Deep Down (Hallie Michaels)

by Deborah Coates

  He shrugged, like, yeah, what had seemed simple and right at nineteen was somehow harder to explain at twenty-six. “It seemed like a good idea. We could share expenses. I could—yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but I thought I could protect her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to be the one to fix things for her.” He paused, like he was thinking about what he wanted to say. “Maybe it never made sense. But he was at least forty. She’d just turned eighteen. And why should she have to marry him? Because he was pushy? Because he wanted to? And I could help her. At least I could help her.”

  “Did you dream about her?” Is that where all this had come from?

  “No.” He looked at the ground. “I hadn’t had any dreams since I was sixteen. I thought that was over, done. And it was a problem because I wasn’t—I never dreamed about her dying.”

  After a minute, he said, “I thought that I was saving her. I married her to save her. But in the end she saved me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Boyd rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Sorry. I don’t talk about it much.”

  Hallie figured if they had a list of all the things Boyd didn’t talk about, it would stretch from Rapid City to Pierre.

  “This is the accident she died in,” he said, pointing at the car and the grain truck. “This car and this truck. Exactly. Exactly like this.” As if that couldn’t be said too many times, as if that were the fundamental wrongness, which in some ways it was. Because Boyd was right—who would do this? Or, more to the point, why? Because Hallie had a feeling she already knew who. Or, rather, what.

  “This is a threat,” he said. “And it’s my problem. Not yours. Not the sheriff’s department. Mine. And I won’t let this hurt you. Or anyone else. I won’t.” His voice was flat and hard.

  You don’t get to choose, Hallie thought, what I get involved in and what I don’t. But she didn’t say it. Bit her tongue so hard, she almost drew blood, because this wasn’t about arguing. For once. Or, right now. This was about figuring out what was going on.

  Boyd walked over to the wreckage one more time, then back, like he couldn’t actually believe it was there, for which Hallie didn’t blame him.

  She said, “Okay. Okay. But if this was the accident—”

  “It was.”

  “How was this to save you?” Hallie hated this conversation in so many ways. Hated it because she was holding back, which was wrong; she knew it was wrong and yet she also knew, right now, she couldn’t talk about this on her terms. Right now, right this minute, she had to talk about it on his. And that was hard. Way harder than fighting with him. And not because she cared that Boyd had been married before, though she did care a little because it changed how she knew him, what she knew about him. She hated it because she couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to mean. How had a dead man re-created this accident in the middle of nowhere in the middle of South Dakota? Why? Why here? Why now?

  “After we got married,” Boyd said, looking at the vehicles rather than at Hallie, “he didn’t follow Lily anymore. He started following me. And that was all right with me. I figured I could handle him.” He turned to Hallie, his gaze steady. “I had no idea.”

  6

  “Boyd, this guy … this guy is dead, right?”

  Boyd looked at her. The black dog rose from where it had been lying next to the wreckage, stretched, and trotted across the road to them. Hallie moved so she was standing between the dog and Boyd. Don’t you touch him, she thought. Don’t you even think about touching him.

  “He’s dead. I saw him die. Or, I saw him … dead.” He swallowed. “Lily was in her car—that red car there, or one just like it. Hollowell—that was his name, Travis Hollowell—he was in the grain truck. She’d have just gotten off work. And I think she was coming to meet me because it was raining. She must have recognized Hollowell or saw the truck headed for me. But it’s not something I know. That I can ever know. Not now.” And Hallie knew how that was, that something could never be understood, that you just had to live with not knowing. She didn’t like it, but she understood it.

  “There’d been some weird incidents the week before she died,” Boyd continued after a moment. “A broken step, an out-of-control motorcycle, some dog that tried to attack me in an alley near downtown. But I never saw him—Hollowell. I didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe if I had—” He cut himself off, like he’d been down that path a hundred times. Nothing ever changed, but he still thought about it, Hallie figured. Still wanted to rewind that day or week or year, still wanted it to turn out different.

