Trinity

by Kristin Dearborn

  The child was a boy, maybe seven years old. They’d removed his yellow rain slicker and his pants. Ashen gray on the table, he lay there in a soaked T-shirt and colorful briefs. Val stared at him a moment, those deep gashes; the red making his skin look even more lifeless. Val whipped the leather studded belt out of his pants and fashioned a tourniquet at the boy’s groin. He’d seen it in a movie.

  “They’ve got me on hold,” Kate said, her panic barely contained.

  “Fuck!” Val started CPR on the boy. The woman kept coming up to Val, standing too close, looking down at what he was doing and praying in Spanish. Blood spurted from the wounds in time with Val’s beating. Someone answered the phone and Kate told them where to come. It would take at least half an hour from Lott to get here, worse if any of the roads had washed out. She explained the boy wasn’t breathing, and someone was doing CPR. The operator asked to be given to Val.

  “Looks like his femoral artery is slashed. He’s bleeding all over the place. And the slices in his stomach…I can’t do anything about those. I’ve got compresses on them. He’s lost a lot of blood. I—I got his heart going again. I don’t know if it will last.” Val was silent, listening. He wiped his bloody hands on his pants. “They look like claw marks. She says an animal did it. They showed up at my door, I’m the nearest house, I guess.” He listened again, for a moment. “Big goddamn animal.”

  He pumped and breathed for the boy, ignoring the light pink whatever he was fairly sure was an intestine peeking out. Val hung up the phone and looked at Kate.

  “He needs a million things I can’t do,” Val said. He applied pressure to the stomach wounds. “Hold this,” he said to the boy’s mother. She did, calling out after them in frustration as they left the room.

  Val led Kate to the bedroom. “You need to get the gun out of my truck. Do something with Rich’s Mossberg.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He is going to die. The cops are going to come. And I’m going to get arrested.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hello. What did I just get out of jail for? What kinds of people aren’t I supposed to be around?” He paced back and forth, and she sat on the bed.

  “But…they can’t…”

  “Sure they can. I had my mouth on his mouth—“

  “To save his life.”

  “Which I’m sure I didn’t do. That boy is going to die.” Val lowered his voice. “Why didn’t it kill me? I sat right there with it, tonight, and it looked at me. It’s killed everyone else, why not me?” He began to pace. “Should I run? If you think I should, I will.” Before she could answer, he rubbed his eyes and said. “No. That would be stupid. I’m not smart enough to run from the cops. I can’t keep my mouth shut about anything. Fuck, Kate. I don’t want to go back there.”

  The mother called from the kitchen, panic in her voice. Val bet the world the heartbeat was gone.

  “He’s gone,” Val said. “Get the gun, do something with it. Something smart so hopefully I can find it again.” He ran for the kitchen.

  No heartbeat, too much blood. He started CPR, the boy’s lips like cool, flaccid rubber under his own. He lost himself in the rhythm, keeping time in his head with the song Another One Bites the Dust. Kate stepped out into the rain, as the hum and Queen resonated in his head.

  23

  Kate stepped out the screen door into the rain. It lambasted her, flattening her hair to her head, soaking her T-shirt and pressing it against her body. She ran to the truck and jumped in on the driver’s side.

  When she slammed the door, the dome light went out, and everything seemed very, very black. The rain drummed on the metal roof. She opened the glove box and she reached over, groped around, and picked up the gun. She looked at it in the low light, little more than a blacker spot in the dark.

  Would the police look in his dead mother’s room? Above the drop ceiling in her closet? Would they look anywhere at all? Should she move her car? She looked over at it, yellow and inauspicious in the rain. There would be no reason to look in the car. Right?

  The kitchen lights were long and distorted by the sluices of rainwater flowing down the truck’s window. Darkness pressed from outside.

  What if the thing was out here? She’d seen it, Val had seen it, there was no doubt that’s what got to the little boy. And TJ. And the frat boy. Why hadn’t it gotten Maria? She looked out into the rain, trying to scan the yard for the animal.

