The Dead Woman

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They pulled up to the house just after midnight. Matt had asked Dale to kill the car's headlights, but the officer had refused, insisting that there was nothing to worry about. Matt disagreed, but knew he couldn't win the argument, so he let it go. With any luck the two were in the bedroom, which was at the back of the house. If so, the house was wide enough to block the headlights and they could surprise her.

If not, then Abbey would know they were here.

Luck was not with them that night.

Abbey opened the front door and stood silhouetted by the light of her living room. She raised her left arm to her face, probably trying to block the car's headlights. Maybe they weren't such a bad idea, after all. "Who's there?" she asked.

Dale got out of the car. "Abbey, it's me."

"Dale? What are you doing here?"

"I just want to talk to you, hon," Dale said.

"Damn it, Dale! I thought I told you this was my place. Go home. I'll be there tomorrow."

Matt stepped out of the car. "I don't think that's going to happen, Abbey."

Abbey turned her head towards him. "Matt?"

"Yeah, it's me. And we both know you aren't going home tomorrow."

"I don't know what you are talking about," she said. She turned back to Dale. "You didn't tell me you brought company."

"We just want to talk to you," Dale said.

"Fine. But turn those goddamn headlights off. I can't see a thing."

Dale reached into the car. Matt caught a glimpse of something behind her back. It was long and straight and glinted dully in the light.

"No!" Matt shouted, but it was too late. The headlights snapped off, and Abbey brought the shotgun up faster than he or Dale could follow.

The shot sounded like a cannon.

Dale grunted in pain as his body flew backward in a spray of blood and gore. He landed in a heap a few feet away from the cruiser, blood flowing freely from a large hole in his thigh.

"Fuck!" Matt yelled, and dove behind the car just as another shot peppered the dirt where he'd been standing.

"I told him not to come here," Abbey said. "This is my place. My private place."

Matt poked his head around the back of the car just in time to see Abbey step off the porch. Now that the light wasn't directly behind her, he saw the huge gaping sore on the side of her face. The edges were rotted away, leaving nothing but dead skin and insect larvae. As he watched, the area of rot spread across her whole face, covering her nose and mouth. Even from ten feet away, the stench of decay was almost a physical presence.

But as horrifying as her face had become, it still didn't scare him as much as the shotgun in her hands. And she was coming towards the car.

Fuck.

Matt scrambled around to the driver's side, where Dale lay on his back in a growing pool of blood. The lawman's left thigh was a mess. Blood poured out of it like water from a pitcher. His breath came in rapid gasps that sounded like wet slaps. Dale's eyes stared up at the sky but didn't seem to settle on anything for more than a few seconds. His whole body shook, making him look like he was having a seizure. Matt grabbed Dale's belt and slid it off, then jerked it tight around the injured man's upper thigh and cinched it into a makeshift tourniquet. The blood slowed, but didn't stop. It would have to do until he could get medical attention.

This was his fault. He had insisted Dale come to Abbey's. If he'd just left Crawford like he was supposed to, Dale would be fine and probably filing divorce papers right now. Just another person Matt had managed to hurt with his very presence. Maybe he'd be better off if Abbey took that shotgun to his head.

"You still here, Matt?" Abbey asked from the other side of the car. "Where'd you go? You can't hide from me, you know."

Matt would have to worry about Dale later. Right now he needed something from the fallen cop's waist. He reached down, trying not to look at the ruin of Dale's leg, and unclipped the holster for Dale's service revolver. He wiggled it free and brought it to his face. A .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, minus the safety and, thank God, sporting a full cylinder.

He brought it up just as Abbey rounded the back of the car, leading with her shotgun.

Matt was faster. He fired off two rounds as fast as the revolver would shoot, and one of them hit Abbey in her left arm.

She yelped in pain as the bullet spun her in a circle, sending her shotgun to the dirt. "You cocksucking asshole! I'll kill you for that!"

You were gonna kill me, anyway, Matt thought. He jumped to his feet and ran around the car, hoping to catch her on the ground, but all he saw of her was her backside as she ran back into the house, presumably for another weapon.

Matt sprinted up the yard to the doorway, not wanting to give her time to find another gun. With luck, he could catch her unarmed and force her to surrender, and then he could call the police. He didn't want to kill her any more than he'd wanted to kill Andy, but he couldn't let her hurt any more people, and Annie was probably still in the house. If she was even still alive.

He stepped into the house, looking left and right, but there was no sign of Abbey. A dull green telephone on the end table gave him an idea, and he pulled it off the hook and dialed 9-1-1.

"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?" a voice said.

"Officer Everett has been shot. He needs medical attention. Send a car to—" Shit! Matt didn't know the address.

A muffled cry from somewhere in the house caught his attention. He set the phone's receiver on the table and walked deeper into the house. He might not know the address, but the operator at 911 would. Her voice came through the line asking more questions, sounding tinny and small. When she couldn't get an answer, she'd have to send a car.

Or so he hoped.

