Strange Country

by Deborah Coates

  Hallie had always preferred her sex athletic and sweaty, but with Boyd she liked it slow, like holding back time, like if they were just tender and patient and slow enough, they would live forever in the moment they created.

  Moonlight filtered through the uncurtained window. And Hallie thought that Boyd in the silver light of the moon looked amazing, his face not just planes and angles, but exactly the right planes and angles, the perfect definition of a man’s face. It actually made her heart hurt to look at him. Like, what would happen if she lost him, if she didn’t know that she could call him, could see him sitting across the table at the end of a long day. She touched his face, ran a finger down his cheekbone; he turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand.

  “Jesus, Boyd,” she breathed.

  In a cool smooth movement, he switched places so he was above her, one arm underneath her. He kissed her and she could feel him hard against her and she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything. This—this—was why she would stay, wanted to stay, would do anything to stay forever, but not just this, not just sex. Sex was just the feeling, a way to express what everything else, the quiet moments, the companionship, the conversations, and even the arguments meant. It meant “I want you.” It meant “I love you.” It meant … Oh God, it meant everything.

  “Hallie?”

  She realized that while she’d been thinking of the world and their place in it, he’d reached across, retrieved a condom, and put it on.

  “Yes,” she said. And, “Yes, oh yes.”

  He entered her and it was perfect, the way sex ought to be but often wasn’t. Like this was where the witching hour came from, where magic came from, when they matched up and the world matched up and just, right then, when she came and he did, time actually stopped. It stopped. Until they had to breathe or die and both of them, at the same time, chose breath.

  An hour later, the sun was up and the world and everything in it was back.

  There were outside chores to do and more to talk about, things that they had been too tired to figure out the night before. Boyd was heading into town to meet with a contractor and possibly Agent Gerson, and Hallie planned to join him, at least for the contractor part, figured she could help throw and sort and make the temporary repairs from last night a little more permanent. She was heading upstairs to change out of her chore clothes when her cell phone rang.

  “Beth?”

  “It’s Laddie. I heard about what happened. At Davies’s house.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Hallie asked, standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. Boyd had gone outside to load an old tarp and some tools into his SUV. “Not the explosion, but how? The stones caused it. Somehow.”

  “Yeah. I had an idea,” Laddie said. “From what people were saying.”

  “Did you know something like that would happen? Could happen?”

  “We should talk,” Laddie said. There was something in his voice, both sad and—Hallie couldn’t quite identify it. Angry? Frightened? Hopeless. “There’s something I haven’t told you about the stones and Prue and all that back then.”

  “All right,” Hallie said. “I’m on my way to town. I can come over.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Can you meet me … You know where’d be good? If you could meet me at that old church, you remember the one. St. Mary’s. It’s good and open.”

  “I know where it is,” Hallie said. It was where Lorie Bixby had died back in the fall, where Martin Weber had killed her. Laddie was right, you could see a long way from there in every direction, though she wasn’t sure why that was important. And she didn’t like most of the reasons, from back when she was a soldier, why it had been important in the past.

  She went outside to find Boyd and told him she’d meet him later. It was drier and colder than it had been. The thin layer of ice that had coated things the night before was gone, no match for a dry north wind.

  “I’ll come,” Boyd said.

  “Don’t you have a contractor to meet?” Hallie asked.

  “I’ll call,” he said.

  “All right.” Truthfully, she didn’t mind. Prue’s death was, after all, an official police investigation, so if Boyd wanted to come, well, it was probably a good idea.

  It took them ten minutes from the time Laddie called to get on the road, Boyd driving because his car had a better heater than Hallie’s old pickup, and they were five miles from the ranch, so maybe fifteen minutes altogether when Hallie’s cell phone rang again. She pulled off one of her gloves and answered.

  “Hallie…” The sound like a single breath puffed into the thinness of the dry, cold day.

  “Who is this?”

  “I need … listen…”

  “Laddie?”

