Crane, R [ Southern Watch 03] Corrupted (18 page)

He didn’t know the exact elevation of Mount Horeb, but he knew he was a lot happier driving it than climbing the damned thing. Besides, the whole thing was covered in trees all the way up, looking like some monster with a bowed back rising out of the earth. Lerner clicked his tongue in his mouth. Where was this motherfucker hiding?

Lauren paused at the door, hesitating before she knocked. The sound of violin music filled the air, not a single sour note. Lauren was no expert, but she could hear that her daughter wasn’t quite like a concert violinist. She was pretty proficient, though. She listened through the door, waiting to see if Molly missed a note, and held back from knocking.

It wasn’t like she didn’t want to see Molly, but the thought of picking up the conversation where they’d left off when she’d stormed out this morning wasn’t exactly appealing. It was a lot easier to let her mother handle the duties associated with being the bad guy, while she could just swoop in and be the good guy in the limited amount of time she usually had with her daughter.

The thought that those days were over was cause for a little more joy to be robbed from her life. Stressful job, a sheriff who considered her his personal mortician, and now this? Ugh. Double ugh. Triple-quad-quintuple ugh. She knocked.

“Come in,” Molly said, as the sound of the bow running over the strings came to a stop. It wasn’t one of those scratchy, abrupt stops, either, it was a graceful stop at the end of a note, not like when the needle came off a record mid-song.

Lauren entered the room, pausing at the threshold. There was still a lot of pink in here, though she doubted it was much to do with her daughter’s taste. The room had been pink since she was a little girl, and it hadn’t ever been repainted. Who would have done it? She was too busy, Molly was too disinterested, and her mother had left that sort of stuff up to her dad before he died. As a result, the few posters her daughter had put up had a pink background. The place smelled nice, though, the result of a vanilla-scented candle burning on the dresser.

“Hey, kiddo,” Lauren said. She shifted to lean on the frame of the door with her shoulder and crossed one foot behind the other. She was still wearing her scrubs.

Molly was sitting on the desk chair. Light shone in on her across the old wood floor. “Hey,” she answered without enthusiasm, the violin still stuck under her chin, bow in hand but away from the instrument.

Lauren stood there for a minute pondering her angle of attack. She didn’t want it to be an attack, but she knew—knew for sure—that Molly was going to see it that way no matter how she put this. How could she not? “Did you finish your homework?” She asked it low and slow, lowering her head to stare at her own feet and the floor as she did it.

“The homework from this morning? Yeah,” Molly said, and Lauren looked back up. She was still holding the bow, ready to get back to her practice. “Turned it in at school, of course.”

“I meant your homework for tomorrow,” Lauren said, and she bobbed her head up to look at Molly while she said it, but only with great effort. It was so damned uncomfortable.

“No,” Molly said, and her voice seemed suddenly strangely husky. “I’ll get it after I finish my practice.”

Lauren felt another one of those sighs coming on, the one that told her she was tired and that she damned sure didn’t want to do what she was about to have to do. “I think you need to do it now.”

Molly stared at her, probably fifty/fifty on dumbstruck and annoyed. “I’m running a straight-A average. Are you sure you want to question my process?”

“Way to sound like a corporate employee,” Lauren said. “But since you brought it up, call this a management initiative from your mother to try and keep you from having to do your algebra in a rush as you run out the door.”

“I got it done fine,” Molly said, and her brow had descended, eyes turned dark with fury.

“I’m sure you did,” Lauren said, trying to figure out how to broach the other gaping subject just sitting there in the middle of the room. “But the real question is why you didn’t get it done before that—”

“I told you, I fell asleep.” Molly’s voice crackled with teenage anger. Lauren started to wonder if she’d sounded like this at sixteen, but she didn’t have to think it over very hard. She knew she had.

“I’m not gone so much that I don’t know when you’re lying.” Lauren just laid it out there, quiet, trying to avoid the path that would set her off. Doubtful that this would do it, but it was worth a try.

“You think I’m—?” Molly’s eyes flickered. They still held that resentment, but there was a flash of uncertainty. “Whatever. I got my homework done, turned in, and my grades are sound. I don’t know why you’re bitching at me.”

