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“I don’t know what this footage is supposed to be, but even my blips are clearer than this.” Lila leaned her elbows on the counter as Bear played her a clip on his phone. He’d surreptitiously pressed record on his phone while the bank’s security officer had played CCTV footage from when Rita had left the hotel. An off-angle recording of a grainy video, in other words. In black and white, yet. It was almost impossible to make anything out.
“That is her, though.” He played the clip again and pointed to the woman in a backpack exiting the door. “She gets into a car. Looks like a Subaru. A dark color, probably green or black.”
“But you can’t even see who’s driving.”
“No. And no license plate, either. But it does confirm that she most likely went backpacking with this guy. Does that look like a fishing hat like the one in the watercolor?” He played the clip again.
She sighed and shook her head. “I think so. But how can we find this guy? What if he hurts someone else while we’re trying to figure out what color his car is and whether he wears a fishing hat?”
She shivered as she watched the dark gray car slide past the camera again. Her intuition had gone silent since that day in the woods. She hadn’t had any more strange dream messages from Allison Casey, either. The quiet unnerved her, as if another shoe was preparing to drop.
“He may not even be around anymore.” Bear pocketed his phone. “If he was smart, he’d be long gone.”
“Doesn’t that depend on what he wanted to accomplish?”
Bear’s forehead creased in a frown. “What do you mean?”
“We really don’t know anything about him, or why he killed Rita, or if he killed her. I still think it’s strange that she had the same last name as Allison. I know they weren’t related, but even so…” She shrugged. That coincidence still bothered her, and it also bugged her that it didn’t bother anyone else. So what if the murder spree was four decades in the past? It was still odd.
“It’s significant that he seems to have disappeared too. If he wasn’t involved, why isn’t he coming forward to help the police? Think about it. It was just chance that she washed up on the shore. Her body could have easily been swept all the way to the Gulf of Alaska. Maybe he was even counting on that.”
Lila took out a can opener and a big can of olives and got to work on the lid. “Maybe. But he could have just left her in the woods. No one would find her there, either, especially with winter coming. In a few weeks, she’d be buried under a couple of feet of snow. Anyway, the guy in the watercolor, I just…he seems like a peaceful person, that’s all.”
“From her perspective. She painted the watercolor.”
That was a good point, one she couldn’t refute. She looked up at Bear to find him watching her movements with frustration. With a sigh, she handed him the can and the opener. It took only a few forceful cranks for him to accomplish the task.
“Thank you, although I nearly had it.”
Without a word, he reached into the knapsack filled with supplies he’d brought back from Blackbear. He set a brand new can-opener on the counter.
“Wait. Am I looking at a can opener that isn’t thirty years old and duller than my third grade teacher who put me to sleep every day for a year?”
He smiled, gratified by her excitement. “Need the right tool for the job. Sorry it took so long.”
“It’s all right. I know it doesn’t seem dull to you because you could pierce a tin can with your bare hands. Or maybe a well-directed frown.”
His grin widened into a laugh. “I’ll try that next time. One more thing.” He strode to the back door and came back with an enormous cardboard box, clearly heavy, even for him. Nothing on the outside identified what it contained. “They happened to be on sale, so I grabbed one.” He plopped it onto the counter, then used a utility knife to slit open the flaps.
When they all fell away, the most beautiful sight in the world greeted her. A commercial espresso machine, complete with a spigot to froth milk. Her stomach cratered and mouth fell open. “You got a frothy drink maker?”
“You said you missed your lattes.”
“Yes, but…you didn’t have to…” She trailed off, still marveling at the gleaming newness of the machine, with its ornate brass details—an eagle with spread wings, a logo in Italian. “This must have been expensive.”
Bear, looking embarrassed, stuck his hands in his back pockets. “It’s a bar expense.”
“But we don’t serve lattes. We just have that drip coffee maker that we only activate for emergencies, like when Pinky falls asleep at the bar.”
“Times change. First soup, now this. Gotta keep my staff happy.” He rounded the counter and shoved aside a pile of plastic pitchers to clear a spot under the shelves that held the liquor bottles. Under her watchful eye, he heaved the machine into his arms and settled it into place.
“Be careful, it looks very heavy.”
He ignored that, since to him it probably wasn’t heavy at all. She hovered next to him while he tweaked its position and searched for an extension cord to plug it in.
“First drink request?” he asked once it was all set up.
“I get the first drink?”
“Why not? I got it for you. Christmas bonus, if you want to think of it that way.” He opened the mini-fridge behind the bar and pulled out a gallon of milk. “Mocha latte with sprinkles, how does that sound?”
“You got sprinkles too?”
“They’re still in the truck. But yeah. I got sprinkles. I didn’t know if you wanted the basic chocolate or the ones with all the colors, so I got both.”
“Bear.” Overcome, she could barely get his name out without tears coming to her eyes. “This is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. And that’s including all my boyfriends.”
His expression closed down at her mention of boyfriends. She kicked herself. Way to ruin the moment.
