by Peter Farris
Never once imagining he’d be where he was now.
Willie Nelson sang “City of New Orleans” on the radio. Lang recognized the old Lee Greenwood hit, hummed along to it. Never been much for singing. Even by himself in the truck.
Bugs and birds dashed across the road, which turned sharply, then sloped under a canopy of Judas trees. There was an abandoned shed slanted to one side, as if it considered lying down for an afternoon nap. A feral home a few yards away, swallowed by sunlight-starved kudzu. He passed a stretch of horse fence and finally saw Kalamity’s Dodge parked in the driveway of her home. A big, round sun setting behind it.
Lang was excited after their conversation. He’d apologized first for calling her drunk the week before, a late-night conversation where he’d sworn to quit drinking, bemoaned his estranged family, the job, his life as one with too many wrong turns. Kal didn’t say a word. Just listened. Let him vent, anticipating a similar call the next week or next month when Lang hit upon that special combination of whiskey and beer that sent him spiraling with self-pity. Some phone conversations he wouldn’t even talk. He’d just listen to her while she read aloud whatever it was she was reading, a magazine or one of those mysteries she loved. Maybe turn up the television so he could hear it. Put the phone down near her head if she’d been sleeping.
They had—as damaged human beings—an understanding.
For years she took him in. Cooked for him. Drank with him. They’d make love. By morning any sense of commitment would have worn off. Weeks passed before they wanted or sought each other’s company again. Off-duty he’d slip into her bar and drink all night. Then Kalamity would take him home. Never been quick to judge. Years like this and not one word from her about it. Yet Lang knew early on that he was being used as much as she was.
He wanted to tell her things, too. About the robbery. About the bank teller, Charlie Colquitt. Probably dead. Visions of that feral child behind a cage, barking at him, walking on all fours down busy sidewalks in town. Nightmares where he woke up screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted to tell Kal how he was starting to lose his grip. Not caring if he lived or died. Tell her about the loneliness and the binges that temporarily cured it.
Eating a bullet.
Lang often imagined who would find him if he did such a thing. Hunters, maybe, stumbling upon a gnarled mummy in the woods. A hole in the top of his skull, obscured by rotten leaves and rags of clothing. A picture of his family in one hand.
A gun in the other.
* * *
A sudden sense of caution struck Lang. From the driveway he could tell the kitchen door was open. Flies buzzed in the front yard. A hummingbird hovered near a feeder. Other things perched and observing. Lang ran a hand across his sweaty nape. He eyed the front door again, the windows to either side. No lights on. Nothing.
Near the kitchen door Lang could see dimly inside. A glass had shattered on the floor. He craned his neck and looked into the living room. He saw Kalamity.
He ran back to the truck, retrieved his personal firearm from a holster mounted under the steering column. A Kimber Warrior .45 ACP. He checked the chamber. Satisfied, he faced the house again.
The living room came into focus, a familiar setting now off-kilter. Kalamity had a bullet hole in her sternum and one under her right eye. The image of her burned like a nuclear shadow on his brain.
Where all the bad shit of his life was stockpiled.
The freezer door was open. Someone had thrown Kalamity’s cat inside. Hershel’s fur was matted with ice. An eye hung from a tether. Water leaked down the front of the refrigerator and pooled on the floor.
He scanned the kitchen. A brass shell casing lay where the linoleum ended and the carpet began. Foolish to leave it, unless the cartridge had been wiped down. Lang looked at her body again, at her smashed and swollen feet, at the slack death mask that was her face. That empty stare he’d never grown used to.
He inched down the hallway, peering down the length of his thumb that was parallel to the muzzle, should he have to point and shoot. He listened for any sound that was out of place, any creaking board or muffled breath a portent for violence.
The bathroom was clear, as were the hall closet and sewing room. Lang entered the bedroom. The bed was made. But the bookshelf and dresser had been rifled through, ransacked, books and picture frames littering the floor. Same with the closet and nightstand. Socks, underwear, jewelry, broken glass, papers and envelopes. All thrown about.
