The Weight of Blood (14 page)

Carl

Carl had trouble sleeping. He'd turn out all the lights downstairs and go around to every window and door, looking outside for a minute or two, each view framed a little different but all the same: dark road, dark field, dark hills. Nobody out there, no
thing
, nothing. He didn't know what he expected to see. Joe Bill Sump dragging himself up half-eaten from a hog trough, or his bones all split up like kindling from a long fall down Devil's Throat? Carl didn't know where Crete had taken him, where the body was, if there was anything left of it, but Joe Bill was dead and Carl had killed him. The scene replayed in his dreams on an endless loop, a record stuck on a tuneless refrain. His arm pulling back like a piston and shooting forward to smash the words out of Joe Bill's mouth. The burst of numbness in his knuckles as they struck the jaw with a sharp crack. Joe Bill's head hitting the wall. The sudden absence of Joe Bill despite his body on the ground. Ransome buzzing in his ear
, Get your truck, go!
And then he was running, because there was something more important than Joe Bill, and that was making sure Lila was okay.

The guilt didn't seep in until later, not until she was under his roof and healing and he knew nothing would hurt her, and then he felt sorry that he'd killed Joe Bill, because he hadn't meant for it to happen. He also felt guilty for being glad Joe Bill was gone. How could Carl have gone around every day doing normal things, knowing what Sump had done and what he still might do? Knowing that he somehow could get to Lila? He didn't have to worry about that now, and freed from worry, he had plenty of room for guilt. He could carry that weight. But it made it hard to sleep.

Crete knew how to dispose of a body. He and Carl had learned from their dad and grandpa, growing up. Dad preferred the respectable way of laying a body to rest, digging a proper grave and tamping it down nice and smooth before the family arrived to mourn. But that wasn't always what the job called for. Sometimes measures had to be taken to keep things quiet, hidden. The spirit's fled, Dad would say. Nothing left but a body, and a body without a spirit'll fall apart whether you help it along or not. Sometimes you did things that disrespected the body, and that was just part of the job. There wasn't any way around it.

So Crete had taken care of things. He'd always been a good big brother, protecting Carl from bullies, dragging him out of the river when he got swept up in the current. He made it clear they were there to help each other, it was what brothers did, and he led by example. Joe Bill was gone and so was his truck, and Crete wouldn't say where.
Better you don't know
, he said. He'd kept Joe Bill's wallet and license plate, and though he didn't say why, Carl knew. So Crete would have something over him if he needed it. He'd always had that seed of distrust in him, even when it came to his brother.
I owe you
, Carl had said, and he meant it. He promised Lila that Sump would never touch her again.

Jamie

Jamie knew the guy in the white van, the one Lucy had seen at Doris Stoddard's—though even if he hadn't, he would have lied and said he did, made up a story, anything to keep her with him, alone and in arm's reach. She'd found Jamie at his fishing spot on the river, and he knew in order to do that, she first would have had to hunt down Gage in whatever hole he was crashing and convince him to give her directions. It was good that she'd gone to some trouble. It meant the information was valuable. Through his years of dealing and bartering, Jamie had developed a knack for knowing how far somebody would go to get something. He could stare right through a person's eyes to the scale that seesawed in the brain, weighing wants and needs, balancing desire against guilt and pride. Lucy had agreed to his terms without argument. He couldn't believe his luck, that by virtue of the very life he led, he had something she needed. People needed him all the time in various sharp-edged ways, but not people like Lucy. Lucy would never stumble over him in some dark corner, press her tits in his face, and beg to blow him for meth.

He'd gotten close to her at the bonfire, as close as he'd ever been, near enough to taste her breath. He'd mentioned Cheri partly to get her attention, but also because he'd been spooked—the memory of it choked him, the rasp of Cheri's breath as she splashed by, looking right past him without seeing, as though
he
were the ghost—and he wanted to share it with Lucy, that feeling of not knowing whether he was real or the world around him was real or if anything was real. He knew Lucy would believe him, that she would somehow understand, because he imagined her privy to that spectral world, the realm of unknowable things that existed beyond an invisible sieve, and maybe if he tried hard enough, he could break apart into tiny pieces and sift through to the other side.

