This Side of Night

by J. Todd Scott

  Chris nodded. “Sometimes, I don’t either. Let me get you a beer, and you can meet Melissa and Jack.”

  * * *

  —

  MEL HAD INSISTED ON DINNER, so she was putting together a salad and working on some black beans when Chris brought Garrison in. Chris was going to grill steaks to serve over the beans, along with a homemade chimichurri sauce Mel had picked up from Vianey Ruiz. Barely three months after giving birth to Jack, Mel still had the beautiful, tired . . . exhausted . . . look of a new mother, but she’d insisted on playing the good host, even to a man she wasn’t sure she liked. She had seen Garrison maybe once at the hospital after Chris’s shooting, but that was several years ago, and they’d never spoken. All she knew about him was whatever Chris had said, and since Chris’s own opinion had waxed and waned, he had been reluctant to have her go out of her way. But she greeted Garrison warmly, without a hint of reservation. She took his folder and replaced it with a cold Rahr, and said that Jack was still asleep, but would be up soon. She told Chris to get the steaks on the grill, and that whatever they needed to talk about could be done just as well, and probably better, on a full stomach.

  Garrison smiled, agreed, and took a long drink of his beer, as Rocky sat on the floor at Mel’s feet and looked up at everyone.

  * * *

  —

  CHRIS DID THE STEAKS MEDIUM-RARE, the way everyone wanted, and they sat in the kitchen and ate them with the windows open so they could watch the sun roll lower and smell the creosote and the sweet acacia. Mel finished first and brought Jack in and showed him off, and as Chris held his son, Garrison said he looked big and might grow up to be a football player, like his dad. Mel asked if Garrison had children of his own—carefully avoiding the question of whether he was married, something Chris didn’t know—and Garrison said that he had two daughters, Angie and Megan. Angie was a freshman at Juniata in Pennsylvania who hoped to be a doctor someday, and Megan was a senior in high school, also back east. She was a field hockey player, and pretty damn good.

  He admitted he didn’t get to see enough of her games, but she sent him plenty of videos. He hoped maybe she’d consider University of Texas at Austin, or maybe Chris and Mel’s alma mater, Baylor, but so far none of the schools she was interested in were this far west.

  Garrison then asked for another beer, and Mel went to get him one.

  After dinner, Mel stayed inside with Jack, and Garrison and Chris went out to the front porch, where they’d started. Chris brought out an ice-choked bucket of Rahrs, and Garrison brought his folder, still unopened, and settled into a chair, as Chris fished out a beer for each of them. Mel had told Garrison there was room enough for him to spend the night, but the agent had insisted he had a room back in Valentine. That was a long drive, but he had meetings all the next day, and it wasn’t as long as going all the way back to El Paso.

  Chris got the impression that Garrison had slipped out of El Paso quickly to come see him, maybe without telling anyone that he was coming to Murfee.

  It also wasn’t lost on Chris that Darin Braccio’s and Morgan Emerson’s burned bodies had been recovered outside Valentine.

  * * *

  —

  THE TWO MEN DRANK their beers silently.

  The sun wasn’t yet down, and long shadows were still gathered on the ground where cenizo and Texas mountain laurel ran into the distance. Over time Chris had learned to pick out the tall spikes of spice lily, the dark brown of chocolate flowers, and even the trumpet shape of sacred datura—jimsonweed—that opened its flowers only at night for hawk moths. Chris had spent nights watching Rocky chase the hand-sized moths drawn to its pale white flowers under the glow of the house’s security lights.

  As with his Spanish lessons, Chris had made it a point to learn about this place. He wasn’t sure he’d ever know it, truly understand it, but for as long as he was here, he had to try.

  “It’s quiet here. I don’t know if that would drive me crazy or not,” Garrison said. “But I can see the beauty.”

  “It takes some getting used to,” Chris conceded.

  “And have you? Gotten used to it?”

