Three Slices (25 page)

John says, “This is it. This is APN 239159184. That’s Buzzard Creek cutting its way through the ground out there. Running hard right now with all the snowmelt coming down.”

“It’s nothing. There’s nothing here.”

“That’s mostly true. It is pretty, though.”

“I don’t give a monkey’s balls about pretty. This wasn’t it, then. Your theory didn’t work.” Her hope is a bird shot out of the sky:
kablam
.

John shrugs. Sighs. “Sorry.” He flips through some pages in his hands, pages sitting in a manila folder. “You sure your psychic friend is the real deal?”

“I’m not. I don’t even know that she’s really a psychic.”

“She didn’t used to be. Used to be an actress in Denver.”

An actress? Doesn’t that figure. All those theatrics. Still, though—that was more than what she expected when it came to
commitment to the role
. Killing a pigeon and smashing its guts into a glob of cheese? And she
knew
things. Things that almost no one is privy to. She knew Miriam. Or part of her, at least. “Worthless woman,” Miriam says. “Nothing here. And no one.”

“You wanna know who owns it?”

“Huh?”

He taps the folder. “The property. Someone bought it.”

She reaches out an open palm, waggles her fingers.

He puts the papers in her hand.

When she pulls them close, she sees it. The name.

“Oh, shit,” she says.

The owner of the property?

E. CALDECOTT.

Fuck.

14. Now: The Stalking Horse

M
ELORA TURNS
the hatchet in her hand. “I’m not a Caldecott. You know that by now, don’t you?” She
hm
s. “Maybe you don’t. I just needed to get you here. I thought it was... I dunno. Appropriate? At the time you were in the river with Eleanor Caldecott, I was in the bathroom with my boyfriend. He’d beaten me pretty good. My eye was swollen up. Had a good knot on my head. Kyle—that was his name, Kyle—he dragged my butt into the bathroom and conked me on the toilet tank, then tried to drown me in the tub. And I guess he did. Paramedics said I died. I was down there in the water like that, his hand holding a clump of my hair, my blood swimming out in front of me, turning the water red, and I saw someone. I saw you. I saw you reaching for a young girl. I saw a man coming up behind me. It was a heckuva thing, like I wasn’t just there in the tub but like I was at the bottom of that river, staring up from the mud. We connected. And ever since, I’ve been able to feel you out there. Sometimes, I can see through your eyes, too. I know you. We’re sisters. Sisters of the spirit. Of the soul. You can see that, right?”

Miriam’s mind swims.

Nearby, she hears John grunting, groaning, weeping.

“Something else changed for me, too. I can see people who have done bad things. Really bad things. It leaves a...a mark on them. Like these striations of death. Like rigor mortis. When a dog dies, you can see them form first on its belly—these long, gray fingers, like stains on the skin. I’m a vet tech, by the way, and I dosed you with ketamine. That’s why you can still see and hear me.” She breathes loudly inside the mask. “I used xylazine to knock you out first.” She laughs like this is funny, somehow. “I put that in a dart. Had it ready. When you started to come out of it—
then
the ketamine. I think it’s working. It’s working, right?” Another laugh. Some joke Miriam doesn’t get.

Miriam tries to struggle. Her body is gone from her. Like it’s somewhere else, like her mind is unmoored and hovering above it all.

She tries to speak, too. A sound comes out: “Whhha. Mmmmn. Puh.
No
.”

“Your friend, John. He’s a bad fella. He’s done wrong. And we’re gonna right those wrongs today—help get some justice for poor girls. See, I’ve been studying that Caldecott case. It hit the news, you know. Some Internet sites and forums even have glimpses of you—they think you’re some kind of
avenging angel
. Maybe not even a real person but some kind of ghost. Anyway. The Mockingbird Killers, they killed girls. Hurt them. But now, I thought, I can use that. Like, what’s the word? Subvert. I can
subvert
that. Turn it on its ear. Hurt the men who hurt women. Lay them on the table. Make those wicked fools pay.”

Miriam feels hot tears creep down her cheek.

Behind Melora, Not-Louis stands, licking his lips. Then he’s gone.

“Like my boyfriend. I’ll get him someday, too. He ran. I’ll find him. You’ll help me find him. Because like I said, we’re sisters. I love you. So, so much.” She stoops down, kisses Miriam’s forehead. The kiss is cold and soft. “Now, let’s kill John Lucas. You saw the photos I left for you?”

15. One Day Ago: Gone John

W
HILE SHE’S
out trying to chase down leads on this Mary Stitch character, John leaves a message for her at the motel—literally, a note taped to her front door:
Come to my house. Got info. 4040 Durant Gulch
.

She takes the pickup truck—an old beat-ass thing she purchased from some gator wrestler in Florida—and heads out that way after a time to look at the road atlas in the glove compartment. Durant Gulch is a long, winding road that parallels a deep, red-rock ditch. Goes up, up, up, and close to the top, she finds his house: a little rancher. Humble. Not much to look at.

The door is open. Just a little.

She thinks,
I hope like hell he left it open for me
, because the alternative...

The door drifts all the way wide.

“John?”

Nothing. No one answers.

Shit, shit, shit.

There, on a little nook table with a simple red tablecloth: two manila folders like the ones he was holding. The first and closest is open. Miriam picks up papers, skims them. The E. Caldecott who owns parcel number 239159184 accepts mail at a different address. Just outside of Collbran, in a town called Fruita.

John said he’d have his real estate buddy do a little more digging. Was this the result of that? Sure looks like it.

