A Welcome Grave Read online

  Do you know what it means when your friendship starts making a thwackity thwack sound that progresses to a clankity clank? Yes. It means you screwed up. And how to fix it? Stop being scared.

  She worked on my back for a few more minutes, then stopped, running her nails gently up my neck before pulling her hand away. I twisted my head and looked up at her.

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure. Looked like you needed it.”

  “More than you know.”

  I put the heels of my hands against the floor, pushed myself upright, and slid onto the couch beside her. She was curled up against the armrest, watching me. I looked back at her and tried to remember why I’d always avoided making a move with her, what I’d been waiting for. My basic logic had seemed sound enough at first: My track record of sustaining romantic relationships was poor at best, and Amy was too good a friend to risk losing. Maybe Grace had a point, though. Maybe I should stop worrying about what could go wrong with it and see what could go right. Maybe the moment was now.

  I’d actually started to lean toward her when she said, “I’ve got to stop thinking of you as a relationship possibility.”

  I stayed where I was at first, caught in that awkward half lean, and then I pulled back and raised my eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It wouldn’t work, you know? We’d be at each other’s throats. We are half the time anyhow, and that’s in a friendship. Too many similarities. We’ve made the right decision, or maybe you made it for both of us, and I just need to do a better job of being grateful for that. I apologize. Good friends are hard to find, and painful to lose, Lincoln. I don’t want that to happen here.”

  I hadn’t actually made the move to kiss her, but I felt like I had, and now I was struggling to connect with the sudden turn in the conversation.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” I fumbled.

  “I let some emotions get away from me the other day, that’s all. The questions I asked you, like how many successful relationships I’ve managed since I met you, those should have been questions I directed at myself.”

  “Actually, I was thinking—”

  “Damn!” Her eyes had gone to her watch.

  “What?”

  “I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee twenty minutes ago. I didn’t realize how long I’d been here. I just wanted to drop off that article and apologize, that’s all.”

  She was on her feet, gathering her purse.

  “Let’s not cut off this conversation here and forget about it,” I said.

  She gave me a hurried nod as I followed her to the door. “Sure, we’ll come back to it, but I really do have to run out of here. Sorry, Lincoln. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “I hope so,” I told the door as it swung shut.

  A minute later, I went down to the parking lot as if to catch her, even though I’d heard her drive away. The lot was empty, none of the night owls hitting the gym tonight. I stood with my hands in my pockets, braced against the October wind, and stared at nothing for a while. It was cold, but I didn’t want to go back upstairs. I closed the door and locked it, then walked around the corner of the building and started west down Lorain.

  I’d known Amy for a year and a half, spending more and more time with her with each passing month, and I’d never instigated anything beyond friendship. Then, the night she explains that she’s accepted that as a permanent—and appropriate—situation, I’m ready to make a move. Perfect. I’m a master of timing.

  I hung a left on Rocky River, went down to Chatfield, and then walked east, taking as close to a circular route as you can get in a city where everything’s laid out in rectangles. A car swung in beside me and parked at the curb in front of a house with a giant inflatable witch on a broomstick, her face glowing a bright electric green under the pointed black hat. Halloween was one week away. I was headed for Joe’s house, but unintentionally. He’d probably still be up, watching whatever old game was being aired on ESPN Classic tonight, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to drop in on him and hit him with this news. Maybe because I didn’t want to bother him so late, and maybe because as the weeks stacked up he was starting to feel less like my partner and more like a guy I used to work with.

  Several other houses along Chatfield were decked out in the holiday spirit, grinning jack-’o-lanterns in the windows and gleaming skeletons hanging from the trees. All holidays are bizarre when you think about where they started and what they became, but Halloween may be the strangest.

  My breath fogged out in front of me as I walked, moving quickly, my hands still in my pockets, keeping my arms pressed against my sides for warmth. My wet hair soaked in the chill, made me shiver a bit. Just begging to catch a cold. Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing, though. I’d have to stay home, stay in bed, stay out of the world and all of the twists it could throw at you.

  The attacker ran through the grass instead of on the sidewalk, so I didn’t hear his footsteps behind me until the last second. A car door had opened and closed, but I’d assumed it was the people who’d pulled up in front of the house with the witch decoration, and I hadn’t bothered to glance back. I was half turned to see what was coming when he hit me, a tackle that lifted my feet off the sidewalk and slammed my shoulder against a tree before I fell heavily to the ground.

  I landed on my back, which put me in the best position to defend myself against the next attack from a man I saw only as a dark shape, his face obscured by the shadows and a baseball cap pulled low on his head. I pushed myself off the ground as he swung at me, ducked, and lunged toward him as the blow missed by inches. From the sound his hand made as it passed by my ear, I knew he was holding a weapon, something with some weight to it. He stepped back deftly and quickly at my move forward and, instead of collecting himself for another swing, he simply reversed his body and momentum and threw his right hand at my head again, this time in a smooth, fluid backhand, like a tennis player. He did it so fast and so hard that I thought I tasted the blood in my mouth before I was knocked into a black oblivion.