  “I don’t know. Some days . . .” Chris shrugged. “It’s weird. I think Mel has taken to it faster than I have, more than I ever would have guessed. She despised Murfee so much when we first got here, and now . . .”

  “She seems like a good woman.” Garrison laughed. “Tough.”

  “Better than I deserve,” Chris said.

  Garrison raised his beer, a lonely toast. “Well, Sheriff, on that we can agree. I’m glad you said it so I didn’t have to.”

  * * *

  —

  GARRISON TOLD CHRIS about DEA’s FAST program, and how they were looking for a place to get some specialized training done. It’d be a week, tops, and Garrison was hoping they could use the outskirts of Murfee, and Chris agreed—he had no problem with that. Better, he could talk to Terry Macrae over at Tres Rios and see about them setting up shop there. Macrae might let them use some of his currently empty bunkhouses, so they wouldn’t have to stay in town at all. It would be ranch-hand living—rough—but Chris imagined it had to be better than whatever accommodations they’d gotten used to in Afghanistan. Chris had talked to Danny a few times about his military tours over there, and had a hard time picturing anyone investigating, well, anything, in a place like that.

  When he asked Garrison what an agent could truly accomplish in a war zone, Garrison said he didn’t know, either.

  * * *

  —

  “HOW’S DANNY FORD DOING? Has he made the successful transition to small-town deputy?” Garrison asked.

  “He’s fine. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but after everything that happened with the Earls, he wasn’t going to leave Murfee anyway, so at least some good came out of him staying. He felt responsible for Ben Harper’s death, I think.”

  “I went to Harper’s funeral,” Garrison said.

  “I didn’t see you there,” Chris said, legitimately surprised.

  “No, I didn’t want to intrude. You were there with your other deputies, and with Melissa. It wasn’t my place, but I wanted to be there.”

  “I appreciate that. I never got a chance to go to Darin Braccio’s memorial. Sheriff Ross did, on behalf of the department.” Chris spun a beer bottle in his hands. “Anyway, if Danny was responsible for Ben’s death, then I guess I was, too. But I don’t think that was exactly all of it, even if he didn’t say it then, or now. Danny was always going to stick around because of America.”

  Garrison paused, then: “Are they a thing?”

  “Well, that’s hard to say. They spend time together, I guess, but they don’t talk about it, and I don’t ask. On duty, they’re all business, and that’s what matters.”

  Garrison stood, searching for another beer in the ice. He leaned against the porch rail, with stars just turning on in the east; one at a time, a rising glow coloring the horizon. “Speaking of business, what do you think of Chuy Machado?”

  “The sheriff over in Terrell? Nothing. We talk every now and then.”

  “Do you ever talk about his Tejas unit?”

  “I know about it. It’s another one of those task forces you Feds are so fond of. He offered a spot to one of my deputies. I turned him down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not in the drug interdiction and investigation business. Particularly not in another county. You know that. That’s what you do.”

  “C’mon, Chris, that’s not exactly true. You know that better than anyone.”

  Chris set his empty beer down. He was done drinking for the night. If Garrison had come to the Far Six to talk about Chuy Machado, or Chris’s stance on drug trafficking in the Big Bend, it had been a long drive for a very short conversation. “What I do know is that I have a handful of deputies who have enough to do just keeping this cou
nty policed, all ten thousand acres of it. I’m not going to waste one by shipping him off to chase drug smugglers an entire county away.” What Chris wanted to say was that he wasn’t going to risk one of them, not for that. “If we catch them here, we handle it.”

  “Sheriff Machado’s Tejas unit has been catching a lot of them lately.”

  “And we’re not?”

  Garrison raised his hands. “Put the guns away, Chris. I’m just curious what Chuy Machado is up to. Specifically, his son Johnnie, who runs the unit.”

  Chris paused, trying to read Garrison’s face in the retreating light. “Is this where you tell me you’ve been hearing things again? That you think this is like our situation with Sheriff Ross?”

