by G. M. Ford
Corso began to wave his arms, trying to catch the driver’s attention. A full minute of frenzied waving sent Corso to his knees in the snow, where he hung his head and watched the snow turn red, drop by drop. And then the blat of the horn, and when he looked up, one of the side windows of the road grader was open and a hand was waving.
He stayed on his knees as the huge machine backed up, turned its front wheels, and started down the driveway toward him. Above the roar of the machine, he heard Dougherty’s voice cry, “Yahoo!” He looked to his right. She was standing in the open doorway. She opened her mouth to speak, but by then Corso was already back inside the shed, finding the end of the duct tape and peeling it off. The pieces of plastic began to separate on their own. Corso reached down and yanked the top of the plastic apart.
The sight sent him reeling backward, tripping over one of the floor joists and falling heavily to the dirt. The roar of the diesel was closer now. Dougherty was shouting something into the wind. He climbed to his feet. His head throbbed as he shuffled back across the floor. He peeked. Quickly. Out of the corner of his eye. As if he might turn to stone. There it was. The ivory grin. The tufts of brown hair still stuck to the skull. The empty eye sockets staring back at him. He brought a hand to his mouth and turned away as his stomach turned over.
He moved carefully, making his way outside. The machine was right in his face now, idling as the driver popped open the door and began to climb down. He was a round-faced little guy wearing orange thermal coveralls and a red plaid hat with earflaps. One look at Corso stopped his descent. His satchel face folded itself into a frown, and then, without a word, he climbed back into his seat. He stuck his head out the side window. “You don’t look so good, buddy,” he yelled. Corso nodded his agreement. “I’ll send an aid car right out,” the driver promised. “You just take it easy till they get here.”
As Corso made his way over to the driver’s window, he heard the lock click on the inside of the door. He looked up at the driver’s gray stubbled face. “Better send the cops too,” he shouted. “There’s something in the shed they ought to see.”
5
Place has been deserted for the better part of fifteen years,” the sheriff said. “Ever since Eldred Holmes packed up his wife and kids and moved on.” She thought it over. “Back in the mideighties sometime. I can’t for the life of me remember where it was they were supposed to be moving to.” She looked back over her shoulder at the shed, which was now surrounded by yellow police tape and half a dozen deputies. “Doesn’t look like they got wherever they were going, though.”
“You think that’s them in there?” Corso asked.
She shrugged. “I peeked in and poked around a little before we sealed it off.” She looked down at Corso. “We don’t have our own lab or technicians. We’ve gotta wait for the state boys to show up. But the fake dental work looks a lot like Eldred Holmes to me.” Before Corso could ask the obvious question, she went on. “When we were kids, he used to scare the heck out of all the other kids. Had this big old set of snaggle teeth stuck out from his lips. Then, later on, he got ’em fixed. Had ’em pulled and a bridge put in. I know because he pulled it out and showed it to me once. Right in the middle of Royals Drugstore.” She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. “Looked a lot like the one in the mouth of that skull in there.”
Thirty yards away, two teams of emergency medical technicians emerged from the house, carrying Dougherty on a gurney. Her hands were wrapped like a boxer’s. The gurney’s wheels were unable to negotiate the snow, so they had to carry her toward the rear of the waiting aid car. She waved a pillowed hand at Corso. He waved back, as they folded the aluminum legs and slid her into the ambulance.
A black Lincoln Town Car nosed into the far end of the driveway. A plume of exhaust settled over the back half of the car like a cloak. The door opened. A thick-set man in a black overcoat stepped out of the car and began to make his way gingerly toward the house. The sheriff shaded her eyes with her hand.
Two-thirds of the way down the driveway, he spotted the sheriff and began to veer in her direction. She muttered something under her breath as he approached, but Corso couldn’t catch the words.
He was a blunt-featured man somewhere in his sixties. His eyebrows were grown out and curly, while his mustache was neatly trimmed. The overall effect lent him a somewhat scholarly quality. “Judge,” the sheriff said, without offering her hand.
“What do we have here, Sheriff?” he demanded.
