Blindsighted Page 6

  The Hut reeked of cigarette smoke, and Lena had to take a few shallow breaths so she wouldn’t choke. Her eyes burned as she walked over to the bar. Not much had changed in the last twenty or so years. The floor was still sticky from beer and crunchy from peanut shells. To the left were booths that probably had more DNA material in them than the FBI lab at Quantico. To the right was a long bar fashioned from fifty-gallon barrels and heart of pine. A stage was on the far wall, the rest rooms for men and women on either side. In the middle of the bar was what Hank called a dance floor. Most nights, it was packed back to front with men and women in various stages of drunken arousal. The Hut was a two-thirty bar, meaning everybody looked good at two-thirty in the morning.

  Hank was nowhere to be seen, but Lena knew he wouldn’t be far on amateur night. Every other Monday, patrons of the Hut were invited to stand onstage and embarrass themselves in front of the rest of the town. Lena shuddered as she thought about it. Reece made Heartsdale look like a bustling metropolis. Except for the tire factory, most of the men in this room would have left a long time ago. As it was, they were content to drink themselves to death and pretend they were happy.

  Lena slid onto the first vacant stool she could find. The country song on the jukebox had a pounding bass, and she leaned her elbows on the bar, cupping her hands over her ears so that she could hear herself think.

  She felt a bump on her arm and looked up in time to see Webster’s definition of a hick sitting down beside her. His face was sunburned from his neck to about an inch from his hairline where he had obviously been working outside wearing a baseball hat. His shirt was starched within an inch of its life, and the cuffs were tight around his thick wrists. The jukebox stopped abruptly, and Lena worked her jaw, trying to make her ears pop so she didn’t feel like she was in a tunnel.

  Her gentleman neighbor bumped her arm again, smiling, saying, “Hey, lady.”

  Lena rolled her eyes, catching the bartender’s eye. “JD on the rocks,” she ordered.

  “That’n’s on me,” the man said, slapping down a ten-dollar bill. When he spoke, his words slurred together like a wrecked train, and Lena realized he was a lot drunker than she planned ever to be.

  The man gave her a sloppy smile. “You know, sugar, I’d love to get biblical with you.”

  She leaned over, close to his ear. “If I ever find out you have, I’ll cut your balls off with my car keys.”

  He opened his mouth to reply but was jerked off the barstool before he could get a word out. Hank stood there with the man’s shirt collar in his hand, then shoved him into the crowd. The look he fixed Lena with was just as hard as the one she imagined was on her own face.

  Lena had never liked her uncle. Unlike Sibyl, she wasn’t the forgiving type. Even when Lena drove Sibyl to Reece for visits, Lena spent most of her time in the car or sitting on the front porch steps, keys in her hand, ready to go as soon as Sibyl walked out the front door.

  Despite the fact that Hank Norton had injected speed into his veins for the better part of his twenties and thirties, he was not an idiot. Lena showing up on Hank’s proverbial doorstep in the middle of the night could only mean one thing.

  Their eyes were still locked as music started to blare again, shaking the walls, sending a vibration from the floor up the bar stool. She saw rather than heard what Hank was asking when he said, “Where’s Sibyl?”

  Tucked behind the bar, more like an outhouse than a place of business, Hank’s office was a small wooden box with a tin roof. A lightbulb hung from a frayed electrical wire that had probably been installed by the WPA. Posters from beer and liquor companies served as wallpaper. White cartons filled with liquor were stacked against the back wall, leaving about ten square feet for a desk with two chairs on either side. Surrounding these were piles of boxes stuffed with receipts that Hank had accumulated from running the bar over the years. A stream running behind the shack kept mold and moisture in the air. Lena imagined Hank liked working in this dark, dank place, passing his days in an environment more suitable for a tongue.

  “I see you’ve redecorated,” Lena said, setting her glass on top of one of the boxes. She could not tell if she wasn’t drunk anymore or if she was too drunk to notice.

