Devil's Oven Read online

  “I’ve got gloves in the cruiser,” Keith said. “Don’t suppose you could come up with any coffee there?” He nodded toward the cabin. “Somebody got my ass out of bed awfully early this morning.”

  “I could probably dig some out of the freezer,” Tripp said, thinking about the instant he kept for his very occasional visitors. Then he remembered the machine on his counter. “Or, hey, I can do cappuccino.”

  • • •

  Getting Lila calmed down and into some kind of shape to drive herself home had been tough. As they walked past the body she had held tight to him, hiding her face against his shirt, and he had stayed at the truck with her for another ten minutes before letting her drive away. He had watched the taillights of the truck disappear into the dark, then reappear briefly as the road curved away and down the hillside.

  Walking back up the drive, he had shined his flashlight on the body, not really wanting to look but feeling compelled. There was no way even to tell what color the guy’s hair had been. It was as though the skull had been sucked out the top of the head, leaving behind flaps of lumpy, chewed-up skin. The neck was twisted and stretched, longer and much thinner than it should have been.

  Tripp stared, trying to imagine it wasn’t human, that it wasn’t real. But despite the hash atop the body’s shoulders, it was obviously a man. One of his arms had broken at the elbow and lay at an impossible angle. Tripp could only think it had happened as the body landed. He had knelt to take out the wallet whose shape had worn a faded square in the back of the man’s pants, but stopped himself, knowing he would be better off not touching the body at all. Later, as he lay in bed not sleeping, he thought he should have covered the body with a tarp or something. That would’ve been a bad idea, too. If only a bear or pack of coyotes had come through and dragged the thing away. It wasn’t a thought he liked; it just would have made everything easier.

  Lila called him around four a.m. She had taken a sedative and sounded better, calmer, but wasn’t able to sleep, either.

  “What will we do?” she said. Her voice was soft in his ear. Tripp hated that she might have been there beside him all night, if it hadn’t been for…well, if it hadn’t been for a lot of things.

  “It’s handled,” he said. “You can forget about it.”

  “Sure,” she said, giving a rueful laugh.

  “Go to sleep,” he said. “I love you.”

  “You sleep, too,” she said.

  He held the phone to his ear, wanting to hear more, but there was only the sound of the call disconnecting.

  • • •

  “The body” turned out to be Claude Dixon, a dispatcher at Bud Tucker’s trucking company. When Tripp came back carrying the steaming cup of cappuccino, Keith showed him Dixon’s ID card with its two-inch-square photo. A grinning Claude Dixon hunched forward, squinting at the camera so that his narrow, freckled face loomed. But the eyes beneath his bowl haircut were bright and intelligent, and one got the sense he was born with a sense of humor.

  Bud Tucker’s company. Lila’s husband’s company.

  Tripp wasn’t even able to process the implications before the next thing Keith told him turned everything upside down in his head a second time.

  “You’re not going to believe this shit,” Keith said. “I just found out that Dixon’s wife—works at the Git ’n’ Go down in Alta—she called in around eleven thirty last night screaming that some giant hairy guy had beaten the crap out of her, assaulted Claude, and then ran off with him.”

  “Ran off?” Tripp said.

  “Threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, she said. Smiling like some kind of freak. And he wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes.”

  Tripp shook his head, lost in both relief and confusion. “So how did he—Claude Dixon, I mean—get up here? You think somebody brought him all the way up here to do that to him?”

  “All I can say, Tripp, is you should be damn grateful that you’re under six feet tall and not covered in black hair.”

  • • •

  Within the half hour, the hillside was crowded with uniforms and flashing red and white lights. Tripp shifted into professional mode, and with the shift came a huge sense of relief. He was no longer Keith’s sole focus and the area around the body in the driveway was an official crime scene. Everyone there—the state investigators, his DNR co-workers, and even his supervisor, Denise—could be counted on to keep the emotions to a minimum. His palms were still sweating, but he was finally sure he could handle things the way he knew he needed to.

  For now, Keith seemed to have his back and was sticking close to the state investigators. He had also sent away the guys who’d shown up from the county-licensed ambulance service. Word had spread about the mutilated state of the body. As people came and went all through the morning, Tripp’s front yard took on the air of an impromptu carnival, with Claude Dixon’s exploded head as the five-dollar sideshow attraction.

  Finally, Burns and Johnson, two of the state’s investigators, got around to questioning him. Tripp led them to the front porch where they could have some privacy, and he was glad neither of them asked to go inside. He was fairly certain he had hidden Lila’s things, starting with the bra she had playfully left hanging off the back of a chair a few days before, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  Burns, sixtysomething and with the relaxed manner of a man who was only a year or two away from retirement, asked the questions. Johnson lounged against the porch railing, picking clean his nails. Easily twenty years younger than Burns, Johnson wasn’t as clean-shaven as the state liked their boys to be, and his jacket was badly wrinkled. When he leaned forward to introduce himself, Tripp had noticed a citrusy smell that reminded him of the cologne his kid sister had worn when she was a teenager.

