by Abby Geni
“Now?”
“The thing is . . .” Roy said, and paused. “There was a dog at Big Tom’s Taxidermy. Somebody let the animal out before the fire and took it to a playground across the street. Latched the gate and everything. Kept the dog safe. There was a special mention in the paperwork. That’s what caught my eye.”
Darlene began to speak and failed. She heard a scuffle, and they both turned to see a woman moving along the other side of the street. Darlene recognized Mrs. Watson—Cora’s third-grade teacher. She was staring at her phone as she strolled down the sidewalk and did not notice them there. They waited until she ambled out of earshot.
“I’m starting to see a pattern,” Roy said. “I believe Tucker’s interests are constant, even if his behavior isn’t. The chicken farmer in the Amarillo shooting was in violation of any number of health department statutes. And a taxidermist, well . . .”
“Are you saying that Tucker and Cora—that they’re—”
Darlene could not finish the sentence. Roy did it for her.
“They’re on some kind of spree,” he said.
34
That evening, Darlene drove home with a cork-lined bulletin board rocking in the bed of the pickup truck. In the rearview mirror, her own expression intrigued her—obstinate and fierce.
The trailer was empty. Jane was spending the night at a friend’s house, and Roy’s shift would keep him at the police station for another hour. First, Darlene removed the print above the couch. (It was a faded drawing of a zoo, done by an artist with a poor sense of scale; the animals all seemed too large as they came bursting out of their cages, teeth bared. Tucker had scavenged it from an alley somewhere.) She hung the bulletin board in its stead, then barged into Jane’s closet. Among the soccer gear and friendship bracelets and clothes she found what she was looking for: a cardboard tube as tall as her waist. A year ago, Jane won a map of the United States in a spelling contest.
Darlene took pushpins and markers from a drawer. She could feel the physical effects of fatigue—her fingers occasionally trembled—but her mind was as sharp as ever, almost painfully clear. She understood what the FBI and the reporters did not. Her situation was as dire now as it had been when Cora first vanished, when the claxons sounded and the media and the law descended on Mercy. Nothing had changed since that fatal moment except the passage of time. Time, it seemed, was Darlene’s enemy. With each day that passed, the collective sense of urgency diminished, even though Cora’s plight was no less perilous. The FBI had made its indifference plain. There’s no story, Tobias Morgan said. All of them were lulled into nonchalance by the months of quiet and inaction.
Darlene drew herself up to her full height. She would be fine without the government or the media’s help. Bureaucratic organizations, arbitrary rules—she did not need them. She was clever, scrappy, a survivor. Sooner born, Sooner bred. And Roy was on her side.
She unspooled the map of America and pinned it to the bulletin board. She arranged the pushpins and markers by color on the kitchen table. The map had a story to tell. Darlene was sure of it.
By the time Roy arrived, the scene was set. For the next few hours, the two of them worked in a kind of fever. He had been accumulating data for months without fully realizing its importance. He used a yellow marker to circle the area where Cora’s burner phone pinged off a cell tower back in June. A swath of the Oklahoma panhandle. A stretch of desert near the Texas border.
With green thumbtacks, Roy marked every account of grand theft auto inside the circled zone. After thirty minutes, the bulletin board bristled like a porcupine. Too many. Darlene wiped the sweat from her brow.
Then Roy took a handful of red pushpins and approached the map again. The states were outlined in black, the highways orange, the rivers purple. One by one, Roy marked a series of towns. Point by point, he made an erratic, jagged line out of crimson thumbtacks. There was, after all, a pattern. Here was the story that no one else could see.
“Tucker’s moving west,” Roy said.
Darlene met his gaze, nodding.
“Here,” he said, tapping the first point. “The fire at Big Tom’s Taxidermy.”
“Yeah.”
“The shooting in Amarillo,” he said, indicating another thumbtack.
“Right,” Darlene said.
