A Living Grave

by Robert E. Dunn

  I was shaking and light-headed when I dug the phone out of the seat to call in. It was the effect of so much adrenaline draining from the blood, but I suddenly felt as weak as moth’s breath.

  While I waited for the other units, the EMTs, and fire department, I had a lot of time to simply be with what I had done. Cotton was silent on the ground. I had done that. I was justified. I felt justified—at first. Standing there as a witness after the fact, I wasn’t so sure. The darkness was a black, silky depth pushed out by flames on the ground and embraced by stars overhead. There was no dust. The blood wasn’t mine.

  When Cotton stirred, I stood over him and said, “Now, maybe we can have a conversation.”

  His answer was a hateful glare.

  I tried again. Because I’m a calm and patient professional, I spoke slow and clear, trying to keep the situation calm. “You kept Middleton from being shot, Cotton. Who did the shooting?”

  He said something I couldn’t understand. It had slipped my mind that he’d taken a baton to the jaw.

  “Say it again,” I told him. “Slowly.”

  He said it with his middle finger.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. Criminals are exasperating. I thought about cuffing him and just going back to sit in my car to wait. Instead, I asked another question.

  “Did you do anything to the girl?”

  There was no mistaking the confusion in his eyes.

  “The still you busted up tonight. It used to be over by Bear Creek. There was a girl killed there.”

  He nodded. He knew about Angela.

  “Was she part of this?”

  Cotton shook his head.

  “Did Riley Pruitt have anything to do with it?”

  His answer that time was to try to get up and, I assume, somehow get away. I kicked his legs out from under him. I was cinching the cuffs down when the first units began arriving.

  * * *

  Work, both the routine of it and the puzzle, would provide a distance from Nelson that I needed. Not all that I needed, but at least I could think about what he was asking. Forget the fact that the sun was not yet up and I hadn’t slept. The previous night I had not really slept, either. Passed out drunk in your truck is not exactly beauty sleep. As my tires bumped up from grass back onto asphalt I decided to turn toward home rather than back to Nelson’s place.

  The question—proposal—was hanging there in front of me demanding the kind of attention that I wasn’t sure I had to give. I tried to ignore the thought that after I had run out like that he might no longer be asking. Discussion always helped me think things through. Uncle Orson was usually my go-to guy but there were some subtleties of emotion for which he was not the best sounding board. So, as I drove unlighted roads that snaked through dark woods between sheer rock walls and equally sheer drops, I called Dad. The fact that the landscape I was threading my truck through was not unlike the emotional world I needed to navigate was sticking in my mind as the phone rang.

  “I wondered when you would call,” Dad said instead of hello. He was wide awake.

  “He talked to you?”

  “For a long time. I helped him pick out the ring.”

  I said something to that, a word I rarely use and never to my father.

  “What was that?” he asked and the smile in his voice suggested to me that he knew exactly what I had said. For just a moment I thought that my ideal father would have pretended not to hear that, but we never get the ideal, do we? He didn’t wait for me to say. He asked, “Did you accept it?”

  When I didn’t answer with words he said, “I told him you might not right away.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You tell me. You didn’t take it, did you? You didn’t call to give me good news; you called to be coaxed.”

  “No. I didn’t,” I said. “I called to talk. I wanted your opinion and your thoughts and . . . Why would you say to Nelson that I might not marry him?”

  “For the same reason that you didn’t tell him you would. Doubts.”

  “You doubt my feelings? You’re the one that told me—”

  “I don’t doubt your feelings at all. You do that. But this isn’t exactly about honest feeling, is it? How long have you known him? How much is feeling and how much is time? I told him too; I wasn’t sure there was time for your feelings to catch up to his needs. My doubt is that you could make the decision before it was too late.”

  I had to swerve to miss an opossum that was standing his ground in the middle of the road and hissing at the headlights of my truck. Once around the angry creature I told my father, “I can’t believe you would say that to me, or to him. I know my own mind.” My voice was a bit shriller than I wanted it to be.

  It was quiet on his end of the line for a long time before he said, “We’re not talking about your mind, sweetheart.” His voice remained calm and steady. “We’re talking about your heart. And I think you’ve been afraid for so long you hate the thought of giving it up. The fear you’re comfortable with is a shield you hold up between you and your own life.”

  “You don’t know anything about my fear.” When I said it I didn’t recognize the voice. I thought I was angry but it sounded quiet and like I was about to cry. For some reason I wondered if it was how Angela Briscoe’s voice sounded at the end.

  “I know all about the pain you live with,” he said, “and the fear.”

  “Orson promised—”

  “He didn’t tell me. He didn’t have to. Respect for a loved one’s privacy only goes so far. It goes until it’s more important to know the secrets than it is to keep them. You learned that when you looked in that box and found Nelson’s gun.”

  “Dad, I don’t understand . . . I’m confused by all of this . . .”

  “Katrina, do you want to marry him?”

  “I don’t know. We’re just getting to know each other. I know it’s too soon, but I’m afraid of losing him.”

