Coates, Deborah - [Wide Open 03] - Strange Country

by Deborah Coates

  “Where’s the doctor?” Gerson asked.

  “In her office,” Waters said, and pointed.

  “Huh,” Gerson said, and headed over.

  Four hours later the coroner had come and taken Laddie’s body away, the Templeton police under Gerson’s direction, had bagged all of Laddie’s clothes as evidence and taken those away as well. The EMTs had restocked their ambulance and left, called out to a car accident seven miles north. Gats came over and said good-bye and thanked her, though Hallie wasn’t certain exactly what he was thanking her for. Gerson left after an hour and a half, sweeping through the reception area as if no one else were there.

  Finally, there was just Hallie. She called Boyd.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Not really,” Hallie admitted.

  “I should be there in ten minutes,” he said. “It took a while for the tow truck to get here. It wasn’t Tom and they got lost twice. Plus the snow, I guess. Hang on.”

  That’s what I do, Hallie thought. I hang on.

  She saw his car as it pulled into the parking lot and was out the door and pulling the passenger door open as soon as he’d pulled into a parking space. She didn’t want him to get out, to come inside the clinic, to touch her, especially she didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t want him to say he was sorry, to ask her if she was okay, didn’t want him even to look at her with sympathy.

  “We have to stop at Laddie’s house,” she said.

  “Hallie, you can’t go there. It’s an—”

  “Don’t say it, goddamnit. I know what it is.”

  “Well, they’re going to have to search his house. It’s all evidence now. Everything.”

  “He has dogs,” Hallie said.

  “Oh.”

  Hallie wasn’t sure how many dogs there were, because Laddie had different dogs every time she saw him, but she knew she couldn’t leave them there alone and she didn’t want to hear about evidence and official investigations. Someone told her once that Laddie found stray dogs and took them in, fed them up, and found them homes. Dogs who never had anything until Laddie gave them something. They wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t understand why Laddie wasn’t coming back or why strangers were going through his things. They would probably hate her, dogs did, because of the ghosts. She’d do it anyway.

  When Boyd pulled into Laddie’s oversized front parking lot, three motion lights snapped on, the day just dark enough with the snow and clouds overhead to activate them. Inside the yard, drifting underneath the light closest to the house, was Laddie’s ghost.

  “Shit,” Hallie said.

  “What?” asked Boyd.

  “Never mind.” The ghost looked younger than Laddie had looked in life, wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and lacers. It wore a battered black cowboy hat tilted forward, and it pissed Hallie off because of course it had unfinished business, of course it was here, but she didn’t need to be reminded.

  She got out of the car, Boyd next to her. She wasn’t even sure yet what she was going to do. Laddie’s ghost hanging around in the yard wasn’t going to help.

  She’d expected the dogs to be hiding, but to her surprise, all three of them were right beside the ghost—a Jack Russell with a graying snout, a young fawn and white pit bull, and a slender Australian shepherd with an amazing blue merle coat. They huddled against each other for warmth, from the snow and the cold and the ghost. She could see three doghouses with blankets inside and electric running to them. But the dogs were here, with a ghost who’d once been a man who’d taken care of them.

  If the person who’d shot Laddie were standing in front of her right then, Hallie would have ripped his heart out with her hands.

  She opened the chain-link gate slowly, prepared to get out quick if the dogs made any aggressive moves. They didn’t, though the pit bull watched her suspiciously as she approached. Laddie’s stone felt warm in her pocket, growing warmer with each step she took.

  She crouched beside the dogs and offered the back of her hand; the pit bull stretched its neck as far as it could without actually shifting its position and sniffed suspiciously. The other two dogs curled tighter into their balls. The Jack Russell shivered so hard, Hallie could see it shaking. The temperature was in the low twenties and damp, and the extra cold from the ghost just in front of her left Hallie feeling as if she were deep in the depths of arctic winter.

  “You can’t stay here,” she said quietly to the dogs, like they would understand her. “Laddie wouldn’t want you to.”