  It wasn’t far to the house. She could make it there in time. And also before the police arrived, she mused. It wouldn’t do to be caught standing in the driveway, armed and dangerous, when they arrived.

  Everything exploded in a flash of blinding white light and an accompanying crash. Across the yard, by the gnarled shape of some scrub brush, Kate saw something, a lithe animal shape crouching. Or a rock.

  She might not be able to make it inside after all. She chewed on her lip and stared as hard as she could at the corner of the house, but the lightning had destroyed her night vision.

  She had a gun.

  She could shoot it, if there was something out there. That could at least slow it down, and let her get in the house. She thought of the flimsy two-ply door, and wondered what good it would do. Stupid Val. This was all his fault. Except it wasn’t. All he’d done was get out of jail. And he wasn’t stupid.

  She groped around on the dark floor. Opening the door for the dome light was an option. Then her antagonist would have a clear view of where she was, and the little bit of vision that came back would be gone. She opened the door.

  Feeling the rain blowing into the truck, cool wetness in the warm night, she ran. She held the gun in her left hand then she threw the truck door shut with her right and sprinted across the gravel driveway in her bare feet. And nothing happened.

  She sort of tucked the gun under her soggy T-shirt and went inside. Looking between Val and the mother, she saw their faces were grim. They both looked at her. The mother dropped her eyes, cradling the boy’s limp, wet body to her. Val wasn’t giving the boy CPR anymore. He followed Kate down the hall.

  “You might want to change your shirt.”

  “I think I saw something outside.”

  “Something?”

  “Crouching over by the corner of the trailer, near the brush.” She took the gun to the bathroom, wiped it down. She pulled aside the tile in the closet ceiling, and placed the gun up there. Val handed her the Mossberg, and she placed it next to the handgun. Over the wail of a siren, soft and faint, she replaced the tile.

  “Too late, boys,” Val said. “Seriously, change your shirt. Or don’t. Maybe they’ll be less likely to arrest me.”

  Kate changed her shirt.

  The paramedics came in and started in on the boy, replacing Val’s belt with a real tourniquet. They worked for maybe ten minutes, asked questions of Val, asked the boy’s mother in Spanish. Kate couldn’t understand what she said, but her answers didn’t seem to be what the paramedics were looking for. Then the police arrived.

  Spence hurried in, and Duane Harvey. Duane was two years ahead of Kate’s class, but he and Rich had been pretty tight, smoking pot together and some pickup basketball games, and for that reason Duane had something of a personal vendetta against Val.

  “Hey, Slade, why don’t you get in the car?” Harvey asked, as the call to the coroner was placed.

  “Can I grab a shirt first?”

  “We’re not arresting you. We need to talk to both of you at the station for questioning,” Spence said, sounding kinder.

  “No thanks,” Val said, ignoring Spence and locking eyes with Harvey.

  “Come on, Val. You don’t even have to wear the bracelets. We want to ask you some questions about what happened tonight.” Spence kept his tone even, like someone dealing with a skittish dog.

  “Like why you got a dead kid on your table. I thought you weren’t supposed to be around kids.”

  “I’m the only child he’s ever molested and you
know it,” Kate said. Spence gave a half smile and Harvey looked her up and down. Kate crossed her arms over her chest, glad she’d gotten out of the wet T-shirt. She saw Val’s eyes narrow, and she put a hand on his back.

  “I don’t know why Rich hasn’t cleaned your clock,” Harvey said, turning towards the paramedics and the boy.

  She could see Val weighing the pros and cons of some smart-ass remark.

  “I’ll be right behind you in the truck,” she said to him.

  “You’re serious,” Val said to Spence, all good humor bleeding from his voice.

  “Just for questions. Grab your shirt and some shoes.”

  “Can I sit up front?”

  Harvey rolled his eyes and went to talk to the dead boy’s mother.

  “Yeah, you can sit up front,” Spence said.

