فصل 21 - بخش 04

21

Jack Hoskins stopped at Gentlemen, Please on his way to the Elfman property. He ordered a vodka-tonic, which he felt he deserved after being called back from his vacation early. He gulped it, then ordered another, which he sipped. There were two strippers on stage, both still fully dressed (which in Gentlemen meant they were wearing bras and panties), but humping at each other in a lazy way that gave Jack a moderate boner.

When he took out his wallet to pay, the bartender waved it away. ‘On the house.’

‘Thanks.’ Jack dropped a tip on the bar and left, feeling in a marginally better mood. As he got moving again, he took a roll of breath mints from the glovebox and crunched a couple. People said vodka was odorless, but that was bullshit.

The ranch road had been strung off with yellow police tape – county, not city. Hoskins got out, pulled up one of the stakes the tape was tied to, drove through, and replaced the stake. Fucking pain in the ass, he thought, and the ass-pain only deepened when he arrived at a cluster of ramshackle buildings – a barn and three sheds – to discover no one was there. He tried to call in, wanting to share his frustration with someone, even if it was only Sandy McGill, who he regarded as a prissy twat of the first order. All he got was static on the radio, and of course there was no cell service out here in South Jerkoff.

He grabbed his long-barreled flashlight and got out, mostly to stretch his legs; there was nothing to be done here. It was a fool’s errand, and he was the fool. A hard wind was blowing, hot breath that would be a brushfire’s best friend if one got started. There was a grove of cottonwoods clustered around an old water pump. Their leaves danced and rustled, their shadows racing across the ground in the moonlight.

There was more yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the barn where the clothes had been found. Bagged and on their way to Cap City by now, of course, but it was still creepy to think that Maitland had come here at some point after killing the kid.

In a way, Jack thought, I’m retracing his path. Past the boat landing where he changed out of his bloody clothes, then to Gentlemen, Please. He went to Dubrow from the titty-bar, but then he must have circled back to … here.

The open barn door was like a gaping mouth. Hoskins didn’t want to go near it, not out here in the middle of nowhere and not on his own. Maitland was dead and there were no such things as ghosts, but he still didn’t want to go near it. So he made himself do just that, step by slow step, until he could shine his light inside.

Someone was standing at the rear of the barn.

Jack uttered a soft cry, reached for his sidearm, and realized he wasn’t wearing it. The Glock was in the small Gardall safe he kept in his truck. He dropped the flashlight. He bent and scooped it up, feeling the vodka surging around in his head, not enough to make him drunk, just enough to make him feel woozy and unsteady on his feet.

He shone the light back into the barn, and laughed. There was no man, just the hame of an old harness, nearly busted into two pieces.

Time to get out of here. Maybe stop at Gentlemen’s for one more drink, then home and straight to b—

There was someone behind him, and this was no illusion. He could see the shadow, long and thin. And … was that breathing?

In a second, he’s going to grab me. I need to drop and roll.

Only he couldn’t. He was frozen. Why hadn’t he turned around when he saw the scene was deserted? Why hadn’t he gotten his gun out of the safe? Why had he ever gotten out of the truck in the first place? Jack suddenly understood that he was going to die at the end of a dirt road in Canning Township.

That was when he was touched. Caressed on the back of his neck by a hand as hot as a hot water bottle. He tried to scream and couldn’t. His chest was locked up like the Glock in its safe. Now another hand would join the first and the choking would begin.

Only the hand pulled back. Not the fingers, though. They moved back and forth – lightly, just the tips – playing across his skin and leaving trails of heat.

Jack didn’t know how long he stood there, unable to move. It might have been twenty seconds; it might have been two minutes. The wind blew, tousling his hair and caressing his neck like those fingers. The shadows of the cottonwoods schooled across the dirt and weeds like fleeing fish. The person – or the thing – stood behind him, its shadow long and thin. Touching and caressing.

Then both the fingertips and the shadow were gone.

Jack wheeled around, and this time the scream came out, long and loud, when the tail of his sportcoat belled out behind him in the wind and made a flapping sound. He stared at—

Nothing.

Just a few abandoned buildings and an acre or so of dirt.

No one was there. No one had ever been there. No one in the barn; just a busted hame. No fingers on the back of his sweaty neck; just the wind. He returned to his truck in big strides, looking back over his shoulder once, twice, three times. He got in, cringing when a wind-driven shadow raced across the rearview mirror, and started the engine. He drove back down the ranch road at fifty miles an hour, past the old graveyard and the abandoned ranchhouse, not pausing at the yellow tape this time but simply driving through it. He swerved onto Highway 79, tires squalling, and headed back toward FC. By the time he passed the city limits, he had convinced himself nothing had happened out there at that abandoned barn. The throbbing at the nape of his neck also meant nothing.

Nothing at all.