Chapter 15
“All I’m saying is that your shit is not that impressive,” Julian said as Santiago stepped into his boxers. “If I dropped my drawers for Lauren, she would have said the exact same thing.”
“If she ever sees your dick, St. James, I promise it’ll be the last time she does,” Santiago threatened.
“Because I will shoot it off then put in an evidence bag and use it as a tourist attraction. People would want to see the excised appendage of a famous author who writes grisly tales. Hell, half the residents of Shrouded Lake don’t like you and the other half already think you killed Ms. Willoby.
They would pay good money to verify you’d been castrated. ”
“Just for the record, the only people I kill are on the page, but these inbred—”
A terrifying scream from the other side of the lake ended all discussion.
Santiago sprinted toward Lauren’s house with Julian in lock step beside him.
When they reached her house, Santiago launched himself up the stairs and pushed open the door. Instinctively he went to the stairs, bracing as Lauren launched herself into his arms from halfway up the stairwell. She was wild-eyed and fighting to escape his hold, fighting to get out of the house.
“Holy shit,” Julian whispered, looking up the stairs.
His words dissolved Lauren’s fight, and she tightened her arms around Santiago’s shoulders and buried her face in the crook of his neck, wrapping her legs around his hips.
Pushing her hair out of his face, he walked two steps up the stairwell and saw the head of a decapitated deer placed on top of the upstairs newel cap. Blood had seeped down the polished pine and now coagulated on the floorboards.
“You got your phone?” Santi called to Julian.
His neighbor nodded.
“Call dispatch, have them send Roan and Jessie to help secure the scene.”
He walked to the back porch and sat Lauren in the rocking chair. Going back into the house, he ensured no one was inside. He stopped in front of Julian who was still gazing up at the deer head.
“I’m going to take Lauren back to my place and get dressed. If I’m not back before my deputies get here, don’t go off and investigate anything in here alone.”
Julian snorted. “I don’t know how many other Black, non-military, non-law enforcement men you’re friends with, but as a rule we don’t really investigate shit in a haunted house where a woman recently died, and the newly decapitated head of a deer is bleeding out at the top of a stairwell.
Investigate alone… Man, get the hell out of here.
I’ll be on the front porch waiting for your backup. ”
Outside Santiago helped Lauren up and wrapped his arm around her as they walked back to his place. Maybe due to shock, or maybe it was just the quiet before the storm, she was silent the entire trek.
“You haven’t been quiet this long in all the days I’ve known you. I know it’s a peculiar thing to say, but I’m kinda missing your voice. You want to go in or do you want to hang out here on the porch?”
“You’re wrong you know. When I read, I’m quiet for hours and hours if it’s a good book.”
“And what do you consider a good book?”
She sat down on his bench and looked back toward her home.
“Who would do something like that? Like really,” she said turning back to him, her gaze penetrating and pragmatic, searching for answers he didn’t yet have.
“Who here has that level of depravity to mutilate a deer and leave it in my home? Because there is nothing I’ve done that justifies this,” she said.
“Absolutely nothing that justifies this kind of violence toward me.”
Her mouth turned up in a partial smile and she shook her head.
Her sadness rolled over him with the force of ocean waves, and for the first time in his life, he felt like he was drowning.
He reached for her, but she pulled away.
“I am...so tired. Just…give me a minute, Santi. Give me a minute to pull it together and make sense of this, then I’ll get back up and continue the good fight knowing no one’s going to fight for me as hard as I’ll fight for myself.
I get that… Learned it a long time ago. What I don’t understand, what I will never understand, is the cruelty, the willingness people have in wanting to hurt me. ”
She stood up and headed to the door.
“I’m going to go lie down. And when I get up, I’ll be ready to take on whoever the fuck did that to my home.” She smiled at him again. “When that happens, be prepared, because there will be so many words you won’t ever remember the sound of my silence.”
She disappeared inside his house, and he sat on the porch steps looking out over the tranquil waters trying to understand the depths of grief he hadn’t sensed before. Grief that had very little to do with the dead animal on her second story newel cap.
Hearing sirens, Santiago stood and entered his house. Showering downstairs, he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked upstairs, quietly entering his bedroom to get dressed.