“We’ve got some bones buried under the floor of the shed, Your Honor.”
Before he could ask another question, she said, “That’s all we know right now, Judge Powell. We’re waiting on the state boys to get a forensics team here.”
The judge set his jaw like a bass and started for the shed. The sheriff barred the way with her arm. He looked down at her arm with a mixture of anger and disdain.
“Don’t you dare—” he began.
She met his irate glare. “We’ve got an active investigation going on here, Judge.” She motioned toward the yellow tape surrounding the general area of the shed. “I’ve got it sealed off,” she said. “State Patrol hates it when they get a contaminated crime scene. Gets ’em thinking we’re a bunch of hicks.” She dropped her arm. “I’m gonna need to keep everybody out until they get here.”
His lower lip quivered as he swallowed whatever he’d intended to say next. Instead he took a deep breath and expelled the air through his nose in a pair of locomotive plumes. “You’ll keep me posted,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” she said.
He shot Corso a look and then went back to glaring at the sheriff.
“I’ll be in my office,” the judge said. “I’ll expect to hear from you before the end of the day.”
“The timelines are not under my control, Your Honor,” she said. “The state boys will—”
He cut her off. “By the end of the day,” he repeated, before turning on his heel and marching off. She stood silently, watching him make his way back to the car. Followed the big black car with her eyes until it was out of sight. Sighed.
“Richardson,” she called.
Across the trampled expanse of snow, a tall guy in a matching brown uniform turned toward the voice. Instead of the warm flaps-down model the sheriff was wearing, Richardson wore one of those state trooper military model hats with the leather strap so tight around his chin it was a wonder he could speak. His ears were as red as signal flags.
“Yes, sir,” he barked.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. “We gotta get these aid cars outta here. Clear the driveway.” She pointed to a white van with a satellite dish on the roof. “Start with those media types. Get ’em outta here.”
“Public’s got a right to know,” Richardson yelled.
“Which is why he called them?” she said under her breath.
She crooked a finger. Richardson marched over and stood stiffly at attention, staring out over the sheriff’s head. She stepped in close, speaking to the point of his collar. “First you get them the hell out of here. Then later we’ll talk about you calling them.”
He stiffened. “The right of the public to have free access—” he began to recite.
“Shut up,” she said through her teeth. “The rights of those poor people in the barn are what concerns me. However it was they came to be there…they have a right to some respect. They have a right to be treated with dignity.” Richardson’s thousand-yard stare never wavered as the sheriff continued. “What if they were people you knew? What if they were members of your family?” She patted him heavily on the shoulder and said, “Try to weigh that kind of thing against your great desire to be on television.” She patted him again, a little harder this time. “Who knows…maybe your better side will emerge.” Before he could respond, she went on. “Get the driveway clear. Remind the media types that there’s no parking on Hawthorne Road…especially in a snow emergency like this. If they park that damn van
there, call Bob Sowers and have them towed. Once the aid cars leave, we can bring the rest of the cruisers back in.”
“Yes, sir,” he barked again, before turning on his heel and marching off into the melee. The sheriff sighed heavily as she watched him go and then shifted her gaze down to Corso, who lay strapped to a gurney at the rear of an orange and white aid car. The top third of his head was bandaged like the Mummy. His nose was packed with gauze.
She shook her head sadly. “The ‘sir’ stuff is Richardson’s way of reminding me that he doesn’t think sheriff is a job for a woman,” she said. “He ran against me last November. I beat him by thirty-seven votes. He’s gonna run again next year, so he’s trying to get himself on TV as much as possible.” She sighed again. “Probably gonna win too.” She grinned down at Corso. “Gulf War hero, you know.”
She was middle-aged, black hair, brown at the roots, crammed up under her winter hat. She could have been fat or she could have been slim—at that moment she was wearing too many layers of clothing to tell. The crinkles at the corners of her blue eyes put her somewhere in her late forties.
