by Waite, Urban
“I was going to call,” the lawyer said.
“Where is the heroin?” the first man said, stopping to pick the boulder up from the floor.
The lawyer stuttered something as he watched the rock rise from the floor into the man’s hands. He felt the back of his legs touch the couch, the girl’s hand held against his thigh, the touch of her fingers.
“Two girls,” the man shouted. The terrible vein in his forehead rose under the strain of the rock in his hands.
“Two girls?” the lawyer repeated.
“Where is it?”
“It’s on its way.”
“From here to Canada—,” the man said.
“Just a minute—”
“From Canada to here—”
“Just a minute—” He felt his legs give beneath him, his knees knocking together, brittle as petrified wood.
“Looking for our heroin,” the man finished, all the time crossing the floor with the boulder held in his hands. It seemed heavy, looked heavy, and the lawyer watched the strain on the man’s face. The eyes clear, held down on him. The lawyer’s knees buckled and he dropped onto the couch behind him.
The man raised the boulder up over his head.
“No,” the lawyer said.
The boulder raised high.
“No,” the lawyer begged. “Please.”
The girl screamed.
THE IMPACT CARRIED THROUGH THE WALL. NORA GOT up from the bed and went to the television and switched the set off. Through the wall, she could hear Eddie’s television going. Then the sound of his outside door opening and the brief shadow of someone passing across the shades. The door handle rattled. Nora went to the bathroom. She looked up at the high window and pulled it open. The window was six feet off the ground. She didn’t think she could fit. She left the window open and went back into her room. The wood around the door splintered, the knob still there but a jagged hole to the side. She got down under the bed and squeezed herself in. The crack of the wood again. She could see the splinters falling to the floor.
The door opened. She saw it swing wide and a pair of men’s boots standing there, the toes pointing toward her, then turning and facing the bathroom. From under the bed, she could see him walk across the floor and disappear behind the bathroom wall. The carpet smelled like water damage and mold, old plastic, and she fought back a sneeze. The space she was in was barely enough room to move her head. The boots reappeared. For a while they stood there in front of her. She imagined he was looking at the television. What had he seen in the back there? The truck? The horses? He’d assume she had run.
The boots walked directly over to her, turned, and faced the dresser and the television. She felt his weight on the bed, the mattress depressing over her, the side of her face pressed into the carpet. Something crustlike on the fibers near her left ear.
There was a brief whistle of air, the television exploded, and she could see the glass fall to the floor. He lay back on the bed, and Nora felt his weight disperse across the mattress springs, his boots leaving the carpet for a moment. She felt him roll back and then roll forward, testing his weight on the bed, and then he was on his feet and he went out the door.
Nora didn’t move. She listened for what sounds she could hear. All she saw were the white walls around her, the base of the dresser, the television glass on the carpet, the legs of the table and chairs near the window. He hadn’t closed the door on the way out, and she could see the night out there, the way the light from the motel flooded out and lay on the parking lot. There was a cold draft coming from the opening and playing along the floor. Her cell phone was somewhere in the sheeting of the bed. She didn’t know if he had found it.
She thought that if she could just get it, maybe she could call Hunt. With her fingers digging into the carpet, she began to pull herself out. She kept an eye on the open door. Where was Eddie? She didn’t like the quiet now, no cars passing, nothing happening, no sound of gravel, a small drift of air from the open door. Her legs lay behind her and she tried to use them in the limited space, as if she were swimming, frog-kicking from under the bed.
The door to Eddie’s adjoining room shattered out on its hinges. A hand reached down and found her leg. He pulled, fighting her loose, kicking leg. Her fingernails in the carpet, digging in, then her hands on the legs of the bed as she came out from under, then on the bed frame itself. She felt the rug burning wherever her skin came exposed—her chin, her left cheek, her fingernails and fingers. He pulled harder, backing into Eddie’s room and pulling her with him.
YOU EVER PULL OVER SOMEONE YOU KNOW?” DRISCOLL said. He was sitting at his desk. Drake sat across from him, two coffee cups on the desk between them. They’d been waiting three hours for news from the lab regarding the bullets taken out of the dead horses. There was nothing left for them to do.
“Sure. I pull them over.”
“Even if you know them?”
“It’s not that big a place. I know ninety percent of the cars out there.”
“You ever surprised by what they have to say?”
“There’s a few wise ones out there, but for the most part it’s just what it is. I’m not looking to write anyone up. It’s not good to go around pissing folks off if you’re just going to see them later on at the bar.”
“I used to think I could be real tough. For the first three or four years, I was serious about this thing. You know, I carried my pager everywhere, I carried my gun. Regulations, everything. My friends always introduced me as the cop. It gets pretty old, you know. Life isn’t as much fun. No one wants to do stupid things anymore.”
“Would you have arrested them?”
“No. That’s not really what I’m talking about here. It’s difficult enough as it is. There’s no point. I tend to think those friends of mine are going to do stupid things no matter what. I’d rather be there in case they need a hand up at the end. But I do expect it. I don’t go around thinking, I’m going to need to arrest this guy. Even if I know the guy, know he’s a real straight edge. It’s better to always have that in the back of your head, the ‘what if’—maybe his wife left him, maybe he was fired from his job. Even if you know them, I think you need to be prepared. You get what I’m saying?”
