The Thirteenth Skull

by Bonnie Ramthun

  “Yes, surely,” Eileen said, trying to sound like she thought so, too.

  Larry, the other park ranger, had driven them to the Visitors Center in his enormous Ford truck. Only twice had fallen trees blocked the road, and both of those were taken care of quickly with Larry’s chainsaw. An occasional log sent bursts of sparks and sullen smoke into the air, but the fire wasn’t going to flare up again.

  “You saw him run up the trail into the rock fall?” Don asked Joe. Joe nodded. Eileen fingered her gun, which was drawn and cocked and locked. She didn’t want Joe to come. She wanted him to stay behind, where he was safe. Joe won that argument by refusing to argue.

  “Ma’am, you’re making me nervous,” Larry said.

  “I’m a very good shot,” Eileen said with a cold look at Larry. “This man killed Sheriff King yesterday, sir. He set this fire.”

  “I know that,” Larry said. “I know your folks and I know about you. If you’re that worried about this guy, then I’m worried too. That’s why you’re making me nervous.”

  “Oh,” Eileen said. “Sorry.”

  “I’ve got a shotgun,” Larry said. “How about I take that, too?”

  “Good idea,” Joe said. Eileen looked at him and flicked her eyes to his pocket. Joe blinked at her and dipped his chin in a tiny nod. He still had the gun she’d given him, then.

  They’d gobbled nutrition bars as Larry drove them carefully up the trail from Devils Tower Junction, even as Lucy and Ted were reuniting joyfully with their little boy. Time for celebration later, time for food and drink and love. Right now they had to go back into the belly of the beast and see if it had killed their killer. It felt like going back into hell, to Eileen. The miasma that surrounded the Tower was even worse in the smoke and ash. The burnt smell that settled into her nose made her feel like she was going to go absolutely mad.

  “Sorry about your truck, Don,” Larry said, with a nod to the burned out shell of the park ranger’s truck.

  “Damn shame,” Don said with a shrug. “But now I get a new Visitors Center, don’t I?”

  “Brand new, I betcha,” Eileen said. “Let’s walk carefully, folks. If he’s alive, and it looks like he needs help, let’s just hold back until we’re sure he doesn’t have a surprise for us, all right?”

  “All right,” the three men said, and fell in behind her without comment.

  They found him in the rock fall, the smartest place to go. The flames shouldn’t have reached this far, but the fire wasn’t an ordinary one, was it? He lay half under a tumble of enormous boulders, his face buried in the cracks between the rocks. The smell announced him, a smell that made Eileen wish for the cleanliness of the burnt wood. He smelled almost sweet, that was the worst. Sweet, like roast pork.

  “I think he’s alive,” Don said from the trail, in a choking voice. Larry held his shotgun trained on the man curled like a fried snail in between the rocks, a revolted expression on his face. Joe turned and leaned off the trail and vomited the trail bar he’d eaten just a few minutes before. Eileen noticed with distant amusement that it didn’t look any different coming up than it had going down. Her own stomach was okay. Not happy, but okay. She’d seen burn victims before, working car crashes on the highway. Rene was by far the worst she’d ever seen. His clothes hung in patches and his skin, underneath, was purple and hairless. Where the skin had cracked it was a deep, roasted pink.

  “Don, can you get the stretcher out of Larry’s truck?” Eileen said. “Joe, is this Rene?”

  “I can’t tell,” Joe said, his face turned away. “He’s tall and fat like Rene, but I don’t know.”

  “We’ll see in a bit,” Larry said, his shotgun held ready, his face distressed and white. “I don’t think he’s going to survive, ma’am.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Eileen said. She patted Joe on the shoulder. “Hang on, everybody. We’ve got to get him to the hospital. Think about what he is, later. Right now he’s a man who needs our help.”

  When they rolled him over, grimacing helplessly and trying not to touch his wounded and raw flesh, they saw that his face was almost unmarked. He’d buried his face deeply enough into the rocks that the blowtorch of flame had crisped everything but the skin of his face. It wouldn’t be enough, Eileen thought, to save him. She helped strap him in and took a Glock semiautomatic pistol from his belt as they settled the blanket around him. She searched as carefully as possible and discovered he only had the one. Perhaps there were more weapons in the car in the parking lot. That was for later. For right now, there was only wrapping this horribly burned fat man into the stretcher and making sure that there was no weapon that he could bring out, like the last scene in a cheap horror movie, and kill them after all.

