Nobody (Men of the White Sandy) (Volume 3)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Nothing happened. He’d give it one more try and then he’d have to bail. Anything more and he’d attract the wrong sort of attention. Damn it, he just wanted to make sure the boy was okay.

  While he waited, he looked around. It was about 4:45 in the morning—still early enough that the neighborhood was quiet. He didn’t have much time, but then he didn’t need much—just to check on the boy.

  Nice place—all the windows had glass in them and the yard was mowed. So this Nancy Winking person took care of her house. That was a good sign, right?

  Doubt crept in. Melinda would kill him if she knew he was here. She’d asked him to trust her and he wanted to. He really did. But the boy …

  Above his head, the window opened. “Hello?” a small voice—Jamie’s—whispered into the dark. “Nobody?”

  The tightness in his chest unclenched so fast that it made him dizzy. He looked around one final time—no curtains fluttered, no lights popped on in any of the houses he could see—so he stood up.

  “Nobody!” Jamie said in an excited whisper as he threw his arms around Nobody’s neck.

  “Hey, boy,” Nobody replied, patting him awkwardly on the back. “Came to check on you.”

  “I knew you would—I knew it!” But then his excitement drained. “I don’t want anyone to see you—you better get inside.”

  Nobody hesitated. Knocking on a window was one thing. Actually going inside?

  “Please? I can show you my room.”

  Nobody nodded. He wouldn’t stay long, he reasoned. He’d just make sure that the boy’s room was okay—that he wasn’t locked in or had any new bruises or anything. Then he’d go.

  He hefted his weight up and climbed into the room. Jamie turned on the small lamp next to his bed. Nobody flinched at the light, but he looked around.

  The room was plain—a blue rag rug was on the floor, a twin bed with a blue blanket was next to a small white table with the lamp and a white dresser stood off on one side. There was a small bookshelf with books and a few worn looking toys on it next to a rocking chair. He could see someone sitting in the chair to read stories to a child in bed.

  It wasn’t a dark, dank cell. It was actually pretty nice.

  Jamie sat down on the bed. “It’s not bad here,” he said in a quiet voice. “She thinks I should eat a salad every night. I don’t like salad, but she won’t let me have carrots for lunch and dinner.”

  Nobody half grinned at this as he tested the doorknob. It opened.

  “The bathroom’s down the hall,” Jamie went on. “I have my own towels and everything, but I hafta hang them back up.”

  “Melinda said you were doing your chores real well,” Nobody replied as quietly as he could. He looked around the room again. He wouldn’t fit in the chair and besides, that felt … well, for some strange reason, that felt like he’d be trespassing too much. The chair belonged to the woman.

  The bed was out, too. It was just a twin—and besides, it probably squeaked. So he folded himself up on the floor. Which squeaked. Damn it. “I’m real proud of you for that.”

  “Yeah …” Jamie shrugged. He mimicked Nobody’s cross-legged posture. “It’s okay. Better than home used to be, but not as good as camp with you. I really miss the horses. Miz Nancy doesn’t even have a dog.”

  Nobody nodded. Anything would be better than home—even living in a strange house with a strange woman. He’d have to see if Melinda would let Jamie have a dog. She’d probably know how to get one without borrowing it.

  The silence grew between them. “You doing okay?” He swallowed. Talking about feelings wasn’t really his strong suit. But he was going to make himself try, for the boy’s sake. “About your parents?”

  Jamie looked away. “I … I wake up, you know? I wake up thinking that this has all been a really weird dream and I’m back in my old room with the dresser against the door and Dad’s going to come in and hit me with his belt because I hoped they were dead.” He curled up onto himself, head against his knees. “I don’t want it to be a dream. I don’t want them to come back.”

  His body began to shake, even though he didn’t cry. Damn it. This was the sort of thing Nobody needed Melinda for, or even Rebel. Emotions were messy and painful—they could be used against a man. Against a boy. That’s why he tried not to have them

  But beyond that, he understood exactly how Jamie felt.

