Finding Susan (12 page)

Blake sat down on a chair opposite her and stared. He couldn’t help himself. It must have been a terrible wound to leave a scar like that, but he didn’t see Kate limping or any evidence that she was recovering from a wound. At least nothing physical.
 

Blake’s mind twisted as though it wanted him to leave this alone. He grimaced and knew exactly what he was missing. He’d smoked back when he started on the force, before it was made illegal to do so in county buildings. He was a disciplined man, but for the first time in years he wanted a cigarette. He had a lot of thinking to do, and he needed something to keep his mind occupied and relaxed. He had nothing, though, but himself.
 

Kate woke up and wanted to go right back to sleep again, but she caught Blake looking at her and decided to stay awake. He was leaning back in his chair against the window, and behind him the sky was filled with red clouds, like something had set them afire. It was gorgeous. Kate couldn’t help but be flattered that Blake chose to look at her rather than the splendors of nature.
 

“Hey, don’t you know there’s something creepy about watching people while they’re asleep?” She smiled, but Blake didn’t smile back. He was still looking at her, but it didn’t look like he was seeing her. Kate sat up and tugged her clothes into place. “Jeez, I’m all ruffled. You didn’t ravish me, did you?”

“What? No. Ravish you. That’s silly.” He stirred in his chair and looked very uncomfortable.
 

“Well, can’t blame a girl for being protective of herself. Say, sun’s almost down. What say you and me catch a bite to eat?”

“I picked up some steaks. I was going to barbecue them as a... sort of an apology.” Blake was on his feet now, heading for the kitchen area. The apartment was far cleaner then Kate had expected a man’s bachelor pad to be. So clean, in fact, it looked like a hotel room. There was nothing personal in the place at all, except for one small photograph frame face down on the glass coffee table. Something made Kate leery of looking at it when Blake was gone, and now that he was here, it seemed gauche.

“Steaks? Are you sure you don’t want me to cook those?” Kate stood up and walked over to the kitchen. Back when she was a kid she did all the cooking for the family. In San Francisco she mostly ate out, but the opportunity to prove she was still a fine preparer of meals was something she didn’t want to pass up.
 

“I can manage, thanks,” Blake said.
 

“No really, I want to help.” Kate walked in the kitchen and looked at the stove. It was gas powered. She’d been used to electric, but this would do in a pinch. “Where are your pans?”

Blake backed up into the corner of the kitchen like a cat getting ready to defend itself. “I’m going to cook the meal, Kate. And for God’s sake, I’m not going to pan fry it. There’s a barbecue on the balcony.”

“You’ve got a balcony?”

Blake pointed to the large glass window on the far side of the living room. It was covered in blinds, but beneath that, sure enough, was a balcony. It wasn’t very wide or long. Besides the barbecue, there was a single folding chair and a large pile of firewood.
 

Kate threw open the door and headed out onto the balcony. Blake’s apartment was part of a complex just a couple blocks from the main road, so it was first somewhat surprising that the view from the balcony was so fantastic. But that was Whispering Pines. Forests and lakes and mountains every which way you turned.
 

These were the things she loved so much as a child without even knowing it. She couldn’t know it, without having lived in the city without these things for so long. The mountain air was crisp, and the smell of the trees was invigorating. Being surrounded by nature was like being home again.
 

“I bet you spend a lot of time out here, don’t you?” Kate said. She looked down at the folding chair. There was a book there, some thriller with a leather bookmark in it. The pages were curled and puffed up from water damage and yellow.
 

“I read out there. Or at least I intend to.” Blake walked behind Kate and had to squeeze close to her to get to the barbecue. He’d showered while she was asleep - she could smell the soapy scent on him.

Same soap I just used
, she thought.
 

“Good book?” Kate asked. Blake opened the barbecue and dumped a bag of coals into it. He looked down at the book, and furrowed his brow.

“I haven’t started it. It’s been out here for two years. Well, you know what they say about good intentions.”

“If it were Dostoevsky, that would be good intentions. This isn’t even mediocre intentions.”

