Sticks and Stones (24 page)

“So we’ll try the next one.” Danny grabbed her hand, and then moved his grip to the hem of her cotton shirt, because they were both so hot that holding hands felt utterly disgusting. Sandra was pretty sure she’d sweated off five pounds already.

“We’ll do one more hour,” he compromised. A suit with a phone pressed to his ear passed them. Danny brushed close, flicked his wrist, and revealed the black wallet in his big hand. Sandra stretched her legs to keep in step, biting her lip to keep her mouth closed and watched him slip the bills out, shut the wallet again and return it to the suit pocket. The man twitched this time, looked back, but Danny was already stepping to the side, stopping at some sidewalk table set up in front of a boutique, showcasing handmade jewelry and painted pottery bowls.

“Where’d you guys learn that anyway?”

“As a kid. I taught Jack. Then Dad found out and boxed our ears.”

A laugh barked up out of her throat. “You haven’t lost your touch.”

“I’ve been practicing. I’ve got to keep up with you and Jack.” Danny folded the bills, nice and neat, and tucked them into the pocket of his jeans.

I only did it the
once
, she wanted to say, sarcasm all thick and heavy inside her head.
And it was to save a life
. She’d spent two weeks perfecting it, trying it out on the boys, and then she’d taken herself to the park where Elizabeth Rightly had been about to steal little Michael Miller and pick-pocketed the madwoman’s wallet to give to his parents.

“It’s fine,” Danny said, as though she had spoken aloud. “It’s only the rich ones.”

Yeah, that made it better. They reached another store and, sighing, Sandra went inside.

~

The days following were frustrating. Jack had healed with a mass of thin, silvery scars left behind. One bisected his left eyebrow and he’d discovered two towns ago that it gave him a rakish air. Now, instead of getting numbers from mothering hens, he was getting numbers from cow-eyed girls, all swooning smiles and giggling behind their hands. Hotels blended together. Stores, too. It was hard not feeling like they were losing Jeremiah’s game. And, in the end, they weren’t even the ones to make the next play.

They’d gotten dinner and brought it back to a hotel that smelled like cigarettes and citrus air freshener, with an air conditioner that only worked half the time.

Sandra wrinkled her nose at a burger that looked like shoe leather and grabbed the fries instead. Danny had more newspapers on the table, which Jack was slowly dripping ketchup onto, using them as a place-mat. It was the only reason they noticed.

They hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Jeremiah Epps for five weeks. And then he showed up, wanted, in county-wide papers.

The convenience store worker was dead. Sandra put her fingers to her throat and watched Danny and Jack start to pack up the room.

It felt too much like her dream. The one that had started everything. The one Jeremiah had obviously seen. The one where they’d kept looking and moving and chasing…
The one where they had lost
.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The police
didn’t know Jeremiah’s real name.

All they had was a picture – grainy and fuzzy from the store’s camera feed, bright eyed and grinning and not even attempting to cover his face. In Tampa Bay, Florida, he’d reached over the counter and slashed a man’s throat.

For no reason at all. The cashier had been left bloody, dead, on the floor, money still in the till.

By the time they reached Tampa Bay, Jeremiah was gone.

He killed another man two states over. Then a woman in Jasper, Mississippi. He left a path of delicately slashed necks, always walking away without anyone the wiser, no more than a drop of blood on his fingers. On his shirt. On his shoes.

Sandra continued to dream.

Jeremiah’s taunts grew more obvious with time.

The heat wave broke that night. Sandra woke to rain pounding the corrugated steel roof of the motel, curtain sticking wet to the wall from the opened window, a slippery shine through the dark. The air smelled fresh and damp.

A car drove past the motel, rumbling loud, and Sandra settled her head back into Danny’s arm. She breathed in the humidity of his skin as he sighed and pulled her close. Far off thunder rumbled.

When she slipped back to sleep, everything beyond her eyelids settled into shades of blood and shadow. Something unseen and vicious ripped at her, slashed at her skin, and tangled in her hair. Distantly, the world was screaming. She was at the very heart of a raging storm, and it threatened to tear her to pieces.

~

She had her next vision in a coffee shop two weeks later.

Danny and Jack were downtown, swindling good folk out of their money. Probably picking pockets on the side. The walls were yellow and the floor looked like stone. She’d been sipping Chai tea from a paper cup, until suddenly she wasn’t.

A tremor of dread settled into her spine and Jeremiah Epps walked through the door.

Sandra was in a house. There was gray carpeting under her toes, hair thick around her shoulders, curly and smelling of herbal shampoo. For a brief moment, Sandra wished she could make the woman walk out the front door. But that wasn’t the way it worked. Sandra couldn’t make the woman do a damn thing. She closed the door behind Jeremiah. His eyes slid over her, slick and slow, leaving dirt behind like oil – and then he was across the landing, up the two stairs that led to the rest of the house, hand pulling her behind.

What are you doing?
Sandra thought as the woman said, “Thought you’d never get here.”

