Tips for Living(75)

It took drinking vats of weak coffee at the nurse’s station to reach my functional caffeine level. Then I spent the next few hours holding Lada’s hand through another battery of tests. Her doctor came by and gave a cautiously optimistic report but ordered more tests for the afternoon. The gloomy day passed in a medical bubble. It was actually a relief to be focusing on Lada instead of the murders. I managed to leave messages at the auction houses, but I had to stand outside in the rain to do it. The sun broke through after Lada’s pal Mort visited. She finally smiled and seemed more like herself. My spirits brightened as well.

By midnight I was headed home, hurrying down the cedar path in the brisk night air toward the parking lot. Above me a cluster of feathery gray clouds surrounded a giant yellow moon. They made it look like the eye of a wolf. I pulled my collar up, wrapped my coat around me more tightly and jogged the rest of the way to the car.

After I crossed the Harbor Bridge, a dark road stretched ahead. Not a single car in sight. No headlights behind, either. Sgt. Crawley’s car wasn’t parked on the shoulder where he’d waited before, but that didn’t mean the police weren’t watching. This deserted stretch of Crooked Beach Road offered plenty of secret spots for a stakeout—thick, dark woods on either side. The police could be lurking in there for the night.

As I arrived at the Coop, the clouds moved over the moon. Cloaked in shadow, the long, low building and a small garden shed squatted between two walls of towering hemlock shrubs. The dark forest loomed at the edge of the field behind. I’d forgotten to turn on the outside light when I rushed off to the clinic and had to squint for my house key on the crowded chain. I finally remembered to use the light on my phone.

A strong odor of cigarettes and burned rope greeted me at the doorstep. I stiffened, whipped around and scanned the driveway and bushes with my phone light.

No sign of anyone. Silence. I slowly returned to face the door and sniffed again. I aimed the light beam at my feet and could see two cigarette butts mashed into the sisal mat. I concluded the police must’ve returned for more questions. But then I remembered I hadn’t seen Roche or Crawley smoking. I bent down, picked up one of the butts and held it closer to the phone. I recognized the eagle wing insignia on the paper instantly and went completely still.

American Spirits.

Something rustled the thick hemlocks at the side of the house. I flinched and accidentally dropped the phone. It bounced off the concrete step and landed in the gravel as a bright beam of light shot straight into my eyes.

“Hey, Nora. I’ve been waiting out here so long, I had to relieve myself back there.”

The light kept me blinking, and pretty much blind, but I recognized the voice. “Stokes?”

“You’re out late. Been on a date?” he asked. There was a taunt in his tone I didn’t like. Stress hormones coursed into my bloodstream.

Stay calm. Just keep talking.

“I was visiting my aunt,” I said, discreetly stretching my foot down the step to feel for the phone. “What are you doing here? And where’s your car? I didn’t see your car.”

The light swept away from my face toward the shed.

“I rode my bike.”

Spots danced in front of my eyes for a moment, but then I could distinguish the form of a bike leaning against the shed’s side.

“These miner lamps are great, but I don’t want to wear out the battery,” Stokes said. There was a click and everything went black again. “I took the bike so I wouldn’t wake Kelly, so she wouldn’t hear me leave. Man, I had to beg her to come home. She wanted to stay at Grace’s.”

Oh shit. Had he done something to her?

“I think you know why she left,” he said.

I heard him take a few steps toward me. Bile rose in my throat. My legs pulsed with tension like a runner at the starting line. The only thing I could see was Stokes’s dark, hulking form.

“She came back, but she told me I had to sleep on the couch. I couldn’t sleep. The fucking voice wouldn’t shut up. I kept hearing this goddamn fucking voice inside my head,” he said.

I took a step backward. There was nowhere to go—the front door was locked.

“It wouldn’t stop. It kept needling me. Wouldn’t let me sleep. ‘Why did you do it, Stokes? How could you do it? You are a degenerate son of a bitch.’”

Tendons pulsed on either side of my neck. If I could make a break across the field and run like the wind, I could lose him in the forest. But what if he was faster? My hand began working the keys. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. It took an eternity to maneuver them between my fingers into a spiked fist.

“You can come to hate the person you once loved. Isn’t that true, Nora? You’ve felt that hate inside, haven’t you?”

He took a few more steps. He came close enough that I smelled the smoke on his clothes. The alcohol on his breath. The sharp stink of his sweat. I swallowed hard. My tongue felt heavy as lead.

“Sure,” I said.

“You probably couldn’t stand the sight of Hugh. What a scumbag that guy was. You must’ve prayed for bad things to happen to him. You imagined making them happen yourself, didn’t you? You wanted to take your revenge. Isn’t that right?”

I clenched my barbed fist. Take one more step, Mister. Meet Gladiator Girl.

“Isn’t it?”