The Pines (20 page)

Pulling off the wide road, Athena parked by the police car. Throughout the drive, she had tried to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about, that Barry would never marry her anyway, but she wasn’t sure whether she found the thought comforting or more disturbing. Though grimy and mud splattered, the diner offered glass and aluminum brightness in the night. As she hurried through the lot, she could see them at the window.

Behind her—a growl. With one hand on her throat, she spun and faced into the bellowing snarl. Claws raking the flatbed truck, a mean bull of a farm dog strained its chain. She stood close enough to be struck by the foul breath, and deep-pitched barks went through her like hammer blows.

As her paralysis eased, she moved away and tried to imagine being savaged by a pack of such animals, brutes like this one, gone feral, the way that poor little girl had been. She glanced back.

The drip and hum of the air conditioner filled the lot with noise, and in the spill of light, the dog’s eyes glowed with utter malevolence.

Watching from across the table, Steve noted the way they greeted each other. No hint of romance. Not even warmth. As though they prided themselves on how cold-blooded they could be. Shuddering inwardly, he glanced around the diner. Fairly good crowd for a weeknight, and if anyone should happen to look over, they’d detect nothing about these two. Cold.

Smug. And yet her eyes seemed neither cold nor smug. Always, he found something in her face, something brave and lovely, a quality that suffused the body she held so erect. Yet again, he studied her. The way she moved could scarcely be described as graceful. The limp remained too distinct, even her smallest gestures too defiant. Yet he felt she possessed a certain elegance, like that of a wounded cat.

“Did you hear we picked up a couple of poachers today?” A cigarette dangled from Barry’s lip, and he still wore his dark glasses.

“Really?” Clammy in the air-conditioning, she kept plucking at her damp shirt.

“Yeah, city people. I’ll tell you, I can’t wait for hunting season to come around. All them businessmen come out here with their brand-new thousand-dollar rifles and start having heart attacks. Then the stateys gotta go in after them. Yessir, can’t wait.” A weird pride rang through his heavy sarcasm, akin to that of a new recruit complaining about the difficulty of being a marine. “Gotta haul their fat asses out of there, and let me tell you, some of those guys weigh a ton.”

“That’s something to be grateful for anyway,” put in Steve. “At least you’re not a trooper anymore.”

“Well, it’s all the same.” She changed the subject fast. “You should know. You’ve been a cop a long time, haven’t you, Steve?”

“Him? All his fucking life.” Barry’s glare couldn’t disguise the envy in his voice. “Used to be a fucking police dick up in Trenton.”

Old man Sims dragged over. “What’s it gonna be?” He wiped beads of sweat from his pale forehead, wiped his hands on the wretched apron.

“About time,” Barry growled at him. “We been sitting here for twenty minutes.”

“Shit,” commented Sims.

“Heaven forbid you should have to wait,” she said.

Shifting around, Barry stared at her in astonishment. “Look, I’m tired of telling you. I couldn’t make it that night. All right?”

“What’ll it be?”

“Barry, I was only kidding.”

“What’re you having? I ain’t got all night.”

“It ain’t my fault you can’t get your goddamn messages straight.”

When they ordered, Sims grouched. “How come nobody never orders nuthin’ but friggin’ hamburgers?”

“Yeah,” said Barry. “It ain’t like anybody’s ever proved nothing about the claws in your rabbit stew.”

Steve laughed, but Sims walked away muttering, “Friggin’ cops.”

“Barry? Just ignore him.” She sounded worried. “Anything else interesting happen today? Barry?”

“Yeah, real exciting.” He still glowered at the old man’s back. “Some old biddy in White’s Bog got her groceries snatched by some guy came out of the woods.”

“White’s Bog? Since when is that your jurisdiction?”

“We just heard about it,” Steve answered. He peered into her eyes for just a moment too long, then stared down at the table.

“Was that true, Steve? About your being a detective?”

“Ten years.” He nodded. “In the heart of the Cancer Belt.”

Back behind the counter, Sims dropped a plate and cursed, kicking at the pieces. There came the dancing sizzle of hot grease, the smell pervasive and too sweet.

“So what was that like?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Was it rough?”

“She wants to know about procedures, Stevey-boy. She digs that stuff.”

