2,000 Miles to Open Road (Barefield)

by Trey R. Barker

  "I don't need security," she said quietly, her voice hardly a whisper. "But I can't get rid of his ass. It's my casino and he won't leave."

  The cop's grin grew slowly. "No, no, sister, it's my casino." He looked at Apple Valley. "And we do need security, missy, not everyone enjoys the Disney-fication of Las Vegas. Or Times Square or Florida or all of southern California. There are those who long for a return to the old days, with all the crime that entails."

  "'Specially Neanderthal cops looking for an extra pie to shove in a Cayman Island bank, right?" Hal sat up straight and dared the man to take another swing.

  The man took the dare.

  Hard this time. Teeth rattled in Hal's head as he fell off the couch. More blood washed over his lips while some munchkin in his head began to bang with a twenty-pound sledge hammer.

  "Next time, we'll just report you resisted arrest. It'll break my heart, truly, but as an officer of the law, I occasionally have to kill suspects."

  "More than occasionally," Jolene said.

  Officer Douglas grinned triumphantly. "Just doing my job, ma'am. Protecting our investment from the riff-raff." He turned to Hal. "Anything else to say?"

  The answer was on his tongue, but the man's finger on the trigger kept Hal quiet. Through angry eyes, Hal stared at the cop. The uniform was perfect, the creases in his pants as sharp as those boys' thin ties and probably just as lethal. His shoes were black mirrors. And his badge--

  Hal frowned and took a deeper look. It sat perfectly straight on the man's chest. Gold with silver and a number along the bottom and no fucking city name.

  What crawled across Hal's mouth might have been a grin but it felt more like the curl of lip you might see on a dog before he bit a bloody chunk out of your ass.

  "Hal?" Apple Valley said.

  It was bullshit. More than that, it was bad bullshit. Hal had seen enough crappy cons to know when one had sprung a leak and this was pretty much one of those times. Face bloody, Hal stood and put himself between Officer Douglas and Apple Valley.

  The cop's face grew long with surprise. "Get some balls, did you?"

  "And I'm gonna shove 'em down your throat."

  Hal moved quick, bringing his left hand up in a feint. When Officer Douglas faded to his own left, Hal smashed him with a hard pop to the face.

  "Hal, what--"

  "Get him, baby," Jolene said. Her laugh spiraled up over them.

  Officer Douglas stumbled sideways, but reached out as he fell. His hands clamped around Hal's left arm like a vise. The man's nails, too long, tore into Hal's skin. With a yelp, Hal went down. They both landed in a pile and the air went out of Hal. He gasped as Officer Douglas landed punch after punch.

  Apple Valley threw herself on top of the cop. She grabbed his hair and tried to roll him off Hal.

  "Get the hell off me, bitch," the cop screamed. "You're breaking the law."

  "You ain't no law," Jolene said.

  Hal covered his face with his hands, tried to avoid the flurry of punches. Fists, eventually blood-covered, came at Hal's face again and again. They were fucking bricks, hard and unyielding.

  As he punched, the cop's head flounced back and forth. Apple Valley slammed it over and over again into the shag carpet, as though she was playing a counter-rhythm to the punches Officer Douglas threw at Hal. The man's chin bounced off the floor. His tongue flopped between his teeth, becoming bloodier and bloodier.

  "You're under arrest, you're under arrest." Spittle flew from Officer Douglas's face.

  "Arrest this," Hal said. He jammed his knee upward but had no idea what he hit until Apple Valley winced.

  The cop laughed and shoved himself free. It was like a concrete block had been torn away. Hal jumped up and his blood flew across the garishly decorated office. Red dots here, red dots there.

  Hal danced and tried to keep moving since he couldn't see anything through the blood. He could hear and smell the cop, he just couldn't see him.

  "Hal," Apple Valley said. "Watch out. Left. Left, damnit."

  "What the fuck does that mean?" Hal rubbed bloody fingers in his eyes. Stinging pain answered him. "Whose left?"

  "Yours," Apple Valley yelled.

  "Get outta my casino, asshole," Jolene said.