  At Laddie’s name, the Jack Russell’s ears twitched. Hallie studied them for a minute. They might let her carry each of them to the car, but she didn’t think it was a good idea just to pick up strange dogs, and the pit bull weighed at least sixty pounds. She rose to her feet, trotted over to the side door into Laddie’s garage, and went inside. There was a light switch just inside the door, and when she switched it on, she saw three lined trash containers that, when she opened them, held dog food, dog treats, and sawdust—she had no idea what the sawdust was for.

  Above the food was a row of hooks with an assorted jumble of leashes and collars. Hallie picked out three collars that looked about the right size and three leashes, which all had brand-names for dog food manufacturers and looked like they’d come free with purchase. She stuffed the collars and leashes into the pocket of her jacket. She grabbed a handful of dog treats and put them in her other pocket. Then she gathered up the trash bag full of food, tied a knot in the top, and took it out to the car. She came back and took the pads and blankets out of three doghouses, surprised that they smelled as if they’d been freshly laundered, and put them in the backseat of Boyd’s SUV. The pit bull stood when Hallie took the blankets, but it didn’t move.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Boyd said. He had stayed outside the fence, but he dropped his hand for the pit bull to sniff. “There’s a shelter in Templeton.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Hallie said. Boyd didn’t argue.

  Laddie’s ghost had drifted a few feet away from where it had been, and all three dogs were on their feet watching Hallie approach. She hoped they wouldn’t run, hoped she and Boyd wouldn’t have to chase them down. Maybe they’d have been okay in their heated doghouses. Maybe the shelter would be fine, better than taking them to the ranch, where there could be ghosts and Maker and god knew what else. Maybe she should leave them alone. But they hadn’t been in their houses when she and Boyd had arrived; they’d been outside with Laddie’s ghost, slowly freezing, and she couldn’t bear, for reasons she didn’t feel like examining too closely, for them to be hauled unceremoniously off to the shelter.

  She didn’t speak, didn’t know what to say or why it would do any good, but when she’d fastened the collars and leashes on each of the dogs, they just came with her, like they knew. Laddie’s ghost trailed behind. Once, the Jack Russell turned and looked back like it could see; then it turned back to Hallie and trotted alongside her with the others. She let all three dogs into the backseat, and after sniffing everything carefully at least three times, the dogs each curled up on a blanket, the Australian shepherd panting like it had just run a marathon. Hallie closed the door and walked back around to the front passenger door.

  As she was opening the door, she heard, or thought she heard, Thank you, like a whisper.

  She looked across the top of the car to where she’d last seen the ghost, but it was gone. Not for good, she was pretty sure. There would be a sound, then, and a scent of some sort, something unique to the person the ghost had once been. No, Laddie’s ghost had just gone somewhere else for a while.

  It would be back. That much was certain.

  23

  Hallie stumbled as she crossed the threshold into the house, more tired than she’d expected. She welcomed the rush of warm air. The dogs sniffed everything, frantically investigating each room, like they’d never been inside a house before, which might well be true, but Hallie had no place warm enough for them outside, so they’d just have to figure it out.
She put their beds and blankets on the floor, hoped the smell would help.

  The Jack Russell jumped up on the couch, sniffed carefully along the entire length, then curled up in the corner, tight up against a worn pillow. As if that was a signal, the Aussie trotted over to one of the beds and lay down on its side and the pit bull sank into a stiff straight-up down like a sphinx, like it was waiting for the bad thing, because it knew that it would come.

  Hallie sighed—Jesus.

  She walked into the kitchen and it just looked so … so normal, so like it had in the morning when she left, like everyone was still alive, like the world gave a shit about anything ever anywhere. She’d intended to take off her coat and hang it up, but she couldn’t—couldn’t stay, couldn’t stand it.

  She went back outside.

  It was not quite sunset, just after five o’clock and clear, and the cold hit her like a slap in the face. Stars already sparkled in the high dome of the sky, and she could see a tiny pair of headlights on the road from town. She drew in a breath and let it out slowly, rubbed her hands hard across her face and headed toward the barn, where Boyd had gone to feed the horses while she took the dogs inside.

