God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (4 page)

But let’s say the guy isn’t as fucked as his friends think he is. Just unconscious, as opposed to dead or dying. A few minutes goes by and he gets up. He walks straight to the gas station, presumably to rob it, as they confirmed one thing: his pockets had been empty. No money, no dope, no weapon, still a little out of it from whatever his friends thought he OD’d on, loses his shit, goes after AJ and the girl.

Fine. Sure. A junky almost OD’s, doesn’t, then decides to hold a place up for some more dope money. There were stranger things in this city, in every city. John had dealt with them himself, this was no big deal. Open and shut, right?

“Right,” Lubbock whispered. Lately things
hadn’t
been so open and shut. He sighed again and pushed those thoughts, those bad thoughts, those Todd Bowden thoughts, out of his brain and ejected the tape. He re-bagged it, put it in the evidence box, and stood, cracking his back, ready to walk the box back down to the boys in The Tombs so they could witness his return. He could sign for the contents when they checked it and they would both sign when they re-sealed the box. Then it’d go back on the shelf, maybe forever.

Open and shut, John told himself. That’s how the chief liked things, how the commissioner liked things, how the mayor and the
fucking governor
liked things. John thought of his old colleague Jin Makoto, who’d believed in working a fucking case, going where the evidence told him to go. Jin had been
Police,
through and fucking through.

Look at what that got him, though
, John told himself. Forced retirement, a stack of gag orders and confidentiality agreements a foot high, a name that, while once synonymous with the kind of detective work any real cop dreams of doing, was now nothing more than a hushed whisper, like a curse. He was a fucking cautionary tale and John’s face burned a little with shame at the thought of standing by, helpless but to watch all that had befallen his old friend.

As a cautionary tale, though, the fall of Jin Makoto was nothing if not an effective one, so John swallowed his anger and his doubts and the feeling in his guts that he’d had in the months leading up to Jin’s expulsion.

So,
John thought.
Open and shut.

CHAPTER FOUR

When AJ opened his eyes, he could tell by the light it was well past noon. He lay in bed awhile. His mind went back and forth between two things: the color of Clover’s eyes and the sound the bat had made connecting with skull. Both thoughts followed him out of bed, throughout his shower, and pounded in his head while he sat on the couch. His apartment was small but now seemed stuffy, claustrophobic.

There was a window leading to the fire escape between his bedroom wall and the kitchen. The window was fucked and wouldn’t stay up by itself, so when he wanted it open to get some air he had to prop it up. He had a small table to the left of the window that currently held only a hammer. He grabbed the hammer off the table and opened the window, wedging the hammer in to keep it open. A nice breeze came in but it didn’t help as much as he had hoped it would.

He tried to read and was unable to enjoy it, finding himself going over the same paragraph again and again because he wasn’t retaining or enjoying the prose. He tried to eat and couldn’t, tried to watch TV and found himself restless, wanting to move.

Finally, he dug the scrap of paper out of his wallet and dialed the number.

Three rings, and he was trying to think of what he would say to her answering machine, when she picked up the phone. The sound of her voice pushed everything else out of his head and he felt himself relaxing for the first time since rolling out of bed.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” AJ said.

“Hey yourself.”

“It’s AJ.”

“I know. How are you doing?”

“I’m okay, you? How’s your mouth? Your lip, I mean. Where you got hit?”

“Oh, it’s not bad. My roommate had some Vicodin, so I took a couple of those. How are you holding up?” Clover asked.

“I’m just…I dunno. I really wanna get out of the house. Wanna meet for coffee, or something?”

“I do, that’d be nice. Where do you wanna go?”

“I could do with some breakfast, actually,” AJ said, realizing as he said it that his appetite was coming back.

“It’s almost two, man,” Clover said with a laugh.

“Oh come on, you telling me you couldn’t go for some waffles right now?”

“Actually, yeah, that sounds kinda great. There’s this great little spot near me, they do breakfast all day, and it isn’t an IHOP or anything.”

“Let’s do it, my treat.”

