Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (24 page)

“Just one, Kain.”

He nodded to her, and she offered a feeble smile that wavered. His hands trembled as he opened the pill tin. He drew a single pill from the lot, nearly dropped it, and then fingered it into the man’s mouth. The big fellow swallowed, in a perfect reflex reaction of sensing a pill on his tongue.

Al Hembruff’s eyes rolled listlessly in their sockets. But then, mercifully, they steadied. His breathing relaxed, and his grip on the tire iron expired. He stirred as he looked up, eyes searching, and offered a wiggly smile for his granddaughter when they found her. The girl fell into him all at once as she hugged him, and wouldn’t let go.

Kain grimaced as he slipped back onto the road, that hot knife in his back driving all the way in. The old woman sought him out with uncertain eyes, and simply thanked him with barely a breath. Steeling himself against the pain, he moved onto his side and lay perfectly still as he watched the girl and her grandfather. Tears were streaming down her bloodied face, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

Now,
he thought, his mind swimming,
if only time had.

~ 24

They parked the flatbed at the Bishop farmhouse, and at Kain’s suggestion took a walk along the trail, its twists and turns their guide. The prairie sky was clear to the east, but dark gray clouds had gathered, forging a troubling alliance in the west.

“I’m sorry about my mother,” Lynn said, breaking the unbearable silence that had held them apart for a solid mile. Like two strangers at a wake, neither had seemed to know what to say.

Kain acknowledged her with barely a nod. It was all he could muster. In the last two hours—
Jesus, had it only been that long?
—Georgia Hembruff had glared at him time and again, as if he were some pesky gnat. He had wanted to face up to the good woman, spill his soul to her, but had found the mountain too high. With Lynn, it too seemed an utter impossibility.

“It wasn’t your fault, Kain … Dad said so. And Lee, she said—”

“No,” he said, stopping short. “No. I’m sorry. This is wrong. It’s all wrong.”

He could barely face her. All he could think of was running, so far and so fast that all of this would seem like a bad dream.

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand. I talked with that officer. What’s his name … Burridge?”

“
Berridge,
” he said, and the name tasted sour. The cop hadn’t taken to him, not at all. The man had smelled drifter, and with nothing more than a look, had, just as Georgia had, blamed
him
for what had happened. Truth hurts.

“Berridge. Yes. He said—”

“I know what he said.”

“So do I. He said if it hadn’t been for you, this would have been a lot worse. Dad said it, too. In my eyes, you’re a hero.”

“I’m no hero, Lynn.”

She tried to look him in the eye, but he avoided her.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“… Your father … I know he means well.”

And Big Al
had
meant well; his only want to protect his little girl. She had been a wreck.

“Out with it.”

Out with it.
Were it that easy.

“The accident,” he said. “It didn’t happen the way he said it did.”

Lynn folded her arms. “Really.”

“I wasn’t driving,” Kain said. “Lee was.”

“
Lee? What?
”

“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let her.”

“Was this your idea?”

He didn’t have to answer. She knew.

“I bet she pestered you into it, didn’t she? Oh, that girl. No wonder she didn’t want to talk about it.”

“It wasn’t her fault, Lynn. If I hadn’t let her drive, none of this would have happened.”

She fell expressionless as she considered his words.

“She wanted to tell you. She was afraid.”

“I can’t believe my father didn’t tell me. He lied.”

“I wouldn’t be too hard on him.”

“Hmph.”

“Believe me, he had plenty to say to me in the hospital. He wasn’t too pleased with me … let’s keep it at that. He’s a good man. I have a lot of respect for him. But I broke a trust, Lynn. With him, with you. With Lee. He wasn’t hiding the truth from you. Don’t you see? He wanted
me
to come clean.”

“Were you going to tell me? Was anyone? My God—” She uttered a kind of anxious half laugh that bordered on hysterical. “You even lied to the police.”

“I did. I admit that. It was wrong.”

“I can’t believe my father lied! No wonder Berridge kept looking at you like that. I don’t think he believed you. Either of you.”

