Jack opened his eyes and had no idea where he was. It was dark and cold and he was lying on the ground. He looked around. As his eyes began to focus, he could see he was surrounded by woods.
Oh, no. I did it again.
He sat up; pulled a couple of dead leaves off his face and threw them down. The night was quiet except for the sound of a train in the distance.
He smelled whiskey and looked down to see a pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the ground beside him. It was empty. Trying to stand left him no doubt as to where the liquor had gone.
He steadied himself against a tree. He looked at his watch. It was nine thirty. Randa would be frantic. Either that, or on her way back to LA. Hell.
His jacket was a few feet away. He crawled to it, managed to get one arm in a sleeve on the third attempt, and left it at that.
He remembered sitting on Cathy’s sofa, drinking a glass of sweet tea. He had finished the gutters and was in the process of telling her the Randa story. The last thing he remembered was Cathy going to answer the phone. It had given him an opportunity to look at his watch. It had been 5:35.
Where the hell have I been for four hours?
Where the hell was he now, for that matter? He surveyed the landscape, started to move slowly in the direction of the most light.
It didn’t take him long to clear the trees, and then he realized where he was. He was in the woods just down the road from Cathy’s. He could go back there and use the phone to call Randa. And maybe Cathy could shed some light on the missing block of time. Maybe she could do that while he worked on an explanation for why he smelled like a still.
The road was deserted, which made everything feel even creepier. He walked back to Cathy’s as fast as his unsteady legs would carry him.
When he got within sight of her trailer, he froze. From the other side of the trailer, he could see the reflection of blue light, traveling in a circular pattern that was all too familiar.
He slowed down and edged closer. He made his way behind a dark trailer, then crept along the side of it until he had an unobstructed view of Cathy’s.
His embryonic fears were instantly confirmed. Two cop cars and an ambulance were parked in front of Cathy’s trailer. A cop standing in the front door of the trailer, barking at someone inside. A semicircle of neighbors had gathered around, standing behind a line of yellow police tape.
Jack’s breath left him in one acidic rip.
Oh, no. Please God . . .
The cop in the doorway stepped aside to let two attendants bring a stretcher through the door.
Oh, God . . .
The body (It has to be Cathy, there was no one else there.) on the stretcher was covered with a blanket, but Jack couldn’t see all of it. The cop was blocking Cathy’s head.
Please be alive . . . How could I have hurt Cathy, even if I’m crazy how could I have hurt Cathy?
He heard a noise nearby, the static of a two-way radio. Cops in the woods. Searching for a suspect. Searching for him.
Maybe it wasn’t me . . . Maybe it was someone else . . .
It was you. Don’t be an idiot.
I don’t know for sure.
You know who you are.
He saw the beam of a flashlight, far too close to him. Whether he had done it or not, a Landry lurking in the woods near a crime scene was all it would take for the sheriff to consider the case closed. He had to get the hell out of there.
He moved away from the sound of the radio, grateful for all the years he’d spent hunting, which had taught him as much as could be learned about moving through dead leaves with a minimum of noise, even given his current alcohol level. He also knew, from younger years, that the woods ran behind the Haskins’ dairy farm and came out just north of town. If he could make it to the other side, he could make it home.
Home. And then what?
Worry about that when you get there.
He could hear the cops moving in his direction. They had the advantage of not needing to be quiet, so they could move at twice his speed. They’d be on him in a minute if he didn’t do something.
He looked down at the ground. Found the right-sized rock. The moon gave him just enough light to see how to aim, though dodging the trees would have been a near-impossible task stone sober. He found the clearest spot, aimed, and sailed the rock directly in front of him. It cleared a good eighteen feet before hitting the trunk of an oak, but the sound was nebulous enough to be anything. He heard the feet and the radio noise begin to move toward it. He used the cops’ footsteps to camouflage his own, and got away from them as quickly as he dared.
As had always been true in the course of Jack’s criminal career, Barton’s finest proved easy to elude. In ten minutes he had emerged on the other side of the woods. He waited until there were no cars coming, then trotted out to the road and picked up a normal pace.
All the while, he knew he was only buying time. Half the trailer court had seen him at Cathy’s, he had no way to account for the hours since he’d left there, and his last name was Landry. The trial would probably take an hour. Not that it mattered. Whatever remained of his newfound will to live had disintegrated the second he’d seen Cathy on the stretcher. If she was alive, she’d wake up feeling hideously betrayed, as well she should. If she was dead, he didn’t want to live anyway.
But he needed a chance to tell Randa what happened. He needed to tell her to leave quickly, before anyone knew she’d been at his place. She shouldn’t even be alone in a room with him, but he had to warn her. And maybe he wanted a chance to say “I told you so.” Hell if he knew. Not that it mattered. He was long past needing to examine the purity of his motives.
In his cloudy and grief-infested mind, he knew one thing. He was going to do what Tallen did. He wasn’t going to argue when they came for him. He was going to shut his mouth, drop his appeals, and get this over with as fast as possible.