Rites of Extinction Read online

“I guess.” Cassie shrugs like she’s never thought of it that way. This isn’t a girl who cares much about what the world around her has to say about anything. “Mostly just wanted him to put a baby in me. Guy like that . . . you do what you gotta do to lock him down. Keeping things unpredictable keeps them rock hard. And public places are exciting. You do what you can. Bet you had guys like that in your day?”

  “Ever try the beach?”

  A smile like she’s swapping naughty secrets at a sleepover. “Once or twice. Ocean’s too far away to do it more than that.”

  Rebecca is suddenly enraged. Her pulse quickens and her heart’s wedged in her throat. Doesn’t know how Cassie has managed to breach her armor with something so trivial, but the anger builds with surprising momentum. She feels like snatching this little cunt and squeezing her windpipe until the truth comes oozing from her ears like mashed potatoes.

  It’s at last a thought that brings genuine humor to her face.

  Rebecca knows she shouldn’t care so much about this girl’s sex life, so long as she gets answers. But rage burns through her like wildfire. In a bout of misplaced callousness, she resists the urge to tell her that Paul’s heart belonged to another. It’s hard to imagine something that could be more antithetical to her purpose, though, so she shifts gears and says, “I saw the hotel room.”

  “Looked like shit,” the girl laughs. “Didn’t it?”

  “What did you do in there?”

  “Said goodbye.”

  “So . . . he left you?”

  “He left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “On ahead. For Tanner Red.”

  That sounds like some campaign slogan. Rebecca asks after it, but the girl only slides over to her bed and sits. Her back arches and her fiery red hair unfurls and dances like the spitting blaze from an inverse campfire. She stares at Rebecca invitingly, scissoring her exposed and sweaty thighs.

  “What’s the last thing he said to you?” Rebecca says.

  Cassie laughs, closes her eyes and chuckles soft. She enjoys the memory first inside her own head. Eyes flutter and lift and she smiles. “It’ll sound crazy.”

  We’re past crazy, Rebecca thinks. What Rebecca says is, “Try me.”

  “He said, ‘It’s been fun.’”

  The girl shuts down at that, stretching out on the bed and shutting her eyes, rolling wantonly above the sheets.

  That’s as much help as Cassie’s willing to be. Rebecca leaves back down the groaning steps. Passes the girl’s mother on the couch. The woman stares up at a water stain on the ceiling that’s spreading in real time. Small drips pluck down on the hardwood. It takes the woman a long while to blink even once, but she never looks again at the stranger in her house.

  “Is your daughter all right?” Rebecca asks.

  “No,” she says with barely any pitch. “Been wrong for as long as I can remember.”

  “I can ask after some counseling when I get back into—”

  “Counseling can’t fix this.”

  Rebecca starts inside the room, prepared to argue. To make the case that yes, it can, but she gets as far as the threshold and pauses at the sight of the mirror hanging on the back wall, the room reflecting right back. Mostly. Rebecca isn’t in the image. In her place stands a girl splattered in so much blood a year’s worth of hot showers wouldn’t be able to wash it all away.

  The whites of the girl’s eyes stand out with so much definition it’s like they’re glowing. Rebecca takes a step back, startled. The girl in the mirror moves toward the frame and her face never comes further into focus, even as her body nears.

  On the couch, the mother doesn’t seem to notice any of this.

  The reflected girl takes another step forward, even as Rebecca stands sedentary. The glass starts to ripple and bend, almost like expanding lungs.

  Rebecca rushes for the door, certain she doesn’t want to see what happens next.

  7

  ONCE MORE SHE GLIMPSES THE scarecrow at the far edge of the Pennington property.

  Rather than go to her car, Rebecca starts toward the high grass. She walks until the house over her shoulder is the size of a dollhouse.

  The scarecrow looms large. Rebecca looks up at the display. Its clothes are crisp—fresh off the store shelf. Something about the way its plaid shirt is tucked into bright blue denim jeans . . .

