Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  And they sure as hell didn’t jerk away like they were wasp-stung when he walked into a café. Which meant, he was almost certain, that the rail-thin woman staring at him with huge, brown eyes knew who he was, knew all about Willie Tyler. His pulse thundering in his ears, he almost ran out before he noticed Patsy Copeland’s head shaking.

  “It’s okay. He’s fine,” she assured the younger woman. “This is Zeke Pike, Rachel. He comes in every afternoon about this time. I’ve known him—what’s it been, Zeke? Twelve years, or is it fourteen?”

  Frozen to the spot, he nodded, struggling to make sense of the situation. And then the name registered. Rachel.

  Of course. This must be Walter’s daughter, the one who’d been the subject of so much talk that even a recluse couldn’t help but hear it—and form his own opinion.

  From what he’d overheard, Zeke figured that unlike Willie, Rachel’s so-called victim—the dumb son of a bitch—had no one but himself to blame for ending up on the wrong side of the grass. Out here in West Texas, such a case would never have gone to trial. But folks said the boy had come from some high-dollar family with all kinds of connections, and Zeke had learned the hard way how such factors reshuffled the deck.

  Rachel Copeland eyed him carefully before nodding. “Oh—sorry. I thought—I took you for someone else.”

  He wondered if the kid she’d shot had been big, too. Or if, in light of her experience, she was spooked by men in general. Too bad, if that was the case, because she was a pretty thing, early thirties, maybe, with a coltish build and big, doe eyes partly hidden by long bangs. The rest of her dark, reddish hair was sleeked back in a careless ponytail that hung straight and glossy along her axle-stiff spine.

  “I can go,” he suggested.

  She shook her head, her face flushing. “Don’t leave, please. Come inside and have your lunch.”

  Her voice triggered something in him, made him imagine himself undoing her hair, running his hands through the silken river of it, or tangling it as he laid her back and—

  “Maybe that’d be best,” he said, aggravated with the direction of his thoughts. He’d been mostly celibate—with a few occasions off for bad behavior—for a lot of years now, but instead of forgetting about sex, he spent way too much time thinking on it. Made him wonder about priests and monks—how the hell they stood it, when here he was, picturing this scrawny, scared, stray kitten of a woman naked.

  Patsy said, “Let me get your sandwich started. And this one’s on the house.”

  He gave a dismissive snort. “Like hell it is.”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself. The chicken salad?”

  He took another step inside, then cracked a rare smile. “It’s still Tuesday, isn’t it?”

  He and Patsy had it all worked out. He’d show up some time after the lunch rush and have a different meal each weekday, for which he paid on Friday afternoons, in cash. Cheeseburger and fries on Mondays. Chicken salad on whole wheat with barbecue chips Tuesdays. BLT, more chips, on Wednesdays. Salad plate with cold cuts Thursdays, and chicken-fried steak Fridays to reward himself for eating something green, other than his usual dill spear, the day before. Each meal was followed by a slice of whatever fresh-baked pie Patsy had on hand—Zeke had never met one of her homemade pies he didn’t favor—and then he’d get up and walk the mile and a half down the highway and long, private road leading back to his place, where he would work well into the night.

  No muss, no fuss, and only the bare minimum of interaction. And better yet, he didn’t have to eat his own cooking, which wouldn’t pass muster in a Third World prison.

  He glanced over at his usual seat, a table near the window, as far from the possibility of conversation as a man could get. But for the first time he could remember, he didn’t immediately head to it, put his back to those present, and stare out the window to watch graceful, long-winged aircraft pulled like kites into the sky.

  Though he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with Rachel—he was losing the knack for it—he felt words squeezing loose, working their way out of him like embedded cactus spines. He would have stopped himself if he were able, but instead, he cleared his throat and said, “What you did—they should’ve given you a medal. Most feel the same around here.”

  “Glad to know I meet with your approval.” She shaded the words with equal parts relief, sarcasm, and defiance.