Their stories hadn’t quite jived. Waiting for the ambulance, Big Al had whispered to Kain,
Don’t you dare tell the cops Lee was driving, that’s a canna worms we don’t need to open.
Kain had seen the seriousness in the man’s eyes and did not argue the point. The big man told the cop that all he saw was Kain carrying his granddaughter on his back, and nothing more. This earned an obligatory nod from the seasoned Trooper, but the drifter’s story had been slightly different. Kain explained how he pushed the girl out the passenger side, climbed out behind her, grabbed her from the ground and dragged her to safety. Dragging versus carrying. You say po
ta
to, I say po
to
to … but enough to raise some Trooper eyebrows. The cop had regarded him with that oh-so-familiar look of disdain, and then, after glancing not too subtly at the long hair, carefully put away his notepad and pen and said, “You know, sir, I think I got a handle on this thing. In all that excitement, what with the explosion and all … maybe the old fella just can’t remember straight.”

Maybe State Trooper Berridge, a dutiful bastard if ever there was one, believed that; maybe pigs did fly. All Kain really knew was that guys like Berridge were next of kin to trouble. They asked questions, straight questions, and questions meant answers, answers that made sense, and answers that didn’t make sense meant more questions. With men like Berridge, it was always some wild Abbott and Costello routine.

More troubling, he’d had to give his real name. For all he knew, Brikker’s claws were dug into every police department, every Sheriff’s office, big and small, from Miami to Moscow. On the surface it seemed absurd, but was there not the chance that something so seemingly innocuous could lead to his capture? With Brikker, it was more likely than not. And then there was Lynn. What would he have said should Officer Berridge come knocking, asking for Brent Thompson or Eddie Lieberman?

“No,” Kain said. “I don’t think he did.”

“And Lee? She lied, too?”

“No. They didn’t get a statement from her.”

“I guess it was a good thing she broke her nose. They might have wanted to speak with her.”

That stung. But he deserved it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was a cheap shot.”

“… I didn’t want this between us, Lynn.”

She sighed. “I don’t like the way it came out. But I’m glad you told me.” They continued along the path, stepping round a deep recess where the way had sunk, but then she stopped cold. “Does my mother know?”

He didn’t answer.

“You didn’t tell her.”

“Lynn—”

“My dad, right? He knows Mom’d just go off the deep end if she knew.”

“I wanted to. I want to. She has a right to know.”

“No. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Dad’s right. Telling Mom … it’ll just make things difficult.”

He understood.
Difficult
meant moving on. His indiscretions had already claimed two lives, for he made no distinction between what was and what is, thank you very much. Good old Beaks
had
bought the farm, so too his offspring, and he had very nearly cost Lynn Bishop far more than she would have been able to bear. But really, moving on was looking like a grand idea. And now, standing here in the stifling Iowa heat, facing west toward those darkening clouds and sensing a slow churn in the pit of his stomach, he could almost feel that velvety slickness of the rains.

They walked.

~

“Do you think Clara’ll be all right?” she asked, rounding a long curve that led up a sharp rise. The path narrowed suddenly, and Kain slipped behind her. A gorgeous meadow greeted them at the top of the knoll, the countryside sweeping down below them, the sweet smell of wildflower teasing them in the welcome breeze. Little brown butterflies, Sleepy Duskywings, flittered among the softly flowing grasses and flowers and weeds. Somewhere close, a dragonfly
buzzed
and
bizzed.

“
Owwww.
”

Kain stiffened with a sour grimace.

“Are you okay?”

The drifter leaned back and felt a throb in his back. He nodded as he moved up beside her, Lynn helping him up the last few feet, and as he straightened, found the pain diminish as the cool touch of the light wind struck his face. The knoll was barely thirty feet higher than the rest of the landscape, but you could see both farms from this lofty perch, two others in the distance, and beyond them, a few miles off to the northeast, you could sense the blueness of the river as it wove through that boundless prairie. The sky was still clear in the east. The west was a gathering swarm of darkness.

