Lucky Day (6 page)

G. William was feeling blurry at this point, and Billy’s words hit him harder than he would have imagined possible. “Thanks, Billy,” he said quietly. “I just wish I could have…”

Dead Girl One and Dead Girl Two swam before his eyes for a moment. Somewhere in the current, Maribeth delivered another beer, and G. William lunged for it.

“Wish I could have…”

Leaning in some more, Billy said—in a conspiratorial tone—“My daddy used to say something to me, back when he was still with us. Used to say: ‘Ain’t no shame in losing to a better man.’”

“You think Mr. Sweep-in-the-New is a better man?”

Billy paused just long enough that G. William began to wonder what was going on. Then Billy cackled, “Hell, no!” and they clinked glasses again.

“Glad someone’s still got faith in me,” G. William said.

“This sick SOB can’t avoid you forever,” Billy said with verve. “You got more than my faith, Sheriff. You’ve got my
vote
.”

G. William awoke the next day on his sofa, which was better than the bathtub, but most disturbing of all was that he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home. His car was missing from the driveway, so at least he hadn’t risked killing someone on his way home. His head throbbed with hangover excellence, and his eyes wanted to scrub themselves clean.

A note on the end table told the tale, written in a scrawl that was not G. William’s own.

“Sleep well, Sheriff,” Billy Dent had written. “PS: Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Good for me,” G. William muttered, and headed for the shower.

As if the hangover weren’t enough, the day also dawned with Weathers’s blog finally getting some traction. As G. William shaved and dressed for the day with CNN on, he heard the unmistakable voice of Doug Weathers. Peering out from the bathroom, he beheld Weathers blathering over a chyron that blared
TERROR IN A TINY TOWN!

Lovely.

No one in the office—no one in town—would have gainsaid G. William if, less than a week before the election, he’d taken the day off. But he was damned if he would slink off into the night. No, if he was going away, he would do so on his own terms. And he would leave the incoming sheriff with every possible scrap of information about the murders in Lobo’s Nod.

He drove his county-issued sedan to the office, making a mental note to pick up his car from Roscoe’s later, then spent a good part of the morning typing up his notes, translating his chicken scratch into the computer so that someone else could use them. Then he wrote up a carefully detailed and annotated description of how he’d come to the realization that both Dead Girl One and Dead Girl Two had been killed by the same man. He would not announce this information before the election. Not out of a sense of self-preservation—his loss was foreordained, barring a miracle—but rather so that the new sheriff could make the discovery public and begin his term at a running start. It was the least G. William could do for the community, he felt.

By noon, he was feeling less hungover, slightly more alert. On a whim, he decided to log into the FBI’s ViCAP computer system. It was out of a sense of completeness, more than anything else. When Sweep-in-the-New swept into office and asked, smugly, “And did you run it by the feds?” G. William wanted to be able to say, “Yes. Yes, I did.”

He spent the better part of the afternoon meticulously filling out the questionnaire in between the usual interruptions from his deputies and support staff.

Never expecting the three words that eventually popped up on his screen and changed his life.

Hand-in-Glove.

G. William blanched when he saw the words.

The Hand-in-Glove Killer. Famous from a few years back. Killed his way through part of the Midwest before disappearing. He’d murdered some way back, then went away for a little while, then came back to do more.

Usually, when serial killers vanish, it’s because they’ve been arrested for something else—the caesura in their depredations is enforced by the coincidence of their incarceration. The world assumed Hand-in-Glove had been locked up somewhere and rotted in a prison cell in Kansas.

But he’s here. He’s here in the Nod.

The details of the cases had slipped from G. William’s memory over the years, though the killer’s odd name had not. But reading through the ViCAP report, he found himself recalling them easily.

Hand-in-Glove liked blonds, with six of his seven victims being blonds not much older than the dead girls of Lobo’s Nod. One had been younger—only fifteen years old.

And he had switched the undergarments.

