The Summer Man

Chapter NINE





Sadie came hard, felt herself fluttering around Josh’s thickness as he pulled his magic fingers away. He gave a few final pumps, gasped, and buried his head against her collarbone. Pulsing, pulsing…and they slumped together, Sadie’s bare ass against the damp, icy-cold wall of the walk-in, her skirt hiked around her waist, Josh supporting himself against one of the wire shelves.

“Mmm.” Sadie smiled, laughed a little as she caught her breath. His skin was so young and tight, lightly tanned and smooth over long, lean bones. A flop of thick, shining goldbrown hair hung over his eyes, his head down as he breathed deeply, radiating warmth in the humid cold. He was all she could have asked for in a summer fling. Pretty to look at, smart enough not to be embarrassing, too young to take seriously.

She pulled herself away from the moment long enough to glance at her watch. Ten to four. Shit. Randy would be in soon. He was cooking Monday through Thursday for the season. The restaurant opened at five. And Rick had said something about coming in to do inventory, probably right around then…there was still another hour of prep to do, at least, and she didn’t want Rick wondering why it wasn’t done. Wednesdays were tricky, since it was her night to work in the kitchen. He was always dropping in. Keeping you out of trouble, he’d chortle, pecking at her cheek. He had no idea.

“We gotta get moving,” she said, carefully edging herself toward him, making him pull out. She immediately clenched her vaginal muscles; no panties today in anticipation of their rendezvous, and she didn’t want essence of Josh running down her thighs while she put together the cassoulet. She’d want to get to the bathroom, pronto.

Josh reached down, pulled up his pants by the belt, the soft clink of the metal pieces half-buried in the heavy, constant thrum of the refrigeration system. She smoothed down her skirt, watching him.

“You still want me to do the salads?” he asked.

“Yeah. Randy’ll do the filet when he comes in, and the bisque’s already on.”

Josh nodded and started to turn away.

“Hey,” she said, catching him around the waist. “That was nice.”

He grinned, leaned in to kiss her. “Sexy Sadie,” he whispered, and though the nickname was tired, she smiled in turn. At least he knew the reference.

Together, they walked to the door of the cooler, brushing at their clothes, Sadie running her fingers through her hair. If either had turned, they might have seen Rick on the other side of one of the narrow glass doors that fronted the walk-in, where the chilled side dishes and desserts would be set out for the waitstaff to reach in and grab. Rick with his hands tightened to fists, an expression of near wonder on his face.





In spite of her day—the sheriff had been in a mood, they’d had twice the usual number of crank calls, and there were rumors of a statewide benefits cut—Annie was full of energy when she went off duty, psyched for her date with John. She signed out at six and hurried home to shower and change for their date at seven o’clock at Le Poisson. She chose a sleeveless summer dress, nice but casual, opting for the big, lacy shawl thing over her shoulders, her last birthday gift from her brother and his wife. She had nice shoulders, she thought, drooping the shawl low, looking in the mirror on the back of her closet door. Of course, John had seen them already—along with a few more private areas—but she saw no harm in accentuating her better attributes. Saturday night with John had been really good for her, had lifted her spirits after that long, miserable almost-affair with her college prof, and she wanted their first “date” to go just as well.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty, her mind hummed as she locked up the apartment and got into her well-used Toyota, the old blue car starting with barely a sputter. She’d be right on time.

John Hanover. Who would have thought? Until a week or so before, she’d never considered it, never considered him, mostly because of Lauren. They hadn’t been close, but fairly friendly—two professional women in a small town, both wending their way through academia. They’d met for lunch a few times. She’d liked Lauren well enough, but wasn’t surprised when she’d heard about the divorce. Just the way she’d talked about herself, her ambitions and interests…it was like she hadn’t wanted to include John in her depiction of herself, in what she presented to the world. That was pretty much what John had told her on Saturday. He’d been so…so real about it, too. Realistic and angry and sad and OK with feeling all those things. Like a grown-up. Now that she’d looked at him, really looked—

—really f*cked his brains out, she thought, smiling, downshifting her car as she came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. No reason to be coy. Now that they’d done that, she was wondering how she’d never looked at him before. She knew why she’d never looked; Annie didn’t pretend to be some pinnacle of morality, but she had a few principles, and screwing a married man wasn’t one of them.

