futility of control, resentment, and selfishness.
But where was Wendy now?
Out of his life, living across town from him, both of them financially damaged by the separation and legal battle.
Of course, when you got right down to it, God had set up the bowling pins for this particular split. Why cast about for blame when there was One who had all the power?
In the Blame Game, you didn’t need to point the finger at yourself. The real target was in the sky, everywhere, pervading the fabric of reality.
Or, alternately, God was nowhere.
The grin was a grim rictus on his face. Justification, that savior of drunks the world over. He licked his lips. His hand was actually trembling in a way it hadn’t since he’d beaten delirium tremens during a thirty-day stay in a treatment facility.
If God didn’t want him to drink, God would cause him to trip over the living room rug and break a leg. And God wouldn’t have stuck Steve’s liquor in the cabin, just waiting for him like manna.
God’s fault. God’s desire. God’s will.
He was heading for the liquor cabinet when someone knocked on the door.
He glanced at the ceiling, wondering if God was up there laughing, the hoary old bastard.
He thought about hiding, or maybe going for the back door and running into the woods, but that would be stupid.
No, the best thing was to answer it and act like he belonged there.
Roland opened the door, smiling but with a little hint of annoyance at being disturbed. A man stood there, beefy, dressed in a flannel shirt and overalls. He wore a new straw hat on his head that looked uncomfortably stiff. One side of his mouth was slack, as if he’d worn out his muscles from chewing tobacco in that cheek.
“Can I help you?”
“Howdy,” the man said, waving vaguely off to the left. “I own the farm down there and keep an eye on the place for Steve. Thought I might check in and see if you need anything. Place has stood empty a while.”
Yeah, right. And not a bit curious, I’ll bet.
“I’m just stopping over on a road trip,” Roland said. “I’m Steve’s brother.”
The man squinted. “I see a little resemblance, now that you mention it.”
“Yeah, he got the brains, but I got all the looks.”
The man nodded, no sense of humor. “Well, if you need anything, just holler.”
Roland glanced at the man’s feet, expecting to see scuffed boots flecked with goat shit. Instead, the man wore shiny leather dress shoes.
“I’ll do that, sir,” he said, though the man was only ten years older than him.
The man turned, and Roland noticed there were no other vehicles in the driveway. The farmer must have walked at least half a mile. Without scuffing his new shoes. “All right, David, enjoy your stay.”
“My name’s not David,” Roland said. “It’s-”
He caught himself as the man turned. “Steve said he had a brother named David,” the man said.
Roland thought about lying, but he planned to be long gone soon. “It’s Roland.”
The man’s lips pursed, and then they broke into a grin. “That’s right. I was just testing you. We get all kinds of weirdos out in these parts. It pays to be a little suspicious.”
“Sounds like good advice.”
“You’ll be heading back to North Carolina soon?”
How the hell did he know? “Depends on how much I enjoy my stay.”
“I wouldn’t enjoy it too much. You might never want to leave.”
The man laughed, but the humor was off, like an inside joke he didn’t want to share. Roland watched him walk down the road, those new shoes slapping in the dirt and gravel.
He slammed the door. Soon it wouldn’t matter if he was Roland or David or the fucking ghost of Kentucky Colonel Jack Daniels.
He reached the cabinet and swallowed hard, throat stinging with the anticipated heat of the liquor. Steve’s drink was Crown Royal, out of Roland’s price range, but there would be rum, vodka, gin, and probably some brandy as well. Enough.
The cabinet was oaken, the door slightly warped by dampness. But now it was the gate to paradise.
As he opened the door, he closed his eyes, half-hoping for a final reprieve, some cosmic gesture that would gird his spirit.
The cabinet door creaked open. A warm, putrid odor wafted out with the force of floodwater.
A goat hung in the cabinet, a hemp rope tangled in its horns. Its body cavity was peeled open, red ribs exposed, offal spilling in trails of gray-green and pink.
As Roland dry-heaved for the second time that day, he realized the kill must have been recent. A strange jubilation surged through him; here was proof that he was not the killer.
On its heels came a deeper relief. He had stayed sober. Maybe through a little luck, maybe through the divine hand of that Big Bastard in the Sky.
But sobriety didn’t change reality. The sacrificial slaughter had occurred while he was in the car, on his way here. Someone must have left the mutilated carcass for him, someone who knew his destination, someone who had anticipated his moves after leaving the Cincinnati motel.
Someone who knew he’d open the liquor cabinet sooner rather than later, because the killer had left a message.
Scrawled in congealed blood were the same cryptic letters he’d observed in the motel shower stall: “CRO.” And beneath it, “Every 4 hrs. You’re late.” The symbols were smeared as if by a callous finger.
As blood continued to drain from the goat, it pooled around the message, and Roland realized the letters would soon be obscured.
The crime techs would be able to decode it. They’d be able to match evidence with the crime scene in Cincinnati and he’d be off the hook. Of course, there was still the problem of the missing time and his new identity “It’s not my identity, damn it,” he said, the words scouring his ravaged throat.
Roland couldn’t stay in the cabin now, not while that hideous face leered from the cabinet with its strange, milky eyes. He reached past it and grabbed the only bottle there, half a pint of vodka. He twisted the lid free.
Here’s to you, you glassy-eyed fucker.
Roland turned up the bottle, craving the sweet relief, no matter what price he’d pay later.
He’d forced down three swallows before he realized the vodka didn’t burn. He pulled it away and smelled it.
Water.
The laughter hit him hard, and he leaned against the wall, air leaping from his lungs in painful grunts. He was such a fuck-up that he even fucked up getting fucked up. His sides hurt, then he punched the wall, and the pain brought him around.
Roland pulled the orange bottle from his pocket and glanced at the bloody letters on the cabinet door: “You’re late.”
The rage came over him almost instantly, and he had retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen and was about to hack into that goddamned goat, with its glassy, accusing eyes.
Who are you to fucking judge me?
Trembling, he dropped the knife and fled to the back bedroom, crawling onto the bare mattress and huddling into himself.
They were coming. They’d find out he’d drunk the vodka.
He thought of the farmer with the spiffy shoes and city hands.
The farmer’s words came back to him. “You’ll be heading back to North Carolina soon?”
And another question, maybe one from David Underwood up in the peanut gallery:
Why did you kill Susan?
He hadn’t thought of the girl in years, and he didn’t even know he’d forgotten her, but her rounded face slid into his mind, eyes wide and mouth screaming and chubby cheeks bleeding.
Roland felt the world sliding away and the black walls of the room closing in. Then Susan blended with the
