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Hank gave a soft laugh. “Like hell I am. It actually felt really good.” He bobbed his head in a goodbye to Kerra, then left them.
The bell above the door jingled as he went through. The two old men had moved from auto makers to football teams but were still arguing. Seated on a stool behind the cash register, the waitress was flipping through a tabloid magazine.
Trapper picked up a french fry and studied it as he twirled it between his thumb and index finger, then dropped it back onto his plate.
“No longer starving?” Kerra asked.
“No.” He noticed that her food had also gone untouched. “What’s spoiled your appetite? Sitting next to me?”
“Trapper—”
Before she could say anything more, he got out of the booth, pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, and placed it on the table. “That should cover it.” He set a key fob on top of the bill. “Keys to the maroon car. Your bag is already in it. I doubt you know how to hot-wire, so I’ll use your car. I’ll get it fixed for you. In a day or two, we’ll figure out where and when to make the switch. Phone.”
From a coat pocket, he produced a cell phone and battery. While he was inserting it, he said, “This is the number yours has been forwarded to. You can undo it when you reunite with your phone. Be careful driving back.”
“Wait a sec. You’re just leaving? Like this?”
He paused to take her in. Eyes, beauty mark, mouth. She was everything desirable, and he wanted her.
But he made trouble. He wreaked havoc and made people miserable.
Like Marianne.
Like Glenn.
Like his father.
He was poison.
“I didn’t want this to be my life, you know,” he said. “It just is.”
As Trapper drove through the gate, the wind whipped up a dust devil between him and the horizon. He braked and watched as it cut a swath across the ground. For a minute or more, it spun with furious energy, kicking up everything in its path.
Then
, as though exhausted by its own futility, it disintegrated.
Except for the damage left in its wake, no one would have known it had been there, raging but aimless.
Trapper continued up the drive toward the house. One end of a strip of crime scene tape had come loose. The yellow ribbon snapped in the wind, whisking the windshield as he brought Kerra’s car to a stop just short of the porch.
He left the engine running when he got out. The front door was locked, but he knew where The Major had always kept the spare key, and it was there, resting on the third support to the left under the eaves.
The crime scene techs had been thorough. There were markings on the floor where measurements had been taken. Tiny plastic tents in varying colors showed where pieces of evidence had been collected. Black dust coated articles from which fingerprints had been lifted.
He avoided touching anything as he made his way first into the kitchen. He gave it a cursory glance, seeing nothing in it to indicate that it had been an area of interest to the investigators.
Leaving it, he crossed the main room and entered the hallway. The door to the powder room was missing, taken as evidence, battered latch and all. The window through which Kerra had escaped was intact, the upper and lower sections locked together. He marveled that she could have squeezed through a space so small, but then panic and adrenaline enabled people to accomplish amazing feats.
He continued down the hall. He’d never lived in this house, but when The Major and his mother had moved to Lodal from Dallas, she’d designated a guest bedroom as Trapper’s room, making it homey and personal to encourage frequent visits. The wall opposite the bed served as a photo gallery, with all the pictures framed identically and attractively arranged.
Trapper stood before it now and studied the collection that more or less chronicled his life. He could have marked the year of the Pegasus Hotel bombing just by looking at the photographs.
In the pictures taken before it, his dad was beside him, hand on his shoulder, grinning proudly into the camera as they held between them a fishing pole sporting a catch, an athletic trophy won at summer camp, a Boy Scout sash with badges attached. Snapshots captured other such milestone markers up to age eleven.
In the pictures taken after that, Trapper was alone.
The bedroom had been left undisturbed by the investigators. Trapper touched nothing in it now. Although the room had been prepared for him, he was never homesick for it. The things in it belonged to him, but he felt no emotional connection to anything, no compulsion to claim ownership. They were stage props.
