As bad as yesterday had been, things still worked out pretty good in the end. After the stupid tow-truck driver forced him to kill her, Draven drove the rig straight to the farmhouse. Luckily, Gretchen wasn’t home. He figured out how to unhook the Granada, and stashed the truck in the barn, long before Gretchen showed up.
She cooked hotdogs and chili and bounced up and down on his lap until he promised to take her to a bar.
They ended up at a dive with cheap beer and a crappy jukebox but a nice, homey feel.
Then they drove back home with guts full of alcohol and managed to screw like crazy before passing out.
That was last night. Now, today, he had work to do. He put the tow-truck driver in a wheelbarrow and muscled her into the mountains as far as he could, ending up a good five or six hundred yards from the cabin. Then he buried her a foot down, fighting rocks the whole way.
In a perfect world, she’d be deeper.
The effort was too much.
The ground was almost all stone with hardly any dirt.
In any event, a foot ought to be good enough to keep the stench in and the animals out, especially after he piled a ton of rocks on top.
Then he went back to the cabin and ate a sandwich and half a box of cookies, thinking about how he should kill the tattoo woman.
He heard her moan out in the Nissan.
Perfect.
She was waking up.
Just in time to die.
He unchained her and carried her into the bedroom, where he tied her on her back with her arms over her head. Then he gagged her, straddled her chest and slapped her face until she was fully awake.
The hammer kept drawing his attention.
He pulled up a vision of driving a nail into her forehead.
On the one hand, death would be quicker than she deserved for all the pain she’d put him through. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to fuss around with her all day.
She must have read something in his eyes, judging by the way she pulled so frantically at the ropes.
“Yeah, it’s that time,” he said.
She tried to plead with him, through the gag, but everything came out scrambled.
He leaned over far enough to get the hammer and a couple of nails.
He dangled them in front of her face.
“I can’t lie to you,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”
After working up a search warrant and taking it down to the D.A.’s office for review and processing, Teffinger drove back to the wooden building and paced back and forth outside the chain-link fence.
The four women had been killed inside that structure.
He was sure of it.
The question was whether it would give up its secrets.
Mid-afternoon, Sydney pulled up, dangling a thermos of coffee out the window. Teffinger immediately ran to his truck and searched around in the back seat until he found a used Styrofoam cup.
“You got the warrant?” he asked, relieving her of the thermos and pouring much-needed caffeine into the cup.
“Nope.”
He shook his head in wonder.
“I’m going to enter Clay in a snail race,” he said. “See if he can at least move that fast.”
She grinned and then paced with him, for some time, for so long in fact that he brought up a subject that he didn’t think he would.
“Davica blindsided me this morning,” he said.
“How so?”
“Well, you know she’s bi, right?”
“So you say.”
“This morning she said she misses women,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have said anything, but of course I did, and we ended up in a little discussion. The bottom line is this. If I give her my approval to sleep with other women, she’s going to look around. If I don’t, she won’t.” He picked up a stick and snapped it. “This has nothing to do with men. She’s crystal clear that she isn’t interested in other men.”
He studied Sydney to get her reaction.
“Does this mean you’re sleeping with her?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me, that’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”
She laughed.
“Well, this is quite the dilemma,” she said.
“I want her to be happy. On the other hand, if I give her the go-ahead to get intimate with a woman, I’m afraid she’ll end up falling in love.”
“Think of the bright side,” Sydney said. “Unlimited threesomes.”
He smiled.
“Been there,” he said. “They were fine in their day, but now I think they’d be more work than they’re worth.” He kicked a stone.
Sydney cocked her head.
“What if she did get feelings for another woman?” she asked. “Do you think that would mean she would feel differently about you?”
“I’m don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.”
He stopped, laced his fingers through the chain-link fence and stared at the building. “I’m jealous of someone who doesn’t even exist yet,” he said. “A woman, no less. How pathetic is that?”
She looked amused.
“It’ll either work out or it won’t,” she said. “There are no guarantees. Personally, I think you have a better chance with a woman if you give her what she wants instead of trying to herd her in.”
He kicked the fence.
“I know that,” he said. “It’s just going to be hard.”
“Maybe there’s a compromise,” Sydney said. “She can do other women but only if you’re there.”
He thought about it.