Before Sonny could take another breath or consider himself lucky to be alive, the car and the trio inside it sped off into the tumultuous grayness, disappearing completely from sight. But there was no question that they had been there, that Eddie and his brother had started something that they might not have intended to.
The crows had gathered on the telephone line as soon as the rain had stopped. They didn’t know what humans called them when they came together, nor did they know what a murder was; the killing of one’s own kind by another. All they knew was that there was blood, that death had beckoned them with opportunity and potential. They would just have to wait. Patience was something they did understand. They could stand on the wire until the last bit of light drained from the sky. Stand until darkness came, making them invisible, silent, and ready for whatever came next, whatever had been left for them by the violence of another. It was as if it had all happened just for them, just so they could continue to exist, black wing against black sky.
CHAPTER 11
“Get out of the car,” Eddie ordered Carmen. “Just get out.” His clothes were splattered with blood, his face carved with anger so severe that it threatened to stay there permanently. His handsomeness had vanished.
Eddie had said little after he’d run out of Lancer’s Market. “Go. Go back to the motel.” Then he looked forward from the passenger seat, stared straight ahead tight-lipped, emotionlessly, as Carmen shifted through the gears, driving away from the market as fast as she could, but not so fast that she would draw attention to them. There were cars in the lot across the county line.
Tió had tried to apologize from the backseat. “I‘m sorry, Eddie; he was hurting you.”
“Shut up; just shut the fuck up, Tió.” His voice was like lightning hitting the ground. Biting electricity spread throughout the interior of the car, followed by deafening thunder.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, Eddie. He wouldn’t stop . . .”
Now, in front of the motel, the engine running in neutral, the vacuum wipers slapping against the windshield, Eddie repeated himself. “Go. Get out of the car, Carmen. Wait. Just wait. I‘ll be back.”
Carmen looked at Eddie, then back to Tió, who had shrunk into the gray upholstery like a fearful little boy on the verge of a spanking. Her gut told her not to argue with Eddie. Her gut told her to run from them both as fast as she could, as far away as she could get.
She pushed out of the driver’s seat, her fingers numb from gripping the steering wheel so hard, and hurried to the door of their room as quickly as she could. There was no goodbye, no looking back.
For the first time since she had left home, Carmen longed for the comfort of her own bed, the smell of menudo simmering on the stove, her father sitting in his chair reading the newspaper after a long day’s work at the hospital. Would he take her back? Forgive her if he knew what she had done? What about confession? Telling the priest? Something told her that there was no turning back, what was done couldn’t be undone. She’d be marked for the rest of her life, all because she wanted to be with a boy, to strike out on her own. To be grown up.
A tear ran down her cheek, but she wouldn’t let anyone see it. She could barely stand to wipe it away, acknowledge its sudden presence.
From the outside, the motel was as hopeless looking as it was on the inside. It was a long building with a sloping flat roof from front to back, like an old hog barn had been converted to house people on their way to slaughter instead of pigs. The motel sat outside of town, surrounded by fallow fields, along the main road out of Memphis that headed to all points north and south. Emptiness and squalid Indian reservations awaited in Oklahoma—a quiet kind of hell—while the draw of the city, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin, even farther south, piqued Carmen’s curiosity with their size, opportunities, and places to disappear into. She needed to make a plan. She needed to decide what she was going to do next: Wait on Eddie—or go out on her own. “Wait,” Eddie had said. It was an order, a command no different than her father’s.
The overhang of the roof kept the weather from her as she pushed the key into the lock. What remained of the storm was weak, gentle, the aftermath not so threatening and severe as it had been. The wind had weakened into an intermittent breeze. The pelting rain was nothing more than a soft drizzle, almost a fog.
She could still see the lightning coming from inside Lancer’s Market in her mind, the flash of a gunshot, followed by another, along with two defining booms.