Lauren was on her side of the bed, a lumpy mound completely buried beneath the covers. No part of her was visible.
Quietly he donned his protective skin—uniform, badge, gun belt, radio, hat, and sunglasses—and paused to look at Lauren curled up on his bed as if it was the safety of a womb.
A feeling that had nothing to do with responsibility or duty, a feeling that must have taken root the moment she turned her wrath on him on Old Lotty Road, germinating with each chaotic encounter, unfurled within every part of him: want, need, protect.
The feelings were clear, but too unexpected, too fragile to expose beyond more than recognition, because to put them into words now would mean to destroy them before they had a chance to grow strong enough to sustain themselves.
“I’m sorry this happened Lauren. I promise I’ll discover who did this and they will be punished accordingly.”
“Wake up Santiago!” she said, flinging the covers to the side. “You’re not saving anyone or anything, because with all its beauty, this place has an ugly side that is centuries old. If its dying, maybe you should just let it die.”
The weight of her grief…
She submerged beneath the covers again.
“This place is my heritage,” he said softly.
“Some say it’s my destiny. I’m choosing to let its power help me fight the ugliness.
It’s what we do, you and me. We fight. Me with my unyielding spirit and you with your mouth, your wit, your ability to speak to the heart of things.
” He stretched his neck to the left and right.
“Even when it’s uncomfortable to hear. Right?
I’m gonna fight against you at times, but more importantly, I’m going to fight with you.
So, like you said, take a minute, rest. Then if it’s in you to get ready for the council meeting, I’ll be back to pick you up and take you. ”
He started to walk out and paused. “Maybe that deer…maybe that was somebody’s attempt to keep you away from the meeting. Maybe somebody—or several somebodies—are afraid of what you have to say. Make use of my home in any way you need. I’ll return soon.”
He left her alone in his home and locked all the windows and doors behind him, verifying that all the cameras in the living spaces and entrances were on and functioning.
As he approached Lauren’s house, Roan was making her way toward him.
“I found the area in the woods where the deer was decapitated about a half mile off Old Lotty Road. Wondered if it was the same animal Veronica Archer alleges to have hit,” she said, shrugging.
“There were at least two different sets of footprints near the carcass, but the imprints are too eroded by this morning’s early rain to do anything with.
The deer’s blood can be tracked from the carcass to the house. ”
“No muddy footprints inside from what I saw,” he recalled.
“None. And the alarm was down. Someone had too much skill and determination to consider this a prank.”
“Dust for prints just in case and have Derry check with the alarm folks about getting the footage in and around the house up until the time the system went down. And have him find out how it went down.”
He looked back to his place.
“Good thing she wasn’t here last night, who knows how things would’ve turned out if she was,” Roan said.
“We’d probably have another death on our hands. And it likely wouldn’t have been hers.”
“Sheriff Stillwater?” Audrey’s voice sounded over the radio.
“Yeah Audrey.”
“We got a call from Steve Landry. He called to file a missing person’s report, says Bailey Joe Williams hasn’t been seen in days. He also says he hasn’t seen or heard a peep out of Dottie. He suspects foul play; his words not mine.”
Landry was a retired postman who had to be close to seventy years old.
Over three years ago he’d designated himself the neighborhood watch person, which would’ve been fine if the man didn’t consume true crime docudramas all hours of the day and night.
Now he saw most normal actions as nefarious.
Which exacerbated the feud between him, Bailey Joe, and the Mong family.
“Roan and Derry are tied up over here, so I’ll go and check in with Landry on my way to the office.”
“Thanks Sheriff, I’ll let him know.”
“We’re all being spread real thin around here, League,” Roan said.
She was right. It was like that the day Lauren showed up, which began a chain reaction of events they didn’t have the capacity to manage without strain.
“Sonny should be here by tomorrow night,” Santiago stated. “I’ll make sure Audrey has all his paperwork prepped. He’ll go through a brief orientation and begin a ride along that same day. I just hope this turns out to be the help you hope it will be.”
“It’s the help that is needed; more importantly it’s the help that he needs. I’ll follow up on a few more things here then meet you at Bailey Joe’s. Hopefully it’s just another volley in their eternal feud.”
“Hopefully,” Santiago said, turning to walk back to his cruiser.