Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

  “None taken. So listen, we should probably talk about other ways I can be helpful to you guys. You know, since the incident at the station. I’m sure there’s stuff I can do. I mean, I don’t know if you want me on your crew, but I’ve got some construction in my background and I’m always up for learning new things. But maybe . . . I don’t know, I was thinking . . .”

  “What?” Jordy asks. “What were you thinking?”

  “I know things didn’t go totally as planned, but she did leave, right? I mean, I was able to convince her to walk out so . . . I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got a future with you guys as kind of an ambassador or something.”

  “An ambassador,” Jordy says. “That’s an interesting thought.”

  “You know, like a representative in town. That kind of thing. And I just have to say, again. I mean, I know you’ve heard me say it before. But honestly, most of the folks in town are really happy you guys are here. You gotta forget about cunts like Sanchez and Prescott. There’s no convincing folks like that of anything. But the rest of them, they’re easily won over.”

  “I see,” Jordy says. “So what you’re suggesting is that you take on a new job for us. That’s easy.”

  Milo gives Jordy a warning look. That’s why he needs Milo. He’s his balance. His focus. The lens through which the righteous fire in Jordy’s soul will soon be unleashed upon the world.

  “Oh, no, man,” Henricks says. “I mean I’d be willing to do anything just about.”

  “Just about, huh?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve told you how important I think you guys are. You know that, right?”

  “Of course, Henricks,” Milo says.

  They’ve left the valley far behind. Slowing down some, Milo takes a sharp left, and suddenly they’re traveling a narrow dirt service road Jordy’s crew only cut through the brush a few weeks before. Some of the branches have grown in a little, and they thud lightly against the roof of Milo’s truck, mostly when the rutted road sends the truck bouncing up into them.

  Henricks stares out the back window with a nervous-looking frown. For the first time, he looks afraid.

  That’s a good thing, Jordy thinks. It indicates the presence of at least one small shred of humility. And given how fucking clueless he’s acted over the past few days, some humility about now would be a very good thing.

  “Where we going?” he finally asks.

  “Found this great view spot up ahead,” Milo says. “You can see straight through the mountains, straight to the Pacific. Good place to talk without anybody overhearing us, you know?”

  “You guys . . .”

  “What, Pete?”

  “Seriously, you guys . . . I mean, I don’t . . .”

  “Hey.” Milo hits the brakes, puts the car in park, then turns in his seat to face the passenger in the back seat, all with the smooth authority of a car pool mom; that’s how good the guy is. “It’s not like that, Henricks. We’re just talking. Promise.”

  “I mean, I know you probably aren’t that happy with me right now.”

  Now you fucking say it, asshole, Jordy thinks.

  “Henricks,” Milo says with a gentle smile. “Come on, man. Get those thoughts out your head. It’s a small town. We just wanted some privacy and some space. That’s all.”

  To his credit, the guy doesn’t hesitate or start crying when they all step from the truck. When Milo and Jordy start walking ahead of him, he seems to relax. His only frame of reference for a moment like this has got to be TV shows or movies, so he probably assumes the fact that they’re in front of him and not behind him means they aren’t planning to shoot him.

  And they aren’t.

  Not really.

  Henricks is lucky. He’s got choices.

  The air’s a few degrees colder up here, and they’re close enough to the top of the mountain to smell the salty tang of the Pacific. Wind rustles the pine branches, shifts the dense foliage underfoot. Jordy’s reminded of what the world could really be like if it were cleansed of pollutants and nonbelievers. Peaceful and tranquil and devoid of those temptations that act like sandpits for good, honorable men. It’s the type of world men like him and Milo and the others deserve, men who’ve been run through the inferno of combat and forced to return to a degenerate country that keeps adding wood to the faraway fires, all without thought to the good soldiers those fires consume, all without respect for the good soldiers who survive those flames.

  The foot soldiers in the nearby trees are doing a good job of staying back. Jordy can’t see them, and Henricks doesn’t seem to be getting any more nervous than he already is, so he probably can’t see them, either.