  Above her voice, Hal heard Officer Douglas's laugh. Then a truck pummeled Hal's gut. Pain exploded white hot as though he'd been shot with a cannon. He howled and fell to the floor.

  "I'm sorry, Hanford," he said, his voice a weak and watery moan. "Ain't gonna make it."

  "This is my place," Jolene shouted. "Get the hell out."

  "Shut up, bitch," Officer Douglas answered. He went to his knees on top of Hal. His fist cocked back and just before he let fly, he smiled.

  "Damnit, this is my club," Jolene said again. "Puss."

  A hollow thud rang out into the office. Officer Douglas slumped a bit as bits of fur exploded from around his head. Hal thought the man had been shot with a pillow. It took him a second to realize Jolene had beaned Officer Douglas with the stuffed cat. She stood behind the cop now, the cat held high--broken at its back and one leg missing--cocked and ready to whack him again.

  "The fuck are you doing?" the cop asked. He stood and faced her, his hand moving to his gun.

  Jolene's eyes went wide. She dropped the cat and whirled to her desk. When she came back around, Hal caught just a quick flash of bronze.

  "And mother fucking boots," Jolene yelled.

  She heaved, the cords on her neck stood high and defined, her face a grimace. The bronzed boot smashed into Officer Douglas's face. Beneath the metallic bong of metal against bone, there was the tender crack of cartilage and bone.

  He never made a sound. His head snapped back and his spine curled until he resembled the letter 'C' more than he did a man. Spatters of blood trailed down the closest wall.

  And then, as though attached by strings that a puppeteer only reluctantly released, he slowly fell.

  Apple Valley began to cry, her breath thick and ragged and whistling. She was scared and Hal wondered if her fear tasted as bad as his own. Hot and liquid and dragging his ass down in a whirlpool. It pulled him so far down, in fact, he damn near didn't feel the pain of the beating the cop had administered.

  Oh, yeah, Hanford was right on this one. This was one bad--check it, BAD--decision. "Holy shit," Hal whispered.

  "This is my place, dickhead," Jolene said to the corpse.

  She stood over him, stuffed cat in one hand, bronzed boot in the other. The heel of the boot dripped blood and Hal was pretty sure that if he checked, there'd be a matching hole in Officer Douglas's brainpan.

  "Are you kidding me with this? Another felony."

  Apple Valley began to shake. "Shit shit shit, I can't believe this." She turned to Jolene. "I just needed a few bucks, that's all. Christ, this wasn't supposed to happen."

  "Felony?" Jolene asked.

  "For killing a police officer," Apple Valley said. "Oh, God, I can't believe this." She fell to her butt on the couch and hid her face behind her hands.

  Jolene snickered. "He wasn't any cop. He got thrown off the force two years ago for beating up whores and sniffing evidence room coke and turning in faked travel expense reports."

  "Damnit," Apple Valley said. She bolted off the couch and began kicking Officer Douglas's body. "What the hell were you doing? I don't have to take this shit from you."

  Hal pulled her back. She beat on him for a second or two, intensifying the pain of Officer Douglas's beating, and then finally collapsed in a heap at his feet. She paid no attention to the blood in which she rolled.

  A cop's blood. Former cop's blood. Either way, what was left of him was a bloody mess. It pooled on the carpet where his head lay. The man's face, pale now as moonlight, was contorted into a grimace.

  Yeah, yeah, bad decision. He sighed, tried to see himself further down the road, all the bullshit behind him. "Cop or not, he's dead."

  "Makes him easier to bury," Jolene said. "You won't have to dig too f
ar down, seeing as how he would be climbing out."

  1,560 Miles

  An hour and a half later, Hal scratched his dick. After taking care of his knob, he snapped the radio's knob. Country music, bad hip-hop, all night talkers. It was all the same, no matter where in the country you were.

  He drove Jolene's 1985 Nova. A small car but it ran pretty good. It had a full tank of gas and they had a few bucks besides. Hal kept it just above sixty, unsure of the limit in southern Nevada. Regardless, sixty-two probably wasn't too fast or too slow.

  "God, we're screwed we get stopped," he said quietly.