The bra from Victim Two found on Victim Six. The panties from Victim Seven on Victim One. He’d killed them, hidden some of the bodies, no doubt revisiting them to reexperience his crimes. They’d been recovered out of order—years, in some cases—and it had taken the FBI months to reconstruct the chronology of the murders. There was a note in the ViCAP file that an FBI agent named J. Morales was to be contacted with any new information.

G. William’s hand trembled on the computer mouse. Did he have new information? Was Hand-in-Glove really stalking the Nod?

He didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to believe it was a copycat. But the swapping of undergarments had apparently not been released to the public. A copycat wouldn’t know to do that.

What are the odds of two perverts killing the same kind of girl and swapping their skivvies? For real.

It boggled the mind. The idea that a serial killer—and one who’d gotten some national exposure, too—could be living in the Nod. Somewhere, the spirit of old Étienne LeBeau was no doubt looking up from hell and cackling with approval.

So, what now,
Gareth?

The answer was as obvious as it was impossible: He should contact this Special Agent Morales. He should notify the state police and start up a task force.

And how do you suppose that’s gonna look? Right before the election? You suddenly tell everyone you have a lead and the cases are linked and the killer happens to be the bogeyman of the Midwest. It’s gonna look like you’re trying to grab the election at the last minute. Like you’re desperate to hold on to this chair, this desk.

By the same token, though, he couldn’t do
nothing
. That was a complete abrogation of his duty, of his sworn oath.

What did he have to go on, anyway? Panties. Panties and blond hair and three words.

Hand-in-Glove.

He would call Special Agent Morales. That was what he would do. He would call Morales, and the man would either laugh his ass off at the hick from the sticks or maybe it would be something more. Then let the FBI announce it. Let them handle the press.

His hand was halfway to the phone when a knock at the door distracted him. Hanson poked his head in.

“Sheriff? You wanted me to give you a lift when I was off duty?”

Right. He’d asked Hanson to drive him to Roscoe’s to retrieve his car.

Special Agent Morales could wait a half hour, he decided. “Let’s go.”

His car was in the parking lot at Roscoe’s, right where he’d left it the night before. He thanked Hanson for the ride, then went to unlock the driver’s side. As he did so, Maribeth slipped outside for a smoke break.

“Evenin’, Sheriff.” She blew a cool ring into the darkling air.

With a scowl, G. William leaned against his car’s roof. “You better get a grip on your customers, Maribeth.”

Shocked, she almost forgot to exhale. “What do you mean?”

“You had no business lettin’ Billy Dent get behind a wheel last night. You can bet I’m gonna talk to Roscoe about—”

“What are you talking about?” Maribeth’s lower lip trembled, but G. William had seen better criers in his line of work.

“A customer gets lit up like he did, like I did, you don’t let ’em behind the wheel. Just common sense, Maribeth. For God’s sake.”

She flicked ash from the cigarette, her hand shaking just a bit. “But…but Billy wasn’t drunk! He was stone-cold sober! I swear.”

“Don’t give me that. I outweigh him by a hundred pounds, and the man matched me drink for drink.”

“Right.” Her head bobbed in eager agreement. “His usual. All Billy has is tonic with a spritz of cola and some grenadine. That’s all he
ever
has.”

G. William stared into the middle distance for so long that he didn’t even realize Maribeth was openly weeping now. “I need this job, Sheriff. Please, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. He was sober and he said—”

Abashed, G. William harrumphed and came around the car to take her hands in his own. He cooed apologies and reassurances to her until she’d settled down, then shifted his frame behind the wheel of his car.

Billy had been sober last night.

Why did that surprise him so much? Why did it matter?

He kept ordering rounds for us. It was like—

No.

It was like he was trying to get me drunk.

Men get women drunk to get into their pants. Why would a man get another man drunk?

“Ain’t no shame in losing to a better man.”

It floated up from the previous evening’s (half-)drunken confab.

“Ain’t no shame in losing to a better man.”

Why did he even say that? Billy had said he didn’t think Mr. Sweep-in-the-New was a better man. He’d called him a dilettante. Why had he said…

Unless he wasn’t talking about my opponent.

