A dachshund barks from the back seat.
Ian nods toward it. ‘What’d he do?’
‘Tried to rob Sally’s Gun amp; Rifle.’
‘Then he deserved to get caught. Nobody with half a brain fucks with Sally.’
‘Not if they want to keep their nuts.’
‘How much you make so far?’
‘Seventy.’
‘How many dogs still loose?’
‘Three or four, I think.’
‘I hope you’re reporting all this to the IRS.’
‘It’s not income. It’s beer money.’
‘You haven’t bought a drink in five years.’
‘Four. And that’s just for myself. I still buy for my friends. If you ever stopped into Roberta’s you’d know that.’
‘I don’t get drunk anymore.’
‘You buy a six pack every day from Bill’s.’
‘Six doesn’t get me drunk.’
‘So have six at Roberta’s.’
‘With that markup?’
‘I said I’d buy.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You hear about Genevieve?’
‘What about her?’
‘She finally left.’
‘Yeah?’ Ian says. ‘Good for her.’
‘Weird thing, though. When Andy showed up at Roberta’s last night, left side of his face was cut and bruised. Refused to talk about it.’
‘That is weird,’ Ian says.
‘It reminded me of what you said about maybe someone should do more than talk to him.’
‘I don’t remember saying that.’
‘Are you-’ Diego licks his lips-‘are you all right, Ian?’
Ian looks at his watch. ‘I better get to work,’ he says. ‘Don’t wanna be late.’
‘Ian-’
He rolls up his window, puts the Mustang into gear, and gets the car moving. He glances in his rearview mirror and sees Diego’s car still stopped in the street, taillights glowing red.
In another seven minutes he pulls into work.
At three o’clock he steps outside for no other reason than he wants a few minutes away from his desk. He reaches into his car and pulls a plug of cigar from the ashtray and lights it with a match, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke from the corner of his mouth. He squints at the horizon. Probably should get a bite to eat. Maybe he’ll see what’s floating around the fridge when he heads back in. Pretty good chance he left a carton of General Tso’s chicken in there on Monday, and if no one else got to it-a possibility with these barbarians-he’ll have that.
While he’s out here he should make a call. He should make two calls, one leading directly to the other. Personal calls it would be better not to make from the office. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, then scrolls through his contacts till he finds the one he’s looking for.
It rings three times, then: ‘Hello?’
It’s a strange thing: Ian does not miss Lisa, but hearing her voice makes him miss the past, a past in which his future, now past itself, was still ahead of him and filled with possibility. He met her when he was twenty-two.
He’d already been married-and divorced-once, to a girl named Mitsuko he met on a train in Paris. They made eyes at each other while they shot through the darkness underground, and when the train stopped at rue du Sentier they both got off. Eventually it became obvious they were headed to the same place-Chartier-for dinner. They got a table on the second floor near the stairs and every time a waiter walked by he would have to tuck in his elbow to avoid getting bumped (and it happened often as against the wall opposite was the silverware cart). Ian would have been mad except every time it happened she laughed and said, ‘Your face.’ He didn’t know what was so funny about his face, but her laugh was adorable. Two weeks later Ian’s trip was over and, not wanting to separate from Mitsuko just yet, he proposed marriage. She flew to Los Angeles a week after him and they said their I dos at a quick-wedding spot in Torrance. And two months after that they were divorced. Mitsuko finally got the courage to call her parents in Japan and after twenty minutes of crying she said she was flying back home. Ian was eighteen when that happened, and in truth he was relieved. He wasn’t nearly as ready for marriage as he’d thought.
But four years later, when he met Lisa on the sand in Venice Beach, he thought he was much older and wiser. He was twenty-two: no kid. She was beautiful and surfed better than half the guys in the water and had a smile that was all tomboy confidence. Looking at her beneath the Los Angeles sun he could imagine a future for himself. Before he even knew her name he could. A happy future with five kids and a house on the beach. His mom still owned Dad’s surf shop then (she hadn’t sold it to pay for the several cosmetic surgeries she was convinced would land her a new husband), but he ran it, and it seemed that as long as she had enough money to stay in vodka and cigarettes she was okay and happy to let him run it. He would have his house and his five kids and his father’s surf shop. The old man was five years dead by then, and it didn’t even hurt much to think about anymore. The future was as bright then as it had ever been. Everything seemed lined up in a row as he stood on the sand and watched her come out of the water soaking wet with a board under her arm.
