Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

At the top, with his hand on the knob, he took another look around before pulling on the door, fully expecting it not to give.

It swung open.

He poked his head into a dim hallway with a scuffed wooden floor, its finish worn to bare wood in places. Motes of dust hung in the sunlight coming in around him. At the end of the sun’s reach, shadows crowded until the hall opened up to the main room, where yellow lighting made the tables and barstools look like something out of an old photograph.

Someone was moving around up there, a lonesome sound, the scuff of rubber soles on wood, the scrape of cardboard being set down or lifted up.

Carl stepped inside and held the door as it fell quietly closed.

To either side sat unmarked doors. He took a step and put his ear to one. Then, just as quietly, moved across to listen at the other.

Glass clinked up ahead. Water ran.

His hand was on the gun at his back. His muscles itched to draw it out, but not yet. He glanced up the hall before putting his hand on a knob.

Holding his breath, he eased it open, just a crack at first, darkness spilling across his toes. He pushed it wider, blind to what was inside. He risked taking his hand off the gun to feel for a light switch.

It snapped on, the switch loud and the bulbs dim, two 40-watters in a ceiling fixture under a shade glazed with age. Boxes sat stacked against the walls, familiar liquor company names printed along their sides. A trio of metal folding chairs sat in the middle around a table with a scarred top, drink rings worn into its wood.

Rather than risk the loud snap of turning the light out, he just eased the door shut.

Water was still running in the main room.

He reached for the door across the hall. Held his breath as he opened it. Reached for the light switch right away, moving it slowly this time, hoping to muffle the snap.

It clicked, and he jerked his head toward the front, then right back to the room, where a big steel desk sat loaded with papers. A couch that had seen better days had been pushed against the wall, with hardly space between it and the desk to roll the chair out.

What he needed was a basement door, or access to the attic. The ceiling in this room was plaster, stained yellow with tobacco. No trap doors in it.

As he eased the door closed, a “Help you?” jolted him back a step. His hand still gripped the knob. The door clapped against its frame.

“Uh, I was looking for a restroom?”

“We’re closed.”

“Sorry. It’s just that…it’s kind of an emergency. Promise I won’t take up any of your time, I’ve just—I’ve really gotta…”

The wiry guy had a draught glass in his hand. He pushed a bar towel into it as he eyed Carl. “Said we’re closed.” He lifted the glass toward the street. “There’re some places up the way.”

Carl’s stomach clenched, making him think he really did have an emergency on the way. He opened his mouth, his mind blank. Desperate. “This a biker bar?” rushed out. “I saw a bunch of bikes out front. Some nice ones.”

The guy didn’t answer.

“It doesn’t look like there’s anyone in here, though. The bikes wouldn’t happen to be for sale, would they?”

“Weren’t you about to shit yourself?”

Yes. Right about then, yes he was.

“Sorry. I’ll come back later.” He started toward the door, stopped. “When do you open?”

“Private bar. No membership, no entrance.”

“Right. Sorry.” He put his hand against the door. Turned his head again. “There’s a Triumph out there…I’d be especially interested in that.”

“Get the fuck out.” The guy dropped his hands to his sides, one with the towel, the other with the glass.

When Carl pushed open the door, sunlight hit him square in the eyes.

The guy was still standing there as he shut it, starting to give a disbelieving shake of his head.

Carl’s feet carried him down the steps and into the dirt. His head swirled with thoughts—no one was in there, but they had to be
somewhere
.

That guy was going to keep an eye on him, no doubt, but the bar’s windows were shut up, so he was pretty sure the guy wasn’t seeing him crossing the street, pulling out his car keys. At least he hoped not.

His shoulders were tight just the same. The back of his neck crawling.

He started the engine when he dropped inside the Cougar. His heart beat his ribs as he pulled away from the curb.

D
ean’s hand
survived sound check. His head throbbed, though, and when he pushed out the venue’s back door to get his Tylenol from the bus, the late afternoon sun flashed off the bus’s side mirror, stabbing a headache into the back of his eyes. He hauled himself inside and took the bottle to the back lounge, where the blinds were drawn.

As he shook out a couple pills, footfalls came up from the front.

