The Crush Part 34

"I rode Beade over, carrying the gas can. Then I tied him to the tailgate and drove back slowly."

"It would have been easier if you'd waited on me to go with you."

"I didn't think you wanted anyone to know you were here."

He studied her for a moment. "That's not quite accurate, is it, Rennie?"

She stopped slicing tomatoes and looked across at him.

"You didn't want anyone to know I was here."

She returned to her task. "Do you like tomatoes in your salad?"

"Rennie."

"Some people don't."

"Rennie."

She dropped the knife and confronted him. "What?"

"It was only a kiss," he said softly.

"Let's not make a big deal of it, all right?"

"I'm not, you are. You're the one who went tearing out of the bedroom like it had caught fire."

"So you would stop mauling me."

"Mauling you?" he repeated in a raised voice. "Mauling you?"

"The night we met--no, the night you arranged for us to meet--I told you then, straight out and in language a child could understand that I wasn't interested in ... all that."

Masculine pride kicked in. Wick rounded the work island so it would no longer be between them. "Well that's a switch for you, isn't it? One kiss and I'm mauling you, but back in Dalton you were quite the party girl. What did you call it then?"

She recoiled as though he'd struck her, but that initial reaction lasted only a second before her facial expression turned hard. "You must have had a locker-room chat with your pal Detective Wesley."

"Only after I heard all about you from folks in Dalton.

You're remembered there, Sweetcheeks. Because you used to do a lot more than kiss the locals, didn't you?"

"You're so well informed--why ask me?"

"You did considerably more than kiss."

She backed down and looked away. "I'm not like that now."

"Why not? Seems to me like you were having one h.e.l.l of a good time. Tongues in Dalton are still wagging about your topless cruise through town in your red Mustang convertible.

But I get your nipple ripe and you freak out."

She tried to go around him, but he executed a quick sidestep and blocked her path. 'You had all those h.o.r.n.y cowboys at the rodeo panting after you. And their daddies, and their uncles, and probably even their grandpas."

"Stop it!"

"And you knew it, too, didn't you? You liked keeping 'em steaming in their jeans."

'You don't know--"

"Oh, yeah, I do. Guys know. We have ugly names for girls like you, Rennie. Doesn't stop us from wanting what you advertise, though. How many hearts were broken when you set your sights on Raymond Collier?"

"Don't--"

"Then when that affair went south, you shot and killed him. Is that what turned you off mauling?"

"Yes!"

Her shout was followed by a sudden, reverberating silence.

She turned away from him and leaned forward against the counter. She put her hand to her mouth and kept it there for several moments. Then, very unsurgeon-like, she seemed at a loss what to do with her hands. She

crossed her arms over her midsection and hugged her elbows; she wiped her palms on her thighs; she finally

picked up the baking dish of chicken and placed it in the oven. After setting the timer, she returned to chopping tomatoes.

Wick continued to watch her with the single-mindedness of the buzzards that had circled the carca.s.s of the bobcat.

He refused to drop this subject. He felt ent.i.tled to peel away just one of her multiple layers. He wanted at least a glimpse of who she was and what had made her so compulsively neat, what had made her so disinclined to touch another human being except in the sterile security of an operating room. He wanted to see, if only for an instant, the real Rennie Newton.

"What happened in your father's study that day?"

The knife came down hard and angrily on the chopping block. "Didn't Wesley share the details with you?"

"Yes. And I read the police report."

"Well then."

"It didn't tell me s.h.i.+t. I want to hear what happened from you."

She finished with the tomatoes and rinsed off the knife. As she dried it on a tea towel, she looked at him sardonically.

"Prurient curiosity, Wick?"

"Don't do that," he said, keeping a tight rein on his anger. "You know that's not why I'm asking."

She braced her arms on the countertop and leaned toward him. "Then why are you asking? Explain to me why it's so b.l.o.o.d.y important for you to know about that."

He leaned forward to narrow the s.p.a.ce between them.

"You know why, Rennie," he whispered. There was no way his meaning could have escaped her. But just in case it did, he covered the back of her hand with his palm and encircled her wrist with his fingers.

She lowered her head. It appeared to him that she was

staring at their hands, but all he could see was the crown of her head, the natural part in her hair. Half a minute pa.s.sed before she withdrew her hand from beneath his.

"Nothing good can come of this, Wick."

"This being the weird triangle we have going? You, me, and Lozada?"

