McFall Page 24

  Cindy spread grape jelly on her bagel and then brandished the sticky knife as if preparing for a swordfight. “I’m not counting on you to feed me anything anymore,” she said. “From now on, I’m using public records and official sources who will actually cut through the bullshit.”

  Littlefield sighed. The end of his term in December couldn’t come soon enough. He just wondered if the coming winter would also put this relationship in the deep freeze. The running joke that she’d only been in it for the scoops was now hitting too close to home.

  “Sweeney’s not officially a suspect. At least, not until I get test results to see if the blood on the pipe wrench is a match for Cole’s. I had to go around Perry Hoyle and send it to a private lab.”

  “So you’re suspicious enough to tap your homicide budget, huh?”

  “The blood on the wrench might have come from an animal for all I know. Stepford Matheson lost some dogs a while back. He thought it was coyotes, but maybe Sweeney conked them over the head. God knows, their howling was enough to make anybody want to shut them up one way or another.”

  “I don’t have to wait until you open a formal investigation,” Cindy said. “Not everyone is bound by your little unwritten rules of secrecy.”

  “You don’t have anything to run with. Not if you’re still pretending to be a responsible journalist.”

  “‘Pretending,’ huh? Maybe it’s time for that little editorial about a sheriff that’s coasting through the end of his term and letting someone get away with murder.”

  Littlefield slammed down his cup so hard that coffee sloshed onto his plate of eggs and grits. He sheepishly dabbed at the mess with a napkin.

  Going to have to work on my fits of self-righteous indignation. If I end up marrying this woman, I’m sure as hell going to need a decent repertoire.

  At the counter behind the cash register stood Melanie Ward, the young woman who had been Brett Summers’s date on the night of his death. Taking her statement had been one of his toughest acts as a law enforcement officer, because she’d kept repeating, “I shouldn’t have come.” Now she looked pale and listless, ten years older, and even her curls seemed to have wilted in grief. He guessed she was still carrying around some guilt—join the club, there’s plenty for all of us—so he was relieved she wasn’t their waitress.

  “Okay,” he said to Cindy. “What do you have on the Sweeney case if you don’t quote me?”

  “How about an eyewitness account?”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way. I’ve had a very interesting discussion with a certain Mr. Larkin McFall, and he’s willing to go on record.”

  “I can’t believe you’d be that reckless, even to sell a few newspapers.”

  “I’m not going to accuse Sweeney Buchanan of murder. I’m simply going to lay out the lineage of facts, all the way back to Cole Buchnanan’s death, and let readers draw their own conclusions. We’ve got a lying medical examiner, three suspicious deaths over a couple of months in the same area, and a possible deranged killer running wild. I’ll admit, I was as suspicious of McFall as you were—partly because I was under your spell and wanted to please you—but he’s starting to seem like the only sensible person around here.”

  “Why would you want to inflame the community like that?”

  “Quite frankly, Sheriff, for a person who puts so much stock in ‘evidence,’ I think you’re deathly afraid of the truth.”

  “And what would that be?” Littlefield wasn’t sure he wanted to know, because there were several possible answers, and all of them whispered of truth.

  “You have such a hard-on for McFall that you’ve closed your mind to anything that might indicate he’s not some sort of demon sent here from hell to personally torment you.”

  “You haven’t been much help. You never did get that information on his businesses.”

  “What do you want? For me to seduce him so you can swab his DNA out of me?” She pushed her plate away and stood. “Are you going to eat that bacon?”

  He shook his head. It wasn’t much of a peace offering, but right now he’d take what he could get. She plucked the two strips from his plate, shook the remaining coffee dregs from the greasy meat, and shoveled them into her mouth, intentionally smacking her lips. “Your turn to pay,” she said, tossing a few ones on the table and heading for the door.

  At the register, Melanie took his check and totaled the bill, not looking at him. He waited silently, turning his hat in his hands, until she muttered, “That will be $18.76, please.”