But how? How did I never notice him before? He was startlingly appealing in an intellectual way, like one of those actors who always played smart, deep guys. Kevin Spacey, maybe. His wit and charm made him handsome. Average body but well endowed where it counted. And the way he looked at her when she was talking, when they’d been together in bed…like he was concentrating on her, really working to see who she was, to know her.

Thinking about it gave her a happy chill. She didn’t want to jump the gun; she knew there were men who had taken faking sincerity to an art form—God knew she’d dated her share—but she thought John was different. The connection between them on Saturday night had been so intense, so…so perfect.

Slow down, girlie-girl. You barely know the man.

True enough, but that didn’t stop her from feeling like a future with him was somehow inevitable. It was so strange. She was a levelheaded kind of girl; overly direct sometimes, but not impulsive. Certainly not the type to sleep with someone before the first date. And the sex had been…well, extremely satisfying. She’d been uncharacteristically assertive, in ways she’d only ever imagined, and it had paid off.

Maybe he brings it out in me, she thought, and smiled again, turning onto Front. Le Poisson was on Front, parallel to Water. Parking would be murder on the weekend, but Wednesday was a relatively slow night; she quickly found a spot less than a block away. She took a second to check her makeup and fluff at her hair in the rearview, then got out, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. There was almost always a breeze this close to the water, and though the lowering sun was still bright, it was already starting to get cold. The salt wind ruffled her hair, and she hurried to the restaurant, concerned for her ’do; ironically, the just-tousled look didn’t stand up to actual tousling.

Just as she reached the door, a beautifully carved mahogany affair with a massive brass handle, John caught up to her.

“Allow me,” he said opening the door. He smiled at her, seeming slightly out of breath as she slid past him. He smelled nice, like some mild soap. Subtle.

They only had to wait for a moment before being seated. The last time she’d been in had been a few weeks back, a Friday night, and the place had been packed. Tonight, Poisson was barely half-full, the muted conversation from the dozen or so tables low and pleasantly background. The soft lights and candles made the dark, heavy woods of the room glow, like some romantic restaurant from a movie.

Leticia Barker seated them near the kitchen, handed them menus. Tish was a quiet young woman who lived in Port Angeles and who played weekend hostess for the restaurant and waited tables during the week. Annie noted that she seemed more subdued than usual. Her shoulders were up, too, her body language tense.

“How are you, Tish?” Annie asked, after the girl had listed the specials—a wild rice cassoulet with herbed prawns, salmon steaks with lemon-dill pesto, pork medallions in garlic, filet mignon. Yum.

“I’m well, thank you,” Tish said. “How are you? Can I get you something to drink?”

Her smile seemed a bit strained, but Annie let it drop. She didn’t know her all that well. John opted for a microbrew, and Annie got a glass of the house Chardonnay. Tish said she’d be back shortly and hurried away from their table—directly to another, with an apologetic smile. Annie looked around, realized that Tish was the only waitress on. And there was no one behind the mirror-backed bar at the far wall, so she was doing the drinks, too.

No wonder she’s tense. Annie had waited tables just after high school, a twenty-four-hour greasy spoon that had been horribly understaffed—one waiter per twelve tables, something like that. She still had panic dreams now and again from that place, that she was standing in a vast room full of diners that had all arrived at the same time and she couldn’t find the menus.

“Looks like she’s by herself tonight,” she commented.

John looked up from his menu. “What?”

“Nothing, never mind.” If John hadn’t ever worked in food service, he didn’t likely notice that kind of thing. She’d often thought that everyone should be forced to serve food to the general public for at least a day at some point in their lives, to gain some measure of empathy for the waiters and waitresses of the world. It was a difficult job.

“So, how’s life since Sunday?” John asked, sitting back in his chair. He was wearing a dark suit jacket over a handsome dress shirt, no tie, new jeans. He looked good, crisp but not overdressed.

