Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children (18 page)

Duncan said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have cheated on your wife.”

Mike agreed. Herb had brought his problems on himself. He wondered what other weird shit the man craved. “So he waited all this time to play that card.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “He’d ask for little things here and there, but never nothing major, he liked the feeling of power more than he liked using it.” Herb rubbed his hands together. He stared at Duncan. “I don’t blame you for judging me. And I’m sorry about your daughter. But like I said, all I know is my own situation. Rusty might be able to tell you more.”

Mike said, “Why?”

Duncan, quiet as a cat, moved up next to him. “So you put your little secret before the lives of four girls, and their families. You’re a piece of shit.”

“It’s easy to judge me when you’re not wearing my shoes. Rusty and Pat had something going on behind the scenes, I don’t know what. Maybe Rusty can tell you if Pat did it. I don’t know. I think so though. He got off on seeing people suffer.”

The big cop put his pistol away and cracked his knuckles. “They were friends?”

“As far as friendship between criminals goes.”

Mike did his best to glide back through the years, remember Rusty as best he could, his flaws, any coldness. There were just images of him drinking, or smiling those rare smiles the times he was around John Sr., and his boys. He realized he didn’t like Herb much—he wasn’t even half the man Rusty was, even when Rusty got lost in the bottle.

“Do you think he’s home, Mr. Miller?”

“Probably.” Herb tried to stand and collapsed back in the chair, holding his leg. “I don’t think I can walk on this.”

Duncan shook his head. “No. Probably not.”

Mike found a set of crutches, the same ones he’d used after a stupid stunt as a teenager. He carried them over to Herb who took them and smiled weakly. “You’re not going to tell my wife, are you?”

“Depends if you told us everything. If Rusty has another story, well, who are we supposed to believe?”

Herb shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

Duncan frowned. “You’re lying about something. We’re going to let you go for now, but remember what we know, remember what you did, all of it. You’ve still got a price to pay. Enjoy your time with your wife and daughter until the hammer drops.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Herb said. He looked at Mike. “No. That’s it. I swear.”

“You look pretty nervous.”

“You had me thinking you were going to kill me! You hit me with that wrench and—”

“Shut up. You are a fucking accomplice. And you’re going to heal from that…” Duncan pointed at Herb’s leg. He didn’t have to finish the rest of his sentence. There was no healing for Duncan, only acceptance if he was lucky, but that was a cry in the dark.

Herb looked at Mike, confusion plain on his face, almost disappointment, a
Why are you turning on me all of the sudden. We’re supposed to be friends
look.

“You can walk home,” Mike said.

“It’s almost two miles.”

“I know.”

Chapter 27

I twisted beneath Angela’s laughter, her hand holding my head down, my nose feeling like it would break against her pubic bone. She purred and ground herself into my face, bringing her butt up off the cruiser’s seat, the pressure in my head nearly unbearable. I punched her side. She laughed again. Cool night air came in through the open passenger window and the hair stood on the back of my neck, the fight going out of me. Black panic swam around the edges of my vision even as I felt myself letting go, fading.

An ocean of fear and anger consumed me, pulled me beneath its weight. Sweat stung my eyes. Heart thudding, I forced my mouth open enough to tear at her with my teeth. Angela snatched my hair and jerked me back, threw me into the driver’s seat. “No biting.”

I choked and rolled down the driver’s window.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I puked on the cruiser’s door, bile sharp and hot in my throat. I shivered.

She could have easily killed me.

When I turned back to her, lungs burning, feeling returning to my face, I put my hand on the pistol and said, “You’re a messed up bitch.”

“We’re in this together, remember that.”

“In what? Why me? Why are you messing with my life?”

She shrugged and pointed toward the road.

“Answer me first.”

“I’m here to help you. How many times do you need me to say it, Johnathan?”

I rubbed my nose, the back of my hand wet. I held it out between us and stared at the blood, at her. “This helps me? You’re a lunatic.”

“Let’s go. Flattering me won’t change what you want.”

“I told you what I want: You out of my life. This nightmare to end.”

“You can have one but not the other.”

“We’ll see.”

“No. You’ll see.”

We sat there, gazes locked. Slowly, my pulse dropped to normal and what was left of reality as I used to know it seeped back in. Crickets chirped. A dog scurried down the alley, alongside the cruiser. It eyed us suspiciously, head low, and trotted on. I held my nose and tilted my head back until the bleeding stopped. “Where am I supposed to go?”

“I already told you. Follow your heart.”

“My heart says I should go alone.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t fucking know. I’m not exactly in the habit of listening to it.”