  “Then why can’t I ride with her?”

  “I need both of you. If you come, I know she’s going to come. If I don’t bring either of you, it’s something of a crapshoot. You hear me?”

  Val let a long breath out of his nose. “I hear you. Okay.” Val disappeared down the hall for his shirt, and Spence joined Harvey. Kate stood alone as the boy was gently placed into a big black bag, too big for his small body. His mother cried, and Spence spoke soothingly to her in Spanish. Kate picked up a few words, like muerto and mi hijo, but that was about it.

  Val came out of the bedroom and chucked the truck keys at her. She barely caught them.

  “Can we go?” he asked Spence.

  Spence excused himself, and turned to Kate and Val. “Yeah. You following, Kate?” She nodded and fetched her own shoes.

  Val got like this. She knew he would probably cry if he took a moment to say goodbye to her. The first few months visiting him in jail had all been like this, she reflected, heading out to the truck. He’d been keeping his own emotions in, and keeping her at bay.

  It wasn’t until the truck roared to life and the headlights came on, joining the flashing red ambulance lights and the flashing blue police lights that Kate remembered how afraid she’d felt out here not long ago. The truck’s headlights were angled in such a way that they alone illuminated the scrub brush in the side yard. She looked for movement, any sign of life, but in the drumming rain, everything was still.

  The police cruiser behind her turned around on the lawn, and headed for Lott, switching off its lights. Kate switched the radio to a country station Val hated, and followed. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through for Felix’s number. Call him? Don’t call him? Val wasn’t okay, and regardless of how Felix unsettled her at the bar, he was Val’s closest friend. She looked at the clock, and as the phone rang in her ear, debated doing this in the morning.

  “Hello?” It didn’t sound like she’d wakened him.

  “Hi, Felix?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “Kate Fulton—”

  “Val’s Kate?” Felix’s tone changed.

  “Yes, Val’s Kate.”

  “How are you? Is Val all right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, keeping her tone cautious. She kept the red taillights of the police cruiser in sight. “His mother died. And…He’s been taken in for questioning.”

  “What kind of questioning? About his mother? The police have him?” His voice was like syrup, or like butter, smooth and sexy, yet something about it still put her on edge.

  “The sheriff has him.”

  “For what?”

  “A boy was killed tonight, and Val tried to save him. The deputy we talked to told us he’s just being questioned. I’m even being brought in for questioning, and I don’t know anything.”

  “I’ll come by. He’s at the sheriff’s office?”

  Kate said yes, and they said goodbye.

  They hung up and she sat in the dark for a moment, trying to pin down what she didn’t like about him.

  They rolled into Lott’s downtown.

  24

  They made Kate wait for a very long time in a room with bare, white walls. She sat on a wooden chair, at a wooden table. An interrogation room. When they’d questioned her before, they’d done it in an office. She’d been a minor then, she’d been the victim. Now she didn’t know what she was. An accomplice?

  Kate sat back in her chair, swinging her feet, tracing her finger across the rough surface of the table. A cup of coffee, now cold, sat untouched in front of her.

  Spence came in with a file and sat on the edge of the table. They looked at each other for a moment. Spence looked tired, and Kate knew she must look as rough. Her hair didn’t like getting wet, then drying naturally; it tended to result in an unkempt, tangled, curly dark mass.

  “No one is pressing charges. His story and the Mexican woman’s story match up. She’s saying some crazy things, but even Harvey doesn’t think we can pin anything on Val. The woman’s an alien, so at the moment, everyone is more interested in her than in Val.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s a what?”

  “In the country unlawfully.”

  “Oh. Right. You’re letting Val go?”

  “Not yet.”

  The tension flooded back, perhaps worse than before, a knot between her shoulder blades.

  “There’s a guy from Immigration who wants to talk to him. Should be here in a few hours.”

  “About the woman?”

  “Must be. She must be some kind of big deal if they’re coming this early. They asked us not to send him home, to keep him here so they wouldn’t have to go looking for him.”