  He liked that, liked that what she’d been through hadn’t melted down the mental toughness that had prompted her to kill rather than allow herself to become a victim. He’d been wrong earlier, when he’d thought of a starved kitten. This was a little lioness, fallen on hard times.

  “You’ll be all right.” He nodded, feeling yet another smile—two, in one day—pulling at one corner of his mouth. Then he turned back to his spot and sat to face the window, where he watched Walter Copeland turn on a dime and waggle his little plane’s wings for sheer joy before buzzing around to make his landing.

  Zeke heard light steps behind him and felt, rather than saw, Rachel Copeland’s nearness as she bent to peer out, too. She smelled nice, like a lemon drop shot through with honey. He wondered if it was just her shampoo, or if the whole of her smelled so good. He shifted slightly, figuring she’d either scream or shoot him if she caught sight of what was going on beneath the table’s edge.

  “That father of mine—the man never changes.”

  He envied her for the affection bubbling through her words, for the ease with which she spun away and hurried out through the door. He watched her glide past a beat-up gold van with Pennsylvania plates, break into a trot, and then run toward the airstrip. Fluid, graceful—bliss suffused her movement. The joy of her homecoming, her reunion with a parent who would always take her back, no questions asked.

  Zeke had no patience for self-pity, and until that moment, he would have said—if he’d had anyone other than his horses to confide in—that he’d rooted out and vanquished the last traces from his soul. But it must be like his sex drive, something a man could fight off but never truly conquer, for at the moment, grief lanced through him, sharp and bitter and unutterably painful.

  Grief that left him reeling with awareness of the price paid for his choice.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow …

  —The Holy Bible (King James version)

  Isaiah 34:15

  Finally alone. It was all Mary Alice had wanted in the dark wake of her husband’s funeral. And all she’d been denied for what had seemed like ten eternities. First, she’d had to suffer through the clumsy platitudes of the mourners who had swarmed her house after the service. She had wanted to scream at each one: Don’t you remember, you said that same thing the last time? Don’t you remember how it didn’t help at all?

  But her grown daughters, Marlene and Kathy, must have seen an outburst coming, for they’d hustled her off to the kitchen, where they’d plied her with herbal tea and hugs. Mary Alice didn’t want their coddling either, didn’t want anyone’s comfort but their brother’s, the lost son that her husband had unfairly been allowed to join ahead of her.

  She hated Jim for that, God help her, and hated him for leaving her the object of so much useless sympathy. What she really needed wasn’t pity but a crowbar, to pry open the single, locked room in the upstairs hallway.

  As she slipped out her back door and made her way around the edge of the pool, she wondered why her two surviving children didn’t turn their backs on her. Despite the way she had virtually ignored them for so long, her daughters still felt the need to comfort her. Or maybe they themselves were seeking comfort, as both seemed shaken by their father’s sudden death. As well they might, for ever since the family’s first loss, he was the only parent who acknowledged their grief, their existence.

  A few fat snowflakes fluttered past, but Mary Alice, dressed only in a gray silk blouse and black slacks, noticed neither the flurry nor the blue norther’s biting c
old. She knew she should feel guilt for her part in her family’s dissolution, just as she should feel pain for the loss of the man she’d slept beside for decades. But those emotions were beyond her and had been since the terrible day her son had been taken from her.

  The day her precious baby boy was murdered.

  Her eyelids pinched shut, and colors swirled. Crimson and obsidian: the stark flash of police lights against the blackness of that night. The keening of a siren and her own stricken wailing formed the soundtrack to the memory, as always.

  Trembling less from cold than pain, she came to the neatly painted back shed and frowned to find that her chronically forgetful husband had locked it as securely as he had her son’s bedroom door. Like that key, this one was missing, but since her Jim had loved to putter with his roses and camellias back here, she suspected he would have a copy hidden nearby.

  “And this time, you aren’t here to stop me,” she told the man she had just buried. The man who’d always thought he knew best for her.

