I shut the flashlight’s defense mode down and keep the halogen beam fixed on the two drunks, who are now struggling up to their knees, spitting mad. They’re still holding hands to their ears. One of them leans over and throws up a gush of pale beer, but the other—Carl—keeps his gaze fixed hard on me. I see the hate in it. There’s no reasoning with him. And no way to feel safe.
“Police are coming,” I tell him. He looks over, like he didn’t notice—and he probably hadn’t—and a flash of pure rage makes me tighten up my grip on the tire iron again. He wants to hurt me. Maybe kill me. And maybe he wants to take his fury out on the kids.
“You fucking whore,” he says. I think about what a satisfying crunch the tire iron would make coming in contact with his teeth. He’s five foot eight of bad breath and shitty posture, and I can’t think I’m taking a light out of the world if I end him. But I suppose he has people who love him.
Even I have that much.
Officer Graham is the first to make it to my side. I’m glad to see him; he’s bigger and taller, and he looks like he could intimidate the spine out of just about anyone if he wanted to give it a try. He takes in the situation, frowns, and says, “What the hell is going on?”
It’s in my best interest to get my story in first, and I’m quick off the mark. “These idiots decided to pay me a not-so-friendly visit,” I say. “They blocked us into the driveway. Somebody—probably them—vandalized the house. I tried to go cross-country, but a rock took out my steering. I didn’t have a choice. I had to try to keep them away from my kids.”
“Lying bitch—”
Graham extends a hand toward the drunk without taking his gaze off me. “Officer Claremont will be taking your statement,” he tells him. “Kez?”
Graham’s partner tonight is a tall, lean, African American woman with close-cropped hair and a no-nonsense briskness. She leads the two drunks over to the wrecked pickup and calls for rescue and an ambulance to get the three from the cab and the one broken farther up the hill. They’re babbling at her in high-pitched, urgent, slurring voices. I don’t imagine she’s enjoying herself.
“So all this came with no provocation at all, is what you’re saying,” Graham says.
I turn back to look at him, then lean into Connor’s open window to kiss his forehead. “Lanny? You all right, sweetheart?”
She gives me a thumbs-up and tilts her head back to help slow down the bloody nose.
“Mind putting down the tire iron?” Graham says in a dry voice, and I realize I’m clutching it tightly, as if I’m still facing threats. My thumb is resting on the stun function button of the flashlight, too. I ease myself back from that invisible cliff and lay both things down next to the Jeep, then take a couple of steps away. “Okay. Good start. Now, you said these boys blocked you in. You had words with them?”
“I don’t even know them,” I say. “But I guess the information is out about my ex. I’m assuming you know.”
He doesn’t betray much, but I see something stir down in the depths of his gaze, and his mouth goes tight. He deliberately loosens it. “As I understand it, your husband is a convicted murderer.”
“Ex-husband.”
“Uh-huh. A serial killer, if I got it right.”
“You know you do,” I say. “Word’s traveling fast. Guess it would in a small town like this. I asked Detective Prester for some kind of protective detail for my kids—”
“We were on the way to take that up,” he tells me. “We’d have been parked out front tonight.”
“I guess the paint would have probably dried by then.”
“Paint?”
“Feel free to go look once you’re done here. Can’t miss it,” I tell him. I’m flat exhausted. The aches from the crash are starting to make themselves felt. I have tenderness in my left shoulder, where I probably wrenched it against the restraints. My neck’s stiff, and now my nose has a dull ache around the bridge. My nosebleed has stopped, at least, so I must not have broken anything, and when I touch it I don’t feel anything shifting. I’m fine, I think. Better than I deserve to be. “This is just Round One. That’s why I said we needed protection.”
“Ms. Proctor, maybe you should consider that of the six guys who came after you, at least four of them have some kind of injuries,” Graham says, not unkindly. “I think we can call this round for you, if you’re keeping score.”
“I’m not,” I say, but that’s a lie. I’m glad that shitty pickup is lying on its side leaking radiator fluid into the ground. I’m glad four of them get a chance to nurse wounds while thinking about never coming back at me. I’m just sorry they aren’t hurt badly enough to keep them from ever doing it again. “You’re not arresting me.”
“You didn’t even make that a question.”
“Any decent defense attorney would make dog food out of you. A mother with her kids, attacked by six drunk jerks? Really? I’ll be the trending hero on Twitter in half an hour.”
He sighs. It’s a long, slow sound that mingles with the lapping of the lake’s waves below. Mist is beginning to rise from the water as the air cools just enough to start the cycle, like a thousand wisps of ghosts escaping. Lake of the dead, I think, and try not to look at it. Stillhouse Lake’s beauty is ruined for me. “No,” Graham finally says. “I’m not arresting you. I’m arresting them for criminal mischief and good old Bobby over there for driving under the influence. Good enough?”
It isn’t. I want them all arrested for assault, and that word hadn’t even crossed his lips.
He must have seen the argument coming up in me, because he holds up a hand to forestall it. “Look, they didn’t lay a hand on you. At least one of ’em is sober enough to figure out he can claim they saw you wreck and came down here to help, and you got paranoid and fired off that—whatever the hell it is—at them. Unless we find paint or evidence of it on them or in the truck, they can claim they have no idea your house got tagged—”
“Tagged? It’s not Banksy art!”
“All right then, vandalized. But the point is, they’ve got good deniability for everything to do with any stalking or assault. And you’re the one who had the tire iron. Far as I can tell, these men were unarmed.”
Six on one don’t need weapons, and he knows that, but he’s right, of course. Defense attorneys cut both ways.
I lean against the broken wreck of my Jeep, out of strength. “We’ll need a wrecker,” I tell him. “My Jeep’s not going anywhere without one.”
“I’ll arrange for it,” he says. “Meanwhile, let’s get your kids and go back to your house. Make sure nobody’s gotten inside.”
I know they hadn’t. I have mobile notification for my alarm system, and if it goes off I can immediately look at the tablet and rerun the footage to see who’s been in there. Nobody broke any windows or kicked in any doors, but even so, the last place I want to take my kids right now is back to the house, with that red paint still dripping. I suppose they picked the garage for that particular splash pattern on purpose. Reminding me where Melvin liked to do his gruesome work.
But there really isn’t a choice. I know just from Graham’s expression that he’s not taking us to any Norton motel for the night, and I strongly suspect that any calls to Detective Prester will go unanswered. With the Jeep destroyed, my only option would be to rely on the kindness of strangers, and . . . I’m far too paranoid to even consider it. My nearest neighbors, the Johansens, helped block my driveway. Sam Cade lied to me from the beginning. Javier’s a reserve deputy and probably won’t return my calls, either.
I reach into the open Jeep window and hit the unlock button, retrieve my keys, and help Lanny out. Her nose has mostly stopped bleeding now, and it doesn’t seem broken, but she might have bruises. We all might. My fault.
I hold on to her as the three of us slowly follow Officer Graham up the hill, to a house that no longer feels like home.
10