Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  “Wilson?” The enemy is a woman, and she is smart. She is heading back down the hill to the truck. Janis forgets she is tired and goes after the enemy like the predator she is.

  A heavy blow knocks Janis to her knees. The enemy must have heard Janis coming up from behind, because she was hiding, waiting, holding the heavy stick. Her shoulder blades will be black and blue, Janis thinks, and she is pissed. Janis pitches forward, face to the dirt, waiting for the enemy to come closer, something an enemy can never resist.

  Janis grabs the enemy’s ankle, and slams her head into the enemy’s knees. The enemy makes a noise as the air goes out of her lungs. She has gone down quickly and hard. It catches her wrist when Janis raises her arm; it is strong, but not strong enough. She pins both of its arms, but the enemy is quick and it bites. The teeth are merciless, and Janis loses her balance, and both of them slide over the edge of the ridge.

  Janis is falling, it is steep, and she cannot stop the momentum. The enemy is falling, too, it is getting away. Janis grabs a skinny tree, and hugs it like a lover. Her heart is slamming, and here comes that old headache, her constant companion; she’s ripped out a fingernail, and bruised if not broken a rib.

  Janis is so tired. That anger that she calls her tantrums is gone, and she doesn’t care if the enemy gets away. She tries to look at her forearm where the enemy bit, but it is too dark to see. She touches it carefully; the bite hurts more than the rib. She wants to head for the truck, but there is something she has left behind. She can’t remember what it is. She left it at the barn, right, the barn. Is it Dandy? Is that where Dandy is? Janis sobs deep in her chest. What if she never finds him? What if she never sees him again?

  Nobody but Mama knows how scared Janis used to get. Sometimes, after a bad fall, her legs used to shake so badly she could hardly get up in the saddle. She used to make over ninety thousand dollars a year barrel racing as a teenage girl, and she was elected Sweetheart of the Rodeo when she was twenty years old. No Sweetheart of the Rodeo was ever afraid of a horse. Dandy would never hurt her, Dandy never did. They were both scared, but when it was the two of them together, they were safe as rocks.

  Wilson moved quickly, plotting a trajectory in his mind. He climbed down off the ridge, losing any semblance of a trail, and followed a steep slope back in the direction he’d come. He moved as fast as he could and still stayed on his feet, but it was taking him too long, and he was making too much noise. He stayed with it, grimacing. The presence of pain was already making itself known over the buffer of the Advil. The leg had been getting too much of a workout.

  Damn, he was awkward as hell. Before Waco he would have moved down this slope without breaking a sweat. Before Waco he could crouch on a surfboard and run his hand on the wall of water moving his wave, right in the sweet spot of the curl.

  The worst thing was facing it, knowing Chesterfield was right, that his leg was a problem in a crunch. He moved as swiftly as he could but even the girl could outdo him. She might be a sociopath, but she was also a girl.

  Wilson kept the pain in a separate compartment. He was aware enough to dread the long hours it would take to get it back in control, the spaced-out exhaustion and relief of pain medication. But worse was giving up. Knowing he no longer belonged in the thick of an investigation like this; that ethically, he would have to retire to the sidelines, the minor gun buys, the endless paperwork. He’d be pretty useful doing computer analysis and research for the active agents.

  So much of what he loved in life had been taken away when the bullet tore through his thigh, penetrated the bone, and shattered. It always used to amaze him the way doctors could pull someone through when they were horribly, tragically hurt. You saw the documentary on television, found out the patient lived, and never thought about it again. Wilson knows that the story is not over after the first dramatic hours in the ER. Welcome to a lifetime of trouble. Old bullet wounds never die.

  A split second’s difference in Waco … he could be dead. A lot of them were dead—agents, women and children in the compound, and so many of them innocents, sucked into the cult by their own tragedies, with no way out once inside. Who was really to blame for it? All of them human, stumbling through the drama of their own lives and ripe for mistakes, all of the pathways converging. Somewhere in that night of oily black smoke and no heroes, was the story of Janis Winters.