  He’d been there, after Albert had opened the closet door and carried Nobody home and laid him on the couch. After Albert had rubbed bear fat on Nobody’s festering burn wounds and dripped water into his mouth from a rag so that Nobody wouldn’t die of thirst but wouldn’t guzzle the cup full so fast it would make him retch.

  Of how seeing the man who wasn’t a man but a coyote stand in the doorway and smile down at Nobody and say something that he didn’t understand right before Albert came in and told Nobody that his mother was dead and her boyfriend was dead, too. And not believing the old man because to believe it was to hope and Nobody didn’t know how to do that.

  It’d taken him weeks to fully accept that his mom was gone and not coming back. And even when he’d recovered enough to believe that, he’d still been afraid that her ghost wouldn’t let him be, that her sica spirit would haunt him until she drove him mad.

  That fear, more than anything else, had pushed him into bars and brawls and women’s arms as he tried to get away from the fact that, even though he never saw her, his mom was still torturing him.

  Nobody got up. So he wasn’t so good with words. The boy didn’t need words. He wouldn’t believe them anyway, not yet. Maybe after they got him back home, safe in Melinda’s new house—the one that Nobody could walk into any time he wanted—maybe then Jamie would start to believe that they were dead and gone. It’d be different for the boy than it’d been for Nobody. Jamie wouldn’t be alone.

  Just like he wasn’t alone now. Nobody went to the boy’s side and sat on the edge of the bed. It squeaked, but he tried not to care. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders like he’d seen Melinda do and sort of hugged him.

  It took a long time, but eventually the boy stopped shaking. By then, the sky outside his window was starting to show hints of color. Nobody found a clock hanging on the wall. It was almost six—hell. He hadn’t planned on staying this long, but the boy had needed him.

  “I have to go,” he said, rubbing Jamie’s back before he stood.

  “Will you come back?”

  Nobody didn’t know the answer to that. “Melinda’s going to see you next week. And you won’t be here too much longer. You’ll be home soon.”

  The boy nodded. “Okay. I’m glad you came.”

  Nobody actually smiled. “Me, too.” And he was. The boy was okay. This was a nice place to stay for a little while and soon enough, he’d be back where he belonged, where Nobody wouldn’t have to hide in the shadows to see him.

  Filled with these good thoughts, Nobody turned and climbed out of the window. His feet hit the ground in the same moment he realized that something was wrong. He dropped into a fighting crouch but he was too late—a bright light hit him square in the face. He couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “All the way down—now!” a voice shouted.

  Nobody tensed. He didn’t need to see with his eyes to know where the man was standing. He could hit him hard and—

  “Nobody!” came Jamie’s cry from inside.

  Then there were more voices—a scared sounding woman and another man’s voice. “You heard him, buddy,” the second man said. “All the way down.”

  Something hard jammed into the top of Nobody’s head from above. A gun.

  Shit.

  He fell to his knees and put his hands behind his head. He didn’t want to go all the way down—too easy to be kicked. But he also didn’t want to be shot. Bullet wounds hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “You’re under arrest for breaking and entering,” the first man said. Nobody heard a noise that sounded like a gun being holstered, then the metallic clink
of handcuffs. “Don’t make my partner shoot you.”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Jamie cried from inside. “Nobody!”

  “Come away from the window, Jamie,” the woman’s voice said. She still sounded terrified but there was steel in her voice. “Now.”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Jamie wailed. His voice grew distant, as if he’d been pulled out into the hall.

  The gun jammed into his scalp pushed. “Are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way, buddy?”

  If it were just him, they’d do this the hard way. He was pretty sure the cops knew it, too. He couldn’t go back to jail, couldn’t be found guilty and be sent back to prison. He’d be a repeat offender—his record would be Exhibit A that he was a bad, bad man who shouldn’t see the light of the moon for years to come. He could bulldoze his way through these two cops with hopefully only a few collateral flesh wounds. No one would believe Jamie that it’d only been ‘nobody’ in his room.