  “What happened that day?” Hallie asked. It wasn’t going to be less painful this time, thinking about the things he should have done or could have done, but she needed to know. Until she knew, she couldn’t tell what parts were important. And parts were important. That was clear just from the fact that they were here and the vehicles were here.

  “That day,” Boyd said, “I was walking. We had an apartment south of campus and I’d just gotten off the bus. It had been raining, drizzling, and the road was slick—or at least that’s what they said, after. It was dusk and there wasn’t really a sidewalk, not right there, not then.”

  Hallie felt as if she was holding her breath, or the world was, like time itself had stopped. If there was wind or birds or the sound of tires on pavement, she didn’t hear them.

  “I don’t even remember what I was thinking about, probably biochem or feed formulations. Or maybe running out to the farm for the weekend. My parents liked Lily. They didn’t like that we’d gotten married, but they liked her. So, I don’t know. I was paying attention, but not paying attention. Not like I would have been if I’d know what was going to happen. Not like I should have been. The first I knew anything was happening was when I heard tires squealing. I looked up in time to see Lily accelerate into the intersection and right underneath that—that truck.”

  Hallie put her hand on his arm. Lily’s ghost hovered off his left shoulder. When Boyd spoke again, his voice was harsh. “She was already dead when I reached the car. I don’t know anything.” As if that were part of the problem, that he couldn’t know each detail, what was thought and why it was done. “Nothing. Except she saved my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hallie said.

  Boyd turned away from the wreck once more and looked at her, his expression bleak. “It was seven years ago,” he said.

  Hallie’s mother had died thirteen years ago and it didn’t matter. Sometimes things were fine. And sometimes—like maybe when you saw a wreck exactly like—it slammed right through you like yesterday.

  Hallie looked at the wreck herself, looked at the little red car shoved under the heavy front end of the grain truck. “Hollowell was driving the truck?” she asked.

  Boyd nodded.

  “But—” She didn’t understand. “I mean, did he go through the windshield? It was a big truck.”

  “It was weird,” Boyd said. He’d turned away from the wreck now, was staring across the open field to the west. “Although they said it happens like that sometimes. He got out of the truck. He was walking around, telling everyone she just drove right in front of him, that he couldn’t stop. I remember wanting to kill him. I’ve never wanted to kill anyone, but I wanted to kill him. But I didn’t want to leave her. She was dead. I could tell she was, but I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

  He raised a hand, like he was going to point to something, then let it drop. “Then he just … died. A heart attack, I guess, or some sort of latent injury. I never asked. Never cared. For a while I thought maybe I just wanted it enough, for him to die. For a while, I hoped that was it.”

  Hallie waited, but when he didn’t say anything more, she said, “So, this guy. He’s in his forties, right?”

  “He was,” Boyd conceded.

  “Dark brown hair cut fairly short. Not as short as yours, but precise, good barber, I bet. He’s got some gray hair, like you said, though not much, just a little at the temples. He wears
nice clothes, dress pants, a navy sweater. Not as tall as you. Taller than me. His eyes are really light colored. Like—” She had to think. “—like old snow.”

  Hallie hadn’t thought Boyd could look any paler, but she’d been wrong. “Not the eyes,” he said, “but the rest. Yes. How do you know?”

  “He was here,” she said.

  “His ghost?”

  “No,” she said. “He appeared, right here, while I was waiting for you. Out of nowhere. Like a ghost. Only he wasn’t. He was solid. I touched him.”

  “He’s dead,” Boyd said, his voice like ground stone, like repeating it would make the car wreck and the conversation, and maybe even Lily’s death seven years ago, go away. They were standing on the edge of the highway, asphalt crumpling slightly just underneath their feet. Behind them was the wreck like a giant grotesque memorial. Hallie didn’t even have to turn her head, and she could still see it. The red car’s hood was nearly swallowed by the front of the grain truck, the car itself twisted sideways, like it hadn’t hit straight on, but almost, its back wheels six inches off the ground, the right one bent almost in half. Such a small car and such a big truck. No question Hollowell had meant to kill Boyd. No one hit by that truck could have survived.

