Page 31 of You Can Make Me (Carnival of Mysteries #28)

Sixteen

C ooper

I prided myself on being able to spot liars and kooks as a reporter.

Not that they weren’t worth interviewing, but you had to go into a conversation with an unreliable narrator with a certain finesse.

I knew to take care with the mentally ill and their families, how to tell their stories with dignity and respect.

When I interviewed Dee Dee Miller, just hours before my assault, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that there was far more to his story than I’d had time to dive into, but I hadn’t gotten the sense that he was suffering from any sort of mental illness.

Before we’d even finished, in my mind, I was working out ways to get Gene to arrange for more face time with him.

“Nineteen seventy-four?”

“Mmm, yeah. I think. It was the tour for Tess’s fourth album.

I played double duty on that tour; an opening set, then the local support acts would play, and then I played in her band.

It was a lot, but I loved the challenge.

” He shrugged. “You can look it up. Walter taught me how to swim through the internet, you know, on his fancy typewriter.”

Dee Dee grinned at me, and the twinkle in his eye dared me to ask the question.

“You’re not Dane Donovan’s son, are you?”

“It depends,” he said, playing the tune to a song I knew very well, “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and he seemed intimately acquainted with it. “Are you asking as Cooper, the man who’s seeing my husband’s best friend, or the reporter, Cooper Harris?”

“I don’t know if the reporter still exists.” My voice broke as I spoke. “If you’re asking whether I will keep what you tell me confidential, the answer is yes.”

“Good, because I have a lot of things to tell you, things you need to hear for your own good. But there are people I need to protect. I have your word that you won’t speak of what we discuss this night outside of our circle?”

Black spots appeared in my vision. I felt as if the ground had just fallen away, and I was a second from plunging into the abyss. “I swear.”

“Good. Hey, Walt? Are the suits dry?”

“Yeah, babe. You guys want to swim?”

My heart dropped into my stomach, and I looked to Denny in alarm.

He gave me a sad smile. “Sure. We’d love to.”

Walter showed us into a guest room, where he laid out extra swim trunks on the bed and left us to change.

“I can’t— I’m not ready. I know they’re your friends…”

Denny stripped out of his clothes and reached for a pair of black trunks.

“Woo, these are kinda small, but those look even smaller.” He pulled up the Daniel-Craig-as-James-Bond type that hugged his ass and thighs so well, my tongue practically lolled on the floor.

But it wasn’t enough to erase my near-panic at being mostly naked around his friends.

“Denny?”

“You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but I think it would be good for you. Trust me on that. If you don’t want to swim, come outside and sit with us in your clothes.”

“Denny—who is he? Who is that man?”

“That’s for him to tell you. There’re things I haven’t been able to share with you.

It’s been so hard, and I worried it blurred our honest-always policy.

I need you to talk to him. Listen to what he has to say.

I promise, it will all make sense.” He stepped close and put his hands on my face.

“Please trust me, baby. I would never do anything to hurt you. I would never let anyone hurt you.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I said, but as I spoke, I wasn’t as certain as I should have been.

There were things he hadn’t told me? Not that I expected him to have told me every single detail while we were getting reacquainted, but something big was going on here, and I didn’t like not feeling in control.

I kicked off my shoes and shoved down my slacks with a huff.

Denny watched me with his brow furrowed, and the helplessness I’d seen in his eyes back at the cabin made a showing once more.

Had he walked me into a trap? Not one that would hurt me, but that would force me to face demons I wasn’t yet ready to tackle?

I yanked down my boxer briefs and snatched the swim trunks out of Denny’s hand, kind of rough actually, and the move surprised him. Surprised us both. It broke the tension, and we laughed at my outburst.

“Fine, but I’m leaving my shirt on. And you walk in front of me.”

“Yes, sir,” Denny murmured. “I kinda like taking orders from you.”

I pinched his ass hard, and he yelped so loud it echoed off the walls in the great room as we passed through.

“Okay there, Hamilton?” Walter grinned at Denny from his place in the deep end of the pool on a giant floating flamingo.

“I guess, jeez.”

“I’m sure you deserved it.” Walter splashed Denny, who retaliated by jumping in the pool feet first in Walter’s direction, dousing him and knocking him off his perch.

“I love the way they are with each other. They’re like teenaged boys but not as obnoxious.”

I turned to laugh with Dee Dee—but my breath caught.