* * * * *

After giving the name of the little cafe to AJ and agreeing to meet him there an hour later, Clover swiped her phone closed and smiled. She took a long moment, closing her eyes and marking it in her memory. Right then, she was happy. While she knew very well she had a life that was inconceivably privileged and rich and easy by the standards of most of the world, it had been a far from perfect life. Growing up in the shadow of her parents’ religion—their
mania
--had been a long and arduous task. She recalled one afternoon in particular, during her freshman year in high school, when her mother had beaten her for catching her wearing a different change of clothes than what she’d left the house in that morning.

The clothes her parents made her wear were all dull browns or boring dark blues, no hemline that stopped anywhere north of her knee, no sleeve that was not full-length. Though Clover had been there to try on nearly all the clothes her mother had purchased for her, and knew they were brand new, they still looked grotesquely old-fashioned and conservative, which, Clover supposed, was probably the point.

Her parents would not allow her to do anything with her hair besides pull it back into a ponytail. She was not allowed to use product in it or even a curling iron. Forget makeup, too.

Clover had experienced many a tearful morning before school, staring at herself in the mirror and thinking she looked like a casting call reject from
Little House on the Prairie
or something.

Angie had been her savior. They’d lived down the street from one another as kids and they were still roommates now. As early as third grade, when what you wore to school became suddenly and inexplicably important to the other kids, almost overnight, it had seemed, Angie had begun sneaking clothes to school for Clover in her backpack.

Freshman year it went like this: Clover would walk down to Angie’s house in the morning, where she would change into the clothes they had picked out the night before, and then Angie would help her with her hair and makeup—nothing much, usually just lip gloss and a little eye shadow or something. After that, they rode to school with Angie’s older brother, Mark, who was a senior and on whom Clover had once had the world’s biggest crush.

Her freshman year had been perfect for this, as she’d had gym last period, so she was always able to hop in the shower and wash off her makeup and undo whatever Angie had done to her hair that day, change back into the clothes her mother had laid out for her that morning, and her folks were none the wiser.

This system worked like a charm until the first really perfect day of spring that final quarter of her ninth grade year. Mid-May, this had been, the gloom and rain of April having stuck around a little longer than anyone would have liked. The sun had been bright and strong in the cloudless sky that day and you could tell it was going to be perfect.

And it would have been, if she’d been able to wear something not full-length or made of corduroy and wool. Clover had gotten uncomfortably warm on even the short morning walk to Angie’s house.

At school that day she’d changed into a cotton, v-neck t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Not even
booty shorts
, not short-shorts, and certainly not, as her parents had called them, hooker-shorts. They were even an inch past her fingertips when she stood with her arms to her side, as was required by the school dress code. She’d traded the thick, shin-high tube socks and penny loafers her parents made her wear for a pair of Angie’s flip flops.

The problem was, she’d forgotten her geometry book and hadn’t
realized
she had forgotten it.

Mom, though, Clover now thought. Mom found it, going through my room.

About halfway through second period she was called to the office over the intercom. Clover had gotten a hall pass from her teacher and bopped happily down the hall, no inkling of how wrong things were about to go.

She turned a corner and saw her mother standing there, textbook clutched to her chest. She looked at Clover and her face twisted into that little moue of distaste she seemed to use so much.

She doesn’t know it’s me,
Clover had thought
. I still have time to—

That was when her mother finally
did
recognize her. And oh, what a shock it must have been for her, to realize the tramp in hooker-shorts oozing down the hall toward her was her own daughter. The little moue of distaste was gone and it was replaced by something like fury.

Her mother had drug her out of school that afternoon
by the ear
as many of the upperclassmen and some kids from her own grade watched and laughed.

In the car, the screaming had started.

Then they got home and the screaming continued, her mother only taking a break to call her father at work and tell him what she’d found. Then the screaming resumed and, just before her father got home, her mother had slapped her across the face.

It wasn’t the first time her mother had hit her but it had been a
long
time since she’d done so, the last incident having been in sixth grade when Clover had made the mistake of saying church was stupid.

It turned out that time in freshman year had been the last time her mother had lain hands on her—her father too, for that matter, but it had been the worst. The sound of the slap echoed off the walls of their living room and her cheek had felt touched afire, tears springing immediately into her eyes.

“You
can’t
hit me!” Clover remembered screaming and remembered that her mother had seemed to take it as a challenge. She’d wound up and backhanded her, this time across the other side of the face.