  “Maybe he was something else back then,” Hallie said. She thought of the black dogs—not everything that wasn’t alive was a ghost. “Maybe he was never human.”

  “He was a real guy.”

  “Are you sure? Because he’s solid. He could have fooled you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure. Not,” he added, “that he couldn’t have fooled me. Because I didn’t know anything, not back then. I thought the world was … well, the way you think the world is.”

  “You had dreams,” Hallie pointed out.

  “But I thought that was just me,” he told her. He stepped away, like the conversation was finished, then he turned back. “People knew him, Hallie,” he said. “Lily’s stepfather knew him. He had to be real.”

  You hope he was real, Hallie thought. But he’d also said that Hollowell’s eyes were different, and maybe that meant something. Maybe it meant he’d been alive then, that he’d died, that he was something else now. One more thing that Hallie didn’t know anything about.

  Hallie heard another vehicle, really close, like it had probably been audible for several minutes and she and Boyd just hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t long before a tow truck—Big Dog’s Auto in Prairie City—pulled up, the engine rumbling. Tom Hauser stepped out, and Hallie and Boyd crossed the short distance back to where he’d stopped, just behind Boyd’s patrol car.

  “What’s going on?” Tom asked.

  “Wreck.” Hallie stepped in front of Boyd, because she thought he might need a moment.

  “Yeah,” Tom said dryly, “I got that.”

  “Can you get them out of here?” Boyd said from behind Hallie, sounding so normal that Hallie almost whipped her head around to look at him, like he’d swapped himself out for someone else, which in a way he probably had.

  “They go to the hospital already?” Tom said. He approached the wreckage and ducked his head to look inside the car.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said, “there isn’t anybody.”

  Tom straightened. “Well, there had to be somebody.”

  “Just tow them,” Boyd said, apparently no longer trying for “normal.” He opened the door of his patrol car with a movement so violent, the door almost bounced back at him. He got in, shut the door, and reached for the radio.

  “What bug flew up his butt?” Tom asked.

  “It’s fine,” Hallie said.

  Tom looked at her, like he could see things clearer than either Hallie or Boyd might have wanted him to. “There aren’t any tire marks,” he finally said.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. “You should just move them.”

  Tom shrugged. “Sure.”

  He went back to his truck and started to maneuver it into position. Hallie walked over to Boyd’s patrol car and tapped on the window. Boyd had been staring out the windshield at the wreckage, but he didn’t jump when Hallie tapped the window, like he was aware of everything—Hallie, the tow truck, the pattern of the wind across the dried stalks of grass at the side of the road.

  “Look,” Hallie said when Boyd stepped out of the car, “there’s something else you need to see.”

  “I called in the plates,” he said.

  “Why?” She looked at him.

  “These vehicles,” and she could see that he was trying to put himself back together, to be calm, precise, and organized. It wasn’t quite working, but she could see that he was trying as hard as he knew how. “These vehicles have to belong to someone. They had to get here somehow. If I can trace them back to their owners, maybe I can find out what’s going on. Maybe it really is just someone’s elaborate and sick idea of a joke.”

  “And that explains the guy I saw, how?” Hallie asked.

  “Maybe you were wrong.” He said each word separately and distinctly, like providing the right emphasis would be the same as being right.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said, matching his tone, “let me show you something.”

  Tom had by this time towed the red car to the side of the road. Boyd looked at it hard, and for a minute Hallie didn’t think he’d heard her, but then he said, “Sure, show me.”

  The wind rose as they crossed the road. It was still out of the west, but sharper now, heavy with the promise of winter, finally, as if the sky and the earth had been waiting until just this exact moment for the season to change. Into the wide ditch and back out. The field on this side of the road hadn’t been cultivated or grazed for years, all low grass and occasional brambles.