"There's no such triangle."

"You know better, Rennie."

"The two of you had a score to settle before you ever heard of me."

"That's true, but you've added another dimension."

"I'm not involved in your feud," she said adamantly.

"Then why did you leave town?"

"I needed some time off."

"You heard Lozada was released from jail."

"Yes, but--"

"And you beat it here within hours of his release. Looks to me like you're hiding from him."

His cell phone rang. He picked it up and read the caller ID, then swore under his breath. "I might as well get this over with." He carried the phone with him through the living room and out onto the front porch. He answered as he sat down in the swing. "Hey."

"Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"No h.e.l.lo?"

"Wick--"

"Okay, okay." He sighed heavily. "I just couldn't take that hospital anymore, Oren. You know I don't handle inactivity well. Another day in that place and I'd've wigged out. So I left. Retrieved my truck from your house and drove most of the night. Reached Galveston this morning around, hmm, five or so, I guess. Been asleep most of the

day and got a whole lot more rest listening to the surf than I would have in the hospital where real rest is impossible."

After a significant pause, Oren said, "Your place in Galveston is locked up tighter than a drum."

Oh, s.h.i.+t. "How do you know?"

"Because I asked the police there to check it."

"What for?"

"I'm waiting for an explanation, Wick."

"Okay, on my way home I took a little detour. What's the big deal?"

"You're with her, aren't you?"

"I'm a big boy, Oren. I don't have to account to you for my--"

"Because she's coincidentally flown the coop too. From the hospital. From her house. Her obliging neighbor told me that he saw a man who looked seriously ill and malnourished knocking on her door in the middle of the night."

"Does that guy keep vigil at his window or what?"

"He's become a valuable informant."

"My, my, Oren. Talking to Galveston police. Talking to nosy neighbors. You've been busy today."

"And so has Lozada."

"Oh yeah? Doing what?"

'Terrorizing my family."

His name was Weenie Sawyer. Only someone of Weenie's diminutive size would have tolerated such a derisive name. Weenie did so only because he had no choice. He

was defenseless. He had acquired the name in second grade when he'd wet himself in the cla.s.sroom. During a geography lesson on Hawaii a seeming river of urine had charted a course down his leg. To the amus.e.m.e.nt of his cla.s.smates, what wasn't absorbed by his sock had formed a puddle beneath his desk. He'd wanted to die on the spot, but he had had the rotten luck of living through it. That afternoon he had been dubbed Weenie by a pack of bullies led by the scourge of the school yard, Ricky Roy Lozada. The nickname had stuck to this day. And so had Lozada's bullying. Weenie audibly groaned when he opened his door and saw Lozada standing on the threshold. "May I come in?" The formality was a mockery. Lozada asked only in order to remind Weenie that he didn't need an invitation. He pushed past Weenie and entered the cramped, poorly ventilated apartment where Weenie sometimes confined himself for days without going out. For self-protection, Weenie existed in a universe of his own making. "This isn't a good time, Lozada. I'm having dinner." On a TV tray next to the La-Z-Boy a bowl of Cap'n Crunch was growing soggy. "I wouldn't interrupt, Weenie. Except that this is very important." "You always say that." "Because my business is always important." Lozada's torture of his unfortunate cla.s.smate hadn't ended that afternoon in second grade, but had continued through their high school graduation. Weenie's size, his perpetual squint, and his meek personality were open invitations to torment and ridicule him. He was almost too easy a target. Consequently Lozada had treated him as a forgettable pet, one he could scold and neglect, or grace and praise, at whim. Every cla.s.s has a computer whiz, and in their cla.s.s it had been Weenie. While computers and microchip technology bored Lozada, he was nevertheless aware of the advancements being made. As the viability of computer usage increased, so had Weenie's value to him. Nowadays Weenie's livelihood was designing Web sites. He liked the work. It was a rewarding creative outlet. He could do it alone, at home, on his own schedule. He billed his clients four times the number of hours it required him to complete a job, but they were so pleased with the result that none ever questioned the amount of the invoice. It was a lucrative business.

But that income was paltry compared to what Lozada paid him.

Weenie's computer setup occupied one whole room of his apartment and rivaled NASA's in sophistication. He put most of his money back into his business, buying state-of the-art equipment, upgrades, and gadgets. He could dissect a computer with the precision of a pathologist, then rea.s.semble it with new and improved specifications. He'd never met one he didn't like. He knew how they worked.