But now the future is past, and in the end he couldn’t see it clearly at all; it turned out so different.
‘Lisa, it’s Ian.’
‘Ian! God. Is it 1985 again? Please tell me it’s not. I’ve gotten rid of all my stonewashed jeans.’
‘No such luck.’
‘I take it from your tone this isn’t a nostalgia call.’
‘Afraid not. I was hoping you could tell me how to get hold of Jeffrey.’
‘Yeah, do you have a pen?’
‘I’ll remember it.’
The phone rings five times. Ian is about to hang up when the sixth ring is cut off and replaced by a ‘Hello?’
Ian licks his lips. His chest feels tight.
‘Hello?’
‘Jeffrey.’
‘Who is this?’
‘Jeffrey, it’s me.’
Now it’s Jeffrey’s turn to go silent. Then, finally, ‘Dad.’
Ian nods. ‘Dad,’ he says.
‘How’d you get my number?’
‘I called your mom.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I have some news.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Maggie.’ Jeffrey says nothing, so Ian continues: ‘She’s alive. I thought you should know.’
Silence from the other end of the phone but for a sound like a desert wind.
‘Jeffrey?’
‘Alive?’
‘We still haven’t got her back, but she’s alive.’
‘Really?’
‘She got to a phone day before yesterday, called for help. We’re working on finding her. But it was her and she’s alive.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I know. Hard to wrap your head around.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Jeffrey. I know you felt like I blamed you, and I know I’ve been a crummy dad. I’m sorry for that. But it wasn’t your fault.’
Jeffrey does not respond.
‘Jeffrey?’
‘I’m here.’
‘I missed your birthday last month.’
‘You’ve missed a few.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’d like to-’
‘Listen, I’m at work. I should go.’
‘You got a job?’
‘Of course.’
Of course is right: his son is the same age Ian was when he met Lisa. He had an apartment and worked at his dad’s surf shop and had already been married and divorced. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised to learn that his son is growing up. Part of him expected Jeffrey to stay frozen in time, waiting for Ian to be ready to act once more as a father. But that just isn’t the way things work. It never was.
‘What do you do?’
‘I work on a reality TV show. One of those stupid d
ating shows. I’m an assistant editor. Mostly I just shuffle footage around on an AVID. But, look, I really don’t have time to talk. I’m glad you called and told me about Maggie.’
‘Okay,’ Ian says. Then: ‘Hey, remember that chess game we were playing?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Queen to b4. I promise to be much quicker about my next move.’
‘There is no next move, Dad. I put that game away years ago.’
Click.
Ian pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it. The call’s duration is on the screen: 3:53. Less than four minutes.
He should have said different things. He shouldn’t have mentioned that goddamn chess game. He should have said different things.
He drops his cigar to the ground and snuffs it out with the heel of a shoe. He pockets his phone and heads back inside, straight to his desk. He’s decided not to have lunch after all.
Maggie walks around to the back of the stairs. She sits on her haunches and looks at the darkness beneath the bottom step. She doesn’t want to reach in there. She is afraid to reach in there. She swallows and sticks her hand into the shadows. But she does not find the hand-made weapon. Her fingers brush cold concrete, nothing more. Her first thought is that Borden must have taken it. He must have taken it and hidden it from her or destroyed it or showed it to Henry who will now punish her with it. He’s going to make sure she is forever trapped in the Nightmare World, stuck here with him and the damp shadows that lay themselves over everything.
But then she remembers that Borden is not real. He is not real. He is made up, and things that are made up cannot hurt you. Not unless you let them.
But maybe Henry took it.