She read Corso’s mind. “I didn’t hire him, so I can’t fire him,” she said. “His father’s the chairman of the City Council. Clint Richardson’s the one who talked the council into making me take his kid on as deputy sheriff. Said I wasn’t making a strong enough impression in the community. Needed some new blood.”
Corso watched as the doors on the other aid car were closed. One guy stayed inside. The other three started Corso’s way. The last police cruiser was backing out of the driveway. “Done nothing but fight me on everything,” she said. “Won’t even wear a proper hat, for pity’s sake.”
“They’re his ears,” Corso offered.
“Wanted to carry a forty-caliber, and when I wouldn’t let him, he started loading his own thirty-eights with enough powder to either blow his hand off or kill somebody in the house next door.” She shook her head. “He just don’t get it.”
The sheriff put a hand on Corso’s shoulder. He turned his head in her direction. “Speaking of not getting it, Mr. Corso…you want to tell me what a world-famous writer and his photographer friend were doing driving around on a night like last night?” Corso shrugged. She leaned in closer. “Ole Swanson dead in his truck I can understand. Since his missus died last spring, Ole’s been getting so drunk every night it was just a matter of time before he did something stupid and ended up dead. But you, Mr. Corso, if you don’t mind me saying…you really ought to know better.”
Because his eyes were incapable of keeping up with the movement of his head, Corso averted them slowly. He watched as one of the trio of EMTs slipped and fell heavily in the snow. Watched as his buddies helped him to his feet, dusted him off, and then pulled him Corso’s way. Corso could feel her gaze on the side of his head.
“I guess I was looking for something,” he said.
“What was that?”
“A free lunch.”
The sheriff whistled under her breath. “A costly commodity.”
“Apparently so,” he said.
The EMTs checked that his straps were tight and then lifted him into the back of the ambulance. The sheriff stood in the doorway as they buttoned the gurney down.
“You think the whole family’s in there?” Corso asked.
“I didn’t want to touch anything,” the sheriff said. “But if you ask me, there was more than one set of remains in that bundle.”
“Yeah,” he said as the doors swung shut.
It’s hard to know Jesus. No matter how I try to keep his picture in my mind, the face just leaks out my ears like sand. I think it’s ’cause I’ve got all these other pictures in there. Things that happened to me…here in my life. Not to somebody else a way long time ago. I can stare at the picture of Jesus in Papa’s Bible…the one with him standing on a cloud with all this white light coming out from him like he’s the sun or something. I can look at it for an hour, and the minute I stop, all I can see are Billy Cameron’s eyes, and that pink party dress Brittany Armstrong wore to the last day of school…and my hair…my hair…all scattered and lying there. Mama says that’s why those nun ladies wear those black things and lock themselves all up together in musty buildings. So’s they can keep their minds empty. So’s they can make room for Jesus.
6
The television image flickered, but Richardson’s voice came through loud and clear. Beneath the talking head and the bank of microphones, they kept flashing the words Deputy Sheriff Cole Richardson. Live from downstairs in the hospital lobby. Back over his shoulder, the guy who showed up at the Holmes place—Judge Powell—stood shoulder to shoulder with a tall man who looked a lot like Deputy Richardson. His city councilman father, Corso guessed. Although Richardson didn’t come right out and say it, the message was that if he had been sheriff for the past seventeen years, those poor people in the shed wouldn’t have been lying around out there all this time.
Someone rapped on the door. Corso clicked off the TV and told whoever it was to come in. The kid’s yellow nylon jacket was so bright it made Corso squint. HERTZ. Big black letters across the front. Cursive Craig embroidered up higher on his chest.
“Uh…Mr. Corso,” he stammered as he pushed a clipboard toward the bed, “if you wouldn’t mind signing right here.”
Corso marked his place in his journal and used his pen to sign on the dotted line. The kid tore off the top copy of the rental agreement and handed it to Corso. From his right-hand jacket pocket he produced a set of keys. Corso nodded toward the end table. The kid took the hint, placing the keys next to the water pitcher.
He walked to the window and looked down into the parking lot. “Hunter green Expedition. Right down there,” he said. “Next to the white Buick.” He turned back toward Corso. “Plate number’s on the keys.”
