John Locke - Now & Then

“And she’d have used her own initials.”

“Exactly.”

“So maybe she’s got a fuck buddy with the initials LV. They go on a picnic, spread out a big blanket, eat some food, and suddenly he’s all over her. She’s all ‘Oh, LV! LV!’ They have wild monkey sex right in the middle of the day in some deserted area tucked behind a sand dune. It’s their special place. They’re lying on the blanket after doing it, thoroughly spent, and our sanctimonious little Beth is all raptured up ‘cause it’s been a long time, and she gathers up her strength and scratches his initials on the basket.”

I looked at her as I often did, with complete amazement. “Why is it that all your scenarios involve sex?”

“Why is it that yours don’t?”

She had me there. I decided to move along. “Let’s frame it a different way.”

She shrugged.

“You still haven’t proven the marks were made by a woman.”

“I’m getting to that.”

“You’re just trying to be dramatic. Like some detective in a stupid movie.”

“It’s my one opportunity.”

“When you fall asleep tonight I might super glue your dick to your stomach.”

I looked at her as I often did, with complete horror. I handed her the little sharp piece I’d put in my pocket earlier, just before the kid burned his back in my fire pit. She looked at it and wrinkled her nose, turned her hand and let it fall to the kitchen counter.

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“But you’ll concede it’s a woman’s fingernail?”

“Not Beth’s.”

“Right, not Beth’s. But a woman’s. And suppose she was scratching her own initials into the bottom of the basket, and had to use her fingernail because she didn’t have access to an ink pen, a knife, or any other type of sharp object.”

“Like what, a prisoner?”

“Exactly like a prisoner, except that she has a northern accent.”

“A northern accent.”

“Yup.”

“And this you can tell from her fingernail.”

I smiled, enjoying the moment.

Rachel abruptly crossed the floor to the cabinet that housed the odds and ends. She pushed a few objects around with her finger and eventually picked up a small tube and held it between her thumb and forefinger so I could see it clearly.

Super Glue.

She sighed. “I’m tired, Kevin. Just say it. Who do you think made these scratches in Beth’s picnic basket?”

“Libby Vail.”

Chapter 21

A LONG, LOW rumble woke us up an hour before dawn. Remembering what happened the last time I heard that sound, I jumped out of bed and checked the window, wondering if another hail storm was headed our way. Thankfully, all was calm. Patches of heat lightning lit up the distant sky.

“You okay?” I said.

Rachel murmured, “I’m tired. Go back to sleep.”

“How’d you know the kid’s name?”

“What kid?” She seemed half asleep as she said it.

I raised the volume in my voice to a conversational level. “The kid that got burned in the pig pit yesterday, the fire ant kid.”

She lay still a moment, and then yawned. “I went to check on him in the hospital.”

“When?”

“The morning after that thing with the fire ants.”

She settled back into her breathing rhythm and I thought about that morning and how I’d gone for a long run. I remembered returning to the Inn, and Beth mentioning Rachel had gone somewhere in the car. So that made sense. But Rachel had gone to see the kid before I agreed to help Beth at The Seaside. Which meant there was more to the story.

“You saw him again, though.”

She hesitated a moment, then sighed and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Is this really so important we have to talk about it now?”

“That depends on your answer to my last question.”

She thought a minute. “Did I see him again? Yes. Why, you think I’m cheating on you?”

“No,” I said, but her comment made me pause to think about the possibility. Rachel was a sexual being, and while I didn’t doubt for a minute that she was capable of cheating, I didn’t think the kid was physically capable of participating. Then again, he seemed awfully resilient.

Rachel said, “Then what, you think he’s holding that girl captive somewhere?”

“No, I think that’s a whole different thing.”

“Then what’s all this about D’Augie?”

“When you saw him that second time, did you happen to mention I’d taken the job as caretaker and that I was planning to kill the squirrels in the attic?”

She started to speak, but caught herself. She thought about it. “You think he somehow got up in the attic that day when all the snakes and squirrels got out?”

“There was a major hole in the plywood, where the stairs are,” I said. “Him falling through it might explain the casts on his arm and leg.”

“Why on earth would he want to climb up into that smelly old attic?”

“To kill me.”

She laughed. “ Kill you? He doesn’t even know you! Kill you for what?”

I kissed her forehead. “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”

She looked at me wide-eyed. “Are you for real? D’Augie’s sweet. I think he’s just a weird, accident-prone kid.”

“Remember the knife I found that first night?”

“Yeah. You didn’t tell me about it at first, though, remember? I found it in the dresser.”

“Well, he had another one yesterday, in his arm sling.”

“So?”

“This knife was just as sharp as the first one.”

She shook her head. “Kevin, you’re insane.”

“Why’s that?”

“Every time we see this kid he’s lying helpless on his back in the sand. One day he’s getting bit half to death by fire ants, the next he’s getting burned alive in a pig pit. Not to mention the fact he’s hopping around on a broken leg and has a broken arm. You really think he’s trying to kill you?”

“I didn’t say he was any good at it.”

“Go to sleep.”

I took a seat on the couch and waited until Rachel had fallen into a deep asleep, which didn’t take long, thanks to the sleeping pill I’d given her a few hours earlier. I put on my running shoes and shorts and snuck out of the room and jogged the mile to the little church on Eighth Street. I paused, waiting for the feeling, but nothing was happening. I circled the building, peering through windows, searching for any sign of guards or prisoners, but found nothing.

Maybe the feel-good power hadn’t come from the church after all. On the chance it was further north, I jogged another quarter mile up A1A, gave up, circled back around to Eighth Street, and stopped about two blocks west of the church.

Still no feeling.

Assuming the power could be detected at least a mile from its source, I decided to cover as wide an area as possible on my way back to the B&B. The course I chose took me near the hospital on Center Street.

Which is where I finally felt it.

I didn’t understand how the feeling could be at the church one day, at the hospital the next, but I knew for certain it was emanating from the hospital this time. Wishing I had a car so I could get there quicker, I tore down the street in a full sprint. As I rounded the last corner, I knew I was too late.

The feeling was getting progressively weaker.

I stopped.

Within a minute it was gone.

I jogged back to the B&B more confused than ever. When I got in the room I fired up my laptop and typed a name into the search engine while Rachel slept. In a half hour the alarm would ring to get us up for kitchen duty. I clicked on one of the search choices and began reading. That article led me to another, and I read a half dozen more before the alarm went off. When it did I turned the computer off and shut the lid.