Bad Things (25 page)

all, hadn’t this all started
before
John called? She thought it had, that things had stopped being where she expected them to be in the supermarket, that she had woken feeling as if she had been half smoth-

ered in the night . . .
before
he called. When he was already up there, but she hadn’t even known about it.

Because of course, there had been the
other
phone call, from a

woman Carol had known since she was small. She could blame John

all she liked, but that game was getting old. She could hate him for

what happened then, but not for what was happening now.

Either way, it had to stop.

It had to stop for good and all. No running, no hiding, and cer-

tainly no doing what other people wanted her to do. In the meantime,

the lock could go fuck itself. If she stayed up all night, then it didn’t

have to be locked, did it.

Ha
.

Ten minutes later, armed with a warm robe and a large pot of strong

coffee, she sat at the kitchen table with a big book of very diffi cult Sudoku puzzles. All she had to do was wait until the sunlight, look sane when

Rona came to collect Tyler, and work out what to do next. Everything

is easier when it’s light. Rays of light are bars in the cage which protects

us from what’s outside. A little, anyway. Most of the time.

Anything else she had to do?

Oh yes—
not lose her mind
. That’s right.

She was halfway through the third puzzle when she heard the soft

sound of a window being broken at the back of the house.

C H A P T E R 2 4

The first thing I did next morning was go to the office. The owner

was in place, behind the counter.

“Looks like you’re a keeper,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Unless you’re headed out today? I just meant you’re staying

longer than you thought.”

I was watching her face, and looked for—but did not fi nd—

signs that this observation was loaded.

“It’s a nice town,” I said.

“It surely is.”

“You been here long?”

“All my life.”

I nodded, keen to get back to my real reason for being here.

“Your dog,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Where does he sleep? At night. Does he have a kennel?”

She laughed. “Hell no. I tried it, when he was a puppy. Used to

howl like, well, I already said I was told he was half wolf. That’s what

he sounded like then, for sure.”

172 Michael Marshall

“So now?”

She jerked her head, indicating the area behind the offi ce. “Takes

up three-quarters of my bed—on a good night. Why?”

“Thought I heard something around the back last night. Won-

dered if it could have been him.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Well, can’t think what that might have been.

Years back, a bear, maybe.
Maybe
. But no one’s seen one of those near town in a coon’s age. I mean, like, forever.”

“Probably just the wind, I guess.”

“Most likely. Got up fi erce as hell last night. Keep you awake?”

“Something did.”

The car wouldn’t start.

I walked over to Kelly Street right after talking to Marie, with a

simple goal—driving straight to the Robertson house—but when I

got in the car and turned the key, nothing happened.

I got back out and stared at it furiously, which is about the sharp-

est tool in my car-fi xing armory. My father had known how to do that

stuff but I’d failed to pick up any of those skills, and modern vehicles

are in any event less responsive to being optimistically tackled with a

monkey wrench. I did open the hood to see if there was any obvious

sign of tampering, but saw nothing I could understand (like, say, a

missing engine), and felt dumb for even looking.

In the end I stomped across to the Write Sisters, thinking I might

as well be warm while I waited for someone to come fi x the fucking

car. A server I hadn’t seen before was watching me as I walked in.

“Problem with your car?”

“Won’t start.”

“Funny. Melanie had the same thing. Personally I don’t drive,”

she added. “It’s bad for the planet.”

“Right. I keep forgetting. Though, given I live in Oregon, I guess

I’ve got a little more carbon to burn this week, realistically.”

B A D T H I N G S 173

“But that’s the thing,” she told me earnestly. “People shouldn’t do

all this moving around. We’re meant to live as part of our environ-

ment—love it, nurture it, return to it. That’s how we should live.”

“Oh yes?” I said tightly. “And what would happen then? How

would it change things?”

“I don’t know. I just think it’s a good idea.”

“Americano,” I said. “With milk.”

While she brought my drink into being—using, presumably, cof-

fee beans from the plantation out back and milk from the cow hun-

kered upstairs—I talked to the rental company and eventually got the

sense something might happen about my car at some point.

When the coffee arrived I looked up.

“Wait a second,” I said. “You said someone had the same problem

with their car? It wouldn’t start?”

“Melanie. From the salon? She actually lives only two minutes

away, so she leaves her car on the street here virtually the entire time.

She was here, fi rst thing, supposed to go off and drum up a cake for

her daughter’s birthday, she’s twelve in a couple days, unbelievably,

but the thing wouldn’t start. She’s waiting for Brian Jackson to arrive,

if you need someone to look at yours.”

“Brian being a mechanic?”

She nodded, looking disapproving.

“Can I have this to go?”

As she poured the coffee into a disposable cup I remembered

something. “The other girl who works here. Blue hair?”

“Jassie Cornell?”

“Is she okay?”

The girl looked at me quizzically.

“She didn’t look so good last time I saw her.”

“Well, funny thing,” the girl admitted. “I wasn’t even supposed to

be working this morning, but she didn’t show up yet.”

“Maybe her car punked out on her, too.”

“Yeah, right. Like she’d drive. She’s a hard-core vegan.”

174 Michael Marshall

I smiled as if she had said something I could understand, took the

cardboard cup, and went back outside onto the street.

Fifteen minutes later a guy arrived in a white truck and parked

close to the hair salon. He went in and came back out a minute later

holding some keys.

