by Brett Riley
Now they’re doin it anyway, Johnstone said. Because of the murders.
Well, it’s good to know you’re safe, Raymond said. We should all trade numbers.
I was just tellin ’em they ought to stay here until we catch this fella, Bradley said.
Yeah, said Thornapple, frowning. Except I’m supposed to be workin the story.
And we don’t intend to live like prisoners, Johnstone said.
Raymond gestured at the room. This hardly counts as a cell. Right now, this sumbitch is workin the diner grounds, but it’s possible he’ll break the pattern. You don’t want to be around if he does. You got security here?
Alarm system, said Thornapple. Security cameras with a clear view of the grounds. Floodlights and motion detectors.
Standard, but better than nothin. Then I’d suggest followin the chief’s advice. If you go anywhere, go together. That includes trips to and from work. Stay around as many people as possible. Then lock up tight when you get back. Call one of us if anything weird happens, and I mean anything. That sound okay to you, Chief?
It would sound better if they just left town.
Thornapple and Johnstone both shook their heads.
Can’t do it, the newspaperman said.
Bradley sighed. Well, I can’t make you. I’ll have a car swing by every so often. And whatever you do, don’t go to the goddam diner. Hell, stay outta the south part of town, period.
But— Thornapple began.
No, said Bradley. If I so much as hear a rumor you’re within a mile of that place, I’ll arrest you for bein hardheaded.
Thornapple looked at Johnstone. She shrugged. I reckon we can live with that, he said.
Johnstone kissed him on the cheek.
Chapter Nineteen
September 13, 2016—Comanche, Texas
Adam Garner could barely keep his eyes open. He had slept ten hours over the last three days and wanted nothing more than a sandwich, a long piss, and fourteen hours in bed. And now, finally, he had almost reached home.
When Pat Wayne called him with the news of John’s death, she had been in shock or hysterical or both, rambling about how a ghost shot John in the guts. Garner could not follow most of it and, in truth, could barely recall it now. He must have drifted off while she talked, remembering John in his high-school football uniform, on his couch with a beer in hand, at Cowboys Stadium when Dallas lost their first game there to the New York Goddam Giants back in ’09. Garner had wanted to hightail it back to Comanche, but he had been driving through upstate New York on the way to Minneapolis. By the time he offloaded and headed southwest, he had missed the funeral. He called Pat and apologized, and then he phoned his boss, asking for another assignment. He needed time, just enough for the worst of his grief and anger to subside. Pat would need a good friend. He had picked up a load of electronics in Fargo and hauled it to Salt Lake City, and when that was done, he pushed on to Vegas and spent nearly a week at an off-Strip casino, playing poker and slots and drinking beer and watching the whole sad press of humanity rumble by. When he felt like he could look at Comanche without punching someone, he got in his truck and headed home.
Now, nearing his house in the rig’s cab, he geared down and tugged on the wheel, every muscle in his arms and shoulders protesting. Jesus God, I ain’t never been so tired. Even my hair hurts. He did not notice the squad car parked across the street and paid no attention when two deputies got out. As he killed the engine, removed his keys, and stumbled out of the truck, he did not hear them approach or when they called his name three times. Heading for his front door, trying to find the house key on his overloaded ring, Garner finally acknowledged the cops’ presence when one of them tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned around, eyes bleary, bladder aching, and said, Huh?
He recognized one of the cops, a sawed-off little prick named Roen who had given him four speeding tickets over the years. After that last one, I promised myself I’d break your little rat face if I ever caught you outta uniform, but here you are again, all dressed up. It’s like you turn invisible or teleport to the moon as soon as you unbutton that black shirt. What the hell are you doin here at one thirty in the mornin? The other cop, a Latino Garner had never seen before, stood a head taller than Roen and looked as if he could eat the little bastard for supper with room left over. But Adam Garner was bigger than both. His beer gut protruded well past his belt. His biceps were the size of country hams, his graying beard cascading down his chest so far that more than one truck stop hoochie had asked if he were one of those ZZ Top guys. Maybe that was why the little rat-faced cop kept glancing around, one hand hovering near his service weapon. Even the bigger guy looked like he would jump a mile in the air, if anybody said boo.
