Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2)

by Trey R. Barker

  She kissed my cheek again, as softly as my mother ever had, and led me back toward the theater. “It will. That remorse still eats at Cope’s bones and it’s been fifty years since he joined the church.”

  ***

  “Can I go downstairs?”

  Her head cocked. “Sure. Want a tour?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Five minutes later I was blooding it out.

  —Whap!—

  When I’d been in the church, I did it most every night. Not the way most of the priests did it, with huge swaths of flesh being torn off and gouts of blood running down their backs and legs. Mine were never that violent, though I always let some of Fagan’s blood escape me and soak into the ground. But I did it most nights. It was what I filled myself with when I couldn’t sleep, which was most of the time.

  Now I stood on a stage floor, which I’d covered with a tarp.

  And I blooded out.

  Fagan’s blood, too, infected at one hundred forty-five degrees with plague and violence and all things Fagan.

  —Whap!—

  Sometimes, I really believed the only way to get rid of all the shit burning my head from the inside out, was to blood it out.

  It was a sharp sting, but had never been quite sharp enough. Maybe a harsher penance actually would cleanse my soul. Or maybe getting that goddamned pendant would get it done. Either way, it wasn’t happening now.

  —Whap!—

  “Mmmm”

  I really, desperately wanted that blood out. There were few things I wanted more.

  “Mmmmmm”

  —Whap!—

  If I could get the blood out, and the memories that went with it, maybe I could sleep again. Maybe I could laugh and enjoy a Beam shot with a Corona back again.

  I realized then I heard a voice. Muffled. Sounded far away. I stopped splitting my skin and followed it to a small cabinet hidden in a corner of the stage.

  I popped it open and stared right into the face of Johnny Law.

  The duct-taped face of Roy the Poh-leece.

  Wearing a body suit of tightly tied ropes.

  “Holy shit.”

  A Little More Than Six Days Ago

  “This is a fucking nightmare.” I paced the bedroom.

  “Calm down, White-Boy Darcy.” Cope was in bed, his face rumpled.

  “No fucking ‘White-Boy Darcy,’ Cope. Damnit, don’t you get it?”

  Not much longer, maybe a heart’s beat, maybe a sweaty breath, and the cops would be crawling on this place; maggots on the corpse. They’d know, if they didn’t somehow already, their man was stuffed in a props cabinet like a forgotten latex love doll.

  “Off-duty,” Esther said. “Doesn’t sign on until eight tomorrow morning.” She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “This morning, I guess.”

  I stopped short. “Off-duty?”

  “Y’all calm down a little we’ll lay it out. But where’s the cooler?”

  “What? Why the— What for?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Damnit, Cope, we’ve got a little problem here; can you forget about your cuke for half a fucking minute?”

  Cope’s eyes blazed, his hands clenched to loose fists. “I’m hungry.”

  “Cooler’s outside,” Esther said. “But there are cukes in the fridge, just like always.”

  With a tight nod of his head, Cope disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Doesn’t matter what you lay out for me,” I said to Cope’s back. “Soon as Guy doesn’t sign on, it’s over. They find him here....” I head my shook. “If you let him go, he’ll spill his guts and we’ll all get a kidnapping charge.”

  “So we won’t let him go right now,” Esther said. She waggled her eyebrows. “And when I do, he’ll forget all about you guys.”

  I sat, got up almost immediately. “Kidnapping. Felony. Not only that, federal felony. And kidnapping a cop? I don’t even know what all charges that means.”

  Esther shook her head. “Nobody was kidnapped. I just...just kept him from...I don’t know...kept him from leaving. That’s all.”

  “Yeah...what the rest of us call kidnapping. Unlawful restraint.” Sweat poured in sheets, a summer squall out on the Gulf, off my head.

  “You been blooding?” Cope asked. He stood in the doorway, veggie in hand.

  “Damnit, Cope, I’m covered in blood. What do you think?”

  “Y’all figure out that number yet?”

  “Will you leave the number alone already?”