No one was supposed to get hurt. Eddie had said he wouldn’t shoot anyone. They just needed money for rent and gas to deliver the gin. Then everything would be golden. Just her and him on their own. No more Tió. No more gin. A new life, a new kind of love away from the small town that she felt trapped in, suffocated by—they could be anybody they wanted to be, not Aldo Hernadez’s daughter, or Eddie Renaldo’s girl, just Carmen and Eddie, in love, the world theirs to be had. K. I. S. S. I. N. G. Eddie, behind a tree . . .
“I didn’t mean to kill him” Tió had said. Kill him. Somebody was dead. The boys were in big trouble now. More trouble than Carmen ever thought was possible. All because of Tió. That didn’t surprise her. She shivered, shook the key. The door fought her, wouldn’t open.
Eddie had slid into the driver’s seat, and the car had sped away. The road was too wet for the tires to squeal, but the immediate thrust of the motor echoed on the breeze, the accelerator pushed all the way to the floor, the desire to flee not isolated only in Carmen’s mind or heart.
She was glad she hadn’t seen the shooting, the dead man. The only memory she would have were the flashes in the rain and the smell of fear and blood when the boys had run back to the car, tossing their guns into the backseat, Eddie yelling, “Go, go . . .”
She glanced over her shoulder before pushing the door harder. It opened with a knee. Behind her, the car was gone. The road was empty. Only the lights in Felix Massey’s office burned against the fog—a light she wished didn’t exist.
Carmen slammed the door behind her, locked it, and stood staring at the mess in the room. The bed was unmade. Eddie’s clothes, from the day before, were strung over the lone chair that sat cockeyed next to a cluttered desk. A makeshift sleeping pallet, a tangle of used blankets and sheets pilfered from the maid’s cart, lay in front of the bathroom door. Tió’s bed. The sight of it made her stomach queasy, made her feel like she was going to vomit. He was a killer now. She had smelled his breath. Touched his hand once, mistaking him for Eddie in the darkness.
There was no escaping the smell of aging gin in the small room. Rotting fruit and juniper berries coated her throat, attacked her hair, clung to her body like a magnet. A scream gurgled in the bottom of Carmen’s stomach, or maybe it was bile; either way she forced it back, swallowed deeply, knowing full well that it was her pride that she was tasting. She refused to sob, to cry out loud any more than she already had.
Without any more hesitation, Carmen began to collect her clothes. She stuffed them in a pillowcase as quickly as she could. It didn’t matter whether they were clean or dirty. She had to get out of there. Get out before Eddie came back. Something told her it would just be Eddie. He was going to ditch Tió—one way or another. She didn’t want to know how, didn’t want to see any more blood on his shirt, on his hands.
Eddie had promised her before they’d left for the robbery: “No one’ll get hurt, I promise. You just need to drive, Carmen. Can you do that?” She’d nodded. Yes. She would do anything he wanted her to. But that was then. Now she was alone with her memories and fears, death on her heels.
Her brushes were on the desk. She had to step over the pallet on the floor. They were the last of her things. She had all she needed, all that mattered. Not that she’d ever had that much to begin with. She’d run off in the middle of the night, sliding down the tree outside her window under the light of the moon like a cat in heat, a molly in search of a tom to rub up against. She’d been lonely then. Lonely and trapped. Nothing had changed. Eddie’s th
umb was like her father’s. Only now she was afraid. More afraid than she’d ever been in her life. She didn’t want to end up like Bonnie Parker, ambushed on the side of some road with so many bullets in her body that her flesh was nothing but mush. She didn’t want that. She was just a girl with her life ahead of her. Tears threatened again, but she pushed them back just like she had the bile.
Carmen scooped her brushes into the pillowcase and headed to the door.
But a loud thump stopped her. Somebody was knocking on the door. Boom, boom. Another knock.
“Open up, girl. I saw you go in.”
Damn it, Carmen thought, but didn’t say it out loud. She stood frozen, clung to the pillowcase like it was a Teddy Bear, and tried not to make any noise at all. Her heart beat so loudly she thought it was going to jump out of her chest.
It was Felix Massey come to collect the rent.
The bottom of the pillowcase teetered back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. Carmen eased her hand down and stopped it as quietly as she could. There was no other way out. A front window faced out, next to the door, curtains closed. The bathroom window was too small to climb through and only cranked halfway open. That was it.