  “Everyone loses. Life is full of losing. Your problem is that you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t lose what you didn’t have. Today you’re finding out how wrong you were.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You’ve spent ten years with a hole in your life. If you don’t put someone in it, you’re going to fall in and never get out.”

  “Daddy?” I was crying then. I was confused and kind of angry. I wanted to talk to Nelson but I didn’t know how.

  “Trying not to get hurt is no way to live.”

  “You sound like the therapist,” I said. It was supposed to be a thumbed nose at both of them. The gesture didn’t really come through in the words, so I hung up.

  * * *

  After the sun was well up I came out of my place cleaner, if not rested. Coffee was on my mind. There was a boring sedan parked in the drive and Major Reach leaning against my truck.

  Checking out the bandages, I said, “Nice face.”

  “Fuck you,” he shot right back.

  “You tell your buddies a girl did that to you?”

  “No. I told your buddies. Cops stick together, don’t they? Just like you complain about soldiers.”

  “In case you missed it, I was a soldier too.”

  “Not in my book,” he said, trying to put a sneer into it. It didn’t work with the nose.

  “What do you want, Reach?”

  “Just wanted to let you know that the messages got through,” he answered. “All of them.”

  “What messages?”

  “What messages, she asks.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re good. But I think you got into a hurry.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now do you mind? I have a real job to do.”

  “I know all about the way you do your job. Seen it firsthand. Do you bring anyone in without busting them up first?”

  That brought a burn to my cheeks.

  “Do you see me up on charges?” That sounded weak even to me.

  “I know you’re in therapy. Mandated by your department.” H
e arched his eyebrows in mock surprise. “What’s that tell us?”

  “It tells us you had better be careful whose truck you choose to lean on. Now get out of my way.”

  “Two messages yesterday. One telling me that Bayoumi died in custody. Just like that—died. Homeland is closing its investigation. It could have been a weird coincidence; people die sometimes. I could have bought it. Until I got another message, an official message from my CO, telling me to halt any investigations involving you. Unless I have new, specific evidence of a crime or conspiracy. Suddenly it’s not a coincidence anymore, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told him. “I wasn’t involved.”

  “So, is your vendetta over?”

  “Vendetta?” I asked, and when I did I got up close to him. Dangerously close. I could see him tense up, ready to defend himself. “All I ever wanted was the justice I was due.”

  “You got your justice. A full investigation—”

  “I got you. And I got people like you following rules. Rules that are there to protect the Army, not the soldier.”

  “You accused superior officers of crimes in a combat zone. They had alibis.”

  “They had friends.” I was yelling in his face now. My hands were clenched hard at my side, and I had to consciously tell myself to keep them off my weapon. “The same friends that spread rumors and bile about every woman on base.”

  “I did my job and I’m doing it now.”

  “Maybe you did your job,” I said, getting my voice under control and quiet. “But you failed everyone who needed something more from you.”

  “This isn’t over,” he said. His voice was flat and overcontrolled.

  “Believe me, I know it’s not over. I got a message last night too. A call from Ahrens.”

  Reach smiled slightly. Just enough.

  “You did it,” I accused. “You gave him my phone number.”

  “Not at all,” Reach answered. I could read the lie in his eyes and on his lips. “However . . . Contact with another party of the investigation—hostile contact, I can assume, given your history. Maybe that can be considered evidence of a conspiracy. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m getting in this truck and driving away. If your ass is still on the fender when I do, I’m not responsible for the kind of ride you get.”

  He tried to look mean but when I started the truck he jumped. After that he kept a cautious gaze on me as he went to his car. I don’t think he trusted me.

  * * *

  Why can’t a day ever start well and stay that way?

  It’s a bad habit, I know. Like a poker player’s tell, touching the scar around my eye displays my agitation. My therapist calls it self-soothing, like I’m a baby sucking my thumb. That made me madder than it should have, I guess since it was hard to argue with. As I drove that morning I was working it pretty hard.

  There were a lot of things that I could be worried about. Even beyond the obvious personal turmoil, there were two people who I had beaten pretty badly, Reach trying to pin me to some bizarre revenge conspiracy, bikers lighting up the county like a free-fire zone, and RV gangsters taking over a club. Anyone would think I’d be glad to have an obvious and clean suspect in Angela Briscoe’s murder. I wasn’t. It didn’t feel right in a strange way. It was like solving an empty puzzle box. You did everything right but there should be something more. Everything else was turning out to be about greed, money. I really didn’t have any doubt that the case tying Figorelli to Riley Pruitt and the bikers would come together. They were a bunch of checkers players trying to compete in chess. The truth would come out in paperwork or a witness and then, with a little pressure, someone would talk.

  Because things weren’t fitting for me—in so many ways—I didn’t go into the sheriff’s office. I went back out to the scene of Angela’s murder.

  This time there was even more crime-scene tape and even more damage to it. After Danny’s arrest and the details of what he and Carrie were doing out here got out, news crews and the curious had been all over the scene. It always worked that way. If I was there to look at evidence, I would have been pissed. I wasn’t, though I wanted to be there to think.