  11

  The first thought I had when I regained consciousness sent a bolt of pure horror through me—I was blind. I’d come around slowly, groggy, but then I was awake and alert, blinking and trying to focus and finding that impossible. There was nothing but blackness, and for a few awful seconds I knew a fear as great as any I’d ever felt, thinking that my vision was gone, maybe permanently. Then I felt the cloth on my face, and I realized there was some sort of bag over my head, fastened tight around my neck.

  Someone prodded me in the ribs. “You back?”

  I was starting to get my bearings now—on the ground, cool, wet grass beneath me, hands bound behind my back, not with handcuffs but one of those thin, incredibly strong plastic ties that cops use as an alternative. Cloth bag over my head, very thick, allowing absolutely no light to filter through the fabric. I ran my tongue over dry lips and winced as it touched a deep cut with a coppery flavor. There was a steadily increasing ache behind my right ear.

  “Say something.” Another prod in the ribs, probably with the toe of a boot.

  “Take the bag off my head, asshole.”

  A laugh. “Ah, you are back.”

  “Take the bag off. I can’t breathe.” As soon as I said it, I began to feel as if I really couldn’t breathe, then had to still myself before I began gasping, sucking in panic breaths.

  “You don’t want that bag to come off. That bag represents a nice alternative I’m providing to you, Lincoln Perry. It’s a chance to do some talking. The other option is that you do some dying. So, no, I don’t think you want that bag to come off.”

  A hand reached down and grabbed the bag, taking some of my hair with it, then jerked me upright. When I was on my knees, he released me.

  “Stay up.”

  Sitting there on my knees, hands bound behind me, a bag tied over my head, I felt like I was waiting for execution. I tried to get to my feet, but he put his boot in the midd
le of my back—not gently—and shoved me back to my knees.

  “No movement. Just sit still and talk. Do that, and you’ll go home tonight.”

  I licked my lips again, and the moisture turned the dried blood to liquid, filled my mouth with the taste.

  “Who are you?”

  “A man who has plenty in common with you,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I prefer you talking to you dying. We’ve got some similarities, yes, we do.”

  I was silent, waiting for more.

  “You don’t need to know about me, Lincoln Perry. I know about you, and that’s the important thing. I know who you are, I know what you’ve done with your life, I know who is important in it. I know that you paid a visit to Karen Jefferson last night, that you worked in your partner’s garden this morning, that you spent some time with that good-looking reporter this evening. She seemed upset when she left. What’d you do to spoil her fun?”

  “Told her I wanted to play kinky games with my hands tied behind my back and a bag over my head.”

  He laughed. “Good, Lincoln. Very good to see you’re rolling back into form, hiding your fear. I applaud the attempt. But don’t take it too far.”

  There was the ratcheting sound of a round being chambered, and then I felt a hard press of metal at the back of my skull.

  “Keep your fear, Lincoln. I’m a man to be afraid of, no matter what I said about wanting to let you live tonight. Don’t forget that.”

  The gun lifted away from my head, and I realized I was biting down on my wounded lip, making the blood flow freely again.

  “You’re causing some problems,” he said, moving around behind me, shifting to my left side. I could hear nothing but a soft wind and his voice. Wherever we were, it was someplace secluded. That realization wasn’t particularly comforting.

  “I believe these problems you’ve caused were inadvertent,” he continued. “That’s just unlucky for you. But now I need to address them.”

  “All right.” My lips brushed against the thick bag when I spoke.

  “What happened in Indiana? Why were you there, and what happened?”

  I stayed silent for a minute, and then I realized how pointless that was. If I didn’t talk, he’d go to work making me talk. That would be fine, if I had something valuable to protect. I had nothing to protect, though. There was nothing I could say that he wouldn’t already know from the papers.

  “I went to find Jefferson’s son and tell him his father was dead and he was rich. When I found him, he killed himself, with me watching.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “Two minutes, tops.”

  “He spoke to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?” His voice had picked up a new intensity.

  I hesitated.

  “What did he say?”

  “Told me your name and your game,” I said. “A dozen cops are on it right now.”

  There was a pause, and then he hit me. It was a swift, staggering blow to the kidneys. I fell forward, and, since I couldn’t put my hands out to protect myself, I landed on my face. I smelled the wet earth for a half second before his hand tightened on the bag and my hair again and jerked me back.

  “Why?” he said. “Why do you say that, why do you tell a lie that there’s no reason to tell?”

  “Because I’m tired of the bag, dickhead.”

  The gun was back then, hard and cold against my skull. “I’ll ask again—what did the man’s son tell you?”

  I could feel blood running down my chin. After giving it a long pause, I spoke.

  “He told me you had a reason, and all I had was greed. He thought I knew you, thought I was with you. He said that, and then he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “That’s what you said last time. Pick one to believe.”

  His hand tightened on the bag, pulling my hair painfully. “We’re coming from the same place. I know what you did to Jefferson, and I know what he did to you. I admire you for it, and I sympathize with you. But the score you had to settle? The wrong you suffered? Lincoln, it can’t touch me. You saw him on his best day. I saw him on his worst. And I came to settle up.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Yes. I would have killed his son, too. But then you got in my way. I’m not happy about that.”

