Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(58)

“You can hear if someone’s coming, right?” Hajo asked, still scanning the area.

Lon didn’t answer. He stepped inside the trailer, long legs disappearing into shadows.

“Is that a yes?” Hajo said to me, bemused.

Oh, good. It was sort of nice to see Hajo flailing, unsure of how to interpret Lon’s low-level communication style. I smiled to myself and skirted around him up the steps.

“Yep.”

The inside smelled musty, but cleaner than I expected. Dark. Sparsely decorated. The door led into a depressing living room. Two couches had been pushed against the walls and a large, round table that sat in center of the room. Chairs were knocked over. A few bills were scattered on the floor. I leaned down to look at them. Hundreds.

“Christ,” Lon said. “Someone got robbed. Explains the emotions I was hearing.”

“Not good,” Hajo murmured. He pointed to the far end of the room. “Body’s in there.”

We rounded the breakfast bar counter into kitchen and stepped into what could’ve been the aftermath of a tornado. Pots and pans were strewn everywhere. Cabinet doors had been ripped off their hinges. The old avocado colored refrigerator had been toppled to the floor. And sprawled beneath it, like the Wicked Witch of the East, was a crushed body.

My heart pounded against my rib cage as I approached. A man’s limbs jutted out at awkward angles. Salt-and-pepper hair crowned his head. Blood pooled around his body.

“This your contact?” Lon asked Hajo.

“That would be him.” He stooped to look at the man’s face. “Poor Tabor. What a way to go. This bionic shit is more holy grail than sømna, and that’s saying a lot.”

“Telly did this,” I said as the shock wore off. “Who else would kill this way? Anyone else who wanted to rob a drug dealer would use a bullet or a knife.”

“It’s just like the Road Runner and the bridge,” Lon agreed. He toed a small gun lying a few feet away from the body. “This was no use against Telly’s bionic knack.”

Hajo sighed. “Maybe we should look around and see if we can find anything else.”

The three of us scoured the trailer. Lon found a stash of amphetamines in the first bedroom. The door was ripped off the second bedroom. Inside, the floor was covered in broken glass. A small desk sat in the center of the room. On it were three glass bottles. Two of them contained clear liquid. The third was red. But next to it sat an open container of food dye.

“Asshole was lying,” Hajo said, sniffing one of the bottles. “Tabor wasn’t holding—he was going to try to sell us sugar water.”

I looked around the room. Red was splattered on the white wall, broken glass beneath it. “Telly must’ve realized the same thing. Smashed a bottle against the wall.”

“Maybe Tabor ran out and couldn’t get more,” Hajo said. “Thought he could pass this off.”

“Too big a coincidence that Telly showed up right before we did,” I said. “This isn’t Telly’s dealer. He acted hesitant when he was talking about him. Said he couldn’t go back to him, like he was scared of him. Why would he be scared of a gray-haired man in a trailer with one little gun?”

“You said everyone started giving you Tabor’s name all the sudden today,” Lon said to Hajo. “Maybe Telly heard the same noise you did. Maybe he came here thinking Tabor was easy pickings.”

“No idea,” Hajo said. “But frankly, I’m not interested in following this thing any further. Tabor’s dead, and I don’t want that punk kid dropping something on my head. Not to mention the car that was following me earlier. And even if I wanted to help, this was my only lead. I’ll keep my ears open and let you know if I happen to hear anything else. But maybe you need to look outside of Morella if you think this wasn’t the dealer.”

Outside of Morella. That put us back in La Sirena. And if Mr. Lucky, Peter Little, didn’t know who brought the drug to his party two weeks back, then the only other lead connected to the elixir in La Sirena was Merrimoth, and he was dead. That left us with nothing.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas,” Lon said, reading my thoughts as we went outside while Hajo stepped into the living room to make an anonymous 911 call on the trailer’s landline about Tabor’s dead body. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the years I spent with Yvonne, people tend to self-medicate during the holidays. I’ll make a few phone calls around La Sirena. See if anyone knows any other bionic knack stories.”

I gave him a halfhearted smile. “Merry freaking Christmas.”

• • •

By Christmas morning, I’d managed to block out the image of the drug dealer crushed under the refrigerator and took a break from obsessing over Telly. The Butler household was buzzing and busy. Everyone was in good spirits—even me. Maybe it was because, being the daughter of crazy occultists, I’d never experienced a big Christmas celebration. But Jupe was so damn excited that it was hard not to go with the flow.

Mr. and Mrs. Holiday came over and we did the whole gift exchange thing. I got Jupe a couple of DVDs, graphic novels, and a 1977 Godzilla toy. It was rare and vintage and he totally loved it. I knew he would. He’d tried to buy a similar one last month but lost the bid, so I’d contacted the seller and paid twice as much for him to find another one. Most expensive toy I’ve ever bought, but it was worth every penny to see his eyes go big when he opened it.