Read Online Lie Down with the Devil by Linda Barnes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Linda Barnes
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locked and skidded.
Instinct took over. One minute the car was out of control and the next minute it was slowing and stopping, sliding but stopping, not quite on the road, but not quite in the ditch, and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that I thought I might need help to pry them off.
Quiet. It was absolutely still, like church, except no one coughed or rustled in the pews. Dark and quiet and still. No cars, no streetlights, scudding clouds across the faint hint of a moon.
Damn again. I knew that sound. I knew what made a car behave like that. A blowout, a flat, and while I’d checked the oil and gas, I hadn’t cracked the trunk and checked for a spare.
Oh, please
, I prayed silently.
There’s got to be a spare.
I got my flashlight out of my bag and flicked it on, pointing the beam out the side window.
I couldn’t see grass; I couldn’t see ground. I knew there were no cliffs on the Cape, just dunes overlooking the ocean still far to the south, but who wants to take chances, so I slid to the passenger side, closer to the center of the road, and got out. I didn’t slam thecar door. The silence was so profound, it didn’t seem right to break it.
As I edged around the car to inspect the tires, I kicked something that skittered across the road. My lowered flashlight caught a gleam of silver. I bent and studied the pavement.
Carpet tacks. Too many of them. In fact, a whole box of carpet tacks.
The rain started again, pockmarking the gravel at the side of the road, its faint patter the only sound on the planet. The metallic barrage of a jackhammer or the wail of a siren would have been a welcome intervention. I won’t say that the worst parts of Dorchester and Mattapan hold no terrors for me, but they hold familiar fears. I’m a city kid. The dark rural silence sent shivers up my spine.
Mooney used to get on my case whenever I’d make an intuitive leap, make use of what he used to call unwarranted imagination. Hey, I’d respond, most cops have no imagination, period. Now I gave mine free rein.
Had the man in the Volvo tossed the tacks, or had they been lying here for hours, days? If they’d been here even ten minutes ago, why had the Volvo passed with no problem? Luck of the draw? Karma?
I decided to hold Ken responsible for the tacks.
Okay. Had he simply been trying to stop me? Was the man insane or just reckless and impulsive? Had injury been his deliberate goal? Had he assumed I was someone else, some unknown—to me, at least—enemy? Would he U-turn the Volvo, return to demand why I’d been tailing him? Come back to finish me off? Would I hear a car approaching on the roadway with the sputtering rain? See a car if it traveled with no headlights?
Every cheesy horror flick I’d ever seen took place at night in the deserted woods. Woods exactly like those that kissed the margins of Route 149. After fifteen minutes spent crouched in the wet, leafy underbrush, I decided imagination might be running rampant. I decided Ken wasn’t coming back.
By then my hair was plastered to my head and my clothing soaked through. I was also shivering uncontrollably. And the rain kept pelting down.
PART TWO
NINE
I threw myself into the air, timing the leap to meet the opposing center, smashing the ball at a wicked downward angle for the kill. Tie game: 10-10. Our point, our serve, the rhythm of the game speeding up, the momentum changing, slowly turning in our favor. I could feel the surge of energy around me, a corresponding ebb across the net. A teammate smacked my upraised palm.
“Let’s do it,” Marlena, our co-captain, yelled.
When everything else in my life turns ugly, I have a place to go. Some people find succor in the warmth of their family, but I find what I need in the smell of the locker room, in the warped wooden floorboards of the old Cambridge Y in Central Square. I find it in the thwack of skin on a volleyball, the community of players who show up three times a week for no
Instinct took over. One minute the car was out of control and the next minute it was slowing and stopping, sliding but stopping, not quite on the road, but not quite in the ditch, and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that I thought I might need help to pry them off.
Quiet. It was absolutely still, like church, except no one coughed or rustled in the pews. Dark and quiet and still. No cars, no streetlights, scudding clouds across the faint hint of a moon.
Damn again. I knew that sound. I knew what made a car behave like that. A blowout, a flat, and while I’d checked the oil and gas, I hadn’t cracked the trunk and checked for a spare.
Oh, please
, I prayed silently.
There’s got to be a spare.
I got my flashlight out of my bag and flicked it on, pointing the beam out the side window.
I couldn’t see grass; I couldn’t see ground. I knew there were no cliffs on the Cape, just dunes overlooking the ocean still far to the south, but who wants to take chances, so I slid to the passenger side, closer to the center of the road, and got out. I didn’t slam thecar door. The silence was so profound, it didn’t seem right to break it.
As I edged around the car to inspect the tires, I kicked something that skittered across the road. My lowered flashlight caught a gleam of silver. I bent and studied the pavement.
Carpet tacks. Too many of them. In fact, a whole box of carpet tacks.
The rain started again, pockmarking the gravel at the side of the road, its faint patter the only sound on the planet. The metallic barrage of a jackhammer or the wail of a siren would have been a welcome intervention. I won’t say that the worst parts of Dorchester and Mattapan hold no terrors for me, but they hold familiar fears. I’m a city kid. The dark rural silence sent shivers up my spine.
Mooney used to get on my case whenever I’d make an intuitive leap, make use of what he used to call unwarranted imagination. Hey, I’d respond, most cops have no imagination, period. Now I gave mine free rein.
Had the man in the Volvo tossed the tacks, or had they been lying here for hours, days? If they’d been here even ten minutes ago, why had the Volvo passed with no problem? Luck of the draw? Karma?
I decided to hold Ken responsible for the tacks.
Okay. Had he simply been trying to stop me? Was the man insane or just reckless and impulsive? Had injury been his deliberate goal? Had he assumed I was someone else, some unknown—to me, at least—enemy? Would he U-turn the Volvo, return to demand why I’d been tailing him? Come back to finish me off? Would I hear a car approaching on the roadway with the sputtering rain? See a car if it traveled with no headlights?
Every cheesy horror flick I’d ever seen took place at night in the deserted woods. Woods exactly like those that kissed the margins of Route 149. After fifteen minutes spent crouched in the wet, leafy underbrush, I decided imagination might be running rampant. I decided Ken wasn’t coming back.
By then my hair was plastered to my head and my clothing soaked through. I was also shivering uncontrollably. And the rain kept pelting down.
PART TWO
NINE
I threw myself into the air, timing the leap to meet the opposing center, smashing the ball at a wicked downward angle for the kill. Tie game: 10-10. Our point, our serve, the rhythm of the game speeding up, the momentum changing, slowly turning in our favor. I could feel the surge of energy around me, a corresponding ebb across the net. A teammate smacked my upraised palm.
“Let’s do it,” Marlena, our co-captain, yelled.
When everything else in my life turns ugly, I have a place to go. Some people find succor in the warmth of their family, but I find what I need in the smell of the locker room, in the warped wooden floorboards of the old Cambridge Y in Central Square. I find it in the thwack of skin on a volleyball, the community of players who show up three times a week for no
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