Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) (5 page)

Voices rose on the other side of the wood, but not enough to make out what they were saying.

He put his head against the wall. Swallowed. Clenched and unclenched his hands.

He needed to do this.

A car came down the road, turning onto a street a little ways up. Someone came walking down the sidewalk several blocks down, a Styrofoam cup in hand, a newspaper tucked under an arm. Getting an early start on the day. Carl watched the man shake out a set of keys, put one in the lock of a shop door.

When the street was empty again, he turned toward the front of the building, shoulder against the wall, and started making his way toward it.

At the corner, he put his hand against it, cheek pressed to the wall. A laugh gathered like a storm under his ribs. He was more suspicious creeping along like this than if he’d just manned up and walked up to the door. He pressed his forehead to the wall, heart hammering.

Just as he lifted his foot to do it, to man up to it, the door around the corner opened. Boots thumped out.

“Damn,” someone said.

“Pain in the ass,” said the other.

“Least it’s still drivable.”

Silence—Carl guessed they were looking at the bike he’d just watched drive up the street.

He was listening to his guy.

He’d heard his guy’s
voice
.

He wanted to flatten his back against the side wall of the bar, but he was afraid to move, afraid the crease of clothing or shift of his foot over dirt would draw their attention.

“You’ve got a mess on your hands,” the one who wasn’t his guy said.

“I’ll get it cleaned up tonight.”

“No fucking shit.”

“A little fucking sympathy, huh? I was fucking run over.”

“How’re you gonna find him?”

“He left his wallet. If he doesn’t turn up at the hospitals—” The door swung shut again, cutting them off.

Carl pushed off the wall and stepped past the building’s façade, heart thudding. His guy had been
right there
.

Another car swept past, its gust riffling Carl’s hair.

He reached behind him as he headed for the door, his other arm outstretched, fingers closing over gun and door handle at the same time.

He pulled.

The door didn’t budge.

He took a soft breath, put his teeth together, and pulled again, just to be sure.

It was locked.

He dropped both hands, empty. Stepped back a few paces and looked at the building.

They’d leave eventually, go home. He’d just wait and follow. Once he got to the biker’s house, he’d wait some more, let him get good and asleep. Then he’d break in any way he could.

In fact, he liked that plan better—standing over the bed, his gun pressed against the asshole’s temple. No way to miss.

D
ean’s eyelid twitched
.

He drew his upper lip back, his neck stiff, and he hadn’t even moved it yet. His body wasn’t in a position he’d expected to wake up in. He forced his eyes open to narrow slits. The steering wheel was directly in front of him, and beyond that the dash, faded in the early morning sunlight.

He squinted until everything was just a sunlit blur before pulling his head forward with a groan. He must have had one hell of a party.

Hugging the steering wheel with one arm, he dragged himself up. His shirt peeled away from the seatback with a sound like old tape pulling free. His head pulsed with hot, cottony murk. Blinking at the sun, he tried to make out the truck’s hood, hoping the front end was intact. The last thing he needed to wake up to was the aftermath of a drunk-driving accident.

He fumbled for the door handle, and as he pulled it, he elbowed the door open. It took another grunt to get himself to the ground, one of his knees taking his weight like a rusty hinge. He stumbled forward a step and stopped bent over, hands braced on his thighs.

Sharp lines burned across his right hand, irritated by the rough denim. He was afraid to turn his head or hand to look at it—the movement might upset the very delicate balance of his stomach.

Too late. His sides heaved. Vomit vaulted up his throat, splattered steaming in the dirt.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, eyes closed—unsteady.

He felt for the door and clutched it, using it to pull himself upright. The lines of pain in his palm throbbed against the sun-warmed metal.

His neck hurt like a son of a bitch. Moving it as little as possible, he took a gander at where he was.

The old, boarded-up body shop looked familiar, but he thought it was a strange place to wind up, on the way to no place he imagined he might have been going to.

He squinted at his watch.

“Shit.”

He was catching a ride to the bus in a little over an hour. New York City by two in the afternoon—interviews, sound check, more interviews, and the first show of the tour.

He grasped the back of the driver’s seat, then closed his eyes and opened them carefully, taking in but not being able to process the fact that the back of the seat was filthy with rust-brown stains.

The echo of a dog barking scratched the back of his memory, made a shiver dig through him. Suddenly he felt chilly.

He’d worry about the seat later.

He dragged himself inside, his knee complaining again as he pressed the brake pedal down. The engine started right up—he loved this truck, a 1962 Chevy C10 hand-me-down from his grandpa not long before he’d died. Save for the seat, it seemed fine.

As he pulled the Chevy in a circle in the dirt lot, pointing its nose at the road, a fog of déjà vu muddled his head. Shrugging it away, he aimed the truck toward home.