In a small clearing ahead, just off the path, she spotted a perfectly sawed log that stood on its end. A mess of footprints in the soft earth led them to it. Lynn stepped up to it, brushed off the top (there was some kind of ugly beetle lying on it, legs up, unmoving, looking quite fried and quite dead), and sat down, easing onto it with grace and allure. Her hair dipped and danced in the fine western breeze, blowing gingerly across her lovely skin. And when she smiled at him coyly the way she did, looking so amazingly attractive, he was thankful there was still breath in his lungs to be taken.

“Did you put this here?” she said.

“I might have,” he said, smiling.

She took in the vista. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? God … I haven’t been up here in at least fifteen years. Maybe twenty.”

“The sunsets are amazing. But for my money you can’t beat the stars.”

“You come up here at night?”

“Sometimes. When I can’t sleep.”

“Drifter troubles?” She apologized immediately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I mean—oh, God.”

All he could do was give a small grin in embarrassment.
Drifter.
It was probably the last thing he expected her to call him.

“I can’t believe I said that, Kain. Forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, hurting, doing his best not to look it. He moved up beside her and motioned toward a small patch of tall grasses that were postcard perfect.

“Oh! Look at that!” Lynn was awestruck. Countless monarch butterflies hovered in a living cloud of orange and black, rippling above the flowing grasses in a rhythm that was almost sensual. “They’re so beautiful!”

“They love the view,” he said, and she smiled with him. He knelt beside her. “Can’t say it’s ever been better myself.”

She blushed. She blushed and she stiffened.

“I wonder how Clara’s doing,” she said, the words coming quickly. He feared she was going to stand right up and go running back along the trail. Running screaming. Running scared.

She did stand. “She’s so frail.” She said this quickly too, as if it was the most important thing in the world. She turned away, looking out over the prairie. The butterflies scattered.

Kain simply stood with her. There wasn’t much else he could do, now that he’d screwed up.

“She’s a lot tougher than she looks,” he said, and she regarded him with an anxious smile.

Clara Brayfield had sprained her wrist in the ordeal, landing hard on her left hand after Big Al had toppled into her. She had lost a perfectly lifeless dress in the process (the tire iron had caught it and torn it), and as the old woman had rambled on to the doctor (once she had calmed down from the sedative), “I wanna go home, my dog is dead and I wanna go home, I wanna go home and listen to Gene Autry,” it was clear she was more than a little messed up (mostly from the accident but partly from the meprobamate), yet above it all, that survivor in her, that survivor that had outlived two husbands and two world conflicts, a Great Depression and nine of her nineteen children, had carried her through. Yes, Old Clara and her shepherds (four out of five ain’t bad) were going to be fine. Just fine.

Lynn’s expression fell. “Losing a pet like that. It must be awful.”

She’s worried about Costello,
Kain thought.
She’s seeing Pepper in her mind, all dopey and dead … but what she’s really seeing is Costello. Lost and alone. Too stupid to find something to eat. Animal Crackers.

They took the path down the knoll, the trail leading them across the meadow and into a stand of forest that seemed to have no business being there on the great plain. As they entered the thick woods, they were both taken aback by the utter silence that surrounded them. Only the crackling of sticks and underbrush beneath their feet seemed to disturb the solemn semidarkness that befell them. The flies and mosquitoes had a hell-feast on their blood, and they hurried through. Kain came out first, leading them out of the bug-fest, and Lynn followed quickly, thrashing the air madly at the noseeums, but mostly at the seeums. When she moved up beside him (Kain had two blood-filled mosquitoes on his cheek that looked like small sacs of red pus and was about to flatten them), she grabbed him by the wrist and blew them off.

“Yuck,” she said. “That wouldn’t have been pretty.”

He directed her. “This way. Away from the bugs.”

She followed him through another meadow, the breeze growing stronger as they walked. They crossed a rickety footbridge (it was really nothing more than several rotting logs splayed haphazardly across a narrow, nearly dried-up creek), and when they had come to a fork in the trail, Lynn asked the question he had dreaded her asking. The same one her mother had asked not an hour ago.

“There’s just one thing,” Georgia Hembruff had said, arms folded, her suspicion coming to bear on the sorry-looking wounded sitting silently in her living room. “I’d like to know what it is makes a dog jump out of a moving car like that.”