Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,31
you don’t come back. Now move your skinny ass.”
She charged past me, and the sound of her steps on the asphalt faded.
Hashok, the thing in the grass.
I caught an Uber home. The afternoon was sunny; heat radiated up from the drive, and I tasted gravel dust as my ride left. The house looked the way it always did: the fresh white paint, the picture windows, the rocking chairs on the porch. Home. This was home, and it was real, and I laughed because here, with just the sound of the Okhlili murmuring in my ears, the dreams and the craziness, Ray and Mason and Suzette in the stairwell, it all seemed like I’d been half-asleep and was finally waking up.
When the breeze shifted, I smelled shit and rot.
Something had died nearby. Animals came out of the bayou all the time, some of them injured, some of them old. They crossed the Okhlili and died on the lawn. It would upset Richard, so I opened the garage and left my books on the workbench and grabbed a shovel. I followed the stench, hoping it would be small. A swamp rabbit I could just toss back across the river. A fox. A squirrel.
As I came around the house, something burst into motion. I barely caught a glimpse of it, white and thin and tall, crashing into the tree line and disappearing into the brush. A flock of crows startled up from the branches. And then I saw, on Richard’s manicured lawn, what was causing the smell. Entrails. Intestines. Yards of it. It took me a moment to recognize what it was because it had been stretched out in a strange pattern.
And then I realized it wasn’t a pattern, at least, not the way I’d been thinking. It was my name. Elien. Spelled out in guts across the grass.
DAG (6)
In my bedroom, I spent hours going over the folder that Kade had given me. Nothing on Elien, unfortunately, but plenty of stuff on Mason—all of it bad. Kade had been telling the truth about the bank accounts. Mason hadn’t been rolling in money; neither of us was, which was one of the perks of being a public servant. Unlike me, however, Mason had managed his paychecks pretty well. He’d had a small house, a decent car, and eight thousand dollars in a savings account. Up until last week, that was. Then he’d withdrawn it all in cash. Somehow, Kade had even gotten a video of the transaction from the bank’s security camera, and sure as hell, it was Mason standing at the teller’s window.
I wanted to know where that money was.
Another thing that bothered me was Mary Ann. Where was she in all of this? The pictures in the file Kade had given me had obviously been pulled from social media, and Kade had dated them and sorted them. The most recent one was from months ago, right after Mason had been shot. It showed them in the hospital, Mason still in a gown and propped up in bed, Mary Ann with her arm around his shoulders. Before Mason had been shot, they had lots of pictures together. Mary Ann, who had red hair and freckles, looked happy in all them. After the shooting, though, there was just the one. I thought of all the times Mason had told me Mary Ann had gone out of town to visit a relative. I thought of all the times I had to give a last-minute ride. I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out earlier.
The pictures of the house surprised me too. Kade had obviously swung by the house as part of his investigation, and many of the photographs showed the interior. I didn’t want to know how Kade had gotten inside. I’d been to Mason’s house, of course. I’d been plenty of times, even after the shooting. I’d give him rides, and sometimes I’d go inside for a beer or to watch a game. But now I was realizing I’d only seen the stuff Mason wanted me to see. I’d noticed the front lawn got a little shaggy sometimes. I’d noticed that sometimes the dishes piled up in the sink, and sometimes he’d have some clothes lying around in the living room. I’d attributed all of that to a straight guy living by himself; I’d known Mason for a long time, and he’d never been a clean freak.
But I hadn’t been in the backyard in months, and it looked like a disaster.