But then, the other folder.

That one has a Post-it note on it.

Her name is written on that note. In a script different from the one left at her motel room, the one from John. This: red pen. Flowy handwriting.

All it says is:

Miriam.

Miriam opens it.

Her innards clench.

Pictures. Crime scene photos. Marked at the bottom with
Denver PD
.

Dead women. Girls. Teenagers, maybe. Six of them, at least. All beaten so that their faces are unrecognizable. Hair matted with so much blood.

Miriam doesn’t understand what she’s looking at.

Her breath comes in fast, shallow bursts. Heart racing. Throat burning with bile. She thinks,
This is tied to the Mockingbird Killers somehow,
and again she starts concocting a mad idea in her mind about a resurgent Caldecott clan out there killing young women. But she tries to imagine how John ties into it. He dies soon at the hands of one of them, but that doesn’t track: they kill girls, like the girls in these photos—bad girls, Wicked Pollies—not old men from the Army. More theories: maybe John
is
one of the Caldecotts, maybe he’s been playing her this whole time, and maybe that blows back on him somehow.

Maybe he killed these girls.

She turns over the photos. Writing on the back of each. A time and a date. Each written in the same handwriting on the note she found at her door.

John’s handwriting.

Miriam slams that folder closed.

She picks up the other one. The one with the address on it.

Time to take a trip, she thinks.

But first, she has a few stops to make.

16. Now: Death Marks

M
ELORA WALKS
over to Miriam. Helps prop her up. Miriam’s like a doll:
Pose me, place me, use me
. When it comes to date rape drugs, the one everyone always talks about is Rohypnol, or
roofies
. But ketamine is right up there, too.

Something rattles in Miriam’s boot. Something loose.

Again, Melora kisses her on the cheek. “You stay there. Watch me. I’m just like you, Miriam. You’re not alone anymore. I know you feel alone, but you have me. Someone to do what you do. To make the bad people pay.”

Then it all starts to happen like in the vision.

Miriam realizes,
I’m the one standing there. In the back. Just a shadow
. The killer’s not talking to somebody. The killer’s talking to
her.

I really am just a shadow
. Bodiless, thin, bleak, black.

Melora goes to John. John, who cries and struggles and bleeds.

Hatchet in Melora’s hand.

Do something
, Miriam screams inside her own mind.
Move. Speak. Something. Anything!

Melora says, “I’m glad I get to show you this. You need to see this. You need to see what I’ve become.”

This is happening. You have to stop it.

Change fate.

Rock in the river time.

Melora lifts the hatchet.

“Wait,” Miriam says—an animal bleat. She lifts her hand. Waves it about.

The killer stops. Hatchet hanging.

Melora turns toward her, the beak pointing, the leather hood creaking.

“We...do it...” Miriam draws a deep breath through her nose. “
Together
.”

“Together,” Melora repeats, the word hollow inside the hood. A few seconds pass. Seconds that feel like minutes. Miriam still floats. Disconnected. The wall behind her barely a presence at all. But then Melora says, “Yeah.
Yes
. I like that. We should do it together. You can... you can show me the way.”

She steps toward Miriam.
Sisters
. Arms out. Helping Miriam to move, one plodding step at a time. Toward John there on the table. His eyes big as dug graves. Fearful as he’s probably ever been. Are these his sins coming home to roost? Does he believe he deserves this?

Whatever comes next, it has to happen a certain way.

My boot.

It’s in my boot
.

Miriam doesn’t have much strength. She still feels off-kilter, unmoored, and so as they get to the table, she lets the weight of her body do the first part—she puts all her weight to her left side and falls that direction.

Into Melora. A moment of imbalance—

A moment of distraction.

Just enough for Miriam to grab the knife.

The second one.

The one she bought at the bait shop after breakfast that day. The one she bought just in case. A second knife—
because knives are cool
.

This one, hiding in her boot.

She grabs it—it’s small. Three-inch blade. Serrated.

Opens with a quick flick.

A fast plunge and it sticks in Melora’s thigh. The girl howls—and again the hatchet rises. Miriam, still sluggish, still groggy, can’t do anything, can’t be fast, so all she can do is
push
with all her might—

Melora falls.

The hatchet clatters.

Melora, on all fours, straining for the knife jabbed in her leg. Miriam has nothing, no grace, no dexterity, and even though control of her body is returning, the best she can do is drop down on her “sister” like a felled tree. One hand clumsily wrenching the hood up and off. The other arm snaking around the girl’s neck. Miriam puts all her weight, meager as it is, straight down. Pulling her own arm tight. Grabbing her wrist with her other hand to cinch the noose.

Melora starts making a choking sound.

“I’m sorry,” Miriam mutters. “I’m so sorry.”

You can’t live. You can’t make these decisions. You can’t be me.

I don’t even want to be me anymore.

The woman’s legs kick out.

Her head tries to snap back but there’s nowhere to go.

And eventually, the fight goes out of her.

And death enters in.

17. Now: Time Keeps On Ticking

R
EST.
N
O
rescue for John. No resurrection for Melora.

Miriam slumps against the wall and she sleeps. If it can be called that. Instead, it’s like falling: falling down through the dark, through grave dirt, through a casket-shaped hole carved out of a hill. Rustle of feathers. Clack of beaks.

Eventually, she jars awake. To the sound of John Lucas weeping.

Her head feels like someone filled her sinuses with cement. Her body like someone injected molten lead into her bone marrow.