  “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have—”

  Hallie could feel the SUV slow, could feel Boyd’s hand on her arm, though it felt like something distant, like someone else’s hand or someone else’s arm. “Laddie, where are you?” Hallie asked. “Are you at St. Mary’s? We’re coming, Laddie. Hang on. What’s happened? Tell me what’s happened.”

  The car stopped. Hallie felt more than saw Boyd reach for his own cell phone, heard his voice a soft murmur as he called the central dispatch. Laddie lived on the outskirts of Templeton, which had its own police force, though their calls went through the county dispatch anyway. If Laddie was at St. Mary’s already or between there and his house, then it was Taylor County, the sheriff’s office, who’d respond. The important thing, though, was to get someone.

  “I made mistakes, you know, but … I never,” Laddie said after a long pause, his voice so soft, Hallie could barely hear him. “Just … a guy’s got to get by. Everybody’s got to get by.”

  “Laddie, tell me where you are,” Hallie said.

  She was vaguely aware that Boyd had stopped talking, that the SUV was moving again—even if they didn’t yet know exactly where they were moving to.

  “It don’t…” This time the pause was so long that Hallie wasn’t sure Laddie was going to speak again. “It’s cold,” he finally said.

  “St. Mary’s or his house,” Hallie said quietly to Boyd. “Or somewhere in between.” Jesus.

  “Templeton’s sending a car to his house. A sheriff’s car and the ambulance are going to St. Mary’s,” Boyd said equally quietly. “They’ll call.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t even look at him, like all her concentration had to be on Laddie, like it was the only thing that might save him. To Laddie, she said, “Help is coming. Can you hold on?”

  “I never hurt no one,” Laddie said. His voice was softer, but seemed more steady. Or maybe Hallie just wanted it to be. “I mean, I wasn’t always smart. I wasn’t…”

  “Laddie.” Hallie gripped the phone so tightly, the edges bit into her hand. “What happened?” Not that she wouldn’t know soon enough, but talking was good, right? If he kept talking, that would be good.

  “I don’t even know,” he said.

  Hallie was vaguely aware that Boyd had to be traveling at least eighty miles an hour, and she was glad it was daytime and the roads were dry. He was the most careful driver she knew and there was never much traffic, but—

  “Deer.” Spotted the almost invisible movement of brown coat against brown grass.

  Boyd hit the brakes hard so that Hallie had to put her hand out quick, though she was wearing her seat belt. He slowed to under forty, but didn’t stop, and they passed half a dozen deer right at the edge of the road; then he sped up again. In the outside rearview mirror, Hallie saw the deer step lightly onto the highway, then take off again, like hounds were chasing them.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. It was something she did automatically, all the time, because deer and cars on roads that weren’t heavily traveled were a tricky combination, even in the daytime, even if you were paying attention. Laddie had continued to talk, but Hallie had heard only a little bit.

  “
You need to know,” he was saying now. “The stones. They don’t just happen. It takes big magic. Big. You understand?”

  “Yeah, Laddie, I understand,” she said, though she didn’t.

  “Big magic,” he repeated, like it was important. “Like…” His voice faded. “… Could have done it. But I been looking. Maybe because of the iron or the blood or the way it happened. I think it’s all right.”

  “Okay,” Hallie said. “Good. It’s okay.”

  Silence. Then,

  “All the trouble I’ve ever had,” Laddie said. “That stone.”

  Hallie was pretty sure that wasn’t actually true, but it probably wasn’t a good time to say so.

  “Lost the ranch. Lost my wife. Lost—”

  “Laddie?”

  Silence. Shit. Then—“Lost the best dog I ever had.”

  Hallie could hear a siren. Thank God. “Can you hear that, Laddie?” she said. “Help’s coming. You hang on.” Said the last like it was a command, like one of her soldiers.

  There was no reply. “Laddie. Laddie!” Nothing. “Shit.”

  Hallie heard the siren again, louder now, then really loud, a final whoop, and silence.

  Boyd slowed again for deer, two of them this time on his side of the road. There’d been a lot of deer lately, a lot of animals in roads. Half a mile later, Boyd turned onto the gravel road to St. Mary’s church.