“Ain’t no shame in losing to a better man.”

Why had he said it? And why was it bothering G. William so much? He sat in the car, the door still ajar, his hands gripping the steering wheel as he focused mightily.

Why?

G. William swallowed hard. No. It was impossible. Not Billy Dent. Not the goddamned father of the year, aw-poor-single-dad, oh-my-look-at-him-ladies
Billy Dent
!

He gunned the engine and drove back to the sheriff’s office. By the time he arrived, he’d convinced himself how wrong he was. Dead-dog wrong, his father used to say. As in, “You think that dead dog can hunt? You ain’t just wrong, boy—you’re dead-dog wrong.”

Billy Dent could not be the Hand-in-Glove Killer.

He sat in his office, the door closed, the only light coming from the ancient desk lamp. Other than Loralynn out at the reception desk, he was alone. Everyone else was on patrol or on a call.

So he said it out loud: “Billy Dent cannot be the Hand-in-Glove Killer.”

He felt ashamed when he heard the words, the suspicion. He thought of how he’d had Hanson dig into Henry Reed, how they both now knew the man was an alcoholic. It wasn’t his job to know that about an innocent man, but he did.

And he thought of his own secret investigation of Doug Weathers. Pulling strings and skulking around. Plotting every damn grocery trip the man made with that GPS bug on his car.

You’ve crossed the line too many times already. And you can’t even say you did it with pure intentions because admit it, old man—you would have cackled yourself into a coronary if Doug Weathers had killed those girls.

And now he was suspecting Billy Dent! Billy! The patron saint of Lobo’s Nod! It would make more sense to go with the old theory that Étienne LeBeau had come back from the dead.

He glared at the corkboard, with its accusatory photos. The girls screamed,
You failed us. You can’t get the job done.

And he remembered…

He remembered Billy Dent looking at that same corkboard. Calling it a goddamn shame.

Meaningless. Yeah, some serial killers like to scope out the investigation, but he was just dropping off a cruller. Would have been weird if he
hadn’t
looked at the board. It’s right there, out in the open.

But wait. Billy
hadn’t
come by just to drop off a cruller. He’d done that, sure, but he had actually been in the building to…

To…

The PBA donations. Hell.

He told himself it was just to satisfy his curiosity. He told himself it was just one phone call. He told himself no one had to know and that he’d crossed the line already, so why not dance a jig on the other side?

He called Hanson in his patrol car. “You remember when Billy came by to drop off the PBA donations?”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

“Doesn’t he usually just deposit it right in the bank account for you? We signed something a while back to let him make deposits, didn’t we?”

Hanson hesitated before answering, as if weighing the pros and cons of his response. “Well, sure. I don’t get…he decided to drop by. What’s the big deal?”

What’s the big deal? Ain’t no big deal, Hanson. Except that he decided to drop by to give you the donations, when you would just have to go deposit them, anyway.

And he did this the day after we found Samantha Reed’s body.

And he didn’t offer me the cruller when we were all jawing in the outer office. He waited until I came back in here.

“No big deal at all,” G. William said, staring at the corkboard. “Just wondering.”

“You sure?”

“Yep,” G. William said as brightly as he could manage. He hung up and knew that he still had nothing even remotely approaching evidence, and he picked up the phone again.

A few hours later, he pulled into Billy Dent’s driveway. It was fully dark now, but Billy had a series of lights along the driveway that allowed passersby to enjoy his perfectly manicured lawn even at night.

G. William sat in the car as the engine cooled. A curtain had moved. Someone was in there and knew he was here.

He didn’t want to knock on the door. Didn’t want to go inside.

Now, Billy, I’m sure there’s an explanation for all of this.…

No. Don’t start like that.

He’d made some more calls. The coordinator of the Nod’s Little League. The folks who ran the FoodMobile. Other places.

Billy had been unavailable each and every date matching the FBI’s dates for a Hand-in-Glove murder.