He stood in the doorway behind me in a Speedo, with the light behind him bright and the patio light shining on him from the front.

He looked like me.

Those scars.

Deep, thick ropes stood up from the surface of his skin on his thighs and arms in almost identical spots to mine, but it was as if his cuts had been left untreated, not stitched up neatly in a sterile environment by plastic surgeons like mine had been.

“Like looking in the mirror, huh?” He gave me a sad smile, then walked past me.

I gasped when I saw there were more on his backside. He hopped into the pool, went under the water and popped up in front of Walter.

When I could finally move, I shuffled closer to the water. I’d worn a long-sleeved linen shirt, and I left it on as I sat at the edge of the pool and put my feet in.

Dane whispered something to Walter, kissed him, and then swam over toward me. He sat on one of the steps leading into the pool and moved his arms back and forth in the water. I couldn’t stop staring at his wounds.

I was bursting with questions, but I wanted to let this man explain himself.

“I know what happened to you.” He gazed at me with such profound sadness in his eyes.

“When I found you, when I realized it was you, my heart broke, man. Your attack was one more failure. I’d left the carnival to stop Hunter Holland from hurting anyone else, but I wasn’t fast enough.

He killed Chris Gilman, then Jordan Rhoads, and he nearly killed you before he killed himself, and I couldn’t stop him. ”

“It’s not your fault, Dee Dee,” I said, though I wondered if I should call him that. “I shouldn’t have been there. I should have listened to Gene.”

“Hunter Holland came for me at my place of work. What I did, my job at the carnival, involved a bit of scrying, a little psychic phenomenon, some consulting with oracles, but then…you know a little about that.”

The old ladies. “I think I do.”

“You saw me. Back at the house. With Kal and my board.”

“I don’t know what I saw.”

He chuckled. Denny and Walter were against the far wall of the pool watching us, whispering to each other as they observed. Denny’s gaze was anxious, as if he felt my agitation and wanted to take it away but knew I needed to hear this.

“Cooper, in your job, or in your life, how do you deal with unexplained phenomena?”

I balked. “How? Well, I find the truth. There’s an explanation for everything, even when you don’t agree or believe it’s not possible. I don’t give up until I’ve found the truth. That goes for everything.”

“Even if it hurts someone else?”

“That’s…that’s not what I mean.”

He leaned his elbows on the side of the pool next to me. “What if the truth you seek causes harm to another?”

I flinched. Those words…

“How…how do you know about that?”

“I first met them old ladies by the store when I was fifteen years old. In nineteen sixty-seven. I bought a Ouija board from them. I didn’t mean to buy it, but they insisted I needed it.

” He sat up a little taller and pushed back his hair with a shaky hand.

“You saw the board, the one me and Kal used to help track down the killer…the killer we were too late to stop.”

“I walked right into his trap and I didn’t even know.”

Dee Dee put his hand on my knee and sighed. “You knew something was off with my story when you interviewed me. Why?”

“Because. You look exactly like Dane Donovan.”

“And?” He nodded slowly.

“There was something different about you. But how?” I insisted, taking his hand in mine.

“The carnival.”

Denny appeared at my side as the man’s words shook my whole world.

“The one your grandfather told you about. The one your circus pals came from.”

My vision went blurry as the damn tears started up again.

“Hey, it’s okay. Come here.”

I allowed Denny to lift me and bring me into the water with him. I wrapped myself around him as I sobbed, but I kept my eyes on…

“Dane Donovan.”

Walter sat beside him and held him close while he stared at me with those bright green eyes. He was daring me to believe in him, and I saw no alternative.

“In the mangled flesh, at your service.” He gave a funny little bow, and we all chuckled, releasing some of the tension.

“We wanted to tell you,” Walter said. “Once we knew what happened.”

“But you were concerned about safety. And whether I’d keep my big mouth shut. God, I’m so sorry, I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through,” I said.

Dane smiled sadly. “Yes you can. You’ve been through it, too.”

I let out a breath and Denny squeezed me tight. When I stood on my own two feet, he moved behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “So it’s true what Granddad told me. The carnival heals people?”

“Somewhat. It’s more than that. The carnival itself…has certain properties that aid in healing. They found me after Virgil Evans attacked me and kept me safe for forty years.”

I put a hand over my mouth.“Oh my God. This whole time?”