  Kate felt as though this should have eased the knot in her neck, but it didn’t. Tonight. She’d demand they go to Santa Fe tonight. No more of this.

  “The paramedics said he did an impressive job keeping the boy alive as long as he did. If the kid had lived, he’d be a hero. I want to get your side of things.”

  “But since he died, we’re happy with not getting arrested.”

  “Kate, look. I know he’s not a violent guy. I like him. I want him to stay out of trouble. He’s had a really awful couple of days.”

  “We’re moving to Santa Fe soon,” Kate said.

  “Good. Rich is toxic. This place is toxic.”

  “But you’re still here?”

  Spence smiled a little and shrugged. “I’m fine. My family’s all here. I can’t leave them.”

  Kate nodded, though she didn’t understand. Family was something to run from. She told her version of what happened, omitting, of course, the parts where she hid the gun. She didn’t like lying to Spence, didn’t like lying to anyone, but it was all she’d done for the past few days.

  “That’s all I need to know. They’ve searched his trailer, found nothing linking him to a crime, nothing illegal or out of the ordinary. You’re good to go back there.” Spence said, organizing the papers into his file. “Oh, Kate, one more thing.”

  Oh, fuck. TJ. It felt like the color drained from her face, but Spence didn’t react, so she assumed she hadn’t gone white.

  “Rich called in last night saying his wife was missing.”

  “Good. Took her long enough.”

  “He sounded kind of frantic. He suspects foul play from Val.”

  “Of course he does.” Kate locked eyes with Spence, and felt like she surely was going to hell. “How else can he justify the massive coincidence of his best friend and his wife going missing at the same time? Knowing them, I bet they waited for Val to get out because they knew Rich would think he had something to do with it.”

  Spence studied her a moment. She could feel tears coming. Frustration leaking from her eyes—they were powerless, powerless against the monster in the desert. One slipped from the corner of her left eye, cutting a wet trail down her face.

  Spence’s face softened. “I hope you get to Santa Fe. Wherever TJ and Maria went, he’ll be gunning for Val.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Sure. I’ll take you there.”

  She followed him. She wiped at her eyes. Exhaustion covered her like a cape, heavy
and muffling.

  The walls of the sheriff’s office were all the same, light industrial green, devoid of pictures on the walls. Val’s interrogation room was two doors down from hers.

  “Knock when you want to come out.” Spence knocked once on the door and opened it, admitting her. The lock clicked as he closed it behind her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Val looked exhausted, great dark circles under his eyes, and his dark hair a disheveled mess. “You should go home and get some sleep. I can get one of these guys to give me a ride. I guess someone from Immigration needs to talk to me, this lady’s run a few illegals across the border.”

  She nodded. There didn’t seem to be anything else she could do.

  “You called Felix?” he asked.

  “Yeah, he said he’d be here. He was pretty vague about when.”

  “Here or the house?”

  “I think the house.”

  “Yeah, go home and rest, wait for him, I’ll be along in a bit. I can’t imagine this guy will have much to say to me.”

  “How are you being so calm about this?” Another tear, this time from the other eye.

  “Don’t cry,” Val said, and took her hand. “I’m on auto pilot. I’m exhausted. I’m going to cooperate, and then they’ll let me go. They’ve got nothing on me.”

  His tone calmed her even as she stood sniffling. “Okay.” She wiped at her eyes and nose. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “What can get me in here?”

  “Don’t talk like that. Please.”

  “Okay. I’m safer in here than I am at home.”

  “I want to go tonight.”

  “Okay. As soon as I get back, we tie up loose ends, and then we’re gone.”

  The tension ball melted. They were going. They were going to be safe. Everything would go back to normal.

  “Go home,” he said again.

  She nodded. Being tired made her so goddamn emotional. She hugged him, loving the feel of him through his old T-shirt. So he wouldn’t see her cry she turned away. Like Spence asked, she knocked on the door and he opened it for her.