Carved in Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

he was standing in his doorway talking to an unmanned housekeeping cart.
    “I got your number from Charlie. He said he just talked to you, so I called but you didn’t answer.” Charlie. Good ol’ Charlie, the town coroner slash funeral director. He and Charlie went way back. Charlie’d been the one to call him when it was time to bury his parents. He hated Charlie.
    “Yeah, I broke my phone … look, I’m a little busy. Come back tomorrow.” After I’ve given myself a .40-caliber lobotomy. Ignoring him, she used the business end of the tire iron to push him out of the doorway, back into the blessed dark. She followed, shutting the door behind her.
    Clicking on the bedside lamp, she used her tire iron to root around in the pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed. She unearthed a pair of boxers and hooked them with her magic wand.
    “Here.” She held them out to him, and he stared at her for a second or two before he remembered. Oh, yeah—he was naked. No need to get dressed when you had no plans to go anywhere, and really, pants were a chore he could do without. Taking the boxers, he sat down on the bed. The effort at modesty turned the room into a Tilt-A-Whirl. He replanted his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees, breathing through the spins until they subsided.
    “Hand that to me, will ya?” he said, flinging his arm in the general direction of the dresser. Glancing in the direction he’d indicated, she saw the bottle. Her frown deepened into one of disappointment and concern.
    “I certainly will not.”
    Fine. He struggled to stand, but she pushed him off his feet with that freakin’ tire iron again. He went down and kept going. Sprawled out on the bed, the spins hitting him again. “What do you want?” Just say it and get the fuck out . He was a disappointment … Sophia and Sean would be ashamed of him … what would Frankie think. Nothing he hadn’t been saying to himself for the past decade or so. Still, he wasn’t sure he could handle hearing it right now, but she didn’t say any of that.
    When she started talking, he became sure he was having some sort of psychotic break. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he was hearing.
    She told him Melissa, her granddaughter—the one who’d been murdered years ago and a thousand miles away—was alive.
    He had no idea what any of it had to do with him, and he didn’t care. He just wanted Lucy to leave so he could get more blind drunk and hopefully pass out again.
    “Look … it’s been a really long day. I just want—”
    “Drinking yourself to death is gonna have to wait. Aren’t you listening to me? Melissa’s not dead. When they found her, she was damn close, but she managed to pull through. She’s living in California. She’s a police officer,” she repeated when all he did was stare at her.
    Melissa was alive ? She was a cop ?
    “What are you saying? What does this have to do with Frankie?”
    “I’m saying my granddaughter survived what that man did to her, and I’m saying he’s the same man who killed your sister,” she said plainly, pacing his room in tight circles while her fingers twisted together in an endless series of intricate knots. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. She’s alive.” She was babbling so fast he could barely track what she was saying. “She always knew he was from here. He followed her to Arizona when she ran away. After Tommy. I always thought maybe she was wrong. I mean, who around here would do such a thing? I never told her so because I didn’t want to upset her, but what happened to your sister proves she’s right.”
    “How?”
    Lucy sighed and sat on the bed, next to him. “I saw what he did to Melissa. From what I hear around town, it sounds like he did the same things to Frankie.”
    It had taken less than a week for the police chief, in his infinite wisdom, to decree what had happened to Frankie was the work of a transient just passing through. Popular opinion latched