Chapter Thirty

Tuesday, October 24, 4:37 p.m.

Roy peeled his tongue off the roof of his mouth. When he raised his head from the couch, it was like lifting a stone. Eyes half-closed, he stumbled into the kitchen, turned on the faucet and stuck his mouth under the water. It tasted brackish at first, but he didn’t care, swallowing and swallowing. He had been asleep since sometime early Saturday morning, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been before that since he ate or drank. With his head tilted, Roy had to hold on to the edge of the counter to keep from falling over, but finally he had drunk enough.

He was scrubbing the sleep from his eyes when he remembered. Those two guys! He had offed those two doofuses. Thinking again of how that big one had tried to run away sent a thrill down Roy’s spine. He had been so cool, so calm. Sighting an imaginary rifle, he fired again, making “pow” noises with his mouth.

He was suddenly, ravenously hungry. In the back of the cupboard, he found a box of Lucky Charms. He grabbed it off the shelf, but the fucking thing was empty except for some cereal dust. Not even a goddamn marshmallow. He threw the box on the floor, stamped on it, then picked it up again and tried to rip it in half. It refused to tear. With a snarl, he threw the box behind him, where it landed on top of the broken stuff that had once belonged to Lydia.

Maybe there was something good in the freezer. A venison steak or maybe a frozen dinner. He opened the door and then jumped back. The sour taste of vomit rose in his throat.

Shit. He’d forgotten about that damn cat. Wrapped in a once white dish towel, it stared at Roy with its remaining eye. He slammed the door shut.

In the refrigerator, the milk had gone sour, but he found some square cheese and ate piece after piece, so hungry it was hard to be patient enough to unwrap the plastic. Behind a melting blob of what had once been lettuce, he finally found two of the microwave burritos he liked. Not bothering with a plate, Roy put them in the microwave, then burned his fingers and tongue while he wolfed them down.

If Lydia hadn’t left, the refrigerator would be full. If Lydia hadn’t left, the house would be swept up. If Lydia hadn’t left, everything would be so neat a man wouldn’t know where he could sit down without risking getting something dirty. But she had left. If Lydia were here now, he’d beat her so bad she couldn’t show her face at the grocery store, so bad she couldn’t walk away from him again, so bad she would never tell another soul what wasn’t their business.

After what had happened at the gravel pit, Roy had spent three hours at Jiggles, buying two lap dances from some chick named Darcy, finally throwing in an extra fifty for her to join him at a little private party in the parking lot. And then he’d come home and crashed. Now he didn’t even know what day it was. He turned on the TV and flipped around through the channels until he finally found a cable news show that told him it was Tuesday. Roy counted on his fingers. He’d been asleep for nearly three days.

He flipped through the channels again, looking for Baywatch reruns, but he couldn’t find any. He was about ready to turn off the TV when he caught a local newscaster, all prissy in a collar buttoned up under her chin, saying something about the killings at the gravel pit. Up above her shoulder was a photo of the pit and some yellow crime scene tape. The words Badger Ridge Killings ran across the bottom. The woman on TV said they were looking at all available leads, but Roy didn’t feel too worried. No one but Warren and the two dead guys had seen Roy or his Monte Carlo that day. And Warren could be counted on not to talk. Pop-pop’s rifle was now at the bottom of the river, in a spot deep enough where it would never see the light of day. When the woman started yammering on about county budget shortfalls, Roy turned off the TV. What he had done, he figured, was what they called the perfect crime. The cops would fall all over themselves trying to figure out who had known those two guys, who had had reasons to kill them. They’d look at their co-workers and friends, they’d look at their current and ex-wives, and they’d look at their kids. They’d spend weeks chasing their own tails before finally giving up.

Thinking of Warren reminded Roy that he had to get Warren the money before he would tell Shari to start looking for Lydia. He checked his wallet. Three fives and two ones. He maybe had two or three hundred in checking. Wasn’t he due some kind of severance check from Dri-N-Fresh? Roy walked out to the mailbox. It was jammed full, but only with bills. He searched through twice. Nothing. He walked inside the house and let the useless pieces of paper fall to the floor.

You couldn’t sell blood for that kind of money. He looked around the living room. Nothing he owned would bring it either. He needed some Benjamins real bad. He was also out of meth, and he could feel the need for it beginning to seize him up.

He thought about the biddy who lived across the street, the one who had called the cops on him. There had been rumors for years that she didn’t believe in banks, that she had squirreled all her money away in hidey-holes all through her house.

Roy thought about it and thought about it. Then he put on his coat and walked out the door, determined to get what he needed.