  Esther stood, her large body naked, her giant breasts heaving as she wrestled into a robe. “You guys have a couple hours until he signs on. Probably another two until they start to get crazy and look for him. They’ll find him here quick though.”

  “Why that?” Cope asked.

  “Car’s out front,” I said.

  “But by that time,” Esther said, “he’ll be well taken care of.”

  Cope was just as naked as Esther. Rather than giant breasts lurching back and forth, he covered his long, skinny dick chastely with his hand. “But we should boogie on down the road now, what y’all saying.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Esther wiped away a tear.

  “Y’all sorry I’m leaving?” Cope began to dress.

  “Not you, old man, you’re just a used-up, dried-up old bag.” She nodded toward me. “Him though. I’m sorry I didn’t get me none’a him.”

  “Big ol’ load’a crap, Esther,” Cope said. “Big ol’ load. To go along with them big ol’ balls y’all got. Stealing a cop? Shit, I wouldn’t even done that.”

  Finished dressing, she stood as straight and tall as she could. Her eyes were misty. “I was trying to help. It’s all I could think of.”

  He kissed her. “Y’all are the Queen, Esther, don’t let nobody tell you different. I appreciate what y’all done. Maybe y’all can make it right with this copper. Tell him we didn’t wanna hurt him, but he cain’t take us in, we got too much baggage. We gotta get out.”

  Acceptance was full on her face, in her eyes and lips, in the cut of her breath. “Where will you go?”

  From my pocket, I pulled a scrap of paper ragged with Fagan’s handwriting. Some of the towns were already crossed off. Andrews, Kermit, Pecos. Next up was a bank in Marathon, for all the fucking good it was going to do. Chances were good it’d be a bust, exactly as every other one had been. Yeah, Fagan had been to the banks and yeah, sometimes they remembered him. But no one could remember what he’d asked, what he’d wanted.

  “What the fuck were you doing at those banks, Fagan?” I asked.

  I caught sight of the number on my arm. Inked now with a ball-point pen, but originally done as the template for the tattoo artist. Fagan had given me the number. Said it was a piece of our family’s history. Said his memory was so bad he was afraid he’d forget it.

  Problem was he was dead and I had no idea what that fucking number meant.

  101645.

  “Why were you at those—”

  Banks.

  “You go mute?” Esther said.

  “Son of a bitch. We’re going to Marathon.” I jammed the paper back in my pocket.

  “The magic paper say so?” Esther said.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in Marathon?” Cope asked.

  “A bank.”

  “Yeah, y’all been chasing them banks down pretty regularly.”

  “Yeah, but now I know why. A safety deposit box.”

  Cope nodded. “’Bout damned time, boy. I didn’t think y’all was ever gonna figure that part out.”

  “You knew that’s what it was?”

  “Well...don’t know about knew, but it seems pretty obvious, don’t it?”

  “He told me to get the number tattooed so he wouldn’t forget it.”

  “Really?” Esther asked. “Would you have done that?”

  “Said it was part of our family history...part of what made us who we are...so who knows, Esther, as drunk and daddy-happy as I was, I might have.�
�

  “And you didn’t because...?”

  “My membership in the church came along before I had time.”

  Cope finished getting dressed. Esther stayed close to him, touching him sometimes, looking at him other times.

  “Why are you going?” I asked Cope. “Why are you leaving this woman’s love behind?”

  Esther said, “Not too long in any one place.” She nodded toward the church. “Doubly so now that the cops are involved.” Esther gave Cope a tremendous hug, cutting off any more discussion. “You gotta come back to me, Elmer, I ain’t never known anyone like you.”

  “Ain’t no mens like me.” He left a delicate kiss on the side of her neck.

  “Get out. But call me soon as you can, Elmer. Don’t leave me in the lurch again. Tell me where to meet you.”

  “Might be far away,” Cope said.

  “Tell me where.”

  The old man, tears standing in his eyes, pulled a ring from his thumb and wrapped her fingers around it. “’S for y’all, Lovely Esther.” His voice went quiet, might have shaken a little. “It’s all I got right now. Call it a down payment for later.”

  “You asking me to marry you?”

