A teeny part of me was thrilled. Okay, a big part of me was thrilled. If anybody needed some pain inflicted, it was Randy.
My gloating was short-lived. Randy had gained his feet, swaying slightly. Moonlight glinted on something he held in his hand, and with a sinking heart, I shouted, “He’s got a knife!”
Joe didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward, grabbing Randy’s wrist with one hand, his shoulder with the other. Another brief struggle, until Joe’s knee came up and caught Randy right where it hurt.
Randy froze, eyes bugging, his agonized wheeze bringing joy to my heart. Joe was still moving, twisting Randy’s arm behind his back before giving him a hard shove. Randy went down face-first, and Joe stood there alone, holding the knife.
Randy curled into a ball, drawing his knees up tight. The next sound we heard was retching as he emptied his stomach in the dirt.
I hoped he’d choke on his own vomit.
Joe threw the knife into the bushes that ringed the parking lot and came over to gather me in his arms. “You okay? Did he hurt you?”
Not taking my eyes from Randy, I held on to Joe for all I was worth. I was still clutching the empty whisky bottle, not ready to let it go yet. “I’m okay.” I was shaking like a leaf, dammit. “Where’d you come from? How’d you find me?” Not that it mattered—Joe was here, warm and solid, breathing hard but thankfully breathing.
“Google Maps,” he muttered into my hair. “You told me the name of the bar, and I had a bad feeling.” He turned us a little so he could keep an eye on Randy, too. “Beer, rednecks, and my gorgeous, fiesty girlfriend; not a good mix.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “You know me too well.”
“Not nearly well enough,” Joe said softly, letting me bury my face against his neck. “But I’m working on it.”
Randy moaned, drawing our attention. He dragged himself to his knees, then pushed himself to his feet, stifling another groan. Without another word, he staggered toward his pickup truck, bent over and holding his belly.
Joe started after him, but I tightened my fingers in his shirt. “Let him go,” I said. “Let him crawl back into his hole.”
“Nicki,” Joe clearly didn’t like that idea. “He pulled a knife on me; who knows what he would’ve done to you if I hadn’t shown up.”
“Oh, I know what he would’ve done.” I couldn’t help the involuntary shudder that rippled through me, and remembered what my mom always called that particular feeling: somebody just walked over my grave.
“I’m calling the cops,” Joe said grimly.
The truck’s engine roared to life.
“Not yet.”
Clearly frustrated, Joe looked from the truck to me. “Why not?”
Another shadow moved in the parking lot, one I’d known had been there all along. Michelle stepped into the ring of light beneath the single lamppost, staring at me silently.
“Because we have to follow him,” I said.
Chapter 5
The One-Stop Body Shop was a dump, but it was a dump that sent a chill down my spine, and not just because of the name.
It was a garage like many other garages, a run-down building with three big dented and rusty steel doors closed and padlocked against thieves, a small office with glass windows overlooking a dirt parking lot that held four cars and one pickup truck.
Randy’s pickup truck.
What sent a chill down my spine was the big retention pond in the field beside it, and the way the moonlight glistened on the slick, oily surface of the water. Once there’d been a chain-link fence surrounding the pond—now there were just a few sections left, sagging and covered with kudzu vines.
It hadn’t been hard to follow Randy here. We’d had a guide, after all. Now that Michelle’s spirit knew and remembered what had happened to her, she had no trouble directing us down the main roads to the One-Stop.
I was worried about her, though. Other than a few sparse words telling me when to turn and where, which I’d relay to Joe, she said nothing. Her eyes looked haunted, which was weird, considering she was the one doing the haunting.
“This is it,” Michelle said, as we drove slowly past. “He has a room in the back.”
I looked at Joe, nodding, and he pulled over to the side of the road beneath some trees a few hundred yards away.