“There,” he said, touching a red pushpin in North Texas. “This one was ten days ago. A high-kill animal shelter. The employees locked up for the night and came back in the morning to find the power off and all the cages empty.”
“Oh,” Darlene said, struck by the image.
“Somebody cut the electrical wires in a few different places. That’s expensive to fix, as you can imagine. And they spray-painted the front door with—well—”
He strode over to the table and picked up his satchel. Fumbling inside, he removed a photograph and handed it to Darlene. She saw beige brick, a metal door, and a barred window. The wall was defaced by a stick figure of an animal that blurred into a scribbly blob. Darlene could not tell what it was supposed to represent; the mass of lines could have been the animal’s blood pouring out, or maybe a tornado touching down and ripping the creature apart. The sketch was so crude that it could only have been made by a child.
“I’m beginning to get a sense of Tucker’s agenda,” Roy said.
He pointed to the last pushpin in the row, a tiny town in the middle of Texas. Then he reached into his bag again.
“Have you ever heard of a rattlesnake roundup?” he said.
She shook her head.
“It’s a local tradition in a town called Stillwater,” he said. “It goes back decades. Thousands of snakes are killed in a single day. They do it to thin the population. That’s the theory, anyway. I think it’s mostly just for sport.”
He retrieved a stack of photos and began laying them out on the kitchen table like playing cards. Darlene saw a pool of red soaking into desert earth. She saw a rattlesnake coiled as though preparing to strike. She saw a man holding a machete. There was a picture of a ditch filled with mutilated carcasses—bare skulls, scraps of jeweled skin and viscera.
Darlene leaned over the table, staring down in dismay. There was a snake being milked. Its jaw was clamped in the fleshy vise of a human hand, its maw wide in a kind of silent scream. A second person’s arm was holding a cup beneath the fangs. Darlene saw a few droplets of venom glimmering at the bottom of the glass. In another photo, a group of men in cowboy hats grinned at the camera while holding dead serpents the length of their bodies. There were snapshots of various souvenirs: snakeskin belts, snake heads preserved in amber, baby rattles made of snake tails. There was a petting area fenced with chicken wire and filled with children. Small figures ran to and fro, chasing the reptiles across the pen. A close-up revealed that all the rattlesnakes had their mouths sewn shut with thick black thread.
Darlene picked up the picture at the bottom of the pile. It showed a snake-skinning contest. The participants stood at a table strewn with chunks of flesh and knobs of bone. Several were smiling. There was more blood than seemed possible—splattered on every surface, dripping down the tablecloth, pooling in the grass, painted in smears across hands and faces.
“Those photos are from last year’s roundup,” Roy said. “It always takes place on a weekend in August. People come from all over the country.”
His fingers twitched toward the pocket where he kept his cigarettes, but he refrained from taking one out and lighting it. He never smoked in No. 43. Darlene flipped the photograph over on the table, turning it into an innocuous rectangle of white. One by one, she did the same to all the others.
“The roundup was scheduled for last weekend,” Roy said. “A local ranger was going to lead a guided hunt at dawn on the first day. People bought tickets specially—they’re pricey—and showed up with all their gear. But when they got to the ranger station, the building was on fire.”
“Was it . . .” Darlene began, then let her voice dwin
dle away.
“The fire had penetrated every room,” Roy said. “The windows exploded. A witness said it was . . .” He searched through some papers and read aloud: “‘It was the kind of fire that spoke and sang.’”
“Was it Tucker?” she asked, keeping her tone expressionless.
“I’ve got no proof,” Roy said. “But it fits.”
She nodded.
“It was arson,” he said. “We know that much for sure. Someone doused the place before lighting it up. The fire burned hot enough to warp the stone and melt the plumbing. Consistent with a hydrocarbon-based accelerant. I’d say kerosene, but it could have been gasoline.”
“My lord,” Darlene murmured.
“No snakes were harmed,” Roy said with a wry smile. “The heat of the fire would have scared them off.”