Lucy had pounced on his story, questioning, prodding, taking it seriously, like he'd known she would. But he hadn't been prepared for her anger. He hadn't thought to help Cheri as she fled down the river. If anything, he would have asked
her
for help, asked how to get where ghosts go on earth, how to stay and watch and haunt without anyone knowing he was there. He hadn't expected Lucy to get so caught up in Cheri that he wouldn't have the chance to tell her the other, more important story: that he'd met Lucy's mother at Ralls' grocery when he was twelve, and she'd cast a spell on him, held him in thrall all these empty years until Lucy emerged from the void.

Back then, Jamie was the runt of the Petree clan, the scrawniest of all the boys. That was before he got into his present line of work and started benching cinder blocks, before people stopped calling him skinny and started calling him wiry, which was what you called skinny people you didn't want to mess with. He'd tried to sneak out of Ralls' with a Mr. Goodbar stuffed down his pants, but Junior Ralls had grabbed him by the shirt collar, his calloused knuckles scraping the back of Jamie's neck. Jamie played dumb, which wasn't much of an act; as a kid, he often didn't know what people expected of him or how he'd failed to meet their expectations, which he inevitably seemed to do. Junior shook Jamie back and forth, hissing in his face,
Answer me, boy, why you think your white-trash ass can get away with stealing.

Then an angel appeared, the lights of the dairy cooler bending around her like an aura. She looked right into his eyes, and he saw himself mirrored there, a stupid kid with a candy bar sticking out of the waist of his hand-me-down Wranglers; his mom would never buy him a Mr. Goodbar no matter how hard he begged, because her holy-roller stepfather had whipped her into believing everything good was evil, including chocolate, soda, and birthdays. The woman, Lila, paid for the candy, allowing Junior to pluck the coins from her outstretched palm. Junior let go of Jamie's collar, and Jamie saw the way the grocer gawked at the woman, his mouth gone slack, and he knew Lila's power wasn't in his imagination. It slowly came to him that she was no angel. Angels didn't show so much cleavage or smile at the likes of him. No, she was something else entirely. Long hair gleaming like a blackbird's wings and eyes like a wolf's, sharp and beautiful and full of secrets. He'd jacked off to that image uncountable times. He had run straight home from the grocery store, in fact, and humped the bathroom rug. Later, when he learned her name, he'd moan it in time with the stroke of his hand.
Lila, Liiilaaa
. Savoring the undulation of the tongue, the exotic taste of her name in his mouth.

His mother heard him and thought sure he was possessed. She started telling people that Lila Petrovich, the trampy new waitress at Dane's, was some kind of old-world witch. Beneath that disguise of comely flesh and shiny hair, she was probably covered in hundred-year-old wrinkles and warts. The witch had done something to her boy, had crept close enough to enthrall him, and now he was trapped in her magic, helpless as a fly in molasses. Jamie had believed it, too. Lila had cast a spell to make sure no other woman would ever measure up. And none had, not until Lucy arrived at the bonfire, grown up, blood and flesh warming the shape of his memory, her eyes identical to Lila's save for the way they assessed him. He longed for her to look at him the way Lila had, to take him in, but Lucy's eyes locked him out.

He'd started dreaming of Lila again the night he met Lucy at the river party. She was so real in his dreams, as she always had been, but now she didn't smile and hold out her hand, as she had done so many times in the past. She was trying to tell him something that he couldn't understand, her words rising soundlessly like bubbles underwater. Her eyes, though, were clear as ever, and when he looked into them, he was twelve years old again, and she was saving him from Junior Ralls, his scrawny body flooded with relief.

Lila was the one in his dreams, but when he woke, it was thoughts of Lucy that lingered. He'd been trying to figure out how to see her again ever since the party. Now Lucy had hunted him down, tracked him to this remote fishing spot, and stood before him on the riverbank, her arms crossed over her chest, waiting. She had questions for him, about Cheri and the van, and they had struck a deal.
I'll tell you what I know
, he'd said.
If you kiss me. One kiss. I start it, I finish it
.

