Page 37 of The House Beyond the Dunes

The night gets rolling quickly, and the bar fills up fast. All those people who’d made it through the week and have overdosed on family barbecues are ready to bust out and ring in the Fourth in style.

It’s all Joey and I can do to keep up with the crowd. The joint is hopping. The cash and booze roll. Life is good.

Last call is at 1:00 a.m., but I don’t get out of the bar until after 2:00. Nothing like a room full of drunks to screw up a bar. The cleanup is a bitch.

Joey hands me a piece of paper with an address. “It’s a trailer about a mile west on the other side of the bridge.”

I shove the paper in my pocket. “Got it. See you soon.”

“When?” Joey asks.

“Don’t know.”

“Make it tomorrow, and I’ll love you forever.”

I smile. “Give it my best shot.”

“Let me know if I need to get involved with Nikki.”

“Will do.”

Bone-deep fatigue doesn’t quite measure up to how I feel as I walk to my car. I really need sleep, but I said I’d check on Nikki.

I follow Joey’s directions across the bridge and locate the collection of brown trailers lined up in two neat rows on hard-packed dirt. I pull into the lot and park in front of unit 201, which is supposed to be Nikki’s.

Rap music pulses out of the trailer at the far end, and there are clusters of young people swaying in time to the music. A few folks glance in my direction, but I’m out of smiles. My attitude is strictly don’t-fuck-with-me, which seems to put them off. For now.

I climb the stairs to Nikki’s trailer and bang on the door. There’s no answer. Shit. Maybe Nikki has flaked and gone off with the next Mr.Wrong. Maybe she’s getting laid and savoring the best of what summer has to offer. I could be doing the same if I wasn’t here. I wonder what Sully is doing tonight.

Banging on the door again, I still get no answer. This time I turn the doorknob, and surprisingly it twists. As I push open the door, a sense of dread rushes toward me. “Nikki, tell me you aren’t this stupid.”

I flip up the light switch. Yellowish light spills from an overhead fixture onto what I can only describe as chaos. Several chairs are overturned. There’s a stain on the wall, and glass fragments scattered in the carpet wink in the light. A purse is dumped out, and there’s a wallet lying on the floor. I carefully poke around. There’s twenty bucks in cash, but the driver’s license slot is empty. I’m not sure if this bag belongs to Nikki or not.

There are two bedrooms. I move toward the one on the right and carefully push open the door. With the flip of a switch, light peters out over sheets, and the coverlet is rumpled and tossed on the floor. In the center of the graying sheets is a bloodstain bracketed by two strands of rope. Shit. What the hell?

My heart beats faster. I don’t have to imagine what happened here. I’ve lived it.

There’s no sign of Nikki near or under the bed. In the bathroom there’s an array of beauty products and several half-snorted lines of coke on the counter. The curtain is closed. Palms dampen as I reach for the plastic curtain. Bracing, I yank it back.

The tub is empty. However, the walls and shampoo bottle are splattered with blood.

I grow dizzy, and for a moment it feels as if I’m being pulled from my body. Old memories I work hard to contain push out of their cages and reach out to me.

“You deserved everything you got,” he growls. “Only bleach is going to clean the sin off you.”

Rage bubbles and boils, burning up my throat. I back out of the room, aware that my DNA is sprinkled around this crime scene. I open the other bedroom door. The bedding has been stripped off, and the dresser drawers are open and empty. The walls are bare except for the tiny corner of a poster. Someone ripped it off in a hurry.

A roommate? My guess is he or she knows something about what happened in Nikki’s room. Hearing, seeing, or finding evidence of the violence would’ve been enough to freak anyone out.

I back out of this room and move to the kitchen. The refrigerator is filled with a take-out pizza box, a half carton of milk that hasn’t expired, and a bottle of vodka.

I leave the trailer, careful to wipe the edge of my shirt over the doorknobs. Yeah, my DNA is in the apartment, but no sense leaving prints everywhere and making it easy for the cops if or when they show.

In my car, I press into the seat. Chills roll over my skin, and my hands tremble slightly as I grip the wheel. People have gathered and are staring at me.

Out of the car, I move toward the crowd. “Have you seen Nikki?”

A woman wearing a tank top and jean shorts takes a long drag on a cigarette. “Who?”

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