  He gave her a twenty. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m sorry about—”

  “Everybody’s sorry. Well, I’m the one who’s sorry. I went out with the guy one time, and now I’m getting treated like a widow. I barely knew him.”

  A man at the counter, sipping coffee and picking at a piece of apple pie, glanced over at them. Melanie lowered her voice. “He acted like a stupid asshole, and he got what stupid assholes deserve. I’d think a cop would know that better than anybody.”

  She thrust out the change and he waved it away. “Put it in your college fund,” he said.

  “Jeez, you been talking to Ronnie Day? Figures.” But she slipped the money into the front pocket of her apron regardless.

  The cook called out an order and Melanie headed for the grill. Littlefield took the opportunity to get the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “How did she get here?” Bobby asked.

  “It’s an all-ages club,” Ronnie said.

  Bobby didn’t think “club” was the right word for this craphole. The State Line Tavern was just across the Tennessee border, a tin-roofed restaurant that wasn’t much of a step up from Sweeney Buchanan’s digs. Half of the business was dedicated to fireworks that were much more potent than those legally available in North Carolina, and the clientele appeared to be the type that would happily blow their welfare checks to hell for a few kicks.

  Dex had scored the gig for The Diggers, and the tavern’s owner had promised them a cut of the door. Bobby had been suspicious from the get-go, because the tavern’s owner, a rat-faced man with a stringy mullet named Lou, wouldn’t let the band provide its own door check. Even though the place was packed with a Saturday night crowd, the patrons cared more about drinking than dancing, and the second warning sign had come when a vocal portion of the crowd had begun chanting for “Sweet Home Alabama.” The bowling jackets that had been cool at the high school dance now felt ridiculous among the plaid-and-blue-jeans crowd.

  But that was just rock'n'roll on the road. What really threw Bobby for a loop was when Melanie showed up in her blue summer dress, edging her way through the tables until she was right next to the stage. She stood there swaying by herself through a couple of songs. A middle-aged man in a cowboy hat came up and said something to her while The Diggers were blasting through a makeshift version of “Johnny B. Goode.” She shook her head and the man scuttled away, and then Amy Extine popped up beside her, holding a beer bottle.

  At the break, Bobby slipped out the backstage door where the Silverado was parked. He was glad to be out of the lights and noise. Ronnie had joined him while Dex, Jimmy Dale, and Floyd went to talk their way into free beer at the bar.

  “Amy must have given her a ride,” Ronnie said. “Looks like they’re best buds now.”

  “I guess it’s a good sign. About time she rejoined the living.” Bobby glanced up at the sky, hoping for stars, but he couldn’t see past the moths circling the security light. He leaned against the truck. His shoulder was sore from work, and he hadn’t been throwing any baseballs lately. He’d lied to his App State coach and his dad about his workout schedule.

  “Brett’s death was hard on all of us.” Ronnie hung back in the shadows, and Bobby couldn’t see his face. In a way, it was like a confessional booth.

  What happens in Tennessee stays in Tennessee.

  “I saw him,” Bobby said.

  “W
ho? Brett?”

  “No, the guy they found dead in the church.”

  “For real? You ought to tell the sheriff.”

  “You don’t get it. I saw him after he was dead. That night I wrecked my truck at the bridge.”

  Bobby told him the story about the stack of smoke and ash—as much as he could remember anyway. The events had become hazier and hazier with the passing days. “That’s what’s so weird about the wreck. I didn’t hit my head or anything, but it’s like there’s a gap of a couple of hours. Like I was taken somewhere.”

  “Oh Jesus, Bobby.” Ronnie’s voice was guarded. “I was hoping all that ghost stuff was over.”

  “I’ve felt weird ever since. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s like I left something behind. Like part of me is missing.”

  “Dude, maybe you really did hit your head. But we’ve both seen some weird shit. I don’t even know what’s real anymore.”

  “Ever since Vernon Ray vanished on Mulatto Mountain—and he is dead, I just know it—I’ve been praying for him to come back. I don’t know how to pray like you do, but sometimes I can hear him playing his little snare drum.”