  She stared straight ahead, her jaw set and tight, her hands compressing to tight fists, then opening and repeating the process. Her feet were up on her toes and her legs opened and closed as though she was crushing someone's head between her knees. "So don't get stopped. I guess that'd be the answer, wouldn't it?"

  "The hell did we agree to this?"

  "Because she helped us, Hal. You don't mess with people who help you." Apple Valley's tone was as brittle as the men in Jolene's casino. Anxiety flooded every word. "Did she not save us from Brooks? Did she not get us out of Vegas? She damn sure got us a car and some money."

  "Not much. Could use a few more bucks."

  "Don't forget about the map." Apple Valley waved it in his face. "She went way beyond for us. So we do the favor because we owe her."

  "Wasn't really looking for an answer. That was a rhetorical."

  She waved her hand. "Whatever."

  Night had swallowed everything. Not the kind of night where there was a bit of moonlight to see by and damn sure not the kind of night where there were still some slivers of orange or purple on the horizon. Black night, black as the inside of a shitty dream, and that black had swallowed everything like a big-bellied eater at a barbeque cook-off. Tomorrow morning that eater would vomit out some sunlight and this mess would start again. The only difference would be he and Apple Valley would be a helluva lot further down the road.

  Hopefully straddling that New Mexico line no later than six of the a.m.

  Except things hadn't gone any too well since he got the disk so why would they start now? Bad decisions since the beginning and definitely over the last few hours. Shouldn't'a stopped in Vegas, shouldn't'a let her in the car. Maybe shouldn't'a tried to buy the disk and maybe shouldn't even'a gone looking for it.

  Piss on that. That had been the one good decision of the last few months, regardless of what Hanford had said over that last cup of coffee. "Don't do this, Hal. They'll think you're running."

  "I am running."

  "It's the wrong thing to do."

  Hal had shaken his head. Good old Hanford just didn't get it. It wasn't the wrong thing to do, it was the only thing to do. Nine billion fucking people on the planet and only two--count 'em, one two--did Hal give a shit what they thought about him.

  One of those two was Hanford.

  Finding the DVD and taking it to Hanford was the only thing he could do.

  The second person Hal gave a crap about--Theresa--was through that disk. He'd have no life with her until Hanford had seen the thing. And no crap about it, it was something Hal had no desire to see. More than that, he thought maybe he was actually scared to look at it. He knew what was on it and he didn't want that stuck in his eyes. Once he saw it, he wouldn't be able to unsee it.

  So as shitty as things were since he sent Theresa to home to her family in Nueva Rosita, had that last cup'o'java with Hanford, then boogied outta Barefield for Elk City, they were looking up right now. He was on the road moving toward Texas. Full tank of gas. Partially full wallet. DVD. This was as good as it could be right now.

  If that's the case, he thought, then why am I on the verge of freaking out?

  "Don't forget about the body," Apple Valley said.

  Right. Could be that.

  Hal licked his lips. Could be the body and the exhaustion, which was threatening to close his eyes regardless of what he wanted. They were both like a stifling muffler, the kind his mother used to wrap around his face when he and Hanford were kids. It never got all that cold in west Texas, but Mama wrapped those damn scarves anyway. Blue for Hanford, green for him. His exhaustion was one of those mufflers: hot, suffocating, hard to breathe through.

  Trying to cover the memory of Officer Douglas' nose crunching like snow beneath boots, Hal played with the radio. More bad country, bad Top 40, paranoid right-wingers gabbing about government take-overs, and liberals too stupid for their own good.

  "You think he needed killing?" Hal asked.

  In the dim light from the dashboard, her eyes were both cynically dark and brutally alluring. "Don't you have the stomach for it?"

  They hit a bump, probably coyote road kill ground into the highway. Officer Douglas thumped in the trunk.

  Hal shook his head. "Hell no. I'm not a killer."

  "You're okay stealing, but not killing."

  "Fine line, maybe, but it's what I have."

  A good chunk of distance passed beneath the Nova's wheels. "I'm sorry about this," she said. "I didn't think anything like this was going to happen."

  He chuckled but felt no humor. "Bullets were flying when we met. What else can we expect from this relationship?"

