Working Stiff

Page 41

She did believe him. She believed that if he had to, Patrick McCallister would take up that saw and end things for her, once and for all. He had the strength of will.
She’d never thought she did. Not until the moment when she’d had to choose.
That terrified her, the fact that something like that was hiding inside her—something so strong, so cold, so capable. She didn’t want to know that about herself.
She didn’t want to know what it was going to be like in the end, either. She’d looked into her future, into the ruined, screaming eyes of Violetta Sammons.
McCallister held her until his security team arrived to sanitize the scene of the crime, and she was glad he did.
Fifteen minutes after they’d started the … removal proceedings, McCallister stepped back into the house. He donned an extra pair of coveralls stored in Bryn’s go bag, a ball cap, a thin Windbreaker that had the Fairview Mortuary logo on the front, and said, “I’m going with you. You shouldn’t be alone.” His team had their orders. They also had come in disguise as renovation workers, with their own van, tools, coveralls—they even put a sign out by the curb. Anyone looking out would see nothing but normal life, although what was going on was far, far from sanity in there. “We need to get the van out of here. It’ll raise questions.”
The Fairview logo was small and discreet, but he was right; it was visible to anybody who really looked. Bryn, who’d finally gotten feeling back in her arms and legs, started to unlock the driver’s-side door.
McCallister took the keys from her. “No. I’m driving.” She didn’t feel able to argue the point. It felt good to let someone else take charge, at least for the moment. Maybe the protocols are kicking in again. But she didn’t think so. It was just shock, and the drugged exhaustion that followed extreme emotional stress.
“Is it safe for you to do this?” she asked in a remote, tired voice as he piloted the van back toward Fairview. “What if he’s watching?”
“He probably is. And yes, it’s risky. But you go through staff quickly at the assistant level, so new faces aren’t unusual. I’ll keep my head down.” He glanced her way. “You still with me, Bryn?”
“Yes.” She could hardly keep her eyes open, but when she tried to let them drift closed, she saw jolts of images. Ants. Maggots. Flesh. Eyes. “I think I need a drink.”
He laughed softly, and a little shakily. “That, Miss Davis, is a vast understatement. There has never been a single moment in my life when I more needed a drink, and I wasn’t the one—” Holding the saw, Bryn finished silently. He let it go. “I heard your sister is staying with you.”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“I was. It seems a little beside the point right now.”
“Annie’s okay,” Bryn murmured drowsily. “She’s just a kid; that’s all. And we push her too hard.”
“We?”
“The fam. Especially Mom, and my sister Grace. Grace is kind of a bitch. Not as bad as George, though.”
“George is a girl?”
“George is a pissy little bitch of a man. He’s not gay, which is too bad; he’d be a lot more fun that way. He’s just a jerk. He runs a pharmacy in—” Her brain finally caught up to her mouth. “You already know all this. I told you all about them, in the car.”
McCallister shrugged. “I like hearing you talk about them.”
“Remember Kyle?”
“The one who’s three years into a fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery?”
“Kyle is still more fun than George.”
“Ouch.”
Her brain was waking up. Small talk, it seemed, did wonders. “Anyway, Annie just wanted some space, so I’m letting her stay a few days. It’s not a big deal, and I won’t tell her a thing.”
“She’s a walking, talking security breach, and you should have run it by me, but what’s done is done. I’m just concerned for your safety.”
“From Annie? She grew up wanting to be a fairy princess. She’s not exactly dangerous.”
“That’s what I’m concerned about.”
She couldn’t work that out, tired as she felt, so she let it lie. “You got me to talk about my family,” she said. “But you never return the favor.”
He glanced over at her, frowning, and shook his head. “It’s not the time, Bryn.”
“Come on. Humor me.” She needed something else in her head besides … that. Besides the smell, the insects, the desperation in Violetta’s eyes. The rasp of the saw. “Tell me about your brother.”
“I can’t.” He paused, then let out a sound—not a laugh, more of a sigh. “Can’t. That doesn’t sound right either, considering … it’s just words. All right, if you really want to know. Jamie was … different. My parents couldn’t see it. He was a charmer, but he was cold inside. A sociopath with no real empathy or connection to anyone else. Including me. And I was his favorite target.”
