people who lived there now were professionals-doctors, lawyers, executives-most of whom worked in Marquette but had been lured to Bodine by the beauty of the place and the stunning old houses they could buy for a song. A lot of the homes had been refurbished over the last few years. Stash’s family lived there. So did Amber Kennedy’s.
Ever since the day before when Charlie told him that Amber liked him, the girl had occupied much of his thinking. She was pretty, with long gold hair that always seemed to flip in just the right way over her delicate shoulders. She wore braces on her teeth, and when she smiled she usually covered her mouth. For some reason, that made Ren like her more. In truth, he’d been thinking less about her prettiness or long gold hair or smile than about her breasts, which over the past summer seemed to have erupted and now pushed up like a couple of active volcanoes under her sweater.
He didn’t linger when he reached her house, not wanting her to think, should she see him pass, that he’d come that way just because of her. He did cast a quick glance in that direction, but was disappointed to see no one at the front windows.
He turned west. Near the edge of town, the pavement gave way to gravel. He bumped along beyond the last of the small ranch houses and entered an area of failed commerce. He passed Zeke’s Small Engine Repair, now abandoned, a small pasture where a man named Fry Ahearn still sometimes kept a few goats, and finally the Huron Lumber Company, which had given up the ghost years ago and now sat idle behind a tall Cyclone fence.
Charlie lived with her father in a beat-up green trailer home set on a cinder-block foundation a quarter mile south of the abandoned lumberyard. There were two red maples in front and between them a big patch of raggedy grass that was usually long overdue for mowing. In back a sea of weeds swamped the empty frame of a swing set, a couple of rusted barrels, an old gas stove, a claw-foot bathtub, and a hundred other smaller items with so many jagged or broken edges that Charlie and Ren no longer set foot there.
Because he didn’t want to risk waking Charlie’s father, who would probably be battling a mammoth hangover, Ren pulled to the side of the road a good distance from the trailer, killed the engine, and walked the rest of the way. Far from town, everything was quiet. The maples were a deep red and shedding. Their fallen leaves lay embedded in the tall grass of the front yard like rubies. Ren knew better than to knock. He crept to a side window, which was closed, the blinds inside lowered. He tapped at the glass, waited, tapped again. He put his lips to the window pane and called softly, “Charlie?”
Nothing.
Which was understandable. It had been a late night for them both. He walked around to the front, saw that the door was open. He climbed the crumbling set of concrete steps and peeked through the screen.
He’d been inside hundreds of times over the years and the place was always a mess. This morning it looked even worse than usual. Way worse. As if Charlie’s father had gone on a drunken rampage and tried to break everything he hadn’t already broken. Christ, how could Charlie stand it?
Ren didn’t like the idea of disturbing Mr. Miller, but the place looked so bad, he was worried about Charlie. If she’d come home while her old man was going crazy…
“Hello?” Ren called timidly. “Mr. Miller? Charlie?”
The day was sunny and still. The clarity of the Huron Mountains in the distance was softened by a blue haze. Ren watched a stray dog squeeze through a hole in the lumberyard fence, look his way, then trot off in the other direction. This was all so normal, yet Ren sensed that something wasn’t right.
A long moment of uncertainty passed, then he decided.
He eased the door open and stepped inside. Immediately, his nose was assaulted by the same raw odor that had hit him when he opened the door of the car where Cork O’Connor had bled heavily after he was shot. Ren would have turned around and got the hell out of there except he was afraid for Charlie.
Although the trailer was full of broken debris, it felt empty. Ren made his way toward Charlie’s bedroom. As he approached the threshold, part of the room was revealed and what he saw stopped him cold.
Charlie’s walls were powder blue. The wall that Ren could see was splashed with a different color. As he stood there, unable to make himself move ahead, the artist in him tried to find form in what he saw. Numbly he thought that the splatter resembled a jellyfish with many long tentacles.
A big red jellyfish.
11
Cork offered to share his breakfast with Dina. She accepted a bit of his coffee and a piece of toast. She sat at the cabin table, hunched over her half-filled coffee cup. She’d removed the forest green jacket she’d been wearing. Underneath was a tan sweater. Below were khakis and hiking boots.
“For a city girl who never learned much about the woods, you look pretty good here. Pretty natural,” Cork said, speaking from his bunk.
With her thumb she flicked a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Deep-cover training.”
“You haven’t talked to Jo, right?”
“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
It was, but he was dying to know how they were doing, to be assured that they were fine. And he wanted them to know they shouldn’t be worried about him.
“The less they know, the safer they are. They’re of no use to Jacoby,” he said.
Dina used Cork’s butter knife to brush some char from her toast. “You know, I never believed cops and families were a good idea. You get hurt, killed, it’s not just you who suffers.”
“If cops didn’t have families, where would little cops come from?” He smiled. She didn’t. “Is that the reason you don’t have a boyfriend?”
She leveled her green eyes on him and said dourly, “Boyfriend?” She picked up her coffee with both hands. “I haven’t had a boyfriend since high school. I have lovers.”
“Anyone special?”
“Special gets complicated and leads to things like families.” She gave her attention to the coffee.
Cork lifted the tray on which Ren had delivered breakfast. He tried to move it out of his way, twisted his leg, and grunted in pain. Dina got up, came over, took the tray from him, and carried it to the table. She came back, lifted the sheet, and looked at his wounds.
“Hurt much?”
“Only when the drugs wear off. Or I think about it. Ever been shot?”
“That’s a pleasure I’ve missed.” Her eyes moved from his leg to his face, then slid away quickly. “You were lucky.”
“I know.”
She let the sheet drop. “Is this really the kind of thing you want to put your family through?”
“Maybe when all this is over I’ll go back to running the hamburger stand. Except I got shot doing that, too.”
“Maybe guys like you just attract trouble.”
“What about people like you?”
“Like me?”
“Who make a living pulling other people’s keisters out of the fire.”
“I’m not making a nickel off you.”
He laughed softly. “You can use me as a reference.” He reached out and took her hand. “Thanks for coming, Dina.”
She glanced at her fingers, small in his palm. “What was I going to do? Leave you to the wolves?”
“Some would.”
“In my shoes, what would you do?”
“Deep down, we’re the same kind of people, you know. Except with you, it comes in a nicer package.” He laughed easily, jesting.
“And with you, it comes with a family.” She slid her hand from his easy grip, walked back to the table, and sat down with her coffee.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.