“Safe. Like the dog in the playground.”
“Exactly.”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead and the broad swath of his nose.
“There’s something else,” he said. “Something odd.”
Darlene laughed, a strangled little bark. Roy began gathering up the photographs and tucking them back in his bag. Without looking at her, he said, “A woman at the scene told the officers that during the blaze she saw a kid all alone in the desert. A young boy.”
“You mean Tucker?”
“No. I reckon it was Cora.”
“She thought Cora was a boy?” Darlene asked, her voice high.
“The woman couldn’t give a clear description,” Roy said. “She just thought it was strange. A child all alone like that. Standing way out in the scrub, so calm, she said. Watching the place burn to the ground.”
THEY ENDED THE NIGHT IN speculation, looking toward the future. They were making a pattern, and patterns could be predictive. Perhaps they could now guess where Tucker was heading. A line of red pushpins in a sea of green pushpins. A narrative cobbled together from photographs and secondhand information. Roy felt certain that Tucker would continue moving west. He had done a little reading, he said. Studies showed that 80 percent of people on the lam traveled west. Nobody knew why—some deep instinct, a desire beneath conscious thought. It was helpful to the police, anyway.
Around ten o’clock, they collected five blue thumbtacks—a whole new color—and marked the towns that might be next on Tucker’s list. Darlene felt a surge of powerful momentum. The simple act of shoving pushpins into corkboard was immensely satisfying. Finally, a chance to be proactive. No more waiting. Once again, she felt the spirits of her ancestors moving near, her fellow Sooners watching her with pride and recognition.
Darlene noted that midsized towns seemed to be Tucker’s preference. Roy agreed. He hypothesized that Tucker was looking for places too small to have a lot of witnesses, security cameras, or a large police presence—but not so small that the appearance of a strange man and child would spark interest among the locals.
At last, Roy got on the phone, alerting the police department in every town marked with a blue pushpin. He reminded them about the Amber Alert. He talked about Big Tom’s Taxidermy, the shooting in Amarillo, and the fire at the rattlesnake roundup. He told them to stay vigilant.
Then there was nothing left to do. On the couch, Darlene lounged with her feet on Roy’s thighs, both of them staring up at their map.
“I’ve been thinking about serial killers lately,” she said.
“Hm?”
“Those guys always start out torturing animals, don’t they? It’s pretty universal.”
“Sure,” Roy said. “They taught us that at the academy. Harming our dumb friends is a big red flag.”
“Well, Tucker was . . .” She paused. “He did the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“He would save any animal he could find. He became a vegetarian when he was five years old. He took in possums and rats if they looked hungry. He would hide them in our basement and nurse them back to health. He would pick up the bugs drowning in the swimming hole and carry them to land. If a baby bird fell out of a nest in our backyard, Tucker would wrap it in a paper towel and climb the tree to put it back.” She nudged Roy with her heel. “I don’t know what kind of crazy that is. Do you?”
“I reckon it’s something new,” he said.
AT MIDNIGHT, DARLENE WAS BACK at Roy’s house, too tired to sleep. She had been awake so long that her muscles would not uncoil. Roy snored against her shoulder as she stared at the ceiling. As usual, she wore one of his T-shirts, while he was nude. Three electric fans churned the air into froth. A slim blade of moon glinted in the window. After their long hours of work, Roy had made a few noises about maybe crashing at the trailer for once. But ever since Cora’s disappearance, it was Darlene’s policy never to make use of her sister’s bed; she refused to occupy any space still waiting for Cora to return and fill it.
She rolled onto her side, staring at Roy. His face was divided into stark contours of moonlight and shadow. He was not her first boyfriend, but he was her first since the tornado—the first man she had known, perhaps, as her true self. Darlene dated in high school, lost her virginity in high school, but the girl she had been back then was a stranger to her now. A teenager with a stable home and a loving father. A young woman planning for college, excited to leave Mercy. A girl so far away now that she was barely recognizable.