I sat on the bench and watched the guy—Brian, I assumed—

climb into a blue Ford and fi ddle around for a while, then get back

out and pop the hood. Meanwhile I worked through most of a granola

bar from the café, which this morning tasted stale and bitter. The

mechanic spent quite a while bent over the car’s innards without pro-

voking anything that sounded like a harbinger of successful internal

combustion.

In the end I went over.

“Any idea what the problem is?”

“Not a clue.” He looked around, still bent over the engine. “I

know you?”

“Got a car on the other side of the street, won’t start either.”

“One of those days. You got someone coming for it?”

“I do.”

“Huh.” He straightened, looking pained. “Hope he has better

luck. Maybe the immobilizer’s blitzed or something. Guess I’m going

to have to tow it back to the shop.”

He went back and climbed in the car to let the brake off. Stuck

the key back in the ignition, and gave it a turn for the sake of it. The

car started.

He switched it off, turned the key again. The engine fi red back

into life immediately.

He and I looked at each other. “Huh,” he said, again.

I waited until he’d delivered the news that Melanie’s vehicle seemed

to be working once more, declined payment, and drove away in his

truck. Then I walked over to my own car, unlocked the door, and got

in. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car started.

“Huh,” I said.

B A D T H I N G S 175

It began three or four hundred yards from the turnoff. At first I didn’t

notice except to think that whichever local business sponsored the

cleanup of this stretch of mountain highway wasn’t getting their

PR dollars’ worth. Once it grew from occasional scraps of paper to

include a few widely spread items of clothing, I realized something

in particular must have happened. Perhaps a suitcase coming loose

from a roof rack, spreading its cargo to the winds, unnoticed by the

driver.

And then I saw a fl ash of purple, and pulled over.

I left the engine running as I walked across the road to what I’d

seen caught in a strip of crimson dogwood on the other side. I knew

what it was before I’d even picked it up, recognizing it from a couple of

days before. The sweater was sodden, soaked by the overnight rains.

There was something odd about the way it smelled, over and above

the unattractive odor of wet wool. Something sweet. Further articles

of clothing were dotted down the slope toward the creek far below,

caught in the branches of trees.

As I drove the remainder of the distance I saw other objects, in-

cluding two small, battered suitcases, but I no longer believed they

or the rest of the debris had fallen from a car. No one would have

packed a small wooden table in a suitcase, and yet one was strewn

along the side of the road, smashed to matchwood, along with frag-

ments of several ornaments and the remains of a framed wedding

photograph.

I parked outside the gate and leaned on the entry buzzer, hard.

After a pause, the gates opened. I probably should have thought about

the fact that no one tried to stop me entering, but I was angry, and I

did not.

Brooke Robertson was standing outside the main house. She was

dressed again in a black pantsuit, the legs fl apping noisily in the wind.

176 Michael Marshall

“Good morning, Mr. Henderson,” she said. “What a pleasant

surprise.”

“It may not stay that way.”

“How thrilling.”

Pieces of clothing lay strewn around the lawn, including a blouse

I recognized from the fi rst time I’d met Ellen, in the Mountain View.

The door of her house was hanging open.

I turned back to the woman in front of me. “What the hell is

wrong with you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really.”

She smiled. “You look tired. Problems sleeping? I fi nd a bout of

moderately savage sex is the best solution. Doubtless you’re familiar

with that approach?”

“Not having someone call your motel room through the night

would help.”

“I’m sure I have—”

“—no idea what I mean. You bet. You’re kind of limited, aren’t

you, when it comes to understanding what other people say.”

“I don’t listen much of the time. One so seldom hears anything

of interest. Especially from men of your type. Action is your forte, I

should have thought.”

She said this in a way I did not care for, and I took a step toward

her, knowing and not caring that I was close to behaving in ways I

should not.

“How about you concentrate just this once, Brooke, and—”

I heard someone call my name, and saw Brooke was looking

calmly over my shoulder toward Ellen’s house. I turned to see Cory

Robertson walking across the lawn toward us. Beside him was Sheriff

Pierce, holding a pale blue shirt in one hand.

“Standing kind of close there,” the sheriff said to me, when they

reached us. “Wouldn’t like to think there was an altercation taking

place. Especially after the conversation you and I had last night.”

B A D T H I N G S 177

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“My job.”

“Did Ellen call you?”

He looked puzzled. “Well, no. Of course not.”

“Something strange occurred here last night,” Cory said. “The

sheriff is here to investigate.”

“Odd? Yeah. You let yourself into Ellen’s house and trashed her

belongings. Spread them half a mile down the road. Why? Do you

think she deserves that?”

“That’s not what happened,” Cory said.

I turned to Pierce. “Are you really going to let these people get

away with this?”

“I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,” he said. “Not all

the stuff you see belongs to Ellen.” He held up a man’s striped busi-

ness shirt.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Cory said, taking his shirt

from the policeman, “but my sister and I spent last night with friends

in Yakima. When we returned this morning, the doors to both houses

were open, and, well . . .”

He gestured around the lawn.

“Bullshit,” I said. The three of them looked at me like parents

and a teacher who had all just witnessed inappropriate behavior, and

weren’t sure whose responsibility it was to upbraid me for it.

“So who’s supposed to have done this?” I said. “Ellen? By mind

control, from the hospital?”

“Much closer than that,” Brooke said.

I could almost feel her smile on the back of my neck, but didn’t

give her the satisfaction of turning.

“Ellen’s not
in
the hospital anymore,” Pierce said, after a pause.

“She checked herself out yesterday evening. Nobody knows where

she is right now.”

“Unless, of course . . . you do,” Brooke murmured.