hurt her mom.
Her dad had told her right when he got there today that his offer was still in effect – she could leave West Virginia and go live with him, could start all over again – and that would solve everything, Carla thought, and that’s exactly what she would do, even though she knew it would break her mother’s heart.
‘Just figured I oughta let you know that I’ve made up my mind,’ Carla said, ripping through the words as if she were pulling things out of a drawer without even looking at them, flinging them over her shoulder, hasty and heedless. ‘I’m going to go live with Dad. Just as soon as I can. I’m outta here.’
14
Chill was impressed. He was also pissed.
She was a hell of a driver, and he respected that. But he was also annoyed that she had outfoxed him. It made his job a lot harder.
Following her up the mountain and then back down again had been his own inspiration. When Chill finally got around to telling the boss about it, he might like it, might not. Chill couldn’t predict. But he knew that the boss would’ve been a hell of a lot happier if it had worked. A car accident was perfect. Nobody would question it.
Chill was back in the motel room. It was a good hour-and-a-half drive from Acker’s Gap. Needed to be. He had to be more careful now, in case somebody recognized him from the shooting. Going after the Elkins bitch that way, in broad daylight, had been risky, sure. But risk was his specialty. He had a reputation. Or was getting one. Gradually.
Chill was sitting on the bed. He hadn’t bothered to yank off his boots when he came in. He’d just slammed the door shut behind him, headed for the bathroom to take a piss, then stumbled out into the crummy little room and heaved himself down on the bed.
He turned and scooted around and angled his back against the pillows. He’d bunched them up, both of them, mashed and pummeled them against the headboard so that he could sit up and smoke. He’d already had a warning from the management. One of the maids must’ve ratted him out. So sue me. The cigarette wobbled on his lip. He took a long, slow pull on it and then blew out the smoke from the opposite corner of his mouth, and the cigarette wobbled a little more. Chill could smoke an entire cigarette and never touch the damned thing.
God, he hated Sunday afternoons. They were the worst. He’d always thought so. Even as a kid, he hated Sunday afternoons. His daddy would sleep all day, usually, because he’d been out all of Saturday night, and then he’d fall in through the front door on Sunday morning and just lie there on the floor in a swamp of his own piss and puke, drunk as a goddamned skunk, and if you talked too loud or turned on the TV – well, the memory made Chill shudder. He’d done that once, as a kid. Eight years old. He’d come in the living room and tried to move real quiet and he’d turned on the TV set because he wanted to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers game. It was after 2 P.M., for Christ’s sake, and you would’ve thought that was okay, but his daddy rolled over and woke up and before Chill knew what was happening, before he even realized that the snoring had stopped, his daddy had picked up one of his boots, the big, heavy kind of boots, size 14, and he’d flung it at Chill’s head. Chill didn’t see it coming. It caught him on the side of his head and damned near took out his eye. The sharp part of the heel hit the little crease in the corner of his left eye and hooked something there, tore something, and for a couple of months Chill couldn’t make out a goddamned thing with that eye. Everything looked mushy and cloudy, like he was trying to see through a plastic bag or a dirty window. Plus, that side of his head was all swollen up, all yellow and purple, and when he went back to school on Monday, he had to say he’d run into the open truck door. That was what his daddy told him to say. Don’t want no goddamned meddlers coming round and telling me how to raise up my own kids, his daddy had said. So