Nora Roberts: Blood Brothers

“Let’s take fifteen.” Quinn pushed to her feet. “Get the table cleared off, take the dog out. Just move a little. Fifteen.”

Cal brushed a hand over her arm as he rose with her. “I need to check the fire anyway, probably bring in more wood. Let’s do this in the living room when we’re finished up.”

THEY LOOKED LIKE ORDINARY PEOPLE, CAL thought. Just a group of friends hanging out on a winter night. Gage had switched to coffee, and that was usual. Cal hadn’t known Gage to indulge in more than a couple drinks at a time since the summer they’d been seventeen. Fox was back on Coke, and he himself had opted for water.

Clear heads, he mused. They wanted clear heads if there were questions to be answered.

They’d gone back to gender groups. Had that been automatic, even intrinsic? he wondered. The three women on the couch, Fox on the floor with Lump. He’d taken a chair, and Gage stood by the fire as if he might just walk out if the topic didn’t suit his mood.

“So.” Cybil tucked her legs under her, let her dark eyes scan the room. “I’m wondering what was the first thing, event, instance, the first happening, we’ll say, that alerted you something was wrong in town. After your night in the clearing, after you went home.”

“Mr. Guthrie and the fork.” Fox stretched out, propped his head on Lump’s belly. “That was a big clue.”

“Sounds like the title of a kid’s book.” Quinn made a note on her pad. “Why don’t you fill us in?”

“You take it, Cal,” Fox suggested.

“It would’ve been our birthday-the night, or really the evening of it. We were all pretty spooked. It was worse being separated, each of us in our own place. I talked my mother into letting me go in to the bowling center, so I’d have something to do, and Gage would be there. She couldn’t figure out whether to ground me or not,” he said with a half smile. “First and last time I remember her being undecided on that kind of issue. So she let me go in with my father. Gage?”

“I was working. Mr. Hawkins let me earn some spending money at the center, mopping up spills or carrying grill orders out to tables. I know I felt a hell of a lot better when Cal came in. Then Fox.”

“I nagged my parents brainless to let me go in. My father finally caved, took me. I think he wanted to have a confab with Cal’s dad, and Gage’s if he could.”

“So, Brian-Mr. O’Dell-and my dad sat down at the end of the counter, having coffee. They didn’t bring Bill, Gage’s father, into it at that point.”

“Because he didn’t know I’d been gone in the first place,” Gage said. “No point getting me in trouble until they’d decided what to do.”

“Where was your father?” Cybil asked.

“Around. Behind the pins. He was having a few sober hours, so Mr. Hawkins had him working on something.”

“Ball return, lane two,” Cal murmured. “I remember. It seemed like an ordinary summer night. Teenagers, some college types on the pinballs and video games. Grill smoking, pins crashing. There was a kid-two or three years old, I guess-with a family in the four lane. Major tantrum. The mother hauled him outside right before it happened.”

He took a swig of water. He could see it, bell clear. “Mr. Guthrie was at the counter, drinking a beer, eating a dog and fries. He came in once a week. Nice enough guy. Sold flooring, had a couple of kids in high school. Once a week, he came in when his wife went to the movies with girlfriends. It was clockwork. And Mr. Guthrie would order a dog and fries, and get steadily trashed. My dad used to say he did his drinking there because he could tell himself it wasn’t real drinking if he wasn’t in a bar.”

“Troublemaker?” Quinn asked as she made another note.

“Anything but. He was what my dad called an affable drunk. He never got mean, or even sloppy. Tuesday nights, Mr. Guthrie came in, got a dog and fries, drank four or five beers, watched some games, talked to whoever was around. Somewhere around eleven, he’d leave a five-dollar tip on the grill and walk home. Far as I know he didn’t so much as crack a Bud otherwise. It was a Tuesday night deal.”

“He used to buy eggs from us,” Fox remembered. “A dozen brown eggs, every Saturday morning. Anyway.”

“It was nearly ten, and Mr. Guthrie was having another beer. He was walking by the tables with it,” Cal said. “Probably going to take it and stand behind the lanes, watch some of the action. Some guys were having burgers. Frank Dibbs was one of them-held his league’s record for high game, coached Little League. We were sitting at the next table, eating pizza. Dad told us to take a break, so we were splitting a pizza. Dibbs said, ‘Hey, Guth, the wife wants new vinyl in the kitchen. What kind of deal can you give me?’

“And Guthrie, he just smiles. One of those tight-lipped smiles that don’t show any teeth. He picks up one of the forks sitting on the table. He jammed it into Dibbs’s cheek, just stabbed it into his face, and kept walking. People are screaming and running, and, Christ, that fork is just sticking out of Mr. Dibbs’s cheek, and blood’s sliding down his face. And Mr. Guthrie strolls over behind lane two, and drinks his beer.”

To give himself a moment, Cal took a long drink. “My dad wanted us out. Everything was going crazy, except Guthrie, who apparently was crazy. Your dad took care of Dibbs,” Cal said to Fox. “I remember how he kept his head. Dibbs had already yanked the fork out, and your father grabbed this stack of napkins and got the bleeding stopped. There was blood on his hands when he drove us home.”

Cal shook his head. “Not the point. Fox’s dad took us home. Gage came with me-my father took care of that. He didn’t get home until it was light out. I heard him come home; my mother had waited for him. I heard him tell her they had Guthrie locked up, and he was just sitting in his cell laughing. Laughing like it was all a big joke. Later, when it was all over, he didn’t even remember. Nobody remembered much of what went on that week, or if they did, they put it away. He never came in the center again. They moved away the next winter.”

“Was that the only thing that happened that night?” Cybil asked after a moment.

“Girl was raped.” Gage set his empty mug on the mantel. “Making out with her boyfriend out on Dog Street. He didn’t stop when she said stop, didn’t stop when she started to cry, to scream. He raped her in the backseat of his secondhand Buick, then shoved her out on the side of the road and drove off. Wrapped his car around a tree a couple hours later. Ended up in the same hospital as she did. Only he didn’t make it.”

“Family mutt attacked an eight-year-old boy,” Fox added. “Middle of that night. The dog had slept with the kid every night for three years. The parents woke up hearing the kid screaming, and when they got to the bedroom, the dog went for them, too. The father had to beat it off with the kid’s baseball bat.”

“It just got worse from there. That night, the next night.” Cal took a long breath. “Then it didn’t always wait for night. Not always.”

“There’s a pattern to it.” Quinn spoke quietly, then glanced up when Cal’s voice cut through her thoughts.

“Where? Other than ordinary people turn violent or psychotic?”

“We saw what happened with Lump. You’ve just told us about another family pet. There have been other incidents like that. Now you’ve said the first overt incident all of you witnessed involved a man who’d had several beers. His alcohol level was probably over the legal limit, meaning he was impaired. Mind’s not sharp after drinking like that. You’re more susceptible.”

“So Guthrie was easier to influence or infect because he was drunk or well on the way?” Fox pushed up to sitting. “That’s good. That makes good sense.”