Lucy

I was grateful that Jamie was willing to tell me what he knew, even if it was for a price. He moved closer, his stringy hair hanging in his face, and I steeled myself for what was coming. I tried to pretend he was an ordinary guy from school, not a drug dealer a dozen years older than me. It wasn't the wisest choice I'd made, to come here alone without telling anyone, but I didn't want to have to explain myself, the things I was willing to do to get what I wanted. I'd never imagined myself as the sort of person who'd use my body in trade. But I was starting to think you were one kind of person until a situation arose that required you to be something else. It didn't mean that I was on the road to ruin. It just meant that I would do what I had to. You didn't wait for snakes to come out of their den, according to Birdie. You poured the den full of gasoline.

It was only a kiss, I reminded myself. That was all he'd asked, though not all he wanted. I could feel that much in the air between us.

“Just get it over with,” I said.

He leaned in, his breath sour. The breeze brushed his long hair against my arms, and I smelled his sweating body, acrid and earthy like burning leaves. He watched me for a long minute, his hand reaching up and smoothing my hair, trailing across my cheekbone. I kept my expression detached, tried not to shudder. His eyes stayed open as he tilted his head, pressed his lips against mine. He pulled back slightly to look at me again, and I thought he was done. It had been nothing, an instant of touching skin. Then his mouth was hard on mine, wet and open. I shrank away from him and he caged his arms around me, locking me in place. I tried to stay calm and focus on why I was doing this. I let my mouth soften and he pushed his way in. He tasted like smoke and liquor and an underlying bitterness I couldn't identify. He loosened his grip and his hands traveled tentatively over my body, barely grazing the sides of my breasts, and then drawing my hips firmly against his. Tendrils of fear curled up my spine. I had placed my trust in a criminal and in my own belief that I could protect myself. He pushed himself against me more insistently, and for the first time, I gave in to thoughts of what would happen if he shoved me to the ground, held me down. I would fight him, of course, but I wasn't sure I would win.

I risked his anger by pulling away, slowly this time, and he opened his eyes, dazed. Before I could say anything, he pressed his cheek to mine and spoke softly into my ear. Had anyone been watching, we might have looked like lovers embracing.

“Name's Emory,” he said. “Don't know if that's first or last. Hear he's got a place up on Caney Mountain, but I've never seen it and neither'll you. Dogs'd eat you first. He sells things. Drugs, guns. A friend of mine told me a while back Emory was selling
people
. Girls. You remember Eldon Johnson? Found dead underneath his deer stand, everybody figured he got drunk and fell and broke his neck. Wouldn't be unlike him. I believe your dad laid him to rest in his parents' pasture. Eldon was the one flapping his mouth about Emory.”

Jamie nuzzled my hair and inhaled, long and deep, before letting me go. “People think I'm nuts,” he said, squinting at me like I hurt his eyes. “But I got enough sense to fear all the right things.”

I knew he was referring to Emory, that I should stay away, but I wondered if that was also why he let me go instead of taking what he wanted. If he feared my family would come after him, bury him in an unmarked grave. Or if he still thought there might be something to those witch rumors. My legs trembled but held. I resisted the urge to turn and see if he was watching me walk away. My breathing didn't return to normal until I'd put some distance between us, and even then I could still taste him, his bitterness mingled with fear in my throat.

Daniel's face turned new shades of red when I told him what I'd done. I considered not telling him at all, then settled for a tamer version of the truth, so I wouldn't have to lie outright if it somehow got around that Jamie had kissed me.

“So all I had to do was give him a little peck. Creepy. And kind of sad that he's so starved for affection. But I don't guess anybody would kiss him for free.” I sat on my hands to hide their shaking.

Daniel looked about to boil over, like Birdie's old coffee percolator. “Did you even stop and think what he might've done to you? For all we know, he's the one who killed Cheri.”