  “Hello? Still there?” A new voice on Hallie’s phone.

  “How is he?” Hallie asked.

  The voice, a man and sounding very young, hesitated. “We’ll do what we can,” he said.

  “Tell me.” It wasn’t a question. It even felt like she was back in Afghanistan. It was cold, thin sun in the sky, someone was injured, and she didn’t know who the enemy was or where they were.

  “He’s been shot. He’s lost a lot of blood. Thanks for getting us to him—now shut up and let me do my job.”

  Okay.

  Hallie could appreciate someone who got on with things.

  She disconnected.

  Boyd slowed further. They could see the lights of the ambulance now, another mile, maybe two, farther up. The road they were on was narrow and badly maintained over the winter. The SUV jounced heavily along the rutted surface.

  The EMTs were already loading Laddie into the ambulance when Boyd pulled in behind Laddie’s old Malibu. Maker lay on the ground a few feet away. Hallie wanted to stand right between Maker and Laddie, wanted to tell the dog to get out of here. Go away. It couldn’t have Laddie. She wouldn’t let it have him.

  “You the one who called?” one of the EMTs asked when Hallie reached the ambulance. He looked like he was no older than eighteen, which he probably wasn’t. When she nodded, he said, “Thanks,” slammed the back door shut and banged on it, then headed to the front of the ambulance.

  Hallie paced him. “How is he?”

  The EMT hesitated, pulling open the driver’s door. Boyd, who had come up behind Hallie, flashed his badge, and the EMT said with a grimace, “We can’t stabilize him here. We’re going to the clinic in town. Hopefully, we can buy enough time to get to Rapid City.”

  “Bad, then.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, sounding both stressed and apologetic.

  “Sheriff on the way?” Boyd asked as the EMT started up the engine.

  “Ten minutes, they said.” Then he was turning on the lights, shoving the ambulance into gear, quick whoop of the siren and he had turned and gone, throwing up gravel in a scattering of spray as they left. Hallie had barely seen Laddie, let alone talked to him, if he could even talk. Bad, the kid had said.

  Goddamn.

  What had happened? What the hell had happened? She strode to the middle of the parking lot where she could see in all directions at once. Nothing. The only things moving were grass and a loose shingle on the one section of roof that hadn’t burned.

  Hallie looked over at Laddie’s car. Before she could move toward it, Boyd laid a hand on her arm. “Wait,” he said.

  For the Taylor County sheriff’s car, he meant, for the official investigation. But she wanted to know. Wanted to know what had happened. How it had happened. Was it the same person who’d shot Prue? It had to be the same person. And what had Laddie tried to tell her? Big magic? What did that mean? Like flinging open the car door and riffling through Laddie’s possessions would answer those questions, like destroying evidence would net her the information she craved.

  She wanted to do it anyway. It was what she knew how to do.

  Waiting was harder.

  Five minutes later, Sally Mazzolo rolled slowly into the old gravel lot. She angled her car so it was headed back out again. She sat in the car for another minute, radioing in her location, then got out and looked from Boyd to Hallie with narrowed eyes.

  “He called Hallie,” Boyd said. “That’s how we knew.”

  “Because if he’d just called 911, they wouldn’t have been able to get here on their own,” she said dryly.

  “Well, he didn’t call 911,” Boyd said, not inclined to argue about something someone else did when he wasn’t there. “Photographer coming?” he asked as Mazzolo continued to look at Hallie with suspicion.

  “State’s coming,” she said. She walked around Laddie’s car, bent to peer in the windows, but didn’t open the doors. A mile or so up the road, approaching from the direction opposite the way Hallie and Boyd had come, they could see a gray sedan making its way slowly toward them. It stopped just past the turn-in. The three of them—Boyd, Hallie, and Deputy Mazzolo—waited as the engine turned off, the place suddenly agonizingly quiet again.