  “I’m serious, you know,” Henricks says. “I mean, I’m committed, is what I’m saying. You guys are special. What you’re doing for us, all the things you’re doing for us, I don’t take them for granted, and I never will. Never.”

  “That’s real good, Henricks,” Milo says. “We appreciate that.”

  They’ve reached their destination. Through the branches off to his right, Jordy can see one of the seismic geophone stations they’d set up a few weeks before, a slender pyramid of plywood about Milo’s height. The geophone’s hung at the apex, pointed down toward the earth. Tucked against a copse of nearby pines is one of the storage sheds they built on-site.

  He and Milo have discussed exactly what needs to happen next, but it’s not like they’ve physically rehearsed, so Jordy feels a little flutter in his chest as he pulls his Glock from his holster, and Milo does the same.

  Henricks sees both guns, starts saying the word no over and over again. Then he realizes that neither gun’s pointed at him, and his protests turn to gasps and swivels of his head.

  Milo opens the door to the shed, disappears inside, then reemerges, dragging Lacey’s hog-tied body like it’s a sack of potatoes. There’s enough dope in her that as soon as Milo releases her wrists, she collapses to the dirt in the fetal position, gazing at nothing with wet, slitted eyes.

  Henricks has raised his hands like a suspect. But he’s staring at Lacey as if she’s the only thing in his world, as if her bruised forehead and the gag in her mouth and the flex-cuffs on her wrists and the nylon rope around her ankles are all evidence his life will never be the same again.

  And it won’t be. If he’s lucky.

  “It’s all right, Henricks.” Milo’s also got his hands up; he’s pointing his Glock skyward as he closes the distance between them like a stalking snake. “This isn’t what you think it is. Seriously. We’ve heard you. We’ve heard your willingness and your commitment. So consider this an invitation.”

  Tears are sliding from Henricks’s eyes as he stares at Milo in evident disbelief. “But I . . . but I . . .”

  “You what?” Jordy asks.

  “I made her leave. She was talking crazy, and I made her leave before she could do anything.”

  “I know,” Jordy says, “but then you quit. You were our man inside the department, and then you quit, Henricks. Can you see how that’s a problem for us?”

  “But I’ll do anything . . . I’ll do anything, please.” The last word unleashes a wrenching sob in the man so pathetic Jordy almost shoots him right there just to have this done with. But that’s not how they’re doing this. Milo insisted on something different. Given the momentousness of their mission, and how central Altamira’s about to become to their operations, they need local men to do more than spy and listen, to jump when they say jump. They need men who believe.

  That’s why Milo reaches up and places the handle of his Glock in one of Pete Henricks’s raised hands. Henricks looks up at the gun and his hand as if neither are really connected to him anymore. He lets Milo take his wrist and lower his hand to chest level. Milo nods at Jordy. Jordy lowers his own gun toward his feet and rests it there.

  When realization dawns, Henricks goes very still, and then, slowly, brings his free hand to the gun’s grip.

  “You want me to . . .” Henricks’s words leave him, but he’s got
the gun pointed at the earth a few feet in front of him and in Lacey’s general direction, so there’s little doubt in Jordy’s mind the guy knows exactly what they want.

  “She lied, Henricks,” Milo says quietly. “She’s a lying cunt who told that cop Jordy beat her when he did no such thing. Tell me, how many men have been destroyed by the type of thing she did? But you. You weren’t fooled. You saw right through it. You knew better, knew what kind of man Jordy is. You knew he’d never lift a hand to his girl like that. You weren’t like Prescott.

  “You see, men like him, they believe anyone who calls themselves a victim. They think it makes ’em powerful, you see. But what they don’t understand is that when they indulge the lie, they weaken everything. Everyone. They think they’re being all strong and protective, but really they’re just living out some fantasy of being a cowboy that’s no better than jerking off alone in their room. But men like you, Pete. Men who can see the truth. Men who think before they act. Men who pause to ask where the bruises really came from. You’re the strong ones. We’re the strong ones.”

