Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,96
this thing has leagues?”
Holger nods. “Amateur. Semi-pro. Pro. Big money at the top.”
“That’s scary. And a little bit sick.”
For a moment, Holger just looks old and tired. Like this is all she sees and it’s the cross she bears, a cross that weighs her down and pushes her closer to the earth day after day, year after year. She finally says, “It is, and sometimes it feels like you’re just kicking sand at the tide. But we did good today thanks to you.”
“Will it make a difference?”
“It will.” But the way she says it, Atlanta’s not so sure. “Anyway, now that we’re wrapping up I should get you out of here. Thanks for waiting. You made us kinda busy.” She smiles.
“I’m ready to go home.”
“You mind coming by the station first? Make your report? I want to tie up all the loose ends on this thing.” Way she looks at Atlanta, there’s a flash of something: suspicion? Irritation? Straight-up confusion as to why a girl like her is here at fights like these? “I’ll be quick about it. Better to pull the Band-Aid off fast than rip it slow.”
Atlanta hesitates—she really is ready to go home. But she nods. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“I appreciate that. I’ll get someone to take you and I’ll be along soon enough.” Holger starts looking around, then her eyes fall on someone over Atlanta’s shoulder. “Petry! Petry, hey, c’mere.”
Petry.
Atlanta’s blood goes ice cold.
And here he comes. Petry. In full uniform. He comes over, makes no obvious notice of Atlanta. He’s all business. “Detective. What’s up?”
“Can you take Miss Burns here back to the station? I want to get through the paperwork.”
Atlanta feels like she’s got a string of firecrackers under her feet but she’s forced to stand there as they go off. No. Not him. She runs through the possibilities, plays a series of mini-movies in her head, like the one where Petry drives her somewhere you can’t find on any map and puts a bullet in her head, bang.
Whitey’s feeling it, too. Staring up Petry. Licking his chops.
Before Petry can say anything, Atlanta blurts: “I can get a ride.” They both look at her. “I’ll call somebody. They’ll come. They can drive me.” Her words are short, clipped, a little breathless. All doing a poor job of masking just how her skin crawls, how her heart feels like a moth trapped under glass.
Holger shakes her head. “Nah, this is fastest. It’ll get you on your way, then.”
“How about the dog?” Petry asks.
You leave my dog alone.
“Take the dog too,” Holger says. “You can put Atlanta in my office and the dog…” She seems to think on it. “Break room downstairs, maybe. Give him a cookie or something.”
Petry waves her on like he didn’t just have a showdown with her behind the Morton building. “Miss Burns, follow me, please.” Please. So polite for a psychopath.
Atlanta looks to Detective Holger. Thinks to say something. Anything. Maybe just run. What if she tells them Petry was here? That he was a willing participant in all of this? That he threatened her? That she stole his gun and tossed it into the woods?
Would they believe her?
They’d take his word over hers.
And saying any of that right now opens up a real bag of snakes. More snakes than she can kill right now.
A thought strikes her: he can’t do anything to you. Not now. Not like this. Everybody will see him put you in that car. This is on the record. On the books. Holger knows.
Holger looks at Atlanta expectantly. “You can go, Miss Burns. Unless there’s something else?”
Atlanta wants to tell her everything else. All of it. But she doesn’t. Instead she pats her thigh to get Whitey’s attention and follows ten feet behind Officer Petry.
The killer in a cop-suit, the monster in man-skin.
He opens the door to a cruiser—his cruiser—and says nothing as he points toward it.
It’s a little mini-prison, she knows. She’s seen movies and TV. Those doors close they only open for him. It’s a portable cage, a jail-on-wheels.
Whitey hops in the back.
Atlanta holds her breath—not by choice but because she can’t seem to let it out—and gets in too.
* * *
For a while the car just drives, humming along the back roads, occasionally rocking as one or two tires hop in and out of a bad pothole. Like before it’s all trees and barns and horses behind fences. The trees seem to sag and wilt. The paint on barns peels in long leprosy