like a dark-eyed hawk, then he may have others, too. While none of this ties to Orly—or Mitchell, or Chris’ death, or the gun club—Atlanta’s still got a big blood-red bullseye on her back. The foreclosure notice made that dreadfully clear.
So, no. No trusting the cops.
Atlanta hides.
* * *
Every minute is an agony that gnaws at Atlanta like a rat chewing through drywall, because every minute where she’s stuck behind a mailbox is a minute where the truck is getting away and that dog-napping bitch is running further and further.
By the time the cops stop sweeping and go home Atlanta’s been there for another hour.
It’s damn near 2AM when she hoofs it out of Clover Knoll and back down the road toward the valley, toward the town of Maker’s Bell proper. The walk is only fifteen minutes but it feels like forever—a long dark journey past crickets chirping and the black shapes of oak trees and evergreens.
Eventually through the trees, a fuzzy glow of the U.S. Gas at the bottom of the hill just before you turn onto Main Street. Also the only place in town that has a pay phone. Atlanta thinks, I have to get a cell phone. Not that she has the money for that.
The U.S. Gas isn’t much to look at. Four pumps under a cock-eyed red, white and blue roof. Dingy convenience store surrounded by a parking lot cracked and cratered as if struck by a bunch of tiny meteorites. Above, tinny speakers play some dogshit country music—not old-school country music but rather the kind that’s basically just earworm pop crap sung by some strapping lad or too-skinny blonde with a Southern twang. Little Johnny Cash, maybe. Or Hank Williams Jr. They’d go nice about now. But all she has is this and it sours the spit in her mouth.
Atlanta slides into the phone booth. Finds the phonebook dangling there by a red lacquered chain. What was Chomp-Chomp’s last name again? Burkholder. Right. Only one set of Burkholders in the book, blessedly—unusual for a town where families breed like lusty rabbits (everywhere you go you meet a Troxell; those thick-witted bastards are like dandelions sprouting up and blowing their seed). She dials the number.
A man answers. Gurgles. Snorts. “…the hell is this?”
“Steven, please.” She tries to be polite about it.
“It’s 2:30 in the morning.” Another gurgle-snort.
More politeness made all the easier by her own Southern accent. “I understand and apologize, sir, but I’m a classmate of his and I really need to talk to him.”
The phone clunks and thumps as the person on the other line sets it down.
Atlanta tries not to listen to the awful pop-country instead focusing on the crickets beyond and the buzz of the lights overhead, lights surrounded by little clouds of gnats and skeeters. Eventually someone picks up.
“Got it,” comes Cho… er, Steven’s voice.
Someone—the father—grunts and hangs up the phone.
“Hello?” Steven asks. Not groggy. Not gurgle-snorty. In the background: a TV with the volume turned down.
“Doesn’t sound like I woke you,” she says.
“I wasn’t sleeping. I, uh, don’t sleep much.” Pause. “This Atlanta?”
“Yeah. It’s me.”
“Hi. Wh… uhh. What’s up?”
“Think I found the dog-killers. Had one of ‘em on the ropes and…” She neglects to mention the crotch-kick because it seems unladylike, even for her. “She got the better of me. We went to school with her. Got a name like Vanessa or Tessa or something. She’s dumpy, listens to that dopey clown-rapper-duo—“
“ICP. I like ICP.”
“Ick, whatever. She’s covered in tattoos like, I think her shoulder is covered in a, a… a fishing net or something.”
“A spider web?”
“Oh.” Blink. Blink. “Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. A spider web, then.”
“That’s Tressa Kucharski.”
Oh, snap. She has to laugh. She didn’t make the connection. “Tressa ‘The Cooch’ Kucharski?”
“Yeah, I guess they call her that sometimes.”
“They also say that having sex with her is like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.” Or for the regional variation, tossing a kielbasa in a trashcan. “You know her?”
“She was doing Jonesy last year but then they broke up and she threw a rock through his window and he took a dump in her mailbox and then they dated again and then more stuff got broken and I think she hit him? And I think he hit her back and then she started hanging out less with us and more with the rednecks from Grainger—“
A shape moves past the phone booth. Like a polar bear swimming past the glass at a zoo enclosure.
“Good story,” Atlanta mumbles.