  Jordy’s stunned. Henricks is looking straight into Milo’s eyes, and it’s like all the resistance has drained from Pete’s face. Is this shit really going to work? Is Henricks about to become a foot soldier?

  Milo reaches down and raises Pete’s gun hand until the Glock is aimed directly at Lacey.

  “We’ve got big things planned, Pete,” Milo says. “Important things. You could be part of it. I mean, this is way beyond just being our ambassador. I’m talking about being ground zero at a revolution that’s going to spread out all over this land. Fear and fire paving the way for truth. The kind of truth only men like us can see. But first . . .”

  When Milo suddenly steps away from him, Pete flinches, as if he’s been drawing comfort from the big man’s proximity, and now that it’s been ripped away he feels unsteady.

  Milo taps the top of the Glock in Pete’s hands, then points to Lacey’s prone body as if it were a target in a shooting gallery.

  Jordy studies every inch of Pete’s body, from the way he holds the gun to the tension in both sides of his flushed neck to the glazed look in his eyes. Is it a settling into a fate, a necessary hardening of the soul, or just paralysis and shock?

  But then Jordy realizes that Henricks is looking at Lacey too much. He’s not just looking at her; he’s looking for something in the way her body’s sprawled on the carpet of pine needles and leaves. Big mistake. Lacey is the target, not the revelation. The revelation will be in how he feels once he’s disposed of her; once he cuts her vicious lies free of their earthly anchor and allows them to float over the mountaintops before being blown out to sea.

  And man, if anyone here should be having an emotional reaction to Lacey’s killing, it should be him. She’s his girlfriend, after all.

  Jordy figures another few seconds of hands shaking this bad and Pete’s knees will go next. But instead Pete drops the gun and screws his eyes shut and starts shaking his head as if doing so will make the clearing, the trees, Lacey, and most importantly, Jordy and Milo disappear.

  Milo purses his lips and nods at the ground; he seems so disappointed, Jordy almost feels bad for the guy. Maybe he really did think Pete had potential.

  Pete’s crying now, but at least he’s not begging for anything, including his life.

  Milo closes the distance between them, wraps his arms around the man. Pete gives in to the hug as if he genuinely thinks this might end with him being given another chance, or at least a chance to run. Instead, in a series of lightning-quick moves accompanied by the quick crunch of breaking bone, Milo snaps Henricks’s neck and drops his body to the ground.

  Slowly, the other foot soldiers emerge from the woods, seven in all, lowering their guns at the sight of Henricks’s body.

  Lesser men, Jordy realizes, would probably make a joke to dispel the tension, but they take death far too seriously for that, and so they just stand there, offering up Pete Henricks to the wind and the patches of dark-blue sky with their first dappling of stars, and to a God whose pure will has been ignored so often people have come to view any implementation of his wishes as a sign of pettiness or vengefulness.

  32

  After what feels like an appropriate amount of silence, Jordy asks Milo where he found Lacey’s bracelet. Brushing branches out of their way, Milo leads him past the nearest geophone. A few paces later the pines break, and the ground just ahead turns into a series of granite steps that quickly give way to a plunging slope so steep there’s no traveling it on foot.

  “It was resting up against that trunk there.” Milo’s pointing to the trunk of a hearty ponderosa pine a few yards downslope. It’s not so thick that the bracelet couldn’t have gone easily tumbling past it after Lacey dropped it. But did Lacey drop it? They’ve still got no damn idea what actually happened during Lacey’s first visit here, and two days of trying to beat it and then drug it out of the girl hasn’t yielded any clues.

  If she fell all that way, she’s lucky to have survived. And if she climbed her way back up the slope by herself, she’s stronger than he thought.

  “So she was snooping around up here and fell?” Jordy asks.

  “She wouldn’t say, but I checked with all our guys and nobody was up here and nobody pushed her.” Milo’s trying to hide his frustration, Jordy can tell. Milo’s powers of persuasion are intense and effective, but this is Lacey they’re talking about, so Jordy’s asked him to be less gruesome than usual.

