My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(73)

Jade nods to herself about all of this, part of her fully aware that she’s made this same plan twenty times before. Fifty times. Ever since junior high, really, with all manner of household implements, with every last screwdriver in the toolbox, with all the rakes and shovels and hoes in the shed.

This time she means it, though.

“Bang,” she says, looking down her finger at her father, but she also sort of sees herself standing here, adopting that pose —sees herself as Hardy would, as Mr. Holmes would: another teenager who hates the parent she’s stuck with. And that’s the only way they have to see her, too, which is the catch-22

bullshit of it all.

Still, Jade angles the barrel of her finger over, drills a bullet into Rexall as well, just for good measure, and then freezes when Rexall hikes a leg up in an obscene pose, almost in response.

Jade angles her face up to stare through the ceiling, away from this moment, only slowly realizing she’s listening to something. She cocks her head over to let the sound drain in better: somewhere far above Proofrock, Mr. Holmes’s tiny rotors are whapping at the air. Either him or that’s another LifeFlight up there, and, if it is, then who for this time? Who for and how late?

Let Letha handle it, though. Which means: let Letha witness it. Let it all stack up in her head, because she’s the one who’s going to need it as fuel for her big turnaround.

What Jade needs is… sleep?

Except, as much as she hates it, here in her living room are two survivors, two witnesses to what happened to Clate Rodgers. Two idiots who could tell her if the Umiak had been tied to the pier or not. That her father was wet in the alley meant he had to have been the one wading past the crusty pylons to find a latchpoint on that sleek white hull, Rexall high and dry playing lookout, Clate bobbing under the pier, psyching himself up. Well, shotgunning another beer anyway.

Same difference.

Problem is, asking Tab Daniels for a version of this will be putting him up on a throne for as long as Jade needs that answer, won’t it? When she’s promised and sworn and vowed to never ask him for a single thing again, no matter what.

Jade comes back to her father’s sleeping face. There’s a beer in the crook of his arm, its longneck nestled in his armpit.

When he shifts, it starts to seep into his pearl snap shirt, a slow flower of darkness to match all the faded-out flowers in the print. Jade watches it bloom as long as she can, finally has to ghost forward, tiptoe between, sneak the bottle up and out.

What she tells herself is that she’s Ripley, crawling over a sleeping alien. She’s Sidney, squirming over an unconscious Ghostface. But really she just doesn’t want her dad feeling that wetness and waking.

Much better to let him sleep on.

Instead of taking a swig of the warm beer, she settles it onto the taped-together coffee table with the other empties. That’s another thing she’s promised and sworn, mumbled vows about: never to drink beer like him. Cigarettes, sure, smoking doesn’t make you stupid, just dead. But if she ever drinks, then that opens the door on a future where she someday shares a beer with her dad, and that’s not a door she’ll ever let life drag her through.

She could nudge Rexall awake, she supposes. Tricking him into telling her about what happened to Clate would be cake, less than cake. Except… talking to him would mean talking to him, and she’s not that desperate. Even at four in the morning.

But what could Rexall or her father tell her about Clate Rodgers that would even be useful, right? Doesn’t she already know?

This is always her favorite part of any slasher. It’s already been established, thanks to the bodies stacking up, that somebody thinks they’ve got a good reason to be doing this, however it is they’re doing it. Now the push is to figure out what the dead might have in common, where their paths might cross. After that it’s just a matter of thinking back to who was where when a prank or accident went down. Who had stepped out to powder their nose, see a man about a horse, make a call?

Or, before Scream, anyway, that’s how you used to be able to figure a slasher out. Until it was either Billy or Stu who had to be gone from the room long enough to don a certain mask.

But, it was just and only Hardy ambling down from Melanie’s bench, wasn’t it? Cashing his last smoke and then moseying down to what was left of the idiot that let his daughter die.

So it’s him, then?

He is as good a candidate as anyone to bring Stacey Graves back. Except for Christine Gillette—his aunt—he’s the only one Jade knows to have actually seen Stacey Graves. And, what a Prowler-y rush if the slasher’s a law enforcement officer, right? That would… it would be like Nancy’s dad in A Nightmare on Elm Street feeling so much guilt about breaking the law to kill Freddy that he ducks into the crusty fedora himself, doses the kids with something to make them think they’re dreaming, and goes about punishing the whole block for their big crime.

As for how Hardy could have done Clate Rodgers: with his airboat tied to the pier, he had every excuse to be ambling past the Umiak for whatever he forgot—his lighter for that all-important last cigarette, probably. And if Letha or Tiara called down to ask why was he tying them off, he could just say he didn’t know anybody was aboard, he just didn’t want it drifting away, a big pretty boat like that. What he wouldn’t be saying would be that, when you have the chance to dispense with the grown-up version of the kid you blame for your daughter’s drowning, you do that, even if you’re already involved in something larger.