The Far Empty

by J. Todd Scott

  She’d imagined once or twice showing Caleb one of Dupree’s pictures, like the one she got this morning that she couldn’t delete fast enough—a black knife held next to his pene, daring her to compare which was longer, sharper; begging her to dwell on which one was going to hurt more. What could Caleb do about that, about Dupree? How would someone like Caleb ever stop someone like him?

  “I’m sorry, Amé. I just want to help us.”

  “No, you want to help you. You want this for you. You know nada about what I want.” She hurt him, felt it. Those eyes she sometimes liked flickered, dimmed. He pulled back like she’d hit him, lost for something else to say.

  She believed enough of the things he’d said about El Juez to know Caleb’s own unhappiness, to feel it for him. But no matter how bad it was, he had a hundred more ways to walk away from his life than she’d ever have to run from hers. Caleb could never understand that; showing him Dupree’s texts and pictures wouldn’t change it. And no matter what he promised, when the time finally came, it wouldn’t stop him from leaving, with or without her.

  “It is nothing, Caleb. Nada, nothing. Let it go.” She didn’t have to say anything more, but she knew he heard it, felt it, understood it. Not today or tomorrow, but soon. Let me go.

  • • •

  But he wouldn’t, not yet, so later Caleb came to her again. She thought about pretending she was out, but he knew better. He’d stopped first at Mancha’s down the street and picked up gum and her favorite cigarettes. He peered in her window, tapping until she opened it, one of the few times she’d let him inside. She hated him being in her room now, knowing Dupree had been there as well. He took in all of her posters, her pictures. None were of him. Nothing in her room said they were friends or knew each other at all. If he was hurt by it, he didn’t say anything.

  She was embarrassed by all of her magazine cutouts, glossy and bright and taped to her wall—homes and beaches of the rich, the famous. There were several pictures of Rodolfo, one from when he was very young, wearing a cowboy hat, pointing his finger at the camera. She always thought he looked so small beneath the wide brim, his face lost in its shadow. Caleb stared at that for a long time. He also saw the ragged peacock feather stuck behind her mirror, colors faded by the sun. Finally he took one of the clippings from her wall, a city skyline along a beach—the one she’d written those mysterious phone numbers on—and put that in his pocket. Then he took the picture of Rodolfo in his cowboy hat and put that in her hand. He wrapped his hand over hers, over the picture. His hands were warm, gentle. “Try.”

  • • •

  And that night she did dream of Rodolfo—un sueño—the first one in a long time, and different from the others. He’d been so good at fútbol, not what the gringos thought of as football but what they played in the dirt streets. Rodolfo had been thin like a reed along the river and could bend like one too, moving with the ball as if it were tied to him on a string. As he got older, there were fewer chances to play. Bigger clubs would not take a Mexican and the high school did not have a team, so Rodolfo gave it up for other things. But for a time there was always a ball at his foot—trailing dust around the house, leaving marks on the walls. There was still a black smudge in the kitchen, one her mama refused to wipe away.

  She is sitting in the grass and they are calling his name . . . Pasa la pelota, Rodolfo.¡Pasa! ¡Dispara! ¡Nadie puede atraparlo!

  The sun is so hot and her mama and papa have promised her helado if she behaves and she is clapping for her hermano.

  There is loud yelling and he is next to her on the grass and his eyes are so, so wide, and his arm is in her papa’s hands and his hands are so big and gentle and dark from the sun and so is Rodolfo’s arm but it doesn’t look right and Rodolfo is holding her hand too tight and she is crying but she does not know why.

  She is calling his name over and over again and her hand stings from where he is squeezing and she doesn’t care whether she gets helado even her favorite chocolate because Rodolfo is whispering just for her . . . Estoy bien, pequeña estrella, estoy bien . . . and then he is kissing her between the eyes and then he is gone.

  Rodolfo.

  • • •

  She sat up in bed with cold starlight on her sheets, Rodolfo’s phone in her hand. She had fallen asleep with the phone or it had slithered from its place under the bed. It was warm, alive. She got up quietly and put it back in its place. The picture of Rodolfo, the one Caleb had handed her, was still on her nightstand where she’d left it, the last thing she had looked at before falling asleep. Caleb had made her remember, made her dream. Rodolfo had broken his arm bad, and her papa had taken him across the river to get it set because they could not afford the doctor in Murfee. He’d worn the cast proudly—it was so white—and he would not let anyone color it or sign it as they both had seen others do. She’d been five, maybe six; seven at the most.

  He’d worn that cast for a long, long time.

  She took Rodolfo’s picture, held it tight, and went to her window. It wasn’t dawn, not quite yet, the moon all but lost and the stars still the brightest things in the sky, as white and faceless as Rodolfo’s cast. They were all she could see outside her window, the rest of the town, the whole entire world, having disappeared. She was alone. But maybe she could tell Caleb about that bad injury, and how whenever it was going to rain Rodolfo used to swear his throbbing arm, never quite the same, always let him know first it was on its way. Maybe she could tell him about Dupree’s number in her brother’s phone too, but not explain why she knew it so well, knew it by heart. Maybe she owed him that small thing, something, for wanting so bad to help her . . . for helping her remember. Maybe she owed it to herself.