  Garrison hesitated, and Chris knew that both of them could agree that no situation, that no one, was exactly like the former sheriff. Garrison shrugged. “Possibly. I don’t know . . .”

  “Sounds to me like Chuy’s deputies are doing their job, and doing it well, if that’s what you think the job should be.”

  Garrison tapped his bottle against the porch’s railing, a sound that sent faint echoes across the scrub. “Would you consider putting Danny in bed with them for a while?”

  “Why?”

  “You told me what he did with the Earls, then all that undercover work he did before that for DPS. He’s a natural, and . . .”

  “And I’m not asking him to do that again. Not like that, not ever. I’m not helping you run any sort of operation, undercover or otherwise, against another sheriff. I told you I’m out of that business, for good.”

  “You can say that, Chris, and tell yourself you believe it, but that doesn’t make it true. It can’t be true. Look at what you found floating in your river yesterday morning.”

  “And look at how your last operation down here turned out. How’s Morgan Emerson doing?” In the gloom, Chris could see Garrison’s jaw clench, hard, and the sudden darker cast to eyes that were only focused on him. It was a horrible, shitty thing to say. “I didn’t mean that. That was over the line, way over the line, and I’m sorry.”

  “No, you said it exactly because you meant it. I get it, I do, and that’s the one thing you are damn right about. It didn’t turn out well for anyone. What a goddamn mess.” Garrison pointed his beer bottle at Chris. “And we’re never going to escape it, you and I . . . ever. I don’t know how, and I’m not sure I even want to anymore. It defines us. There is no ‘us’ without it.” Garrison paused, took a breath. “But to answer your question, Morgan’s doing okay. She’s still back home, with family. It’s where she should be.”

  Chris let a long silence settle, let the sparks between them blow out before he said something to flare them again. He wanted to rewind the conversation a few minutes . . . a few years. “Anyway, there’s already history between Johnnie Machado and Danny. They had some sort of run-in at one point, up in Crockett. I don’t know the details. Danny’s had run-ins with all sorts of people. He’s got one damn gear, full-speed ahead, whether people get out of his way or not. I can ask him about it if you want, but I won’t have him tangling with this Tejas unit.”

  “Forget it, I’ll let it go. But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to talk to you.”

  Chris sighed, and then despite what he’d decided only moments ago, got himself the last beer out of the bucket. He opened it and steeled himself with a long drink.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. I didn’t think so at all . . .”

  NINE

  Danny watched her sleep.

  The slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.

  Her gently closed eyes.

  It seemed like right now, sleeping was the only time she was ever truly peaceful, relaxed.

  Dreaming?

  There was always far too much going on behind those eyes when they were open.

  And he had no idea what was going on behind them when they were closed, either.

  * * *

  —

  DANNY GOT UP QUIETLY from the couch, so as to not wake Amé, and went to get himself a beer out of her fridge. She’d finally come in a while ago, muddy and exhausted from the nearly forty-eight hours straight she’d been awake and working. He hadn’t seen her at all during the day, since she’d been at the autopsies at Hancock Hill and he’d been dealing with Eddy’s initial appearance and the drunken altercation at Mancha’s.

  There was still plenty more work to be done at Eddy’s trailer, but at least the bodies were gone, and the rest of it could take its time.

  There was no hurry. Eddy wasn’t going anywhere for a while, and those five dead men would keep. After a long, hot shower, before drifting off to sleep, Amé had said they’d start getting the forensic returns soon. Maybe sooner than expected, since one of the DPS techs who’d come out to the canyon was the same one who’d taught a class at that training in Austin. His name had been Ron, Don, something like that, and he’d clearly remembered Amé. That didn’t surprise Danny, since she was pretty damn memorable, after all.