Mercury lamps burned like silent sentinels over the road. Everything so quiet. Angela said, softly, “This isn’t the place you grew up anymore, and you resent it. The happy days have fled on a midnight train and carried your ignorance with them. But you’re lucky, Johnathan. So many people stroll through life without touching anything deeper than the surface of what they are, only passing moments of pure perception. You have the chance to touch more than that. You can look deeper, if you choose, and you can help other people. That’s your gift.”

“I can’t help anyone. I can barely take care of myself.” I held the steering wheel, my mind heavy with all my failures, disappointments. I breathed her in, still unsure of what her motivation was. “I think you have the wrong guy. And I don’t want you touching me like that. I love my fiancé.”

“No, you love the idea of her you’ve built in your head.” She touched my leg, twirled a circle on my jeans. “You’re the one. And your friend.”

“You think I should just put up with you like you’re a blessing instead of a curse? You almost smothered me. I don’t like you. If you weren’t a woman, I’d…”

“Let’s not pretend anymore. Okay? We both know I’m not a woman. And I am here for your good. I’m preparing you.”

I nodded, the last of my anger seeping out through my hands. “For death?”

She didn’t laugh. “Possibly.”

I flipped the car’s headlights on, not liking the possibility of dying. “Do you know that raven?”

She tensed for a moment and then smoothed her dress against her legs. “What about him?”

“Whose side is he on?”

“The same one as me.”

“The side looking to help.”

“Yes, Johnathan.”

“You both have a funny way of showing it.”

She smirked. “He’s one of The Seven Brothers.”

“Brothers of what?”

“Things you wrestle. Drive now. You know where you need to go? Can you see it clearly?”

My mind turned over
Things you wrestle
. Guilt? A lack of faith? What?

“Can you see it clearly? Where we need to go?”

I closed my eyes. I saw her, trapped in a thick fog, her mouth unable to open, cry for help, lost in perpetual dream. I threw the car in drive and pulled out onto the street, wondering what kind of hell this psycho bitch was leading me to; unsure what could be worse—prison, death, or the nuthouse.

* * *

Duncan sighed and Mike ignored it, both of them in the manor’s living room, Mike at the desk, a phone book on his lap. “Here we go.” He typed Rusty’s address into MapQuest and hit enter. The bereaved father leaned over, braced a hand on Mike’s shoulder, shivering. He smelled clean, thanks to a shower; the faint tang of mothballs clung to the clothes Mike had dug out of his dad’s wardrobe for Duncan.

Mike hadn’t taken a shower, but some dry clothes and getting the dead smell away from him helped. Duncan pulled his hand away. “I hope he knows more than Miller. I feel horrible. I was out of line.”

Mike memorized the directions and shut the Mac down. “Don’t blame yourself. He’s not worth it. Remember, he helped bury her.”

Duncan gave a slight nod. “I know. But I felt myself losing control down there, with the pipe wrench. I liked seeing him suffer, and it made me sick at the same time. I’ve broken all the laws I’m supposed to stand for. Like some selfish vigilante.”

Mike stood and slapped his shoulder. He understood the darkness and guilt the state boy wrestled; he’d wrestled it, too. “He would have gotten a lawyer and passed it all off on Pat and Rusty.”

“We can’t know that for sure.”

“Not our problem. He made his choices and has to deal with the consequences.”

Duncan shrugged. “I’m tempted to stop and give him a lift home, how screwed up is that? Even though my gut tells me that I’ll have to come back and throw cuffs on him later.”

“Forget about him.”

Why would you care anyway? Because you broke a man’s shin bone? That’s nothing, Dunc, trust me
.

Mike pointed to the hall. “Let’s get over to Rusty’s.” He put a hand on Duncan’s back, turned him, pushed him forward, felt the fight going out of the father, the cop, reality setting in.

It’s all too easy to do things when we’re consumed by frustration and rage, but once they wane… not all men have it in them to do what needs doing.

Out on the road, Mike explained the directions again and followed Duncan in the Jaguar. Duncan tapped his brakes as they neared a shambling man on crutches, wobbling on the shoulder of highway 87.

“Jesus Christ.”

The cruiser slowed, but didn’t stop.

“Good.” Something shifted in the passenger seat, a bramble of shadows as they sped beneath the few lights lining the road toward town. Mountains loomed over Division like dark giants, stars like a million needle heads peering over their shoulders. He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and called the hospital, hoping his mother was awake, punching her room number when the automated voice offered him the selection.

She picked up the phone and her voice came out as frail as he imagined she looked at this point. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“Mom?”

“Where have you been? You never called.”

“I’ve been busy.”

And you always hated me
.

His heart rate galloped as his mind turned over how she used to treat him—cold, withdrawn, those sharp eyes in her severe face, judging. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m dying.”

