Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [20]
My nipples went hard. They damn near pulled me through the windshield. Lately, my body was not my own, but this was ridiculous.
“Odd, you’re giving me the willies. How the hell do you know that?”
We sat there looking at each other with blank eyes, two scared cops, and neither one of us scared easily.
“Ever since we came on this island,” he said, “I’ve been feeling…unsettled, and then seeing that picture of those two kids, something clicked. Now, looking at that boat….don’t ask me how, but I know this stuff.”
“How can you?”
“I just do.”
“Anything like this ever happen before?”
“Never.”
“Psychics don’t run in your family or anything….?”
“My family? In my family, you have a vision, you get an enema.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You had a vision?”
“No, just a strong sense…a knowledge, of something I know, about this place and these people, but I don’t know why I know it, or even what I know. This is freaking me out, Quinn.”
“Let’s just go sit in the car for a minute, okay? Let’s take a quiet look at all this. No visions, no voices.”
“I’m going crazy, ain’t I?”
“Look, you haven’t slept all night and you don’t sleep well anyway. You’ve got major sleep disorders. You take the bed. Let’s go back, get you to bed, sleep all day. We got nothing to do but wait for Houser to stop puking.”
“But I’m not sleepy, not at all. I feel…urged…pushed on by something. There’s something we gotta do here, Quinn, there’s a reason why we came to this island. And we don’t have much time.”
Time? I looked at my watch. Connors was expecting me home by now.I tried to call him on my cell, but of course there was no reception out there in the deep water hard against Canada.
We found a Jiffy Mart with a public phone. I used my AT&T card to make the call. Through the front window, I could see Odd chatting up the Indian woman behind the counter.
Pharmacy,” answered Esther, all pert and a pain in the ass.
“I need to talk to Connors, Esther.”
“Hi, girlfriend, wuzzup?”
I got your girlfriend, bitch. Put my husband on the phone or I’ll break your jaw. That’s the inner dialog. What I said was, “I can’t talk to you now, Esther, this is kind of an emergency.”
“Oh…”
She quickly buzzed or nodded or gave Connors a look, because in a second he came on with a worried tone. I explained I was still on Geronimo Acres, waiting out a sick prisoner, and would have to spend the night. I didn’t get into what was happening with Odd, figuring it would be something we could talk about tomorrow night over a couple of Rolling Rocks.
“You sound out of breath,” he said.
“I do? No, I’m fine.”
“Do you have a number?” he asked.
“A number?”
“Where you’ll be staying.”
“Oh, where we’ll be staying…I doubt there’s even a phone in that place.”
I didn’t tell him it was the Honeymoon Cottage or about the goofy couple there were encouraging me to hop into bed with Odd.
“Listen, Connors, they only have the one cabin, so we got to share. Odd volunteered for the davvy, gave me the bed, but I might have to insist, ‘cause he hasn’t slept in I don’t know how long…but either way, don’t worry, ‘cause, you know, there won’t be any funny business going on.”
I was coming unglued, but he laughed and said, “I know that.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so happy about it.”
“You think I’m happy? I’d be happy if you did find someone who could light your fire. Lord knows, I can’t.”
“It’s not you, Connors, how many times do I have to explain that? It has nothing to do with you. You’re my man, I love you. But I’ve lost it. No man in the world can bring it back. I’m sorry.”
“This is probably not a good time for this conversation.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“You should have the bed. Odd is young, he’ll be fine on the sofa. You get that numbness in your legs, you don’t sleep right.”
I wanted him to express some…what, jealousy? He didn’t care at all