Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [50]
Which was one of the questions, one of the several questions I hollered at Robert, while we checked Houser’s cleaned-up wound, which was ugly as rot but no more than superficial. Why in the hell did you take off the cuffs? I hollered at him. How in the hell did you take off the cuffs? They had keys too, you know, he told me, quite defensively, and one of them fit our cuffs, so why shouldn’t the poor guy be a little comfortable in the lock-up? He never did anything to Robert, after all.
Now our perv had both wrists bandaged up and I was fretting over a fresh round of fevers and puking.
“You will not get sick all over again,” I said. “There is no place for you to get sick, and no one to take care of you if you do…so don’t.”
He looked up at me with a hang-dog face.
We pulled him up on the porch and opened the door. Stacey and her mother were asleep in the bed. Gwen’s head lifted to watch us come inside, but the kid never did stir. Gone to dreamland.
The door locked from inside.
We made a pallet on the kitchen floor for Houser and lay him down. I cuffed his one hand to an exposed pipe and the other to some cabinetry. It was not the most comfortable position in which to try to get a night’s sleep, but we were not going to take any chances on him cannibalizing himself again. If he were up to it and had the necessary dexterity, let him chew on an ankle. Da frick.
We turned out the lights and Odd and I undressed in the dark, down to our skivvies. I lay down on the davvy and pulled the bedspread over me. Odd pulled a blanket over himself on the rocking chair.
“I’m dead,” I whispered.
“It’s been a long day,” said Odd.
“You know what we kinda lost sight of, in all the shit that’s happened?”
“Ron,” he said.
“Yeah, Ron. Who is he? Where is he? Is he on the island, even? How do we find him?”
“Maybe he’ll find us, if he’s still alive and on the island. We’ve made ourselves known.”
“Odd…how long can this go on? We’ve had our overnighter, I’ve gone along with that, and, yeah, I’m convinced. You’ve been recycled, and for maybe the best of all reasons. But at some point soon we’ve got to deliver our prisoner…or call someone else to come get him and quit our jobs and just live here.”
“You don’t have to be involved. I told you.”
“I’ve been wondering about that.”
“It’s not your thing, Quinn. You don’t have to go through this with me.”
I didn’t, of course. I was fully capable of throwing the perv in the backseat and driving alone to Spokane. I knew I wouldn’t.
“You and me don’t have that much in common, Odd. After we’re both cops, there’s not much to say.”
Which he didn’t.
“So why is it,” I asked, “we’re here together? Why is it we always wind up buddying up?”
“Not always.”
“Think about it.”
“It’s a small department.”
“Who’s your best friend, then, in the department?”
“In the department? I guess you are.”
“Now, isn’t that strange, because I would say the same thing, if somebody asked me.”
“What’s so strange about it?”
“You’re a young guy, I’m a woman almost twenty years older. I’m half a couple, you’re a loner. I’ve never been to your place, you’ve never been to mine. You don’t talk, I can’t stop. You’re a Protestant, I’m a Catholic.”
“I don’t see how that makes much difference.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t think we ever realized what friends we were ‘til we came to this island. I’m wondering…if you had a life before, maybe I did too, and maybe we were buddies back then, all the way down the line. Now, this ain’t coming from the head, it’s coming from the gut, and lately I don’t trust my visceral turmoils…”
“Your what?”
“I haven’t trusted my gut for some time, but I’m lying here thinking, whatever you do, I gotta stay and do it with you. That’s what I did before, and that’s what I gotta do again…and again…and again. Whatever happens to you has to happen to me. That’s why I have to stay, even though I don’t want to. This thing…we do it together, we always have.”
“What thing?” he asked.
“Die,” I said.