  Nobody could disappear again. He might have to move his camp, but he could do it. He could survive. He had before, he could do it again.

  But if he did that—if he fought his way out of this like he always used to …

  “Nobody!” Jamie cried from somewhere in the house.

  He’d never get to see the boy again. Worse, he’d never get to see Melinda again. He’d be completely, utterly alone.

  Melinda.

  Jesus, she was going to kill him.

  He lay down on the ground and didn’t make a sound as the first cop’s knee drove into his back. His arms were wrenched behind his back and his wrists were cuffed.

  A thud came from behind him—the second cop jumping out of the window. Together, the two cops picked him up. Nobody’s shoulder popped out of joint, but it didn’t hurt. He wasn’t about to make a sound that the cops would take as a sign of aggression—or a sound of pain that Jamie might hear.

  “You picked the wrong house to bust into,” the second cop said as they walked him back to a black and white. Nobody was slammed against the side of the car before the cop opened the door and shoved him into the backseat. “I installed that security system myself. Nobody messes with my aunt.”

  Yeah, that sounded about right. Nobody had messed with the guy’s aunt.

  Now there’d be hell to pay.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Melinda tried not to worry. She hadn’t seen Nobody in two days. There’d been a time when two days without Nobody was just the tip of the iceberg.

  But something about his absence this time felt … off. Like the fact that the clinic and the center didn’t get cleaned. The only time Nobody had failed to do his job was when Jack had been staking out the place and even then, Melinda was pretty sure Nobody hadn’t made it in only because of that whole stab wound thing.

  So for him to just disappear without a trace was problematic.

  Then there was the call she got from Bertha Watterkotte at eight a.m. on the nose Wednesday morning. There’d been a disturbance at the foster mother’s house, she told Melinda in an all-business voice. A man had been arrested leaving Jamie Kills Deer’s room at 5:52 in the morning two nights before.

  Ms. Watterkotte hadn’t provided any other details—indeed, she’d stressed that she was only informing Melinda of this because Jamie was refusing to talk to anyone about what had happened that morning and perhaps Melinda could come in this afternoon to speak with the boy?

  Melinda hung up the phone in a daze. Jesus, what a mess. And it’d happened two days ago! Somehow, she knew exactly what had happened.

  That man had tracked down the foster home and gone slinking off into the shadows and gotten caught.

  By God, she was going to wring his neck.

  Anger got her moving. Someone had to be the responsible adult here and that someone was her, apparently. She didn’t have time to waste. Rebel was already gone, doing whatever it was a medicine man did, so Melinda was on her own here. She called Tammy and informed her that she wouldn’t be in to the center today, so Tammy should just do the best she could. Then she dressed in her best suit—okay, it was the only suit she’d moved out here, the one she wore when she had to go to the board meetings for the Mitchell Trust Fund—and headed to the police station.

  When she walked in, Sheriff Means did a double take. “Ms. Mitchell?”

  “Sheriff Means, we have a problem.”

  He regarded her for a second. “What’d he do?”

  Yeah, the sheriff wasn’t a stupid man. “He tracked down Jamie in his foster home and got arrested.” Then she remembered—she’d told him Nancy’s last name. And when a person’s last name was Winking, there probably weren’t that many listed in the phone book. Damn it all to hell—this was her fault.

  Well, her fault up to a point. That man had promised her that he wouldn’t make trouble and look what had happened. Trouble with a capital Nobody. “I don’t know where he is. I only just found out he’d been arrested.”

  Sheriff Means gave her a startled look, but then he sat down and fired up his outdated computer. “He got arrested? What’d they do—taze him a dozen times? I didn’t think Nobody would ever go quietly.”

  That was a good point—one she’d hazard a guess as to why. “If they cornered him around Jamie, he might not have wanted to risk getting the boy caught in the crossfire.”

  Sheriff Means snorted, like he didn’t believe this was possible. Melinda let it slide. “I can track him down, but it might take a little while.” Then he looked up at her again. “You going to go visit him?”