  Ronnie emerged from the shadows. His eyes were somber with understanding and something Bobby had never seen in them before. Could it be sympathy?

  Deathboy’s happy to pass on the crown, that’s all.

  Ronnie opened his mouth to say something, but then the stage door swung open and Dex came out, the club owner behind him.

  “We got a problem, Ronnie,” Dex said, a sour smirk on his face. “Lou here wants it louder.”

  “Yeah,” Lou said. “And don’t you boys know any good music? Like Bob Seger and stuff?”

  Bobby shook his head and forced a grin. “Go crank it up, Ron-O. I’ll be along in a few.”

  After they were gone, Bobby walked to the corner of the building and looked out at the parking lot. People sat on the hoods of cars passing 40s of malt liquor, orange dots of burning cigarette tips making redneck constellations. A couple of men were yelling at each other as if gearing up for a brawl. Bobby wondered if a music career would encompass hundreds of gigs like this one, passing through the lives of strangers who would remain utterly unchanged by whatever bit of your soul you sliced off and dished out for them.

  To hell with it, let’s rock.

  Before he reached the back door, a stranger stepped from behind the Silverado, his sunglasses glaringly out of place. “Bobby?” the man said.

  “Do I know you?”

  “We have friends in common.”

  The upturned collar. “You were with Larkin McFall at the high school dance.”

  “I’ve been listening. You’re good.”

  “You’re only as good as the people you play with.”

  The stranger smiled, pushing his sunglasses up his nose. “McFall told me you’d say that. But it’s bullshit, Bobby. You’ve got some chops. You can go places.”

  “We’ve been working hard this year. Starting to write some of our own tunes.” Bobby nodded toward the club. “Not that we’ll get to play any of them tonight.”

  The man dug in his pocket. “Your singer is a pile of shit, Bobby. And the other two guys are a dime a dozen. When you’re ready to get real, I’ll be waiting.”

  The man held out his palm and Bobby expected to find a business card there, the sort of sleazy L.A. move he’d always pictured. Except he’d always figured it would be a sports agent, some slickster with too much hair gel who’d be happy to take a ten-percent cut while Bobby trashed his body with steroids in order to reach the top. Instead, the stranger offered him a glass vial.

  “What’s that?” Bobby asked.

  “Kickass powder, kid. Give it a try.”

  Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know. The guys are counting on me.”

  The stranger’s teeth gleamed, seeming far too large for his mouth. He unscrewed the cap and tapped some of the white powder onto the cleft of his thumb. He held it up to Bobby’s face. “One little sniff.”

  Bobby leaned forward and instinctively pinched one nostril closed. He inhaled through the other nostril and the powder burned its way up his nose and into the base of his brain, simultaneously freezing and burning his skull. His shoulder pain vanished and he felt like he could throw a baseball a hundred and ten miles per hour. The stranger lowered his sunglasses and his eyes sparkled. For a second Bobby saw him as the stack of smoke and ashes and his heart stuttered and clenched.

  It’s the drugs, that’s all. That’s all.

  The stranger pressed the vial into Bobby’s hand. “Consider it an advance,” he said.

  Bobby staggered through the back door and onto the brightly lit stage, and there was Melanie, standing beside Ronnie at the sound board. She lifted one corner of her mouth in a speculative smile, but Bobby ignored her, settling behind the drum kit like a space pilot preparing to guide a faster-than-light machine toward a black hole. Dex launched them into “Take It To The Limit,” and even though it was a mellow song, Bobby somehow filled it with flourishes and accents, as if the sticks were moving by themselves. Melanie jiggled her body to his rhythm, the hem of her dress swishing across her thighs, and he couldn’t help but remember her writhing and whimpering beneath him.

  He wondered if Brett had experienced the same sensation before he’d gone down for a final time.

  To hell with it, let’s rock.

  Bobby might not have fully returned from wherever he’d been taken that night at the bridge, but at least he was better off than Brett and Vernon Ray and Darnell Absher and that Buchanan guy who’d gone to hell in the red church.