Steve shook his head as though coming out of a dream. “In a big case,” he began, leaning back, “first I always liked to find out the background. A lot of guys complain about paperwork, but you’d be surprised how much you can pick up from the files, questioning the neighbors, that sort of thing.”

“What kind of big cases?”

“Shit.” Barry blew smoke in their faces. “You know what the Pine Barrens is famous for?” His voice rumbled over them. “Swear to God, the number of unsolved murders. You look in any of the famous crime books, and alls you’re gonna find is Pine Barrens, Pine Barrens, Pine Barrens—none of them ever solved.”

“That’s because they mostly weren’t discovered for twenty years,” explained Steve. “And then all you’ve got is some bones.”

“Only reason anybody even remembers Hog Wallow is they had one there once.” Barry continued, ignoring the interruption. “Remember the Cleaver Murders? Listen to this, ’Thena. There was this woman…”

“Hog Wallow?” she asked. “Isn’t that where they found the biker in the trash bag last month?”

“That was Dead Forge.”

“Would you both shut up and listen to me for a minute? This woman just disappeared, then later on they found a skull in the woods. Never found the rest of her.”

“Never found her husband either,” appended Steve. “Not very mysterious.”

“Yeah, but don’t gimme that shit like you don’t know what I mean. And it goes way back, too. Too many of the shack people just turn up missing. And it’s not like they just wander off into the woods neither, so don’t say that, ’cause sometimes they find pieces out in the swamps.”

Athena tried to look away from Barry. She found something in his childishly gloating expression both fascinating and repellent. “So, Steve,” she said after a pause, “after all those years in the city, I guess this must be a big change for you. Right?”

“Chain of command is the biggest difference.” His laugh graveled pleasantly. “There isn’t one here. I always had trouble with the higher-ups. Always. They’d hand out commendations with one hand and reprimands with the other.” He laughed again, but more tightly. “What’s really funny is—now that I’ve got the freedom on the job I always wanted—I don’t care anymore.”

She never knew how to react when Steve said things like that. Fortunately, Barry started telling them the latest gossip about the sheriff of a neighboring township, who apparently had blown away his son in a sexual conflict over his daughter-in-law. But Barry soon launched into his usual complaint about how these “lowlife pineys” gave a bad name to the decent hardworking sort like himself. She’d heard it all before and listened until the contours of his words melted into an indistinguishable lump. Nodding in an interested fashion at regular intervals, she allowed her gaze to wander over the diner.

Several of the men wore fancy cowboy boots, and a fat woman had thick braids to her waist. Most were dressed with some degree of odd formality, but she found it difficult to pin down exactly what made it peculiar. A few of the customers began returning her stares, so she looked around, as though suddenly fascinated by the institutional-green walls. The fluorescent tube above the dusty moose head blinked, orange and unnatural, and she studied the bristling head. With an idle nausea, she wondered if she’d ever eaten any of the huge creature. One never knew about these hamburgers. Following its glass gaze, her eyes came to rest on the painting above the counter.

Applied too thickly, lurid colors turned the image almost three-dimensional, a crude mass of swirls and ridges. She couldn’t make out the words on the brass plate from here but recalled the title as something like
Devil in the Swamp
.

“Nothing but miles of wetland, quicksand, poison snakes,” Barry’s voice droned on. “Don’t go in. That’s the first thing they teach you on the force, practically. Let them settle it themselves.”

She nodded again, her attention not straying from the painting. Fat, crusted strokes formed hills and lumps, and out of the trees twisted a wraith like mist, on top of which drifted a malformed skull. She squinted. There appeared to be words scrawled in ghostly letters in the background, lines of doggerel under the greasy dust.

From across the table, Steve watched her, wondering what fascinated her so. Barry kept talking, and Steve groaned quietly. Inevitably at this point, in terms all the more irritating for being arch and vague, his partner would begin to brag about his underworld connections and about mob activity in the pines in general.

Barry winked at him, oozing confidentiality. “Better than dumping them in the Hudson where they’re only gonna swell and float. Am I right?” Suddenly, he stood up. “Gotta go visit the little boys’ room.”

She slipped out to let him pass, and with a familiar gesture, he allowed his hand to slide along her thigh. Steve reddened.