  But his story was in there, too. The story of Wilson—who can no longer dance or surf or do his job. The story of Alex Ruggers, who died with a wire around his neck, struggling so hard his wrists were sliced to the bone as he died slowly, and suffered. And no doubt that somewhere in an inside pocket of the clothes the Medical Examiner cut away from Rugger’s body were pictures of his kids, his wife, his dog.

  Janis hears someone moving up on the ridge, quieter than the other one. Another enemy, a big one this time. Janis has adrenaline now and it renews her. Where before she could barely hang on to the tree and keep from sliding down that steep mountain slope, now she moves in spurts, strong and ready, making her way back up to the ridge.

  Up at last, and back on her feet, Janis stops to listen. There is so much noise, coming from down the slope. Which one is it? It is hard to keep track of two. She needs to be high, she needs to be above them, and she sees what may be a shortcut that will take her past a switchback on the trail. She can wait there for both of them.

  In the darkness, Janis can’t see that the offshoot of trail only peters out, and she has to backtrack and find her way back to the ridge. The big one has gotten ahead of her, and is blocking her way on the path. Janis is not afraid. She is never afraid anymore.

  She can’t see the face of this enemy, but she can tell that it is a he, and the enemy comes toward her. Come and get me, she thinks. I’ll be waiting. But she does not take the gun out of her waistband.

  The enemy does not see her as she stands behind a tree. It is too dark. She knows who he is by the limp—a Fed, another Waco veteran, another name on her list. His face is shadows, and he seems to bring the darkness with him, and he sees her, finally. They are ten feet apart on the trail.

  The enemy has a gun, and he points it at her. Janis knows what to do. It is just like when she played out in the fields with Chris and Dale—once they get the drop on you, partner, you have to play fair, don’t you, or the boys won’t let you back in the game. Girls on sufferance only.

  Janis puts her hands up, and the bullets catch her, one-two-three. She is thrown off her feet with a force that is familiar—because it happens so fast, because she is helpless; and because this is a place she has been before. She has missed her chance to get it under control, it’s bad horsemanship and her own damn fault, she should have been ready for it, not smiling at that cowboy who is up-and-coming on the team roping circuit.

  Ah, God, it is happening now, the nightmare, her foot caught in the stirrup, she is being dragged. No, no, no she can’t make it stop, she is going so fast, her back is hurt, her muscles won’t obey. She feels her body flip, and the left foot is still tangled, something has to give, and she hears the bone in her leg snap. She is facedown now, and her forehead seems to explode in showers of fireworks … oh, she remembers this well.

  How strange the mind is, how odd the ways it finds to protect. She has been here all along, it isn’t over, a memory of the past, it is still happening—the thing she has always dreaded, being dragged. All of those other things, just hallucination, the blood and the wires and the haze of pain before the anger takes her under like a monstrous wave crashing over her head. Thank God it is all just a bad dream, she’s hurt her head, and Dandy, her Dandy, is stopping, people are screaming, one of them is her. Mama’s voice, talking to Dandy, keeping him still; only Mama could stop this horse, she must have run so fast, she was way back in the stands, Mama is magic, Mama will save the day, Mama is screaming cut the leather cut the leather …

  “Catch Dandy,” Janis whispers.

  And the man who leans over her, who checks the pulse at her neck, does n
ot understand what she means, but he does understand she is dead, and he says a small prayer in the back of his mind, just for her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Wilson was aware that Lena was standing just up the pathway looking down. He felt his muscles jerk, it was uncontrollable. He wondered how long she had been standing and watching.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Nothing that can’t be cured by a hot bath and a Band-Aid. So that’s her? Your killer?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Is she dead, then?”

  “She’s dead,” Wilson said. He took the cell phone out of his pants pocket, and flipped it open, but there was no service at the top of the mountain. He expected as much. “We’ll head for the house, make sure everything is okay there, get a team out to round up the bodies.”