No need to tell Daniel about my moments of doubt on the riverbank, from which I hadn't quite recovered. One of Birdie's sayings came to mind:
If the wolf wants in, he'll find a way.
“If he wanted to hurt me, he'd do it whether I kissed him or not. And he didn't kill Cheri. Whatever else he might be capable of, I don't see him killing her.”

Daniel rubbed his hands over his face, as though trying to wipe away his annoyance. “Okay,” he said. “I'm not as sure about that as you are, but let's just say Jamie's not involved. So we're thinking if this Emory guy sells girls, he might've taken Cheri and sold her. We still don't know who he sold her to or who killed her. And I doubt that guy's gonna tell us. How the hell does somebody
live
on Caney Mountain, anyway? It's all conservation land up there.”

Caney Mountain rose out of the earth just north of Henbane. The park encompassed eight thousand acres of springs, caves, woods, and cliffs. Tourist maps proclaimed it to have the best views in the Ozarks. Bess and I had gone there on our fifth-grade field trip, made the pilgrimage to see Missouri's champion black gum tree, the biggest in the state.

I shrugged. “It'd be a good place to hide.”

“Did you ever think it was something like that? With Cheri, I mean? People had all kinds of ideas, everything from satanic sacrifice to voodoo to an affair with the art teacher. But I never heard anybody mention her being sold.”

“No,” I said. “I kept a list. That wasn't on it.”

“It's just hard to believe, in a place like this where everybody knows everybody else's business, there're still secrets.”

I might have thought so, too, but I was uncovering more secrets every day. “Do you know how to pick locks?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“We're at a dead end here. I have to get into Crete's office, look through his files. We need to know who rented that trailer.”

Daniel sighed. “You know my brothers are serving time for robbery?”

I looked away, feeling guilty for having asked.

“We're good at picking locks,” he said. “Not so good at getting away with it.”

“You don't have to help,” I said. “Just teach me how to do it.”

He paced a slow circle in the dirt, hands in his pockets. “I can do better,” he said, sending up a plume of dust with his shoe. “I know where to find the keys.”

A half-moon silvered the parking lot as we crept toward Dane's. A dark night would have been better, but it had to be done before Dad got back to town, and once I knew Daniel had access to the keys, I couldn't get in quick enough.

Daniel ticked off the reasons he'd held back on telling me about the keys: He didn't want me getting into trouble, didn't want to lose his job, didn't want his mom to have to visit all of her kids in jail. Still, he'd insisted on coming along. He used his key to get into the boathouse, where a ring of spare keys was hidden under a floorboard in the supply closet. He didn't know which keys went to what, but he'd once walked in to find Judd returning them to their hiding place after locking the cash drawer in the office for the night.

I waited on the dark side of the building, listening to the scratch and clink of failed keys until Daniel called softly that he'd found the right one. When I scurried over to join him, he stopped me before I could slip inside. “Wait out here,” he said, holding on to the bell at the top of the door so it wouldn't make noise. “You can be my lookout.” I started to argue, but he pulled the door shut behind him and locked it. He had broken in to Dane's without me.

I sat down to wait. It was still hot enough outside to make me sweat. The river beckoned from across the road, gleaming under the moon, and I wondered if I could convince Daniel to take a swim with me when we were done. Cheri's tree hung over the water like it was bending to take a drink. Had her killer admired this same nighttime view when he disposed of her body? No, it had been cold that night, freezing, the air laced with fog. Surely he hadn't taken the view into account.

The beam of a flashlight swept across the gas pumps and startled me to attention. I gave the front door two quick taps and sneaked around the corner to the patio, where a side door led out from the restaurant. We had planned to escape this way if anything went wrong. I hoped Daniel had heard my warning, though I wasn't too worried about it. Most likely the light belonged to a camper wandering around in search of a soda machine. I waited for the flashlight or footsteps to move past me, but they didn't. Then I heard the bell jangle on the front door.