Corso nodded his thanks and picked up his journal. The kid began to leave the room. From the rear, it was obvious he had something tucked beneath his arm.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Corso asked.
The kid stopped walking. Checked everywhere except under his arm.
“Under your arm,” Corso said.
The kid looked like he was surprised to find a book tucked away in his armpit.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s…ah…”He pulled the book out and glanced at the cover. “I’ve read all your books, Mr. Corso.” He held out a copy of Missing Lync, Corso’s second book. “Lync is my favorite,” the kid blurted.
“And you want me to sign it?”
“If you…I mean…I brought it, but then it didn’t seem…”
“No problem,” Corso said quickly. “Give it here.”
Corso set the book on the bed and retrieved his pen from his journal. “Can I personalize it?”
The kid looked bewildered. “Excuse me?”
“You want me to put your name in it?” Corso asked.
The young face brightened up. “If it wouldn’t be too much—”
“That’s Craig with a C?”
The kid covered the embroidered name with his hand. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m Michael. I borrowed the jacket…from…mine had a…”
Corso scribbled in the book and held it out. “Here you go, Michael.”
Michael used two hands to hold the book against his chest. “Thank you,” he said, backing toward the door. “If there’s anything else we can…Hertz is always…”
“You’ve already gone beyond the call of duty,” Corso assured him.
The kid’s expression said he thought so too. He nodded and smiled his way back into the hall. The door silently closed behind him. Then opened again. The kid stuck his spiky head back in the door. “Er…Mr. Corso, sir…my supervisor…Craig Mason…he wanted me to ask you if maybe you couldn’t be”—he winced—“you know…be a little…a little…”
“He wants me to try and not crash this one.”
“Something like that. Yes, sir.”
“Tell him I’ll do the best I can.�
�
The door had only been closed for a moment when the sheriff pushed her way into the room, followed by a pair of cowboys in matching beige suits. Each man held a dark brown stocking cap in one hand and a Stetson hat in the other. The sheriff made a rueful face. “Mr. Corso, these gentlemen are from the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. This is Officer Duckett,” she said, indicating the older of the two, a slitty-eyed specimen who looked like he’d spent a lot of time squinting out over the prairie. “And Officer Caruth,” who was under thirty, wide-eyed, and looked like this was as far from home as he’d ever been. “As soon as the doctors say it’s all right for you to travel, these gentlemen are here to take you back to Texas. On a material-witness warrant.”
Corso went back to writing. Somebody cleared their throat. “Well then…” the sheriff stammered. “I’ll let you gentlemen know when Mr. Corso here’s cleared for takeoff.” The cowboys issued a couple of thank-yous and reluctantly shuffled from the room. Once they were gone, Sheriff Trask stood for a moment, hands on hips, breathing deeply, looking around the walls. “What’s with them and those hats?” she asked finally. “You’d think they’d leave the damn things back in the motel room instead of carrying them around with ’em all day.”
“It’s a Texas thing,” Corso offered. “You gotta spend some time there to understand.”
She shook her head and grinned. “You want the bad news, the worse news, or the worst yet news?” she asked affably.
“You mean…other than the cavalry there.”
“Yeah.”
He finished writing a sentence and then looked up again. “Let’s start with the bad. That way I’ll have something to look forward to.”
“You’ve drawn quite a crowd, Mr. Corso. We got every damn news agency in the world down in the lobby, wanting to talk to you”—she waved a disgusted hand—“…or me, or anybody else they can get to say anything at all. It’s taking every deputy I own just to keep them pinned downstairs.” She gestured toward the TV. “Don’t matter what channel. Turn it on and there’s some old picture of you and they’re running on about your troubles with the New York Times and all that. If it isn’t you, it’s me or the state boys tellin’ ’em we got no comment. That’s how the Dallas boys got a line on you.” She used her right hand to massage the back of her neck. “Or worst of all, it’s Richardson running his mouth about how Eldred and Sissy have been lying out there for all these years right under my nose and how I never even had a clue.”