“I’m not ‘bitching’ at you,” Lauren said—but she was, wasn’t she? Same shit her mother would do to her, that passive aggressive thing where she’d latch on to something unrelated to what she really wanted to talk about—which was the reason she was lying about not finishing the homework. Lauren remembered sixteen like it was yesterday—hell, it practically was—and there was always a reason for her to do it, too. “Who’s the boy?”

Molly just stared at her but didn’t adjust quite quickly enough. “What boy?” she asked, a second too slow.

Lauren laughed, light, near-toneless. “God, I wonder if it was this obvious to my mom when I was lying?” Of course it was; she’d almost always figured it out.

Molly made a half-grunt, half-seething sound. “I have to practice. And then I have homework to do.” She made the dagger eyes, the ones that Lauren had made at her mother.

“I’m going to check your homework later,” Lauren said. “Leave it out for me, okay?”

The eyeroll was prodigious. “Fine.” It was definitely not fine.

“Okay, then,” Lauren said, and started to leave her daughter’s room.

“Close the door behind you!” Molly called, a little more snot in her tone than was really needed. Lauren did and stood out there, just waiting, listening as the tone of the violin picked up.

It was late afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky, and she could feel the tension wracking her. What to do? Normally she might have tried to squeeze in a run by the Caledonia River, but since she’d seen that body at Rafton Park, she had no desire to go anywhere near there. Or town, for that matter, since Tim Connor had gotten run over on a jog of his own.

No, she needed air but not danger. Those places were right here in town, along with whoever the hell was being so damned vicious as to run people down. Lauren wanted somewhere a little more isolated, a little more removed from what was going on in Midian. There was the road up on Mount Horeb that she’d run a few times. Maybe she’d try that.

Arch could see Erin’s Crown Victoria behind him—the sheriff’s own car, he still thought of it—easing up the curved road leading up Mount Horeb. It wasn’t like they’d planned to travel in a convoy, but once they were out of town she was a little heavy on the pedal and he was light, so it was natural she’d catch up to him eventually, he supposed. Besides, they weren’t going all that much farther.

“Where do you think this thing is?” Alison asked from next to him. She was pretty quiet, thinking it over on the way up. “Hiding in one of the old mines by day, slouching down to Midian by night?”

“Could be,” Arch said. “It’d be tough to comb all those old mining tunnels, though. Best we check up and down the main roads first, see if there’s any sign of anything amiss. Maybe look at driveways for a sign of …” He let his voice drift off. “Well, I don’t know what we’d been looking for a sign of.”

“Mmmm,” Alison said, and he could tell she was lost in thought again. She was pretty smart, his wife, valedictorian of her class and all. Sometimes he forgot how smart she was because she didn’t always come out with the deepest thoughts. She put her mind to something, she could usually do something with it, though he wasn’t sure exactly how far she’d get with demons hiding somewhere on the mountain. “Locals,” she said.

“What?” Arch asked, holding the wheel tight around a curve, the vinyl steering wheel smooth against his fingers.

“Erin said this thing made noise. Loud noise. When it came past her.” They passed a mailbox on the right, and Alison flicked her wrist to indicate it as it shot by. “Some of the locals might have heard it, especially if it’s following a path or a road.”

“Well, shoot,” Arch said, blinking in surprise. He hadn’t come near to thinking of that.

Erin eased off the gas and pulled into the overlook as Arch guided the Explorer off the road in front of her. She had been expecting him to drive slow, but he was past slow and into granny territory. She bit off another complaint, let it die on her lips, and just took the Crown Vic in to park behind him and the town car already waiting for them. The overlook was on a curve, and down below the whole Caledonia River Valley was laid out, with other smaller mountains and foothills providing the rise that fenced it all in.

“Here we are,” she said, stating the obvious to Hendricks, who was already reaching for the door. They hadn’t talked much on the way up the mountain, because there wasn’t much to say. Plus, she could feel her own fatigue setting in, and she knew he was dealing with more than a little of his own. She’d already picked up on the fact that when Hendricks got tired, he got cranky and sullen. It wasn’t subtle, either, though he seemed pretty pleasant overall right now. She attributed that to the idea that they were maybe close to something on getting this demon.

