Run Rose Run(96)

Blaine sucked his teeth and said, “Uh-huh, I know him. Clayton Dunning’s a mean sumbitch. Give him half a chance and he’ll knock the pretty right off your face.”

Ethan immediately thought about showing Blaine just who could knock what. But that went against his rule. Don’t start fights, it went, just finish them. So he faked a smile and said, “How about you tell me where I can find him so he can do that for me? I’m sick of being so damn good-looking.”

Blaine snorted. “Nearest hospital’s an hour away.”

Ethan gritted his teeth. The joke was getting old fast. “I need you to tell me where he lives.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Blaine said, coming out from behind the counter. “Just don’t tell him I did.”

Two minutes later, Ethan tossed his purchases into the back seat of the cab and headed northeast out of town. He stayed on the main highway for twenty miles before turning onto a narrow road leading into the woods. As he drove, the road grew narrower and rougher—the kind of road that would’ve rattled Gladys to pieces. Pretty soon it was just a dirt track, and it seemed like the trees were closing in on him from all sides. Feeling claustrophobic, he rolled down the window and breathed in the scent of leaves, moss, and a nearby creek. A rabbit skittered in front of the truck, and Ethan touched his brakes as it disappeared into the woods.

“You’re going to think that you’ve gone too far, and you’re lost,” Blaine had said. “But you won’t be. You’re just supposed to feel like it.”

As he drove, Ethan tried to convince himself that he’d find AnnieLee just up ahead. There were girls she loved and a man she hated living off this road, so it wasn’t so crazy to think she’d be there.

Finally he came to the tree Blaine had told him he’d find, the dead maple with the NO TRESPASSING notices nailed all over it. Two children’s dolls hung from the broken branches, one upside down by her plastic legs and the other by her neck.

“That’s the warning for any trespassers who can’t read,” Blaine had said, laughing. “You have yourself a nice visit.”





Chapter

87


A dog barked as Ethan drove up the dirt track toward the crooked jumble of tar paper and cheap siding that was Clayton Dunning’s house. There were rusting machine parts scattered all over the yard and one incongruously shiny Chevy pickup with a gun rack and a brand-new deer hoist. Weeds grew around a pile of broken beer bottles and through the rigging of a wrecked trampoline.

Shit, Ethan thought. No wonder AnnieLee left.

As he walked toward the house, the front door opened and a man came onto the porch. “Who the hell are you?” he said as he lifted a rifle and pointed it at Ethan.

Ethan stopped in his tracks. He held up his hands a little—not a gesture of surrender, but an indication that he was unarmed. “The name’s Ethan Blake. Clayton Dunning? I’m here because I’m looking for your stepdaughter. For Rose.”

Clayton Dunning squinted at him. He was a bulldog of a man, round and ugly and unsmiling. Behind him, a teenage girl poked her head out of the house, and she looked Ethan up and down with a quick, almost animal curiosity.

“Get back inside,” Clayton said.

“Hey,” Ethan called to her. “You look a little like Rose.”

Surprise flashed over the girl’s face. “Rose? You know her?”

“I sure do,” he said. “I’m trying to find her. Has she come around?”

“No,” the girl said, and then she turned and yelled back into the house, “Shelly, he knows Rose!”

“I told you to get inside,” Clayton said. He shoved the girl with the butt of his rifle and she vanished from view. Then he pointed the weapon back at Ethan. “You’re trespassing.”

“I was hoping a friend of the family wouldn’t be considered a trespasser,” Ethan said mildly. He gazed at the gun like it was a curiosity instead of a threat. “Is that a Winchester Model 70? I used to have one of those.”

Clayton hocked a loogie into the yard. “You ain’t no friend,” he said. “And Rose ain’t no family. Not my blood.”

Then the teenager came around from the back of the house, holding the hand of a younger girl who looked even more like AnnieLee—rosebud lips and bright-blue eyes and everything.

“He knows Rose,” the older girl said.

Ethan turned to them. “Have either of you seen your sister?” he asked. “Or heard from her lately?”

They shook their heads solemnly, and Ethan struggled to push back a growing sense of unease. He knew she was close. Why wouldn’t she reach out to them?

“Listen,” he said, “I know Rose came back this way, and I’m trying to find out where she is.”

“She ain’t here,” Clayton said, stepping down off the porch. The dog started barking again. “Shut up!” he yelled, and it whined and lay down. “I don’t know where she is, and I don’t care. I just know that whatever they did to her, she deserved it.”

“Deserved what?” There was a sharp edge to Ethan’s voice. “Who’s they?”

Clayton spat again and said nothing.

“We haven’t seen her in a couple years,” the teenager said quietly.