“This is a really bad idea, Nicki.” Joe put the car in park a little harder than he needed to. He glanced in the back seat, which to him must’ve appeared empty. “I mean, what are we gonna do, go in and make a citizen’s arrest or something? We have no proof this guy did anything except assault you in the parking lot; no proof he murdered anybody.” He checked the back seat again, a little self-consciously. “I mean, I’m sorry for your friend Michelle, but we’re out of our league here.”
“If we find Michelle’s body, that’s all the proof we’ll need,” I argued.
“You won’t find me,” Michelle said hollowly. “Not without scuba gear.”
I was trying hard not to look at Michelle any more than I needed to—ever since she’d seen Randy at the bar she looked more and more like a corpse, and less like the college girl she’d once been. Her dark hair hung in damp rat-tails, and her skin had taken on a greenish tint.
“She’s in the pond,” I said to Joe. “Maybe we can find her car or something, get the police to come out and investigate.”
Michelle spoke up again, sounding more despondent by the minute. “The car’s in the pond, too. Everything’s down there.” She was staring out the window, toward the garage.
“We have to do something.” I was beginning to get annoyed with her attitude. Here we were trying to help her, and she was giving up before we’d even begun. “Do you want him to get away with this?” I would’ve reached out and given her a good shake if she’d been real. “Do you want him to do it to someone else? Darlene said he was always sniffing around Debbie—what if he decides to go after her next?”
That got her attention. “Debbie,” she said, almost as though she’d forgotten her best friend. “That’s why he did it, you know.” The circles beneath her eyes made them look sunken, which I supposed they were. “He’s mad because he can’t have her. They went out a couple of times in high school, but now she’s marrying Dale and he has to stand up there in a monkey suit and watch while it happens.” The way Michelle recited the words told me they came from memory. “She thinks she’s too good for him; I think I’m too good for him.” He’d said the same words to me. “We fucking bitches are all alike.”
“Stop it!” I couldn’t listen to it anymore—Randy’s foul words coming from the mouth of a dead girl—a girl he’d murdered with no more thought than squashing a bug. And for what? Unrequited love? Jealousy? Revenge?
“Nicki.” Joe’s hand on my knee brought my attention back to him. “I say we call the police and report the guy for assault. They’ll come out here and talk to him, and maybe they’ll find something.”
“Or maybe not.” I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the local police—this was rural Georgia, not New York City. A town like Hogansville probably had two deputies, tops. And they were probably off having fried chicken at Popeye’s or something. “Besides, it’s my word against his.”
“Our word against his, remember? At the very least, it’ll rattle his cage,” Joe insisted. “He won’t like having cops snooping around if he’s been up to no good.”
“Don’t worry,” Michelle said, though Joe couldn’t hear her. “I’ll rattle his cage. He’ll be begging for the cops when I’m done.”
I turned back to her, glad to see that the empty light in her eyes had been replaced by something else. Anger, and a calculated gleam that should’ve made me nervous, but instead made me optimistic.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked, ideas of my own beginning to percolate.
Michelle glanced out the car window again. “You can see me,” she said, obviously thinking out loud. “If you can see me, maybe we can make him see me, or at least make him t
hink he sees me.”
I grinned, liking the way this was going.
“We both have dark hair,” Michelle said, “and we’re about the same size.”
Joe was watching me, and when he saw my face light up, he began to shake his head. “No, Nicki. Whatever it is you’re thinking, the answer is no.”
I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his non-responsive lips. “That’s not what you said last night.”
He wasn’t in a playful mood. “This isn’t a joke. The guy’s a murderer!”
Michelle and I looked at each other, and I knew I couldn’t just walk away.
“Yep.” I nodded. “And he’s about to be one very freaked-out murderer.”
The bad part about this plan was that I had to get wet; the good part was that Joe had a plain white t-shirt in his gym bag, so I didn’t have to ruin my pretty pink sweater. I mean, I wanted to help and all, but one-of-a-kind, designer vintage that fit me like a glove was hard to come by.
The t-shirt was perfect—way too big for me, so it fell nearly to my knees. The extra fabric made it look like a shroud. And I didn’t have to go near the scummy, oily pond; there was a hose on the side of the building furthest from the office, so I gritted my teeth and let Joe hose me down.
