The Last Thing She Ever Did(76)

Yet somehow—by the grace of God, he once believed—he’d avoided all of that. The police car swept past him, and David Franklin stopped drinking because he knew that if he didn’t, there would be nothing left but disaster. His life would be as empty as those pearlescent razor clam shells that were discarded after he’d proudly collected all of those rave reviews. He’d attended the meetings with those he once looked down on as losers, when really they were only different versions of himself.

Now whatever he thought he’d found when he’d pulled himself together had been eroded by the fact that Charlie was missing and that Carole somehow blamed him for everything. She might as well have taken a pair of her orange-handled Fiskars scissors to his balls and mounted them on one of her weavings.

The man from Ohio had mentioned to the chatty bartender at Anthony’s that he was staying at the Pines. He’d passed that information on to the police.

He also told David Franklin.

A Toyota Camry with Ohio plates, grimy from a nearly cross-country trip, sat parked in front of cabin 22; a NO HATE IN OUR STATE sticker was affixed to the back window. Inside, David was sure, the man who took his boy was doing whatever freaky, disgusting thing that he did. David took a full, deep drink from the bottle. It was nectar coating his throat, reminding his body what alcohol did for him. It gave him the kind of calming rush that made him feel ten sizes bigger. A kind of power surged through him.

I’ll make that freak tell me where my boy is, he thought, taking another drink before getting out of his car.





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

MISSING: EIGHTEEN DAYS

David had cut his right hand. Blood oozed onto the leather-covered steering wheel, making his hand slip as he drove. The last thing he wanted was any attention to his driving—or to what he’d done. He’d ditched Brad Collins at the hospital and the Old Grand-Dad bottle somewhere between the cabins of the Pines and home. If he’d expected to feel more like a man for having beat the shit out of a pervert, he found the opposite to be true.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!!!

The expletives were useless, but they kept coming while he replayed what had taken place at the Pines as he tried to get home without getting pulled over.

Brad was caught completely unaware. The Ohio tourist was watching Judge Judy in his boxers when a rage-and alcohol-fueled David shoved open the cabin door. It swung so abruptly that David was uncertain if it had been unlocked or if he’d been given some kind of superhero boost from the bourbon that he’d guzzled in the parking lot.

“Hey!” Brad said, dropping his feet over the edge of the bed and standing as if at attention. “You’re in the wrong room, buddy!”

David pulled the door shut behind him and wheeled on him. “You pervert! You took my boy!” he said, then lunged at him, jumped on top of him. It was lightning-fast. Superhero-fast. It was faster than a man of his age could normally manage.

“I didn’t do anything to anyone!” Brad said as David, bolstered by the booze and powered by the contempt he had for himself and the world, pummeled the younger man over and over.

Brad tried to fight his attacker, but David Franklin was like some kind of machine. He just kept punching, emitting a grunt like a prizefighter with each swing. At one point his hands found a T-shirt and he shoved it inside the bloody man’s mouth.

All while demanding answers.

“Tell me where Charlie is!”

Brad had no idea, of course, and the T-shirt made speaking impossible. He tried to shift his weight and slither out from under his attacker, but David was relentless.

“You sack of shit! You know where my boy is and I’ll goddamn kill you if you don’t tell me! Where did you put him? Where in the hell did you put my boy?”

Brad managed to extract the T-shirt from his mouth. His lip was torn so badly that it hung like a piece of tenderloin on a skewer. Blood oozed like a ketchup commercial.

“I told the police,” he spat out. “I don’t know anything.”

David hit him again.

“Liar!”

Brad coughed up more blood.

“Not lying,” he said. “Not . . .”

They struggled a bit longer, and David finally got off him and sat there, gasping for air and snapping out of his rage. His victim’s eyeballs were white marbles rolling backward in a sea of red. He grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him again.

“Don’t you die on me without telling me where Charlie is! Where did you put him?”

Brad lay still. He couldn’t move. “I don’t want to die,” he finally said.

And just like that, like the flicking of a light switch from full glare to complete blackness, terror seized David. He was gripped and slapped hard by the reality of what he’d done.

He’d nearly beaten a man to death.

Bloody and weak, Brad Collins fought for air. It was a sickening sound. A trash fish caught in a gillnetter’s line, fighting for life.

“Jesus,” David said, “what did I do?”

“Doctor,” Brad said. “I need a doctor.”

David sat there on the floor next to the other man, who was slippery with blood. His own hand was bleeding, and there was blood spatter on his face. He wondered who, if anyone, had seen him at the Pines. He wondered if the guests in the next cabin over had heard him land blow after blow, or if in places like the Pines people just minded their own business. He got up, surveyed the cabin. He wondered what evidence he would leave behind. How long it would take Brad to die. The cabin had an old-school rotary phone, and David grabbed it, yanking its cord from the wall.