Directly in front of him was a large living area, which opened onto a deck on the rear of the place. He knew from his previous visit that the kitchen and dining room stood to his left, while Abbey's bedroom was to his right. He'd spent most of his time here either in the bedroom or in the backyard, and while he hadn't seen any weapons in the bedroom, that didn't mean there weren't any there. Besides, that's probably where Abbey had Annie. He set off down the hallway, keeping his back to the wall and listening for any sound of her presence.

Along the way he noticed more pictures on the wall. Lots more. They had been there the other night, of course, but he hadn't paid any attention to them. Now that he looked, they were all of Abbey and various men. There was one of her and Dale, obviously only a few years old, and one of her and another man that, by their clothes, looked like it was taken in the seventies. Beyond that was another picture of her in front of the old car lot with the man she claimed was her husband, Clark. And beyond that were many more. All of them showed Abbey as one half of a smiling couple through the decades. There was even one done in the very old style, with the man sitting in a chair while Abbey stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder. The clothing looked to be from around the early 1900s.

Jesus. How old was she?

Matt stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking back at the line of pictures. Was that what was in store for him? Would he someday have a hallway full of old photos, too? Not if I let her kill me tonight, he thought, forcing his mind back to the present. The implications of Abbey's pictures would have to wait. First he had to stop her from killing Annie. He walked the rest of the hallway's length. It ended at the bedroom door.

Matt put his hand on the doorknob, then took a deep breath, and turned it. He pushed open the bedroom door a half inch at a time, waiting for the gunshot that would end his life. When it didn't come, he opened the door the whole way.

There was Annie, gagged and tied to the bed but very much alive, despite a few cuts across her chest that oozed blood onto her shredded T-shirt. Matt breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God you're all right."

Annie's eyes grew wide when she saw Matt, and she tried to mumble something under the gag, but Matt couldn't make it out. He crossed the room and leaned over the bed, putting his finger to his lips.

"She's still here somewhere," Matt whispered. "I'm gonna undo your gag, but you have to keep quiet, okay? Nod if you understand me."

She nodded.

"Good," Matt said, and he reached over and pulled the gag down over her chin. "That better?"

"Yeah," she said. "That bitch is fucking crazy. Get me the hell outta here."

"I will. Just give me a second." Matt tried to undo the knots on the ropes. His wrist flared with pain. He gritted his teeth and tried again but soon realized he couldn't maneuver his fingers while holding the gun, so he set it on the nightstand. "You let me know if you see her, okay?"

"You got it, man."

Matt went to work on the knots, but he couldn't loosen them. Abbey had tied them very tight. He could probably get them if he had an hour to spare, but he didn't. "Shit."

"There's a knife in the top drawer of her nightstand," Annie said. "It's the one she used to cut me."

Matt opened the drawer and grabbed the knife. The smell of decay hung in the room like an invisible fog. Abbey must really be rotting, he thought. I can still smell her in here. He knelt beside the bed and sawed through the rope on Annie's right wrist. Then he went to cut the one at her feet. As he moved, he caught another whiff of the decay. It smelled strong. Too strong.

Annie shifted in the bed and Matt caught a glimpse of the girl's skin beneath her torn pants. He stopped sawing through the rope and stared at the greenish, oozing skin hidden under Annie's clothes. No wonder the smell had been so strong.

"I should have known," he said, just before the gun barrel poked him in the side of the head.

"Finish cutting," Annie instructed, punctuating her words by jabbing the barrel into Matt's temple. Matt resumed sawing the knife through the rope, trying to think of a way to dodge a bullet from point-blank range.

"I got him, Abbey!" Annie yelled.

From somewhere deep in the house, Abbey's voice floated into the bedroom. "I'm coming."

"How long?" Matt asked, still sawing through the rope. "How long have you and Abbey been working together?"

"Since the beginning," she said. "Right after she came down from Kentucky."

"Abbey's not even her real name, is it?"

"Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care. That pussy's so good, she could call herself Fred Flintstone if she wanted. You just get back to cuttin' that rope before I spray your brains all over the wall behind you."

Matt cut through the rope on her right leg and moved to the one tied to her left. "Bitch sure can tie a knot," he muttered.

Annie smiled and ran her tongue across her upper lip. "That ain't all she can do."

Too true, Matt thought.

Abbey stepped into the room carrying Matt's ax. Her face was half eaten away with rot, and Matt could see her lower teeth and part of her jawbone though the dead tissue on her cheek. The smell was overpowering, and he swallowed the urge to vomit. He didn't want to look at her. How had she hidden the decay from him while they were... He couldn't even finish the thought.

"I knew you'd come to save her" Abbey said, pointing at Annie.

"What do you mean?" Matt asked.

"We watched that spineless husband of mine drop you off at the store," she said. "I knew you were there. But I needed you here, out in the country, where no one would hear anything."

So the whole conversation back at Abbey's Antiques was for his benefit. Another trap. "And I fell right into it," he said.

"You sure did," Annie giggled. "She told me you would."

Abbey smiled. "Toss the knife aside, Matt," she said.

