All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(69)

Leslie bent over and vomited on her own shoes. That’s when I saw the woman crumpled on her side on the kitchen floor, with a chair toppled next to her. I knew Aunt Val from her long, brown hair soaked in blood.

I don’t know what other people would have done in that situation, but my mother walked around the table, picked up the phone and dialed 911. While she was waiting to be connected, she said, “Get your sister a cold, wet washcloth.”

That was Mom’s solution when someone vomited. I was supposed to step over my aunt’s body, go into the bathroom, stepping over another dead body on the way, and get Leslie a cold, wet washcloth. It wasn’t going to happen. Mom, she was on autopilot, trying to follow some inner guidelines for What to Do in a Crisis.

“Yes, my name is Brenda Newling and I need to report an emergency. My sister’s been—I think she’s been shot.” Mom started off all business, but by the end her voice was shaky.

While the 911 operator talked, Mom picked up a dish towel and turned on the kitchen faucet.

“It’s off County Road 7. Near Powell. I don’t know. I don’t know the name of the road.”

All we had were a series of landmarks and turns written on the back of an envelope. Maybe the road didn’t even have a name. Mom frowned, her lip trembling, as she wrung out the towel. She held it out to me, but I was paralyzed.

“God, I don’t know! It’s Valerie and Liam Quinn’s house. You turn off the highway after the tractor dealership and take the left. There’s a silo there with a tree growing in it. I think it’s four miles and—coming from Powell. What do you mean is it Belton side or Powell side? I don’t know what county it’s in! Amy, please.”

She was waiting for me to take the towel. I made myself move, following the same route she had taken, around the table on the opposite side of Aunt Val. The towel felt good in my hand. Fresh. Cool. Not hot and sticky like the blood that was attracting flies.

A few drops of water dripped off the towel, and Mom and I watched them fall to the floor. That’s why we saw it at the same time: a footprint in blood. A small one, and then another, a trail of them going toward the back door.

“Oh God, Donal.”

Mom laid the phone on the counter and followed the footprints out the door. In the dirt at the foot of the porch steps, there were no more prints. The blood had dried or soaked into the ground. Mom looked toward the road, the barn, the meadow.

“Wavy,” I said, because at that moment, I realized her mother was dead.

“Get in the car,” Mom said.

Leslie and I stared at her.

“Now! We have to tell someone who can help. Someone who can tell the police where this is.”

Mom drove down to the ranch without making us put on our seat belts. As we pulled up in front of the trailer, Sandy came down the steps. Her tanned legs seemed a mile long below her white shorts. She smiled at us. Beautiful. Something to look at that wasn’t blood.

“Hey, girls.”

“Where’s Donal?” Mom opened the car door and got out.

“Oh, he went up the hill to see Val. She’s up there now, if you want to see her.”





2

BUTCH

I don’t know why, but Liam had a taste for crazy women and dumb women. My ex-wife wasn’t a beauty queen, but at least she had half a brain in her head. Not Sandy. She came into the lab at full tilt, running in high heels with her tits bouncing, never even looked to see if it was safe.

“It’s Val. There’s a problem,” she said.

That wasn’t news. All Val did was cause problems.

“You’re going to have to take care of it, Sandy. We’re busy down here. Where’s Liam?”

“He took the bike out. It’s serious, Butch. You have to come.”

I left Vic and Scott to cook, and followed Sandy out.

When I got to Sandy’s trailer, there was a woman on the porch. An older, straightlaced version of Val with housewife hair and a pink sundress showing off her chubby arms. Val’s sister, Brenda. She looked shaky and the two girls sitting in the car looked freaked out.

I figured it was some bullshit problem, because people like Brenda get upset easy. Maybe they’d gone up to the house and caught Val and Liam in one of their fighting and f*cking moods. Maybe Val was high. Maybe Liam had given her a taste of the back of his hand. If she’d been my wife, I would’ve done it more often.

“Hey, Brenda. We met once before. I’m Butch.” I held out my hand but Brenda just stared at it.

“Val and Liam are dead. I think they’ve been murdered.”

I pulled my hand back, I was that shocked. Sandy started screaming.

“Liam! You didn’t say Liam! You didn’t say! Oh my god! Liam!”

“Shut up, Sandy. Calm down and let me think.” I wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears idiot, and the first thing I thought about was the lab.

“What happened?” I said.

“I don’t know. I think they’ve been shot. And Donal’s missing. I didn’t know the address to tell Nine-One-One.”

I could see if I didn’t play things right, I was going to have a bunch of ruined product and the cops sniffing around. What I needed was help. Kellen could say he didn’t have the stomach for dirty work, but you could’ve fooled me. We once went to take care of some former business associates of Liam’s who backstabbed him. Kellen wouldn’t pull the trigger, but he didn’t blink when I did. That’s what the situation called for. Somebody who wouldn’t blink.