Devil's Oven (22 page)

He turned the truck around in the middle of the road and went back.

•  •  •

Outside the kitchen windows, the somber patio lights revealed that things had changed some since he had been a guest at a big summer party the Tuckers threw over a year earlier. The sheltered arbor in which he had cornered Lila—trying quietly to convince her to come up to see his place in the woods, where they could talk—had been moved, replaced by an outdoor kitchen with a massive stainless steel grill, a sink, and a small refrigerator. Lila wasn’t much of a cook, but she didn’t need to be, did she? The lights also illuminated the hot tub where Lila was supposedly last seen.

Detective Johnson stood beside him, acting like he owned the place.

“So, you believe Bud?” Tripp said.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t believe him?” Johnson said. “Or a reason why I should?”

“Why would he kill the housekeeper?” Tripp said, turning to the detective.

Johnson had shown him the hallway with its blood-sprayed walls. Bud wasn’t capable of that kind of violence. Tripp suspected even the sight of that scene would wreck Bud. Anyone who had ever met him would know better.

Tripp felt bad about the Pettit woman. He had only seen her once, but Lila had spoken of her frequently. Mostly complaints, but then Lila was particular about her house, and she had paid the Pettit woman well.

“I’m interested in why you would track me down here,” Johnson said.

“Your message said you wanted to see me, and I was in the neighborhood,” Tripp said. It was enough of the truth. “No sign at all of Lila—Mrs. Tucker?”

Lila was all around him: her white jacket hanging over the back of the chair in the breakfast nook, the box of peppermint herbal tea sitting on the counter. A box just like it sat beside the stove in his own kitchen. There was a framed pen-and-ink drawing of some flowering herb above the kitchen desk. He had recognized Lila’s fine hand and the decorative “L” down in the right-hand corner. She’d had her drawings in art shows in high school, but she had never taken lessons or pursued it further. He had meant to ask her why.

He wanted to go upstairs to her bedroom and touch her clothes, hold them against his face. They might hold some clue, tell him where to find her. When they were freshmen, she had once left a sweater on the school bus, not long before she started dating only boys who could drive her to and from school. He had quickly stuffed the sweater in his backpack and later hidden it in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Months later, it still smelled like her lemony perfume. But then it disappeared, and he knew his mother had found the sweater and taken it away. They never spoke of it.

“How long have you known Mrs. Tucker?” Johnson said. He wasn’t writing anything down, but Tripp suspected he didn’t need to. He didn’t seem like the kind of man to forget things.

 “Seems to me you guys are wasting a bunch of time not looking for her,” Tripp said. “If the son of a bitch who killed Claude Dixon has got her like Bud Tucker says he does, then she’s probably dead already. Just like the housekeeper.”

Johnson picked up a paper coffee cup that Tripp recognized as being from Lori Ann’s
and took a drink from it. He made a face.

“Coffee’s not so good cold,” he said. He put the cup down beside a clear plastic carryout box that contained the remains of a sandwich. It bugged Tripp that the guy was insensitive enough to eat with Danelle Pettit’s blood on the other side of the wall.

“Why are you hanging around here? Looks like the crime scene folks got done a long time ago,” Tripp said.

“Good question,” Johnson said. “I’ve got an hour’s drive home, and I’ve got Mr. Tucker at County. My partner’s taking care of him.”

“Yeah, well, if that’s all,” Tripp said. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you think you’re doing here.”

When Johnson cleared his throat, Tripp knew he was screwed. Johnson wasn’t going to let him leave without trying to get information from him.

“How long have you been sleeping with Lila Tucker? You understand why we need to know. Might help us find her.”

“Understand? Hell,” Tripp said. “What I understand is that you’re not out beating brush looking for her. You think that guy’s not on the move in the dark?”

“You admit you’re sleeping with her?”

Tripp’s mind worked fast. There weren’t any real secrets in Monroe County because at least one person knew everything about everybody: Sheryl Dixon.

“I don’t have to answer your bullshit questions,” Tripp said.

“How does Mr. Tucker feel about your friendship with his wife?”

