Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [49]
“Thanks,” Lacey said. “You got a message for him?”
“Yeah,” Deena replied. “Dry up,” she said, taking another sip of whiskey.
Lacey dropped her letter in the mailbox and headed out of Mercer to Terry’s hideaway. She parked her car on the fire road and hiked the last mile to the tower.
“Hey, Terry,” Lacey shouted.
She shouted his name again.
She approached the wooden ladder and shouted again.
“Wake up!” she said, banging on the bottom rungs.
From inside the lookout, Lacey heard some stirring and a groggy voice reply, “There ain’t nothing wrong with a grown man taking a nap.”
“Can I come up?” Lacey said.
“I’m indecent,” Terry replied.
“I’ll wait, then,” Lacey said, quickly striding away from the tower.
A moment passed and Terry poked his head out of the primitive window.
Terry smiled warmly. His nap must have quieted his demons for a spell.
“Miss Hansen,” Terry said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Just then an unnerving squeak pierced the forest. The entire tower seemed to buckle to the right. Lacey screamed Terry’s name and instinctively started toward the tower, then backed away. She could still see Terry’s surprised face in the window as the whole thing collapsed.
Lacey watched until all the debris had settled. She approached slowly, easily finding the bright red of Terry’s long johns among the planks. His neck was bent at an unnatural angle.
“Terry?” She said. His eyes were open, but there was no response. He stared directly into the sun.
Lacey checked her cell phone, but she knew there was no reception in these parts. She raced back to her car and started the engine. Leaving a plume of dust in her wake, Lacey drove a mile down the main highway until the cell towers kicked in. She called Sheriff Ed directly.
“Terry Jakes is dead.”
NOTES:
Dave,
Please accept my condolences for your beloved Terry. I assure you, it was a purely professional decision. It was time to raise the stakes in the story. And it was Terry’s time. He’s in a better place now.
With Terry gone, maybe “Paul” can refocus—or rather focus—his efforts on the investigation. I’ll admit that Terry grew on me in the end, but he was a terrible distraction.
All right, let’s let bygones be bygones and finish this damn book. What do you say?
Lisa
P.S. While I long ago developed an immunity to your conveyor belt of insults, I do think it would be wise to use that creative energy toward the book and not in belittling me.
Lisa,
This is how you kick off our detente—by killing my (and no doubt the reader’s) favorite character? If that’s the way it has to be, I can take this one for the team. Just let me know ahead of time if you’re planning to kill Paul next.
I admit I went a little overboard with the Dick and Jane stuff. Though I have to say it felt good to blow off some steam. You keep assuming I’m harboring resentments from the past. I can assure you that they’re all freshly minted. But I feel like I owe it to my surviving characters to see this project through. I’ll try to be less touchy if you try to moderate your hostility toward them.
Re: Paul, I’ve just been waiting for an organic point in the story for him to take an active role. Now that we’ve reached that point, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Dave
P.S. I take exception to the “unpublished” jab in your previous note. Hello? Harper’s, May 1996, page 32.
CHAPTER 16
The first Tuesday of every month was School Supplies Day—the day Paul drove down to the string of colleges a couple hours south of Mercer and distributed to his dealers there. He hadn’t heard whether Terry had talked to Doc Egan yet, but he doubted doing so would make things worse. Somehow, he always landed on his feet. “Like a cat,” Paul had once told him. “Or a puma,” Terry had replied.
On the highway down, Paul felt more relaxed than he had since they’d found Hart. The familiar anxiety of driving around with a pound of pungent marijuana under his seat was almost reassuring