  “Shouldn’t one of us stay here?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to and I bet you don’t either.”

  “I’m cold,” Lena said.

  Her voice sounded funny, Wilson thought. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Maybe a little shook up.”

  “You and me both. Come here.”

  She moved down the path toward him and he took her hand. His leg hurt with an intensity that guaranteed he would not sleep for nights to come.

  “Look,” she said.

  There were lights, down on the road, and the wail of sirens that meant help on the way. Wilson hugged her, for no particular reason, and she slowed her pace to his.

  “Here,” she said, draping his arm around her shoulders for support. “It’s not all that far.”

  They came out of the woods at the halfway mark on the driveway, where the land flattened, and the pond waters looked black in the dark. The barn was lit, and there was a small checkerboard of emergency units—cops, paramedics, the sheriff’s department.

  Halfway up the drive they can see the lights in the barn.

  Wilson felt a prickle on the back of his neck.

  “Stop back here,” he told her.

  “No.”

  He wanted so badly to get the weight off his leg. It was a tedious thing, throb throb throb, he couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Maybe you should stay here and let me go,” Lena said. But they both continued up the hill and were sweating by the time they made it to the barn. Wilson was leaning harder and harder on Lena’s shoulder and she staggered under his weight. Wilson heard the murmur of voices, mostly men. Mayhem, Wilson thought, his mind adrift.

  Wilson saw Kate Edgers first. She was on the ground in a pool of blood so thick and large he could not believe she was alive. But she must have been, because someone had hooked her up to an IV drip and she was being loaded onto a stretcher. He blinked, trying to take it all in. A little dark-haired boy, face stark white, was held by a middle-aged woman who was sitting on the hood of a pickup truck that has inexplicably come up that mountain drive with a horse trailer. A man, probably her husband, brought a cup of something hot to the woman and the boy, though the man looked like he could use something himself. He leaned inside the window to stroke the head of a large black dog. All of them watched the stretcher as Kate was loaded into the van. The man kissed the woman, gave her his jacket, and took the boy from her arms. She got into the back of the van—one of the medics gave her a hand. The lights flashed, and the unit pulled tamely away in a crunch of gravel.

  He saw Mendez, just as the detective turned and spotted the two of them, and his leg gave out as Lena surged toward Mendez. Wilson landed with no dignity and great annoyance on his rear.

  Mendez headed for him, but Wilson waved him off.

  “I’ll stay down here, if you don’t mind.”

  Mendez grinned, looked over his shoulder, and saw two paramedics running toward them. “You hurt bad?”

  “Nothing a cold beer won’t help.”

  Joel put his arms around Lena and held her and Wilson watched them with open and vulgar curiosity. He missed Sel.

  “Wilson?” A car door slammed and Wilson looked between the two medics. The S.A. from Nashville. She was wearing low heels and a skirt and a long coat, and was already giving orders.

  “I want overtime for this,” Wilson said, when she came close.

  “Dammit to hell, it’s been a long night.” she said. But she sounded confident and Wilson heard car doors, heard her start giving orders, and he closed his eyes, relieved, and finally off duty.

  He knew that the minute he got back to California and put his arms around Sel, his world would quit spinning out of control, and he would be able to center, and be steady. But he had much to do before he could go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Two days after Wilson McCoy brought down the Rodeo assassin, Joel asked me to accompany him back to the mountain were Cory Edgers used to live. Miranda and Edgers were still in the custody of the morgue, and Kate Edgers was still listed as critical in ICU.

  The Andersonville sheriff’s department, in a joint operation with the Knoxville office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was providing the equipment and manpower, if not the budget, to drain the pond where Kate Edgers saw Cory Edgers sink Cheryl Dunkirk’s bloodstained sweater. As ponds go, this one was man-made and small, no more than twenty feet across.