  Hank gave the glass a cursory glance, then looked back at Lena. “You don’t drink.”

  She held up the glass in a toast. “To the late bloomer.”

  Hank sat back in his office chair, his hands clasped in front of his stomach. He was tall and skinny, with skin that tended to flake in the winter. Despite the fact that his father was Spanish, Hank’s appearance more closely resembled his mother’s, a pasty woman who was as sour as her complexion. In her mind, Lena had always thought it appropriate that Hank bore a close resemblance to an albino snake.

  He asked, “What brings you to these parts?”

  “Just dropping by,” she managed around the glass. The whiskey was bitter in her mouth. She kept an eye on Hank as she finished the drink and banged the empty glass back down on the box. Lena did not know what was stopping her. For years she had waited to get the upper hand with Hank Norton. This was her time to hurt him as much as he had hurt Sibyl.

  “You started snortin’ coke, too, or have you been crying?”

  Lena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What do you think?”

  Hank stared at her, working his hands back and forth. This was more than a nervous habit, Lena knew. Speed injected into the veins of his hands had given Hank arthritis at an early age. Since most of the veins in his arms had calcified from the powdered additive used to cut the drug, there wasn’t much circulation there, either. His hands were cold as ice most days and a constant source of pain.

  The rubbing stopped abruptly. “Let’s get it over with, Lee. I’ve got the show to put on.”

  Lena tried to open her mouth, but nothing came out. Part of her was angered by his flippant attitude, which had marked their relationship from the very beginning. Part of her did not know how to tell him. As much as Lena hated her uncle, he was a human being. Hank had doted on Sibyl. In high school, Lena could not take her sister everywhere, and Sibyl had spent a lot of time home with Hank. There was an undeniable bond there, and as much as Lena wanted to hurt her uncle, she felt herself holding back. Lena had loved Sibyl, Sibyl had loved Hank.

  Hank picked up a ballpoint pen, turning it head over end on the desk several times before he finally asked, “What’s wrong, Lee? Need some money?”

  If only it were that simple, Lena thought.

  “Car broke down?”

  She shook her head slowly side to side.

  “It’s Sibyl,” he stated, his voice catching in his throat.

  When Lena did not answer, he nodded slowly to himself, putting his hands together, as if to pray. “She’s sick?” he asked, his voice indicating he expected the worst. With this one sentence, he showed more emotion than Lena had ever seen him express in a lifetime of knowing her uncle. She looked at him closely as if for the first time. His pale skin was blotched with those red dots pasty men get on their faces as they age. His hair, silver for as long as she could recall, was dulled with yellow under the sixty-watt bulb. His Hawaiian shirt was rumpled, which was not his style, and his hands tremored slightly as he fidgeted with them.

  Lena did it the same way Jeffrey Tolliver had. “She went to the diner in the middle of town,” she began. “You know the one across from the dress shop?”

  A slight nod was all he gave.

  “She walked there from the house,” Lena continued. “She did it every week, just to be able to do something on her own.”

  Hank clasped his hands together in front of his face, touching the sides of his index fingers to his forehead.

  “So, uhm.” Lena picked up the glass, needing something to do. She sucked what little liquor was left off the ice cubes, then continued. “She went to the bathroom, and somebody killed her.”

  There was little sound in the tiny office. Grasshoppers chirped outside. Gurgling came
from the stream. A distant throbbing came from the bar.

  Without preamble, Hank turned around, picking through the boxes, asking, “What’ve you had to drink tonight?”

  Lena was surprised by his question, though she shouldn’t have been. Despite his AA brainwashing, Hank Norton was a master at avoiding the unpleasant. His need to escape was what had brought Hank to drugs and alcohol in the first place. “Beer in the car,” she said, playing along, glad for once that he did not want the gory details. “JD here.”

  He paused, his hand around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “Beer before liquor, never sicker,” he warned, his voice catching on the last part.