Her killer or killers, he speculated, were sloppy and probably hopped up. Kalamity brutalized and executed. It just didn’t make sense.
Lang thought about they, assuming there had been more than one.
They hadn’t stolen anything. Nothing was missing as far as he could tell. Her purse was left neglected on the kitchen table. So they threw her around the living room, and onto the coffee table. They tied her up and worked her over. Even drank one of his beers, because Kalamity didn’t drink beer. They didn’t want her; they thought she knew something they wanted to know. And whether she did or didn’t give it up they shot her anyway.
Lang remembered Kalamity’s sister, known among the county gossipers as a family embarrassment. She’d been a schoolteacher once. Developed a bad taste for drugs and worse taste in men. These facts moved in Lang’s mind. Thoughts set free like catfish in a pond.
He left the house as carefully as he entered and called Dispatch on his cell phone.
While he waited, Lang walked the property and kept an eye on the road. His heart and gut and throat swollen with a feeling beyond rage. Beyond sadness for Kalamity. By the time Deputy Bower arrived in a shower of gravel Lang still had no proper name for all he felt.
* * *
Charlie woke from a nightmare soaked with sweat. He rolled over. Hummingbird sighed softly in her sleep.
“Untie me, Hummingbird. I’ve got to pee.”
“I cain’t. It’s against the rules,” she mumbled.
“Please, Hummingbird. I won’t tell. Please.”
She rubbed a hand down his chest to his boxers, grabbed him with a moan of pleasure. When she finished she sat up drowsily and untied Charlie’s wrists.
He got to his feet, the need to piss returning so bad he thought he might go on the floor.
In the bathroom he raised the lid on the toilet bowl, surprised to find excrement in it. His vision was fuzzy. He squinted down into the bowl.
When he saw the heads of tiny white worms Charlie backed away. His need suddenly replaced by a sudden revulsion. He ran from the bathroom. Out of the cottage. Into the darkness.
* * *
Charlie struggled barefoot down a rocky path. He turned his ankle and yelped but kept limping along until the path got easier. Creekside the soil was moist and soft under his feet. He looked up. A quarter moon in the sky moved in and out of sight above the understory of redbuds and dogwoods. He stopped to catch his breath and vomited.
Charlie surveyed the trees ahead. Sixty-foot plumed pines. Spruces. Ghoulish shadows in every direction. In his state of mind the forest seemed to swallow him.
He thought he heard the footfall of an animal. Deer? A fox? A bear? Jesus, help me, he prayed, thinking himself a deathbed believer, not sure what good it would do anyway. For a moment he was certain he’d cry, but no tears came.
He hid behind a tree, gripping the trunk, his hands moving through a silken web of bark lice. There were little white eggs snug within the crevices of tree bark, the lice cool and stringy.
The woods were far from quiet. The whines and pulsations of night creatures everywhere, above and around him. Charlie felt victimized by the sound. Got to keep going, he told himself. There’ll be a road. And roads lead to other roads.
The trees opened on a stream lined with ferns and black birch, the water trickling over slabs of limestone. The swath cut between rocky banks ten feet high. Charlie climbed down the bank, his feet sinking into silt three inches deep. The water glowed a blue-black in the moonlight. He crouched on
the bank, wrapping his arms around himself, absorbed by fantasy. He imagined a news crew rushing to interview him. A blanket was thrown around his shoulders. A hot cup of soup offered. His rescuers wore windbreakers, earbuds, the cords disappearing beneath their collars.
What would I say?
Where would I begin?
He got to his feet and crossed the stream, pausing for a moment at the sight of a moccasin in flight. The cool water came up to his shins. Polished stones and mud underfoot. He reached the opposite bank, shivering and tired. Found a ledge he could climb, another gateway to a slope of thick woods. He tried to negotiate the steep terrain with caution but lost his balance, rebounding from tree to tree, finally tripping and falling at the feet of an ancient-looking cottonwood.