"Tell her not to shoot me." Matt glanced at Annie, who was still pointing the gun at Matt's head.

Abbey set the ax in the corner of the room, then walked around the bed, giving Matt a wide berth. She stopped on the other side of the bed and held out her hand to Annie. "Give it to me," she said.

Annie looked disappointed. "But I wanted to do this one."

"He's mine," Abbey said, her face stern. "You can finish off my sorry-ass excuse for a husband. Give me the gun."

Annie handed the pistol over. Abbey took it and pointed it at Matt's chest. "Don't worry, hon," she said to Annie. "You'll get to decide head or gut. I'm just gonna be the one to pull the trigger."

That made Annie smile, and she was about to open her mouth, but Abbey cut her off. "Not yet," she said. "Think about it for a minute."

She nodded and smiled at Matt. Head or gut. If Matt had to choose, he'd rather get shot in the head. It would take less time to die. But one look at Annie's subtle smirk told him the girl from McDonald's had already made up her mind, and it didn't jibe with Matt's preference.

Abbey walked back around to the front of the room, keeping the gun pointed at Matt the whole way. "The knife?" she asked.

Matt tossed the knife to the side of the room, thus relinquishing his only weapon. He eyed the blade as it lay on the carpet, glinting red in the light of Abbey's bedroom.

She stepped in front of him and squatted down, bringing her face level to his, and poked the pistol into his chest. Her shoulder where he'd shot her was wrapped with a bandage that had started to bleed through already. She wouldn't be using that arm for a while. From this vantage point, he could see that the rotten green patch had spread all the way to her chest. It disappeared under her shirt, leaving Matt to wonder how far it went. If she took off her shirt, would he see her ribs? He decided he didn't want to know, but it did bring up an interesting question.

"How did you hide them?" he asked.

"The sores?" Abbey replied. "It's easy. Live long enough and you'll figure it out," she finished with a mischievous wink. Matt knew what it meant. He wouldn't live long enough to figure out what to have for breakfast tomorrow, let alone how a person could hide sores.

Abby reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look her in the face. "So, did you miss me, baby?" she asked.

"Doesn't look like it," Matt replied, nodding towards her shoulder.

Abbey smiled, revealing a mouth full of blackened gums and rotting teeth. "Clever," she said. Then she leaned in close so she could whisper in his ear. "But you shouldn't have done that. I was going to let you live."

"Bullshit."

Abbey pulled away, a wounded expression on her face. "It's true. I thought we were kindred spirits. Soul mates, even. Even though you went running after Brad like some goddamn knight in shining armor. Why? To save that whore wife of his? She deserved it. She's been fucking everything that moves for years. But even then I thought I could change your outlook, given enough time. Then you shot me. I could have dealt with you being a white hat, but I draw the line at letting you get away with shooting me."

"I don't believe you."

"Who gives a fuck what you believe?" she said. Then she turned to Annie. "Okay, sweetheart, did you choose? Head or gut?"

"Gut," Annie said without a moment's hesitation.

Matt groaned.

"Gut it is," Abbey said. She lifted the revolver and pointed it at Annie, who stared back in shock and fear.

"What are you—"

The sound of two shots fired in rapid succession cut her off, and her question turned into a howl of pain as two slugs tore into her abdomen. Her left arm and leg were still tied to the bedposts, preventing her from curling into a fetal position, but she slapped her right hand on to her belly in a vain attempt to hold her life's blood inside her ruptured gut. She stared at Abbey, her face a mixture of pain and confusion, and started to babble incoherently. The words were too garbled for Matt to make them out, but the meaning was clear.

"Hey, don't blame me." Abbey shrugged. "You're the one who picked gut." Then she pointed the gun back at Matt. "I've got two bullets left," she said. "Before I kill you, I think I owe you one."

She pointed the gun at Matt's shoulder and fired. The sound rang through the small room like thunder, and Matt screamed as fire punched him in the shoulder and stayed there to burn. He brought his hand up to stem the flow of blood and gasped in pain.

Being shot fucking hurt!

"Smarts a bit, doesn't it?" Abbey said, chuckling.

"Fuck off."

"You deserve it. You shot me first."

Matt wanted to point out that she'd almost blasted him to bloody bits outside long before he'd shot her but didn't figure it would do any good.

Abbey squatted down in front of him again and shook her head. "Such a waste," she said. "We've been waiting for you, you know."

"Why me?"

"Not you specifically. A drifter. Someone who doesn't belong. Someone no one would trust. Why do you think Annie worked that shitty-ass job? She's been keeping her eyes peeled for someone like you to come along. We were beginning to give up hope. When you stepped into the restaurant, with your line about 'just passing through,' she almost jumped for joy. She couldn't wait to tell me about you."

"I don't understand," Matt replied.

"Yes, you do."

"He probably doesn't," came a familiar voice from out in the hall. Mr. Dark stepped into the bedroom, a red lollipop in his mouth and a hideous grin on his face. "He's really quite simple, you know."