  “No,” she replied, not even knowing if what she wanted was possible. “I want you to get him in your custody and bring him back here.”

  Sheriff Means let forth a low whistle as he leaned back in his chair. “You want me to do what, now?”

  She straightened her shoulders and gave the sheriff her best Mitchell sneer. It was never as good as her sister’s, but it was good enough. “I believe the charges against him will be dropped and he’ll be released. I don’t want that to happen—not right away. I want him transferred to your custody and I want you to keep him locked up until I have custody of that boy. Do I make myself clear?”

  Sheriff Means’ mouth dropped open. “You want me to lock him up?”

  “For a while,” she clarified. “I’m sure you have some outstanding warrants you can use to get custody transferred to you—tribal jurisdiction or something. He won’t be able to post bail. Anything to hold him long enough that he can’t do something stupid to jeopardize me getting custody of that boy.” She gave the sheriff a hard grin. “I can’t have a vigilante running around here.”

  “Oh, sure—you say that now, when it’s convenient for you.”

  She ignored him. “Now that Jamie’s an orphan,” she went on. The word sounded rough in her mouth. Now that he was alone in this world, just like Nobody had been. “It’ll be harder to track him through the system. If I lose him …”

  She shook her head. If she didn’t get custody, Jamie was the kind of kid who could fall through the cracks—alone, mostly quiet like Nobody had taught him to be. The chances were decent that he’d be shuffled around, a sitting duck for bullies and predators.

  It might not happen. There were a lot of good foster families in the world, people who cared about kids and did their level best to make sure those kids had a good start in the world. But she knew enough of the world to know that not everyone had a kid’s best interest at heart.

  “I can’t let that happen,” she finished. “Can you?”

  Sheriff Means tilted his head as if he were debating this. “I might be able to help you out—provided the current charges are dropped against Nobody. You have the power to make that happen, do you?”

  She didn’t. Not yet. But Nobody wasn’t the only one who could figure out where Nancy Winking lived. “Do I have your word that you won’t lock him up and throw away the key? You’ll release him when the time is right and that you’ll treat him fairly while he’s here?”

  Sheriff Mean
s scratched at his neck in a way that was probably supposed to look lazy but instead came off as almost predatory. How long had he waited to get Nobody in his custody? A long time.

  In that moment, she almost backed out of it. Putting Nobody in a cell—even one in this small office—was tantamount to breaking him one day at a time. She didn’t want to do that but he’d gone back on his word to her and mucked up the whole process of getting Jamie in her custody. She was as mad as hell that he hadn’t trusted her, hadn’t trusted that she would be able to navigate the system and get Jamie home in a matter of months, if not weeks.

  He could just sit in a cell for a few days and think about what he’d done while she cleaned up his mess.

  “Tell you what,” Sheriff Means said in a too-casual voice. “I’ll do my best to get him here and hold him and we’ll go from there. Deal?”

  It was a crappy deal and they both knew it. But she needed Nobody someplace safe, where he wouldn’t get himself killed and he wouldn’t put Jamie at risk by being a stubborn idiot.

  “Deal.”

  Sheriff Means chuckled. “Lady,” he said as she headed out to her car, “you are a piece of work.”

  She didn’t bother to reply.

  *

  Melinda knocked on the pristine white door of a pristine ranch house. The moment the sound faded, she reconsidered. If her sister Madeline knew what she was doing—barging in on Nancy Winking three hours before they were to meet at the social services office, Madeline would say that Melinda was no better than Nobody Bodine was—headstrong, stupid and above the rules.

  She’d be right. But it was too late now.

  The curtain moved, but the door did not open. “Yes?” said a worried voice inside. Melinda could just barely see an older woman through the glass.

  “Ms. Winking? Hello.” Melinda pulled one of her hot-off-the-presses business cards out of her handbag. She held it up so Ms. Winking could see the card through the window. “My name is Melinda Mitchell and I’m the director of the White Sandy Child Care Center. We’ve spoken on the phone about Jamie Kills Deer. May I come in?”