  The first thing he said was, “Are you okay?”

  “No,” Hallie said. “No, I’m pissed off and I’m—I don’t even know how to say it—‘sad’ is the easy word, but it’s not the right word. He told me his luck was bad, that it was always bad. He lost his land and his family and, well, everything. And I want someone to pay for that, but even if they do, even if we figure out who it is and bring them to justice, it doesn’t bring Laddie back. I feel like I did when Dell died and not at all like Dell and worse in at least one way because Dell made her own mistakes, but I feel like Laddie paid for mine or that I dragged him into this and I don’t even know what this is.”

  She stopped because none of that was what she wanted to say and yet it was also more than she wanted to say, more than she’d ever said about anyone’s death except maybe Dell’s. She’d known good soldiers who died in Afghanistan, but there it had been a thing that you put aside and promised yourself you’d deal with later, though you never really did. This was right here where she lived. Dell’s death had happened when Hallie was halfway around the world, but this—this had happened right in front of her. And she hadn’t been able to stop it.

  Boyd didn’t say anything immediately, and Hallie felt a sudden regret because he’d lost half his house in a mysterious explosion, he’d seen Prue Stalking Horse shot, almost a week ago now, but still. She ought to be worrying about whether he was okay, not the other way around.

  He reached out and pulled her close. She leaned her head on his shoulder, but the truth was she wasn’t tired. They had big problems, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t handled big problems before—they’d handled the end of the world. But this seemed … more human, more like regular evil, both smaller and larger. Magic revealed itself sooner or later, at least the kind of magic they’d dealt with so far, but people, well, they were people. Whoever had killed Prue, whoever had killed Laddie could be anyone.

  They went inside the house. The Jack Russell trotted into the kitchen and sniffed Boyd’s pants leg. The pit bull appeared in the doorway, the short hair along its spine standing up so that it looked like a darker colored ridge. When it saw who was there, it lay down, like it understood that Hallie and Boyd were being helpful, but it was keeping an eye on them all the same.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. It seemed like all she did lately was make coffee and sandwiches, feed horses, and wait for the next shoe to drop.

  Boyd took her hand and drew her to him. “I don’t want to eat,” he said. “I just want—”

  “Shh.” She kissed him. It was what she wanted too, though she didn’t know the words or how to say it—to be here, to be with him, to be alive.

  * * *

  Hallie woke.

  Had she been dreaming? She couldn’t remember anything but darkness. All-encompassing, but neither comforting nor frightening. Just dark. She heard unfamiliar movement, sat up quick, and realized it was the pit bull, nails ticking on the bare floor. She put a hand on its head and it sighed, then left again, lying down on an old rag rug near the door. She looked at the clock: 4:30 A.M. She looked at Boyd sleeping on his back, one arm flung across his face. She lay back down for about ten seconds, realized she was never going back to sleep, bent over and kissed Boyd lightly on the lips, then grabbed jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt, left the room, and went downstairs.

  Something bothered her beyond Prue’s death and even beyond Laddie’s death, which bothered her a lot. Beyond the notes someone had left her or the phone calls. Beyond Beth Hannah. Part of the reason it bothered her was because she didn’t know what it was, though she thought she ought to know, something she couldn’t remember or almost remembered, or hadn’t understood at the time.

  She went into the office and looked at maps of the Badlands. Boyd had said once that the Badlands were too chaotic, but that didn’t bother Hallie. She liked chaos. And yet, she’d never spent much time there, even though it was, essentially, right there. Halfway between Taylor County and Rapid City, a place she skirted regularly, but rarely stopped for.

  She thought too about the things Laddie said before he’d died. Was there anything there? She wrote down everything she could remember:

  The stones. They don’t just happen. It takes big magic. Big.

  What did that mean? Big magic? The only big magic she knew was when Martin Weber had tried to control the weather. And he was dead.