“
I hate you
!”

“That’s fine, sweetie,” Mom had said. “As long you know I’m doing this because I love you.”

Her mother had slapped her then, twice more in fast succession, like an open-handed, one-two combo, the old left-right, and Clover hadn’t heard her father walk in, or come into the living room, hadn’t known he was standing behind her, already taking off his belt.

“FUCK YOU!” Clover screamed, her nose bleeding now.

She felt an explosion of pain then as her father strapped her across the back with his belt, the sound of it like a gunshot. She had staggered forward under the force of the whipping and her mother greeted her by punching her--
fucking
punching her--
in the stomach. She had dropped to the ground then on her hands and knees.

“Get used to that position, dressing like that,” her father had said before bringing the belt down again, even harder this time, right across the small of her back, then once more across the shoulders. She’d been out of breath from the blow to stomach and couldn’t breathe, and all she wanted to do was scream. It felt like she was going to explode somewhere in the middle; between trying to suck air in and trying to scream at the same time, something in her was just going to give.

Her mother had stomped on one of her hands then, and when Clover heard one of the bones in her hand break she thought, just for a moment, that they were going to beat her to death. She rolled over on her back and held her arms up in front of her face, blood streaming from her nose, face covered in blood and tears, her hand starting to swell like a cartoon hand, that fast.

Clover shook the memory from her head, that and all the others, of the church deacon they had taken her to--a man that had been an Army doctor during the war in Korea--to look at her hand because they knew he wouldn’t report them to child services. She tried to forget the memory of the look in their eyes on that long, silent drive home, when she realized they knew they had gone too far, of the tearful reconciliation effort on her mother’s part that had seemed genuine at first until she had insisted they get on their knees and pray at the end of it, of the ever-widening gap growing between them that had still not closed.

Clover wiped a tear from her eye and took a deep breath, and went to get ready for her breakfast date.

* * * * *

AJ walked the few blocks from the light rail station to the restaurant she had told him about, the exercise feeling good, like he was being cleaned out after the amount of time he’d spent in the last few days sitting in bad chairs and smoking in tiny rooms.

He stopped before going in as he spotted Clover, sitting at a small table near the big picture window in the front of the diner. She was reading a book and sipping a cup of coffee and, as he watched, she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her right ear, her hair like white fire in the beam of sunshine in which she sat, unassuming, unknowing that at that second, right then, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. AJ shook his head a little, forcing himself out of his reveries, and walked into the diner, the little bell above the door dinging.

She looked up from her book when the bell dinged and, when she saw him, smiled, and he felt that smile bloom like a rose of happiness inside his chest, his heart, his soul. Is there anything better for a young man in his early twenties than for a pretty girl to smile and be happy when she saw you? AJ wasn’t sure what it was or how people would be able to stand it if there was.

She closed her book and stood to greet him when he approached the table. He was spared the awkward moment of not knowing how to greet her—handshake? kiss on the cheek?—when she leaned in and hugged him.

“How are you?” she asked, pulling back from the hug and motioning to his chair.

“I’m good. Tired, more than anything. I didn’t sleep much.”

“Ugh, I know,” Clover said, the two of them sitting down across from one another. “It was brutal. I’m
so
glad you suggested breakfast, though, I’ve been going a little stir crazy, sitting at home.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s been a weird day so far, you know what I mean?”

Clover laughed. “Uh, yeah man. Since midnight I’ve been to the store for cigarettes, got assaulted, spent four hours in a police station, had a fight with parents, and had to explain everything to my ADHD roommate.”

AJ felt her foot against the side of his for just a moment.

“I also met a guy,” she said, looking him in the eyes from over her cup of coffee.

“Oh yeah? What’s
he
like?”

“Wellll, he’s a cop,” Clover said, the two of them laughing.

“Zzzzing!” AJ said.

She smiled at that too but then the smile left her face, except her eyes, and she looked into his. “No, really, though, he seems nice. He’s brave, and funny, has the same weird sense of humor as I do.”

Her foot against his again, under the table.

“I told you I’m married, right?” AJ asked as she took another sip of coffee. She laughed and almost spit her coffee back in the cup, kicking him in the shin under the table as she coughed and got herself under control.