Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,107
wood in her hand when she pounded nails into the walls of the warehouse. She’d liked the solid head of it.
At midnight, though, she’d liked the claw end.
“What happened?” Jesse lowered his hand from his mouth, his voice a husky whisper.
Anna couldn’t speak. It would have taken effort she didn’t have.
Jesse walked toward her. He pried the journal from her fingers where she held it on her bare thighs and read what she’d written earlier that morning when she was sick to her stomach. So, so sick. She didn’t even remember what words she’d used.
“Oh, shit, Anna,” Jesse said. He stood above her, reading. It was the first time she’d heard him swear. The first time he’d said her name without “Miss” in front of it.
She started to cry. Again. She’d thought she was out of tears.
Jesse made her stand up. She started to fall, but he caught her. He helped her put on her underwear. Her pants. She felt no modesty. She didn’t care. Then he helped her walk around the other side of the cot so she wouldn’t step through the blood. So much of it! It had soaked into the concrete floor. Already dark, ruby red for all time. She thought she would get sick again, but the feeling passed. Jesse had her sit in the chair by his easel.
“Are you all right?” he asked, though it would be clear to anyone that she was not all right. Not in the least. She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t need to explain what had happened. He’d read it all. She watched him look around the room—the broken cot, the bloodstained hammer, the red concrete, Martin’s skull split open like a bloody egg.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
How? she wanted to ask, but the effort it would take to produce that word was more than she could summon.
She turned her gaze away from Martin. She wouldn’t look at him again. Did she strike him more than once? She thought she had. Once had been enough to kill him. She hit him more than once, though. Once, twice. Maybe three times. She couldn’t remember. She’d used all her might, but it hadn’t felt like enough for her. Was he truly going to kill her? She didn’t know. He’d been turned away from her when she rose in a fury from the cot, grabbed the hammer, and struck him down with all her might. Strength she hadn’t known she had. A side of herself she hadn’t known existed.
She would tell the police he was going to kill her.
That was what she’d say.
“I’ll take care of it,” Jesse said again.
She looked up at him, vaguely aware that he was the child and she, the adult, and that this was all backwards.
“I’ll have to use your car.” He picked up her keys from the table where she kept her paints. Then he picked up a pair of those work gloves she’d bought for him that he never used. He studied them for a moment.
“I’m gonna wreck these.”
She nodded her consent and he put the gloves on.
Maybe there will be no police, she thought.
Jesse opened the warehouse door and she turned away as he dragged Martin’s body outside. Although it was very early morning and few people would be out, she was glad the warehouse was nearly surrounded by trees and at the end of a long road cut off from the rest of the world. Jesse came back inside. He picked up the hammer, walked over to her paint table. He opened a can of paint with the bloody claw of the hammer. Then he walked over to the bloodstained concrete. Anna watched in shock as he poured red paint over the blood. He dropped the can on top of the mess.
“Anyone ask, you accidentally dropped the paint,” he said, so calmly. “You gonna have to git more.”
From the front corner of the warehouse, he picked up the huge piece of cheesecloth that had lined the canvas when Anna bought it. “For your car,” he said. He walked to the door. “I’ll shut this after me.” He looked past her toward the wall of the warehouse, staring hard as if he could see through it to the dirt road. “I ain’t never rode one of them motorcycles,” he said, “but when I come back I’ll do my mighty best to git it gone.” He looked at her then, still sitting there cold and dumb as a rock, and told her, “You got