  Hallie walked Boyd straight through the field to the perimeter of the circle of death, then along that perimeter across field and road and field again with several side trips to show him the dead trees and birds and rabbits. He didn’t seem terribly interested, kept looking back at the intersection and tapping his radio mike, like he wondered if it had stopped working.

  “It’s November,” he finally said.

  “And we haven’t had a killing frost. Look.” She straddled the line between dead and not-dead, bent down and showed him—green grass on one side, admittedly buried amongst dried late fall stalks, but there, nonetheless. On the dead side—nothing. “What about the dead trees, the rabbits?”

  “Okay,” Boyd said, but she could see that he wasn’t going to spend time on it. The accident was weird and disturbing, but it could be investigated. He could call in license plates and check VIN numbers and registrations. He could interview people up and down the road. It was an empty stretch of highway, but maybe there was someone. And maybe they’d seen something. Someone towing vehicles or driving too fast. Those were concrete things—making phone calls, interviewing people. Dead grass and birds and trees? What was he supposed to do with that?

  As they returned to the intersection, Tom trotted over. The little red car sat on the side of the road, its hood crumpled and its front tires splayed left and right. Tom had the grain truck hooked for towing, ready to drive it back to town.

  “Need you to sign these, Deputy,” he said to Boyd.

  Boyd signed them without looking, his signature a slanted scrawl. Tom studied it, then looked at Hallie, like, What’s going on?

  Hallie shrugged, then walked with him across the road to his truck.

  “Thanks,” she said as Tom pulled the door open.

  Tom jerked a thumb back at Boyd. “He okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Hallie said honestly.

  Tom looked at her close, then nodded, like he understood at least half of what she wasn’t saying. He turned to climb into the truck.

  “Did Jake get his car?” Hallie asked.

  Tom turned back. “Jake?”

  “I saw it on the road this morning.” She gestured with her hand. “Over by the ranch.”

  “It’s his day off,” Tom said. “So I haven’t seen him, but that car’s been leavin
g him by the side of the road all over the county. Needs the engine rebuilt. Keeps saying he doesn’t have time. I think he just likes tinkering with it, you know? Told him last time I had to tow it, he could get someone else next time it crapped out on him.” He laughed. “Guess he thought I meant it.”

  Hallie stepped back as he climbed up into the cab of his tow truck, then walked back across the road as Tom pulled out, towing the big grain truck behind.

  She was just approaching Boyd’s car when his radio crackled to life.

  “Those plates you wanted run?” Hallie recognized Patty Littlejohn, who’d been a friend of her mother’s way back and was the daytime dispatcher for the sheriff.

  Boyd said, “Go ahead.”

  “Well, they exist,” Patty said.

  Boyd frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “They’re Iowa plates, right? That’s what you said?”

  “Yes.” Boyd’s voice had that tight undercurrent again, not quite anger—though that was there too—more like he was afraid he was starting to unravel.

  “Iowa claims,” Patty said, her tone implying that as it was Iowa, any information could not be completely relied upon. “Well, they claim that the plates aren’t assigned to anyone.”

  “That’s a mistake,” Boyd said flatly.

  “You would think so,” Patty said. “Unless you made a mistake on the numbers, transposed them or something?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Patty said after a pause. “The thing is, they checked. They physically have the plates. In Iowa. Right now.”

  Boyd rubbed a hand across his forehead as if his head hurt.

  “Ask her if they’ve ever been assigned to anyone,” Hallie said.

  Boyd looked at her, then nodded and passed the question along to Patty.

  “I can ask,” Patty said doubtfully. “Do you want the whole history, then?”

  “Yes,” Boyd said.

  “All righty.” A short pause. “Oh, and by the way, is your phone off? Someone’s been trying to call you. Didn’t know her, but I said I’d tell you to listen to your messages.”