“Not bad,” she said. “The last of the TV crews have packed and gone, which is a relief. Other than that, same old…well, more of it, I suppose.”

“It’s been busy?”

She nodded. “We’ve got a few people who call in pretty regularly, with ongoing complaints about a neighbor’s dog or the volume of a stereo or wild kids or what have you…frequent flyers. Usually, we get a couple of calls a week. Maybe a couple a day in the summer. Since Monday, we’ve logged complaints on, like, eighteen or nineteen separate calls, only a handful of them from our regulars.”

“Wow.”

“Weirder than usual, too,” she said. “One lady called to tell us that her next-door neighbor’s cat has been spying on her. Another guy said he thinks his daughter has taken up witchcraft and wanted to know if that was against the law so we could arrest her.”

John smiled. “No kidding? Do you have to go check them all out?”

Annie sighed. “Usually, no. Like I said, we’ve got our regulars, mostly retirees that don’t have hobbies. Half the time they just want someone to listen; five minutes on the phone calms them down. But like I said, most of this stuff has been coming in from new people. And the sheriff has been on edge since the Billings thing, so he wants all of us out and about, actively fielding practically everything that comes up. Letting ourselves be seen, you know.”

“So you actually had to investigate a spying cat?”

“That one, we passed on,” Annie said. “Is paranoia like that common? It is paranoia, right?”

“Feeling that you’re being spied on by a cat?” John asked. “Could be a lot of things, depending on what her other beliefs are. Not to mention her medical history. Does the cat talk to her? Can it read her mind?”

Annie liked that he was taking it seriously. “I’m not sure. Ian fielded it. He did say that she called her neighbor a ‘lecherous old man.’ I guess it’s his cat she was calling about.”

John shook his head. “Sounds like a delusional disorder—paranoid—but it could be organic, could be schizoid…there’s no way to be sure without knowing more.”

“Delusional disorder—sounds dangerous,” Annie said.

John shrugged slightly. “Again, it depends. On the cause, the severity, the extent of disruption to her life, how she reacts to things in general. There’s not a lot of black-and-white when it comes to psychology.”

“That would drive me nuts,” Annie said, then laughed at the sort-of joke. “I’m a big fan of clear-cut and simple. The law is kind of like that—for all its strange gray areas, it’s based almost entirely on precedent. And police work is definitely pretty straightforward. Not all the time, but most.”

John was smiling. “Yeah, that’d be nice. Unfortunately, people are fairly complex creatures. Of course, that’s what makes them interesting.”

Tish appeared, set their drinks out, and promised to return.

“How about you?” Annie asked. “Anyone really crazy lately?”

John’s return smile was less than amused. “Actually, I’ve also been getting more calls than usual. I came in this morning to a backlog. Clients I haven’t seen in a while, wanting to meet. And several prescription requests.”

Annie sipped her wine. “I thought psychologists couldn’t write prescriptions.”

“Can’t, but I make referrals. There’s a guy in Port Angeles who’s a psychopharmacologist—specializes in psychotropics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, like that. He actually called this afternoon to ask that I start steering referrals to one of his colleagues, all the way over in Kingston. He says his phone’s been ringing off the wall for more than a week now, mostly from clients in Port Isley who want their meds upped.”

“Huh,” Annie said. Interesting. “Seems to be an increase in mental illness around here.”

John nodded. “It’s not uncommon after a sensational death in a small community. A lot of people get freaked-out.”

“Is that a medical term?”

He smiled and nodded again, his voice low. “Yep. Us therapists use it more than any other. Along with dysphoric and totally bugshit. Makes us sound like we know what we’re talking about.”

Annie laughed. They picked up their menus, chatted about what they were going to order, moved on to local gossip for a moment or two—the big Victorians that had been rented out for the summer, the roadwork being done out by the lighthouse, the community theater.