“I get that your friends do stupid things.”
“Okay, how about this one. So you pull a guy over, you think you know him, and so you walk over there and you smile and look in the window, and boom, you’re blown away. My point is that instead of following your expectations, you try and treat everyone the same. Sure, these guys are my friends, they do stupid things, but what’s important is that you’re never surprised. The best advice anyone ever gave me was: Watch the hands. The face isn’t going to hurt you. It’s what’s in the hands that will hurt.”
“You worried about me?”
“Deputy Drake, yes, I worry about you. I know these are your people. This guy and his horses and his wife you’re so sweet on. But look at it this way. If we’re lucky enough to catch him before this other player gets him, you better watch those hands.”
HUNT DROVE THROUGH THE INTERSECTION, IN HIS rearview the gas station and Dairy Queen. He pulled in and parked next to the motel office. A light was on in the back. When he opened the car door he could feel the cool mountain air. He liked that smell, pollen and sap, like a block of ice evaporating on a kitchen counter, rich and mineral. The wind washed through a thicket of willow, and he looked down the length of the motel and saw the light falling from the room windows onto the walk. The sign above flashed “Vacancy.”
Again he was aware of the cut pants and the bandage on his leg. He limped over to the office door and pulled it open. A glass door, with a collapsible shade, drawn up. There was no bell and he entered the office without much sound. Two chairs by the window, a small coffee table where a stack of Better Homes lay, the Sunday paper from the week before, and in the corner of the room a coatrack. He went to the desk and rapped with his knuckle on the counter. No one came. He could see where the
light fell from a lamp in the back room, but could not see the lamp. He turned to look out on Roy’s car. He watched the yellow caution light dangling near the Dairy Queen. Even at that distance the light still played on his skin. He turned back to the counter and knocked again. “Hello,” he called.
He limped around the counter and looked in on the small room in the back. He saw a bed, a dresser, a lamp on the dresser, and in the back a single window, the covers of the bed drawn away, and a book cracked open and laid facedown on the bed. “Hello,” he called.
No one came from the bathroom, and he stood there in the doorway but didn’t enter. The whole feel of it was odd. He backed out and went around the counter and out the door, using his good leg to propel himself forward, his feet moving together in a rough limp as if he had one shoe tied to the other. He went down the walk, stopping at the windows to look in. Nora hadn’t given him the room number. He dug out his cell phone and gave her a call. Straight to her voice mail. No answer.
About a hundred feet down the walk, he found the body of a woman in her forties with curly blond hair, laid between two parked cars. There were a number of bullet holes in her body, a final single shot to the head. She wore a kind of smock, a brown vest with a name tag on it. Hunt knew he’d found the clerk. In the parking lot, he could see the scuff marks in the gravel. She’d been dragged from just a few feet outside the office door, through the gravel parking lot, and hidden there between the two cars.
Hunt could hear the televisions on in several rooms, but no one seemed to have noticed this woman in the parking lot or, apparently, the gunshots that had killed her. He left the woman there and went down the line of rooms until he came to one with a busted-out doorknob and splintered wood along the cement walk. The door was partially open and the brown carpet in view. The bathroom light was on in the back and some of that light crept from the room out onto the gravel lot.
He stood waiting outside the door, listening as best he could. There was no sound but that of the televisions in other rooms. Without touching the door, he slipped into the room, moving around the door with caution. What he found was a bed pulled slightly to the right. He could see where it had come away from the wall on its far corner. The television was shot out, and near the bed was an open door, cracked nearly off its hinges, leading to an adjoining room. Nora’s clothes were on the dresser, her bag barely unpacked. He went over to the bag and ran a hand through it but found only clothes. He didn’t know what he was looking for, his mind empty, no thought but that his wife was gone.
He went into the bathroom and found the open window. He put two hands to the frame and pulled himself up on it and looked out at the river and the stink currant bushes. He saw his horse trailer and truck. After lowering himself, he went back into the motel room and walked to the adjoining door. The television was on. It gave the room a strange feel, like someone was there. No sound except for the television, its light reflecting off the walls.
Something on the screen lit white and then faded. No lights on in the room. With that brief flash he’d seen the shape of a figure sitting within. Eddie.
A minute passed before Hunt could go back into the room. He stood at the door and listened to the television. The eleven o’clock news was on, with warnings of an early snow. When he looked again, Eddie was still there. Hunt could see where the blood had flowed from the cut, like a red bib tied midway up his neck. The blood had come down and caught in his shirt. It looked to be sticky, and when Hunt came closer he could see that it hadn’t completely dried.