  “And we’re sure none of our guys did?”

  “Nobody knew she was up here. Nobody was here. It was almost dark. If she was up here by herself, for whatever reason, she could have easily lost her footing and taken a fall, especially if she didn’t know the area. Maybe that tree broke it.”

  “That’d explain why her bracelet caught on it.”

  “Yeah. But it doesn’t explain the most important thing . . .”

  What the hell she was doing up here in the first place, Jordy thinks. Checking out the seismic geophones. Making sure they actually existed. Why the hell would she do that? If only I didn’t have a good idea. She found something about the fake readings and came up here to find out if we’d actually done any seismic testing at all.

  “The drugs aren’t making her talk?”

  “Nope. Just zoning her out. I can pull her off and then . . . you know, start up again.”

  Start beating her again, is what he means. The longer Lacey’s silence persists, the more Milo’s become convinced something more went down inside that sheriff’s station. Something Henricks didn’t even know about. That’s why he’d insisted on tying up that loose end. Even if the dipshit had quit, he could still have asked for his job back, and in a town this small, maybe the threat of a lawsuit coupled with a call from Jordy’s dad would have been enough to get the tiny department to drop whatever bullshit review that bitch sheriff had threatened Henricks with. But given how quickly this had gone to shit, there’d been no bringing Henricks back in half-baked. Not unless he became a real foot soldier.

  “All right,” Jordy finally says, “so let’s review. She comes up here to check out something, we don’t know what, but it’s gotta be the geophones because that’s really all that’s up here—”

  “Which is not good at all,” Milo says.

  “I’m aware of that. So because she doesn’t know the area, and maybe it’s getting dark, she falls. Hard. Maybe lands in that tree right there, face-first. Then suddenly decides she’s going to blame her injuries on me and walk into the sheriff’s station and tell them I need to be thrown in a cell because I’m beating on her.”

  “Which might have been easier than trying to explain her injuries to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jordy, you didn’t try to bring her in on this, did you? It’s your call, man, but she’s so damn unstable, I just can’t—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, did she see something? Overhear something?”

  Oh,
how to answer this question.

  The problem, as he figures it, is that almost overnight Lacey went from being a woman who didn’t notice anything to a woman who noticed everything. Sure, he’d told her if she went on the pills again, he’d give her the boot, but he hadn’t meant it. Not really. He’d brought her to Altamira because he was sure she’d fail again. And he liked it when she failed. He’d grown addicted to the sudden absences that let him do whatever he wanted, followed by the miserable apologies and the begging—begging for him. It was always magical, the moment when her need for the pills was replaced by her desperate, frenzied need for him. For his love, his approval. His body. The sex that followed was always explosive. The way she said his name during it, it sounded like a prayer for something she couldn’t go without and the invocation of an avenging angel who frightened her down to her bones.

  Then the unexpected happened, right after he set her up in Trailer City.

  She actually got sober.

  Not in an organized, rehab kind of way. In a way that was messy and sudden and left her frazzled, but also as alert and reactive as a Chihuahua. The isolation had worked in a way he’d never really expected it to. Cut off from her roster of sham doctors, she hadn’t been able to fill any scrips, and little Altamira wasn’t exactly awash in street dealers.

  Back in the day, she never would have noticed he’d had his tattoo removed. That’s how out of it she was most weeks. And that’s why he’d made the mistake with the photos.

  He was ninety percent sure that was it. She’d caught him deleting all those old photos of them at the beach, the ones where his shoulder was exposed. And she’d gone ballistic in a way she never did when she was using. Not sobby and messy. Focused, angry, throwing things, and with good aim for a change. Accusing him of turning her into a prisoner out here and then trying to erase their past together.

  But he can’t tell Milo any of this.

  Milo had told him not to use that damn Bible verse to find field recruits. Not to use anything that could be so easily traced back to him. But didn’t Milo get it? You don’t pick the verses from the Good Book that light a fire within your soul; the verses pick you.