Downwinders: Blood Oath, Blood River Part 11

"Yeah," Deem said. "She sure was into you."

"And high as a kite," Winn said.

"What?" Deem asked.

"She's got an entire pharmacy in that bathroom," Winn said. "Every anti-depressant you can imagine, and sleeping pills up the wazoo. That's why she doesn't know her husband leaves the house at night. She's medicated to the eyebrows."

"You think she's got no idea her husband is a skinrunner?" Deem asked, backing the truck out of the driveway and back onto Highway 59.

"What do you think?" Winn replied.

"You're right," Deem said. "She hasn't got a clue. But honestly, neither do we. We've got no proof this is the guy. For all we know Sagan picked a house at random. Visiting with her didn't really confirm anything. And most housewives around here are self-medicaters. That's not uncommon."

"Well, I can think of three ways to confirm it," Winn said. "We could try going to the bank in Hurricane and confront the guy like you were trying to do here. We could wait until tonight and stake out the place, see if he comes and goes. We'd have to figure out how to make ourselves less obvious there's little cover around here. Or, we could break into that garage and see whatever it is he doesn't want his wife to see."

"Break into the garage," Deem said.

"Best time to do that would be during the day, while he's at work," Winn said. "Too risky at night. We'll have to make sure Geraldine doesn't see us."

"We'll come back in a couple of hours," Deem said. "I'll hide in the truck and you'll go to her house. Tell her you just got off your shift and you wanted to see her again, that you wanted to see the Christmas villages. She's completely smitten with you, she'll let you in."

"And then what?" Winn said. "Seduce her?"

"Yeah, whatever it is you do," Deem said. "Find a way to medicate her. Slip some of her prescriptions into a drink, something like that. Once she's out, come out and tell me, and we'll search the garage."

"What if her husband comes back from work?"

"It's just after noon. We wait an hour, then you go in. Get her knocked out within an hour. We'd have another hour before it's three. Plenty of time. But we should leave by three, at the latest."

"The idea of staking out the place is starting to sound better," Winn said. "Less risky."

"I want to see what's in that garage," Deem said. "I want to know what we're dealing with, and something tells me that garage would explain a lot."

"Alright," Winn said. "We need to kill an hour before I go in."

"Let's go back to Hurricane. I want to refill my Big Gulp."

"And we'll need to pick up some bolt cutters to get in that garage. He's got it padlocked."

"You could see that from the driveway?" Deem asked. "Man, you must have some kind of super-vision."

"20/15," Winn said. "Plus I thought to check."

Deem had been hunkered down inside her truck for a long time, and she was getting antsy. She checked her watch Winn had been in the house for almost an hour.

It must be working, she thought, or he would have come back to the truck already.

Just as her watch reached the one hour mark, Winn emerged from the front door of the house and gave her a thumbs up sign. She grabbed the bolt cutters, got out of her truck, and ran up to meet him.

"Took long enough," Deem said. "She's out?"

"Out," Winn said.

"You were in there a long time," Deem asked. "Tell me you didn't have s.e.x with her."

"No," Winn said. "But I could have. She was sending all the signs. Drank a s.h.i.tload of root beer."

They walked quickly back to the garage. Traffic on Highway 59 was spa.r.s.e, but they didn't want to be seen.

Deem snipped the lock and Winn removed it from the door. Then he pushed the door open and they stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind them.

The room they were in housed an old, half rebuilt Ford Mustang, sitting on blocks. All of the car's parts were rusted and unpainted, and several panels were on a bench at the far end of the room. To their left, behind the car, was a set of double doors that looked as though they hadn't been used in a long time.

"Over here," Winn said. At the back of the garage was another door. He tried the handle.

"Locked," Winn said.

"Kick it in," Deem said.

"Really?"

"If you don't, I will. We've already cut off his lock. Come on."

Winn reared back and landed his foot near the door's handle. It burst open, slamming back on its hinges.

Deem walked through the door and searched for a light switch. Once she found it, long fluorescent lights overhead came on and dimly lit the room. It was as wide as the garage, but half the size of the room with the car. There were metal shelves along one wall filled with white banker boxes that all looked the same except for a small number label attached to the side of each box. Stacked in a corner were three large blue Coleman coolers. An old refrigerator stood in the opposite corner. A thin work table lined the remaining wall.

Deem wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn't this. There were no strange symbols drawn on the walls or projects half-finished on the work table. In fact, there was nothing on the table. The room looked like any organized garage, except for the oddity of the numbered boxes. The floor was clean. Nothing was out of place.

"Is it just me," Winn said, "or is this place creepier than I imagined because it's so clean?"

"Come on," Deem said. She walked to the banker boxes, pulled one from the shelf, and placed it on the table. She lifted the lid.

Inside was a mat of twigs and sagebrush, lining the cardboard. The bottom of the box had a thin layer of red dirt.

"Alright," Deem said. "Now it's starting to get strange."

Deem reached into the box and pulled out the sagebrush and twigs; they came out as a matted clump.

"Is that hair?" Winn asked, examining what Deem held. Deem looked more closely at the handful of dried weeds. There were, indeed, strands of red hair running around and through the twigs and delicate branches of the sagebrush. She looked back in the box and saw something green it looked plastic. She removed another handful of twigs and dried sage, and found the handle of a brush. She pulled out of the box and showed it to Winn.

