Skin Privilege

Lena could still go to the hospital and try to track down her mother's birth certificate. If that didn't work, she would go back to Hank's and find the information on her own. She shuddered at the prospect of going up into that attic again, the smell of Deacon Simms. She had no choice, though. Hank was consistent in one respect: he never threw away anything, whether it was an electric bill from 1973 or a newspaper covering the Challenger explosion. Somewhere in that house under all the self-help pamphlets and dirty clothes and boxes of crap, there had to be information about her mother.

Lena followed the car in front of her, turning off the highway and going toward downtown Reece. She passed the motel but did not turn in, the thought of the dark, lonely room too much to handle. Without realizing it, she had made the decision to go through Hank's things tonight. She would get some big trash bags and throw out the trash as she went along.

Maybe she could find a way to dispose of Deacon's body.

As she passed the high school, the car ahead of her slammed on the brakes and Lena turned the steering wheel hard, trying to avoid an accident. Her head slammed into the steering wheel as she skidded into the oncoming lane. The Celica stopped just short of rolling into the ditch. Her heart was in her throat as her brain processed what had happened. She could feel blood trickling down the side of her head and she wiped it away as she pushed open the door.

Up ahead was a white Escalade.

Lena reached under the seat and grabbed her folding knife. She flipped the blade open and got out of the car.

The streetlights nearly blinded her, or maybe the crash had jostled her brain. She felt dizzy and sick, her head pounding like a drum. Lena squinted, trying to see inside the SUV. The rear window slid down with a mechanical whirl. Charlotte Warren sat in the backseat. Duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide with terror.

Hank's dealer got out from behind the wheel, leaving the door open. Lena clenched her fist around the pearl-handled knife, ready to use it, but the man simply grabbed her by her hair and threw her toward the Cadillac like a sack of flour.

'Get in,' he said. Her knife was in his hand. She must have dropped it. He folded down the blade and tucked it into his back pocket while she was watching.

Lena pushed away from the car, but he threw her back toward the open driver's door. Charlotte gave a muffled yell and Lena saw that another man was sitting beside her. This one wore a black ski mask. Surgical gloves covered his hands. He held a gun to Charlotte 's head. His smile sent a cold shiver through her body.

He said, 'Get in.'

Lena didn't move.

He pressed the muzzle of the gun to Charlotte 's temple. 'Get in or I'll kill her right now.'

Lena got in.

THURSDAY EVENING

NINETEEN

Jeffrey sat on the front steps of Hank Norton's house as he studied the street map of downtown Reece. Sara had ridden in the ambulance with Hank so that she could manage his care on the ride to the hospital. Jeffrey knew without asking that she would want to stay with him until his condition was stabilized. Sara had cut her teeth as an ER doc. She wouldn't leave Hank's side until she was sure he was in capable hands.

That left Jeffrey with plenty of time to search the man's house. First, he had opened every window that would budge in the hopes that the place would air out. While he was waiting for this miracle to occur, he checked the shed in the backyard. Other than rat shit and about a hundred boxes full of paper so old it was starting to pulp, he found nothing. The old Chevy pickup was empty, the cab floor so rusted that the bench seat had fallen through.

The clothes Hank had worn were by the fence. Jeffrey guessed from the way the pants, shirt, and underwear trailed along the lawn that the old man had taken them off as he walked into the backyard. After the paramedics had shifted Hank to the gurney, Jeffrey had checked the grass underneath the man's body. Jeffrey took comfort in the discovery. When he'd first seen Hank lying in the grass, he'd thought Lena 's uncle had lain there for days, waiting for someone to discover him. The ground underneath his emaciated frame would have been dry if he'd been therfe overnight.

Jeffrey was biding his time, pacing around the backyard, when his foot found the soft, wet earth over the septic tank. Obviously, the system had backed up into the house. Whoever had taken a sledgehammer to the toilet bowl had broken the natural seal and allowed raw sewage to spew out into the house. A plumber would have to suck out the septic tank, then some poor bastard would have to get a shovel and take care of the rest of it. As far as Jeffrey was concerned, the easiest thing to do would be to rent a bulldozer and push the whole damn house down.

After waiting half an hour for the odor to dissipate, he was able to go back inside without dry-heaving. Even with the windows open, rotting food and the various insects it attracted made Jeffrey gag so many times that bile had made his throat raw. He'd felt odd looking through Lena 's girlhood bedroom. Like most parents, Hank had not changed much when the girls left and like most children, Lena and Sibyl had left behind the crap they didn't want to take with them. When Jeffrey found himself faced with Lena 's underwear drawer, he decided to move on to Hank's room.

As he went through the man's things, Jeffrey got the distinct impression that this wasn't the first time the house had been searched. He didn't know if this was Lena 's doing or someone else's. He did know that when he pulled back the duct tape from around the front door, the splintered wood around the jamb looked newly damaged..

Lena knew how to kick in a door. She also knew how to perform a thorough search. Knowing she could have done either of these things to her uncle's house did not come as a consolation. Jeffrey knew she was hiding out, sleeping at the school, or at least she had been until now, but what had she been doing in the daytime? Why was she still in Reece?

Jeffrey gave up wondering what Lena was up to as his search finally ended up in the kitchen. He supposed the stacks of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets on the table and the empty syringe he found under the chair was what you'd call irony, but Jeffrey wasn't in the mood to play word games with himself. He'd wiped the chair opposite Hank's and sat down at the table, wondering what would make a man do this to himself. It was suicide, plain and simple.

Finding nothing in the house but an overwhelming sadness, Jeffrey had shut the window in the kitchen and gone around the rest of the house to make sure everything was pretty much as he'd found it. He grabbed a roll of duct tape he'd seen in the kitchen and taped the bathroom door shut, sealing the edges as best he could. The window inside was wide open, but he doubted even the most desperate thief would brave the disgusting bathroom to get into the house.

For the next half hour, he wrestled with the front door. No matter how many different ways he tried, the metal flashing sticking out from the jamb kept the door from closing. Jeffrey tried to hold it down with his fingers, but all that did was end up giving him the equivalent of a metal paper cut on the tips of his fingers. Finally, he found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used the flat end to hold the metal strip flush to the door so he could close it.

His plan had been to leave the house through the kitchen door, but Jeffrey had a strange feeling as he started to pull the back door shut. He had the feeling he had missed something. Once more, he walked through the house, turning on all the lights, checking each room to see if anything jumped out at him. All that hit him was the odor. Hank must have moved from room to room, trying to outrun the decay, and finally ended up in the kitchen. Jeffrey went back to the living room. He was breathing through his mouth, trying not to gag again from the smell, when he saw the painting over the couch.