“No, but I’m not going to cut my nose off to spite my face,” Ledger said. “He wants to die, and I want him dead. What about you?”
Dale turned to look at him. “How am I supposed to trust you? You’re a Conroy. Your soul was a mire from the day you were born.”
“My soul is my own,” Ledger said. “Not Bell’s. Not Earl’s—”
“Who?”
“Earl, Mr. King,” Ledger said. “That’s what he calls himself now. It doesn’t matter. But you better make up your mind because he’s on his way.”
Dale stared at him and then toward the storm that curdled maybe a few streets away.
“No. No.” He backed up, slowly at first and then faster until he fell over his own feet. He landed awkwardly on the ground. “You led him here. You led him right to me.”
“Yeah,” Ledger said. “I suppose I did. Now, do you want to help me kill him or not?”
Dale scrambled to his feet in an awkward flurry of movement. He lunged at Ledger and grabbed him by the torn shirt.
“I don’t know how,” he howled. “Nothing in the house was fucking labeled. He didn’t give me a tour before he crawled inside me. If there is something that can kill him… if I still have it… Don’t you think I would have used it already if I knew what it was?”
Ledger pushed him away. The T-shirt stretched out between them until Dale let go.
“That’s OK. You don’t need to. He does,” Ledger said. He grabbed Dale’s shoulder and shoved him toward the door. “Like you said, when he was in your skin, he felt with your body and thought with your brain. That sometimes it’s like an imprint that he left in you? Use that.”
Dale spluttered objections, but Ledger ignored him as he harried him up the stairs.
“What if it’s not a spiritual connection,” Dale objected. “What if it’s just PTSD?”
“I don’t know,” Ledger said. “So let’s hope it’s not. Otherwise, the next brilliant idea is up to you.”
CHAPTER24
DALE’S APARTMENT LOOKEDlike a peacock had exploded, and then the result had been flocked. It was lush and gaudy, with patterned wallpaper and patchwork chairs jostled in around a dozen bookshelves stacked with books. Ledger had been in more cluttered places, but never with a concussion and a drug hangover. It didn’t help.
He stood at the window and watched Earl’s slow advance instead.
“I didn’t keep much,” Dale said. “I sold the clothes and most of the furniture. I banked the money or spent it. There are some books, but other than those, this is it.”
Ledger turned around as Dale dragged the big wooden chest out of the other room. It was old, polished mahogany. It had been lacquered once, but that had peeled off years ago. Urgency nudged at the nape of his neck. They didn’t have long.
“OK,” he said. “Let’s see it.”
Dale didn’t move. He just stared at the chest. “I didn’t want to keep this stuff,” he said. “I keep it locked up. I try not to think about it.”
“Good.” Ledger pushed him out of the way. “That’s probably because it was Earl—Mr. King—that wanted to keep this.”
“God,” Dale shuddered. “I hate that. It’s bad enough to be in this… corpse… but he was in here, too? Like a worm.”
Ledger crouched down and opened the chest. The smell of salt that wafted out was enough to make him recoil as he blinked and rubbed his dried-out eyes. When he looked again, a brief burst of greed managed to distract him.
A jointed dog carved from bone, a merry little face painted on what looked like the rubbed-down femur head. Knives that smelled like atrocity. A nondescript little envelope, a single bit of lavender pressed into the paper that, for some reason, reeked of surgery.
If he found the right buyer, he could make a fortune on it.
Yeah, Ledger reminded himself, and if he found the right weapon, he’d maybe get to live until tomorrow.
He dug through the chest. The smell of salt on its own wasn’t enough. A bobblehead owned by Earl would smell of death and sorrow just from association. Ledger needed to be a little more discerning. The little bone dog was just odd. The knives had been turned to butchery, but just the normal sort. There was a candle that smelled like a living-history kitchen: salted bacon and sweaty humans. It felt weirdly greasy under his fingers, and he tossed that to Dale.
A little sickle blade on a ring that smelled like a nosebleed.
