34

I couldn’t help but think of my conversation with Ronnie when he’d been in jail. Hadn’t he told me that sometimes there wasn’t a good choice? In this moment, driving down Summer Mountain, I felt that. People always tell you to make the right choice. But what if there isn’t a “right” choice? What if both choices are equally fucked? What then?

My answer was simple. I would make the choice that was best for Mary Hawkins. Just like Ronnie had made the choice that was best for Virginia.

I drove around the mountain on County Road 7, looking for Ronnie. I slowed the truck when I neared my best estimate of the area where I suspected he might come out. That was, if the deputies hadn’t caught him. Or worse, if they hadn’t shot him.

Once I reached the other side of the mountain, I turned around and made another pass, slower than before, my thoughts turning darker. What if the choice I’d made had led to his death? How would I live with that?

And then, almost as if that thought had opened the door, another slipped out. And it was the worst one of all.

What if the choice I’d made last Wednesday night to ignore all the ominous feelings I was having and bring Mary to the cornfield had caused her death?

Because I had to face that, right?

With each passing day, the likelihood of her being alive decreased. Why take her at all if not to kill her? Unless the reason was ransom, but there had been no request, so why else? Torture? I shivered at the thought.

An eighteen-wheeler downshifted on the highway somewhere far behind me. How long should I drive around looking for him?

As long as it took, I decided. I owed him that much.

If not a lot more.

In typical Ronnie fashion, he wasn’t visible until I’d almost run him over. One minute, the road was clear, and the next, there he was, waving his arms and grinning like a fool directly in front of my truck. I hit the brakes and cut the wheel, narrowly avoiding killing him.

He didn’t seem to mind. He rushed over to the passenger’s side, cigarette in hand and climbed in. He whooped loudly, pounding the dash with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette. “Goddamn that felt good! Makes my nuts tingle, Earl! Makes me fucking hard. Let’s go find some pussy. You and me. Whoo!” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and drummed on the dash with both hands.

“I appreciate what you—”

“Uh, Earl, you better go. Them boys ain’t far behind.”

I nodded and slammed my foot on the gas.

*   *   *

“I need to hide the truck,” I said. “You know a place?”

He’d calmed down a lot and now sat smoking, his head tilted back into the open passenger side window, the wind pushing his hair up into a wild tangle.

“Shit,” he said, “I just realized me and you are going to be wanted men.”

I nodded. “Yeah. And we’ve got to get out of this truck.”

“Fuck,” he said. “I got priors.”

“Yeah, listen. What you did took some guts. I’m going to stick with you through this. If I can find Mary … if we can find Mary, Patterson will go light on the other shit. But if we don’t, we’re fucked. So, the first thing is we need to ditch the truck and find a place to lay low.”

“I got a friend, name of Martin. He lives next to an old salvage place south of Riley, not too far from here. We could dump your truck in there and hide out at his place for a while.”

“Sounds good for you, but I’ve got another place in mind for me.”

“Shit, the first place they’ll look is at the old blind bastard’s church.”

“I know. I’m thinking somewhere else. I don’t need to be too far away from the cornfield. Besides, I think this person will let me use her car.”

“Her? Damn, Earl, you ain’t wasting no time.”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Sure it ain’t. It wouldn’t be that pretty little library girl, would it?”

“She’s not a girl, and you should be thanking her. She’s keeping your niece and nephew.”

That made Ronnie go quiet. He seemed sad suddenly, and I wondered if it was guilt because he wasn’t the one taking care of them. Because he, like his sister, was incapable of taking care of them.

“Easy, Earl. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

I nodded and let out a breath. Nothing felt right in the world anymore. It had only been a few days since I’d been so thankful for how perfect everything had seemed, but now trials seemed to be coming at me from every direction.

“Which way is best to get to Martin’s?” I said.

*   *   *

We made it to the little salvage yard a little before eleven. Ronnie pointed at a line of old vehicles. “Squeeze in there.”

It took some doing and Ronnie’s help, but I managed to get my truck in between a Chrysler Oldsmobile and a rusted-out Chevy Blazer. The only problem was that that now I had no way to get out because I couldn’t open either door.

“Climb through the back window,” Ronnie said.

Five minutes later, I’d managed to squeeze through the window and into the truck bed. I checked my pocket for my phone. It was there. My 9mm was in the back of my blue jeans, and my other Braves cap—the one Jeb Walsh hadn’t pissed on—was on my head.

“Come on—you need to meet Martin. He’s a trip. And he can break into anything. Don’t matter if it’s got an alarm or not.” He reached a hand out for me and helped me down. “He’s got a little bit of a drug problem, though, so just be aware.”

“Drug problem? We talking hard stuff?”