  The tongues of its unspoiled Timberlands are spattered in blood and there’s a stitch of space where the gloves meet the sleeve. Tight loops of frayed rope have sunk through darkened flesh there . . .

  The last few buttons of its shirt are separated and propped open to reveal bales of red-stained hay.

  Sitting atop the grotesque display isn’t a sackcloth face, but instead the severed head of a real sheep. Blank onyx eyes are ever vigilant against the unseen horrors of the woods.

  Whatever this is fills her with overwhelming dread. A god-awful tableau that somehow proves there’s nothing positive in this world, for how can there be when something so nightmarish stands?

  Rebecca rushes back to her car, realizes she’s running full sprint. She happens to glance up at the house as she reaches it. Cassie stands in the window there, wearing a smile so wide they’d see it on the moon. She seems freshly charged after watching Rebecca high tail it across her back yard.

  Cassie’s bare breasts mash against the glass with enough force to turn her smooshed skin three shades lighter. Her lips fall on the pane next, growing her mouth into a monstrous caricature. She grinds against it, thrusting her hips at Rebecca in a mocking but obscene gesture.

  Rebecca gets into the car, gives the ignition a flick and catches the girl flipping the finger as she reverses toward the road, trying to forget all about that awful scarecrow. And even worse, that reflection in the mirror.

  She wishes to forget everything except for Cassie’s most curious words.

  “On ahead. For Tanner Red.”

  She hits the pavement, glad to leave the whole awful house in her blacked-out, duct-tape-covered rearview.

  8

  THE MIGRAINE RETURNS AROUND DUSK while Rebecca sits in her car, scrolling her phone to brush up on Bright Fork’s recent killings.

  She’s parked in the empty library lot, not quite ready to cloister herself inside her motel room for the evening, when the pain comes at her like the swing of a sledgehammer. Hits her so hard the phone goes tumbling from her hand and slips beneath the seat.

  She usually goes straight for her Advil. This time she goes right for her eyes, pressing at her temples with the rounds of her hands. This pain’s a goddamn lightning bolt. She twists like a pretzel in uncontrollable spasms. She stretches blindly for the Advil, fingers propped wide, but her body’s in open revolt, muscles refusing to comply.

  Rebecca catches sight of her reflection in the darkened windshield and screams bloody murder. It’s so loud several passersby squint through the night for a better look.

  “Oh God,” Rebecca cries, looking at the face overlaid on her reflection. Her head moves to one side, ear slamming against shoulder bone. The stranger’s face remains locked dead center. It stares back, unmoved, like a frozen image on a plasma television screen. The same face in the glass at Cassie Pennington’s house, still obscured by foggy glass and softer vision.

  Burgundy tears roll from the stranger’s ducts like mini red carpets. Runny trails on reflected cheeks. But Rebecca feels those same wet tickles crawling down her face, coasting straight for her mouth on sunken age lines. Her tongue flicks out and catches a bitter sting as if to prove to her brain this is real.

  A startled gasp as her vision cuts out, leaving her to feel around in sudden darkness.

  Panic now that she’s gone blind. Her fingers find the door handle. She shoves it outward and falls toward pavement.

  That reflected face haunts the darkness behind her eyelids. It’s a youthful, red smile that grins wide in spite of its terrible appearance. Blood seeps through the marginal gaps in her teeth. But it’s the whites
of those eyes . . . missing pupils that take away the only bit of humanity it could have.

  “Jesus, girly, c’mere.” Hands around Rebecca’s shoulders. Frail and flexing arms that barely get her back to her feet. Around her, voices debate:

  “Call the sheriff.”

  “Not the sheriff. Call an ambulance.”

  “She don’t need either . . . get her to a loony bin.” The bloody face laughs at this suggestion and it’s a sick, percussive sound.

  Rebecca is too disoriented to settle on any one thing. The sting of open air slows her heart and her vision returns like a warming projector bulb.

  She thinks, I’ll never take it for granted again.

  Now she’s worried about the flurry of concerned faces hovering inside her personal bubble. Feels like half the fucking town’s leaning into her face, huddled way too close, as if proximity holds the answers.