“Not that there’s been many of those, because there hasn’t. I’ve always been a little too weird for most guys. They think I’m going to be a pet kitten but then they don’t like it when I can’t sleep so I work all night on refinishing a dresser or something. Or I let slip some little comment about how they’re going to get promoted, and then their boss has a heart attack and he thinks I made it happen. And yes, those are real examples. I’m not a very good girlfriend at all. I’ve never had what you would call a successful relationship.”
Sweet heavens, could she stop talking? How embarrassing, especially after he’d been so thoughtful. Maybe it was because he’d been so thoughtful. She needed him to know exactly who he was being so nice to. Hopefully Bear would do his usual thing and grunt and end the conversation and go chop wood or something.
No such luck.
“What’s successful?” he asked.
“Well…good question. Lasts a long time? Involves marriage?”
“Eve Dotterkind and Bennie Thomas never got married. Happiest couple in town.”
“Commitment, then. When you both know that you’re in it for good, flaws and all. A safe space that also sets you free.”
He looked at her for a long moment, during which she lost track of where they were and even what day it was. Time drifted sideways under his dark gaze. Winter? Summer? Who knew? “Huh,” he finally said.
The grunt. There it was.
It brought her back to earth like a pin bursting a balloon. Sometimes the things she said made sense to her, but not to anyone else. How could something keep you safe yet also set you free? Total contradiction. Maybe that was her fantasy wishful thinking about relationships.
She jumped at the sound of The Fang’s front door squeaking open. So did Bear.
“Gotta oil that damn hinge,” he grumbled. He dragged a hand through his hair. He seemed rattled. Was there something she’d said that unnerved him? She should know better than to talk about relationships with Bear. He never spoke of such things.
Sure, she’d heard rumors about women he’d been involved with. Someone had mentioned a dispatcher in Blackbear who she was very curious about.
“Morning, fellow humans.” The scratchy voice of their first customer of the day belonged to Oil Can Jones, so called because he drove an ancient Mercedes that he’d converted to run on vegetable oil, and would show up anywhere, anytime to collect anyone’s used cooking oil. He always had an entourage of sorts, fellow members of a loose hippie-like group they called the Community. Today two women were with him, a freckle-faced young woman holding a hula hoop, and an older woman, probably in her sixties, who wore a cowboy hat and a brightly colored poncho.
The two women sat down at a table and set up a travel Scrabble set. Were they planning to be here for a while? Lila had seen the younger woman at the swimming hole this past summer, but she didn’t recognize the older woman. Maybe she generally stayed at the Community instead of coming into town.
Oil Can approached the bar. “What’s the haps? Or should I say ‘hops’?” He caught sight of the espresso machine. “Would you look at that beauty! I call dibs on your used coffee grounds. Our wild roses will love them.”
Usually, Lila found Oil Can entertaining, but right now, she wished it was still just her and Bear talking. It felt like being interrupted in a story right when things were getting interesting. But, since it was her job and her boss was standing right next to her, she made an effort and summoned a smile. “What can I get you, Oil Can?”
“Something for the nerves. Woke up to a traumatic event at the Community.”
The Community was located in the former train station that had been the hub for the copper transported from the old mine to Blackbear. Oil Can and a rotating cast of musicians, cannabis growers, fire dancers and other wanderers had transformed it into a mostly livable space. They’d added extra boards for insulation and built a rocket stove for heat. The place generally emptied out by December, when it got too cold for most normal people, but sometimes Oil Can stuck around.
“What are you talking about?” Bear asked. He sounded just as irritated as Lila felt at the interruption.
“Someone broke in and made a mess. Poured blood all over the floor. Not real blood. Fake blood. Corn syrup, that’s what we deduced at our group meeting.” He stroked the braids in his blond beard. To add to his hippie vibe, he wore a striped knit hat in reggae colors. “Weird shit, man. Whoever did it wrote something with the syrup, but by the time we saw it, it was hard to tell what it said.”
“Did you take a picture?” Bear asked, sounding more intrigued than Lila had expected. All kinds of strange things happened at the Community. This was probably not even on the top ten list.
“Yeah, I posed with it. Do you think it says ‘rawhide’? That’s what I think. Candy Apple, she’s our new trimmer, she thinks it says ‘can’t hide.’” He dug out his phone, which was in a thick Otter neon-orange case, and handed it to Bear.
Bear squinted at it, then angled it toward Lila so she could see too.
The shot showed the interior of the old waiting room of the train station, which was now a communal space with cushions lined up against the walls. In the center of the floor was a pool of blood—or syrup—that had pooled on the floor and soaked into the weathered planks. Oil Can crouched next to it pretending to throw up.
“Dumbass pose,” he admitted. “But it made Candy Apple laugh.”
It’s just syrup, Lila told herself, even though the sight made her stomach roil. It could have been a scene in a movie about axe murderers. So much blood. Just syrup.
She used her fingers to zoom in on the area where someone had used the syrup to write a message. It was clear as day to her. “It says ‘run and hide.’ Not rawhide. ‘Run and hide.’”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12 (Reading here)
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
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- Page 33
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- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42