The Sound of Broken Ribs(20)
“Because women aren’t usually this brutal or uncompassionate. I would like to think that a woman would have stopped to check on her.”
Oh, she stopped, all right, that voice that wasn’t Lei’s said. She stopped long enough to drag her farther into the woods.
Lei expected to see some sign of the whispering specter as it snatched itself from view again, but there was nothing behind Sheriff Wales’s ear. Nothing hiding in the woman’s hair. That was good. Lei wasn’t in the mood to deal with her overactive imagination right now.
Wales left husband and wife to themselves. When she was gone, Harry twisted in his seat to meet Lei’s eyes.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a bright smile. No sign of the buckling stress he must be under. “I’m going to go ahead and run down to the nearest store that sells stationary stuffs and grab those markers and a dry erase board. Okay? Don’t go anywhere.”
She tried to smile with her eyes to let him know she found his comment cute, but, again, wasn’t sure if she pulled off the proper emotion.
“I can’t wait to hear your voice again,” Harry said. His eyes glistened. “Be back in a bit.”
*
Belinda, running on fumes, stood propped up in the door to the guest bedroom while she watched the four men work on Paul. They had pulled the comforter and a bedsheet around him then lifted and lowered the body to the floor. Now Frank was sewing everything closed with a fishing hook and nylon fishing line. The small redheaded man worked neatly and efficiently, was as studious and quiet as a seasoned seamstress. On the other hand, his companions, Tony and Carl, made a bloody mess of everything.
Tony scrubbed at the mattress with a mixture of bleach and a blue dish soap. The bedroom smelled like the sink area in the back of a Burger King where Belinda had spent her senior year of high school earning money for college. While her brother wasted his time on the bed, the taller Carl scrubbed at the blood on the walls and ceiling with the same bleach-and-soap concoction. But neither man was actually washing anything; just spreading red around to a wider surface area.
After an hour or so of things getting worse and not better, Tony ran a forearm across his sweat-soaked brow and said, “Fuck this. We’re gonna have to burn the mattress.”
“You going to be able to burn the room, too?” Carl asked.
Tony didn’t seem to find the other man’s comment amusing. “No, asshole. We’ll have to paint over that shit. I’ll have to go out and buy some paint, but that ain’t no big deal.”
“What about him?” Frank asked, gesturing to the burrito he’d made out of Paul and the bloody bedclothes.
“We’ll burn him with the mattress and bury his bones with the springs.”
“Did anyone know he was coming here?” Belinda asked.
Four necks snapped in her direction.
“How the fuck are we supposed to know that?” Tony hollered.
“Goddamn it.” Carl thumped a fist against his massive calf. “Goddamn it all to hell.”
Tony yelled, “Fat Tom! Get in here, big man!”
The recliner up front creaked and strained as Fat Tom struggled to get out of it. Seconds later, heavy footfalls thudded down the hall. Fat Tom’s panting announced his arrival.
“Yeah,” the big man huffed.
“Enjoying yourself up there? Having a nap, maybe?” Tony chided.
“What—the hell—do you want?” Fat Tom gasped between words. Belinda was a bit concerned the man might die of a heart attack before Tony got out what he wanted from the man.
“Who’s Paul keep around him nowadays. ‘Side from us, I mean.”
“His mother is up to Hancock Rehab center. She’s madder than a haberdasher, though.” Belinda had no idea what a haberdasher was, but figured they were a crazy group of individuals who dashed habers against things. Whatever the fuck a haber was. “Senile or just gone nuts with age—I don’t know which. His sister’s been dead for about six months. Pussy cancer. Sorry, Belinda.”
Belinda just stared back at the man, waiting for him to get to the answer to Tony’s question.
“Other than that… Shit, Tony, I don’t know. I guess all the guys he works with at the prison.”
“Prison?” Belinda asked.
“Yeah,” Fat Tom said. He scratched under the apron of flesh and fat he called a belly and Belinda grimaced. What it must smell like down there…
Fat Tom continued, “He’s worked for Hammer Correctional for, oh, maybe going on ten years. I don’t have a clue if he was close with any of the other C.O.s, though. I could ask around.”
“No,” Tony said. “No asking around.”
“What a C.O.?” Belinda asked.
“A correctional officer,” Carl said.
“Oh.”
Fat Tom said, “Okay, then. Well, other than his coworkers, I don’t think he talks to anyone else. All the rapist-shit did after work was drink and read.”
Belinda said, “I didn’t take him for a reader.”
“Weren’t nothing fancy, ma’am,” Fat Tom said. “Some men’s adventure. Clive Cussler and Max Brand, mostly. Don’t think the asshole was some literary-minded soul.”
“Trust me, I didn’t think that.”