  “No,” Rebecca says. She whirls around to study her reflection in the car window. Her fingertips crawl her cheeks and find dry flesh. A little chapped, but dry. The blood’s a memory.

  “I’ll be fine,” she tells no one in particular. This assurance is for her. These people don’t care one iota for her well-being. She knows that.

  Rebecca slips back behind the wheel as the townspeople close in around her hood like the professional gawkers they are. They’re in a semi-circle, prying through the glass.

  She holds up the Advil and shakes the bottle, as if that explains or excuses her condition.

  Then she starts the car and reverses the hell out of there, smashing the pedal.

  She’s barely out of the parking lot when red and blues explode behind her.

  9

  BEFORE TODAY, REBECCA HAS NEVER been inside of a jail cell.

  This may be considered odd, given her line of work, but she never had to walk anyone to the iron. And almost all of her business these days is done outside police stations. Law enforcement views her profession as a one-way street with almost nothing to gain from cooperation. In fact, it’s usually nil.

  Rebecca used to have a few sources stemming back to her time on the force. When she wanted nothing more than to make detective. Right before the reality of motherhood put that dream on hold. And once it was time to get back to the shield, Bret decided to leverage their little girl as a bargaining chip in order to keep her out of the most dangerous profession.

  Massachusetts State Police was going to have to find a detective elsewhere.

  Rebecca went into private investigation and never looked back. The hours are hers, the beat, not as unforgiving. Her clients are mostly lawyers and insurance adjustors, along with the occasional private citizen who thinks his or her spouse has taken up spurious nocturnal activities.

  The cell is small, cramped. About as comfortable as the shitty motel she’ll be staying at if she ever gets out of here.

  The sheriff sits upfront, reading a newspaper that’s constantly wrinkling. He realizes Rebecca is stirring and reaches for something out of view. Comes down the way and passes a Styrofoam container through the bars. Three tacos. Corn tortillas soggy from too much melted cheese and greasy beef.

  Rebecca goes at it anyway, chomping like it’s her first meal in ages.

  “Can’t stand all the Americana the diner serves,” the sheriff says. He’s Hispanic, judging from the way the tip of his tongue curls his words as he talks. Of course, the nametag that reads CORTEZ is the real tip off.

  “Wouldn’t kill them to have a taco truck,” Rebecca says, spraying greasy beef all over the cell. “Chinese takeout. Falafel. Something.”

  The sheriff laughs. It’s the first time she’s heard anyone in this miserable town do that. “No, it wouldn’t. I gotta go all the way to Pontiac for authentic Mexican.”

  Rebecca lifts her taco like it’s a beer. “Cheers.”

  “Wasn’t originally for you. My deputy’s out sick.”

  “Either way.” The hammering headache recedes the more she eats. After all three tacos are decimated, she licks grease and hot sauce off her lips, picking up little hunks of beef and shredded lettuce between her fingers and then licking them too.

  “Cortez,” he says and sticks his hand through the bars.

  Rebecca places the empty container at her feet and shakes with her clean hand. The wrong hand. The sheriff laughs again. He opens the cell and turns his back, a motion that proves he’s a trusting person.

  “Town’s worried about you,” he says.

  “That’s nice.” She steps out and follows.

  “You have a permit for your weapon, so I’m not too concerned about that. More private citizens should exercise their 2A rights . . . you get me.”

  “I do.” She doesn’t.

  “And you’ve got enough Advil to stock a pharmacy. That’s really none of mine, either, but let me tell you what is.”

  Rebecca goes to the sheriff’s desk. What’s coming is due. She knew she could only run for so long, and with her newfound ailments getting worse, what could she expect?

  It was always going to end this way. She only wishes she could’ve found Paul first.

  She slumps into the chair that faces the desk and prepares for the hammer to fall. The escaped mental patient is going back, and this time it’ll be anything but voluntary admission.