  “You’re going to have to put this thing behind you,” she heard him say, as he’d been saying since a few months after their son’s death. At first he’d advised her gently. Then firmly. And finally, he had dragged her to a variety of counselors, psychologists, and then a shrink who’d prescribed all sorts of medications.

  She’d flushed every pill. Because she didn’t want to dull the edges of the only feelings left to her. If she lost touch with the pain, the rage, and the glowing, molten ball of her hatred, what would she have left except a featureless, gray void?

  She would die in that drugged blankness. Die without her dark dreams of revenge, the shocking fantasies that featured the hot spurt of blood against her clean skin, the scent and taste of flesh as her teeth tore it, the surge of power flooding through her as she smashed a killer’s heart beneath her heels.

  On her knees now—her good wool slacks would be ruined—she found the key beneath a clay pot as a few more snowflakes spiraled past. Her husband had never been very imaginative, not even in his choice of hiding places, she thought as a sting of tears surprised her.

  She let herself into the shed. And found the tools she would need to pry open the long-locked door to her son’s room.

  Tonight, she would sleep among bedclothes that might yet hold a trace of his scent and rest her head upon his pillow. Tonight, she would sleep deeply, while her darkest dreams held court.

  As he hopped down from a bright yellow, single-prop crop duster and walked toward his daughter, Walter Copeland gave no sign of recognition. But the moment she called, “Dad,” his face flushed with elation. He ran toward her, shouting her name and throwing his arms wide.

  But that was Rachel’s father. For better or worse, he had always worn his feelings with all the subtlety of a tie-dyed T-shirt, right out in the open, for everyone to see. When he loved, he loved lavishly, without apology. When he felt hurt or anger, those internal maelstroms, too, were visible as a toddler’s.

  Rachel loved him for it, though he had caused her nearly fatal humiliation throughout the years she had struggled to fit in with her peer group. For a long time, she had blamed her failure to be accepted on her father, who was slyly mocked for his geeky fixation on all things airborne, his never-changing aviator glasses worn with sky-blue coveralls, his brush-cut red hair, and the effusive hugs he’d give her in front of anyone.

  It was not until much later that she realized her obsession with her camera and one infamous plane stunt she’d pulled as a sophomore were in and of themselves enough to forever bar her from the inner circle. While other kids might have cheered the daring of a football jock who’d sent upperclassmen scurrying as he buzzed the senior picnic, they’d been far less amused when the same exploit was undertaken by a gawky late bloomer with braces, bad skin, and allergies that often left her red-nosed.

  Whether it was her ill-considered attempt at humor, her appearance, or some combination of the two, she had remained a dateless wonder until college. In the years since, she’d changed enough to attract plenty of male attention, but Rachel still tended to think of herself as the nerdy type. Consequently, she’d been first bewildered—and then sickened—by the news coverage that categorized her as some sort of hot-bod femme fatale. Her.

  She ran into the embrace of the one man who had always thought her pretty. “Dad…It’s—it’s so…good to see you.”

  Rachel felt stupid, falling apart right then and there for anyone to see. For all she knew, not only the gold-eyed owl but that stranger from The Roost was watching, a plainspoken man who had startled her with his sheer presence. But she’d had to hold things together for so damned long, she was helpless to keep back her pent-up tears.

  Her dad was crying, too, hugging her for dear life and saying, “It’s all right now. It’s gonna be fine, Rusty.”

  Though his use of her childhood nickname made it harder, Rachel pulled herself together, still mindful of the mountain man at his place by the window.

  “So, uh—” She glanced upward, desperately seeking a distraction, and found it in a jet-black pair of vultures rising on a thermal. Close by, three sailplanes formed a gaggle, all spiraling higher on the same column of rising air. “Looks like a great day for soaring.”