Jeremiah gave a slow, tilting smile, pulling her into the kitchen and then past the dining room and into the family area, the small room filled with a large television, a beige couch and a tall, but mostly empty, bookcase. She’d been reading a letter when he arrived. The envelope fell to the ground when he pushed her, back thudding to the living room wall, Jeremiah laughing.

He kissed hard until her mouth felt swollen, nothing gentle in his actions, body riding every burning inch of her. Sandra wanted to scrub off her skin. He felt like rot. His tongue tasted like mint toothpaste but his breath was stale.

Jeremiah’s fingers wrapped around her shoulders, pressed into the skin there, stretching past the thick straps of her sleeveless top. The skin turned white and then red and the woman didn’t seem to mind, though Sandra did. The woman moaned into his mouth and closed her eyes and pushed her hips against him. “Fuck me. Don’t you want to fuck me?”

“Of course I do,” he said, lips on her perfect skin, on her lily-white throat, hands under her shirt and pants pushed around her knees. He had a condom but Sandra didn’t think he cared about DNA because he didn’t care about anything; especially not the police. The woman moaned and gasped, said,
Yeah, baby, do it like that
and Sandra
pushed
, backed away, didn’t want to be
here
.

The sudden silence was disorienting.

She stood in the kitchen, linoleum cold on her bare toes, toenails painted to match her fingers. Early morning light shone through the eastern window. There was a pile of freshly laundered clothes on the dining room chair. The fabric softener had a vaguely fruity scent. She made her way to the kitchen counter, pulled down the peanut butter from the overhanging cupboard. There were envelopes on the island separating the two rooms.
Judy Zwidiker
, Sandra read as Judy got the bread down. She popped two slices into the toaster. They were addressed to a house in Bristol, Connecticut. Sandra wanted to look more closely, but all her efforts didn’t make Judy twitch.

She moved to the fridge. The calendar said August. Judy had a doctor’s appointment on the twentieth and
‘Meet Sal for
coffee’
on the thirteenth. Brightly colored cue cards were lined up with magnets on the freezer door. Grocery lists. Recipes. Inspirational sayings. A napkin casually proclaimed
Rick’s
phone number, name underscored twice.

A tug and Sandra found herself back in the living room. They were done. Judy’s throat hurt, a raw ring all the way around. As though Jeremiah’s hands had been there. She panted, was limp and grinning, held up by only his body, eyes nearly closed from the high. Her head lolled forward into his neck, along his shoulder, purring, “That was good.” She huffed a laugh, soft and breathless. “When I gave you my address, I never thought you’d actually stop by.”

“I know.” He pulled her away from the wall, ran his hand up her back once, twice. “You didn’t tell anyone about me.”

“I promised. You said we could have some fun.”

“We did.” His smile was disarming. “But you know what would be even better?”

“What?” she grinned, excitement fluttering through her body, Sandra twitching along with her.

“This.” Jeremiah pulled the knife out from the back of his jeans. Judy felt intrigued, and then confused, and then wide-eyed and gasping as she stumbled backward, hit the wall, and then fell toward the ground. Jeremiah didn’t stay clean this time. The blood spattered down the front of his shirt and his pants.

Judy didn’t scream. In fact, it took Judy a full minute to realize she was dead. And then she just flopped flat and laid there.

Sandra thought it’d been a good thing she hadn’t had that muffin the barista had offered.

“Hey, you alright?” Sandra blinked. The barista was looking at her – had even left the counter to come ask. The college professor look-a-like from two tables down had gotten to his feet, halfway between his table and hers, looking just as concerned.

“You were crying,” the girl said, hushed, crouching with her hand hovering just over Sandra’s knee. Sandra made a surprised sound, hand lifting to her face.

The barista was right.

“You wouldn’t answer me.” The girl sucked in her lip, clearly wondering if she ought to call someone, or maybe get Sandra a glass of water. “Are you…,” she began tentatively, “are you okay? Do you have a number I can call or—”

“I’m fine.” Sandra jerked upright, forcing the girl away. The professor was still hovering at her back, closer now, but not really getting involved. The blonde moved jerkily, leaned forward to put the lid of Sandra’s tea back on, and held it out.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Sandra summoned up a smile. She doubted it was successful, but the girl nodded all the same. She took a step back and motioned at the counter.

“Did you walk here? I can call you a cab.”

“I’m fine.” Sandra took her cup, made sure she had her wallet and moved to the door. She
was
. She was fine. She was absolutely, perfectly fucking fine. Her shoulder bounced off the frame, door hitting her foot. Her throat felt unreasonably thick. She couldn’t be more fine.

She didn’t reach up to wipe her face until she was back inside the motel. And then she poured her cold tea down the sink and rubbed her face raw. She still felt the salt on her skin hours after the boys returned.

She didn’t cry when she told them.

~

Judy Zwidiker lived in a nice house. It wasn’t big or even all that fancy. The yard was neatly fenced and the wood was freshly painted. It was a lot nicer than the dirty-carpeted room that they’d checked into in the middle of town. Judy had flowers in her garden. And shutters next to the windows. She even had a gnome.

