"Good to be thorough," I said.
He nodded. "I got calls from a Saint Louis cop, a fed, and a state cop. The state cop says you're a pain in the ass and will bend the law six ways to Sunday."
"Bet that was Freemount," I said. "She's still pissed about a case we worked together."
He nodded, smiling pleasantly. "The fed sort of hinted that if you were detained, he might find a reason to have the local federal office to come take a look around."
I smiled. "Bet you really enjoyed that."
His brown eyes went hard and dark. "I don't want the feebies down here messing in my pond."
"I'll bet you don't, Wilkes."
His face tightened, letting me see just how angry he was. "What the f**k do you care?"
I leaned across the table on my elbows. "You should be more careful who you do a frame-up job on, Wilkes."
"He's a f**king junior high science teacher. How was I supposed to know he was shacking up with the f**king Executioner?"
"We're not shacking up," I said automatically. I sat back in my seat. "What do you want, Wilkes? Why the private talk?"
He ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, and for the first time, I realized how nervous he was. He was scared. Why? What the hell was happening in this tiny town?
"If the rape charges disappear, Zeeman is free to leave town. You and everybody go with him. No harm, no foul."
A sport's metaphor -- ooh, I was all a-tingle. "I didn't come down here to sniff around your mess, Wilkes. I'm not a cop. I came down here to get Richard out of trouble."
"He's out of trouble if he leaves."
"I'm not his keeper, Wilkes. I can't promise what Richard will do."
"Why does a schoolteacher have bodyguards?" Wilkes asked.
I shrugged. "Why do you want the schoolteacher out of the way bad enough to frame him for rape?"
"We've all got our secrets, Blake. You make sure he leaves town and takes his assassins with him, and we can all keep our secrets."
I looked at my hands spread on the smooth tabletop. I looked back up, met his eyes. "I'll talk to Richard, see what I can do. But I can't promise anything until after I've talked to him."
"Make him listen, Blake. Zeeman is so clean he squeaks, but you and I know the score."
I shook my head. "Yeah, I know the score, and I know what people say about me." I stood up.
He stood up. We looked at each other.
"I don't always pay attention to the letter of the law, that's true. One of the reasons Richard and I aren't dating anymore is that he is so f**king squeaking clean it makes my teeth hurt. But we have one thing in common."
"What's that?" Wilkes asked.
"Push us, and we push back. Richard usually for moral grounds, because it's the right thing to do. Me, because I am just that unpleasant."
"Unpleasant," Wilkes said. "Mel Cooper may never walk right again or have the full use of his left arm."
"He shouldn't have pulled a knife on me," I said.
"If there hadn't been witnesses, would you have killed him?"
I smiled, and even to me, it felt like a strange smile, not humorous, unpleasant maybe. "I'll talk to Richard. Hopefully, we'll be out of your hair before tomorrow night."
"I wasn't always a small-town cop, Blake. Don't let the surroundings fool you. I will not let you and your people f**k with me."
"Funny," I said. "I was thinking the very same thing."
"Well," Wilkes said, "we know where we stand."
"I guess we do," I said.
"I hope come dark tomorrow you and your friends are on your way out of town."
I stared into his brown eyes. I'd looked into scarier eyes, blanker, more dead. He didn't have the eyes of a professional killer. He didn't even have good cop eyes. I could see the fear shiny and almost panicked around the edges. No, I'd seen scarier eyes. But that didn't mean he wouldn't kill me if he got the chance. Make even a good man scared enough, and you never know what he'll do. Make a bad man scared, and you are in trouble. Wilkes probably hadn't killed anybody yet or they wouldn't have framed Richard for rape. They'd have framed him for murder or just killed him. So Wilkes hadn't slid completely down into the abyss. But once you embrace the screaming darkness, eventually, you kill. Maybe Wilkes didn't know that yet, but if we pushed hard enough, he'd figure it out.
9
By the time I got back to the cabins, it was after seven. It was August, so it was still daylight, but you could tell it was late. There was a softness to the light, a tiredness to the heat as if the day itself was eager for night. Or maybe it was just me that was tired.
My face hurt. At least I hadn't had to have stitches in my mouth. The EMS guy on the ambulance had said I'd need a couple of stitches. When I got to the hospital, the doctor said I didn't. A very bright spot for me. I'm sort of phobic about needles. But I've taken stitches with no painkiller and that ain't fun, either.
Jamil was standing in front of the cabins. He'd changed into black jeans and a T-shirt with a smiley face on it. The T-shirt was cut across the middle so his abs showed. Though my dance card was full of attractive men, Jamil did have one of the nicest stomachs I'd ever seen. The muscles stood out under the tight smoothness of his skin like shingles on a roof. It didn't even look real. Somehow, I didn't think you needed cobblestone abs to be a good bodyguard. But hey, everyone needs a hobby.
"I'm sorry I missed the fun," he said. He touched my bruised lip gently. It still made me wince. "I'm surprised you let anyone mark you."
"She did it on purpose," Shang-Da said.
Jamil looked at him.
"Anita pretended to faint," Jason said. "She looked really pitiful."
Jamil looked back at me.
I shrugged. "I didn't let someone kick me in the face on purpose. But once I was down, I did play up how hurt I was. This way, we could press our own assault charges."
"I didn't think you lied that well," Jamil said.
"Live and learn," I said. "Where's Richard? I need to talk to him."
Jamil glanced behind him at one of the cabins, then back to me. There was a look on his face that I couldn't read. "He's cleaning up. He's been in the same clothes for two days."
I stared at his so-careful face, trying to figure out what he wasn't telling me. "What's going on, Jamil?"
He shook his head. "Nothing."
"Don't give me grief, Jamil. I need to talk to Richard -- now."
"He's in the shower."
I shook my head, and it made my head hurt. "Screw this. What cabin is he in?"
Jamil shook his head. "Give him a few minutes."
"Longer," Shang-Da said, his voice very bland.
Jason looked from one to the other of them, eyes just a touch wide.
"What is going on?" I asked.
The cabin door behind Jamil opened. A woman appeared in the doorway. Richard had her arms and seemed to be trying to push her, gently but firmly, out the door.
The woman turned and saw me. She had pale brown hair in one of those hairdos that seem artless and simple yet actually take hours to do. She pulled away from Richard and stalked towards us. No, towards me. Her dark eyes were all for me.
"Lucy, don't," Richard said.
"I just want to smell her," Lucy said.
It was the kind of comment a dog might make if it could speak. Smell me, not see me. We primates tend to forget that a lot of other mammals consider smell more important than vision.
Lucy and I had time to study each other as she walked towards me. She was only a little taller than me, maybe five foot six. Her walk was an exaggerated sway so that the short, plum-colored skirt bloused around her and you got glimpses of the hose and garters she was wearing underneath. She was carrying a pair of black heels but walked towards us in a graceful, almost tiptoe movement. Her blouse was a paler purple, unbuttoned so that you glimpsed enough of the bra to know it was black and matched the rest of the undies that you could see. And either the bra was a wonderbra or she was, well, stacked. She was wearing more makeup than I ever wore, but it was well-applied and made her skin look smooth and perfect. Her dark lipstick was smeared.
I glanced behind her at Richard. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and nothing else. Water still beaded on his na**d chest. His thick hair clung to his face and shoulders in wet strands. He had her dark lipstick smeared across his mouth like a plum-colored bruise.