“I’m about to cook you a steak, least you could do is lay off for a few minutes,” Blake said.

Since wisecracks come naturally to me, it would be an effort to stop, so the least I could do is actually just what I’m doing,
Kate thought, but did not say. Blake was right - it wouldn’t kill her to cut him some slack. She moved past him, squeezing back into the apartment.
 

“I’ll get this all started in a moment,” Blake said.
 

Kate didn’t reply. She looked again at the face down photograph, and curiosity overtook reason. He was out there on the balcony, and he was concentrating on something else. Kate didn’t see the harm - maybe it was some sweetheart that he left in Seattle and was pining over.
 

Kate grabbed the photo and flipped it over, keeping her body between it and Blake to block his view. It was a picture of a young black girl, smiling like an angel. She had braces on her teeth and glasses. The picture looked like a cutout from a photograph - half of somebody else’s arm was in the shoot, going round the girl’s back. The photo didn’t fill out the frame, and it looked sad and strange there, like it was floating out in space.
 

“What are you doing?” Blake said, his voice filled with urgency. Kate set down the picture. Caught red handed. He wasn’t a bad cop.

“Cute kid,” Kate said. “Yours?” She turned around, and when she saw the expression on Blake’s face she froze. He grabbed the picture away from her and set it back down on the glass table. He glanced at it and closed his eyes. Kate couldn’t tell if he was about to be furious or if he was going to cry. He slapped the photo down and it landed against the glass with a large cracking noise.
 

“I’m sorry, Blake. Bad joke.”

“Why did you look at that? That wasn’t there for you,” Blake said. He was starting to look nervous, and finally he turned away from Kate and went back out onto the balcony. Kate reached out for the photograph again, but stopped herself.
This isn’t something you want to get involved in,
Kate thought. But the ice had been broken, and she could tell something was hurting in Blake.
 

This was quick work, she thought. Just yesterday we were practically at each other’s throats and today... Thank God he broke my porch, Kate thought.
Maybe it was just that they were both lonely, and both back in the small town they thought was restraining them when they were children. Whispering Pines wasn’t what was holding them back now.
 

“Blake?” Kate called as she headed out to the balcony. The fire was raging in the barbecue, but Blake wasn’t minding it. He was staring out at the view. The clouds were darkening as the sun cycled down, and a wind of deep chill was blowing now. Kate tapped Blake on the shoulder, but he didn’t respond.
 

“Blake, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to pry.”

“That’s all right. Guess it’s in your nature,” he said, and his voice was gruff.
 

He wasn’t going to make this easy, thought Kate. Better to ease into it.
 

“Looks ready for the steaks,” she said, pointing at the barbecue.
 

“What?” Blake said, then he looked. “Oh hell, that’s getting too high. Why didn’t you tell me?” And like a switch had been thrown, Blake was changed. This is going to be a long evening, Kate thought as she watched the fire burn.

***
***
***

Fire would sustain here, thought Joe Bob. He was standing on the eastern part of Mr. Sticha’s old property, now his own, on the place where he was laying down the foundations for his new structure.
   
It would take him all day to build that thing, but it would have taken most men the better part of a week. The cinderblock walls would be high enough so that he could stand in here without a person knowing, hidden from the casual passerby. At the same time, the hillside and brush would help disguise it.
 

Just a dozen feet away was a concrete bunker Mr. Sticha had dug underneath the ground. Mr. Sticha was something of a crank, sure that the reds were going to “let fly with the nukes” and that the only things left in North America would be roaches and, thanks to his bunker, Mr. Sticha. Joe Bob wondered if, unless one knew ahead of time, anyone would be able to tell Mr. Sticha from a cockroach. Maybe they could, but they wouldn’t compare him favorably to one.
 

Joe Bob walked to the bunker, stepping around the leaf-covered dirt that surrounded it. It was uncovered now, but in a matter of minutes he could hide it under leaves and a sheet of tarpaulin and no one could ever see the wooden trapdoor that lead into the hiding place he was building. Joe Bob had modified the function of the bunker a great deal from Mr. Sticha’s paranoid intentions. He had his own.
 