Jack kept snickering at the whole Betty Crocker neighborhood.

The car was hot and smelled like sweaty boys and fast food.

“I’m not sitting here for a whole month,” she told them but hoped they didn’t take her seriously, because she would if she had to.

“I think the neighborhood watch might notice.” Danny drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The radio had crackled and cut out one town back and it was now fading in and out, even after he’d fiddled with it.

“I think we could be here every day and still miss Epps.” Jack played with the window crank for what may have been the fifth time in a row and Sandra ignored her urge to slap him in the back of the head.

They had phoned the police, left a tip – but there wasn’t much the police could do when Sandra couldn’t provide the proper information. They did question Judy, and, with any luck, the questions would make her slightly more cautious in her choice of bed partners.

Sandra hadn’t seen evidence of it yet.

“Wouldn’t Dad be proud?” Jack said as he rolled the window down again. “We grew up to be stalkers.”

~

Judy liked this bar down on Kirkness. It was a dance club, filled with bright flashing lights and loud music and sticky drinks spilled all over the floor. There were a lot of people Sandra’s age. She felt decades older than all of them.

Another giggling girl brushed by, nearly plowed into their table, and spilled half of her fruity number on herself. A new round of giggles erupted. Thank God Judy Zwidiker was two tables away and looked ready to leave. She’d flirted all night with a cute guy wearing a leather jacket and tight black jeans. She was going to leave with him, too.

“Our girl’s kind of a slut, isn’t she?” Jack was with her tonight, having drawn the short straw. The beer was watered down and neither of them danced. Jack had been half tempted to go over there and romance Judy himself just so they wouldn’t have to come back.

“Who says she sleeps with them all?”

Jack jostled against her arm, pressed too close and raised an eyebrow at her bored look. “She leaves with them.”

“Maybe they get scared off when she gets them home and things get a little kinky.”

“I knew you were holding out about that dream of yours.” Jack got to his feet, and then led the way to the door, cutting a path across the packed bar and dance floor. Sandra tried not to let anyone touch her. Everyone who did was thinking about sex, thinking
give me
more
and
he’s hot
and
maybe she’ll phone
me
. Sandra was flushed by the time they made it outside. Good thing Jack was busy keeping an eye on Judy and her latest conquest. He didn’t need any more fodder.

“Quit thinking dirty things and let’s get out of here.”

“Shut up,” was her snappy reply.

Jack watched Leather Jacket’s car pull out from the lot. Then he unlocked the car. “Epps better show up soon or I swear I’ll let her die,” he said in exasperation.

“No, you won’t.”

Jack turned the fritzing radio up loud.

~

“I hate her.”

“Jack…”

“I mean, I don’t want to agree with some crazy psycho, never mind the crazy psycho that put me in the hospital, but I really, really
hate
her.”

“You’re bored.” Danny threw a book at him. “Expand your brain.”

Jack threw the book right back at his brother’s head. It bounced into the backseat.
Ooh
, Ancient Egypt. Sandra picked it up off the floor.

“All she does is go to work. Go to the bar. Go to some guy’s house.”

“How I assume most normal lives go.” Danny’s voice was absolutely monotonic. The radio wasn’t working at all today and he’d already finished the crossword in the paper.

“Only with less sex,” Sandra said. The book was much better than listening to them bicker. If there were room, they’d be rolling around by now, giving each other bruises and black eyes and getting dirt stains all over their shirts.

Jack got a wistful expression. “Maybe I should pick her up.”

“I thought you hated her?”

“Sex,” he said. Danny shoved him in the head, which knocked Jack’s face into the window. “I was just kidding!”

The car got very quiet when Judy walked outside. She went to the garage, opened it, picked up a garbage bag and moved it to the curb. And then she went back inside. Jack leaned forward and clunked his head onto the dash. “Shoot me now. I don’t even care about going evil anymore.”

Sandra frowned and jabbed his shoulder with the pointy edge of the book.

“Don’t say that.” Danny frowned, too. Jack’s shoulders hunched. His head went down and he stared out the window.

“Sorry,” he said. It took him a real long time to start talking again.

~

Jack eventually stole a car.

Sandra had to admit it was a nice one – sleek lines and tinted windows and now parked in front of Judy’s house (because he said seeing theirs every day would make anyone suspicious). Sandra thought he just wanted to drive a car that sounded like a lion. Both boys seemed horrified when she didn’t know the make and year.

Sandra was tempted to point out all the things they didn’t know.

It wasn’t exactly low key or sensible, but it was nice not to have to hunch down in the seats when someone came outside.

“It’s not good if she
notices
us,” Danny grumped.

Jack shrugged. “So I’ll steal a new one tomorrow.”

Danny looked disgusted. Not from the stealing, obviously, but because Jack was being so damn cocky. “Less flair,” he said.

Jack’s grin, bright and crooked, said he was going to go for
more
.

He stole cars for five days, changing plates as he went, before the cops nearly nabbed him, and then they were back to their old routine and their own car. They were halfway into the month and there’d been no sign of Jeremiah.