Clawing through a leafy detritus, Charlie cried out and rolled onto his back. He looked up at a tree split by lightning, a charred V forking the length of a great oak. He closed his eyes and rested.
Prompted by the patter of rain, he dragged himself into the nook of the split tree trunk. Lightning flickered. It began to rain harder. Something rattled from deep within the oak.
This will be as g-good a place to die as any, he thought.
* * *
Exhaustion pulled Charlie into a coffin-sized sleep. In his dreams leathery things slid over him, but they meant no harm. They welcomed him as one of their own. He felt cool air, cavernous air. The rattle persisted. As did the sensation of being overrun, his body negotiated like an obstacle.
REM sleep and rockets … those were always the best dreams … in this one he held a competition model, balsa nose and fins with a standard payload packed inside. Next the separation joint, followed by the parachute, the wadding packed tight. Body tube feeling smooth to his fingertips. The thrust ring just above the motor. The specs of the nose base and nose tip appeared. Diagrams he would draw himself in the glorious light from his desk lamp. Protractor in hand, along with his favorite graphite pencil …
… jumping as dreams are wont to do … where a detailed scale of the tail floated in space, turning to allow a side view of the Tomahawk model. Scrolling like a movie’s end credits … first the law of tangents … the triple-track tracker … the law of sines stating c ÷ sin(angle)C = b ÷ sin(angle)B = a ÷ sin(angle)A. All followed by vertical triangles that appeared on his dream screen like a psychedelic after-school special, dancing, spinning in place … jump-cutting … the apogee of a rocket against a blue sky, a bright yellow sun.
But then the sun turned black, as if it’d been flushed with ink.
* * *
He was dragged by his ankles from the nook of that tree, a familiar voice cursing him. Charlie sensed sunlight behind him and desperately wanted to fall back asleep, to feel protected again. But those hands gripped him tighter. When he looked back at the split trunk he thought he saw the eyes of a snake, a tongue that flickered at him.
Like an old friend waving good-bye.
Hicklin lifted Charlie to his feet and cinched a rope around his neck.
It was dawn, the forest alive with chacks and whistles.
Hicklin yanked on the rope, causing Charlie to trip, his feet catching on the exposed roots of a box elder. They crossed another stream, sinking again into the silt, mucky water splashing with every step. Hicklin was mad as hell. That Charlie could tell.
They hiked in silence.
The cottage appeared ahead of them like a woodland mirage. Seventy, eighty yards away. That’s all the ground he’d covered. Swore it felt like ten miles last night. Charlie’s feet hurt terribly. The toes stubbed and stinging, the skin from nail to heel cracked.
The failure to escape depressed him the most. His temples throbbed. He tasted blood on his tongue. He reached behind him and felt a fresh bruise on his tailbone. Hicklin didn’t look back once, pulling Charlie as though he were an afterthought, a chore to be carried out. There were a few moments where Charlie thought his head would come clean off.
As they neared the cottage Hicklin took off at a boot-camp trot. Despite Charlie’s aching feet, he had no choice but to pick up his own pace. They stopped only once so he could vomit.
He ran a hand across his mouth, dropping to a knee so as to catch his breath among the tall, noble-looking pines. He glanced up. In the distance there was a plane. Maybe a 747, he thought. Boeing. Cruising at high altitude. Thin and flat against a blue canvas. Charlie wished he could say, Hello.
Help.
Anything to attract their attention.
* * *
He knew how to get to the plane. If only he had the means.
* * *
Hicklin tied him to the chair again, the rope tight enough to chafe the skin. He smacked Charlie across the face, not speaking. As if an explanation for the beating would have been a waste of time.
Charlie heard Hummingbird whimpering behind him. There was a clatter of dishes. Moments later she offered Charlie a plate of ham and beans and a soda with a straw. He worked his jaw, wincing from the pain as, more blood collected in his mouth.