  It might be nothing . . .

  But maybe for the first time in forever, something was better than nothing.

  10

  CHRIS

  He was at home, thinking about pillowcases. The ones he and Mel were using on their bed. Floral print, old, they no longer held any color because they’d been washed so often. They’d been in his family since he was a kid. His parents probably got them when they were first married. His mother’s head had once graced them, her hair turning as gray as the cotton itself before it had all fallen out. He was just thinking about going to the Dollar General and buying new ones, something he knew he should have already done, when his cell rang.

  It was an unfamiliar voice, calling from far away. A man with a southern accent—not anywhere in Texas, but from back east somewhere—and he said his name was Garrison.

  “I’m a friend of Darin Braccio and Morgan Emerson.” Chris first said he didn’t know them.

  The man laughed, said, “Sure you do, Deputy Cherry, sure you do.”

  • • •

  “Darin wasn’t much of a report writer, worse about reporting in. He had what you might gently call an authority problem. Morgan was better, really good. So new she hadn’t learned how to take shortcuts. She’d already e-mailed me some of her notes for the reports she never had a chance to write. You made an impression on both of them that night you stopped them outside Murfee, a week before they were attacked.”

  Chris wasn’t sure what to say, his long silence almost enough for both of them. Finally, “I think you should talk to Sheriff Ross.”

  Garrison brushed it off. “No, I think he’s really the last person I want to talk to. Unfortunately, you’re about the only person in that ass-end of Texas I do feel comfortable talking to right now.”

  “Why me? Why did you call me? Who are you?”

  Now Garrison started with a long silence. “I’m curious, Deputy Cherry, like you. I’m curious why you checked with Lajitas about Darin and Morgan staying there. Curious why you’re pushing the DPS lab over those remains you found. Is it just good instincts, Deputy? Are you just a good investigator, like Darin Braccio, one of the best I’ve ever seen? Or something else?”

  W
hoever this Garrison was, and he still hadn’t made that clear, Chris understood then he’d been monitoring him, checking up on him. He had his cell number and who knew what else. “I don’t know anything about what happened to those two out in Valentine.”

  “And that’s what I’m most curious about. You’re one of the few people who can probably guess my agents weren’t really interested in Valentine, never were. Instead, they were up your way, being curious, for a reason. You’ve figured that out, but as near as I can tell, you haven’t said anything to anyone about it. Why is that?”

  His agents. “You think I had something to do with what happened to them? If so, this conversation is done.”

  “Deputy, if I already thought that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.”

  • • •

  “Darin and Morgan weren’t killed in Valentine or even down by the Rio Grande. I know that, courtesy of the same DPS evidence and forensic techs you’re becoming so familiar with. Someone drove them there and then set their car on fire, probably after realizing they’d killed two federal agents. Their guns were found in the water, but their badges and creds were left to burn with them.” Garrison paused, remembering. “So here’s what I’d ask myself, Deputy, if I lived like you do all the way out there in the middle of fucking nowhere. First, where did they get ambushed, and why? Because it was a pure ambush, make no mistake about it. They never had a chance, not at all. Second, who drove their car all the way down to the river? And third, how’d that murderous fuck get back home? It’s a helluva long walk from anywhere, so he probably had help . . . a few friends, maybe a whole bunch of them. I guess the only question that really matters is, who do you trust, Deputy Cherry? Can you trust everyone in your department? Can you trust anyone in Murfee at all?”

  “And that’s what I’m supposed to do now, trust you?”

  “I’m betting we’re supposed to trust each other.”

  Chris held the phone away, thinking. “That woman, your agent Emerson, will she live?”

  Garrison breathed, hard. “I don’t know. No one does. I want more than anything for her to open her eyes and tell me what happened. I want her to point out the person or persons who did this to her and Darin. Do you want that, Deputy Cherry?”

  Chris ignored him. “But you already know, right? Or think you do. That’s why you called me.”

  “I have some ideas, Deputy. I’m not clear on everything, but I’m clear enough. I’m getting there.”

  “So why aren’t you down here taking care of it?”

  Chris could hear Garrison struggle, imagined the other man carrying a great weight and praying for a chance to set it down, even for just a moment. It reminded him of his father caring for his mom, both of them carrying her through to the end. How Chris had washed the pillowcase he’d been staring at through this whole conversation, a day after she died.

  “It’s complicated. Messy and political and I wish it wasn’t, but there it is, all the same. You have some popular, powerful people down there. The wheels might turn slowly, but I promise you they will turn, Deputy Cherry, even if I have to turn them by hand.”

  Chris knew nothing about this Garrison, but didn’t doubt him. Despite how he’d said it, everyone knew there was only one powerful person in Murfee. That’s all there’d ever been. I think that’s really the last person I want to talk to.