  His face scrunched. “Didn’t think so...but that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

  She smiled. “No, not at all. We’ll spend the rest of forever together, you and me.”

  “Guess you’re going to miss that boat, ain’t you?” Roy Guy said.

  He stood in the hallway, duct tape hanging from his arms and hips. In his hands, he held the robes Cope and I had discarded. “Guess there ain’t no show, is there? These belong to you.” He winked, but it was the wink of a man in charge. “You two are the only ones to walk away. Guess that means you did it all.”

  Esther stepped forward. “They didn’t do anything, Roy. They were caught in the fire, too. Can’t you see the burns?”

  Guy’s gaze went to her and not for a million dollars would I want those daggers pointed at me.

  “You shut the fuck up, bitch.” His voice rumbled and I thought of a deep stream running a rocky channel. “You played me...a love-sick schoolboy.”

  “No, Roy, I never played—”

  “Shut up. All of you are under arrest.” Automatically, he reached for his cuffs, around his back with his left hand, but they weren’t there. Nor was his gun. Off-duty. No gunbelt. No radio or baton, no mace. Nothing.

  “Guess you ain’t gonna arrest us today,” Cope said. He shoved me toward the back door. “I’m sorry about all this, Esther.”

  “Don’t move,” Guy said. “You’re under—”

  The words disappeared when Cope slammed his cucumber into the man’s face. Green, both dark skin and translucent insides, exploded in a moist puff.

  “No, Cope.” My voice was almost a shriek. “You can’t attack a cop.”

  But the old man kept moving, following the vegetable slap with a full body slam. Cope and Guy smashed into the floor together. Someone yelped and when they separated, there was a hell of a blood stain on the hardwood floor.

  Guy scrambled up, his lip bleeding, cucumber guts hanging from his cheek. “You’re fucking under arrest.” His hands shook wildly, his eyes darted around the room until they found the end table with the gun. He lunged for it and jammed it out at arm’s length toward me and Cope.

  “Esther, they fucked you over, woman. They lied to you sure as shit.” He took a deep breath and I saw his training fighting with his adrenaline. He managed to get his breathing slowed, even as his face lost some of its wild. His arm came down until the gun was about his midsection. Yet he still held it with both hands.

  He isn’t a country bumpkin. Might not be a great cop, but he isn’t any bumpkin. Just a guy got seduced by someone, lost sight of what was what for a few minutes.

  “Go on over, call 9-1-1 for me,” Guy said to Esther, “and maybe we’ll forget your part in this bullshit.”

  My mouth was dry, my skin hot. 9-1-1 would be a disaster. 9-1-1 would end everything, put me in jail, kill my step-father, end the search for the pendant.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you are,” Guy said. “But I know you’re both killers. Killed all them priests. Say hello to the hoosegow, boys, ’cause that’s where you gonna spend every single last day you got.”

  “They’re not,” Esther said. A shaking hand hid her mouth. “They didn’t do it. You have to believe me, Roy.”

  I glanced at the front door, at the short hallway to the back, beyond that lay the motorcycle.

  “Hang on, there, boy,” Guy said. He brought the gun up, hammer cocked. “Whatever you’re thinking, think something else. I’ll blow both you guys away right here and nobody’ll have a problem with that.”

  The barrel was much larger than I’d ever realized. Holstered, under glass in a gun shop, on TV and in the movies, even in the church during the shootout, guns had never looked this big to me.

  Damned good thing this gun was her prop gun.

  Guy was right, there were definitely murdered priests at the church, but I wasn’t going to jail on those. I wasn’t going to jail at all, no sitting in a holding tank until SuperCop Detective Kurston showed up. I damn sure wasn’t going to ride with Kurston back to Barefield and then slowly work my way through the system until they lost the key on my new iron-bar condo for the blood crusted under my nails.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said. “I’ve got a great amount of respect for most cops and I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I am not going with you.”

  Guy winked. “You dictating terms now? You telling me who I can and can’t arrest?” He laughed. “No, here’s the deal. I’m taking you both in, I’m going to get that promotion they’ve been promising me, then I’m putting in my application for the Rangers.”