  He didn’t come around until they had him in the back of the truck and Larry was driving as quickly as he could back towards Sundance and the hospital there. He’d be flown to Rapid City, of course, to the intensive care unit there, if they thought they could save him. More likely he’d be stuffed full of painkillers until he died, which seemed inevitable.

  Rene’s eyes opened. They were black and expressionless pools, the doll’s eyes that Lucy had described. Joe, who was steadying him on the other side of the stretcher, bent over him and touched his forehead, which was unburned.

  “Hang on, fella,” he said gently, and Eileen felt something fierce and warm in her chest, something that was pride and love and astonishment, all at the same time. What a man this was, this Joe Tanner.

  “Joe Tanner,” Rene whispered in a cracked and thready voice. He smiled. “Been looking for you, mon ami.” His arm twitched as though he was trying to reach the gun that Eileen had removed.

  “So I’ve heard,” Joe said. “We’re getting you to a hospital right away, so hang on.”

  “Water?” Rene whispered. “So thirsty.”

  Joe held the bottle for him and he drank thirstily until the bottle was gone. Then he threw up with a grunt, ejecting a gush of water out and down the blanket that covered his chest.

  “Hang on,” Joe repeated helplessly.

  “I didn’t know the fire would jump the road,” Rene said. His voice, though faint, sounded cheerful, as though the pain of his burnt body didn’t bother him a bit. Eileen had read somewhere that burn victims were euphoric, the ones that were going to die. The body knew it was over and dumped all sorts of happy juice into the human system. Or something like that. She could hardly stand the smell coming off this man, the smell of cooked flesh and coming death.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “We would have saved you if we could.”

  “Up there,” Rene said. “I saw you up there in the light. On top of – You took my wallet. My dad.”

  Eileen, who’d taken charge of Rene’s wallet, dug it out of her backpack as Joe helped Rene drink again from his water bottle. This time the water stayed down. Rene closed his eyes as Eileen found the picture of the little boy and his dad. Her throat closed tighter as she looked at the happy little boy.

  Rene opened his eyes. She held the picture in front of him. He smiled gently, and happily, and his inhuman eyes looked odd set in his human face.

  “Who paid you, Rene?” Eileen whispered. “We – I, really want to know.”

  “Just me,” Rene said, not moving his gaze from the picture of his father. “Just me. My dad, he was a cinematographer. He was blacklisted, do you know that word?”

  “Yes,” Eileen said.

  “So he got sent back to France, destroyed him. Destroyed – me. Reagan, he – he blessed the movement, made it legitimate to hurt my father.”

  “President Reagan?” Joe asked, eyebrows raised. Then his face cleared. He understood. Eileen, too, realized what Rene was trying to say. “You wanted to kill the missile defense program. Because it was Reagan’s concept, that’s why.”

  “Almost did it,” Rene mumbled. “It was my hobby, really. Just for fun.”

  Eileen saw Joe’s hands clench into fists and he shut his eyes as though he couldn’t look at
the burned, talking thing on the stretcher for one more second.

  “So these jobs were on the side?” she asked calmly, to allow Joe to get hold of himself.

  “Just on the side,” Rene said, closing his eyes. “Just me, just to destroy something of America that I hated. Right?”

  “Right,” Eileen agreed, but now her own hands were balled into fists. She looked outside the truck as Rene babbled on, describing horrors that she couldn’t force herself to listen to or comprehend. But the small digital recorder she had clipped onto her shirt was listening, the recorder that Lucy had pressed upon her as they’d left, an interesting CIA toy that Lucy kept with her in her fanny pack.

