Читать книгу Whatever it takes - Paul Cleave - Страница 6

Two

Most of the trees in the few miles that surround the sawmill have been logged, regrown, and logged again. Various areas are in various states of regrowth, but the trees bordering the mill are young and fresh-looking and not much taller than me. The road out to the highway is a mile long and none of it straight. I take it quick. The air conditioning is running at full strength. The sawdust on my skin itches. I head south toward town. The nearest building to the sawmill is Earl’s Gas Station, the forecourt and highway out front all lit up like a football field. The owner is one Earl Winters, and he calls us every month or two when somebody puts buckshot into those lights, and every month or two we get no closer to figuring out who’s doing it. Could be one person. Could be lots of different people, since the lights are offensively bright. I blow past the gas station so fast I expect to see it dragging behind me, caught in my wake.

There are no lights on the highway. No signs of life. Out in this part of the country the world could have ended and unless somebody sent word to Acacia Pines none of us would know. The highway is the only road in and out of town. It cuts a swath through The Pines, where the ghosts of missing hikers are still out there walking in circles.

Every half-mile or so I pass ninety-degree turnoffs that lead to small farms and big farms and animal farms and vegetable farms. I pass barns painted red that during the day look like they’re floating on seas of wheat, but at night look like black holes on the horizon. It’s a ten-minute drive that I do in six. I take the turnoff to the Kelly farm. The large For Sale sign staked into the ground out front has faded as it baked and froze over the last three years’ worth of seasons. The road goes from asphalt to dirt and gravel and the back of the car fishtails and bits of stone flick up into the undercarriage. The house is on the other side of a set of oak trees that keep it hidden from the road. I drive around them and point the car at the front door and leave the lights on and get out. Plumes of dirt float up from the driveway and fog the air. The land out here is dry. Only stuff that grows is stinging nettle and gorse and patchy clumps of grass.

The house has lots of red wood and white trim, and an A-frame roof sharp enough to prick the sky. There’s a shed with no front wall next to it, a car and tractor in there with eight flat tires between them, the walls lined with hay bales. I send the beam of my flashlight looping around the porch and over twisted floorboards. There are cobwebs as long as summer evenings over all of it. Something scuttles across the porch and disappears. The headlights from the car and moonlight reflect off the windows. The door is locked, but it’s also old and neglected and doesn’t put up a fight. I figure in all the years the Kellys lived here this door was probably always unlocked. It’s that kind of town.

The house smells of dust and the air tastes of mold. The last time I was out here was three years ago when Jasmine Kelly called Drew from the other side of the country to say she hadn’t heard from her folks in a week. I flick the light switch but there’s no power. I follow the footprints in the dust. Floorboards creak under my weight. I can feel the heat coming up through the floor. Shadows move across walls as my flashlight lights everything up, and there are a lot of everythings — couches, a dining table, beds, kitchen utilities, a coffee table with magazines and a TV that can’t be any older than five years. There are paintings and photographs on walls and shelves. It feels like the house is waiting for somebody to return. I look into the bedroom where three years ago Ed and Leah Kelly took handfuls of sleeping pills and didn’t leave a note to say why. The farm was heavily in debt and their daughter used to say her dad thought the land was cursed because only the weeds knew how to grow.

I head to the basement. Basements are where men like Conrad Haggerty keep girls like Alyssa Stone. I open the door. It smells like something crawled out of the grave, died all over again, then crawled back in. I hold my breath and light up the steps. They groan as I move down them. The walls are gray cinderblock. There are tools hanging on them. There’s an old chest freezer big enough for a body, that I hope is empty. There are piles of blankets and an old dining suite with chairs stacked on top and boxes of junk beneath it. I can no longer hold my breath. The smell doesn’t improve any. There’s an old heater, a couple of bicycles, an old TV. There are shelves full of Christmas lights that could only be ready in time if the untangling started at Easter. The same dust that coated everything upstairs coats everything down here too, even the floor, but the floor also has footprints going back and forth across it.

I follow them.

I don’t have to follow them for long.

If anybody grows up being allowed to believe in curses, then it’s Alyssa. Her father gave his life to the sawmill in more ways than one. He started working there when he was sixteen, gave the place eighteen years of his life, then bled out on the factory floor after a spinning blade snapped, flew thirty feet through the air, and severed an artery in his leg. Alyssa was six months old. Three months ago a car accident took Alyssa’s mother out of the world. Her uncle took her in after that. I can only pray that this is the last bad thing ever to happen to her.

Right now, Alyssa is trying her hardest to blend into the mixture of paint cans and old board games in the corner. She’s shying away from my flashlight as if she’s lived in the dark her entire life. She looks gaunt and scared and she has a black eye from where somebody hit her. She’s looking out at me from behind black hair that is matted with grime and her face is streaked with tears. Looking at her makes me want to cry. It breaks my heart. I want to hug her and protect her and never let her go. I want to make the world okay for her, because so far for her the world has been a harrowing one. There’s an iron shackle around her ankle with a padlock on it. A chain connects it to the wall, welded onto the shackle at one end and bolted on the other. Her ankle is scuffed and puffy and the thing that hasn’t turned in my stomach in some time turns again. When I’m done here, I’m going to have another conversation with Conrad Haggerty.

“Alyssa,” I say, “it’s Deputy Harper.” I point the flashlight at myself. Here I am. Deputy Noah Harper, all lit up in the basement of a dead couple’s house on the final night of his career.

She tries to back away some more but there’s nowhere to go. She stops moving. She stares at me and doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if she recognizes me or not from the day her mother died.

“You’re going to be okay.” I sit the flashlight upright on the floor so the beam hits the ceiling. I keep my voice light. Nice and friendly. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her again, because it is going to be okay. “He’s not coming back.”

She keeps staring at me. Her fingertips are bleeding from where she’s tried to loosen the bolts from the wall.

“I’m going to find something to take this chain off you, okay? I bet I can find something among all these tools that’ll get it off you right quick.”

She says nothing.

“I’m taking you out of here, Alyssa, and back home to your uncle.”