  Cortez sits with his legs up. Hands on the back of his head because this is still the easy life from where he sits. Small towns are usually about as dangerous as pre-school recess. Except this small town has suffered three murders. “You’re carrying a picture of a missing person,” he says.

  “I know that.”

  “Someone who disappeared from these parts. Someone this town would like to find.”

  “Me too.”

  A nervous smile. “You think he’s still here?”

  “Trail goes cold.” Rebecca points out the window, realizes she doesn’t know where the hotel sits in relation to this place, but the effect stands. “Goes cold in that hotel room.”

  “So you’re done? Wrapping up?”

  “Not even close.”

  Cortez comes down off his perch. The chair squeaks as he spins to face her directly. This is what he wants to hear.

  Rebecca gets it. He’s gotta be careful. She tries to understand that, but time’s wasting. And if he isn’t going to call the hospital and send her back, then cut her loose. She can’t say that though, because she’s not sure that’s the game they’re playing. So she stares back with wide eyes to show she doesn’t have the time to be yanking any chains.

  He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to toss you back,” he says. Taps her revolver sitting on his desk. “This stays with me, though.”

  Rebecca cocks her head. Looks around. The station’s empty save for the two of them and a dispatcher in the next office filing her nails. If this is a trap, it doesn’t feel that way to her gut.

  Cortez reads the question in her eyes. “No catch,” he says. “Not if you think you can deliver him.”

  “I intend to.”

  “If it gets out that I let you walk, and you do something stupid, they’ll run me out of town with you. But I read up on you. I think you can do it.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Call me a fan.”

  “Not going to ask me to sign an autograph, are you?”

  Cortez smiles wryly. “No,” he says, but something in his eyes shows he might’ve been thinking about it. “But I have THE Rebecca Daniels in my station. In another life, I’d want to talk shop.”

  A shrug as she says, “I just did my job.”

  “You would say it like that.” Cortez smirks. “So would I. They don’t train us for it, do they?”

  “Train us for what?”

  “All the hero talk. If you don’t squirm when you hear it, then your mindset ain’t right. Nobody likes a superstar in this line of work.”

  Rebecca takes a deep breath. Cortez is right about that. She’s never liked talking about herself. “I just want to close this out.”

  He to
sses his card and it lands in her lap. “You find him, you give me a call.” His eyes dip to the gun. “Maybe I’ll give that back to you then.”

  Maybe, Rebecca thinks. Or maybe I’ll just kill him with whatever’s handy and then disappear before you decide to pin your vigilantism on me. Paul doesn’t need to be pumped full of bullets in order to die. After the things he’s done, a bullet’s almost too quick. More than revenge, she wants him to feel every ounce of the pound she’s fixing to carve from his flesh.

  The chair squeaks as she pushes away from the desk. That should be that, but Cortez isn’t content to let her go just yet. She sees from the disappointment in his eyes that his little show of faith was meant to spur conversation.

  “I’m not here to make friends,” she says.

  “Who’d you lose?” Cortez thinks he can salvage this, motions for her to sit.

  Rebecca is halfway to the door.

  “Okay,” he says with a tightening jaw. He turns toward the window so he can see Bright Fork. The view is probably a constant reminder of his enduring failure to serve and protect. “My kid sister.”

  “Shit,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. The way she died—” Cortez catches himself before his voice cracks. Takes another pause while Rebecca stands helpless. This wretched sight awakens something in her. She fights the urge to touch him with a mother’s hands. Pass along what little comfort she can provide. But those instincts are from so long ago they’re almost alien to her now.

  A dream of another life.

  “Skin was all they left of her. Deflated like a popped balloon. Don’t even know what they did with her bones . . . her organs . . . never found any of them . . .”

  Rebecca’s jaw tightens. “She deserves justice.”

  “So does he. Paul.”

  “Paul’s going to get it. Where was this?”

  “Herbert Farm, out on Brockleman Road. But forget about it. We’ve been through that place time and time again. I had forensics camped out there for a week. Checked every acre twice.”

  “Paul and Cassie killed others, too.”