“You.”
He shrugged. “I learned to cope. I had to. Jamie’s little games were often meant to maim or kill. I couldn’t complain; when I tried, he blamed it all on me, said that I was the bully. They believed it.”
“My God.”
“By eighteen, I wasn’t going to let it go on anymore. I went to my father, but he didn’t want to hear it. So I left. I went straight into the marines, enlisted as fast as I could, and got the hell away from the whole family.”
“You told me Jamie … died.”
“By the time I came home, eight years had passed. I think he was truly surprised. He fully expected me to die in the line of duty.” McCallister’s eyes were unfocused now, looking into something far away and not at all pleasant. “He was out on his own by then, with his own house out in the country. I came back from deployment and intended to just stop in and try to mend fences with him, as much as possible. But when I got here, he was … He’d found a new hobby. One that suited his personality.” He swallowed, a visible bob of his Adam’s apple above his collar. His hands gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly. “I found out later that he’d made a business of it, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that when I went looking for him, I found him upstairs in one of the rooms with cameras and a victim. I shot him. I had to, to save her life.”
“What was he—”
“No,” he said. “Don’t make me tell you. Please. We’ve had enough today” He let the silence fall for a moment before he continued. “I’m not sorry I killed him. I’m just sorry that I let him walk away when I was eighteen. It would have saved lives if I hadn’t been … weak.” He smiled, but it looked painful and false. “My mother was already gone by then. My father passed on soon after that, thinking I was a murderer. Thinking that I’d set Jamie up and killed him in cold blood. I was written out of the estate, of course. I didn’t really mind.”
Bryn thought about her own family, with all its problems and squabbles; she might not totally love many of her siblings, but at least they weren’t sociopaths. And, although he wasn’t saying it outright, murderers. It brought back the haunting question of what had happened to Sharon, all those years ago. Maybe she ran into another McCallister. The wrong McCallister.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for making you tell me that.”
“No,” he said. “No, you needed to hear it. And I guess I needed to say it, too. It’s all right. Now it’s done.”
McCallister drove in silence the rest of the way, parked the van, and walked with her into the mortuary through the back entrance. He kept his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. It was as much cover as possible, but she still felt an uncomfortable, probably imaginary weight of eyes on them until they were safely inside.
Joe and Doreen weren’t back yet from the hospital run, so Bryn took McCallister directly to her office, locked the door, and opened up a locked drawer in her desk. She set up six miniature bottles of liquor: Scotch for McCallister, vodka for herself.
“Did you raid the minibar somewhere?” he asked, but didn’t turn down the tiny servings. He unscrewed the first and downed it in two gulps, then opened the second.
“Certainly not at the Hallmark Motor Court Inn.”
That got her a shadow of a smile. He saluted her with the bottle, downed it, and sat down. She concentrated on the soothing fire of her vodka as it slipped over her tongue, down her throat, clearing away the taste of rot and despair. Somehow, she managed to drink her third before McCallister had properly started his, but then, as he hadn’t quite said, she’d been holding the saw.
“So,” she said, and leaned her head back against the leather of the chair. “Did you sleep with your boss?” Silence. She opened her eyes just a slit. McCallister continued sipping his Scotch without comment. “You’re really not going to tell me.”
“Is this the question that comes to your mind right now?”
“Evidently it is.” She was starting to feel numbed again, but in a slightly better way.
“Do you have any more of these?” He held up the liquor mini. She opened the drawer, pulled out two more, and pitched him one. “This is bourbon.”
“You’re really going to complain?”
He upended it while she sucked down her fourth vodka. This one was lemon-flavored. Nice. “If I say yes, what does it matter to you?”
“It doesn’t.” It did. It did, and he knew it, the bastard. Why it mattered to her was a mystery she didn’t care to explore at the moment; her emotions were confused, raw, and horribly tangled. “Was it good?”
“With her? Not likely.”
She almost choked on her drink. “So you did do it.”
“I didn’t say I did. If such a thing had happened, for which there is no evidence and no admission, now or ever, then it would not have been a good time. Just … maintenance.”