Sunken Graves, Alan Lee [all ebook reader .txt] 📗

living through a movie scene where the heroine was raped. She’d watched enough, casually assuming they’d never happen to her.

She was pinned. Hard to breathe.

“No!” A half cry, the sound barely escaping the car.

“Yes Daisy.”

He fumbled at her shirt and she gripped his beard with both hands. Black tufts between her knuckles. She screamed and pulled.

Great chunks of hair ripped out both cheeks. She came away with two fistfuls, and Lynch with fleshy bare spots.

He howled and reared up. His large head clunked against the roof and he fell out of the backseat, his butt landing on the curb.

Her hands remained clenched, too scared to let go. Still she popped the far door open and she squirmed toward it on her back.

“No no no, wicked girl.” Lynch getting to his feet again, his vision blurry with crimson, pain radiating like lightning down his neck, exciting him. “That hurt, Daisy. Wonder how you’d feel with hooks through your ears, dangling from them.”

He grabbed her ankle and her high-heeled shoe came off. She kicked at him, hyperventilating.

A massive blast of sound stunned Lynch. Enormously loud in the quiet street, the clapback ricocheting off brick houses. Lynch froze but Hathaway didn’t, her desperation to escape creating a myopia.

The hell was that? Lynch frowned. There shouldn’t be walkers this late, this cold.

The sound again and the back window of the Jaguar splintered. Cracks starburst from a puncture wound, and Lynch understood he was being shot at.

“Hey! Hey stop!” Someone shouting.

They’d been spotted. Lynch forgot Hathaway and lumbered around his front bumper, faster than he’d moved in years. He couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be recognized. His lust frenzy was obliterated by the gunfire, by a sudden focus on survival.

Hathaway spilled headfirst onto the cold blacktop, glass tinkling.

Heavily Lynch dropped behind the wheel. He stomped the gas and the sports car surged, the tire inches from Hathaway’s face, and both rear doors slammed shut.

“Bullshit,” said Lynch, fighting for control. Fleeing.

Go. Gooooo!

The spider-webbed rear windshield was opaque. He peered into the sideview. Saw Daisy on her stomach, holding pieces of his face.

Saw a figure running. The shooter. A dark figure waving a pistol.

The figure passed under a streetlight and in that instant, as Lynch turned onto Winchester and out of sight, he recognized the former lover of his brother, the gay teacher from his Academy, Mr. Lewis.

34

Byron Horton clomped up the basement stairs, yawning. He reached the kitchen and stopped as if struck. Hathaway and four men stared at him, frustration evident.

He pulled the video game headset off his ears.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s okay, Byron.” Hathaway shot him a look, the ghost of a smile long dead. “I’m handling it.”

Eyes wide. “But…what’s the deal?”

“Trust me. We’re fine.”

“Are you hurt?” said Byron.

“No.”

“Should I call the police?”

A man sitting at the kitchen table waved a hand. A big guy with a scary face. “I’m a private cop and I’m already here.”

“Byron, did you come up for a soda? They’re in the fridge.”

“Yeah, but…are we in danger?”

She said, “Everything’s fine.”

“You got me spooked. If something’s going on with my girlfriend, shouldn’t I know?”

“Yes,” said the second man sitting at the table. He looked athletic and fit. And he looked angry. “Yes you should’ve.”

Byron swallowed. “I’m really freaked out. You get that, right babe?”

“I know it looks weird, Byron. These are colleagues from school. We’re talking.”

“About what?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Byron wanted to argue but the handsome athletic guy at the table unnerved him. So did the private cop. They wanted him back downstairs and wanted him there pronto.

“Sure,” he said slowly. “I guess.”

“Thank you.” Hathaway smiled again.

“Call me if you need me?”

“I will.”

Byron returned to the basement, his soda forgotten.

Murray, leaning against the wall, rolled his eyes. On his list of guys who didn’t deserve a Daisy Hathaway, the boy in the basement ranked near the top.

After an awful moment of silence, Craig Lewis urged, “Back to the topic at hand.”

“There’s no way Lynch knew he was being recorded?” said the private cop, Mackenzie August. Jennings hadn’t known who else to call.

Hathaway shook her head. “I don’t think so. He was spilling secrets.”

“The girls he hurts and the field. Do you know what it means?”

“No.”

Jennings remembered, barely recognizable through the haze, journalist Kabir Patel mentioning the buried Californian woman. The one with ripped ears. But he didn’t know what to do with that either.

“The chances of your phone short-circuiting are astronomical,” said August.

“I agree. But water was everywhere and the waitress was crying…” said Hathaway.

“What do we do?” said Craig.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“We have to do something. She was in his backseat, screaming! I heard it. She ripped out his beard.” Lewis had been red in the face before Byron appeared, and he was again.

“And you shot his car,” said August.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I heard her shouting.”

“You always shoot at women you hear shout?”

Lewis paused. “I didn’t shoot at her.”

“You live around there?”

“No.”

“You happened to go for a walk carrying a sidearm?”

“I have a permit.”

“Get the permit within the last five years?” said August.

“I don’t remember. That’s not the issue!”

“Does Lynch know it was you?”

“I don’t think he saw my face.”

“Hope not, because Lynch will suspect entrapment. He’ll grill your ass over the gun. He’ll make it part of the issue. You might get rung up for discharging a firearm in the city and reckless endangerment. Might end up paying for his car repairs, Mr. Lewis.”

“That’s outrageous.”

Jennings was quiet. This was his fault and he knew it and so did August, though the man hadn’t said it out loud. He had the queasy feeling he still wore an Army rucksack, loaded with shame and guilt and fury, and he was staggering under the weight. It’s easy to identify a commanding officer overcome by events.

Hathaway said, “He was sexually assaulting me. Mr. Lewis heard it. I ripped out his hair to get away. That counts for nothing?” A few pieces of hair were on the table, the only pathetic proof they had.

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying Lynch is a tricky sonofabitch.”

“If it