  Taking his cue, her father pulled away and smiled, staring as if he couldn’t get enough of her face. The crinkles around his eyes had deepened, and his red hair had faded, with snowy patches appearing at his temples. He looked smaller, too, somehow, diminished by this past year, just as she had been. Perhaps he’d had it even tougher, being forced to stay at home to tend to his mother and his business while his heart was under siege some two thousand miles north and east.

  His suffering was another cost Rachel could add to Kyle Underwood’s tally. Or maybe her own.

  But instead of speaking of it, her father cleared his throat and regrouped. “Cloud ceiling’s good and high, too. They could stay up for hours.”

  She nodded and fell gratefully into a conversation about thermals and ridge lifts and the outrageous impurity—in her father’s view—of optional engines in a sailplane.

  “What’s next? Helicopter rotors planted on top?” he asked, head shaking.

  She smiled at the thought that nothing here had changed, that they could simply pick up where they’d left off when she had gone away to college at eighteen. In Marfa, she could start her whole life again, and maybe this time, her dreams wouldn’t land her in the realm of nightmares.

  “You can’t pretend away the past.” Dr. Thomas’s gentle admonition floated through her memory. She shoved the thought aside, taking cover in a fantasy so beautiful that she could only listen, for her throat was too clogged with tears to speak.

  Eventually, however, she picked up on the concern in her dad’s face. “Did you hear a word I just said?” he asked.

  She shook her head and swallowed. “Sorry. I was trying to take it all in—being back here, talking soaring with you. It feels just like old times.”

  As if nothing ever happened.

  His face lit up. “Make you want to climb back into the cockpit and take the Pawnee for a spin?”

  She closed her eyes a moment, bowled over by a wave of longing for the days when she’d done just that. “You know I can’t,” she told him.

  He waved off her protest. “It’s like riding a bike. You don’t forget. Hell, you practically grew up in the air.”

  “It wouldn’t be legal.” She’d long since quit worrying about her biennial flight reviews and the medical certification required to keep her current as a pilot in command. It hadn’t seemed relevant in Philadelphia. Flying was something she’d done because she was Walter Copeland’s daughter, an expectation, not a passion. The only times she ever missed it were during rare, brief visits home to see her dad and grandma.

  “Since when were you so concerned about flight regulations? I can remember when you used to—”

  Before he could wax nostalgic over the same craziness for which she’d once been groun
ded, she said, “That was before I figured out that gravity applied to me personally. And that even an accusation of wrongdoing can wreck a person’s life.”

  He looked down. “Don’t worry, Rusty. We’ll get you up-to-date. I’ll help you study the rule changes, practice with you—”

  “It’s been a long time,” she said uncertainly.

  “You’ll be back in the air before you know it. You’re a natural. Always were. And I could use the help. Aside from the glider business, I’ve been using the Cessna as an air taxi—ferrying folks out here from the big airports.”

  Averting her gaze, she looked out over the various metal hangars. Squinting at the nearest, she said, “Is that another bizjet?”

  Her father nodded.

  “Cessna’s not fancy enough or large enough to suit the big boys or haul all their luggage, so the place’s been drowning in the damned things.” He peered over his shoulder to make certain no one could be listening.

  Rachel understood. While its population dwindled, Marfa had clung to life for decades, a struggling, high desert nowhere-ville desperately clutching to its mystery lights and its place in cinematic history—iconic rebel James Dean had performed his final leading movie role in Giant, filmed here over fifty years before. Sailplane pilots loved the area for its vast, unbroken vistas, its year-round flying weather, and its thermals, but the niche hobby couldn’t support more than her father and a couple of part-time employees.

  More recently, the high desert light and scores of rundown but charming adobe houses had made Marfa a mecca for the culturati, rich outsiders who had bought up half the town on the cheap. In time, they drove up home prices beyond long-term residents’ modest means and replaced the mom-and-pop stores people had relied upon for years with upscale wine bars and pretentious restaurants. A lot of the locals wished the newcomers would haul their liposuctioned asses off to Aspen, Taos, and all the other small towns they’d “ruined” by making them into chichi playgrounds.