Tish showed up and took their orders. Annie went with the seafood bisque—a Le Poisson standard for her—and the salmon steak. More calories there than she needed, but she’d skimped on lunch. John opted for calamari and the pork medallions, and they went back to talking about the theater. Miranda Greene-Moreland’s open poetry night would be worth seeing. Dick Calvin, one of John’s neighbors, in fact, had proved to be the reading’s big hit last summer. The generally peevish old man—he was probably pushing eighty by now—was a retired ferryboat captain and had scared generations of Port Isley’s children with his perpetual scowl and curt manner. He had his house egged every Halloween. And he had surprised everyone with a short series of simple but lyrical odes to his late wife, Annelise, who’d apparently died when they’d both been in their twenties.

Tish showed up with their appetizers and hurried away again.

“I talked to him a month or so ago; he was out seeding his lawn,” John said. “He said he was planning to do it again this year. ‘If anyone’s fool enough to come listen, I guess I’m fool enough to go up again,’ he said.”

“And the soul of a poet,” Annie said. She shook her head. “I’m definitely going, then.”

“We could go together,” John said. He hesitated, smiling. “You know, if you want. If it’s…”

“Applicable?”

“Exactly.”

She grinned back at him. “I don’t know, that’s practically a whole month from now. Longer. Kind of jumping into things with both feet, aren’t we?”

“Maybe so,” he said. “Something to think about, though.”

“Yeah, it is,” she said, feeling almost absurdly giddy. She couldn’t remember feeling so…so excited about a boy since about junior high. “And I will. I am.”

John nodded, his gaze warm, and dug into his calamari.

“Speaking of neighbors, have you met yours yet?” Annie asked. “The rental next door?” She spooned into the creamy bisque, brought up a tiny bay shrimp and part of a scallop. Heavenly.

“No. He—or she—is a real hermit. Haven’t even seen him. Or her. Although I heard the car pull out late the other night. After midnight, in fact.”

“Really,” Annie said. She took another taste of soup—and crunched into something.

Crab shell or something, big, though. Frowning, she pulled the offending bit out of her mouth, looked at it, turned it around—

“What is that?” John asked.

Annie shook her head. It was semitranslucent, about the size and shape of a small fingernail…in fact, it was exactly the size and shape of a fingernail. A woman’s pinkie, maybe. A sliver of dark-red flesh clung to it.

Tish was walking by, an empty tray in hand. Annie caught her gaze, still frowning.

“Is everything all right?” Tish asked. She looked even more strained than before.

“Something in my soup.” Annie held it out for the waitress to see before putting it on her napkin.

“Part of an oyster shell, maybe? I’m so sorry. Let me get you a new bowl.”

She scooped up the offending bisque, smiling apologetically at Annie. “Our usual chef isn’t working tonight.”

“I thought the calamari was different,” John said. “Who’s on?”

Tish’s smile became forced. “Mr. Truman.”

Annie was surprised. “I didn’t know he cooked.”

“None of us did,” Tish said. She seemed about to say something else but walked away instead, heading for the kitchen. John and Annie exchanged looks, Annie not at all sure that she wanted another serving of bisque. She looked at the thing that had been in her bowl, feeling a little queasy. Whatever it was, it really looked like a human fingernail. Really.

From the kitchen, they heard a raised voice, angry, masculine. Tish came back out a beat later, her face red, carrying a new bowl. She looked like she was about to cry, but she managed a weak smile as she set it down in front of Annie.

“Tish,” Annie started, not sure how to intervene, only sure that she needed to try. “Did he—was that Rick yelling at you? Mr. Truman, I mean?”

Tish nodded, her eyes bright. Annie felt for her. “Is there anyone else back there?” she asked gently.

Tish shook her head. She lowered her voice, leaned in, and spoke all in a rush. “He sent Randy home—the cook? And when Katie started asking about it, he sent her home, too. He said if she didn’t like how he ran things, she could just…she could go home, too.”

The flush in her cheeks suggested that his language had been a bit more forceful. “He told me to stay out of the kitchen. Said if I wasn’t putting in an order or picking up, he didn’t want to see me. I wouldn’t say anything normally, I mean he’s my boss, but he’s—he’s kind of scaring me.”

