Chapter Text
“Bellamy!” Murphy stuck his head out of the bedroom he’d just entered. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Address matches the website and the key was where the owner said it would be. Why wouldn’t it -” His words cut off as soon as he got a glimpse of the bedroom. Dark red droplets splatted the wall. Anyone who’d ever seen a crime show would call it cast off from an assault.
Echo slipped into the room beside him and the three surveyed the mess. In addition to the splatters on the paint, there was a similar stain on the bed cover. The top of the dresser had be swept clean, knocking a few trinkets to the ground. Signs of a struggle were obvious to anyone willing to see them.
The three exchanged glances. This roadtrip was the only time off they’d get all year. A run in with the police might make them late for Monty and Harper’s wedding. If the police searched the SUV and found Bellamy’s weed, Echo’s weapons, or whatever anarchist emergency supplies Murphy was no doubt carrying they’d be a lot more than just late.
Echo spoke first. “The owner hit his head and went to the hospital. That’s not a fatal amount of blood and it's not in the hallway or any of the other rooms we've seen.”
Bellamy looked poised to say something else, something honorable and likely to start trouble.
Murphy stepped closer to him. “The last sign of civilization was outside of Kansas City about 90 minutes north of here. If the police turn this into an investigation and take over the house then once they let us go we need to drive 90 minutes back up the highway tonight and then we add that time on to our drive tomorrow.”
Bellamy roughed a hand over his beard. There was no real evidence of anything except bad housekeeping. “I’m taking a star off the rating of this place for dirty linens.”
Echo said, “Take off one more for vermin. I heard toenails on the hardwood floors coming from the back of the house.”
Murphy asked, “Where’d you find this place?”
Bellamy headed towards the back of the house to see how badly maintained their rental was. In truth, he was a little relieved that there was confirmation that the place was a dump with a careless owner rather than a crime scene.
Echo rested a hand on his arm. “Be careful. Raccoons can carry rabies.”
“It sounded that big?”
“We might be safer sleeping in the car.”
“Let’s see how bad it is.”
From the pictures online, he knew the room off the kitchen at the back of the house was a sunporch, once open to the elements but enclosed at some point so that it could be used year round. He also knew there was a dog door leading into it. Best case scenario, a dog had used it.
Nothing about this trip or this house led him to expect a best case scenario.
He slid open the pocket door and slipped into the room. Streetlight and moonlight filtered through the trees and the windows illuminating patches of the cluttered space. He saw the movement before he heard the noise. Matted fur surged towards him, yipping. Small feet on surprisingly strong legs shoved at his thighs. If he went down there was no telling what would happen next.
“Who’s a good boy? Is it you? Are you a good boy?” The gitchy-goo tone of Echo’s voice did more to throw him off-center than any of the other weirdness he’d encountered tonight. The pressure on his legs relented as the creature moved to her. Her hands stroked the dog’s filthy fur and odors best left undefined rose as she disturbed the muck.
Murphy refused to even enter the porch. “You know you’re rubbing your hands in dogshit, right?”
Echo shrugged. “It’ll wash off when I give him a bath. Poor little guy had diarrhea and couldn’t make it outside.”
Bellamy kicked at the dog door. “He was locked in.”
Only because he’d known her so long could Bellamy read the expressions that flashed over Echo’s face then disappeared as quickly as they’d come. The sequence resolved an issue and created a problem at the same time. There was no way he would ask the owner to come over tonight and clean up the porch and bedroom. The man probably wouldn’t survive the encounter.
Murphy watched it all unfold. Echo’s softness and subsequent murder plans. Bellamy’s Echo management. The dog crap that covered both of them where the mutt had desperately sought help, attention, or just a sucker to spoil him. Me too, he thought. Me too. “Why don’t you two and Fido shower off the feces? I’ll go grab dinner for the four of us from the store.”
“The four of us?” Bellamy asked.
“Sir Poops A Lot there needs to eat, too.”
The upside of spending the night in Carbone, population 300, was that their rental wasn’t far from the store. The downside was that “the store” was the gas station. It only took a minute for Murphy to review their dinner options and select the frozen pizza rather than the frozen burritos or the rotating hotdogs of uncertain age.
As he reached for the door of his SUV, a hard shove slammed him up against the metal and made him drop the bag with his frozen pizzas in it.
A voice, thick and gravelly like he smoked a pack a day then gargled rocks, rumbled in his ear. “I know you’re in cahoots with Mahon.”
Murphy rested his forehead against the door. If it weren’t for the word cahoots he’d be waiting for the Deliverance style banjo music to start, but clearly this weird fuck was a different kind of weird fuck than the stereotype about rural Kansas would suggest.
The wanna-be old timey gangster prodded Murphy in the back with what was clearly a finger rather than a gun. God damn bored locals.
Murphy worked up as much speed as he could in the small space, clamped his hand around Bugsy’s bait and tackle and gave it hard twist. The man crumpled, but Murphy didn’t let go. Instead he stepped backwards, forcing them both away from the car, and didn’t stop moving until the truckstop troll tripped over the curb.
Murphy released him then took a good look. Tall, gangly, about 17, and probably bored as hell when he wasn’t acting like an idiot. Murphy gave the boy some advice, “Fuck off,” then grabbed his pizza boxes and headed back to the rental.
Blood, dogshit, and a cahoots-ing mugger. Could this night get any worse?