She would just have to wait him out. Wait until Eddie got back. Everything changed so fast. Her head was spinning like a top, coming to stop in the same place: no options, no place to run.
Boom, boom, boom. Three more knocks so loud inside the small room that Carmen wanted to put her hands to her ears and pretend she didn’t hear them.
Felix Massey said nothing. Quiet returned. The weather was faint, the storm so distant that it was almost like it had vanished, too. Maybe it all had just been a dream, a nightmare.
The knocks were replaced by the heartbeat of a girl so afraid that she thought she was going to pee herself, just like Tió had when Eddie had pulled the trigger of the empty gun.
A new sound quickly replaced her heartbeat. It was the sound of metal against metal. A key sliding slowly into the lock. Carmen dropped the pillowcase where she stood. There was no place to run. The bathroom door had no lock.
Felix Massey pushed in the door and stopped just inside of it. “I thought I smelled somethin’ a little sour coming out of this room,” he said, staring at Carmen.
She looked for a weapon, saw nothing until her eyes landed on a letter opener lying on the cluttered desk. “Eddie’s not here. He’ll bring you the money when he comes back.” Her voice sounded like shattered glass tinkling to the floor.
Felix Massey closed the door behind him and locked it. “I got all the money I need.” His eyes were glassy and cold. He was still dressed in the same work pants, same ugly stained white shirt, and muddy shoes. An unlit cigar dangled out of the corner of his mouth. He had just put it out. The smell of cheap tobacco touched Carmen’s nose, causing her stomach to lurch again. She didn’t have the will or the strength to stop it this time. She bent over and puked.
A look of disgusted surprise crossed Felix Massey’s face. “That’ll cost you. I‘ll have to have it cleaned up.”
“I don’t have money.”
“Sure you do.” Felix smiled. The cigar stayed put, like it was glued to his lip. He looked her up and down, from toes to breasts, stopping at her chest with a leer that was unmistakable.
Carmen felt naked, violated. She crossed her arms over her chest and backed up until she came to a stop against the bathroom door. She could taste her own vomit, and she spit it out at Felix as he stepped toward her.
The spit fell short, landed on the tip of his right shoe. It didn’t stop him.
“I‘ll scream,” Carmen said.
“Go ahead. There ain’t no one to hear you for miles, or in the next room if that’s what you’re hopin’.”
“Eddie’ll kill you if you touch me.”
“You think I‘m scared of a gin-runnin’ spic?”
“You should be.” Eddie and Tió knew how to kill—she knew that now. But even in her state of fear, she knew better than to confess such a thing. She might’ve been afraid, but she wasn’t stupid.
Felix Massey stopped inches from Carmen. “Don’t make this hard girl. It ain’t gonna hurt. Be better for both of us if it’s fun.”
Up close, Felix Massey was even more foul than he was at a distance. He probably weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and sweated like he had just run a sprint, smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in a week. He was a whale come to swallow her up. His shadow took up half the wall.
Carmen opened her mouth to protest, to scream, but Felix pushed in quickly and covered her mouth with his skillet-sized hand. Her scream was corked. She was trapped with nowhere to go. His hardness pressed against her, announcing the seriousness of the threat.
He started to writhe, hump against her belly slowly. He was in no hurry, not afraid that Eddie would show back up any time soon. “Take it out,” he whispered. “Touch it. We’ll be even then. You won’t owe me nothin’.” He was breathing hard. Each word seemed difficult for him to say. His other hand pushed up under the hem of her simple cotton dress, rubbing her leg, fingers searching inward, toward her private place. “Come on,” he insisted, “touch it. I promise, we’ll be even.”
It was a lie and Carmen knew it. He would want more. The only way out was to give in, or make him think she was giving in. It was all she knew to do, so she surrendered, relaxed, allowed the tension in her body to deflate. “I can’t move,” she mumbled through his hand.
A slow smile crossed Felix’s face, and he pulled away two of his fingers, the ones pressing on her lips, like he was changing chords on a guitar.