Annie had heard enough. “Go ahead and eat,” she said, nodding at John as she stood up. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

John started to stand also, but Annie waved him off. “I don’t want him to feel…overwhelmed. I just want to talk to him.”

“I’m a good talker,” John said.

Annie nodded. “I’m sure. But cold calamari is the worst. And I can handle this. I’m the law, remember?”

She said it lightly but meant it. Rick was kind of a blustering jerk, but he was also on the town council; he toed the line. A few choice words from a PIPD officer—even one in a summer dress—would probably keep him from beating up on his waitresses, at least. Having John along wouldn’t help.

Annie touched Tish on the arm. “Just keep out of the kitchen for a minute or three, OK?”

Tish nodded uncertainly, then went off to attend to one of her neglected tables. Annie smiled at John—he looked as uncertain as Tish, but he smiled back at her—and walked to the kitchen door, already figuring how she’d handle it.

Unofficial, like I’m just coming in to say hi to the chef, but firm, direct eye contact…

She pushed the heavy swing door, and a clean and well-lit kitchen opened out in front of her—two massive stoves, an industrial grill, twin rows of counters, a walk-in refrigeration unit. The back wall opened to the right, but she couldn’t see what was there; prep area, probably, sinks and counters. A single piece of fish was on the grill, spitting and hissing, and there were several big pots steaming on the stove, but no one was in attendance.

To her immediate right was a small room with a dishwasher in it, a massive steel unit with a stray hose attached, but no one operating it and no Rick. A hall ran off to the left, curving around the walk-in and out of sight. There was an office in back, she remembered; a few years ago, she’d taken a vandalism complaint from Sadie Truman there. Someone had broken one of the front windows.

Prep area or office? Annie hesitated, thinking it might be better if she just waited—he’d have to come out for the fish, sooner or later—and heard a noise from the adjunct at the back of the kitchen. It sounded like a sigh and was followed by soft talking. A man’s voice, low and almost soothing in tone…Rick?

Thought she said he was alone back here. Huh. Annie started for the adjunct, eager to get back to John. She liked that he hadn’t insisted on coming along; a lot of guys would have. It was a nice change, to meet someone mature enough to leave off with the whole macho thing. Or, even better—maybe he actually respected her opinion, and—

The smell hit her. She slowed, maybe twenty feet from where the wall opened up, trying to pick apart the unusual and unpleasant scent that had suddenly drowned out good kitchen smells. Raw meat, perhaps, but thick and too heavy, like a butcher shop dumpster. Wasn’t one of the specials filet mignon? Or maybe it was the pork. Anyway, she was glad she hadn’t ordered it, if that was what it smelled like raw.

“Mr. Truman?” she asked, walking forward again—

—and then he was stepping around the corner of the adjunct, quickly covering the short space between them, crowding her back. His face was red and sweaty, his expression thunderous.

“What are you doing here?” he barked. “This is a private business!”

Flustered, Annie stepped back. “I’m—excuse me, I’m sorry, I just wanted to come back and…and talk for a minute. I realize you’re busy, but maybe we could go to your office…”

She trailed off, looking at him. At the clean black apron he wore over a dark polo shirt that was positively stiff in places with unidentifiable stains. At the minute specks of—of something that spattered his face. Food? Mud?

Blood?

Alarms clanged in her head. Her gut gave a sharp, shuddering twist, her instincts informing her deeply, wordlessly to get out, get out.

And there was another sound from the back, from where Rick had been. That sighing sound again, a pitiful, weak flutter of noise.

Rick and Annie had both turned toward the sound. Now Rick looked at her again and smiled. A slow, wide, entirely unpleasant smile that made his face look rigid and inhuman. The flecks of dried matter on his skin stood out now that she really looked at him, red and bright under the fluorescent light. His hands were clenched.

“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “I thought I could, but I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t wait for what?” She barely heard herself speak, her thoughts coming fast and hard, trying to organize, to make sense of all the pieces. Rick, spattered with blood, talking and acting like this, someone sighing…the thing in her bisque that looked like a fingernail.