Nick shambled through the doorway, his hair rumpled like he’d slept on a van seat with a coat over his head—hours ago. “Hiding out? Hey, let me get a couple.”

He dropped beside Dean with a sigh while Dean popped the top off the bottle. When Dean held two out on his cut-up palm, Nick pinched them up, saying, “You look half as bad as I feel.”

“I thought you went for beers last night.”

“
Went
for beers. Stayed for everything else they could pour into a glass. I’m a sucker when other people are buying.” He tossed the pills in the back of his mouth and swallowed them dry, his chin tipped, his throat exposed.

Dean pushed the cap back on. The bandage at his neck crackled like insects as he moved, just below his ear. And in his ear, blood chugged—almost a sub-sound. He had the sense that he was hearing Nick’s too, just a little off from his own rhythm, a little quicker. Leave it to the drummer to be racing ahead.

As they sat, sensation expanded inside his head, bloating until it swelled to press against his skull. He stood, irritated and unsettled. It was like an itch under his skull.

“We could have some party with those,” Nick said.

Dean looked where Nick was looking, toward the ceiling. One of the roof hatches was over his head, a good-sized one, not like the little squares on the last bus. Jessie’d stuck an arm with a bottle of Southern Comfort out one of those hatches a few times as they’d pulled out of venues. But these he could fit his whole body through.

“We need to get one of the flight cases in here to stand on,” Nick said. “Pop that baby open.”

“Overpasses might hurt a bit.”

Nick sat forward with a grunt. “I was supposed to be coming to get you.”

“For what now?”

“Another interview.”

Dean sighed.

Nick held a hand out.

As Dean grasped his wrist, a restlessness rose in him, traveling up the bones in his arm. A prickling, unsteady sense of some unnamed, unshaped thing.

On his feet, Nick dropped his arm, oblivious.

Dean fisted his empty hand, working the weirdness out of it.

Nick was already moving through the bunk area, tapping the curtains as he passed. “This one’s over the phone,” he said without looking back.

Dean reached for a cigarette. Lit it with a hand that trembled so slightly it was almost unnoticeable, but the flame danced more than it should in a still room. He let the flame gutter as he filled his lungs with smoke. By the time he got moving, Nick was already hopping off the bus.

“
A
re you feeling all right
?” Shawn asked after the interview. Dean had found a wall to hold him up in the hallway.

“Yeah, the Tylenol’s working. Headache’s gone at least.” It had slunk away when the sun went down, or maybe as a result of things picking up at the venue. The longest parts of day-to-day touring were the late afternoons—post-soundcheck, preshow. Time dripped like syrup.

Shawn tilted his head and touched two fingers to Dean’s neck, just below the edge of the bandage. “Are you going to be okay for a show?”

Dean pulled back, raking a hand under his hair, dragging his thumb along the skin Shawn had touched. That fucked up feeling again, that restlessness he didn’t know what to do with. “Yeah. Fine.”

A sign taped by his elbow read “Bus Rolls At 2 A.M. Whether You’re On It Or Not.” Mike’s handwriting.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Better once I get out there.”

They’d opened the doors at the front of the house; the murmur of a gathering audience ran underneath the backstage bustle.

Dean wanted to jump forward a few hours, be out there on stage, guitar in hand, eyes half closed, fingers on strings—quickly losing his sense of where his fingers ended and the strings began.

He wanted to be anywhere but standing around backstage with people jostling him and strangers clapping him on the back like they knew him.

Their support act—Thieves—scurried from their seats, chairs scraping, nervous looks casting back and forth. One of the guys grabbed a last slug from a plastic cup, swiping his mouth with the side of his hand as he followed his band through a black door that eased shut behind them, the word
Stage
stenciled in white on its back.

Half a minute later, feedback sounded, an eruption of applause. The first high, fast notes of Thieves’s opener vibrated through the thick walls.

Another night, Dean would be out by the stage entrance, checking out their support act. Checking out the crowd—were they the kind that gave their attention to the opening band, or did they go back to their conversations after their initial applause? It made a difference to the whole vibe of the night.

Tonight, though, he just wanted to—

What?