  “What does the son have to do with it?”

  “Everything. That little shit called his daddy for help in the middle of the night and I paid the price, paid it for five years. But that doesn’t concern you. None of it does, really, and I regret that we’re here, but when you went down to Indiana and left a dead man behind, you created some real problems. You changed the game with that move, even though you can’t see that. We’re going to have to refocus our attention now, and you’ve got to remove yourself from the situation.”

  “Refocus where?”

  “Lincoln, are you hearing me?”

  I was shaking now, the wind blowing cold as I sat there on my knees, no jacket over my thin T-shirt, my mouth bleeding, my eyes blind.

  “Stay away from Karen,” I said. “Whatever Jefferson did to you, it wasn’t Karen’s fault.”

  He spoke with the voice of a frustrated teacher. “You don’t understand a damn thing about this. Can you tell me that? Can you tell me that you don’t understand?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. And that’s a very, very good thing for you. Because I’m going to see that you get home. And home, Lincoln? That’s where you need to stay. You know what I promised Jefferson? I promised him that by the time I was done he’d welcome death. Beg for it. I told him that his would be a welcome grave, Lincoln. I don’t think he believed me. Not at first. He thought he could stop it. But by the end? He believed me by the end.”

  He knelt beside me and tapped my skull with the gun.

  “Leave the dumb slut alone. I’m disappointed in you even for speaking to her, but I suppose that’s to be expected. No more, though. No more. Another trip to that house may cause you problems that I can’t stop.”

  There was silence for a few minutes, and then he rose, and I could hear and feel him pacing around behind me. A few raindrops were falling now, the wind blowing strong and steady, and I couldn’t stop the shivering.

  “What did Jefferson’s son tell you?” he asked again.

  I shifted forward on my knees, my body beginning to ache from holding the position.

  “He didn’t tell me anything. Nothing more than what I’ve already said.”

  “He knew what was ahead. That’s why he did it. He’d been told what his father had been told—that his would be a welcome grave—and he didn’t have his father’s arrogance, or his father’s stupidity. He believed me. He knew he couldn’t stop what was coming for him.”

  It was quiet, and then he spoke again. “All right.” His voice was thoughtful. “All right.”

  Good, I thought, the crazy bastard’s satisfied now, and he’s going to let me go. That was the last thing I thought before he hit me again, a massive blow that seemed to separate my head from my body, and then the world went away for the second time.

  I woke up in the bed of my own truck, which was still in the lot behind my building. I groaned, the pain in my head seeming to spread through every inch of my body, and tried to sit up. The sky and earth reeled around me in a crazy dance, and I settled back down, licked my bloody lips, and waited.

  It took me three tries to get out of the truck. The bed wall seemed impossibly tall, the ground impossibly far away. When my feet touched the pavement my knees buckled, and if I hadn’t caught myself on the truck I would have collapsed. I hung there on the side of the truck for a while. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten. I took short, shaking breaths and tried to block out the bell choir that was banging away with gusto inside my skull.

  My keys were still in my pocket. I fumbled them out with stiff fingers, unlocked the door, and went up
the steps one at a time, my hand on the wall for support. Then I had to unlock the apartment door, which took further effort. When I finally staggered across the threshold, I felt like I’d just finished the last leg of a triathalon. If you ran a good portion of a triathalon on your skull, that is. I went into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked in the mirror.

  “Ho–ly shit,” I said. There was blood on my face and on my neck, and my skin was as pale as I’d ever seen it. I ran some cold water and rinsed my face with it, then turned a white towel red with blood. When I’d gotten my face cleaned off, I saw things weren’t really so bad. The cut on my lip had bled like a bastard, but it wasn’t too traumatic, just one deep slice on the inside. Probably needed stitches, and I definitely should be checked for a concussion. I didn’t know what he’d hit me with, a blackjack maybe, or perhaps brass knuckles, but it had rung me up like a baseball bat swung by Mantle.

  I ran my fingertips over the back of my head and felt two large lumps growing there, both on the right side. I knocked a bottle of ibuprofen out of the cabinet, got the top off, and threw a few into my throat and chased them with water. I’d hardly swallowed before I felt them coming back up, and I dropped to my knees and threw up in the toilet. I curled up on the floor, gasping, and leaned my head back against the bathtub. The cool ceramic felt good on my battered skull. After a few minutes had passed, I tried the ibuprofen again, and this time I held them down. I went out to the kitchen and filled a plastic bag with ice cubes, then positioned it over a pillow on the couch, lay down, and nestled my head in it.

  “Holy shit,” I said again. I’d had some headaches before, like the time I ran head first into a brick building, but this was something else. Concussions were dangerous things. Skull fractures were worse. If I fell asleep now, I might never wake up.

  Two minutes later, I was gone.

  I woke sometime after two, rivulets of cold water from the melted ice trickling down my neck. I moved around a bit, testing my coordination. Everything seemed to function right. My head hurt, yes, but it wasn’t as intense as it had been. My vision was clear.