  Lena held out her glass, rattling the ice for attention. She watched Hank as he poured the drink, not surprised when he licked his lips.

  “How’s work treating you?” Hank asked, his voice tinny in the shack. His lower lip trembled slightly. His expression was one of total grief, in direct opposition to the words coming from his mouth. He said, “Doing okay?”

  Lena nodded. She felt as if she were smack in the middle of a car accident. She finally understood the meaning of the word surreal. Nothing seemed concrete in this tiny space. The glass in her hand felt dull. Hank was miles away. She was in a dream.

  Lena tried to snap herself out of it, downing her drink quickly. The alcohol hit the back of her throat like fire, burning and solid, as if she had swallowed hot asphalt.

  Hank watched the glass, not Lena, as she did this.

  This was all she needed. She said, “Sibyl’s dead, Hank.”

  Tears came to his eyes without warning, and all that Lena could think was that he looked so very, very old. It was like watching a flower wilt. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose.

  Lena repeated the words much as Jeffrey Tolliver had earlier this evening. “She’s dead.”

  His voice wavered as he asked, “Are you sure?”

  Lena nodded quickly up and down. “I saw her.” Then, “Somebody cut her up pretty bad.”

  His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He kept his eyes even with Lena’s the way he used to do when he was trying to catch her in a lie. He finally looked away, mumbling, “That doesn’t make sense.”

  She could have reached out and patted his old hand, maybe tried to comfort him, but she didn’t. Lena felt frozen in her chair. Instead of thinking of Sibyl, which had been her mind’s initial reaction, she concentrated on Hank, on his wet lips, his eyes, the hairs growing out of his nose.

  “Oh, Sibby.” He sighed, wiping his eyes. Lena watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He reached for the bottle, resting his hand on the neck. Without asking, he unscrewed the cap and poured Lena another drink. This time, the dark liquid nearly touched the rim.

  More time passed, then Hank blew his nose loudly, patting at his eyes with the handkerchief. “I can’t see anyone trying to kill her.” His hands shook even more as he folded the handkerchief over and over. “Doesn’t make sense,” he mumbled. “You, I could understand.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  This was sufficient enough to spark Hank’s irritation. “I mean because of the job you do. Now get that damn chip off your shoulder.”

  Lena did not comment. This was a familiar order.

  He put his palms down on the desk, fixing Lena with a stare. “Where were you when this happened?”

  Lena tossed back the drink, not feeling the burn so much this time. When she returned the glass to the desk, Hank was still staring at her.

  She mumbled, “Macon.”

  “Was it some sort of hate crime, then?”

  Lena reached over, picking up the bottle. “I don’t know. Maybe.” The whiskey gurgled in the bottle as she poured. “Maybe he picked her because she was gay. Maybe he picked her because she was blind.” Lena gave a sideways glance, catching his pained reaction to this. She decided to expound upon her speculation. “Rapists tend to pick women they think they can control, Hank. She was an easy target.”

  “So, this all comes back to me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He grabbed the bottle. “Right,” he snapped, dropping the half-empty bottle back into its box. His tone was angry now, back to the nuts and bolts. Like Lena, Hank was never comfortable with the emotional side of things. Sibyl had often said the main reason Hank and Lena never got along was that they were too much alike. Sitting there with Hank, absorbing his grief and anger as it filled the tiny shed, Lena realized that Sibyl was right. She was looking at herself in twenty years, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Hank asked, “Have you talked to Nan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got to plan the service,” he said, picking up the pen and drawing a box on his desk calendar. At the top he wrote the word FUNERAL in all caps. “Is there somebody in Grant you think would do a good job?” He waited for her response, then added, “I mean, most of her friends were there.”

  “What?” Lena asked, the glass paused at her lips. “What are you talking about?”

  “Lee, we’ve got to make arrangements. We’ve got to take care of Sibby.”