  I sat on the dock, leaning up against Joel, who had wisely left his suits behind and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. The jeans were very clean and neat, and the sweatshirt was almost new, but there was mud crusting the edges of Joel’s hiking boots, and with that I had to be content.

  “When are you going to throw this shirt away?” Joel asked me, plucking at the sleeve of my most comfortable denim.

  “Throw it away? Feel how soft this is, Joel. Do you know how long it takes to break a shirt in this good?”

  “Ten years?”

  “Good guess.”

  He kissed the side of my neck, which surprised me, because he is rarely demonstrative in public. I was feeling quite daring as it was to lean up against him while we sat on the dock in the midst of an official police operation.

  I turned sideways so I could see his face. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “You’re easy to please, Lena. Most women want expensive bistros, wine, a dozen roses. Tickets to the opera from time to time.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry, Joel. About the way things have been between us over this whole thing.”

  “Do you wish you hadn’t taken the job?”

  I thought about it. “No, not really. How long are you going to hold a grudge?”

  “About as long as it took you to break in that shirt.”

  The noise of the pump had run most of the crew away. There was nothing to do but wait, and pretty much everyone except me and Joel was taking a long lunch at someplace called Golden Girls.

  “I was kidding, Lena. About holding a grudge. It’s not that I don’t think you have the right to do your job. I just felt betrayed.”

  “Betrayed?”

  “I’d been trying to find Cheryl Dunkirk and getting nowhere for two months. I was failing not just locally, but on a national level, including sound bites on CNN where retired cops critiqued the whole investigation.” He shrugged, then smiled. “Some of what they said made good sense—for some reason that was even worse. Then you get hired by the family, and blithely inform me that you’re on the case, and it’s clear you expect to breeze in with your good old girl network and save the day.”

  “Joel, how can you say that?”

  “I’m not saying that’s necessarily the way it was. I’m saying that’s the way it felt.”

  I looked over at the pond. The water level was down by a third. The water looked murkier, and seemed to be draining at about the rate of evaporation.

  “Lena? Don’t you have a comment or something?”

  “Yes, but you actually expressed a feeling, and I’m afraid to say anything negative, because if I do you may never express another one.”


  He rubbed my shoulders. “Tell me. You’ll spontaneously combust if you don’t.”

  “You make me feel like I have to apologize because I had the confidence to go into the investigation. But Joel, you have to realize that one, I don’t work in the public eye, and two, I knew the groundwork. Although, I have to tell you that even if I did work in the public eye and even if you hadn’t laid the groundwork, I wouldn’t have been afraid to take it on.”

  “I’m not supposed to be surprised, am I?”

  “But to be fair, I did find myself feeling competitive. When you talk to me about investigations, including this one, you always dismiss my opinion like it was nothing. It gets under my skin. I wanted to beat you on this one. I wanted to win.”

  “Win?”

  “Yes, I know, poor choice of words.”

  I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun while Joel absorbed my last remark. I knew that in less than a year he’d respond. I looked out at the pond, and watched the water ripple toward the pump.

  “Joel?” I looked at him over my shoulder. His eyes were closed. “Joel, are you asleep?”

  “Almost.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But how do we resolve this?”

  “We don’t. We communicated.”

  “Is that all there is to it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh. Do you feel better?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. You?”

  I closed my eyes, thinking. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Lena, do you see the way the water is rippling there, right dead center.”

  I looked to where Joel was pointing. “There’s something there. What do you think it is?”

  Joel squeezed my shoulder. “Hard to tell at this point. The crew should be back soon.”

  “Is it Cheryl?” I asked.

  “I think it might be.”

  The crew straggled back within the hour, and we waited for the water to drain. A sodden rag rug, tightly bound with duct tape, lay in the mud in the center of the pond floor. I stayed on the dock while Joel took off his shoes, rolled up his jeans, and squelched through the mud. He had a utility knife, and slit one band of duct tape. He was bent almost double, and he straightened suddenly, and nodded. He glanced at a deputy sheriff.