  Finally, the woman Hallie had seen at Boyd’s that first day—God, it seemed weeks ago—climbed out of the car. Boyd and Deputy Mazzolo both approached her, Mazzolo giving Boyd a look, like—step back.

  Hallie moved closer so she could hear what they were saying. The state investigator looked exasperated. “Do you have a photographer, evidence bags?”

  “I thought you’d be in charge, being from the state and all,” Deputy Mazzolo said, standing back with her arms crossed, like just the presence of a state investigator was an affront to Taylor County, the sheriff’s office, and her personally. There was a brief moment, something charged in the air between the two women; then the state investigator—hadn’t Boyd said her name was Gerson—turned back to her car, popped the trunk, and took out two cases that she set on the hood of the car. She pulled out a camera, which she handed to Mazzolo. “I want pictures of everything,” she said. “Overlapping pictures. Not just the car, but everything around it.”

  “The ambulance was in here,” Mazzolo said, as if that made pictures or even gathering evidence unnecessary.

  “Just do it,” Gerson said. “And don’t touch the car until I tell you to.”

  With a deep sigh, Mazzolo took the camera. Gerson turned to Boyd. “What are you doing here?”

  Hallie thought Gerson gave him an assessing air, and she couldn’t really blame her. This was the second shooting Boyd had been present at in a week. She had to admit, she’d be suspicious too.

  Boyd looked to his right; his gaze caught Hallie’s and held it. “This is Hallie Michaels,” he said to the investigator. “Laddie Kennedy, that’s the man who was shot, called her.”

  “You knew this man?” the investigator said to Hallie. “The man who was shot here this morning?” Now that Hallie was close, she could see there was something taut about the way the woman held herself, her eyes boring into Hallie’s face, like she was looking hard for something.

  “The man who was shot, yes,” Hallie said. “You don’t know that he was shot here.”

  “Hallie,” Boyd said to her, ignoring the agent’s question, “this is Special Agent Gerson. She’s investigating Prue Stalking Horse’s death.” It was as if Boyd had a way he thought the conversation should go and he was determined to hold up his end of that imaginary conversation, whether anyone else cooperated or not.

  “Are you aware Laddie Kennedy is a suspect
in an earlier shooting?” Gerson asked, as if she could keep the information about which particular shooting to herself, as if there were so many shootings in Taylor County in the past week that Hallie might not be able to figure out the specific one she was talking about. She took a step forward, aggressive, less than two feet separating them.

  Behind her, Hallie could hear Sally Mazzolo swearing softly under her breath, the flash of her camera barely noticeable in the sunlight. “Prue Stalking Horse’s shooting?” Hallie didn’t play according to anyone else’s rules, and she didn’t care about aggressive. “Yeah, he didn’t kill Prue Stalking Horse.”

  “Does he have a rifle? Would you say he’s a marksman?”

  Hallie wasn’t sure why Gerson was asking these questions, and particularly why she was asking them of her. “I don’t know,” she said, like she’d told Boyd earlier. “He was in the army.”

  “And you don’t know anything about what happened here or why anyone might want to shoot him?”

  “I didn’t shoot him. Is that what you’re asking?”

  Boyd put his hand on her arm, like, Take it easy.

  “I’m asking,” Gerson’s tone was deliberate. Hallie thought she was trying to convey a patience she wasn’t actually feeling, something in the undertone, edgy and a little strained. “If you know anyone who’d want to shoot him.”

  “He called me to say,” Hallie spoke slowly, trying to keep her own strain from showing. Shouldn’t they be worrying about Laddie, here? Wasn’t he the one who’d been shot? “That he had some information, something he wanted me to know. But something happened before we could get here and before he could tell me.”

  Gerson looked at her long and hard. Finally, she gave a quick nod that was more like a jerk. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you.” Then, “Deputy,” her voice was sharp. “Have you photographed the entire area?” She stepped between Hallie and Boyd and walked quickly over to Mazzolo and Laddie’s car.

  Boyd pulled Hallie back toward the road. “Did Laddie tell you something on the phone?” he asked.