Adrenaline surged through me, making my muscles twitch. I didn't want to risk going back around to the front, so I pressed my face to the little window in the patio door, trying to distinguish shapes among shadows in the dimly lit store. One of the shapes darted toward me, and I stepped aside as Daniel burst out the door and hurriedly shut it behind him. The keys rattled in his hands as he sought the right one and relocked it.

“Let's go!” I hissed. He pulled a folder from under his arm and reached around me, one hand lifting the back of my shirt and the other sliding the folder beneath it, pressing it against my sweating skin.

The door creaked, and there was no time to move. “Hey, now.” The unmistakable gruffness of Judd's voice. “What the hell's going on out here?”

Daniel turned around, holding out his arm to keep me behind him.

“Well, well,” Judd said. “Past your bedtime, ain't it, Miss Lucy?”

“I was just—”

“I ain't blind,” he said, spitting on the ground.

“I'll take Lucy home,” Daniel said.

Judd frowned. “Maybe I ought to be the one doing that.”

“It's okay, Judd,” I said. “I'll get home on my own.”

“You supposed to be out in the woods after dark?”

“Straight home. Like a flash.” I backed into the darkness, tucking in my shirt to hold the folder in place, hoping Daniel would be able to smooth things over with Judd.

I headed upstairs when I got home, and even though I was alone in the house, I closed my door before opening up the folder. I sat cross-legged on my bed and scanned the first document. It was a lease agreement, but not for the trailer in Henbane, the trailer where Cheri had been. The lease was for an apartment in Springfield. So was the next, then the next. It wasn't surprising to see that my uncle had so many rental properties, because he had his hands in lots of different jars and didn't make a point of telling me about all of them. But when I reached the end of the folder, I hadn't found what I was looking for. The whole point of breaking in to Crete's files for the rental records was to find out who'd rented the trailer, because that person might know what had happened to Cheri. Crete kept records on everything. If he didn't have a rental contract for the trailer, that was telling in itself. I sifted through the pages again, making sure none were stuck together.

There was a knock downstairs, and I knew it was Daniel. I hurried down to let him in. “It's not in there,” I said. “Was that the only folder with leases in it?”

He looked distracted. “I don't know. I didn't see another one, but I was in a hurry. So there's nothing on the trailer?”

“No. What's wrong? Did Judd chew you out?”

“It's not that,” he said. “I'm not worried about Judd. I … I don't think I locked the desk. I remember locking the cabinet, replacing the key, locking the door behind me, but I don't remember the desk.”

“Maybe Crete won't notice.”

Daniel frowned. “You know him better than me, what do you think?”

“We could go back now and lock it. I need to put this worthless folder back anyway.”

“No. Judd might be hanging around. I couldn't put the keys away because he was there, but I need to get them back before someone realizes they're gone. We can't risk using them in the morning to get back into Crete's office and check everything.”

I reached out to take his hands. “I'm sorry,” I said. We stood there for a minute, not looking at each other. “Do you want to stay?”

He gave me a halfhearted smile, squeezed my hands, and released them. “Nah, Lucy,” he said. “Get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow.”

I was skittish going in to work the next day and terrified that someone would notice. I'd been up much of the night trying to prepare coherent responses to any questions that might come up. I repeated them until they felt true. Any trace of confidence evaporated when I saw Crete sitting on the bench outside Dane's, watching my approach.

“Sit down a minute,” he said. “I need to talk to you.” I sat. “Judd called me last night, said he caught you fooling around up here with Daniel.”

I had an answer ready. “It's nothing serious,” I said. “We're just friends.”

“We can get into that later,” he said. “What I wanna know is why you were
here
.”

“I don't know,” I said. “We didn't plan it. I couldn't sleep, I came out for a night swim. He was here.”

He stared me down. “So he didn't ask you to meet him. You showed up and here he was?”

I nodded.

“You mighta kept him from robbing the place.”

No. No. No. Something had tipped him off. It had to be the drawer, left unlocked, like Daniel had thought.

“The spare keys are missing, and only somebody working the boathouse'd know where I keep 'em. Looks like he got into the office but didn't make it into the safe.”