Now, lookahere, Garner said. I did thirty-five ever since I hit the city limits. And don’t give me no bull about crossin the center line. I kept my eye on it all the way home.
Roen’s hand rested on his service weapon’s butt. Chief sent us to pick you up.
He grabbed Garner’s arm.
The bigger cop held out one hand like he expected Garner to skip through a field of flowers with him. But Garner pulled away.
I ain’t done nothin. Y’all got no right to drag me off my own porch unless you’re chargin me with somethin.
We’re takin you in to protective custody, said Roen.
Garner laughed. You? Protect me from what, bunny rabbits and rainbows?
The bigger cop pulled a can of pepper spray out of his belt. Garner stopped laughing.
If you try to use that on me, you’re gonna get a pepper enema.
The man looked like he might try it anyway until Roen said, No. Put that up.
That made Garner stop and think. Roen had always exuded Little Cop Syndrome like stink off a landfill, the kind of guy who used the badge and gun to bully people who could have folded him up like a wallet. He never warned, always ticketed, and took every attempt at friendly small talk as disrespect. If a son of a bitch like that was trying to keep things calm, he must be under strict orders from the chief, and that could mean nothing good for Adam Garner.
The bigger cop put the spray back in his belt. Roen turned back to Garner and said, Look. The chief believes you might be in danger.
Garner sighed. Why don’t you boys come in and let me take a piss before I gotta do it in public and get arrested?
The cops looked at each other. Then Roen said, Gotta be better than standin out here where any damn fool can shoot at us. But we’re goin in first.
Adam Garner unlocked his door and stepped aside, bowing like a prince before a lady.
Bradley’s bedside landline rang seven times before his wife elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to wake him. Helen muttered something about turning down the ringer and rolled over. He rubbed his eyes and grabbed the handset off the cradle.
Bradley, he said, stifling a yawn.
The voice of David Roen blasted out of the earpiece. Sorry to get you up, but I thought you’d wanna know Adam Garner came home.
All right. You told him the plan?
Yessir. He ain’t exactly inclined.
Put him on.
Roen talked with someone, but Garner did not pick up for nearly a minute, during which time Bradley considered hanging up and letting the man take his chances. But Momma Bradley had raised her kids to finish their jobs and do them well, no matter the pay or the circumstance, so he waited as Helen snored beside him.
Finally, Garner’s gruff voice said, Hello.
Mr. Garner. Officer Roen tells me you won’t cooperate.
Well, now, he walked up on me when I was half dead. Plus, he won’t explain why I’m supposed to go stay with Red Thornapple. It ain’t like me and Red eat breakfast together.
I expect my officer mentioned our reasonin relates to the deaths at the diner. That would be a whale of an omission
if he didn’t.
He did. But I don’t know what that has to do with me.
You knew the Harveston girl.
I spoke to her at the diner when they took our picture for that article. Some months back, she helped fix me up after I burned the shit outta my forearm changin my oil. That’s how well I knew her.
And what about John Wayne?
Garner went silent for a bit. Then he said, We was good friends. Played ball together in high school. Worked on old hot rods when we could spare the time. Drinkin buddies. Garner’s voice broke.
A second later, the big man was snorting and snuffling, the sound muffled as if he held the phone to his chest. A loud goose honk suggested he had blown his nose. Bradley waited.
Sorry, Garner said. I thought it was all out of my system. Don’t reckon I can do much for Pat, cryin like a little girl every time I think about Johnny. I’d like to get hold of the sumbitch that killed him.
Bradley mustered all his sleep-deprived sympathy. I’m sorry for your loss. We think somebody’s after the folks in Red’s article.
Bradley told Garner as much of the story as he could, leaving out the ghost angle. He would not mock the man’s grief.
When Bradley finished, Garner said, I got no plans to eat at the diner anytime soon. Not when I could probably look out the door and still see John’s blood on the ground.