He knew he was probably going to have to deal with Kate and her nosy ways. And maybe Blake, too. He had to keep them out and he didn’t want any sign of what was below. He had his plans. No one was going to get in his way.

Chapter Seven

The steak was probably great, but Blake couldn’t really taste it. It wasn’t exactly ashes in his mouth, but he couldn’t concentrate on flavor. Kate was making small jokes, trying to draw him out. Thanks, but no thanks. These last two days had been weird, and that wasn’t what he was looking for in life. Life should have a rhythm, an ebb and a flow. Blake’s had been thrown out of whack exactly as much as he could stand already.
 

“You could play football with this potato,” Kate said. She’d slathered hers with sour cream and butter and cheese, and then seemed to be doing her best to eat around all the fattening parts.
 

“No you couldn’t. Thing would fall apart after one toss.”

“Well, yeah, cooked. But raw it’d make a good football. For a bit. I prefer short games to long ones, anyway. Hey, if I start babbling, just tell me and I’ll shut up.”

Blake sighed. Under other circumstances, this could have been a pleasant evening. The lights were a bit bright, but Kate went and put up candles and turned off a few of them so the atmosphere was much more... atmospheric, Blake decided. Under other circumstances, this would look one whole hell of a lot like a date.
 

There were no room for other circumstances in Blake’s life, though. Other circumstances, leading his life in the way he felt rather then thought led him to disaster before, and it would do so again. His instincts and his heart were the greatest liars of them all. He could never trust them again.
 

“Wow, this is lively, Blake. If you get anymore animated, a funeral is going to break out.”

“Hey!” Blake snapped at her. Kate was in the middle of taking a drink, and she stopped, cup in midair, looking like she was bracing herself for a hit. “You stole that line from Rodney Dangerfield. Here I was thinking that you were some great wit, coming up with barbs at the rate of... something really fast, when the truth is you’re nothing but a common thief.”

“I take exception to that,” Kate shot back. “I’m an extraordinary thief!” She was still looking ready to defend herself, but Blake could see this hint of a smile in her face. She’d just come up with a game, and he was going to win.
 

He pointed at her with his index finger, like shooting a pretend gun. “Die Hard - that’s what Alan Rickman says when Bruce Willis’s wife accuses him of being a common thief.” His grin was triumphant. “Isn’t this like the games we used to play as kids?”
 

Kate gave him a quick quelling look, and he knew what it meant. Talking about the game was against the rules of the game - it had to be figured out by playing along.
 

“I guess it is,” she said slowly, looking wise. “And I know what you’re thinking: how can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?”

“Hah!” He slapped the table. “Die Hard II. I’m sensing a theme here. Gonna tell me you see dead people next?”

She looked like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. “
All
I see is dead people,” Kate said. She couldn’t help but grin now.
 

She thinks she has me,
Blake thought. And he thought, and thought, and realized she did have him. He couldn’t come up with an answer.
 

“Sixth Sense, I guess,” he said, groaning as he said it. He knew it wasn’t exactly right.

“Wrong! Twelve Monkeys.” She laughed happily. “I won, so I get to decide what we do next.”

“I get it wrong once, and you’re the winner?” Blake said, being grumpy.

“I never said the game was fair,” she said. She pulled a stick of gum out of her pocket and started to chew. She offered one to Blake, but he didn’t take any. “I get to ask you a question now, and you have to answer it, okay?” She spoke, cutting off Blake’s refusal. “Why did you leave Seattle?”

He shot right back. “Why did you leave San Fran?”

Hadn’t they been down this road before?

“All that stuff you brought here—I’d say you’re moving in. Why aren’t you taking on the big city anymore?” Blake tried to keep his tone measured, but it was difficult. He wasn’t going to be dredging up all his feelings just to satisfy the curiosity of some girl, even if she was... a friend.
 

Kate heard the emotion being tamped down in his voice and she saw the flicker of something cagey in his gaze. Her instincts were usually good and this time her instincts were sending out a bright, clear signal. “Who is that girl in the picture?” she said.