Alexander Death(98)

At the same time, they'd left the front gates unlocked, so that anyone could push them open. They wanted Alexander coming in through the front, where they'd made some preparations for taking down the zombies.

Jenny walked out of the office and just down the hall to the library. Seth and Heather were both sleeping on the old leather couches there, Heather with a pillow and blanket Seth had provided. It was their first chance to sleep since they'd picked up Heather the night before. Jenny felt tired, too. She hoped she had some extra time to rest before Alexander arrived, but she knew he was on his way. She could feel it.

She poured herself a glass of iced tea in the kitchen, then returned to the office to watch the monitor.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN





Tommy watched Jenny's house from the woods. The girl was Ashleigh's obsession, and if Tommy kept an eye on her, he knew Ashleigh would arrive sooner or later. He was patient. He'd sat here all afternoon, through the sunset, and for a few hours since then.

Jenny's father had come and gone a few times, but there was no sign of Jenny. Her father had left for the last time in the early evening, taking the dog with him, and not returned. At this point, he was either having a late night at a redneck bar somewhere, or he was spending the night away.

He suspected Ashleigh might be here, soon—something had made her decide to cut him loose. Maybe she was just moving to Washington, to a nice silk-lined mistress nest provided by her pet congressman, but Tommy didn't think so. He and Ashleigh were connected, like two broken halves of the same twisted soul. He could sense something powerful stirring inside her, much bigger than just the predictable unfolding of her seduction of Representative Eddie Brazer.

Tommy began to feel antsy and restless, like the action was happening somewhere else and he was missing it.

Since it didn't look like anybody was coming back, Tommy made his way out of the woods to the rickety little house. The front door was locked, but Tommy knew how to pick cheap residential locks.

The house smelled like dog and the ghosts of old cigarettes. Tommy rummaged through the bills on the table, glanced in the fridge for anything interesting, cut himself a slice of some really good hoop cheese he found under a glass dome on a cutting board.

The old cassette-tape answering machine was almost as big as a shoebox—it took Tommy a moment to even figure out what the boxy device next to the telephone was. He pressed the PLAY button, but all the messages had been erased.

He'd been here twice before. The first time, he'd come in search of Ashleigh's killers, but he hadn't known about the Jenny pox and had come away sick and scarred. The second time, Ashleigh had sent him to fill Jenny's father's mind with fear until it popped, and to leave a note Ashleigh had made for Jenny.

On this visit, he was in no hurry. He walked through the dining room, looking at the clay pots and simple sculptures on the table. He glanced into the hall bathroom, and then he found Jenny's room.

Tommy sat on her bed, looking around at the old cabinet-style record player, the dresser with the fire scars at one end. He looked at himself in the mirror, and there he saw the photographs tacked on the wall alongside Jenny's bed.

He turned to look at them. They were pictures of the boyfriend, Seth, who Ashleigh also hated deeply. Of course, Tommy thought. Why would Jenny hang around this pathetic dump when she had a boyfriend with a mansion across town? Since nothing was happening here, Seth's place seemed like a good place to look. He was going to die of boredom and his growing anxiety if he had to sit around doing nothing the rest of the night.

Tommy returned outside and rolled his bike out of the woods. He cranked it up in Jenny's driveway, and then he pulled out onto the paved road.





***





The meat truck rattled and shook as it crawled along the dirt road, which was really just a pair of weedy, sandy ruts through endless acres of dense pine trees. It came to a stop at a fork in the road.

“I think this is it,” Alexander said.

“You thought that the last ten times,” Ashleigh said.

“I've only stopped twice.”

“Now it's three times.”

“Just give me a minute.” Alexander grabbed the flashlight and climbed out of the car.

“See if there's a bathroom,” Ashleigh called after him.

Alexander ignored her. He thought he could discern the faint traces of the overgrown trail here. Plenty had changed in the decades since he last lived in Fallen Oak, but he had once known every inch of the town and its countryside.

He bashed aside limbs with the flashlight, stomped down thick brambles with his shoes, slowly making his way deeper into the woods.

He was beginning to think he'd stopped at the wrong place yet again when his flashlight found the brick chimney jutting up among the brambles. It had sunk into the earth a few feet over the years, and it leaned far to one side, but it was still there, surrounded by rubble masked by thorns and weeds.