"A hairbrush?" Winn asked. There were several strands of red hair flowing from the brush. "Obviously used."

"There's nothing else in here," Deem said, poking through the box. "There's some dirt, and...wait," she said, shaking the box to shift the dirt.

She froze. "I don't really want to touch this," she said, stepping back from the box to allow Winn to look inside.

Winn stepped up to the box and looked in. Resting on the dirt was a piece of jaw, with three teeth attached.

"Looks animal," Winn said. "Put everything back in the box, like you found it."

Deem replaced the hairbrush and then covered it with the twigs and weeds. Then she put the cardboard cover back on the box. She slid the box back onto the metal shelf.

"If that was number five," Deem said, reviewing the small numbers on the boxes, "I wonder what might be in the last one, number nineteen here." She pulled that box from the shelf and placed it on the table, then carefully removed the lid.

A similar ma.s.s of sagebrush and twigs matted the top of the box. She pulled the weeds out and placed them on the table. Then she looked at what was under them.

"That's my bracelet!" she said, looking down. "I can't believe it!"

Winn reached into the box and pulled out a small charm bracelet.

"I recognize the charms," Deem said. "One of them is inscribed 'Happy Birthday Kiddo.' My dad gave it to me."

Winn examined the bracelet and found the charm she described.

"Where did you keep this?" Winn asked.

"In the jewelry box on my dresser," Deem said, "in my bedroom."

Deem looked at the intertwined twigs and sagebrush she'd removed. It contained strands of hair, similar to the hair she'd removed before. But these were colored brown.

"Is that my hair?" Deem said. "The f.u.c.ker stole my hair!"

"You didn't notice any missing?" Winn asked.

"No," Deem said. "I didn't. He must have been in my room that first night, before I woke up and saw him."

Deem walked over to the metal shelves and pulled out box number eighteen. It was filled with similar twigs and weeds. "This looks like Virginia's hair," Deem said, inspecting the contents. Under the twigs was a white handkerchief.

"She gave me that on the bus," Winn said.

"I think we have our proof," Deem said, grabbing the handkerchief.

"Here," Winn said, handing her the bracelet. "If your dad gave this to you, I imagine it's pretty important."

"You have no idea," Deem said. She took it from him and looked at it. "My eleventh birthday. He started tutoring me a few months after he gave me this."

Winn walked to the refrigerator. He reached for the handle and pulled. Inside were two plastic tubs. He removed one of them and sat it on the floor. Deem joined him.

"Wait," Deem said, noticing another small label. She bent over and read it. "You may not want to open that," she said.

"Why?" Winn asked. "What's it say?"

"Limbs," Deem replied.

Winn looked at Deem, then he lifted the lid from the tub. They were knocked back by the smell.

"Oh my G.o.d," Deem said, turning away. "Those are children's."

"The bone supply for the corpse poison, I imagine," Winn said. He placed the cover back on the tub and returned it to the fridge.

"Wipe your fingerprints," Deem said, handing Winn Virginia's handkerchief. "When we turn this motherf.u.c.ker in, we don't want trouble."

Winn took the handkerchief and began wiping down the areas he touched.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yes," Deem said. "I'm taking these two boxes." She placed the lids back on the boxes and stacked them. "Would you wipe the light switch?" she asked.

Winn continued wiping as they left, getting the door handle. Then they left the garage and walked to the truck.

"I'm going to go back into the house and wipe a few things," Winn said.

Deem placed the boxes in her truck and waited for Winn, who emerged from the house after a few minutes. She backed out of the driveway and headed back to Hurricane.

"We could call the cops," Deem said.

"I might be wrong," Winn said, "but I think he can still get to you from jail. Awan would know."

"What about her?" Deem asked. "Geraldine?"

"She'll wake up in a few hours and be embarra.s.sed that she pa.s.sed out while I was there. She might hunt around to see if I stole anything. I gave her a fake name, and so did you. I doubt she'll say anything to her husband, and I doubt her husband is going to say anything about the break in."

"I have a confession," Deem said. "I slipped up and called you Winn in front of her when we were here, earlier."

"She might think it was a nickname," Winn said.

"Either way," Deem said, "there'll be little question as to who it was. He'll know it was me, taking those two boxes."

"He's gonna be p.i.s.sed," Winn said. "Maybe we should have gone about this a little differently."

"f.u.c.k him," Deem said, still smarting over the violation of seeing her father's gift lying in the skinrunner's box. "Maybe without these objects, he'll have a little less power over us."

"I think we should talk to Awan again," Winn said. "Tell him what we found. Maybe he'd have some ideas."

Deem thought about this for a moment. Although she was p.i.s.sed, the gravity of the situation was beginning to sink in. She had no idea how the skinrunner might really respond when he discovered that they'd broken into his garage and disturbed his work.

"Call Awan," Deem said.

"And I guess I'll have to tell Sagan about the corpses at Devil's Throat," Winn said. "I'll go see him later."

"Be sure to tell him that Carl Sagan was a renowned astrophysicist," Deem said.

"He won't know what astrophysicist means," Winn scoffed.

Deem pressed the accelerator and began the descent into Hurricane.