  He had also seen Johnson more than once at The Twilight Club. Somebody young like the Jolene girl would appeal to him. The whole Investigator Johnson package was distasteful to Tripp. He was glad it was Burns who spoke, asking him the same questions he himself would have asked of someone with a dead body in their front yard: Had he heard anything in the night? Had anyone been hanging around the cabin? Did he know, or had he ever met, Claude Dixon? Where had he been the night before and with whom? Tripp made sure to mention the name of the restaurant where he had eaten, and that he had stopped to fill up his truck on the way home. Was it his imagination, or did Johnson give a disbelieving snort when he said he had fallen asleep in front of the television before ten? Believe what you want, asshole. As long as Lila’s name stays out of it.

  When they were done with him, the investigators moved off into the woods nearest the drive, and Denise came up to the porch with Keith. Keith asked if he could use the facilities and Tripp waved him inside.

  “You doing all right?” Denise asked him when the door closed behind Keith.

  Denise was good people. A thirty-year DNR veteran, she had survived six different governors’ administrations and an investigation into her alleged use of state money to finance a sweet house on Lake Norfolk. Nothing was proven, and six months later she had melted back into bureaucratic obscurity. Despite being a grandmother of six, Denise, only about five foot two, was compact in her gabardine pantsuit and tailored navy trench coat. The damp had caused her closely trimmed gray hair to curl slightly and her faded blue eyes were concerned. She cared about her people and liked to surround herself with those she felt she could respect and trust.

  Tripp nodded. “Hell of a way to wake up,” he said.

  “I imagine you don’t get much excitement in the neighborhood,” she said. “How long have you been up here again?”

  “Almost twelve years,” he said. “As soon as I could afford it.” He didn’t mention how cheaply he had gotten the place, or how he had bought it off a doctor whose kids had been so spooked by the density of the nighttime woods, and the sounds of coyotes and owls they heard when they came up on the weekends that they refused to ever come back.

  “Spotted a timber wolf last week up n
ear the wood pile,” Tripp said. “He took off, but he looked pretty well fed.”

  “Livestock around the place?”

  Tripp shook his head. Even small talk felt weird to him, and Denise was always slow to come around to her point. “Nope, I think he was just marking territory.”

  “You need to take a couple days off to clear this out of your head,” she said, gesturing to the uniform-surrounded body. “I can get Becker out of mothballs to cover for you. He’s had a good two months since his shoulder surgery. Plus he’s driving me crazy at the office.” She eyed him closely. “You sure you got some sleep last night? You don’t look like you rested very well.”

  “I’m good,” Tripp said. “There’s been a lot of activity over on the western boundary. I need to follow up.” He knew he probably looked like shit, and it would be like her to notice. “But it can wait.”

  “Works for me,” Denise said. She gave his upper arm a light squeeze. “Keep me posted. Get your beauty sleep.”

  Tripp watched her walk down the steps and out to her state-issued SUV. She didn’t stop to talk to any of the investigators or troopers, but nodded to them as she turned the vehicle in the grass and drove out. He liked Denise. He didn’t like to lie to her.

  “I don’t think the big boys need me hanging around,” Keith said behind him. “Ginger and I like to have some alone time while the kids are at school. But I guess I ought to look in at what’s happening at the Git ’n’ Go first, see if the Jolly Green Giant returned to the scene. Hell of a mess. I wonder where the rest of the poor bastard’s head is.”

  “You know I appreciate you coming up here, man,” Tripp said, meaning it. “It was good to see a friendly face after…”

  “No face at all?” Keith grimaced. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

  They stood in silence for a moment. Tripp noticed that the bank of bird feeders he kept on the rise in the side yard was completely empty. He had overlooked more than a few things since he started seeing Lila. He felt sometimes like he had let his own life drift away from him while he took on another.

  Keith started down the porch steps. When he reached the stone walk, he turned back.

  “Hey, did you say you were dating a dancer a while back? What was her name again?”

  Tripp said. “Not me, man.”

  “Damn. Could’ve sworn you told me you were dating a redhead from the club. Or maybe someone said they saw you out.”

  “Must have been someone else,” Tripp said. Bullshit. No one saw me with Lila. We’re too careful. Then he remembered what Jolene had said about Lila. “I gave one a ride home the other night. But she had black hair, and I wouldn’t call it any kind of date.”

  “That’s what they all say,” Keith said. He grinned.

  Tripp shook his head. “Plus, if The Twilight Club had a redhead, I never noticed.”

  Keith laughed. “You wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything, but I think the big boys will stay in touch. By the way, you make a helluva cappuccino. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

  As much as Tripp wanted to follow Keith off the mountain and drive straight to Lila’s place, he knew he had to stay where he was. Lila, and probably Bud, were themselves certainly dealing with the sheriff’s deputies and Bud’s trucking employees. In fact, Tripp was kind of surprised that Bud himself hadn’t shown up to take a look at Claude Dixon’s body. Bud was that kind of guy—big and big-hearted and stubbornly honest. At the club, he was surrounded by half-naked girls any given time of day or night, but despite Lila’s paranoia, there was never even a hint he was screwing around with any of them.

  No, Bud didn’t deserve the kind of treatment he was getting from either Tripp or his own wife. But Bud didn’t deserve Lila, either.