  She met Joe’s eyes across the stretcher and they looked at each other as though they were leaning over an open sewer, a bubbling evil thing. And even though Rene was evil he was also terribly sad. He was dying, a boy who’d loved his father and never found his way in the world, a boy who’d lost his way in a terrible wilderness. In a sense, Eileen thought, the manitou had taken him instead of them, a burnt offering to the evil that brooded in this place. She tried to think of something else, anything else, and found herself looking at Joe, Joe who was even now helping Rene take another drink of water.

  “We’ll be there soon,” she mouthed at him when he looked at her, and he nodded.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rapid City Regional Hospital

  Eileen walked down the hallway corridor, seeing the little figure slumped on the bench that served as a waiting area here. She felt tired still, even after a few hours sleep and a hurried breakfast.

  She’d slept on the ride back from Sundance, slept against the window of Doug’s truck with Joe’s exhausted, sleeping weight against her shoulder. Lucy and Ted, with Hank between them, were fast asleep right next to them. Hank never stirred, but even in sleep he didn’t let go of his mother’s hand.

  She’d woken in Hulett, after dark, to discover her parents weeping and hugging and laughing as they learned that the Reed Ranch hadn’t been touched. Rene’s fire, hot and explosive though it had been, had followed a valley three miles to the west of the ranch. The volunteer fire department in Hulett hadn’t been able to stop the course of the fire as it raced towards Devils Tower, but they’d contained the fire within the ridgeline where Rene had burned Sheriff King’s patrol car and the stolen Chrysler. The fire had missed another ranch on the way, a cattle ranch owned by the Schwartz family. The entire family worked through the day to create a fire line, down to the five-year-old grandson of old Charlie Schwartz. The Schwartz family and the people of Hulett were crying and hugging, too; they thought the Reeds and their clients had perished in the fire since they hadn’t been found at their ranch.

  She didn’t remember the journey to the ranch. One moment she was watching her parents’ joy through the dirty windows of Doug’s horse truck, struggling to comprehend the excitement, and the next she was jolted awake in pitch darkness.

  “Everyone in,” Paul said. “Right to bed, and we’ll go to Rapid City in the morning.” They were at the Reed Ranch, and it was exactly the way they’d left it. Eileen stared through the window at her parents’ home, trying to understand that everything was still there, unburnt, untouched. Doug’s Schwan’s truck sat parked in the yard, just as he’d left it.

  “I have to go to Rapid City—” Eileen started to say, then caught sight of her father’s face. She stopped instantly and nodded. When Paul wore a look like that there was no arguing. She stumbled into the house and fell across her bed, fully dressed, and remembered no more.

  Now the day was bright and she was still tired, but she was showered and dressed and had brushed her teeth before the long ride to Rapid City. The figure on the hospital bench straightened as she approached.

  “Hello,” Beryl Penrose said.

  “Hello, Beryl,” Eileen said. She sat down next to Beryl and took her hand. “Thank you.”

  Beryl looked exhausted. She also looked serene, as though all decisions had been made. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she’d taken Joe’s Mustang, and they were spotted with blood.

  “He’d crawled back to the highway from the ditch,” Beryl said, allowing Eileen to hold her hand. Her voice was rough and unsteady. “He was kneeling, like he couldn’t go any further, and I knew who he was, of course. Sheriff King. So I could run, or I could try to save him.”

  “And you saved him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Beryl said, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers. “I don’t like the way the nurses look. Are you going to see him?”

  “I would like to see him,” Eileen said. She found that she was gripping Beryl’s hand far too hard. “I’m sorry,” she said, letting go.

  “It’s all right,” Beryl said. “I didn’t save him to try and get leniency, you know. I just—”

  “You couldn’t let him die. I know. I’m so sorry this happened, Beryl.”

  “Me, too,” Beryl said. “Are you going to arrest me now? I think – I think I’m ready.”

  “Not now,” Eileen said. “Let’s wait a while.”

  A nurse came out of the room and nodded at Eileen. She was dressed in bright purple scrubs. Her scrub jacket was patterned with purple and brown teddy bears. Her face, above the cheerful garb, looked fixed and sad.

  “He can see you now,” she said. “You have five minutes, no more.”

  “Thank you,” Eileen said, rising to her feet. “How is he?”

  “Are you a relative?” the nurse asked crisply.