  Before getting called back to town to deal with that clusterfuck at Mancha’s, Danny had been at the trailer long enough to watch Ron or Don follow Amé all around. Danny had recognized that look, the way he watched her. The way he asked questions he knew the answers to just to hear her talk. Danny knew all about that, too.

  Been there, done that. He just hoped that with all his fumbling around, Ron or Don actually got some real work done, more than what he’d discovered with the radios, though Danny had to give him credit for that. The issue with the radios was going to be a long conversation with Eddy and his court-appointed lawyer, Santino Paez. A very long conversation.

  Danny wondered if Ron or Don found the time to ask her out when they were pulling the bodies out of the river.

  Danny put the cool beer against his forehead, caught a glance of his shirtless torso in the small apartment’s even smaller window. They weren’t visible in the ghostly image reflected in the glass, but the wounds he’d received out at the Murfee Lights were still there: pale crosses on his skin. Wounds he got the night Ben Harper had died, and he and Amé had carried his body out of the desert.

  In the moments before he was killed, Ben had given Amé his old Saint Michael pendant—Michael was the patron saint of cops—and she still wore it, every day. He never saw her without it. Danny had his scars from that night, and she had that necklace.

  That was probably the heart of it . . . Ben’s death. The deputy had been Amé’s friend, her mentor, and it was his murder that had drawn her and Danny together. Ben had been killed by that piece of shit Jesse Earl way out by the Murfee Lights—trying to save Danny’s life—and during Danny and Amé’s long walk back to town together carrying his body, they had talked. Or Danny had talked, sharing secrets with her he hadn’t spoken out loud for years. She’d listened, never judging, and somehow, out of all those horrible hours, they’d discovered something about each other. They’d found each other out there. But it also meant a part of their relationship might always stay in that place, far beyond the Murfee Lights.

  Now they lived this weird, shadow life. A constant twilight, like it had been that night in the desert. Amé had taken up Ben’s old apartment, and Danny found himself spending more time here than anywhere else. They saw each other first thing most mornings, and the last thing at night, and on many of those nights, one of them would fall asleep within a hand’s reach of the other on her couch. Close, but not touching. It was a joke that everyone thought they were together, when they themselves couldn’t say one way or another, or explain exactly what they did mean to each other.

  They were inseparable, and somehow still separate.

  But Danny was fine with that, just like he was fine spending all his free time with her in Ben’s apartment above Modelle Greer’s garage—although enough months had passed that it was properly Amé’s place now. There was nowhere else he’d rather be, and no
one else he’d rather be with. He wasn’t wasting his time, because the only hours that mattered were the ones he shared with her.

  Hours like those at the Lights.

  * * *

  —

  A TRUCK SLID BY OUTSIDE, lights leading the way, as Danny turned his back to his reflection, to where Amé lay curled on the couch. Her gun was unholstered on the table in front of her, always within reach, whether he stayed the night or not. That was something Ben had taught her, or something she’d learned in her past. That past, before Danny had come to Murfee, before Ben and the Earls, was another thing she didn’t talk about. He knew about her brother’s murder, and the rumors that Sheriff Cherry—when he was a brand-new deputy himself—had implicated the former sheriff and his then chief deputy, Duane Dupree, in that killing, but no one had all the details. Just whispers and local Murfee gossip, some of it bitter, since there were still plenty of people in the county who fondly remembered Sheriff Ross and wished he was still alive.

  Danny guessed they’d all learn just how many in the upcoming election.

  Amé moved, turned a bit, started to reach out a hand to where Danny had been sitting. Her dark hair had grown out over the last few months, like his own, and when it was like it was now, a beautiful mess against her flushed skin, he always wanted to reach out and brush it away.

  To touch her, just so he could see her eyes.

  All those half smiles of hers, all those secrets she didn’t share. All the conversations they never had. He’d always thought he had this compass inside him pointing in only one direction, but whenever she was around, it went absolutely haywire. He lost all sense of direction, but he wasn’t lost. . . . All directions pointed only toward her.