  • • •

  The coroner’s SUV, the state investigators, and the crime scene team were gone by four in the afternoon. As Tripp watched the last vehicle drive off, the exhaustion overtook him and he could think only of crawling back into the bed he had abandoned so early that morning. Instead, he made himself a bologna sandwich with mustard and ate it in front of the sliding glass door that looked out on the primitive backyard. The doctor he had bought the house from had cleared the yard of stumps and tried to plant some grass, but there was way too much shade from the surrounding forest and it had never taken off. The yard was also smaller now than when he had bought the place. Mindful of fire hazards, he kept the brush away, but he had nurtured the few oak trees that had managed to start themselves. Taming nature had never been one of his interests. He liked a certain order to things, but the mountain had its own rules and he never fought those rules. Sometimes, though, he found it difficult to live with them.

  He had tried to leave the mountain more than once, first by going away to college a thousand miles away, a place where the mountains were too vast, too unfamiliar. And two years earlier, he had taken a winter’s leave of absence and half his savings to find out what life would be like living in a rental near his folks’ place near the beach. But he was back on the mountain in eight weeks. Now, there was Lila.

  • • •

  The daylight faded behind his closed curtains. He lay in bed, thinking of her. She was down there in that enormous house with Bud to comfort her instead of him. What was she telling him? Did Bud even know she needed comfort? He probably did. Lila had never been good at hiding her feelings.

  As much as he despised the thought of Bud touching Lila, holding Lila, his weariness won out and he could no longer hold her face in his mind. He found himself remembering the distant sound of snapping tree limbs and the frantic rustle of fallen leaves, the sound of whoever—whatever—had been wandering the mountainside carrying the body of Claude Dixon through the darkness. The troopers had found no footprints in the woods and somehow that seemed right to Tripp. Whatever had killed Claude Dixon might have found him in Alta, but it had surely come from the mountain and was still somewhere on it. Tripp was strangely comforted by the thought. Terrible and dangerous as the thing was, if it was from the mountain he refused to be afraid of it. It would be like being afraid of himself.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The front door was only a few feet from where Jolene slept, so she woke at the sound of the first knock. Her mouth and throat were so dry, she could hardly swallow. Thirst was no small thing to her. Thirst was a memory of being buried deep in time-hardened soil, caressed by tree roots that searched year after endless year for hidden water. Thirst was proof there was some human part of her left, even though she couldn’t see or feel or hear until she had been thrust from the ground and into the world once again.

  Instead of answering the door, she ran to the bathroom, desperate. Filling the plastic tumbler on the sink with tap water, she drained it then refilled it and drank again. It didn’t matter that the water tasted like rust and chlorine. It soothed her tongue and throat and cooled her skin as some of it ran onto her chin and dropped onto her chest. One more glass. Always just one more.

  She leaned against the sink, breathing hard. In the mirror, the skin beneath her eyes looked blue, translucent. After coming back from Ivy’s house, she had started to feel worse, and Charity had offered to cover her shift so she could rest. She had expected to feel better on waking, but only wanted to go back to sleep.

  Out in the hallway, Charity was yelling at whoever was at the door.

  “Eli, that better not be you!”

  The milky light coming through the window above the shower told Jolene it was no later than seven thirty in the morning, and Charity awake after only three or four hours’ sleep wasn’t a nice thing to hear.

  Eli had forgotten his front door key twice since he had brought Jolene to stay at the trailer. Both times Jolene had been the one to let him in, and Charity was always threatening to throw him out for waking them too early. If he and Charity were going to fight, they would do it in front of her. Dancing or not, Charity liked an audience. Then there would be at least an hour of noisy sex, also l
oud enough for Jolene’s benefit.

  Charity’s aura was always a passionate red that flared directly over her heart. Jolene had trusted her from the moment Eli led her from the trailer out to his truck, where Jolene sat naked and not yet able to speak, wrapped in the sleeping bag he kept balled up behind the seat.

  • • •

  Shrouding her shoulders with the quilt, Jolene shuffled back down the hall toward the living room, hoping she might be able to sleep for another hour or two.

  Charity swung open the door. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “What the hell’s on fire?”

  Bud Tucker stood on the step looking chagrined. Taking off his fawn cowboy hat, he ducked his head unnecessarily as Charity stood aside so he could come in. Jolene felt the rush of cool air that came with him. Despite the cold, Bud’s face was flushed and his forehead wore a sheen of sweat.

  The hints of gray around his chest worried Jolene. Otherwise, his aura was a rich indigo she had never seen waver; he cared deeply about the people around him. There were pictures of him in younger, healthier days on a wall in the club’s office—pictures with a governor; with a slightly gap-toothed woman who had signed her picture Carly in a tight, loopy scrawl; and with a smiling actor in front of a Barbarian Master poster. Both men wore tight-fitting suits and skinny neckties, and it was one of the few pictures in which Bud wasn’t the biggest person in the shot. Bud didn’t have any hair back then, either, but he’d had a more athletic build. She had never seen him smile as broadly as he had in the pictures, but his moss-green eyes were never threatening, even when he was dealing with the club’s roughest customers.