“How can I touch it if I can’t move?” Carmen asked.
Felix Massey drew in a deep breath and looked her in the eye for a long second, like he was trying to decide if he could trust her.
Carmen pouted, stared up at him innocently. Being a girl was the only weapon she had.
Felix relented and pulled back six inches, giving her just enough room to drop her arms, allowing her hands to relax across her chest and drop to her side. It also gave Carmen just enough room to raise a knee—which she did with as much power as she could, pushing Felix Massey backward at the same time.
He screamed out in agonizing pain as her knee slammed against her target, his ugly bulge. Bone beat flesh every time, no matter the level of excitement. Felix Massey wasn’t the first man, or boy, she’d had to fend off in her life, and something told her he wouldn’t be the last.
Felix toppled over like an egg rolling off a shelf, giving her just enough room to dart to the side and grab the letter opener off the desk.
He moaned, then hissed, “You’ll regret that, you little whore.”
Carmen gripped the letter opener like a knife and thrust it toward him, slicing at the air, coming nowhere near cutting his skin. “I‘ll cut your balls off you come for me again, you fat bastard. Then I‘ll send Eddie after you to finish you off.”
Felix Massey struggled to stand up and Carmen knew she only had a second or two to make a run for it. In as graceful a move as she could mount, she hopped across the floor, dodged the puddle of puke, picked up the pillowcase and dashed for the door. She was a ballerina escaping a troll. Freedom lay beyond the castle. She wasn’t so many years from believing in fairy tales. She felt like Rapunzel freed from the tower.
Carmen heard Felix try to stand as she fumbled with the lock. Felt him lunging after her as her fingers pulled the knob down. It clicked open and she glanced over her shoulder.
Two seconds, maybe three, then he’d reach her. She knew what he’d do to her once he wrestled her to the ground, and she couldn’t bear the thought. At that very moment, she understood how easy it was to kill a man. The world would be a better place without a monster like Felix Massey. Still, something deep inside her wouldn’t allow her to use the letter opener—she didn’t want to cut him. Instead, she swung the door out, and slammed it into his head, clocking him hard, stunning him like a charging boar hit with a club.
Felix Mas
sey groaned again, stumbled back, taking the hit without crashing to the floor. He was dazed, but he would recover quickly.
The stumble was all Carmen needed. She bolted out the door, unsure where she was going but running faster than she ever had before.
Felix yelled for her to stop, cussed, offered threats until she was out of earshot. She swore to herself that she wasn’t going to stop running until she reached Dallas.
CHAPTER 12
The crows had begun to follow him like they did a wolf or a coyote. There would be blood left in his wake. Sooner or later he would kill again leaving them a bounty to feast on. The crows were sure of it. Just as they were sure that the moon would rise into the night sky offering them light in the darkness to see what was coming their way.
Sonny stood next to the screen door as Hugh Beaverwood, the local coroner and Wellington’s only mortician, covered Tom Turnell’s body with a sheet. Beaverwood was a droll man with a hound dog face; his jowls flapped thinly over his jaw, and he had a flat, turned-up nose that looked more suited to finding rabbits than inhaling embalming fluid. Sonny’d had more than his fair share of dealings with Beaverwood over the years, mostly on Ranger cases he’d been called in on and once for a personal matter, when it had come to burying Martha. He didn’t have a strong feeling about the man either way. The coroner seemed cold and detached, distant, which probably went along with the territory of conducting business with death on a daily basis. He was all business, all the time. If Hugh Beaverwood was around it was not a celebration. That came after he left, if at all.
The Collingsworth County sheriff, Layton Jones, Jonesy to everyone in town, stood behind the counter, opposite the coroner, staring at the empty cash drawer. Bertie Turnell stood behind him, wedged in a corner, his face pale with shock—he had seen the robbers leave, had pulled in the parking lot just as the shots had gone off. Bertie was a shorter version of Tom with lighter hair, probably from his mother’s side, a German-Dutch woman who Sonny had never properly met, but knew from a distance. No one else was inside the store. Even the mice had the good sense and enough respect to remain hidden and silent.
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