The barking came back to him on the drive home. A shudder rocked through him at a dreamlike memory of a dead hand, its delicate fingers resting on the dirt, one of its painted nails split almost to the cuticle. He wiped his forehead with the heel of his hand and pressed the gas a little harder. He just wanted to get the fuck
home
.

When he got through the door, his bags sat packed on the coffee table, unzipped and waiting for last-minute toiletries. He dropped his keys and headed for the bathroom, mentally running through everything he needed to do before the van showed up.

As he let his bladder go, he braced a hand on the wall and rubbed his forehead against his shirtsleeve.

Bent at that angle, his neck throbbed like a heartbeat. He lifted his head, and stared at the hand on the wall. Smeared with dirt, a scrape on the knuckles. Jesus, what
had
he done last night? There’d been the radio interview…

He closed his eyes, and images jolted him like exposed wires: jagged glass, a dog’s barking, struggling on the ground.

Two thumps that made his heart still.

He pressed the flush handle down, his fingers lingering on the cool metal—his mind blank, just the echo of the silence that had followed those thumps.

As he cranked the taps in the shower on, he rewound to the dog in the darkness, its hot breath in his face, its chest lunging over him, his skull rattling with the barks.

He started on the buttons on his shirt, twinges across his palm as he worked his fingers.

He could almost feel the brittle edge of glass, smooth and sharp all at once, cutting into him.

He peeled his shirt off, the fabric adhering to his skin. When he dropped it, it stayed half upright, stained brown down the back, especially at the collar. He stepped on it, flattening it, on his way to the sink. Dreading what he was about to look at, but—

He flinched. Gripping the counter, he pulled himself forward to get a better look.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think he’d just climbed out of a dumpster—dirt smeared across half his face, hair sticking up. He touched his cheek with two fingers and winced at the tender bruise under the dirt.

He dropped his gaze slowly, because he’d already gotten a glimpse of what was there, and he was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as he thought.

His fingertips went cold.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.

He angled his shoulder toward the mirror.

He closed his fist, the cuts stiff, the pain like holding barbed wire.

He’d needed to get to a hospital. That’s the last thing he remembered—giving up on the hospital. Thinking that thing had killed him. That fucking psycho.

He touched his neck, just shy of the wound, and leaned closer to the mirror.

Jesus fucking Christ
.

Was that fucking bone? Or just the glare of the mirror’s light glistening off his pink insides?

He shut his eyes. He was up and walking around, and aside from the pain, he didn’t seem to be any the worse for wear. He’d apparently not lost as much blood as he’d thought, and neither the gouge in his neck nor the cuts on his hand had that intense fire-pain that came with an infection.

And he had twenty minutes before the van pulled up out front. He could spend the better part of the day at the ER, or he could go on fucking tour.

He shoved his jeans off. Steam billowed from the shower. He could use a smoke but didn’t have time. He made the mistake of thinking about the wound in his neck again on his way to the tub, and his knees went rubbery, his forehead clammy. He caught hold of the shower’s curtain rod. He had bandages somewhere—if he hadn’t thrown them out—from the time he’d gone down a hill sideways on a dirt bike. No stitches needed then, no broken bones, just road rash he’d needed to cover to keep blood from oozing through his shirt.

He stepped over the edge of the tub and yanked the plastic curtain shut, trying to think of where he’d put those bandages, forcing his mind to run though his cabinets and closets rather than go back to thinking about what he needed to use them for.

Hot water sluiced his back as he examined the rest of his body. He found a bruise the size of a tangerine on his kneecap, another like a thumbprint on his hip. He had a sore wrist and a hinky elbow—hinky but it worked. It just complained a little when he extended it. Nothing else like his neck, though. Or even as bad as his hand.

He straightened, wincing and turning away as shower spray hit the gash in his neck. He let water run over the cuts in his palm—this was going to be the real problem. It was his picking hand. He fingered a riff in the air. He thought it’d be okay, hoped the cuts didn’t open and ooze halfway through the set, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d bled on his guitar.

He found the bandages in one of his dresser drawers, the box still half full of four-by-four gauze pads, just big enough to cover the mess. He grabbed the buck knife out of the nightstand and slipped it in his back pocket. He wasn’t going anywhere without that thing after this.

The shower hadn’t made his neck look any better. He stood right up against the sink to get another look. The raw edges had dark, coagulated blood around them that flecked off with the scrape of a thumbnail. Between those edges were the bright, moist contours of exposed muscle.

Blood drained from his cheeks. His face washed with heat. Saliva flooded his mouth, like he was going to throw up. He leaned over and spat in the toilet.

You’re okay. You’re alive. You’re gonna be fucking fine.
He tore open the packet of sterile gauze.

As he was taping it to his neck, a horn sounded a short note out front.

