Free Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz

sense of doom were making her nauseous, but she pressed on.
    “I’m fine. What did he look like?”
    “About sixty-five, average height, slight paunch, almost completely bald except for a patch of gray hair on the top of his head, bulbous nose, crooked smile.”
    “That’s Doc Holland, all right.”
    Doc Egan finished stitching and then dressed the wound. He looked at Lacey with concern. She was staring blankly at the ceiling, trying to make sense of this mixed bag of facts that didn’t add up.
    “Now how are you going to get home?” Doc Egan asked.
    “Same way I got here,” Lacey replied, sitting up on the table. She didn’t mention that the room was spinning.
    “I don’t think you should drive. Can you call your brother?”
    “I’d rather not. Besides, he’s probably drunk by now,” Lacey said.
    “Then I’ll drive you.”
    “Totally unnecessary, Doc. I have a car and I’m perfectly fine.”
    Doc Egan reached into his pocket and held out Lacey’s keys.
    “I have your keys,” he replied. “You can pick up your car tomorrow.”
    Lacey slipped off the table, took the bloody sweatshirt from the edge of the table, and tossed it in the trash. Contemplating the bandage on her arm, Lacey tried to figure out how she could hide the accident from Paul. She was not in the mood for his questions.
    “Doc, I’m cold. Do you have a shirt I can borrow? One with sleeves?”
    Lacey waited on the front porch while Doc Egan locked up. He handed her a baseball jersey, which she pulled on over her T-shirt. It just covered the last strip of tape on her forearm.
     
     
    The drive to the Hansen home was silent, minus Lacey’s terse directions.
    “Here,” she said, as they approached the home. One light as usual was on in the living room, punctuated by the flicker of a television set.
    “Looks cozy,” the new doc said.
    “Hmm,” Lacey replied.
    “You should take the painkillers I gave you before bed. It’s going to smart in a few hours.”
    Lacey opened the car door. “Thanks for the ride, Doc.”
    As Lacey strolled up the steps to the house, Doc Egan shouted, “See you tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    “Don’t forget to pick up your car.”
    “Right.”
     
     
    Inside, Paul stared with rapt attention at the TV screen. It was an act. They both knew it. Under normal circumstances, Paul would have asked Lacey where she had been. But neither said anything, because one was tired of delivering lies and the other was tired of hearing them.
    “Night, Paul,” was all she said.
     
     
    As predicted, Lacey woke up in the middle of the night with her arm burning. She grabbed two Vicodin from her dresser drawer and walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. As she gulped the water, she heard a car pull up in front of their house and stop. She looked at the clock: 3:12 a.m. Adrenaline pumping, she tiptoed over to the window. Just before she parted the curtains, the car screeched away.
    Lacey opened the front door and turned on the porch light. She walked a few paces toward the curb. That’s when she saw it. Lacey raced inside the house and shook her brother awake.
    “He’s back,” she said.
     
     
    Paul stood over the even riper corpse.
    “Who is doing this to us?” she asked.
    “I think we can rule out Darryl, since he’d probably think to remove his family heirloom. Is it still there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Let’s keep him out of it.”
    Both siblings held their breath as Lacey aimed the flashlight and Paul bent down to remove the wristwatch. Something familiar caught Lacey’s eye. While Paul gazed into the distance, devising another plan, Lacey knelt down and lifted up the sleeve on the corpse. Just a few inches above the wrist, she found an amateur tattoo of a four-leaf clover.
    Lacey got to her feet, took a deep breath, then choked on the stench and turned away. She silently handed Paul the flashlight and strode back into the house. Five minutes later, she returned carrying two of Paul’s marijuana plants