's suffering. Then he'd handed the gun back to Andy Dodson and turned and punched Tim Carver in the face so hard he fractured a bone in his hand. He'd gone into such a blind rage it had taken both Andy and Bobby to pull him off their quarterback and knock some sense into him.

He thought now about Carver's threat earlier tonight to have this dog hauled off or shot as a dangerous animal, and his anger rose and swirled around with the rage from all those years ago.

What a dick, threatening a dog. Mr. Deputy Sheriff.
I'm gonna be the closest thing you've got to a friend here.

John shook his head at the memory. What kind of friend had Tim Carver ever been to him? The kind who slapped him on the back after a touchdown and forgot who he was when the shit hit the fan. He had turned into worse than a stranger that summer Casey went missing, distancing himself and his sterling West Point reputation as far from John as possible.

Anxious from the memories, John dug his hand down into the deepest recesses of his most hidden coat pocket and pulled out a joint. Weed was about the only thing that took the edge off without making him feel like his brain was surrounded by a thick layer of wet cotton wool. The meds the VA docs had put him on had left him feeling like a zombie, struggling to function. This was better so long as he was careful about his intake. Too much and he could tip over the fine line and trigger his paranoia. Just enough and he could chill out and fall asleep on his own.

The act of smoking relaxed him. The intake of breath, the slow exhale, the rhythmic repetition. The tension left his muscles as the
familiar sensation seeped through him. He looked at the dog. The dog looked at him, sighed, and laid its head on its outstretched paws.

They had a lot in common, John thought, him and this dog. Motherless strays with no real place in the world, with no one giving a shit what happened to either of them.

Starting to feel the chill of the night, he wadded up the burger bag, stuffed it in his coat pocket, and climbed out of the truck. He would leave the tailgate down. The dog could stay or go, its choice. At least now the animal had a full belly, a bowl of water, and a blanket to curl up on if it wanted to.

“Stay if you like,” John said. “But no barking. The old man will come out here and shoot you.”

The dog sighed and burrowed into the blanket.

John went in the house through the back door and into the kitchen. It was past eleven. If he was lucky, the old man would be passed out in his recliner by now, and he could slip down the hall unnoticed. He wanted a hot shower and a couple of pulls on the bottle of whiskey he kept hidden in his room. If all went well and nothing disrupted the sense of calm he was nurturing, he might drift off and sleep without nightmares—at least for a little while.

He assumed the voices coming from the living room were on television, some sports network talk show or redneck reality program. He assumed wrong. He had already stepped into the tiny dining room when he realized the voices were live. Three men were standing in the living room dead ahead of him: his father, Tim Carver, and a third man in a dark trench coat, medium height, heavyset, with a drooping mustache. They all turned and looked at John.

“Speak of the devil,” his old man said.

“Hey, John,” Carver said. “This is Detective Tubman. I told you he might be stopping by.”

That wasn't what he'd said, John thought. He had said the
detective wanted him to come into the sheriff's office. He hadn't said anything about invading his home, but here they were, standing in his living room, talking to his father. God only knew what the old man might have told them already. And why did Carver have to be here anyway? If all the detective wanted was to talk to him, why did he need a uniform backing him up?

Eyes narrowed, John looked from Carver to the detective to the old man. He could feel himself tipping over that delicate line the weed had put him on. He could feel the paranoia rising like a cold tide inside him. He wanted to bolt and run out the back door and just keep running. But he held himself in place like he was a dog on a leash. Running from cops was never a wise choice.

“I have a few questions for you, John,” the detective said, coming toward him. He waddled like a pregnant woman, his belly preceding him into the room.

Carver came forward as well, maybe six feet to the right of the detective, effectively blocking the route to the front door. He had his hands on his hips, close to his service weapon, close to his baton.

John's pulse kicked up faster and faster. He was hot and sweating inside his jacket. He could feel his blood pressure rise. Inside his wounded brain, fight-or-flight hormones were running like water from a wide-open faucet.

“Some girl from the Grindstone got raped,” his old man said, hanging a fresh cigarette from his lip and lighting up. “So, naturally, they come looking for you,” he said sarcastically.

John could hear the Maker's Mark in his voice. He was more than half in the bag. He took a drag on the cigarette and started laughing and coughing.

