Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (18 page)

“Oh, no. You mean that freeze-dried shit?”

“Apt description,” she said, then sighed. “Oh, they’re not inedible. Filling, reasonably nutritious. But tasteless.”

“When you’re a free woman, we’ll hit the best restaurant in a four-state area. My treat.”

“Something with spices and sauces and bottles of wine, right?”

“You got it.”

“I think I’m becoming sensorially deprived,” she said. “All I’ve thought about for the last day and a half is food and sex. Not necessarily in that order. What have you been up to today?”

“We went to court for Slim’s preliminary hearing.”

“How bad is it?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, he could’ve killed her.”

“You think he did?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“You sound pretty preoccupied with it.”

“I was,” I answered, “until you called. Now my preoccupations have changed. How’s Kay holding up?”

Marsha’s voice lowered. “Frankly, she’s becoming insufferable.
For the first day or so, she was as terrified as a cornered rabbit. But now she’s convinced we’re safe in here and she’s yacking away at ninety miles a minute all the time. And I can’t get away from her. The politics in here are weird, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there are five of us in here. Me, Kay, and three morgue attendants.”

“Let me guess: the three morgue attendants are all male.”

“And all under about twenty-five.”

“You don’t have to say it. I got the picture.”

Five people trapped together in tight quarters: two women, one in charge, and three young males. Yes, I thought, the dynamics could get a little touchy.

“So we’re all doing our level best, but frankly, it’s getting tough. I’m afraid we’ll kill each other before the wackos can get to us.”

I rubbed my forehead and fought the cramp that had erupted in the crook of my neck from having the phone jammed in there.

“Jeez, Marsh, I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just hang in there. We’ll be all right.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “
You’re
being held hostage and you’re cheering
me
up. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Her laugh was broken by the popping of the phone and about two seconds of static. When she spoke again, her voice was filtered through a layer of hiss. “—got to go. We’ve had to start rationing phone calls. We had a problem with a couple of the guys making long-distance calls, and we can’t seem to get Kay to limit her calls to less than a decade. I’ll—”

Another loud pop, then silence, and finally dial tone. I placed the phone back on its handset, then turned and looked out my window in the other direction, toward
the east, where Marsha was. Where I couldn’t see her or feel her anymore, at least not in reality. But that’s okay. Reality sucks anyway.

The afternoon traffic on Gallatin Road slowed first to a crawl, then to a dead stop. I looked down at my watch; too early for rush hour. What the hell was going on? I wondered. To my right, a guy on crutches passed us on the sidewalk.

We sat there for a while, then the traffic started moving again. As I approached a slight rise in the pavement and topped it, I realized what the holdup was. A tall, black-skirted, white-shirted woman with a badge and a feeble bleach job held up a stop sign about the size of a Ping-Pong paddle and guided another gaggle of rug rats across the intersection.

Okay, so I know I’ve got this thing about traffic, but I try not to get too iced about school zones. After all, we have to protect the flower of American youth, even the ones that carry nickel-plated .22s in their lunch boxes next to their bologna-and-cheese sandwiches. So I usually stick pretty close to the fifteen-mile-per-hour limit and smile at the crossing guards and behave myself. For some reason, though, it was making my skin crawl today.

Everything was making my skin crawl today.

I’d decided that since I could no longer stay focused on any one subject and was as restless as a six-year-old with ten more minutes left in time-out, I’d take advantage of my options as a self-employed person and blow off the rest of the day. I don’t do that often. It’s not so
much that I’m self-disciplined; I’d just rather be doing something than not doing something. Most days, that is.

So I drove over to Marsha’s apartment, where I watered plants and checked locks. Then I dug around in her desk until I found what looked like a mailbox key. I walked back down the corridor and opened her box to find several days’ worth of mail stuffed in.

There was a stack of the usual bills and junk mail, and a couple of catalogs: L. L. Bean, Williams-Sonoma, and some adventure-wilderness catalog with a photo of a pair of well-sculpted rock climbers in their early twenties plastered across the front. The two were dangling off the side of a cliff, pausing in midrappel for a swig from some plastic bottle no doubt full of yuppie mineral water. Marsha loved this kind of stuff: hiking, rappelling, rock climbing—all the adventure fantasies that appeal to people with too much education, too much time spent in windowless offices, and usually, too much money. Marsha had even coerced me into springing for a two-hundred-dollar pair of hiking boots that I’d never used. We were both too busy, something that left me relieved and thankful. I’d never mentioned to her that the prospect of leaping off the side of a cliff with nothing but a designer rope between me and the consequences of violating the laws of physics made me very nervous. Like totally incontinent …

Besides, I have no great love for the outdoors. My idea of roughing it is when room service closes at ten.

I moped around for a while, then headed across the river. Once through the school zones, the traffic picked up and I soon found myself in the left-hand-turn lane near the old Inglewood Theatre, hoping for a break in the traffic. The light at Ben Allen Road changed over and I shot across two lanes while there was still time. Around the corner, past the steel-doored Death Rangers clubhouse, the chain-link gate across the entrance to Lonnie’s junkyard—excuse me, auto-salvage and recycling
lot—was shut tight. I pulled the smoking Mazda to a stop and set the parking brake.

The padlock on the gate was unhitched, so I figured he had to be there. Without thinking, I pulled the latch up on the gate and swung it wide. The hinges let loose with a long, high-pitched screeching sound.

Big mistake.

She registered in my peripheral vision as I stepped through the gate and started to close it behind me. It was a natural reaction, I guess; I hadn’t seen her in days, didn’t know she was back from the vet’s. I smiled, started to say something in the usual baby talk she drove me to, then froze.