The whole time, Joe was grimly silent, but I knew I was gonna hear about this later. I even suspected he took some satisfaction in dousing me with freezing water from the hose, but I couldn’t really blame him. It was a measure of how much he cared that he was there to begin with, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that.
I’d make it up to him. I’d enjoy making it up to him. If we lived through this night, Joe had a lot of hot monkey love to look forward to.
Mud squelched beneath my toes (I wasn’t going to ruin my leather ankle boots, either), so I reached down and scooped up a couple of handfuls. With a silent grimace, I smeared some on my legs and arms. My suspicions about Joe’s satisfaction were confirmed when he did the same to my face without asking.
He looked at me critically. “Too pink,” he whispered, and glopped some into my hair.
I cringed, making a moue of my lips, and he promptly smeared those, too.
I got him back, though, planting a big, muddy kiss on his nose before he jerked out of range.
“You be careful,” he whispered fiercely. “Wait until I draw him out, and then I’ll be just a few feet away, behind the vine-covered fence.”
Nodding, I put all joking aside and got ready to get down to business.
Together, we skirted the parking lot, keeping low and weaving between the parked cars just in case Randy happened to look out. Then we were on the office side of the building, between it and the pond. Michelle’s restless shade was nowhere to be seen, but I knew she was still there somewhere.
I was counting on it.
The night was quiet—just the chirrup of frogs and the faint whine of a mosquito as it buzzed past my ear. There was no traffic on the road—the nonexistent Hogansville sidewalks were already rolled up for the evening in favor of primetime TV. The grass was cool beneath my feet, and I hoped fervently there was no broken glass or sandspurs to worry about.
Then I was in position, crouching behind the bushes closest to the pond.
Joe’s arm was around my shoulders, his face close to mine, so I couldn’t miss the heavy sigh of resignation he gave. “You are a lot of trouble, woman,” he murmured, directly into my ear. “If we make it out of this alive, I’m going to turn you over my knee.”
I leaned against him for a moment, letting him take my weight. “Promises, promises.”
He kissed my wet, muddy hair, giving me a final squeeze. “Stay put until I’m in position,” he reminded me sternly, then he was gone, heading back toward the parking lot.
I lost sight of him for a few seconds, but when he came back I saw he was carrying something in each hand—a couple of rocks. He looked in my direction to make sure I was keeping low, then hefted the one in his right hand. I thought he was gonna throw it, but he didn’t—he walked over to Randy’s pickup truck and smashed one of the headlights, then did the same to the other one. The tinkle of breaking glass was loud, but not nearly as loud as the smashed sound the front window of the shop made when Joe turned and heaved the rock through it with all his strength. He started running the instant it hit, lobbing the second rock for good measure just before he ducked behind a saggy section of vine-covered fence.
“What the fuck?” Randy’s bellow of rage, coming from somewhere inside the body shop, made me cringe. For an instant, I wondered if I could go through with the plan. I looked toward Joe, and there, standing in the grass right between us, was Michelle. She was wet and shivering, staring toward the garage with a fixed expression that told me something: even in death, she was afraid of the man who’d killed her.
So I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If this poor girl could face down the monster, so could I. If he got away with what he’d done to Michelle, he’d do it again to some other girl, I had no doubt.
And then there he was, bursting through the front door with a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.
Oh, shit. Why hadn’t I thought of this? He was a redneck who lived in the back of a garage in rural Georgia—of course he’d have a sawed-off shotgun.
“Where are you, you fuckin’ rat bastard?” he shouted, scanning the parking lot with his furious gaze. He cocked the shotgun, the cha-chick noise it made sounding like certain death. “I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ head off!”
I looked at Joe—he was motioning with his hand and mouthing the words, “Stay down.”
Like he needed to tell me that.
“Don’t worry about the shotgun,” Michelle said calmly. “That thing is old, and he didn’t take care of it. His first shot will blow it to pieces—I dropped an extra shell down the barrel.”