Get the fuck out of here
was what the heart tripping inside his chest was telling him.

“I’m gonna hit the head.” He turned away, swerving to avoid people.

Locking himself in a stall, he sat down. Dug his elbows into his thighs and pushed his thumbs against his eyelids.

Maybe he should have gone to a doctor after all. Last night had fucked him up, and he didn’t know if it was the attack itself or the psychological aftershock of running a man over.

Had
he run a man over? He wasn’t even sure at this point. The fucking toilet under his ass didn’t feel quite real—how much could he depend on the shattered recollections from the night before?

He kept feeling that ghostly
thump-thump
, the bounce of the truck going up and over. He could feel it right in his bones, feel it in the palms of his hands, as if they were still clutching that steering wheel.

He eased a cigarette out of his pocket. The tip jittered as he tried to light it. When he had it going, he covered his eyes, curled his upper lip up to keep it from pressing against the dull ache in his gums, and hoped Thieves got their set over with quickly.

Hoped, too, that he wasn’t wrong about going out on stage. That’d be just what he needed: a nervous fucking breakdown in front of twelve hundred people.

The restroom door swung open, startling his cigarette out of his fingers. He picked it up from the floor, eyed it to make sure it wasn’t wet, and took a drag over the sound of someone’s zipper coming down.

Piss hit water, and Dean licked his lips, the sharp tang of tobacco blooming over the tip of his tongue.

“Are you hiding or shitting?” Nick called over piss hitting water.

“Meditating.”

The urinal gave a sucking gush as it flushed. An arm came over the stall door. Brown eyes appeared, peering over it. The sneakers below rose up on their toes a little.

“Good thing I wasn’t shitting,” Dean said.

“So how’d you manage to get bit by a dog?”

“By going someplace I shouldn’t have been.” The cuts on his palm crinkled as he flicked ashes on the tiles with his thumbnail.

“Are you gonna stay in there all night?”

“That was the latest plan.”

“Fuck that. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a good forty minutes.”

Dean took another drag before hauling himself up.
Out
sounded good. He dropped the butt in the toilet, and Nick stepped back from the door to let him out. Nick, smiling, opened his jacket. The screw cap of a pint bottle poked from the inner pocket.

“Hair of the dog?” Dean asked.

“Hair on my balls. Come on. I bet there’s almost no one out back now.”

They headed up the hallway, chins up, eyes forward, like they were on a mission—
Can’t talk now
.

Mike caught him by the arm, tried to tell him something. The heel of Mike’s hand pressing on him scrambled the words, and Dean nodded quickly, pulling away, following Nick, who’d stopped and turned to see what was holding him up but swung toward the door again when he saw Dean coming.

Nick shoved it open, and as Dean stepped out, cool night air swept his face. He could almost drink it.

And Nick was right—almost no one was out there.

“Bus?” Nick said.

Dean slid his gaze toward the straggle of fans in the building’s shadow—three guys, hoping to get a look at the band. One shoved another in their direction, and the shoved guy stumbled half a step, looked back at his friend, and gave him a return push.

“Yeah,” Dean said quietly.

Nick pointed his sneakers toward the bus, not giving the group of admirers a second look. He slipped the Jack Daniels from his pocket, unscrewed the cap. Tipped it up while Dean rapped on the bus door.

The bus shifted slightly. The door opened.

Wayne, their drum tech, backed up the steps, hopping into the driver’s area to give them room to get by.

“Holding the fort down?” Nick asked.

“Just about to head back in.”

“Have fun.”

Nick handed the bottle off to Dean and collapsed into a seat in the front lounge, knees splayed, Adam’s apple bobbing as he tipped his head back, eyes closed.

The bourbon splashed in the bottle after Dean’s pull on it, and Nick lifted his hand out, not bothering to raise his head.

Dean handed it over before taking a seat across the aisle.

“I hate the first show of the tour,” Nick said, the bottle on his knee.

“Why?” Blood thudded in his ears again, but the bourbon was warm and distracting in his gullet. He leaned across the aisle and plucked the bottle back, took another slug as Nick said, “Pressure. So much pressure. New songs, old songs, all in a different order than last time.”