  Her laugh was as bright as the afterglow of a speedball. "So true, so true."

  He absently retuned the radio, then snapped it off. "He was right. That cop back there. It's a murder warrant."

  "I figured."

  "With my name on it."

  "Yeah, that was hard to figure out."

  Silence fell hard between them, as it had off and on since she first dove through the window of his car. The sound of the wheels played beneath the silence, the hum of an occasional passing car or truck.

  "Did you do it?"

  The lump in his throat was a big as a fist. "What do you think?"

  "I haven't decided. You say you're not a killer but I don't really know you particularly well."

  "Well enough to jump through my window."

  "That was different." She tapped her nails against the passenger door arm rest. "All I know is that you wanted a disk with something on it and that you scammed $20,000 to buy it. I hear you've got quite the silver tongue when it comes to wheeling and dealing."

  "Didn't wheel the last deal worth a shit. Templeton and Dogwood."

  "Everyone has an off day." She shrugged and leaned back in the seat. "So why do the cops think you're the doer?"

  Hal licked his dry lips. "I was there." So was Tyler, Hal left unsaid.

  Apple Valley snorted. "Color me surprised. So tell me about this disk."

  "It's a DVD."

  "Have you seen it?"

  "No."

  "Do you know what's on it?"

  "Yeah."

  "You?"

  "No."

  "You don't want to see it." A statement.

  "Not for no kind of money." He swallowed into throat as dry as bone.

  "Is it snuff?"

  He left the question unanswered.

  "How'd it get recorded? I mean, most killers--"

  "Ain't no killer." He said it quick and hard.

  "Right, you said that." She nodded. "I just wonder how it got recorded."

  "Guess somebody brought a video camera."

  "So whatever is on this disk happened and someone thought to bring a video cam?"

  "Have to ask them, I guess." Hal ground his teeth.

  "Maybe somebody did it for a private client list that caters to those with a special taste."

  "Maybe. All I know is I ain't no killer."

  She nodded and gently patted his leg. "I'm usually not, either."

  His stomach rolled. "Guess you'll need to explain that one."

  Her laugh was explosive. "You should see your face. God, you'd think you were riding with Satan." She held up three fingers, a Girl Scout pledge. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember killing someone."

  "You'd think."

  She held her fingers steady, her eye
s on his, waiting for…what? His approval? His blessing? His absolution for something that might not have happened? Shit, he had nothing to give her. He barely had it to give himself, why would he waste it on a woman he hardly knew?

  "You'd remember if you whacked someone. Just like you'd remember if you ever seen somebody killed." He looked at her. She kept eyes on the road.

  "Yeah," she said, jaw tightly set. "That I remember."

  Simple, easy words that froze Hal's guts. Hal was running to something, wanting to burn the highway with his speed so that he could get to the rest of his life. But she was running away, trying to burn the highway so that no one could follow.

  And Hal'd bet even money that someone was Brooks.

  "…you've done something stupid and the stupidity keeps getting worse."

  Maybe Hanford's words fit her, too.

  "…everything you do is leading you there."

  Shut the hell up, Hanford, you don't always know what's best. You don't always have to be perfect big brother, better grades and better decisions and the accolades and the rest. But he did know best, didn't he? Wasn't he the successful one? Always getting what he wanted, being where he wanted to be? Had he ever served time?

  Shit no. He wasn't stupid enough to serve time.

  "Hal?"

  Apple Valley looked at him, her fingers still raised in a promise that she was pretty sure she had never killed anyone.

  With a curt nod, Hal accepted her semi-promise. She might be a thief or a whore or whatever, and since she had been with Dogwood there was really no telling what exactly she'd been into, but she didn't strike him as a killer.

  And what if she was? What did it matter? If he slept and she gutted him then none of the worrying would matter at all.

  "You'll get killed."

  Hal ground his teeth, turned the radio up loud. They hit another bump and Officer Douglas' body bounced, seemed to keep bouncing, as though wanting to remind Hal he was back there.

  You're traveling with a corpse, it said.

  "Piss." Hal spit the word. Saliva dotted the wheel.