Tripp felt the blood rush to his face. It took every bit of restraint he had not to knock the smug look off the detective’s face with his fist. He pointed a trembling finger at Johnson.

“You better make sure you send an official invitation to my lawyer the next time you want to talk to me. You need to demonstrate a very good reason why I would touch a hair on either Danelle Pettit’s or Lila Tucker’s head.”

Lila/Jolene lying on the path like white, bloodless death. The man, Jolene’s father, his still eyes open and glistening, so tempting, like they were waiting, begging him to pluck at them.

He couldn’t trust himself to continue. He turned to leave by the patio door. No way did he want to pass through the front hall again.

“Hey, before you go, Mr. Morgan, I should ask you where you were earlier today. You weren’t at your cabin and nobody seemed to know where you were. Not even your co-workers.”

Tripp hesitated, his hand on the door handle.

“You don’t need a lawyer to answer that, do you?” the detective said. “Unless, of course, you do.”

Tripp turned around. The detective’s presence in Lila’s kitchen was a kind of blasphemy. He didn’t belong there, and Tripp wanted to drag him outside and beat the shit out of him for being where Lila should have been at that moment—safe and warm in her own house. Better yet, safe and warm with
him
. Far, far away from here.

“I went for a walk with a friend,” Tripp said. “My supervisor told me to take some time off. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”

The detective shrugged. “Works for me,” he said. “Thanks for your help. You have a nice evening, Officer Morgan.”

Tripp slammed the door behind him, leaving the detective alone in Lila’s dark and empty house.

CHAPTER FORTY

Jolene blew out her hair with Charity’s dryer so that it hung straight and glossy down her back. She had memories of her earliest life, before electricity, before deodorant, days when being able to find food in the forest or build a crude shelter meant the difference between living and dying. In those days, work made her tired in a way it didn’t now. Milking a cow or carrying buckets of water or washing clothes in a stream were all a lot more difficult than dancing on a stage for money. It didn’t bother her that she was nearly naked when she did it. Such an idea would’ve been inconceivable in that other life. Now, she understood her body was a transitory thing, useful in the temporal world, but otherwise inconsequential. That men got pleasure from watching her didn’t matter to her at all.

The women at the club were mostly nice to her, and she had some kind of talent for dancing, which was a blessing. Bud wanted her to work in his trucking office, but she didn’t see the use of encouraging him. She wasn’t even sure where she might be in the next hour, let alone the next day.

When she finished drying her hair, she turned off the light. The mountainside was a shapeless blot outside the window of the bathroom. Lila was somewhere out there, and the evil that had roused itself from its mountain slumber was embracing Lila even in that moment. Jolene leaned against the bathroom wall and closed her eyes.

Had the mountain—the same mountain that was bringing Lila such pain—really saved her the morning her father and brother were murdered? Maybe it had only been another kind of death. Something had heard her prayer, her wish to be hidden. The God of her father’s Bible had never given any kind of sign that He was listening; each of her lives was more full of pain than the last.

Sounds came to her through the open window. Neighbors laughing, a car starting, a cat crying for food. She heard the whispered play of water running in the storm drain at the back of the trailer park, too, as her soul drifted out the window and into the night. Curling around an upper branch of a nearby tree, she gave her attention to the shadowy hills.

Should she call out to Lila with the strength she had left?

If she did, others might hear. The creature. Maybe Ivy. No. Once abandoned by her mother, Ivy had taught herself to ignore the part of her that was attuned to such things.

I didn’t leave you because I wanted to, Ivy.

Lila had to be somewhere near Ivy. It was the only thing that made sense. The creature—what was he like? She couldn’t fix a picture of him. Sheryl Dixon had described a cartoon kind of monster. More like one of the costumed wrestlers Byron had liked to watch on television than a man. But the creature was no cartoon. He was walking death.

Unfurling from the tree, she rose into the night. Below, the trailers disappeared, revealing the colorful auras of their inhabitants like Christmas lights shining through the fog. Up, and up, over Alta, into the dark, cold sky. Devil’s Oven ahead of her, a black wall, with just a few spots of faint light, the homes of the people it hadn’t yet driven away. People like Tripp, who were of the mountain, or those who had found it kindred.