Ronnie shrugged. “He likes coke, but he’s cool with it. Hell, I think he needs it. If he’s not tweaking, he’s pretty much dead, you know. Like I’ve never known a more laid-back motherfucker.”

I checked my phone for a signal, but it was out of range. I knew I should probably wait until the morning to call Susan anyway, but that meant spending a couple hours at Martin’s place. If he had a computer and Internet service, I could at least make the time count. The visit to the warehouse and the idea that somebody—most likely Lane Jefferson and Tag Monroe—might be using it to make snuff films had given me plenty of avenues to explore, but I’d definitely need to get online to explore them.

We rounded a pile of scrap, and there was Martin’s trailer, sitting up on some cinder blocks. A dog woofed loudly at our approach and then shifted to a deep suspicious growl. A voice called out from inside the trailer. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Ronnie. And Earl Marcus. Can we come up?”

“Shit, Ronnie. You ain’t never heard of a phone?”

“We’re in a bad way,” Ronnie said.

“Hold on. Wait right there. I got a girl. Need to get her dressed.”

I looked at my phone again. Maybe I would go ahead and call Susan tonight if I could catch a signal out here.

A few minutes later, Martin shouted for us to come on up. “Move slow, but with a purpose. Don’t fucking creep. Huckleberry hates that, and he will tear your fucking balls off.”

I looked at Ronnie. “Huckleberry?”

The dog—Huckleberry—growled again.

“He’s okay. I been here a bunch, and he only bit me once.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

A light came on outside the trailer. “Easy, boy,” Martin said. “These are friends.”

The dog continued to growl.

“I think the problem,” Martin said, “is that he don’t know your friend.”

“Why don’t you just put him on a leash or in the backroom or something?” I said.

Martin scoffed. “Huck don’t like leashes, and the last time I tried to put him in a room, he nearly chewed through the fucking wall.”

“Nice,” I said.

“Hey, if you don’t like it, go the fuck somewhere else.”

He had a point. “I’m planning to do just that,” I said. “But I can’t get service out here. You got a landline I can use? Even better, a computer with Internet?”

“Got both. But you ain’t using shit out there. You’ve got to make it to the trailer. You keep acting nervous like you’re doing, and Huckleberry will be munching on your nuts soon. Mark my words on that one.”

“Come on,” Ronnie said. “Just walk normal. Hell, you know what I did the first few times I came over? I pretended he was one of them snakes Billy made me hold when I was a kid. It relaxed me some. I figured if I could hold a cottonmouth and not get bit, I could walk by a damn dog and not get … oh, shit. I’m sorry, Earl.”

I just shook my head and kept walking.

Huckleberry kept growling.

When we got close enough to see him, I focused on Mary. How I had made very little progress, but how I also felt like going to the warehouse tonight had been crucial, not only because it somehow solidified Ronnie and me as … well, for lack of a better term, partners in crime but also how it seemed to be important in a way I couldn’t quite name yet.

And just a few feet away from the growling, tense, teeth-baring pit bull named Huckleberry, it hit me.

And I felt like an idiot.

The mic. I’d found it right after Mary disappeared, near where Johnny Waters lay. Was it possible that someone had filmed the whole thing?

And—better question—what if Mary had actually been taken for some kind of snuff film? I was horrified at the thought of someone planning to kill her on film. But it might mean she was still alive, at least until the moment of filming. And I might still be able to find her in time.

“You made it,” Martin said.

I looked around and realized I was standing just inside his trailer, Huckleberry behind me, growling low and steady, but not viciously like he had been.

Martin was about my height and skinnier than any man had a right to be. His face looked like God had decided to try an experiment in human extremes—his skin was stretched close over his chin and jaw bones and drawn to a shiny tightness across his harried eyes. He wore a five-o’clock shadow and a big cowboy hat tilted high so no man would miss the skeletal definition of his gaunt face.

“Computer?” I said.

“Nice to meet you too,” he said. “In the kitchen. Don’t step on Shelia. She had a line or three too many tonight.”

I slid past him and stepped into the nearly dark den. Shelia was on the floor, a blanket pulled up to her neck. Her dark hair formed a pillow around her pale face, and for a moment I was sure she was dead, but then she opened her eyes and looked at me groggily. “Who. Are. You?”

“Just a friend. Take it easy and get some rest, okay?”

Her lips flexed into something like a smile. “M’kay,” she said. Her eyes fluttered and shut again.

I found the computer and sat down and moved the mouse to wake it up. I went online and opened up a search window.

Ronnie and Martin sat down on the couch behind where Shelia lay and passed a joint back and forth.

Thankful I’d had a good night’s sleep the night before, I leaned in and got to work.