Drawn Into Darkness(48)
I stood owlishly blinking at those three lines like haiku, cryptic and profound, compressing worlds of hope and fear into a few syllables.
SORRY LEE
DON’T WORRY
I HAVE A PLAN
That note hadn’t been there the night before. It could have been written—in the dark, in careful printing like that of a blind man—by only one person. Justin. He had been alive a short time ago.
“Justin,” I blurted, staring at the message. “He ran away.”
Stoat put down his mug, swiveled his head in his lizardlike way, and peered at me with the one flinty eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “What you mean, Justin ran away?”
I felt like crying because Justin had sneaked away like the coward I knew he wasn’t. I felt like laughing because Stoat wouldn’t get to kill him today. I had to keep my voice very neutral so that Stoat would not take offense and kill me instead. “Justin wrote that.” I pointed. “He must have left right after I went to sleep.”
“Gee, ain’t that too bad.” The water seemed to have lubricated Stoat’s wheezing somewhat. “And you lying in wait for me with a rattlesnake in your hand. Fixing to kill me.”
He gave me way too much credit. Me, some sort of superwoman wielding a rattlesnake instead of a zap gun? My mouth hung open but words failed me.
“Stupid bitch.” Creepily calm, Stoat began to feel surreal to me, a horror-movie monster whose ballooning purple face might explode at any moment. “You think I’m going to die, don’t you?” He pointed his shotgun at me. “Say it.”
I stood there unable to say a thing.
Stoat said, “It so happens I got double vision right now, but if I shoot one of you, I guarantee I’ll get you both.” The shotgun’s double barrel wavered, showing how weak he felt, and how dangerous. “Go ahead—say you mean for me to die.”
Just in time I got my big mouth back. “I certainly hope so,” I told him brightly.
“Huh.” He put the shotgun down on the table as if it were too heavy for him. “Well, I ain’t gonna oblige you,” he lectured me. “See, I’m the kind of person that if you mess with me, you die, not me.”
He paused to breathe heavily. Some sort of comment seemed expected. “I believe you,” I said politely.
“I need you for a couple days, but soon as I can, I will kill you, tricky bitch. I—what the hell?”
His voice shot up and his single viable eye widened, staring past me. I turned to see what had spooked him.
“Hypatia!” I greeted the oak snake emerging from under my bunk with the absurd joy of seeing a friend during a difficult time. So graceful, the way she poured herself like a meandering stream—
BAM. Shotgun, so close, so loud, I jumped and screamed. Hypatia disintegrated. I stood gulping and quaking. Stoat was a good shot.
“Git me some more water,” he ordered, “then clean up them dead snakes.”
• • •
Thomas Hart Benton murals distinguished the ballroom-sized lobby of the skyscraper where Quinn Leppo worked. Podunk people touring the Big Apple stood gawking, but Quinn strode through without hesitation, tall, reasonably handsome in a three-piece suit custom-tailored to give his long legs and narrow shoulders the most flattering fit, all banker. Or so he might appear, Quinn thought as the elevator lifted him to his office on the twenty-second floor. Hardly anyone ever looked closely at his tie or his socks. He wore plain socks today, but his tie featured a tiny print of Munch’s The Scream. Tomorrow, Friday, he would wear his TGIF socks.
In his office—as midlevel management, Quinn had scored an office with a window—he immediately set down his Starbucks coffee and checked his e-mail. He could have done it on his iPhone during his subway ride, but he hated working before he got to work. He rolled his eyes when he saw, again, the e-mail from his mother that had been there since yesterday afternoon. Guiltily aware that he hadn’t phoned her, sure it would be mama drama, he had left it unopened at the time, and again last night, and in the bright light of morning he felt inclined to leave it unopened yet once more. But if he did, he’d have to begin actual work. With a sigh, he clicked.
What the ruck?
Hello family of Liana Clymer, aka Liana Leppo. This is Deputy Bernardo Morales of the Maypop County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office contacting you.
Quinn read on with rapidly increasing consternation. Schweitzer, dead? Shot? Mom had to be heartbroken, especially at this bad time when she was still getting over Dad’s defection. But Quinn had learned to distance himself from his mother’s feelings, so this concerned him more: Mom would never willingly have gone away and left Schweitzer’s dead body on the floor.