No one could say Billy was actually out of town. He was just “unavailable.” Maybe he was sitting at home, watching ESPN and drinking his nonalcoholic witches’ brew. That’s what G. William hoped. But whatever he’d been doing, he hadn’t been coaching a game or feeding the hungry. Not on those specific dates.

Maybe he just didn’t feel good those days. Or he was on a date. Or he was taking care of his kid.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe he was in Wichita, evading the FBI and raping a fifteen-year-old girl before murdering her.

He wished he didn’t know these facts. He didn’t
want
to know them. Because if a town saint like Billy Dent could end up being a bad guy, what the hell kind of hope was there for anyone else?

It couldn’t happen like this. It
didn’t
happen like this. You don’t catch someone like Hand-in-Glove on sheer dumb luck.

Then again…criminals in general thought they were smarter than cops. And serial killers in particular were impressed with their own genius. And fascinated by their own legends. They were known to attach themselves to the investigations into their crimes.

It had been no coincidence that Billy had been at Roscoe’s. He wondered how long Billy had been observing the investigation from afar, laughing his head off at G. William’s bumbling, until finally he had to sit across from him and spit in his face.

It’s a good thing criminals are stupid, because cops ain’t very smart
, an old boss of G. William’s had said once. But Hand-in-Glove
was
smart. You don’t go back to the scene of the crime ten years later and not get caught if you’re dumb.

Or maybe he was just lucky, too. And the craps table has tilted, and the dice rolled in my direction for a change.

The curtain in the front window had gone still and not moved since. He half expected Billy to come outside and ask what the hell the sheriff was doing loitering in his driveway.

You gotta get out of this car and go into the house and talk to him. Man to man.

His hand hovered near the radio. The sensible thing to do would be to notify Loralynn that he was at Billy’s house. Just in case. But then she’d want to know why and when he wouldn’t say, she would just blabber to people how wasn’t it mysterious that G. William was calling on Billy Dent for no reason and felt the need to radio it in? And the next thing you know…

He caught sight of his own eyes in the rearview mirror. They were bloodshot and haunted and wide, sunk deep into wrinkled, sallow flesh.

You’re not thinking straight these days. Your head’s all messed up. Do you really think Hand-in-Glove drives the damn FoodMobile? Are you really gonna end your career accusing the Nod’s most solid citizen of rape and murder? Just get off your enormous ass, get in there, and go straighten it out. And then you and Billy can have a laugh at it.

He heaved himself out of the car and lumbered to the front door. He pushed the doorbell. The mat before the door said
WELCOME!
—with an exclamation point and everything. G. William felt freshly ridiculous. This was
Billy Dent
, for God’s sake! Hanson worked with Billy on the Christmas parade every year. Could a deputy work side by side with a serial killer—coordinate the PBA pledge drives, even—and not realize…?

He turned to go, but the door opened. Within stood not Billy Dent, but rather what could have been a smaller-scale model of him—same general build, same chiseled face, same sandy-brown hair that threatened to go blond at any moment.

But the eyes. Hazel, not blue.

“Hello there,” G. William said. “It’s Jasper, right?”

The kid nodded with the solemnity only the young can muster. The kid was thirteen careening to fourteen, and had the curse of all teens: He thought he was an adult, but he was just a child.

“Is your dad in?” G. William asked. He was here. He would ask Billy about the absences from Little League and such. And that would be that.

Jasper shrugged with the insouciance of youth and shouted over his shoulder, “Hey, Dad! Sheriff’s here!” Then he stepped aside and let G. William in.

G. William had been to Billy’s for the barbecues, of course, but never for anything else. Somehow, he was not surprised to find it neat and clean, as though dusted and vacuumed right before he’d rung the bell. He’d always been impressed by the cleanliness of Billy’s house. Apparently it wasn’t just for company.

It was cramped, though—Billy kept a tidy house, but he clearly couldn’t bear to throw away anything.