“Evening,” Arch said as Erin got out of the Crown Vic. The overlook was a nice view, all green valleys and a nice picturesque scene of Midian lining the valley floor. It was a fun drive, usually, a real scenic thing to do on a Sunday morning, maybe meander on up to the Mulberry Lodge near the peak of the mountain, such as it was. Nice restaurant, nice place for prime rib. It had the added bonus of a hell of a view, so it tended to cater to a little higher-end crowd. She’d been there a couple times with her folks back in the olden days, celebrating special events, before her brothers had left town.

“So what now?” Hendricks asked, and Erin could hear the cranky and sullen starting to come out.

“Alison had an idea,” Arch said as Lerner and Duncan came shuffling over. “Erin said this thing was loud; maybe someone who lives up here might have heard it.”

“Good point,” Lerner said in that Boston accent. He wasn’t acting like a dick at the moment for some reason, and Erin wondered what it was. “We could split up, canvas the area a little.”

“Closer to the bottom of the hill, the better,” Erin said. “We know this thing probably came toward the mountain, but it may not be up the mountain. It could have veered off before it got here.”

“It could have,” Arch agreed. “Could have gone to the far side over the pass to the north. Probably didn’t go easterly, because there are other roads that would have made more sense to take out of town if it meant to go that direction—”

“Maybe this thing doesn’t know your town that well,” Hendricks said.

“Maybe,” Arch conceded. “But this assumption we got is all we’ve got to go on, so we might as well—”

“Work it, yeah,” Hendricks said, sounding a little resigned to her ears. “Probably best if the cops knock on the doors, right?”

“It’d make more sense than having Lerner and Duncan flashing their badges,” Erin said with a half-smile. She gave them a frown. “Do you even have badges?”

Lerner pulled something out of his jacket and flipped it down; it wasn’t something she could easily read, but she got the sense it was important and that he was very official, whatever it said. “We have something close,” he said with a grin. “It’ll work well enough to get us answers if we knock on a door.”

“Maybe we should split up,” Hendricks said then paused. “Wait …” He almost sounded like he was slurring his words. “Never mind, that’s a plot from a horror movie.”

“It’s still daylight,” Erin said. “That means we’re fine, right?”

“No telling,” Lerner said. “Teams of two would be my recommendation. At least one of us law enforcement types to balance out you two civilians.” He gestured vaguely to Hendricks and Alison. “I’d also really recommend that you don’t put me, Duncan or cowboy together.”

Erin felt an insufferable smile coming on. “What’s the matter? You two having marital tension?”

Lerner grinned. “Well, we’ve been not sleeping together for about a hundred years, sweetheart, so there is that. But I was suggesting you split us up just so because the three of us are the only ones carrying something full length that can handle killing a demon.” He waved a hand faintly at Arch. “No offense to your safety knife, but that thing is gonna be about as effective as a toothpick for poking at something that moves as fast as this thing supposedly does.”

“None taken,” Arch said. “All right, how about—”

“How about I go with Duncan?” Alison said. Erin felt a little surge of surprise at that one.

“I’ll ride with the blond deputy,” Lerner said, and Erin’s surprise increased, mingling with irritation. Her annoyance increased as well as he headed toward her patrol car without even waiting for her to say yea or nay. “I guess that leaves you boys as the dynamic duo.” His eyes flicked from Arch to Hendricks.

“I guess it does,” Hendricks said, shrugging as he headed for Arch’s Explorer. Erin started to say something to him, but Lerner stepped up to the door Hendricks had left open before she had time to come up with something that expressed what she was feeling. She just watched the cowboy go, the black outline of his drover coat nearly touching the gravel and dirt of the overlook as he disappeared around the back of the Explorer.

“I have a feeling you and I are going to get along just great,” Lerner said with that toothy, dickish smile. Did he know how fucking annoying she found him?

“Yeah, we go together like Rikki Tikki Tavi and Nagaina,” she said.

“I like you already,” Lerner said as she got into the car. “That’s such a great film. A classic.”

Erin slammed the door harder than she ever had before. They might even have heard it down in Midian.