  Lena finished the drink. When she looked at Hank, his features were blurred. As a matter of fact, the whole room was blurred. She had the sensation of being on a roller coaster, and her stomach reacted accordingly. Lena put her hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.

  Hank had probably seen her expression many times before, most likely in the mirror. He was beside her, holding a trash can under her chin, just as she lost the battle.

  Tuesday

  7

  Sara leaned over the kitchen sink in her parents’ house, using her father’s wrench to loosen the faucet. She had spent most of the evening in the morgue performing Sibyl Adams’s autopsy. Going back to a dark house, sleeping alone, had not been something she wanted to do. Add to that Jeffrey’s last threat on her answering machine to come by her house, and Sara did not really have a choice as to where she slept last night. Except for sneaking in to pick up the dogs, she had not even bothered to change out of her scrubs.

  She wiped sweat from her forehead, glancing at the clock on the coffeemaker. It was six-thirty in the morning and she had slept all of two hours. Every time she closed her eyes, she thought of Sibyl Adams sitting on the toilet, blind to what was happening to her, feeling everything her attacker was doing.

  On the plus side, short of some type of family catastrophe, there was no way in hell today could possibly be as bad as yesterday.

  Cathy Linton walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and took down a coffee cup before she noticed her oldest daughter standing beside her. “What are you doing?”

  Sara slid a new washer over the threaded bolt. “The faucet was leaking.”

  “Two plumbers in the family,” Cathy complained, pouring herself a cup of coffee, “and my daughter the doctor ends up fixing the leaky faucet.”

  Sara smiled, putting her shoulder behind the wrench. The Lintons were a plumbing family, and Sara had spent most of her summers during school working alongside her father, snaking drains and welding pipe. Sometimes she thought the only reason she had finished high school a year early and worked through summers getting her undergrad degree was so she would not have to poke around spider-infested crawl spaces with her father. Not that she didn’t love her father, but, unlike Tessa, Sara’s fear of spiders could not be overcome.

  Cathy slid onto the kitchen stool. “Did you sleep here last night?”

  “Yeah,” Sara answered, washing her hands. She turned off the faucet, smiling when it didn’t leak. The sense of accomplishment lifted some of the weight off her shoulders.

  Cathy smiled her approval. “If that medical thing doesn’t work out, at least you’ll have plumbing to fall back on.”

  “You know, that’s what Daddy told me when he drove me to college the first day.”

  “I know,” Cathy said. “I could have killed him.” She took a sip of coffee, eyeing Sara over the rim of the cup. “Wh
y didn’t you go home?”

  “I worked late and I just wanted to come here. Is that okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay,” Cathy said, tossing Sara a towel. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Sara dried her hands. “I hope I didn’t wake you up when I came in.”

  “Not me,” Cathy answered. “Why didn’t you sleep with Tess?”

  Sara made herself busy straightening the towel on the rack. Tessa lived in a two-bedroom apartment over the garage. In the last few years, there had been nights when Sara had not wanted to sleep alone in her own house. She generally stayed with her sister rather than risk waking her father, who invariably wanted to discuss at great length what was troubling her.

  Sara answered, “I didn’t want to bother her.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Cathy laughed. “Good Lord, Sara, nearly a quarter of a million dollars to that college and they didn’t teach you to lie better than that?”

  Sara took down her favorite mug and poured herself some coffee. “Maybe you should’ve sent me to law school instead.”

  Cathy crossed her legs, frowning. She was a small woman who kept herself trim by doing yoga. Her blond hair and blue eyes had skipped over Sara and been passed on to Tessa. Except for their matching temperaments, anyone would be hard-pressed to tell that Cathy and Sara were mother and daughter.

  “Well?” Cathy prompted.

  Sara couldn’t keep the smile off of her lips. “Let’s just say Tess was a little busy when I walked in and leave it at that.”

  “Busy by herself?”

  “No.” Sara barked an uncomfortable laugh, feeling her cheeks turn red. “God, Mother.”