And the man himself wandered in from an archway that led to the kitchen, a cell phone to his ear. “Uh-huh. Well, thank you very much. I surely do appreciate that.” He broke the call and slipped the phone into his jeans pocket. “Evenin’, Sheriff.”

“Billy.”

“Jasper, didn’t I give you some chores to do?”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “The doorbell—”

“Get along and do as I said. Now.”

The boy wandered away, leaving Billy and G. William together in the living room, separated by a sofa and fifteen feet of decent shag carpet.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

And that’s when G. William knew. More important, he knew that Billy
knew
he knew.

Those eyes. Those broken-ice-floe eyes.

How many times had he stood in a room with Billy Dent? This close or closer? How many conversations at the supermarket, in the school parking lot, at the town hall?

How many times had he gazed into those eyes and not realized
there was nothing in them
?

“So,” G. William said.
I’m standing in Hand-in-Glove’s living room. This is insane.

First order of business: Get Billy out of here. Down to the sheriff’s office. Safe ground. Coax him, make him slip up, admit something. Can’t just arrest the man because of his eyes.

“You been callin’ around about me, Tanner.” Billy’s voice was as light and as jovial as ever. Aw-shucks, good-ol’-boy converted to sound. It disoriented G. William. This couldn’t be Hand-in-Glove. What the hell had he been thinking?

You’ve been thinking anything and everything.
Joyce’s voice, for the first time in a while.
Trying
not
to think of me, in that hospice bed.

“Callin’ around,” Billy went on, “and people started callin’
me
, saying things like, ‘Why’s the sheriff asking about you, Billy?’” He shook his head. “I don’t like that, Gareth. Hurts my feelings, it does.”

“I’m sorry,” G. William said automatically. He wondered if he should put a hand on his sidearm, but he was mesmerized by Billy, by his stance, his eyes, by the mellow, redneck music of his speech.

“Ain’t a thing.” Billy shrugged and came a step closer. “You’re a good man. Just doin’ your job. But I ain’t your job, Sheriff. Your job—for the next few days, I guess—is to catch bad people. I ain’t one of them. You know that.”

G. William swallowed. “Just a couple of things to clear up, Billy. That’s all. It’s foolishness, I guess, but I gotta be thorough.”

“You’ve been very thorough.” And Billy was within arm’s reach. When the hell had
that
happened? G. William was keenly aware of the tensed, taut muscles exposed by Billy’s rolled-up shirtsleeves. His forearms were corded with veins. “You’ve done your job well. I’m proud of you.”

That hit, for some reason. G. William fumbled for words. “Look, Billy, you gotta talk to me. Let me handle this. I know you. You don’t want that jackass from Calverton coming in here with a SWAT team in a week, do you? Make some mistake, maybe hurt you or your boy?”

At the mention of harm to Jasper, something flickered in Billy’s eyes and the set of his lips changed ever so subtly. G. William realized he was getting through. It was working.

Hand-in-Glove or not, he’s still a father.

“So, look, Billy, whyn’t you get your mother to come look after the boy, and you and me, we’ll go down to my office and clear this all up?”

“Clear what up?”

G. William fidgeted. He’d hoped that he wouldn’t have to accuse Billy in his own home. That he could get Billy to come down to the office, get nice and settled in where he had home-field advantage. A man’s home wasn’t his castle—not really—but it was his turf. Billy would be well within his rights to throw G. William out at any moment.

“We shouldn’t talk about such things. Not here.”

Billy just shook his head. “You’ll have to be more specific. I ain’t sure what you’re driving at.”

You know. You know, you dead-eyed bastard. You’re just stringing me along. Toying with me.

“‘Sometimes the fight itself is worthwhile, even if the prize at the end ain’t.’ You said that to me last night. I thought you were talking about the election.”

“I was.”

“No. I think you were talking about the girls, Billy.” There. It was out there now. G. William realized his mouth had gone dry. “The girls. They weren’t worth it in the end, were they?”

“I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, G. William.” Billy’s tone was concerned, solicitous even. “You look a little pale, you don’t mind me sayin’. You been sleeping?” But his eyes were anything but concerned. His eyes told the story.

