Drawn Into Darkness(59)

“Can or something my ass,” he said. “Git over here.”

Despite feeling weak, I obeyed almost quickly. It’s amazing how fear can quake a person’s gut one moment yet give strength the next.

“Stand there. Not like that. Put your back to me.”

Thinking I was about to be executed, I balked, deploying my big mouth. “Why?” I asked as loudly as I could, which wasn’t very.

“Just goddamn turn around!” The menace in his voice shook me so much that I shuddered. I thought wildly that the rattlesnake venom, instead of killing him, seemed to have joined forces with his own spleen.

I turned around. Yes, sir.

With one hand he seized my shoulder and leaned on me for support while with the other he held the shotgun to the back of my neck. “Move,” he ordered.

“Where?” I had to keep talking, make him think a black eye and a gun to my back meant nothing to me.

“Out the damn door.”

“But where are we going?”

He sighed gustily like a horse. “There ain’t no damn eggs or frying pan here, are there?”

“No.”

“Then what do you think, dumbass? We’re going to my place. You drive.”

• • •

By midmorning, Quinn and Forrest had filed Missing Persons reports on Mom with the Maypop police and the Florida state troopers. But doing so had made Quinn feel worse, not better, because the authorities had given the distinct impression that they would not search seriously for an adult who had every right to go missing; how did they know she hadn’t shot her own dog to death? Assholes, thought Quinn, driving the rental car, heading toward Mom’s shack for lack of anything else to do. Dickheads. Although Quinn hadn’t asked, he felt pretty sure Forrest felt the same way. Normally upbeat, Forrie looked remarkably glum.

“It’s going to be hot as hell,” he remarked dourly from the passenger’s seat.

“Face it, Bro, we’re in hell.”

“Is it that bad,” Forrest shot back, suddenly argumentative, “that we had to go on Facebook to find a photo of our mother? Or that we don’t know her Social Security number? Or that we don’t know her exact place of birth, or whether she has any friends down here, or a job, or a church, or a boyfriend, of all things—”

Quinn cut in. “Because we haven’t talked with her for a month and a half?” He kept his tone angelic.

Slumping in the passenger seat, Forrest groaned. “Then, to top it off, we didn’t open Bernie’s e-mail for almost a day.”

“They don’t know that.”

“But we do,” Forrie muttered.

“Okay, okay.” In a tuneless waltz rhythm Quinn sang, “We are bad, bad, sons, and we’ve been sent, to, hell—”

The Worst Rental Car Ever strayed off the road and onto the grassy shoulder. Forrest yelled, “Shut up and watch your driving!”

“Relax. We’re almost there.”

“Yeah. As if that’s a reason to relax.”

Quinn turned off the road and bumped across the sandy yard to park in the shade of the mimosa trees. Silently he and his brother went inside the pink shanty and had a look around as if their mother might somehow have turned up since yesterday. But except for where Bernie had cut a rectangle out of the carpet to carry Schweitzer to his grave, nothing had changed. The stench had abated slightly overnight, and now the heat seemed more objectionable. They went around closing windows so they could turn on the air conditioner. Mom’s bed remained empty and unmade, her bathroom snowy with talcum powder, her dirty dishes stacked in the kitchen sink.

“These stink almost as bad as, you know,” Forrest said of the dishes. “Howsabout if I wash them?”

Quinn nodded. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Going back outside, he didn’t look at Forrest, and Forrest didn’t look at him. They both knew that the only trace of Mom he was likely to find might be her body.

Not about to search randomly, Quinn visualized a grid pattern of the property and set off toward the handiest perimeter.

Walking slowly between mimosa trees and scanning mechanically up and down, then from side to side, Quinn felt his mind rebelling. There had to be some way to make sense out of this mess.

Time for data assessment.

His mother’s car was here.

But Mom herself was very much not here.

Neither was her purse, cell phone, or keys.

Most logical explanation: someone—for instance, a new friend—had come to the house, picked her up, and taken her somewhere.

And shot her dog, and rearranged her furniture?

Try again, Sherlock.

Okay, an intruder seemed to be indicated in the picture.