Chapter Twelve
Dad storms in the door at 10:14 a.m.
He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept at all, and he must have driven overnight to get home this early. He flies right by me and starts digging through a laundry basket on the end of the couch, pulling free a clean uniform and stripping out of his old clothes right there in the living room. He’s breathing hard as he hops into his slacks, panting as he tugs on his socks.
“How was Seattle?” I ask, and he stops, a limp sock in one hand, and his mouth hanging open for a moment before he closes it, staring at me like I’m suddenly speaking a different language.
“Seattle?” he asks, blinking at me like an owl caught up in a barbed wire fence.
“Yeah, Seattle. The guy?”
“Oh, that. It was nothing.” He shakes his head, muttering to himself and shoving his arms into the sleeves of his cop top, strapping on his holster and loading his gun. I watch every move, most of it memorized, shaking my head in disbelief.
“That’s it?”
“Yep,” he huffs, fumbling with the second sock, totally ignoring me..
“You’re just giving up?”
“I’m not giving up!” He yells loud enough to startle me, loud enough that I jump in my skin. He’s breathing hard, and his hands are shaking, and his face has gone pale. When he finally looks at me, his eyes are heavy and dull. “I’m not giving up, Bells. I’ll never give up. But I’ve got a murder on my hands right now that I’ve got to go deal with. I can’t handle this friggin’ inquisition from you.”
I watch him tuck his gun and sit on the couch to lace up the ugly black shoes they make him wear, my own mouth hanging open.
“A murder?” I whisper. It’s about all I can manage, my heart jammed so high up in my throat I can barely breathe around it.
He just nods, double knotting his laces.
“Another one?” I ask. I must sound bad because that gets him to look up at me. The corners of his eyes pinch, and he shakes his head. I nod. He shakes harder.
“It’s not him, Bella.”
“But it could be.” I’m still whispering, and I’m not sure if it’s just my voice trembling or my whole body. He’s still shaking his head as he stands, wiping his palms on his thighs.
“It’s not. There’s a body. There’s blood. There’s no forced entry. It’s not him, Bells.” He takes a step toward me slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be back before dinner.”
“Can I go with you?” I ask. It’s not that I’m scared to be alone. Not that I think maybe I’m a loose end that needs to be tied up or chopped off or trimmed back by the person who got my sister but left me sleeping in the next room. It’s not that I think that I might be next.
It’s that there’s been another one, another murder, and I need to see it for myself.
“Bells…” He’s trying to say no, shaking his head, his eyes narrowed, so I make myself look extra sweet and even push up a few watery tears to make him think it is about the fear, the “don’t leave me alone, Dad” plea any other seventeen-year-old would give her old man.
He totally buys it.
“Ok. Let’s go.”
Billy Black is lying face down in a pool of his own blood on the floor of his bedroom.
The tiny, slumped trailer smells like what hell probably smells. It’s dank and dusty, and the curtains are molded. The refrigerator is leaking the faint traces of doom and decay, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is Billy. He’s been lying there for five days, and he’s starting to go putrid. Starting to turn a little black around the edges. I guess for most people this would seem gruesome, but I’ve already done a slip and slide through my own kitchen, the familiar tile doused in blood, so this sort of small time on the shock factor scale. I’ve spent so many nights researching decomposition that the FBI is probably watching my computer; I know exactly what is going down here, and none of it bothers me as much as it probably should.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Shut the fuck up, Newton,” I hiss. I don’t look around, but all the hair on my arms stands on end, and I clench my fists to keep myself from gagging. I can’t see him, but I know he’s there.
“Not just my opinion, sweets. Whole staff thinks it’s kinda odd how he lets you tag along.”
Mike appears, leaning against the doorframe beside me, hands in the pockets of his police-issue pants, watching the coroner poke around in the blood puddle Billy is sprawled out in. Mike Newton is a hometown boy who had big dreams and big plans and big ambitions, but too little gumption to make anything of himself. He was a little too dumb for law school. A little too slow for a football scholarship. A little too rowdy for the State Patrol. His last three girlfriends lasted less than two months apiece, and he has a close, personal relationship with Smitty, the scary tattooed guy who runs the liquor store on the Rez.
Really personal.
He doesn’t know I know that part yet.
“Oh, yeah?” I laugh. “The same staff that helped you bury your arrest record? How’s Amanda, by the way? ” I can barely remember it, but the underage girl and the gram of coke he was caught with are the reasons he’s still a local lackey. Mike goes red and stammers something I can’t understand. I narrow my eyes at him because I know it makes me look more like my dad and then lean in really close because it’s totally intimidating if you do it fast and hard enough. He smells like wintergreen and cigarettes and not enough deodorant.
I watch Newton retreat with his tail tucked up so far between his legs that it’s practically nonexistent as I hear the coroner say “blood loss” and “surface wounds” and “animal attack.”
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