The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,77
but that only made matters worse.
We were both thinking the same thing, but neither of us wanted to say it. In time it was she who broke the silence.
“The shots—they’ll know they’re postmortem,” she said. “But they’ll want to check every gun in the house, and that’ll mean any registered to Nick.”
“There’s blood all over the firepit area now,” I said. “Drag marks in the dirt. They’ll know he was here and that he was already dead.”
We looked at the body. Without speaking, Susan took Stanley Turner’s arms and I took his legs.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
DOGTOWN. OUR HEADLIGHTS picked out the winding roads. Now and then the gold beams flashed on an ancient stone foundation of a house long gone. On huge boulders by the roadside, carved and painted with black letters. They were supposed to be motivational slogans for the unemployed and desperate in the failed town, but their meanings changed as I watched them roll by.
Never try, never win.
I shouldn’t have tried to stop Cline. I would not win against him.
A local vandal had spray-painted a boulder with his own words: Save yourself.
“Cline wanted us to come into his world,” I said. Susan glanced at me. She looked sick. I couldn’t blame her. In the trunk of the car, a body lolled and shifted as we drove through the night.
“What do you mean?”
“If we’d reported the body, we’d have had the house searched. Our people would have been questioned and our home invaded again, not with his men this time but with cops. If we didn’t report the body …”
She looked out the windshield at the night.
“This,” she said. “The night. Dogtown. Cline’s own dumping ground. His guys were out here only days ago dumping a corpse, and now we’re here. He must have known we’d be forced to choose the same spot. It’s the best place for a mission like this, isn’t it? We already know it’s been scouted out!” She laughed, a crazed, angry sound. “He wants us to sympathize with him. To understand we’re not that different. He’s sure pulling out all the stops to get us to back off.”
“I’m not backing off.”
“Look at us.” Susan jerked a thumb toward the trunk of the car. “That’s someone’s son back there. We’re Cline right now. We’ve become him.”
“We’re not him,” I said. “We’re nothing like him. He did this to us. We’ll move the body and then call it in. There’s no sense in sacrificing Nick because of what Cline did. He’ll never pass a psych evaluation, not in his current state. He’ll be implicated in the shooting, and who knows where it will go from there?”
Susan was quiet for a long time. “We have to do something about him.”
“Cline will—”
“I don’t mean Cline,” Susan said. “I mean Nick.”
“What exactly are you proposing we do with Nick?”
She didn’t have an answer. “He’s not safe to have around the house.”
“He’s not a dangerous dog, Susan. He’s a person.”
“I get that,” she said. “Don’t you think I get that? I’m here, aren’t I? Doing … doing this. Nick needs treatment. He needs to talk to someone about what happened over there, on his deployment. He can’t keep it locked away anymore. It’s killing him.”
We drove on in silence. I watched the roadside as I drove, looking for a discreet trail to dump our evil secret.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
I HADN’T SLEPT after Susan and I returned from Dogtown. The former FBI agent had lain awake beside me, the warmth and love and security of our connection at the beginning of the night soiled and forgotten. At sunrise I gathered up our bloody clothes and bagged them, and she stood watching, numb.
“We had no choice,” she said. “But I’m still disgusted with us.”
“You and me both,” I said. I had walked to Nick’s room and knocked on the door, found him sitting on the bed. We agreed to meet on the porch later that morning and go to the psychiatry clinic at the VA hospital.
I made coffee in the kitchen. Vinny and Angelica were at the dining-room table together, Vinny’s leathery cheeks glowing pink as he jabbed at the laptop between them.
“Not there, there,” Angelica said, pointing at the screen with her broken finger. She tried to move the laptop mouse but Vinny swept her hand away. “The little envelope symbol. Mail. Sign in.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a new job, Vin.” I smiled, blew the steam off the coffee I’d made. “Angelica’s personal assistant. Are you going to take dictation of the novels?”
“I’m