I was dying to know how she’d managed that when she hadn’t even been able to take a piece of toilet paper from my hand earlier in the day, but now was hardly the time to ask.
“Anger gives me strength,” she said, as though reading my mind. “I didn’t know it earlier. I went to his room while you were getting ready, and when I saw him passed out on the bed where he—” she paused, obviously reluctant to finish that particular sentence. “I wanted to kill him.” She looked at her hands. “I couldn’t pick up the gun, but I saw the loose shotgun shells laying there on the table. I had to concentrate really hard, but I managed to pick one up and drop it down the barrel.” She looked at me, and her face was hard. “My granddaddy taught me about guns. That one is a rusty piece of crap.”
All I could do was stare at her, dumbfounded. And hugely relieved.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” she said.
“Come on out, you motherfucker! I know you’re here!” Randy pointed the shotgun toward the sky and fired. There was a deafening explosion, then Randy screamed and fell backward, clawing at his face. The shotgun fell to the ground. The stream of obscenities that poured from his lips would’ve made the devil himself blush.
I couldn’t help but smile with grim satisfaction, and when I looked at Joe, he was doing the same.
Randy’s foul language slowed down some, and I watched as he tentatively lowered his hands, staring at the blood on them, then touching the skin of his cheek gingerly.
“Shrapnel from the barrel,” Michelle said. “I hope it hurts like hell.” Then, to my surprise, she walked toward Randy.
He, of course, couldn’t see her, and he was so focused on the injuries to his face that I doubt he would’ve noticed if he could.
When she got closer, she kicked out at the shotgun. To my surprise, and to Randy’s, the gun actually moved several feet away.
Randy eyed it warily, keeping a hand to his cheek. To him, it would’ve appeared to move all by itself. He moved toward it, reaching out slowly to pick it up.
Michelle kicked it again, sending the shotgun skittering across the dirt parking lot, and Randy jerked his hand away.
; He stood up straight, scanning the parking lot nervously.
Michelle walked behind him, entering the open door of the garage. Within seconds, it slammed shut, causing Randy to flinch. He swiveled, reaching for the door handle. The click it made as Michelle locked it from the inside was loud in the stillness.
Unless Randy wanted to climb through the broken front window, he was locked out, and he knew it. What he obviously didn’t know was how he’d been locked out. He scrubbed a bloody palm over his buzz-cut hair, clearly unnerved.
Now it was my turn.
From my hiding place behind the bushes, I let out a breathy sigh, as though I’d just run a marathon and was exhausted.
“Who’s there?” Randy pivoted in my direction so fast it startled me.
Steeling my nerves, I let out another sigh, adding a slight moan on the end for good measure.
“Goddammit, I said who’s there?” he roared, taking a few steps toward the pond.
Instead of answering, I dropped to my hands and knees, breathing hard, and began to crawl backward toward the pond.
I was afraid to look at Joe. We hadn’t discussed the particulars of what I’d do to convince Randy that I was the spirit of Michelle, but my instincts told me that the more freaked out Randy was, the better.
What would freak out a guy who’d drowned somebody more than seeing that somebody come crawling out of the water? I prayed that between the freak-out, the darkness and the mud on my face, I’d look enough like Michelle to fool him.
Not that I was going to get all the way into that nasty black pond, of course—that would be too gross—but being all wet and muddy and having my feet in the water would give the illusion that I was dragging myself onto the bank.
And it worked.
Randy took a few more steps toward the pond, and then the bushes were no longer in his line of sight.
I was.
He staggered, visibly shocked. I wasn’t sure which one of us looked scarier—him with his blood-streaked face, or me with my mud-covered one. I borrowed a page from all the bad zombie movies I’d ever seen, and twisted my lips into a sneer, glaring at him beneath my lashes. Saying nothing, I let my eyes do the talking as I started crawling slowly toward him, digging my nails into the muddy grass surrounding the pond.