Smoothing the tape down, he thought he looked better already. Less like he was about to pass out.

He ran his fingers through his wet hair, shaking the ends loose, letting them curl against the bandage.

The horn sounded, longer this time.

He grabbed the box of bandages, the tape, and the moustache scissors he’d used to cut it. Loping out to the living room, ignoring his bruised knee, he stashed the supplies in one of his bags.

The horn again, louder, longer.

He swung the front door open. “I’m coming! Shut up for a minute!” With the door hanging open, he shoved toiletries in his bag. Then went to find his jacket.

He didn’t have his fucking jacket. His first thought was the truck, then—no, he didn’t
have
his fucking jacket.

He patted the pockets of the jeans he’d been wearing. No wallet either.

Shit.

He hoped he wouldn’t need I.D. Maybe he could have Gary work some magic and get something sent to him on the road.

He grabbed a beat-up black denim jacket from his closet, the horn outside blaring again. He caught his two bags by their straps and glanced around the place one more time. Four rooms, modest and easy to manage. He’d put the down payment on it when they’d gotten their first advance, happy to be out of the apartment he’d been sharing with Jessie.

Nothing against Jessie.

He’d expected to be living in a much nicer place by now, maybe a cabin up north, big windows overlooking a lake, floor-to-vaulted-ceiling fieldstone fireplace, a nice crackling fire in the snowy winters. That was before they’d learned that advances were pretty much
all
they got. Those payouts needed to stretch from one album to the next, on top of covering equipment breakdowns, new equipment, whatever they might need that the label wasn’t covering. (And when Dean thought in terms of what the label “covered,” it was a loose use of the word—the label just put every penny it spent, whether it consulted with the band on the expenditure or not, on the band’s account. Try to argue with them, and within twenty minutes you felt like you were being gaslighted. And what could you do about it?)

He could have signed a big mortgage on the strength of the contract they had with High Class, but they were so deep in debt to the label he had a hard time justifying taking on more on top of it.

He
liked
this place too. Liked that it was paid for at this point, just taxes, insurance, and utilities to worry about. Yeah, he’d still like a place in the woods, but that vision had downsized to a one-room hunting cabin with a woodstove and creaky furniture. If there was a lake nearby, fine, but no lake also meant fewer people—just him and the trees.

One day.

Jesus, he felt like he was leaving the place for good. Reluctant to step out the door and never come back.

Someone laid on the horn—and by “someone” he meant Mike, because nobody actually
in
the band was enough of a control hard-on to insist on driving the van themselves, or to keep blaring the horn all over the neighborhood at fuck o’clock in the morning.

He backed out the door, pulling it shut with him, and locked up.

When he climbed in the van’s side, their tour manager—behind the wheel just like Dean’d expected—turned his head. “It’s not like we’re on a schedule or anything.”

He started the van moving before Jessie’d even pulled the door shut.

Nick was curled up on the farthest back seat, his jacket covering his head. Dean dropped his bags behind Nick and made his way back up to the front row.

“Anything I need to know about in those bags?” Mike asked.

Since Dean hadn’t managed to get away with the nickel bag last night—no. Mike didn’t actually care if they had drugs on them; he just wanted to keep tabs on what, where, and how much, in case the bus was about to be searched.

“What happened?” Shawn asked as Dean dropped onto the bench beside him.

The tape on the bandage itched. He touched the edge of it. Felt the ghost of a
thump
underneath him, and his saliva shriveled away. “Dog bite.”

“What?”

Dean patted his jacket pocket. Shit. He didn’t have cigarettes either.

“Must have been some dog,” Shawn said.

“I think it was wild.”

Shawn’s eyebrows rose.

“I don’t want to get into it.” He didn’t know how to explain a fake dog bite, and he sure as shit didn’t know how to explain what he really remembered from the night before.

Jesus—he’d run over some guy.

He reached inside his jacket, hoping, but no—no cigarettes. He’d have settled for stale ones. He leaned forward. “Can we stop at a convenience store?”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Mike said.

“Did you get it looked at?” Shawn asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Is he asleep back there?” Because Nick smoked, might have some on him.

“Who knows?”

“Aw, fuck, come on,” Mike said, the van held up at a red light.

“It’s not like we’re gonna get there and they’ve got our shit all loaded and ready to go,” Shawn called forward.

“Yeah,” Jessie said, leaned back in the passenger seat with his sneaker against the dash. “We’ll get there, and they’ll just be starting.”

“That’s because when we get there, they realize they need to move their fucking asses,” Mike said. The light turned green, and he gunned it. “We have a schedule. Every day you assholes are on tour, you get a little farther behind on it. I just want to start out even with it instead of already behind the curve, if it’s okay with you.”

“It’s fine with me,” Dean said. “As long as we can hit a store on the way.”