“Oh God, Donal.”

Mom laid the phone on the counter and followed the footprints out the door. In the dirt at the foot of the porch steps, there were no more prints. The blood had dried or soaked into the ground. Mom looked toward the road, the barn, the meadow.

“Wavy,” I said, because at that moment, I realized her mother was dead.

“Get in the car,” Mom said.

Leslie and I stared at her.

“Now! We have to tell someone who can help. Someone who can tell the police where this is.”

Mom drove down to the ranch without making us put on our seat belts. As we pulled up in front of the trailer, Sandy came down the steps. Her tanned legs seemed a mile long below her white shorts. She smiled at us. Beautiful. Something to look at that wasn’t blood.

“Hey, girls.”

“Where’s Donal?” Mom opened the car door and got out.

“Oh, he went up the hill to see Val. She’s up there now, if you want to see her.”

2

BUTCH

I don’t know why, but Liam had a taste for crazy women and dumb women. My ex-wife wasn’t a beauty queen, but at least she had half a brain in her head. Not Sandy. She came into the lab at full tilt, running in high heels with her tits bouncing, never even looked to see if it was safe.

“It’s Val. There’s a problem,” she said.

That wasn’t news. All Val did was cause problems.

“You’re going to have to take care of it, Sandy. We’re busy down here. Where’s Liam?”

“He took the bike out. It’s serious, Butch. You have to come.”

I left Vic and Scott to cook, and followed Sandy out.

When I got to Sandy’s trailer, there was a woman on the porch. An older, straightlaced version of Val with housewife hair and a pink sundress showing off her chubby arms. Val’s sister, Brenda. She looked shaky and the two girls sitting in the car looked freaked out.

I figured it was some bullshit problem, because people like Brenda get upset easy. Maybe they’d gone up to the house and caught Val and Liam in one of their fighting and fucking moods. Maybe Val was high. Maybe Liam had given her a taste of the back of his hand. If she’d been my wife, I would’ve done it more often.

“Hey, Brenda. We met once before. I’m Butch.” I held out my hand but Brenda just stared at it.

“Val and Liam are dead. I think they’ve been murdered.”

I pulled my hand back, I was that shocked. Sandy started screaming.

“Liam! You didn’t say Liam! You didn’t say! Oh my god! Liam!”

“Shut up, Sandy. Calm down and let me think.” I wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears idiot, and the first thing I thought about was the lab.

“What happened?” I said.

“I don’t know. I think they’ve been shot. And Donal’s missing. I didn’t know the address to tell Nine-One-One.”

I could see if I didn’t play things right, I was going to have a bunch of ruined product and the cops sniffing around. What I needed was help. Kellen could say he didn’t have the stomach for dirty work, but you could’ve fooled me. We once went to take care of some former business associates of Liam’s who backstabbed him. Kellen wouldn’t pull the trigger, but he didn’t blink when I did. That’s what the situation called for. Somebody who wouldn’t blink.

I left Brenda and Sandy on the porch and went into the trailer. I called the shop and let it ring a dozen times. Nobody answered at Kellen’s house, either, and when I tried the shop again, I got a busy signal.

Brenda came in and said, “Did you give them the address?” She thought I’d called the cops.

“Yeah, they’re on their way. Look, we’re gonna take care of this, okay. Your girls are pretty upset, I bet.”

She nodded and the first tear snuck out.

“I know, Brenda. I’m sorry. This has got to be so hard for you. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Sandy, get in here.”

Looking like a raccoon with her makeup running all over the place, Sandy hiccupped and said, “Butch—he—he didn’t even—”

“Sandy, you have to pull yourself together. We’ve got things to do. I’m gonna take Val’s sister and her girls into town. You go down to the barn, and tell Scott to wrap things up down there. Do you understand? And tell Lance to go up to the farmhouse. To meet the cops.”

“What about Donal?” Brenda said.

“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about him. Sandy, you and Dee go up in the meadow. When you find him, bring him into town to Kellen’s.”

“I should go with them,” Brenda said.

“No. I don’t want you getting lost up there and you’ve got your girls to take care of. So you come into town with me.” Last thing I needed was her wandering around out there, while I tried to get the lab cleaned up. Wherever Donal was, he knew how to get home.

“Why don’t I drive you over in your car, Brenda? Is that okay?” I said.

That way, I was in charge, and it left the guys any vehicles they needed to haul stuff away. My plan was to go by the garage and get a key to Kellen’s house. They’d be out of the way there, because I knew Kellen didn’t keep any product at his house.

After we got Brenda and the girls settled, Kellen could come up to the ranch and help me figure out what to do. We’d have to call the cops, but not until we cleaned up and had a story in place.