  Like everything else, wanting wasn’t enough to make it happen. Nothing was clear and my thoughts were as tangled as the roots and branches I walked between. Not only was I not getting any answers, I couldn’t even work up good questions.

  Wandering beyond the place of Angela’s death I came to the edge of the creek and looked down at the water. It was higher and faster than the last time I had looked. For a long time I just stood and watched the silver ripples running over rocks and eddying into the contours of the bank. There weren’t any answers there, either. As I watched, though, the sound changed. That’s not true. It didn’t change: It was added to by voices. From somewhere downstream there were people talking and laughing. It was soft enough to blend in with the sound of the water and if I had been looking for it I would have missed it.

  Following slowly, I stayed on the thin trail along the creek’s edge, but kept my eyes watching inland. Kids. There were two young teens, a boy and a girl behind a catalpa tree. On first sighting them, I thought they were talking or making out under the tree. When I went off-trail and circled closer. I saw that she was watching him carve something into the soft wood bark with a large folding knife.

  It was impossible, at least for me, to remain stealthy for long in the thick undergrowth and they saw me coming. As soon as they did the pair bolted, laughing as they went. I didn’t try to chase them. I did go to the tree to see what they were inscribing. The tree had evidently been used as a message post for years. Old scars cut into the surface read Class of ’68 and almost every year since. There was a ragged and overgrown, RD+MF. I wondered who they were and how things went. The only fresh carving was a large L with arrows at the tips and the letters e-e-c. It looked like I had interrupted them before they could carve the entire word: Leech.

  Again, that name had fooled me and slipped past my attention. Once I understood that Carrie had sent me on a goose chase, telling me Pruitt was Leech, I had all but dismissed it. My assumption had been that it was something made up by Carrie and Danny with meaning only to them. I had believed it was just another aspect of the secret game they were playing. Now it seemed that they weren’t alone in the game.

  Chapter 18

  Billy was waiting when I got back to the road. His truck was parked next to mine, his arm out the open window and his head tilted back in sleep.

  “I guess that answers my question,” I said once I got close.

  “What question?” he asked without either opening his eyes or sounding surprised.

  “I was going to ask when you slept. Between working overtime, playing songs in a bar, and fishing, I didn’t see how you managed.”

  He held up a huge plastic drink cup with the letters XXXL silk-screened on the side. For emphasis, he shook the cup, sloshing the liquid and ice inside. “Liquid energy,” he said.

  “My God, I’ve never seen a drink cup that big. What is that, a gallon of soda?”

  “I wish. What are you doing out here?”

  “Trying to make some pieces fit,” I said. “What happened with the girl? And why aren’t you at home sleeping?”

  “She’s going to be fine. There’ll be a scar but she’ll keep her arm. If she does the physical therapy it should work okay too.”

  “Nothing fun about PT,” I said.

  “I’m not at home because I’m still working,” Billy went on. “Sheriff had me over by the national forest keeping an eye on some things. And I’m here, looking for you.” He took another long drink from the cup.

  “What kind of things?”

  “That’s what you want to know? Not why I’m looking for you?”

  “Whichever you think I most need to know, then,” I told him.

  Billy sort of half-smiled around his straw. It looked like he was stalling. “Before I tell you,” he finally said, “I want you to know t
hat people talk; things get around.”

  That’s a sentence that can never sound good. I guess he had been stalling. “Spit it out,” I told him.

  “I don’t know what your relationship is with the painter,” he said in a way that told me he knew exactly what it was. “But I thought you might like to know there was a 9-1-1 from his house a while ago.” Before I could react or move he added, “It’s over. He’s fine. The call said there were motorcycles in his driveway making lots of noise. When the cruiser got there it was quiet. I just thought you should know.” I didn’t say anything. Billy looked at my face and nodded. “I thought as much,” he said.

  “I’m going to marry him,” I said instantly, wondering why I had.

  “That was quick.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Billy nodded again and took a drink. Once he finished, he nodded his head, indicating the woods where Angela had been, then said, “So, did you learn anything new?”

  I heard him but I didn’t really hear him. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled my cell phone. “I’d better call him,” I said.

  “Has he called you?”

  “What?”

  “Check your log. See if he called.”

  I looked. Then I shook my head.

  “If he hasn’t called you, he won’t want you to call and check up on him. Unless you want him to know you’re keeping tabs.”

  It made a kind of sense. A man’s sense, I guessed. “You’re not as dumb as they say,” I told him.

  “I’ll have you know I’m regarded far and wide for my wisdom.”

  “Wisdom? That’s what they’re calling it now?”

  “Wisdom and good looks. It’s a package.”

  I put away my phone and pulled my keys, ready to get back to work. I was also thinking that I’d call Nelson anyway, but do it on the road. Before I went though I asked, “Why didn’t I know you were a medic until last night?”

  Billy hid most of his face behind the big cup. It didn’t cover the bit of smile that reached his eyes. After the drink he asked me, “Why would you have known?”