Bradley exhaled. Good, he said.
Did Pat tell you what she thinks about all this?
Bradley cleared his throat. Yeah. A lot of folks saw somethin weird.
A lot of folks think they’ve seen Bigfoot and flyin saucers, too. Don’t make ’em right.
It sure don’t.
I hope somebody’s been out to check on Pat.
One of my deputies goes by there every couple days. As for you, it’d be best if you cleared out until all this blows over.
I’m too tired to run. And I ain’t gonna hide out at Red’s place either. If somebody wants to kill me, I got a little somethin for ’em in my gun cabinet.
Don’t you do nothin stupid.
I’m not lookin for trouble. I’ll be sittin right here until it’s time to hit the road again. Good night, Chief.
Garner must have handed the phone back to Roen, who said hello again just as Bradley hung up. The chief slipped back under the covers and curled up. He would have to assign someone to patrol Garner’s neighborhood, especially at night, until they closed the case. It would be a pain in his ass and his budget. But the CPD could hardly leave the man unprotected. With any luck, the killer would move on to somebody else’s town or slip up, and if Turner’s group caught the bastard, that would suit Bradley right down to the ground.
So thinking, he drifted off and dreamed of a ghostly face—haggard and soiled, stubbled and gray. It stared at him, unblinking, unmoving, its faded eyes mesmerizing. And when it finally opened its mouth, Bradley woke up screaming, pouring sweat. He turned on the bedside lamp and clutched his chest, his heart pounding, until Helen sat up beside him, one breast poking out of her nightgown. She watched him with eyes the size of silver dollars, her hands bunched in the bedclothes. When he finally found his voice, he patted her on the leg and told her to go back to sleep. It had just been a nightmare, one that would fade in the light of day.
The next morning, at Larry’s Grill on West Grand Avenue, Raymond sat across from LeBlanc and McDowell, eating an omelet and drinking a cup of strong coffee, when his phone buzzed. He plucked it out and saw Frost’s name on the readout.
Hello, Jake, he said.
A deep yawn from the other end. Morning.
You sound beat.
Sorry. I’ve been up all night researching the history of the Comanche Depot, and holy shit, did I find something.
Yeah? What?
Okay, so I’ve been using a couple of those public records search companies, right?
Raymond sipped coffee. Uh-huh.
Well, it took quite a bit of digging, but I found it, buried in a defunct Fort Worth paper from the late nineteenth century.
Found what?
An account of what happened to the Piney Woods Kid. That posse didn’t just gun him down. They brought him to the Comanche Depot dead house. Then they fucking dismembered it. The body, not the building. They chopped it into bits.
Raymond’s stomach flip-flopped. To LeBlanc and McDowell, he said, I gotta take this outside. LeBlanc nodded, looking puzzled.
Raymond stood and pushed his chair under the table. He walked out and leaned against the rough brick wall, took a deep breath, and said, I’m back. Who wrote that article—Stephen King?
The time period’s closer to Poe, but I know what you mean.
Did it say what happened to the pieces?
No, but people saw the posse ride out that morning covered in gore.
Christ.
A lot of people believe blood is life. Look at Christian communion rites. Look at vampire lore. Even if those men hauled in tubs to catch the runoff, they would have almost certainly spilled some. If you’ve started to believe in ghosts, that might be enough to anchor one to the depot.
Raymond laughed without humor. I’m not ready to call in the Winchesters just yet. Did you turn up anything about a pair of boots? Maybe the Kid’s guns or gun belt?
Several moments of silence elapsed before Frost asked, How did you know?
Oh, shit. Raymond shivered. Tell me.
The Kid’s gore dripped all over them when that posse shot him. The people who ran the depot displayed them near the ticket window for years. Can you believe this shit? They talk about it in the paper like it’s as normal as Sunday brunch.
What happened to the boots after that?
No idea.
Raymond thought about the stains on the old boots and gun belt in the storage building. About McDowell’s reaction. About what she said—this is a bad place. He told Frost what they had seen.