Shadow, Lonnie’s aging timber shepherd was charging me from across the yard. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been bad. Except for the silence. No barking. No eager panting. No twitching back and forth of the long black-and-gray tail. She was low, close to the ground, coming straight at me like a runaway locomotive, except that she was in complete control. I could yell her name, but that’s about all I’d have time to yell before she ripped my throat out.

I whipped around and threw all my weight into the gate, pushing it back wide-open again from where I’d nearly shut it. Thinking, lately, had been like trying to see through a fogged-up windshield. But I had sense enough to realize my only hope was to get that chain-link gate between me and her.

I caught a glimpse of her as I ducked behind the gate just as she became airborne. She was eye level with me by the time I got my head turned. I had my fingers intertwined in the chain link, scrambling like hell as I pulled it to, hoping she didn’t have a taste for finger food. Shadow had to weigh seventy, maybe eighty pounds, and on her best days, she could outrun a Corvette from a dead stop for twenty yards.

She slammed into the chain link so hard that the fence shook. I felt her hot breath. Slobber splattered on
me as I pulled the fence to and got it latched just in time to get my fingers out of the way.

She dropped to the ground after hitting the fence, but only for a moment. Then she was up on her hind legs, this time with a low guttural growl coming from somewhere deep inside of her that scared the slam-dunking hell out of me.

Behind her, the door to the rusty green trailer opened and Lonnie dashed out, zipping up a pair of tight Levi’s.

“Shadow, cut!” he yelled. She jumped down, backed off two feet, and sat on her haunches. She was heaving like a marathoner at the Mile-24 marker, but she never took those black eyes off me for a second.

“You dumb son of a bitch,” Lonnie hissed as he came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You trying to get yourself killed?”

My heart pounded in my chest and an enormous pool had formed under each armpit. “I didn’t know she was back,” I wheezed. Lonnie squatted down and buried his face in the fur behind her ear, nuzzling her, whispering to calm her. “You didn’t tell me.”

He turned to me. “You didn’t ask.”

“She was so quiet,” I said, forcing my breath to slow to normal.

“You think she’s going to warn you?”

I suddenly felt dizzy, clammy all over. “If I hadn’t see her coming …”

“Don’t dwell on it,” he said. “C’mon in now. And for God’s sake, try to act like a sane person.”

I looked at her. Her eyes still had not warmed. Two rounded cubes of black ice stared out at me from gray-and-black fur. “You sure it’s okay?”

“It will be. C’mon.”

I unlatched that gate again. She seemed to stiffen for a second. Lonnie pressed his hand into her fur. I stepped through the gate, never taking my eyes off her. I’d gotten into nasty scrapes before, but never had I experienced anything like this. I never considered Shadow
this way, as a killing machine that could be turned in my direction.

I closed the gate behind me. “I’m sorry, man. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s not all your fault. She don’t see so well anymore. Come closer and hold out your hand, slow. Don’t make a fist.”

“Shadow,” I cooed. “It’s me, baby. Harry.”

The low growl from hell started up again. Lonnie rubbed her ears. My hand got within about two inches of her great black, shiny wet nose. I moved it closer, just a hair, then held it there.

She seemed to pause for a second, then sniffed the air expectantly. Behind Lonnie, I saw her tail wag. My heart backfired in my chest as she lunged, and I had this fragmented thought that this was what the jaws of death were going to look like.

Then her paws were on my shoulders, and her huge tongue was slapping across my face, wet and hot and sloppy. I relaxed and wrapped my arms around her in a bear hug. I lowered her to the ground, and she barked twice, loud and cheery. No big deal to her. All forgiven, all forgotten.

“No, baby, no chicken. I don’t have any chicken today.”

She barked a couple more times, like
I could still eat you, bud
.

“What’d you do today, anyway?” Lonnie asked as he turned and headed back to the trailer. “Crawl out of bed and eat a big bowl of stupid?”

“Sorry,” I answered, following him.

“I’ve seen you do some sorry shit before, but I’d have to rate that one about a nine-point-nine.”

“That low?” I asked, closing the door behind me as we stepped into the living room. I looked around. Every time I came here, he had some new piece of junk or equipment, exotic weapon, or electronic device. The place looked more like Frankenstein’s laboratory than a
dwelling—especially if Frankenstein drove a pickup truck and drank a lot of beer.

Speaking of beers, one came flying through the air toward me as Lonnie emerged from the kitchen. Two tops popped simultaneously as Lonnie pitched himself down on an overstuffed chair. I settled onto the couch, avoiding a large patch of thirty-weight for the sake of my good clothes.

“What’s this?” I asked, eyeing a large carton on the coffee table.

“UPS man left it,” he said.

“Bet he didn’t try to come through the gate.”

Lonnie laughed. “He’s got better sense.”

Curiosity got the better of me. “What is it?”

“Let’s see.” He whipped out a long pocketknife and thumbed a release on the side. The blade flicked open and glinted in the lamplight.

“What in the ever-loving hell are you doing with a switchblade?”

“This old thing?” he said offhandedly as he slit the packing tape across the top of the carton. “Hell, this’s just a toy.”

I shook my head, then took a long pull off the can. My throat sparkled as the beer went down. I only had to wait a couple of seconds for the burn in my gut.

Lonnie ripped the top of the package open and dug through a pile of Styrofoam peanuts. He pulled out some packing slips and an invoice. “Oh, yeah, I remember. Jeez, I ordered this stuff almost two months ago.”

“What is it?”

He dug deeper into the white, crunchy peanuts, then pulled out a small, green can. He handed it to me and I studied it. It weighed maybe a pound, maybe a little more, and except for the fact that it had a grenade pin and handle on the top, it looked fairly innocuous.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I admitted.

He sat back down in his chair. He held the sweating
beer can in his left hand, and in his right, he casually tossed one of the canisters up and down.