In his sleep, Roy reached for her, pulling her spine against his belly. At first his embrace was soothing, but soon the warmth of his skin became more than Darlene could bear. The air was stifling, his breath sticky, his arms as heavy as lumber. She extricated herself and stood up. She watched as he reached for her again, groping vaguely across the bedsheets before growing still.
She slipped out of the bedroom. The house was cramped—poky staircase, low ceilings, every room overly furnished. The place had been left to Roy by his mother. When she fell ill, he moved back home to care for her. He tended her until she died, at which point the house passed into his care.
All this had happened a long time before Darlene entered his life. Though she would never have said as much, she was glad for the timing. These days, he never cried for his mother anymore. There was nothing for Darlene to do but listen to his stories about the woman and find ways to compliment her on everything she could think of—her taste in interior decorating, her obvious beauty in old photographs, and, of course, her excellent work in raising her boy.
Darlene stepped into the dark living room. She ran her fingers along the mantelpiece. Every surface in the house was strewn with ornaments—fussy lamps, glass figurines, and carved wooden boxes. All these fragile knickknacks had survived the tornado. The storm had come and gone without leaving a trace here. Darlene wondered what knickknacks her family once possessed; such things had disappeared from her memory over time. Roy’s house was a physical representation of an elderly woman’s mind—her color scheme, her dislike of empty space, her addiction to ornate lamps—rather than the personality of the man who actually lived there. Darlene wondered if this was indolence on Roy’s part, a masculine imperviousness to ambiance, or whether there was a deeper nostalgia at work, an inability to remove his mother’s things and claim the house as his own.
She smelled Roy before she saw him. She liked to imagine that it was the perfume of his good heart. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“I gathered. You’re the most wandering woman I ever met.”
“Then why do I feel so stuck?”
His jaw was rough with stubble. He was naked, his skin fiery to the touch. They were similar in height, though Roy was much stockier, his torso twice as wide as hers.
“Come to bed,” he said.
He drew her up the stairs. The ceiling fan creaked, rocking a little with each revolution. Roy picked up his pack of cigarettes, lighting one with a deft motion, and exhaled a cloud of smoke against
the moonlight, twirled into ripples by the fan. Darlene firmly intended to cure him of this habit. She planned to nag him gently over time until he gave up smoking. In the meantime, however, she had begun to associate the odor with Roy. Against her better judgment, she was starting to enjoy the smell.
Three electric fans hummed in harmony. He put out his cigarette, and Darlene slid into his embrace. With her fingers, she traced the groove that ran down his sternum, a notched canyon between the high slopes of his ribs, blooming with wiry fur. She felt a flare of desire in her gut. There was no accounting for attraction. There was no predicting it. She and Roy were made of volatile elements, each inert on its own but explosive in combination, requiring only the smallest spark—a kiss, a breath—to ignite.
They made love briskly, in the manner of tired people: no foreplay, no acrobatics, only those positions that allowed them both to lie down, one orgasm each, no cuddling afterward. Roy was asleep again almost before their bodies tumbled apart, the smile on his face fading into blankness. Darlene let out a yawn. She felt a ripple of exhaustion pass through her like the aftershock of an earthquake.
Against all odds, this seemed to be the real thing. She had never been in love before, and she was not sure what to do with it, especially now. The timing was all wrong. She was as wretched and bereft as she had ever been, and as happy and satiated as she had ever been.
35
A week later, Darlene was driving Jane home from soccer practice when her phone rang. It was raining, a light patter on the windshield. The day had been a long one. Darlene was pleased to be heading at last toward home, where a hot shower and a change of clothes awaited her. Jane was in the middle of a diatribe about the latest drama in the social hierarchy of the soccer team. It was next to impossible for an outsider to comprehend the minutiae of which halfback had offered a cutting remark to one of the forwards and which sweeper kept making backhanded comments about the goalie.