“How did you get past the roadblock?”
I waved vaguely behind me. “I came on the hunting trail from the Dune Club.”
He maneuvered around me, pushed aside some shrub branches and squinted in the direction of the camouflaged blind.
“There’s a hunting trail back here?” He turned back to me. “You’ve got half the trail in your hair.”
I reached up and brushed out debris. More leaves and twigs. I paused . . . the same sort of fragments I’d found this morning. I went on the offensive.
“What are you doing here, Stokes?”
“What do you mean? I’m on the ambulance team.”
“Then why aren’t you doing your job? Why are you sneaking around in the bushes out here?”
His boyish face suddenly looked tired and old. He ran his fingers through his dripping-wet black hair and lowered his eyes. For the first time, I noticed what incredibly long lashes Stokes had.
“I wasn’t sneaking. It’s only my second time out with these guys. My stomach didn’t feel so good. I thought I was going to hurl, and I didn’t want to do it in front of the crew and the cops and everyone.”
He pulled out his cigarette pack and quickly stuffed it back in his pocket again, probably thinking the better of sending the police smoke signals. He grimaced and looked up, shaking his head.
“When they called me this morning, I had no idea where we were going. Then Mac told me who.” He looked like he was about to cry. “And what.” Taking a deep breath, he let out a groan before speaking again. “It’s so fucked.”
My stomach dropped to my groin. I was feeling queasy myself. I wavered for a second.
“What did Mac say?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Tell me what he said.”
“Hey, take it easy. What’s going on?”
Stokes, along with everyone else, was going to find out soon enough.
“He was my ex-husband.”
“Who?”
“Hugh Walker.”
“No.” He took a step back. “You and Walker were married?”
“We divorced three years ago. He got Helene pregnant while we were together.”
His eyes widened. “Fuck, no. Jesus. She . . . no. Mother of God.” He stared at me with his mouth open for a few seconds before he blinked and closed it. “She got herself knocked up by him while he was married to you?”
I nodded. He seemed to lose focus and mumble something I couldn’t understand.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Nothing. That is seriously fucked up.”
“Tell me about it.”
He mumbled again.
“What did you say?”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry for your loss. I guess.”
“So what exactly happened to them?” I prodded.
He looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he seemed to come back to himself. His tone turned official, and he puffed out his chest.
“You should go home, Nora. I can’t tell you anything. I’d get kicked off the crew if anyone found out I leaked information. We’re not allowed to discuss the jobs we do for the coroner. Mac said so.”
“I’m a reporter. I never reveal my sources. Come on,” I begged.
Stokes just looked at me with a stony expression.
“Didn’t Mac give you any specifics? Were they shot in their bed?” I blurted. I was obsessed with knowing how Hugh and Helene were killed. Could he verify the unconfirmed report?
“Whoa.” Stokes frowned. “You’re his ex, and you’re skulking around back here, sniffing out the gory details on his murder? I don’t care if you are a reporter. That’s just wrong.”
“But I—”
“You’d better get going.” He pointed in the direction of the blind. “Now.”
I felt ashamed. Stokes was right. I was acting like a creep, asking these questions. A ghoul. I didn’t belong there. But I’d become irrational. The slashed painting had finally put me over the edge. I’d started adding it all up. My fantasy of shooting Helene and Hugh in bed. The scratch. The leaves and twig in my hair. I was tormenting myself with an absurd idea. “Ne eshee byidi beda sama tibya nadyet. Don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you,” Aunt Lada would say. She’d be right.
I glanced up at the sky. The clouds above us had swelled up and darkened again. Whatever Stokes knew about the crime scene, he wasn’t going to tell, anyway. Rather than offering any closure, coming to Pequod Point had messed with my head. I had to get out of here. If I hurried, I might be able to beat the next downpour. And if I didn’t change these freezing, wet clothes, I’d catch pneumonia on top of losing my sanity.
“All right, I’m leaving. But please don’t tell anyone I was here.”
He raised his huge right hand and pledged. “Scout’s honor.”
I stayed low and set my nose for the blind, loping back through the seagrass. Before I’d gone very far, Stokes called out to me in a loud whisper.
“Nora, wait.”
I turned around. He looked young again, huddled in the bushes, a wet, Elvis-like curl spiraling down his forehead. Young and innocent and scared. Like a little boy who’d gotten lost playing hide-and-seek.
“You think maybe I could get a ride with you to the alley? Mac and Al don’t really need me. It’s almost nine forty-five. I usually open the lanes by ten.”
Strange. Was he just going to walk off the job? Leave them wondering where he went? I nodded and waited for him to catch up. But the rain didn’t wait. It came down in sheets as we ran.
Breathless, we reached the car and jumped inside. I opened my coat and began wringing out my baggy pajama bottoms. Luckily, the police didn’t see a woman in soaking wet pajamas sneaking around the scene of her ex-husband’s murder. What was I thinking? The dark pajama water pooled under the gas pedal. The ride back would be tricky, not just for a car with funky wipers, but also for anyone traveling outside of an ark. I turned the key, cranked the heat and pulled out of the Dune Club lot. It was like driving through a car wash.
Stokes didn’t seem to notice the monsoon. He was making a call on his cell.
“Mac? No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t want to walk into the middle of . . . of . . . a crime scene and be sick. I hitched a ride from one of the neighbors who was on his way to church. I would’ve called sooner, but I just got cell service.”
A convincing liar, Stokes was, innocent face and all.
“Sure thing,” he said.
He hung up and stared out his window. His jaw was clenched. He’d turned distant and morose. We rode without speaking as the rain pounded the hood. I kept thinking about the gray body bags. The mauled painting. The sickening violence. The dreadful suspicion I’d tried to suppress kept surfacing. I needed to focus on the slippery, winding road, or I’d spin out. The wipers were functioning slightly better at the moment, only missing one beat out of four. Still, the driving was treacherous. Suddenly there was a lightning flash, and a blinding torrent of water cascaded down the glass. I flinched at a thunderclap.
“Shit,” I said, hunching over the steering wheel and trying in vain to see the road ahead clearly.
“Make a U-turn,” Lady GPS ordered. “Make a U-turn.”
That snapped Stokes out of his fog. He scowled.
“What’s up with your car?”
“It has Tourette’s.”