Trinity by Kristin Dearborn Read Free Book Online

to dawn on her what she was seeing.
    The headlights also shone off something shiny in the ditch on the side of the road. A Suzuki dual-sport bike.
    “Fuck,” she whispered. She threw the car into park and opened the door, stepping onto the gravel, looking left and right, even up, to make sure she was alone. Maybe this wasn’t happening. Maybe she’d wake up soon.
    She knew from the checkered dirt bike jacket exactly who this was, but she rolled him over to be sure, maybe there was still a pulse, maybe she’d gotten here in time…and half of TJ’s face was missing. Missing to the degree she could see sliced skull edges, and something horrible and gray and soft, already seething with flies that took off at the disruption, buzzing and irritated until they could settle in again. He’d lain on his stomach and the blood had pooled in what was left of his face, the skin looked waxy and purplish. She let go of his shoulder and backed away.
    All that blood and sliced-open flesh and the smell and the buzzing of the flies made her head swim and her stomach bucked. She leaned on her open car door and brought up what was left of last night’s dinner. Bile with a slight taste of beer made her heave again. He didn’t lose his face in a bike accident. There were claw marks on him...or sword cuts. Maybe they looked like bear claw marks? She didn’t even know if there were bears in New Mexico. Black bears, but nothing that…large. A mountain lion? Still not big enough. This looked like a grizzly. A big one. Not that she knew anything about what a grizzly bear attack looked like, but she had seen those shows on Fox, where animals attack people and it’s caught on film. Her empty stomach churned again…this wasn’t television though, this was TJ. She breathed through her mouth until the next wave of nausea passed.
    Hoping, and starting to cry, she went back and dutifully felt for a pulse. If there’s no pulse I can do CPR , she thought, knowing no amount of CPR could fix what had been done. He doesn’t have a mouth anymore…how could I do CPR like that? As soon as she touched TJ’s skin, cold and plastic feeling, she gave up. She thought of his clumsy advances, and pushed thoughts of him from her mind.
    The hitching wheeze of her engine contrasted with peaceful bird calls. Breathing in through her mouth, she could smell something; sort of half rotten meat, half feces, but with a strange nauseating sweetness to it. She knew this guy. This guy who was last seen (to the best of her knowledge) leaving her boyfriend’s home after a violent dispute. The same boyfriend who not only was an ex-con, but had vanished in the middle of the night and come home with blood on his shorts. Had she fucked Val immediately before and after he’d hacked TJ to pieces with a machete?
    No. She hadn’t. Because Val wasn’t stupid. After high school and before jail he’d started his undergrad on the pre-law track. If he were to kill TJ, he would have showed some degree of cunning or subtlety. Though…he’d kind of had a lot to drink last night. And the business with the hum was troubling. And he didn’t have any kind of alibi. If he hadn’t conspicuously vanished during what seemed to be the precise time TJ was being sliced apart, she would have known he didn’t do it. But…this seemed like a damned big coincidence and Kate didn’t believe in coincidences.
    She pulled out her cell phone. Held it in her hand until it became warm, staring at the mess before her. Call the police? Call Val?
    Calling the police wasn’t an option. She couldn’t lose Val again. But…where had he gone in the night? She looked up at the sky. A few clouds floated there against the blue, pink with the edge of sunlight.
    She keyed in 911. Placed her thumb over the green send button, hovered there a moment, and noticed dirt under her fingernail, then scrolled down to Val’s mom’s number. She hoped it hadn’t changed.
    The ringing sounded a thousand miles away in