And to hear her say it, so forward, without emotion, broke his heart, made him want to forgive her cruelness, toward him, his father, Natalie.

Silence choked the line. Mike squeezed the phone. He didn’t know how things were between other men and their mothers, but he imagined it couldn’t be this awkward. “What happened, Mom?”

“I hope you’re not talking stupid again.”

“I need to know.”

“You want to upset me? Is that why you called? You always loved her more than me. So did your father. Everyone.”

He looked up and jammed the brakes, breath caught in his throat as he nearly rear-ended Duncan’s car as he turned right on Valentine road. Mike’s mother said something.

“What?”

“I said you haven’t changed a bit. I thought maybe getting away, going off to chase your stupid dream of writing would help you get over yourself. Now I see it’s only made you fall further. You’re not the selfish boy anymore. You’re worse. The selfish man. You expect answers from me?”

He ignored the venom in her voice, and said, “I didn’t go do what I planned to do. I did something else, but I knew you wouldn’t approve so I never told you. Some people held me in high esteem. I miss that. Respect. Honesty. A clear cut objective. You’ve always been a bitch. I thought the years by yourself would change you. Make you—”

The phone died in his ear. She’d hung up. He realized: You can love someone, but not even love can drive out crazy. Mike took three deep breaths and slid the cell back in his suit coat pocket. He told himself it was fine, even though he knew it wasn’t. Even though he hated her, he still loved her and wanted to fix their relationship, and to know what had happened to Natalie. A raven made of black smoke, eyes and beak a hard shade of ivory, hopped around on the passenger seat. It eyed him, then beaked the radio until it found something it liked.

Mike stared at it as Duncan slowed and pulled into Rusty’s drive. “You follow me back from Cuba? Is that why your master is here?”

The raven sang along to a CCR song, ignoring him.

“Talking to you and that monster are like trying to talk to my mother. You know that?” He parked behind the cop car, stared at Rusty’s small two story home. Its siding was dirty white, the windows dark. “What do you think? He sleeping? Wanna come help wake Mr. Wallace up?”

The bird changed the station until it found some Stones.

“Suit yourself. Don’t kill anything while I’m inside.” Mike opened the door, cool night air seeping into the car. “And remember. Your fight is with me. This cop and John are good men, innocent. Leave them out of it. Understand?”

The bird sniggered and rustled its feathers, beak digging beneath a wing. It pulled a man, an inch tall, held by the back of his shirt, from within the swirling black. Mike saw who it was, even though the features, smoke, like the bird, were blurry. “You think you got me? I’m your dinner, that it? I beat the bitch in Cuba. I can beat you.”

The bird threw him up in the air with a flip of its neck, opened its beak and caught him in its mouth, Mike’s fingers curled around its bone-white beak, legs kicking, trying to crawl from its gourd. The raven wiggled its head, beak pointed at the roof of the Jaguar until Mike couldn’t hold on any longer and it consumed him.

He swallowed, mouth dry. Then lied. “You don’t scare me.”

* * *

I parked in the main lot out front, Our Lady lit up, Halloween posters plastered to the windows, ghosts and gremlins staked to the flower beds. It gave the old building a gothic look, and I wondered how families felt walking in there at night to visit their hurt and dying brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. A chill raised gooseflesh on my skin and settled like a hard knot in my stomach. I felt hollow, weak, too weak to deal with whatever was coming, whatever waited.

“She’s in here somewhere. But I don’t know who.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets.

“Let’s go. Time is short. Everything is falling into place.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but climbed out of the cruiser anyway, hungry, tired, clothes caked in mud. “I can’t go in there like this.”

“You worry about what people think too much. It’s what’s inside that matters, hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

“Yeah. You’re a Book of Wisdom.”

“Not me. I’m a Book of Regret.” She headed toward the entrance, purpose to her step. I still didn’t know what drove her, and it bothered the hell out of me. She knew more about everything than I did though, and I clung to that fact. Whoever, whatever she was, she had answers I hoped I’d be privy to when the time came.

I waited a moment, trying to gather my thoughts, put everything in its proper place, but all the drawers inside me were buckling, the light bulbs in my head felt blown.
I shouldn’t be here. I should be trying to find out where Cat ran off to and dragging her and Ethan back home.

But then Mark’s voice slipped through my head, whispering that he’d sent something horrible my way, and I swallowed a thick lump that felt like my tongue, and nodded.
She’s better off wherever she is until this all blows over. She’s safe with someone. I can patch it up later.

And I knew that if I did hunt Cat down, and tried to make her come home, it would only make things worse. She didn’t like me telling her what she needed to do to begin with. Usually, it was the other way around. I bowed my head, thinking maybe she was right, maybe I needed to talk to a psychologist, get my head cleared of all this bullshit.