Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [5]
“What will we do with all this plastic?” Lacey asked.
“Burn it,” Paul replied.
“We can’t burn plastic. Do you know how bad that is for the ozone layer?”
“Our DNA is all over the gloves, Lacey. The ozone layer can suck it.”
“We should have worn cloth gloves inside the plastic gloves. Then we could have burnt the cloth gloves and left the plastic ones with the body or maybe in a dumpster somewhere,” Lacey said.
“Let’s remember that for next time,” Paul replied, his patience waning.
Lacey took the flashlight from Paul’s hand and said, “We better double-check and make sure we haven’t left anything behind.”
She beamed the light over the body, which was now tangled in brush. While Paul worked to dislodge a thick branch, Lacey gingerly hiked down the embankment to the side of the body. She scanned the area around the corpse with the flashlight. That’s when she noticed it. The watch.
She’d seen it before, lots of times. An old Seiko with a new leather band. One of those watches that supposedly winds itself through regular movement, although most people end up shaking their arm to wind it up. It never kept exact time. Lacey studied the body again. It was the right size. The clothes were the same, although all the men in Mercer seemed to dress alike. Holding her breath, she unclasped the watch and viewed the inscription on the back under the glow of the flashlight:
4 D LOVE D
“Paul,” Lacey said. Panic was edging into her voice, tears catching in her throat.
“Where are you?” Paul said, peering over the embankment.
He saw his sister standing over the corpse with the flashlight.
“We know him,” Lacey said. “It’s Darryl. It’s Darryl Cleveland.”
NOTES:
Dave,
Okay, back to you. I think it’s time for a little backstory on the siblings. Maybe you can take care of some of that.
Also, I’ve decided Lacey should be studying botany. You might want to get started on the research since you’re good at that sort of thing. Mind setting that up in your chapter?
Also, I didn’t mention how the parents died. I’ll leave that detail to you. I don’t care how. Just don’t go crazy. Leave the mafia out of it. Capiche?
Good luck,
Lisa
Lisa,
Nice job. I’m reminded how succinct and propulsive your writing can be. Don’t worry about backstory—I’ve already got a novel’s worth in my head.
Just a note for both of us to keep in mind as we continue: Let’s make sure we don’t start taking sides, with you favoring Lacey and me favoring Paul. That’s the kind of predictable gender stuff that derailed us back in the Fop days (although I stand by my allegiance to Lucius Van Landingham). I think we’re both above that now.
Dave
CHAPTER 2
“Dude grew fucking honeydews in Qua-tar.”
That’s what Paul’s friend and mentor Terry Jakes used to say about Darryl Cleveland. Spoken in Terry’s unplaceable twang, it was the first thing to pop into Paul’s head when Lacey identified the body. Then he pictured Darryl in elementary school, a quiet blond kid always attached to his beat-up ten-speed. After high school, Darryl went straight into the Marines. “The few, the proud, the available,” Lacey said at the time, though Darryl, a former mathlete and an instinctive gearhead, was in fact a pretty smart guy.
In the Marines, Darryl had worked on irrigation systems somewhere in the Middle East—maybe not really Qatar, but definitely not Iraq or anywhere too dangerous. He came back to take care of a family property up in Tulac. Now Darryl lived with his stepmom and worked for growers, including the Hansens, as a kind of overqualified freelance water consultant.
One of the more persistent conundrums surrounding Mercer was that the residents of so rainy a place could be so preoccupied