Her eyes bled, Frost said. They actually bled, and you saw it?
I wish I hadn’t. You said earlier they took the Kid’s body to the dead house. What the hell’s a dead house?
It’s like a morgue. You often find them near older cemeteries. Some train depots from that period have one, since bodies were often transported by rail.
There’s an old cemetery just a few blocks from the depot. We’ve passed it a couple of times. I didn’t see anything like that.
Maybe it never had one, Frost said. Maybe it got torn down. Or maybe nineteenth-century Comanche just had the one.
You think the diner’s storage building used to be a dead house?
I don’t know what the hell I think. But it fits the narrative. It would be where the Kid’s remains were desecrated. Plus, dead houses weren’t exactly secure or sanitary by our standards. Rats, flies, and so forth could find their way in. If the storage building was a dead house, it probably saw a lot of corrupted remains. It’s exactly the kind of place a ghost would haunt. And if your killer knows the building’s history, it makes sense he’d focus on that location.
Raymond swallowed hard. Again, he felt like vomiting. They had stomped around in a bad place all right. And although Frost had no doctorate in criminal psychology, he was probably right. Somebody who wanted to be the Kid or his ghost, or sought revenge for whatever the hell, would know the history and home in on the diner. Plus, it fit the nut jobs’ revenge theory of why the killer had come after the posse’s descendants. But who in Comanche might hatch such an unnecessarily convoluted response to an obscure historical moment?
God, he needed a whiskey. Frost had cleared up some questions but raised even more.
Thanks, Raymond said. I’ll be in touch.
He hung up and rubbed his temples. He wanted another cup of coffee and twelve Tylenol.
He walked back inside and sat down. Their waitress refilled his coffee. LeBlanc ordered a s
lice of apple pie. McDowell sat beside him, watching Raymond, her brow furrowed like a worried mother’s. She fished in her purse and pulled out a bottle of Excedrin Migraine and handed it to Raymond. He opened the bottle and shook out three pills, not caring about the recommended dosage. He dry-swallowed them and dumped a couple of sugar packets in his coffee.
Finally, LeBlanc said, Well? You gonna tell us what he said, or do we gotta guess?
Raymond leaned over the table as far as he could and waved them in. They huddled, elbows on the table, and in hushed tones Raymond summarized his conversation with Frost. In the middle of the story, the waitress brought LeBlanc’s pie. It sat untouched until Raymond finished. Then LeBlanc wolfed it down in three bites. When the server brought the check, Raymond paid it as McDowell and LeBlanc stood at the register behind him, silent. They exited the restaurant, Raymond leading them back to their rental. They got in, and he started the car but did not pull away from the curb.
Well, McDowell said. On the practical side, it sounds like our guy is doing what he thinks an angry spirit would do.
LeBlanc nodded, though Raymond suspected he would have agreed with McDowell if she had said Yankees had two heads.
If that’s the practical side, Raymond said, I’d hate to hear the whacko perspective.
I’m more open to the idea of spirits than you are. Back home, I’ve felt some things I can’t explain. Not just on the ghost tours they advertise to the out-of-towners, either. Things that happened, people that lived and died—they leave echoes, some piece of themselves and whatever they felt. Pride, anger, love, desperation, guilt. And if the emotions are still there, then how much of a stretch is it to believe somethin’s generatin those feelings? We’re probably dealin with a man—a sick one, a vicious one, but just a man. Still—what if it is somethin else?
LeBlanc just about nodded himself into a concussion. Better safe than sorry, he said.
They drove back to the hotel and went to their rooms. Raymond wanted to stake out the diner, now that all the descendants were accounted for. He did not know what else to do. But given nothing had happened in the daytime yet, he felt reasonably safe in lying down for an hour or two, just long enough to get rid of his headache. After that, he supposed they would have to organize watches. The CPD lacked manpower. The Turner Agency would have to take up the slack. And he would not send McDowell alone after what had happened to her in the storage building. In short, the group would have to split up.