“All that crap about the mob. The most he’s maybe involved in is that stolen-car racket with his father-in-law and his damn biker friends. And I’m not too sure about that even.”

“Then you shouldn’t talk about it.” She gritted her teeth.

The food arrived. Smelling like old sweat, Sims bent over them, hairy stomach visible through holes in his rotting T-shirt.

“It’s a shame about Barry’s wife not being able to have kids.” Steve hurried through the words as a grease-sodden hamburger landed in front of him. “Hey, when you going to hire yourself some help in here?”

“Shit,” Sims replied, turning away.

She prodded at the steaming meat.

“Watch out for buckshot,” he kidded. “Yeah, it’s a shame about Cathy. I know that bothers him. Talks about it all the time. Still, what kind of a father would he make? Always running around.” Despising himself, he spoke with strained casualness, his eyes fixed on the table. “Of course, if they had kids, maybe he wouldn’t run around. So much.” He looked up when she laughed at him.

“Thanks for reminding me. That’s right. I’m going out with a married man. A married cop no less. That’s why you’re here, Steven. You’re my red herring.”

“So what’s he with that gut? A blowfish?”

“My, we’re witty this evening, aren’t we?” She looked away.

“He’s what my wife used to call a lady-killer. You don’t know how he talks, the things he says about you.”

“You don’t often mention your wife.” Bored with this, she wanted the conversation to at least seem normal. “No children?”

He shook his head.

“Family?” She found herself avoiding the wounded intensity in his eyes.

“Up in Newark.”

“See them much?”

He shook his head again.

“I guess you get used to being alone.” She sugared her coffee.

“You can get used to hanging if you have to. Another of my wife’s expressions.” He picked up his hamburger and stared intently at the lumpy meat. “Seems to me I’ve heard a person can get diseases from eating venison with ticks in it.” He took a bite and chewed slowly. “He was from around here, wasn’t he?” he asked, swallowing. “Your husband? So how come you’re still out in the pines?”

“My grandmother passed away.” She glared at him a moment, then sighed. “Where could I go? And there was the boy. And the house.”

He nodded, studying her face. “You think there’s any future in this? With a guy like Barry, I mean?”

“Couldn’t we have a friendly conversation, Steven? Just once?”

“The way you act around him”—his words came out with a surge of harshness—“makes me sick. The two of you, like you’ve got ice water in your veins. I know you’re not like that. What are you trying to prove, for crissakes?”

“I’m sick of hearing that!”

Startled by the furious hiss of her voice, he knocked over a water glass. At first he just stared at it; then with ever clumsier gestures, he tried to blot it up, pulling wads of paper napkins out of the holder and knocking over the ketchup in the process. Water slipped off the table onto his lap.

She wouldn’t look at him. She understood her anger only too well: he thought they belonged together, that they w ere two of a kind, the walking wounded.

“I’m drowning over here.” He tried to laugh.

She pushed at the spreading puddle with her napkin. She’d always known why she resented him so, and every glance confirmed it. The broad shoulders, the muscular chest and arms, the blond good looks. But the resemblance never extended beyond the merely physical. Everything else was wrong. Wallace would never have been a failure, no matter what. He’d never have allowed himself to be beaten by life. Never.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I get clumsy like this when I’m worked up. I break a lot of things.” Grimacing, he continued his attempts to clean up the mess, rapidly making it worse. “I guess I do the same thing with my life. I drink too much and…”

“I see he struck out again.” Grinning, Barry stood over them. “Thought I’d give the kid time to put the make on you.” He sat down and put his arm around her. “What the hell happened here?”

“I spilled something.”

“Again?” Barry held Athena with an ostentatiously casual possessiveness.

Steve got up suddenly. “I guess I’ll head on out.” Without another word, he walked away.

“Pick me up here at midnight,” Barry called after him. “And stay sober!”

Everyone in the place heard. She saw him flinch as he went out the door, all eyes upon him. People often watched him, she’d noticed that before—the tall blond cop with the handsome face. And she knew him to be oblivious to it, just as Wallace had never been aware of his physical impact either. Through the smeared window, she watched Steve cross the lot toward the police car, and she noticed that the truck with the dog had gone.