He called Nora again. Voice mail. Hunt had to turn away, but even then he felt Eddie staring at him. The panic didn’t come all at once, but slowly, like an incoming tide. He left the room. He didn’t have any clue what to do. Everything had gone wrong. Feeling lost, he went along the walkway, stopping again to look down at the hotel clerk. He stared at her for a long while, longer than he had time for, trying to make up his mind about what to do. He knew he couldn’t stand there forever, knew he shouldn’t. His wife was gone, Eddie was dead. He stared down at this woman he didn’t know, a stranger, someone who hadn’t asked for this. He had caused this. Looking at her, he was aware he’d become someone he no longer recognized, someone terrible, something drawn up from the deep abyss, with no real purpose, an unquenchable thirst, a bottomless hunger, searching out some demon inside him.
The televisions were still on in several rooms, and he heard them as he limped past. From his pocket he dug out his keys. He was holding them in his hand as he came to Roy’s hatchback. He took the survival bag of heroin from the car floor and closed the door. From above, the red vacancy sign left a layer of dull blood-colored light on everything, like a film of dust in a forgotten room.
With the bag in his hand he walked around to the back of the motel and climbed into his truck. He held tight to the steering wheel, swayed slightly back and forth with his hands anchored to the wheel. “Fuck,” he moaned, drawing the word slowly up from deep inside. He pounded at the wheel several times in quick succession before starting the truck and pulling forward.
In his side mirror he saw something white on the ground. It was the only thing in an otherwise dark lot. He stopped the truck and got down from the cab. He walked back and looked at the coffee cup lying sideways on the gravel. With his toe he investigated it and watched the cup roll over, then stop. He could hear the river. A horse moved in the trailer, and he turned to the sound and walked back to his truck.
THE DRIVER TOOK A RAG FROM UNDER THE SEAT AND cleaned the sledgehammer. The two men were sitting with the doors pulled open on the Lexus, looking back at the gates of the lawyer’s house. There was sweat on the driver’s brow as he finished with the hammer and threw the rag into the shadows at the side of the road. The pits of late-summer cherries everywhere, the cherries themselves long gone and rotted away all around them on the ground, barren cherry trees overhead. Cold, fungal smell of rotting leaves. “You know the address?” the other man asked.
“I know it,” the driver said, getting out of the car and walking around to the back, where he popped the trunk and put the sledgehammer away.
The other man watched him, and when the driver came back he asked, “Grady Fisher?”
“Works as a cook somewhere in South Seattle, does errands for the lawyer.”
“What kind of errands?”
“Errands no one else wants.”
“Those kind of errands.”
“Those kind.”
The driver started the car and they pulled out onto the road and drove south. Neither of them said anything till they reached the interstate. It was late evening and the lanes were all but empty. A lone semi ran past them carrying a double trailer, the sound like a train passing.
“You going to call anyone?” the driver asked.
“Everyone,” the man said.
THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO BUT STUFF NORA IN THE trunk. For a while she had made those horrible sounds, punching at the metal, kicking the backseat. For five miles he put up with it, just figured she would get it out of her system. He stopped the car on the side of the road. The night immediately came on, moths and little flying insects drawn to the Lincoln headlights, cold mountain air, the smell of pine. Underfoot small droppings of pine needles, gravel, the rutted side of the road, depressions filled with rainwater. He stood listening to the sounds coming from the rear of the car. When they didn’t stop, he brought the key out and opened the trunk to look in at her.
A leg came out at him. He sidestepped and grabbed her ankle as it passed. Holding her with one hand, he gave her a quick punch with the other and hoped that would calm her. She didn’t pass out, so he punched her again and this time she went. He hoped Hunt loved his wife. He was counting on it, and he knew people did stupid things for love. They did stupid things all too often. And he thought this was probably how they had all come into this mess. How it had all begun for them. Stupid.
HUNT DROVE THE BIG DIESEL, FOLLOWING THE RIVER and waiting for his phone to find coverage.
One bar poked up on the display, then quickly disappeared. He didn’t know which way Grady had taken her; the road out of town had run east and west. He drove west, toward the mountains, hoping he was right. He slowed the truck, coming to a small town that, like the one he’d just left, ran along the river. Everything was built to look out on the river and everything it brought with it. He tried his phone again and couldn’t get a signal. He drove across the only bridge and parked by a closed restaurant.
He got down and walked toward the river, his phone in his hand. He watched for a signal. Nothing. When he reached the river he walked out on the bridge. Nothing moved anywhere, only the water below him. Dark water moving fast. He looked back at the truck. The restaurant beyond was built of painted white bricks, and across the street from that was a general store, with a bench and a few neon beer signs. He toed a loose piece of gravel into the river. He watched the splash and the current take it and the ripples moving out while the water went on.
From the middle of the bridge, he could see the entire town, not much of a sight, a gas station out by the main road and a small, closed-up produce stand. There were a couple of houses farther down on the river. He looked at the phone and waited. He turned it off, then turned it back on. One small blip of a signal popped up, and he tried Nora again. He listened to her voice mail. Thought about leaving a message but didn’t.
“Fuck!”
He went back to the truck and put his arms out on the hood and stretched, hung his head between his arms, and breathed in the night air. He looked at the phone again. He checked the time, then walked back over to the bridge and called information. After about a minute, the operator put him through to the hospital.
“There’s a Vietnamese woman who came in today on an overdose.”