  Cope watched from near the front door. His face said he’d remembered the gun, too.

  “Sorry, Officer, you aren’t taking me in.” I headed for the back door.

  Guy came up behind me, pressed the gun against my head. “I can shoot a fleeing felon.”

  “Darcy,” Esther said. “I need to tell you—”

  I spun, smashed my fist against Guy’s face. The man’s lips came apart and at least one tooth hit the floor. The blood reminded me, for a split second, of the split open backs at the church, of the blood on the ceiling.

  Guy stumbled backward, but never let go of the gun.

  And when it fired, burying a bullet in the dark wood next to my ear, I screamed like a little girl. My voice was thin and terrified. “That’s not a prop.”

  “I’m pretty sure that was the real one,” Esther said.

  Guy fired again. The bullet shattered the kitchen window. Glass tinkled down to the back lot.

  Cope was gone, the screen door flapping behind him. He was halfway across the back lot before I even made it out the door.

  “Get your ass back here,” Guy shouted. He burst through the back door behind us and stopped on the landing. Fired. Two. Three. Maybe four times. Cope jumped on the bike, gunned it to life, jammed the gears down. I dashed for the sidecar, sure I’d already pissed myself.

  Cope popped the clutch and the bike shot forward as a couple of bullets peppered the ground where we’d been.

  In the mirror, I saw Esther barrel out of the house and smash into Guy. The railing gave way and both went over the side, landing hard on the ground four feet beneath.

  Cope hooted. “Fucking right on top of him.”

  No reason to cheer, much as I might want to. Soon enough, Roy the Poh-leece was going to get his ass back to his station, get a description of the three-wheeled bike out on the air and TCIC. Soon enough, we’d get stopped on the highway and hauled in.

  Except maybe it would be worse than that because when I looked back at the theater, Esther got up, but Roy Guy never moved.

  Six Days Ago

  U.S. 90

  Between Valentine and Marathon

  A few hours later, the wind stole my voice.

  Damned good thing
, because I sure as hell didn’t want to hear myself scream.

  Should be used to hearing that raggedy scream by now, right? Felt as though I’d spent my life screaming. Some days for my step-father. Some days for my father. Some days for a life I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize even if it did come along. And now for all those dead priests. And the burned church. And whatever kept Officer Roy Guy on the ground. Maybe it was just a broken arm or fractured skull, maybe he was only unconscious and he’d be fine tomorrow, but either way, things had just gotten much uglier, which meant the scream kept going.

  Yet in the face of all that, all I could think of was the damned pendant. How fucking self-centered was that? People, lots of people, were hurt and dead because of what I’d done and all I could think of was getting a cheap-ass bit of jewelry back to a man I could give a crap about.

  Man, oh, man, are you a piece of shit.

  Hadn’t that been the trouble all along? How fucked up my head was? I’d spent the better part of life worrying over a man I didn’t know and hadn’t seen since I was three. God help me, I couldn’t get Fagan out of my head, regardless of what that meant to everyone around me.

  I couldn’t not ask questions, couldn’t not want to hear the stories over and over again.

  But those questions got you here. They’re what put you in a sidecar, riding a shaky, noisy fifty miles an hour on an empty desert blacktop, searching for a safety deposit box that hid a pendant that belonged to a step-father who probably hated you about now.

  Eyes closed, leaning back, I tried to snort the smell of gunpowder out of my nose. But it wasn’t just a smell in my nose; it was a sound in my ears, too. Sound of fucking bullets reminded me of the tattoo guy’s needle gun laying Fagan writ large and bold on my back.

  “Fuck.”

  Fagan and I had banged through the better part of two-fifths of Beam, almost a full twenty-four of Corona, two or three spliffs. All that shit blunted my memory, like it had been hammered dull against a sidewalk. Part of me knew that was a good thing, though. Chances were the booze and booyah had stomped the worst of the memories down.

  “What we doing, White-Boy Darcy?” Cope asked, his voice a shout over the engine.