Hummingbird let him rinse his mouth out before she fed him with a plastic fork. He chewed quickly, painfully, chasing the food with big gulps of soda. Afterward she offered him two aspirin.
When he was finished eating she patted Charlie on the head, leaning in to kiss his cheek. The gesture had a mother’s tenderness. He noticed how poor she looked, her skin blotchy, eyes dimly focused. She lit a cigarette and paced for a while, stopping every now and then to read something off the yellowing newspaper tacked over the windows.
Hicklin appeared later that afternoon. The living room floor had been swept, the cans and wrappers tossed, ashtrays emptied. His weapons were neatly arranged on the couch. Action open on the handgun, magazines loaded. The shotgun Charlie recognized from the robbery. Black. Oiled. Menacing. Hummingbird turned on the radio and sat down on the couch with her pipe.
Charlie fell asleep, mumbling to himself like a lunatic.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
They were married in the month of July.
It was a shotgun wedding.
They bought everything that the Lord ever sold.
Except the happy ending.
EIGHT
Sallie Crews walked down a short hallway, nodding politely to two uncomfortable-looking detectives stirring sugar into their coffees. Police headquarters of a metro county. The air-conditioning broke overnight and the whole building filled with an oppressive mugginess by noon. Fans had been plugged into every available socket and succeeded only in circulating warm air around the Robbery-Homicide unit, the entire second floor humming noisily like the tarmac of a busy airport.
Crews paused outside the interrogation room. Took a breath and flipped a sign next to the door. It read: Interview in Progress.
Inside, Izuarita Sandoval sat at a wooden table. They regarded each other for a moment. Crews handed Sandoval a Diet Coke, which the girl accepted gratefully. She rolled the cold soda can along her forehead and glanced toward the two-way mirror.
Crews sat down across from her, the chair creaking as she settled in. A fan in the corner made a grating metallic noise as it pivoted back and forth. Izuarita thought the room smelled steamy. It was transient, anonymous, like a doctor’s office in a third-world country. She noticed a wire running along the edge of the mirror frame but didn’t see a tape recorder or closed-circuit camera. Figured there had to be one somewhere.
Her skin glistened with sweat. There was acne faintly clustered around her cheekbones and chin, probably the reason for all the concealer. Despite the blemishes, Izuarita was a beautiful young woman, with dark Latin eyes and exotic features that wouldn’t be out of place at the Copacabana. A space between her teeth was small enough to be considered cute.
She also had a decent helping of barrio attitude but was playing this one nice and sweet at the moment.
Izuarita took two sips from the Diet Coke. Said something in Spanish. Crews pretended not to understand.
“What’s
that, honey?”
“Nothing.”
“Thirsty, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Izuarita. It’s a beautiful name,” Crews said.
“Thanks.”
“Friends call you Izzy?”
She shrugged.
“You know why you’re here?”
“I’m not arrested.”
“That’s right. You’re not under arrest.”
“Then why?”
“You’re a travel teller for the North Georgia Savings and Loan?”
“Yes.”
“What’s a travel teller?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’d like you to tell me.”
Izuarita shuffled in her seat. She’d taken off a baggy hooded sweatshirt on arrival, a revealing purple tank top underneath that left little to the imagination. Sweaty cleavage and tight jeans. Hoop earrings. Elegant fingers with lots of rings, purple nail polish. A male detective would have been secretly drooling over Izuarita. Crews smiled softly at her.
“It’s like a temp for a certain region, you know. Regular tellers call in sick or take—este—vacaciones. You know? Vacation,” she said.
“So you bounce around all over?”
She nodded.
“At what branch did you fill in most recently?”
“You don’t know?”
“Tell me.”
“The J-Jubilation County office.”
“Off Route Twenty?”
Another nod.
“The one that was robbed six days ago?”
“I didn’t know it was robbed.”
Crews looked past the girl at the wall. Izuarita wanted to turn around. She tried hard not to shift her eyes or chew her nails. A progression of lies formed in her head.