“Maybe your next stop should be St. Theresa's rectory,” he said to the detective, laughing. “The priest is a better suspect than this one. He only ever had the one girlfriend all through school. Of course,” he conceded, smiling like a wolf, “she was a hot little tamale.”

Tim Carver frowned at the comment. “Maybe we should all have a seat,” he suggested.

“I'll stand, thank you,” John said.

“Suit yourself,” Tubman said, pulling a chair out from the table. “I'm taking a load off. It's been a long damn day.”

“Then why are you here?” John asked. “It's the middle of the night. This can't wait until tomorrow?”

“Crime doesn't run on a time clock, Mr. Villante,” Tubman said, settling in. “I've got a rape victim lying in the hospital. I need to find out who put her there.”

“Wasn't me.”

“Where've you been all evening, John?” Carver asked.

“Nowhere special. Why? Did something else happen that you want to try to hang on me?”

“Nobody's trying to hang anything on you, son,” Tubman said.

John laughed under his breath and looked away, down the hall. If they decided to press him, tried to put hands on him, he could be down the hall and out his bedroom window in a matter of seconds. He'd done it enough times over the years to avoid a beating at the hands of his old man.
Down the hall, out the window, run for the woods
 . . .

“So,” the detective began, “how well do you know April Johnson?”

“I don't.”

“Sure you do,” his father said. He pulled a chair out, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning over the table to tap the ash off his cigarette into a beer can. “She works the evening shift. Mousey hair, cute ass, perky little tits.”

“Maybe they should be talking to you,” John said pointedly.

His father's eyes went cold and flat, like a shark's eyes. “Don't get smart with me, boy. I don't need to force myself on women.”

“Neither do I.”

“I understand you got fired from your job at Anthony's last
night,” Tubman said, sending John's father into gales of laughter. The detective ignored him. “What did you do after that?”

“I came home,” John said. He shot his father a glare. “If he wasn't too drunk to remember, he saw me.”

“Yeah, I saw him come home,” his father said. He took another long pull on his cigarette and fired the smoke at the grimy yellow ceiling. “And I saw him leave again after that.”

“The hell you did!” John shouted. “You were passed out in your chair!”

“So you did leave again?” Tubman said.

Fuck.

“I went for a run,” John said.

“And where did you run to?”

“Nowhere. I just ran.”

“Unless you were on a treadmill, you ran somewhere.”

“Down the road. I just ran. But I sure as hell didn't run all the way to the Grindstone.”

Tubman looked at Carver. “How far is that from here?”

Carver shrugged. “Three or four miles.”

The detective looked at John with a critical eye. “You look to be pretty damn fit to me, soldier. Three or four miles isn't so much.”

“Unless you're built like Detective Tubman,” Carver said, trying to lighten the mood.

John just stared at him.

“Did anybody see you running?” Tubman asked.

“It was the middle of the night. No. No one saw me.”

“What time did you get home?”

“I don't know. I didn't look at a clock.”

Tubman looked at his father. “Did you see him come home?”

“No, sir,” the elder Villante said, giving John a cold look. “I must have been passed out. Too drunk to notice anybody coming into my house in the dead of night.”

“What did you wear to run in?” Tubman asked.

John shrugged. “A sweatshirt, sweatpants, shoes.”

“What color?”

“Black.”

Tubman raised an eyebrow. “You went running at night in black clothes? Why would you do that?”

“Those are the clothes I have.”

“Running in black at night,” Tubman said. “In your experience, who does that, Deputy Carver?”

Carver sighed. “People who don't want to be seen.”

“Burglars, thieves, rapists—”

“I'm no rapist,” John said angrily. His head was starting to throb now.
Boom, boom, boom,
with the beat of his pulse. It felt like his brain was swelling, pressing against the inside of his skull.

“Could we have a look at those clothes?” Tubman asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because fuck you; that's why not!” John snapped, the anxiety winding inside him like a spring.

Carver moved a couple of slow steps toward him around the end of the dining room table, hands out in front of him at waist level, palms down. “No need to get all jacked up here, John,” he said. “If you haven't done anything wrong—”

“I haven't done anything wrong!”

“Then let us see those clothes and we'll be on our way,” Tubman said.

His head was pounding like a drum. He was breathing too quickly but not getting enough oxygen. Carver came another step closer, an expression of phony concern on his face.

“Are you okay, John?” he asked. “You seem a little on edge.”