Headlights(12)

My parents and I had been discussing the case, on the way out to Red Rocks, when the truck lights swept through the night and blinded us.

I close my eyes, hold the wall for support.

The answer is, you don’t come back from any of it. You pack up your life and head off to war. You leave your shithole past behind you and don’t let yourself get sucked back in.

I button my pants and step over to the sink, run my hands under the water, my eyes on the flow of it over my skin. I check my watch. It’s almost nine. This day has gone on forever, and I need it to end. I let my eyes raise to the spot in front of me that’s always been graffitied wall.

It isn’t this time.

Blood.

Fuck.

Blood.

I jump back and swear.

Blood in a bathtub.

I hold my arm up over my eyes.

Blood overflowing the bathtub and crawling out over the tiles and—

I swear again, turn around. This bathroom has never had a mirror in it. Never. It was one of the best things about this place. Who needs a fucking mirror in the men’s room? And who decided one day to spend the dumb fuckin’ money to add it? I think I’m gonna be sick.

Finally, turned away, I open my eyes and stare at the stalls. After a few minutes, the blood recedes from my vision. Someone’s scribbled on the wall DEFEND THE WILD, CO NEEDS WOLVES. Someone else has scribbled over it DEFEND YOURSELF. KILL ’EM ALL. A flyer is stuck to the wall that says FEELING LOST? FIND YOURSELF IN YAMPA, over a photograph of a white dome in a field.

Things have changed. This bar has changed. I’ve changed, even if it doesn’t feel like it coming back here. I’ve grown past all this, have made peace with the fact that I will not solve this case. That there is nothing I can do to get my life back.

I have a choice in this. I have a plan and people counting on me. I don’t have to sit here and watch Josie and Tillman have their happy love affair, and the faces of all my former colleagues and friends looking at me with such pity, my life so full of shame and guilt and every feeling that will eat a person alive, has eaten me alive forever. I do not have to walk back into Whileago Manor, or deal with this motherfucking mirror in this bar bathroom.

My stuff is still packed. I can just get on the road tonight and drive to San Diego. Call Murphy from the highway and tell him I’m not the guy. I haven’t had too much to drink yet. I can do this. I can get on with my life and get the fuck out of this place.

I grab a paper towel, keeping my eyes down this time, again that relief creeping back into me, that sense that things might start to look up. Today is the day I’m going to leave it all behind, for good. Maybe this is a test from the universe or whatever fucked-up gods there are, and the only way to pass is to turn my back on it. To walk all the way away and never look back.

I dry my hands and toss the paper towel into the trash can a few feet away.

It goes right in.

And then I do smile. Just once, just for a moment.

That is, until the screaming starts.





5



Josie.

I run. I’m unarmed. I’m not thinking about anything, just her.

I find her in the bar in shooting stance, pistol trained on the chest of a man standing near the door.

She’s talking to him. The scream wasn’t hers. My brain takes in the information out of order. The person screaming is the man Josie is pointing her gun at. The person screaming is dripping rainwater and blood.

Thirties, tall, male. Hysterical.

The person screaming is naked and wearing someone’s skin.

Here.

Almost at once, he seems to realize there’s something on his shoulders. He reaches around with shaking hands to remove it, holding it out in front of his face. An entire human pelt hangs there, before the whole of Mama Tried. Deflated face, black hair shaved tight to the scalp, no feet or hands. The screaming man’s volume surges as he takes it in, eyes frantic, searching around the bar, blood and rainwater dripping down to the floor.

He drops the skin to the ground. Turns, doubles over, vomits beside it. He stumbles on bloody, bare feet. Unsure where to go, vomit dribbling over his lip and tears and rainwater streaming down his face through the blood smeared all over.

Leslie hangs up the bar phone. She’s called it in to the local cops.

This can’t be happening. Here. Now. In person. I reach slowly for my own cell and shoot Jack a text with one hand. Josie takes a step forward toward the man. The Drifter. He flinches back from her. She slowly sets the gun down, still talking, still trying to calm him.

I back myself through the exit, into the wet night, sprint around to the front. I don’t know which direction he came from. The rain, still pelting the ground, the parked cars, me. I don’t have my jacket, but I don’t feel the cold. I don’t feel anything.

I run to the car for a flashlight, move the beam over the slick pavement. Make a full sweep of the parking lot. I head down the road to the east, and then to the west. My limbs electric, every heartbeat, every moment. He’s here. One of them is here. Now. Third in a week.

We’ve never had access to an actual crime scene, never even knew where the skinnings had taken place. And now, here I am, witness to this man fresh off his kill. And I’m sweeping the road again and again, back and forth. The rain pelting incessantly, taunting me. Back and forth, I run and slow. There have to be tracks, there has to be something. Feet pounding on wet asphalt, my feet, asphalt I’ve trod a thousand times. The red, orange, green from the Mama Tried sign reflected on the blacktop, the surface slick like a mirror. Find something. Anything.