  “Okay, what happens next?”

  “I want to meet you, Deputy, sooner rather later. Put our heads together . . . help each other out with this thing.”

  Chris turned it over, thought about what that might mean, what it would have to mean. “Maybe . . . I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s a start, at least, but don’t think too goddamn long.” Garrison’s anger, his frustration, was clear and real across the distance between them. It was heavy. “I don’t know exactly what the fuck is going on down there, and maybe you don’t either, but I do know this—one way or another, it doesn’t end with what happened on that riverbank, not like that. They were my friends.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Chris thought Garrison had hung up on him when he heard that voice again, faint, one more time. “Don’t be a fucking hero, Deputy. Heroes end up dead. Just like Darin Braccio.”

  11

  ANNE

  He picked her up in his truck, held the door for her like a gentleman. They made small talk, his work and hers, on the drive to a little place he liked in Artesia—all smoke and dark wood and deer antlers on the walls; old pictures of places that didn’t even look like Texas. It wasn’t too romantic, more casual. The waiter knew him, everyone did, so she didn’t even need to look at a menu. He ordered for them both. He was different in jeans and a button-down shirt, even with the gun and badge clearly visible on his hip, but not too different. Still recognizable. There was no mistaking Sheriff Ross. He’d followed through with his dinner invitation after all, caught her after school, and with no easy way to say no, she’d said the only other thing she could.

  She’d seen him like this once before, in Austin at a Texas Narcotics Officers Association convention. He’d been the keynote speaker, and she and Marc and several others had met him for dinner afterward at a steakhouse with sawdust on the floor. He’d been funny, engaging—entertaining the table with stories of his time as sheriff. She couldn’t remember what, if anything, the two of them had talked about or if they had spoken together much at all, but she had caught him staring at her a few times, never inappropriately, just intense, focused. Right after Marc had died, he sent a condolence card to the house and may have attended the memorial, but there’d been so many people, she wasn’t sure. Later, when things got really bad for her, he’d sent another hand-addressed note that she never opened.

  She never figured out how he had their home address and didn’t think much of it again—not at all, really—until Dial Johnson called about the job in Murfee. An old friend of his, Sheriff Stanford Ross, had asked about Anne personally—asked for her by name. The sheriff had remembered her from the convention and knew about her situation in Austin, but didn’t care about all that—the school needed the help, and with the sheriff’s own son enrolled there, it’d mean a lot if she was available. The sheriff wouldn’t have needed Dial to tell him no school in Texas would have her.

  • • •

  “Everyone says you’ve settled in well, Anne. I’m glad to hear it.” Sheriff Ross smiled at her, a Shiner Bock in his hand.

  “Thank you, I appreciate your help. I’m sure your word had more than a little to do with it.”

  He kept smiling, faking embarrassment behind a long sip from the bottle. “I’ve been around a long time, gotten to know more than my fair share of people. Texas often works on handshakes and favors, and I’ve done plenty of both.”

  “Well, thank you anyway. I wasn’t sure I was going to teach again, not in Texas.”

  He nodded. “To be honest, I was surprised you were still here. Pleasantly, but surprised all the same.”

  She toyed with her fork. “Me too, I guess. So were my parents, my friends. It would have been easier to go back to Virginia, but I just couldn’t, not yet. Marc wouldn’t have wanted it. He liked Texas, it was our home.”

  “And you met in college?”

  “Well, I was in college, Mary Washington. He was stationed at Fort Belvoir. By the time he was transferred to Fort Hood, we were married. After that horrible shooting there, he didn’t reenlist. It changed him, affected him more than he wanted to admit, and he joined the police department in Killeen. He enjoyed police work more than anything he ever did in the army.”

  The sheriff smiled, serious. “Did you know he and I spoke a few times after we all met in Austin? I tried to sell him on Murfee’s charms, but I think he figured it was too small for him, at least at that point.”

  She hesitated, finding it hard to im
agine Marc talking with this man without mentioning it to her, harder to imagine his ever considering a job in Murfee.

  “What do you think, Anne? Is Murfee too small?”

  She laughed. “Too small? Too small for what? Murfee’s very nice. I can see why people love it, how someone can live here their whole life and never miss a thing. It has an undeniable charm.”

  He raised his beer. “I like that. I’ve heard Murfee described many ways. ‘Charming’ is not often one of them.”

  She played with her napkin, folding and unfolding it. “So what about you? And Caleb? You’ve never had a desire to leave?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I’ve been here so long even I tend to forget that I’m not a Murfee native. My roots aren’t natural, but they run deep. Work takes me away quite a bit, but I always come back. I’ve had offers to do other things, someone always wants me to run for a state office, but nothing I’ve seriously entertained. Caleb, of course, will go off to school, and after that, I guess we’ll see.” The sheriff finished his beer, raised his hand for another. “How’s Caleb doing, by the way? No problem, I hope?”