  “A good friend,” Eileen said. “But I’m a fellow cop. Could you tell me?” The nurse shrugged, nodded. They walked a few steps down the hall, away from Beryl.

  “He was shot in the stomach,” the nurse said. “Perforated his intestines and he lost part of his liver. The surgeons fixed the injury, but he’d eaten a full meal before he was shot.”

  “A full meal,” Eileen said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. She knew what meal it was, too. The meal she’d served him in the Tower Pub and Grill, meat loaf and gravy with French fries.

  “So the infection is in his blood stream now, and that’s called sepsis. His liver is damaged and having a difficult time dealing with the infection. We’ve got every big gun antibiotic we have, but he’s not responding as well as he should. Be positive, be cheerful. He needs good thoughts right now. He might turn around, still. I’ve seen some that do.”

  “Okay,” Eileen said, and found to her surprise that she was speaking in a whisper. The nurse gestured her inside the I.C.U. and she walked in feeling as though she were going before a judge who would find her guilty, guilty.

  But it was only Richard King after all, a very pale Richard King who was swathed in bandages from his chest down, with horrid looking drains and tubes seemingly everywhere. King turned to look at her, his head moving slowly on the fresh white pillow.

  The whites of his eyes were yellow, bright chrome yellow. Eileen tried not to gasp. She’d never seen someone’s eyes look like that. Liver damage, the nurse had said. Other than the yellow eyes, he didn’t look so bad. The yellow eyes fixed on her and his lips drew back from his teeth. It might have been a smile, or a snarl.

  Eileen dropped into the seat by his bed and took his hand in hers. She bent her head over his hand and tears burst out of her eyes and flooded down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, choking. “I’m so sorry, Rick.”

  “Tears,” he whispered. She looked up and he was looking with amazement at his hand, which was wet. He looked at her face with great effort and she looked back, unflinching, though she desperately wanted to hide her face.

  “I should have made you come with us—” she started, and he moved his head back and forth on the pillow, one tiny inch one way and one tiny inch the other way. She stopped.

  “Never saw you cry before,” he said, his whisper even fainter. “Ever.”

  “Just learning how,” Eileen said, and wiped her chin. More tears followed, makin
g her feel sticky and hot and horrible. “Can’t seem to stop, now.”

  “Loved you,” he said, though there was no sound.

  “I should have kissed you,” Eileen said, and she meant it with all her heart. “I was so young, and I was still hurt over Owen even though I knew he wasn’t for me. I hit you. I should have kissed you,” she finished miserably. His hand moved under hers and she gripped it, and the tears dripped from her chin and wet their hands.

  “Loved me?” he mouthed, his strange yellow eyes slipping closed.

  “Yes, I could have loved you, Richard, I could have,” Eileen said, and she was lying but she felt as though her heart were breaking. “Don’t go, please. Don’t go from us. You’re everything you didn’t know you were, Richard King. You are the king.”

  “Time to go, Miss Reed,” the nurse said at her elbow, and Eileen started. She let go of Richard’s hand and wiped hastily at her face. “He needs to rest, now.”

  “Hang on, Rick,” Eileen said as she got to her feet. She patted his hand gently and let the nurse lead her from the room. She looked back and saw his sleeping face, smoothed free of anxiety and pain. She might have imagined the slight smile.

  When the doctor came into the first floor waiting area three hours later Eileen was calm. She’d washed her face with icy cold water, twice, scrubbing at her face as though the sticky tears would never come off. Joe sat by her side. Everyone was there. Doug and his pretty wife, Howie and the hunters, Lucy and Hank and Ted, Beryl and Jorie sitting side-by-side as though nothing had changed from a week ago. Tracy and Paul Reed sat with the mayor of Hulett and with the Olsens, who had shut down their Tower Pub and Grill and driven to Rapid City. The waiting area was overflowing with Schwartz’s and Hammond’s and the families that Sheriff Richard King had served. Among them was Owen Sutter, her boyfriend from high school, who’d hugged Eileen and looked, as she felt, bewildered with loss. His wife, Molly, was with him, and three tall boys who looked exactly like Owen.