Gun’s in my purse. Vincent had been adamant that his people carry at all times; her .38 was in her lacy summer purse, which was at the table next to her chair, and she felt an intense burst of self-reproach for not even thinking of it until now.

Call it in. Get out and get some backup, and keep talking, keep him talking. She slid back another step, very carefully. The lights were too bright, seeming to call attention to her retreat.

Rick frowned, his expression darkening. “As if you didn’t know,” he said. “I’m sure all of you knew. He couldn’t have been the first, not the way—not the way she was taking it.”

Not the way she was…Sadie? Annie had heard things, here and there, about Mrs. Truman and some of the young men she hired—and she worked not to let it show on her face, the way he was watching her…

She backed up another step but also shifted to the left, trying to see around him to the hidden corner. “Who’s back there, Rick?” she asked.

His eyes welled up, his shoulders sagging. “Anyway, it’s over,” he said. He seemed exhausted. He stared down at the floor, at his shoes, still but for the single tear that spilled over one blood-misted cheek.

Annie stepped to the side again, keeping her gaze fixed on Rick. He didn’t have a weapon, but neither did she, and he was built like a truck. On the other hand, he seemed calmer now. Subdued. Maybe she should—

“Help,” a sighing, plaintive voice called from the back, barely audible, miserable and shaking—and male. Not Sadie.

Still watching Rick, Annie took two, three sidling steps left, shifting casually toward the back—and saw what was there, the picture startlingly clear and terrible, the overpowering smell of meat becoming an awareness of what had transpired.

Like a scene in a movie, she thought, trying to fit a reality over what she was seeing. Her glance away from Rick turned into a long, wavering stare as she struggled to process, struggled not to vomit.

A long counter ran the length of the kitchen’s back wall, the adjunct ending in a pair of heavy stainless steel sinks. There was a wide cutting block slanted toward one of the sinks, a fire exit in the corner—and blood everywhere. Splashed on the counters, trails of it drying on the sink fronts, on the floor. He’d made some attempt to clean up—there were diluted pink streams snaking around the floor drain, pink smears on the counters—but all that was scenery, a backdrop to the real horror. Great hunks of meat, some of it skinned and dressed, some of it still recognizable as human—a woman’s bare leg, sticking out of the sink; the flayed rib cage atop the butcher’s block, one shoulder and upper arm still attached, one small, flat breast hanging off like a limp sack—seemed to cover every available surface. On the small countertop to her right she saw a cutting board with a heap of hammered flesh circles laid out, a pile of minced garlic next to a long, dirty knife. A meat hammer was nearby. She saw a huge colander of peeled shrimp by what looked like a cross-section of a human thigh, the rounded, bloody bone and raw muscle tissue contrasting sharply with the pale skin still attached. And in the corner, tucked against the fire door, a person drawn up in a fetal position. A young man, his hands pressed to his groin. Fresh blood seeped from the red pool of his hands, from what seemed to be a thousand cuts along his bare arms and shoulders.

“Help,” he whispered again, rolling his head toward her, longish stands of hair sticking to his battered and bloody face, and Annie took a step toward him, unable to deny him, kid’s dying, and with a terrible, guttural scream, Rick was striding at her, his hand flashing out to the cutting board, his face red and grinning once more.

“Leave him alone!” he screamed, and Annie had ample time to realize she’d made a mistake before the knife he’d snatched up punctured her skin, her chest, her right lung. He drove it in with both hands, and the pain was bad, way beyond bad. Her whole body trembled with it, shock waves of it shuddering through her as her legs went away, and she fell to the floor. The knife ripped and tore as it left her, as her body weight and his grip on the knife’s handle fought for dominance; the knife won. She looked up, saw Rick, saw that he was weeping, saw her own blood dripping from his hands.

“He f*cked her,” Rick sobbed, but his tone was that of a petulant child. “He doesn’t get help.”

Stabbed me. She gasped, tried to think—to cope with the pain long enough to understand the situation, to remember what to do, to breathe—and in a matter of seconds the black and bright darts of light that floated in front of her were joining together, making everything else irrelevant.