G. William cleared his throat and put a hand on his belt, near the handcuffs. Just enough to make them jangle. “Billy, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He’d never actually said that in his life. And right then, he wondered if there even
was
an easy way. He dropped his voice. “Don’t make me cuff you here and haul you away in front of your boy.”

Billy’s jaw tightened. “That ain’t how this ends,” he said lightly. “You’re mistaken. And I forgive you, but—”

“I ain’t mistaken. Now really—get your boy to go to your mother’s. Or tell him you’re going to get a drink with me or something.” He hesitated. “That’s my best offer, Billy. Take it or leave it.”

Billy nodded. “Jasper!” he shouted, never taking his eyes from G. William.

“Yeah?” Bored call from elsewhere in the house.

“Get moving! Now! Now!”

Before G. William could process Billy’s scream, Billy Dent transformed before him. The lazy, charmed quirk of his lips became a peeled-back wolf’s baring of teeth, and his eyes went cold and dead.

The metamorphosis so shocked G. William that it took him a moment to realize Billy already had his hands around his throat.

“The pisser about all this, Sheriff,” Billy hissed through gritted teeth as his impossibly strong hands crushed G. William’s throat, “is that I actually. Fucking.
Liked.
You!” He punctuated each word with a shake that bobbled G. William’s head.

G. William flailed for a moment, grabbing Billy’s wrists, but the man had hands of pure steel. He couldn’t budge them. Already, he was running out of air, running out of blood to the brain, cut off by the pressure of Dent’s fingers, expertly placed along the side of his neck.

This is how he killed them. He did this to them. Hand-in-Glove.

Delirious, he didn’t even think of the gun at his hip. He flailed and flapped his hands like a rookie, stunned and choking.

His spasming hand found something on his belt, and he brought it up. Not out of instinct—there was no instinct for this situation but to gasp and flail, instincts that had to be overridden as they led to burning precious oxygen—but rather years of training so ingrained and repeated that they became akin to instinct.

As his vision blurred to near-black, he depressed the button on his canister of pepper spray.

His aim was off—of course—but Billy got enough of a whiff to loosen his hold. G. William sprayed again, then brought both hands up together between Billy’s and spread them, knocking Billy’s arms aside.

Blessed air flowed down into his sore, mangled, open windpipe.

Billy Dent stepped back, one hand held up as if to say,
Hang on a sec, man—something in my eye.
One eye was swollen shut and weeping. The other glared out at him with an animalistic hatred G. William had witnessed only—

No, scratch that. He’d never witnessed it before.

He finally managed to get his gun out of his holster, swinging it up in a tight arc, now leveling the gun and the pepper spray at Dent. At the sight of the gun, Billy’s entire expression changed, reverting back to good ol’ boy.
Hell, you can’t blame a guy for tryin’, right?
he seemed to be thinking.

“Guess this is your lucky day,” Billy drawled, and grinned a sardonic grin.

“Shut up!” G. William’s voice was raw, abraded, and his body had flooded with so much adrenaline that both hands shook. At this range, he couldn’t miss hitting Dent, and he was half-afraid, half-hopeful that his vibrating trigger finger would do what his civilized brain couldn’t allow him to do. Images of Dead Girl One and Dead Girl Two floated before him like motes in the air, and the ViCAP report of Hand-in-Glove’s depredations scrolled along in his mind, as if narrated by a perverse voiceover.

“Shut up and lie the hell down! On your stomach! Do it! Now!” He didn’t recognize his own voice. He’d been a cop his entire adult life, but he’d never been so close to death before. It spun in his gut like bad food, raced his blood, left a metallic burn on his tongue. “Now, goddammit, Dent, I swear to holy Christ I will put a bullet in you!”

Billy wiped tears from his peppered eye and shrugged. “No need to get all excited, Tanner.” He knelt slowly. G. William—suddenly aware that Billy was in prime position to tackle him—backed up a few steps, hating the satisfied smile that his action prompted from Dent.