Ugly As Sin by James Newman Read Free Book Online

said.
    “Sounds like your boyfriend was mixed up in some bad business. I might look like something out of a horror flick, but I go pushing my weight around, trying to get answers from people who don’t wanna give them, somebody else could get hurt.”
    “I understand.”
    “Good. Tell me how to get to Eddie’s place.”
    “You remember the old train depot just outside of Midnight?”
    Nick remembered it well. Once, after a fight with his father when he was twelve, he had decided to run away from home. Packing a bag lunch and his life’s savings at the time (five dollars), he had set out to ride the nation’s rails like a hobo, embarking on nomadic adventures with no parents telling him what he could and couldn’t do. He got as far as the Polk County Train Depot before he chickened out, hightailing it back home into the arms of his distraught mother.
    Melissa said, “Just past the depot, you’ll see Gorman Gap Road on your right. After about a mile you’ll pass an old church. There’s a cow pasture, then Eddie’s is the first house on the left. His name’s on the mailbox: Whiteside. You can’t miss it. There’s still police tape everywhere.”
    “Got it.”
    Nick slid out of the booth. He could feel everyone in the restaurant staring at him as he stood. Once again, he ignored them.
    “You’re going out there right now?” Melissa asked him.
    “Can’t think of a better place to start.”
     
    †
     
    Since the night Sophie disappeared, Melissa had been renting an apartment on the edge of town. She insisted Nick come stay with her, but he didn’t feel comfortable with the thought of moving in even temporarily with his adult daughter, the fact that they were practically strangers notwithstanding. After leaving Annie’s Country Diner, he drove to the Sunrise Motor Lodge off North Main, where he rented a room for a week. It wasn’t the fanciest joint in the world, but it would do in a bind.
    Melissa gave him her phone number, a key to the house she had shared with Eddie, and a wallet-sized photo of her daughter.
    She begged him to be careful. He promised her he could take care of himself.
    As they left the diner, Nick noticed the flyers up and down the block: stapled to telephone poles, taped to storefronts. He hadn’t paid them any attention on his way into town but now they were impossible to miss. HAVE YOU SEEN ME? read the caption at the top, above a black-and-white reproduction of the photo Melissa had given him. Beneath that: SOPHIE LYNN SUTTLES/AGE 14/MISSING SINCE JUNE 26, followed by a contact number for the Polk County Sheriff’s Department.
    Nick and his daughter embraced as the patrons of Annie’s Country Diner watched through the restaurant’s windows. Overhead, out front of the Sheriff’s Department, the U.S. and North Carolina-state flags flapped and clanked against their pole like the voice of the town itself warning Nick that he could do no good here.
    Just before he climbed into his Bronco, and she into her green Camry parked on the opposite side of the street, Nick looked back to see Melissa glaring at their audience. If she’d been packing, he was quite sure she would have opened fire on every last one of them.
    “Oh, take a fucking picture,” she said.
    He told her, “Hang around me long enough, hon, you’re gonna have to get used to that.”
     
    †
     
    Nick popped his favorite album, a collection of old blues tunes, into the Bronco’s CD player. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up as Lightnin’ Hopkins sang of going back home: “Well, you know this ain’t no place for me, and I don’t think po’ Lightnin’ wanna stay...”
    As he drove out of Midnight’s town proper and into the countryside bordering Polk County, Nick passed a few of his old haunts, and he wondered what had become of others: places like Storch’s Rim, where he had lost his virginity at the age of fifteen...the graffiti bridge near Junction 108, beneath which he had sipped his first beer and