  She took Laddie’s stone out of her pocket and looked at it. She didn’t know a lot about rocks, though when she’d been trying to figure out what to do with her life, she considered the South Dakota School of Mines because it seemed like something hard with plenty of physical work to go with the books. Laddie’s stone looked like polished granite. She went out to the living room and looked at the stone they’d put on a shelf there. It was larger, darker, but maybe granite too. A certain type of stone? From a certain place? If it was, how would they ever know? Who was left to tell them?

  Around seven, when the sun was slightly more than a promise, she put her boots back on, grabbed a jacket, her hat, and gloves and went outside. On the way, she let the three dogs out, hoped they wouldn’t run away, but let them out all the same, because they had to go out. As she stepped outside and the dogs tumbled ahead off the porch, Hallie spotted Laddie’s ghost just outside the hex ring. The dogs raced down the shallow slope toward the old windmill. She almost whistled them back, afraid they’d keep running, but they stopped at the bottom and turned toward the house again, sniffing at bushes and rocks and grass.

  Hallie walked to the barn and started up the old Ford tractor, bounced it across the iron hard ground, speared a big round hay bale, and moved it to the feeder inside the horse corral. She didn’t think about Laddie or Prue or notes on posts. She didn’t think about Death or harbingers or things she wanted to remember, but didn’t. She concentrated on the work and what needed to be done.

  She dumped the bale in the round feeder, idled the tractor, and jumped off to cut the strings and spread it so the horses could eat it. She drove the tractor back out the gate, closed it, and leaned on it as the horses wandered over to eat.

  A crow dropped onto a fence post two away and cocked its head at her. The young gelding wandered away from the hay feeder when the biter laid back her ears and kicked at him. He ambled over to Hallie and pushed at her hands, like he expected her to feed him. When he saw the crow, he shied and the crow rose at the sudden movement and settled on another post a few feet farther along.

  Hallie watched it, but it ignored her, pecking at something on the fence. After a moment it flew away.

  “Coffee.”

  The voice was right in her ear and she hadn’t heard anyone coming up behind her. Her arm came up as she turned, and she hit Boyd hard in the chest, which sent the coffee mug he’d been holding flying out of his hand as he stumbled ba
ck. The mug hit the ground and bounced, throwing coffee in a rising arc. Boyd stumbled, grabbed her hand, and as she felt the sharp tug of his weight, she braced herself and pulled back hard. Then he was close, so close, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  He tasted like mint toothpaste and coffee.

  He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her back. She could feel the curve of his lips like he was smiling. Something huffed warm breath in her ear—the gelding, she knew it was the gelding, but she jumped anyway, tripped on Boyd’s boot and stumbled. He tried to catch her, but his feet tangled in hers and they both fell. Hallie’s elbow hit the ground hard; she rolled away from Boyd as he fell too, landing on one knee and his left hand. He slipped as he tried to rise and then they were both on the frozen ground on their asses. And Hallie laughed because this was the kind of thing that happened, it always happened, but this morning in the bright cold winter sunshine on cold hard ground, she was with him and the horses and a ranch—her ranch. And she knew that Laddie wouldn’t fault her for this, for finding a momentary pleasure.

  Laddie had known how the world went on.

  24

  Someone coughed.

  It was a dry thin sound, like the crack of an old twig in dry mountain air, like the tear of yellowed parchment, like desiccated carapaces. Next to Boyd, Hallie spun, half-rising to a crouch. Laughter forgotten. Boyd was already on his feet, standing over her.

  Just outside the hex ring, beyond the strips of old cloth fluttering in the brittle knee-high grass, stood a man, or at least something that looked like a man, wearing light-absorbing black robes, a hood, and his/her/its hands tucked into the sleeves. Looked like a man who’d appeared out of nowhere, who hadn’t been there seconds before, something shaped like a man, though Boyd knew enough these days to assume nothing, especially not that something standing just outside a hex ring was what it appeared to be.

  He held out his hand without looking away from the thing in black robes and offered it to Hallie. The horses wheeled and ran, even the two old mares, running like they were two-year-olds again, running like their lives depended on it.