Killer Move - Michael Marshall [50]
Her voice is the soft, one-note drawl of the stoned or exhausted. The movement of her lips is slightly out of sync with the words, and continues for perhaps three seconds after the sound has stopped.
“I don’t remember that,” he says.
“You don’t remember anything you don’t want to.”
“Maybe I did say it.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
She walks toward him, her left leg dragging behind. She walks past on his right-hand side, over the edge, but she does not fall. She is still at the same level when she disappears out of sight.
He sits in the chair, his hands gripping the arms. A quantity of urine he would not have believed he still possessed has leaked out into his pants. He knows that he cannot just have seen her, but . . . is she going to return?
She does not.
But he doesn’t sleep again, either.
Back in the here and now, he gives up on finding a smart reply and instead asks the question in his head.
“What did you do to Hazel?”
Hunter looks a little sour. This doesn’t seem like gamesmanship. He evidently does not want to talk about it. So Hazel is probably dead. Warner can remember what she was like twenty-some years ago, when he first met her. The wife of one of the big wheels of the local set he was sliding his way into. A good-looking older woman. Someone who he more than once thought had been looking at him in a certain way, though probably not—she and her husband had been very tight. That whole group had been, long before he joined, and you don’t mess with that kind of bond for the sake of random couplings.
“I remember Wilkins,” Hunter says. “He seemed like an okay guy. Was he really a part of it?”
“A part of what?”
“You know.”
The man in the chair summons his strength. “I do. But I think that you still don’t get it.”
“You care to enlighten me?”
“Nope.”
“I guessed not. So I’m going to leave you to it for another while. I got work to do now. Cleanup. And that’s your fault. Another dumb game you played, right?”
The man in the chair looks at him.
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “She talked.”
As Hunter levers himself up from the wall and prepares to go, the man in the chair feels panic.
“I have friends, you asshole. Other friends, not the old folks’ club here. Friends without limits. I pay my dues to them. They owe me. They’ll bury you and set fire to your grave.”
“Been there,” Hunter says. “Being buried is no big thing. Pour as much earth as you want over people, they have a way of climbing back out.”
“And so what if they do? You’ll always be trash. And I’ll always be who I am.”
“That’s true, my friend, and it must be a source of great comfort to you right now.”
Hunter walks over and looks down at the man in the chair, and Warner is confused and disconcerted to see something in his eyes that looks like compassion.
“You’re old school. But even people like that learn new tricks once in a while.”
He picks the water bottle off Warner’s lap, twists the cap. He takes a drink from it and the man in the chair thinks yes, of course—that was only ever going to be about another way of taunting me. But Hunter holds the bottle down at about the level of Warner’s mouth.
Fearing—knowing—that this is just going to be a trick, but too desperate to resist, Warner leans his head forward hungrily. Hunter holds the bottle to his lips, gently tilts it. A slow, steady stream of water courses into his mouth. He can feel it as it travels down his esophagus and finally into his stomach. Hunter keeps the bottle in position, gradually changing the angle to keep the water coming, until it is completely empty.
Then he scrunches it up and puts it in his pocket. He heads over to the portion of the ledge where he climbed up the day before.
“You have a good night, David.