AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe. Ok, probably. But how? Or maybe the question is still why.”
“Shaw, they’re involved somehow. Welch came here like they had a homing beacon set up for him, and I don’t care what bullshit story they gave us about a burglar, those people weren’t frightened. They were angry and defensive and honestly a little bit nuts, but they weren’t frightened.”
“Gid was frightened.”
North frowned and tried to think back. “Maybe. He was definitely high.”
“The Cottonmouth Club?”
“Are you asking me if I think there’s a connection?”
“I guess.” Shaw shrugged against him. “I mean, Dalton was going to help identify the man he met there. Ambyr was another connection back to the club. And now they’re dead, and Welch came straight here, and the Cottonmouth Club can’t be more than a fifteen- or twenty-minute drive.”
North finally settled on “I guess we’re going to find out.”
Twenty minutes and change went past before the distant rattle of the campus gate reached them and headlights appeared. The Auburn police cruiser passed them without slowing; Cassidy had power, and he clearly had great back and biceps days, but the man hadn’t been near the front of the line when God had been handing out brains. North wished he’d said that last part out loud because he liked how it sounded.
“They’re angry when an escaped killer shows up at their house,” North said, “but they’re not scared. They get rid of the sheriff’s car—presumably, after swapping the plates, since it hasn’t shown up on any traffic cameras. They scrub and bleach the hell out of the bloody shoe prints. They call in their bodyguard—that jackass in his Sunday clothes. And they’ve got the chief of police on a string, but they don’t call him until we show up.”
“Because they’re more worried about us than they are about Welch,” Shaw said.
North grunted. “What the fuck is going on?”
Another ten minutes passed before the gate rattled again. That was the problem with being a dumbass, North considered. Your estimation of your own abilities vastly exceeded reality. Which was why you waited barely ten minutes after the chief left before you tried to sneak out, headlights off, but you didn’t consider the fact that the gate was loud enough to hear several blocks away. Because North knew what to look for, he caught the stray glimmers of light that gave away the sedan’s position. It turned toward them, so he waited and watched.
Lights off, the sedan rolled past them. North could make out Gid’s face behind the window.
“The whole bunch of them were near the back of the line the day God was handing out brains,” North said.
Shaw twisted around to look at him.
“What?” North said.
“Were you saving that one?”
North jammed the key in the ignition and started the car. “What?”
Shaw burst out laughing. “Oh my God. Oh North. That’s so cute!”
“I wasn’t saving anything, you horse’s ass.”
“It was a really good one.”
“God fucking damn it,” North said as he pulled out.
It was hard to do a one-car tail—hard to do effectively, anyway, and hard to do without getting spotted—but after the first ten minutes, North stopped worrying about it. If Gid were concerned he was being followed, that was clearly near the bottom of the list. He didn’t make sudden turns. He didn’t take unnecessary detours and double back. He didn’t even pick the kind of roads that lent themselves to spotting a tail. He did, however, have a lead foot; wherever Gid was going, he apparently felt the need for speed.
That was all right with North. Once they were on the highway, he opened up the GTO. He also—because he was a mature and responsible adult male with a healthy ego and developed sense of self-esteem and self-worth—ignored the fact that Shaw rolled his eyes.
They drove back to Wahredua. It was a minor surprise; North had been sure that something would happen if he waited outside the Epiphany of Light campus, but this hadn’t been it. But as they drove, North decided it made a kind of sense. The murders had happened back in Wahredua; this was one more part of cleaning up the mess.
Inside the city limits, Gid led them north, away from the river. The city flowed and changed around them. Modest single-family homes shrank. Brick dissolved to clapboard and asbestos siding. Chain-link fences sprang up like weeds. The pavement and sidewalks buckled, or in places, opened up into potholes. A white woman with stringy hair sat on her stoop, rolling a spark for a joint. In another house, the gray flicker of television light gave a man a ballooning silhouette.
When Gid turned down the next street, North almost followed. At the last minute, though, he saw the NO OUTLET sign and let the GTO keep rolling to the end of the block. Then he killed the engine and put down the windows.
Night sounds filtered in: the movement of air, a noise like a tin can falling, a phone ringing on and on in a nearby house. What fucking year was it, North wanted to know. A landline? And hadn’t they heard of an answering machine, never mind voicemail?
“Loop around on foot?” Shaw asked.