  At least part of Bobby had come back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Bobby toweled the sweat from his hair and tossed Ronnie the truck keys. “Your wheel, bro. I had a few too many PBRs.”

  Ronnie looked down at them, pleased with the responsibility. “Sweet. Guess I’m officially a roadie now.”

  “You awake enough to make it?”

  “Better than awake. I’m alive.”

  The drums and sound system were packed in the truck and covered by a tarp. It was about two in the morning. Mullethead Lou had paid them eighty-eight bucks for their share of the door, which Ronnie calculated to be at least two hundred dollars short, but Lou had threatened to call the cops on them for underage drinking, loitering, and whatever else the Buford County law could throw at them. He’d made a point of mentioning that his brother-in-law was a deputy.

  Since The Diggers had barely made it through the gig without a riot from the drunk, raucous crowd—only a blistering twenty-minute guitar solo during their third run through “Johnny B. Goode” had saved them—they’d decided to get the hell out of Dodge while they still could. Dex and Floyd had taken the Jeep, and Jimmy Dale had roared off on his motorcycle, some scrawny local gal hanging on behind him for dear life. Ronnie had noticed that when the band members finished performing, they seemed to suffer from a bizarre mix of adrenaline high and exhaustion. Given Bobby’s confession about seeing a ghost, Ronnie was glad to be in control, especially since Bobby’s eyes were bloodshot and foggy. Even worse, his pupils harbored some sort of secretive, mad glint.

  What if he sees that stack of smoke and ash while we’re booking down Slate Mountain at seventy miles an hour? Or worse, what if I see it myself?

  “Warm up the engine while I take a whizz,” Bobby said.

  Ronnie climbed into the driver’s side of the Silverado, enjoying the feel of subdued power. He started the engine and switched on the headlights. There was a silhouette at the edge of the parking lot, just beyond the yellow reach of the beams. Ronnie wondered if it was one of those drunken cowboys, pissed off because the band had failed to play any Toby Keith, thereby revealing themselves to be a bunch of socialist Obama lovers. Ronnie goosed the accelerator, letting the V-8 engine do the talking for him.

  The silhouette stepped forward into the pool of light.

  Melanie? I thought she left with Amy.

 
; She walked toward him, almost ethereal against the surrounding darkness. She had talked to him a little tonight, but he’d been so busy running sound he hadn’t had the chance to say anything important to her. Well, maybe this was his chance.

  Ronnie rolled down his window as she came around to his side of the truck. “What are you doing here?”

  “Amy’s sleeping it off until she sobers up. I don’t want to be stuck here all night. Can I catch a ride?”

  “Is she safe?”

  “Yeah. She drove to that Wilco down the road; it’s open all night.”

  Bobby opened the passenger door, apparently having overheard their conversation. “Hop in.”

  She hurried around to the other side and got in the middle of the bench seat. Bobby settled in beside her. Ronnie had been looking forward to talking with Bobby about his supernatural encounter, but with Melanie beside him, he couldn’t really focus on anything other than the warmth of her body and the clean lavender smell that cut through the lingering stench of cigarettes and beer.

  Ronnie’s hand brushed Melanie’s bare thigh as he reached for the gear shift, but she didn’t flinch. As he put the truck into first, he couldn’t help but feel the heat rising from her lap. He didn’t have much experience driving a straight, but he sure wasn’t going to ask Bobbie for tips. He popped the clutch and the Silverado lurched forward, jackrabbiting a few times before he steadied out the RPMs as they rolled across the mostly empty parking lot toward the two-lane highway.

  “Well, isn’t this cozy?” Melanie said.

  “You could have got in the back,” Bobby said.

  “No, I want to see your faces.”

  “Faces”? That’s plural. Ronnie concentrated on the blacktop and the double yellow lines, glad that there was no traffic as he mastered the shifting of gears. The Silverado’s cab was enormous, but now it felt cramped, claustrophobic with expectation.