She could feel their presence, their tenacity. She was one of them, but up here her connection to the mountain was weak. What if she just kept going, toward the larger lights in the sky? Maybe there was a place there where she could forget the pain of being earthbound. She could be Mary, the child, again. She could feel pure again. She could rest.

 Lila Tucker would die. Tripp would be destroyed by what was already inside him.Ivy would be betrayed. Again. But I would be free.

“Jolene! You here?”

Eli’s voice was clear. Distant. Regretfully, she let go of the night and, with the suddenness of a rogue, chill wind, shifted back into herself. She took two long, deep breaths, filling her lungs.

“Here I am, Eli,” she said. She wrapped the towel loosely around her chest, turned on the light, and opened the door.

Eli, with his mellow, yellow-green aura, was trustworthy and kind. He was almost always calm, at least when Charity wasn’t yelling at him. He was good to Charity, and good
for
her. He stayed away from the club, but was proud of how professional Charity was about her job. Jolene could see he would always be faithful. If she saw Charity again, she would tell her to hang on to him.

Seeing her in the towel, Eli turned away quickly.

“Shit. I wish you wouldn’t do that, Jolene,” he said, blushing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me grab my clothes.” She hurried to the living room, where she grabbed her jeans and sweatshirt from the chair and went back into the bathroom. She never reminded him that he had seen her walk naked down off the mountain.

“Guess you heard about Bud,” Eli said through the door. “I only found out when I dropped Charity off.”

She pulled on the sweatshirt.

“What?” she said. “Did you say something about Bud?” When Eli didn’t answer right away, she put on the jeans as fast as she could and came out of the bathroom still fastening them. She found him in the living room.

“Do you know where they’ve got him?” she said.

“At the jail in the new courthouse,” Eli said. He popped the top of a Mountain Dew that he must have brought with him; Charity wouldn’t keep the stuff in the trailer. “Poor guy. I don’t believe anything they’re saying about him. No way Bud could kill anybody, you know?”

It was wrong. All wrong.

Jolene sank down on the threadbare arm of the couch. She had been so worried about Ivy, and about finding Lila, that she hadn’t thought fully about what was happening to Bud. He didn’t belong in jail. He needed to be out looking for Lila.

 “They took him in to ask him questions, but I don’t know if he’s arrested or not.” He looked at his watch. “Hey, you ready to go? Charity said you needed to get there just as soon as you got cleaned up. She’s all stressed out because she thinks the club’s gonna shut down.”

 As weak as she felt, Jolene knew she had to do something. It occurred to her that Eli might understand, that he could help her, but she didn’t want to bring Charity and him any more trouble than she already had.

“I just need ten minutes,” she said. She stood and touched his shoulder. “I couldn’t ask for better friends than you and Charity. I’ll be right back.”

•  •  •

Eli pulled the truck up to the club’s stage door, which opened onto a hall of dressing rooms.

Jolene gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, getting out.

“Not me,” he said. “Hey, remind Charity to call me when she gets off.” He put the truck in gear as soon as she had closed the door behind her.

At the stage door, she put her finger on the button that would buzz inside the dressing rooms, and pretended to press it. She turned back to wave, but Eli was already gone.

Digging Charity’s extra set of car keys from her pocket, she hurried to the side lot where Charity always parked.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“He said his lawyer’s coming from out of town. That’s all I know.” Jim Fowler, the sergeant on the third-shift duty desk leaned closer to Dwight. “Dumb mistake, if you ask me,” he said. “One of the lawyers next door would’ve had him out of here by now, or at least first thing in the morning.”

The brand new Monroe County Jail and Courthouse complex wasn’t really a complex at all, but a single, fifty-foot-high monolith covered in iron gray concrete. A pair of bronze-washed eagles as tall as two men stood guard on either side of its entrance. 
Lord save us from ourselves
was Dwight’s thought when he saw it for the first time. The faded storefronts and lawyers’ offices crowding around it looked like movie set miniatures in comparison. The place didn’t even look like it was built for humans. Maybe some kind of uptight, giant aliens, but not flesh-and-blood people. The thought of Bud being swallowed by this place—by the system—really burned him up.