Maybe he knew she was up to something and came down here last night and took it. He could even now have plans to punish her. He could come down here and tie her wrists with that bloody yellow rope and hang her from the punishment hook and drag the sharp edge of that shard of plate across her softest parts, across the flesh of her stomach and throat and-
One two three four five six seven eight.
Calm down. It has to be here.
Nobody came down here last night. She would have woken up. No one came down here last night and no one took her weapon, so it has to be here.
Her fingers brush across the wooden handle. She wraps them around it and pulls it from the shadows. She gets to her feet.
It feels good in her grip. Good and solid and dangerous.
Looking out the window she sees that the sun has already moved to the other side of the house. The shadows have begun to lay themselves out on the ground like picnic blankets. Midday has come and now it is leaving. It has begun its retreat. Before, she had always dreaded the sun passing to the other side of the world. All she knows is what she can see through the basement’s sole window and she has always wanted it lighted. But now she is anticipating the night. The sinking of the sun. The sound of the front door closing with Henry on the other side. His truck’s engine rumbling to life. The sound of its tires crunching on the gravel driveway and that sound fading.
She has not seen Donald’s El Camino pull to a stop in front of his mobile home yet, which means it’s still early, but the time has to be approaching. In another hour, maybe two or three, but surely no more than that. Then she will find out whether Donald will be eating with Beatrice or alone. Usually he eats alone in his mobile home and Beatrice eats alone here, or eats at the card table down here with Maggie, and Maggie is counting on the same tonight. She doesn’t want to have to wait another day to make her escape. She wants out of here.
Now that she has tasted the air outside she cannot stand the claustrophobic prison of the Nightmare World.
She is counting on it: her escape will be tonight.
Donald will drive up to his mobile home and disappear inside. He will do whatever he does in there for several hours before coming over for a plate of food, and by then Maggie will already be gone. Beatrice will have come downstairs with a plate for her and Maggie will have been waiting beneath the stairs. By the time Donald comes over Beatrice will be lying on the concrete floor in the basement in a pool of her own blood and Maggie will be in the arms of her daddy.
She looks outside at the shadows. It’s only mid-afternoon but evening is coming.
And with it, escape.
Gripping the weapon in her hand, Maggie nods to herself.
Soon.
Diego drives north on Main Street. He’s on his way to the library on the corner of Wallace and Overhill. The librarian, Georgia Simpson, is having some trouble with Fred Paulson’s kid. Junior’s apparently passed out drunk in the children’s section and Georgia doesn’t want to go anywhere near him. He’s got puke on his boots and down the front of his shirt. Diego doesn’t blame her for wanting nothing to do with him. He’s dreading having to deal with the little shit himself. He’s so useless his own dad won’t hire him, so Junior simply wanders around getting drunk and causing trouble.
Diego’s just passing the summer-abandoned high school when a dog, one of Pastor Warden’s dachshunds, runs out of the woods to his right and into the street.
‘Shit.’
Diego stomps the brake and the car screeches to a stop, the rear end sweeping left a quarter turn before the whole thing rocks on its springs and stands still. Diego’s heart thumps in his chest and his hands grip the wheel tightly. He swallows and looks to the street in front of him, but the dog is not there. He knows he didn’t hit the thing. He’d have felt that.
He looks around for it-catching it in his periphery.
It’s now in the school’s football field on the west side of the street.
Diego pulls the car to the dirt shoulder of the road, kicking up a cloud of summer dust that hangs in the air a moment before thinning into nonexistence. After a truck rolls by he swings open his door and steps from the car, a greasy paper bag hanging from his fist. In the greasy paper bag, leftover fried chicken he bought from Albertsons yesterday morning. As he jogs into the football field, a sorry thing since last year’s chinch-bug infestation, he pulls a piece of chicken from the bag and calls to the dog.
It’s halfway across the field, but when Diego calls, it turns and looks at him, deciding whether it’s interested, Diego thinks. There is something in its mouth. A bone maybe.
Diego whistles.
‘Come on, boy,’ he says, sitting on his haunches and holding out the piece of chicken.
The dog walks toward him.
The bone or whatever it is in its mouth is large. Too big to belong to a squirrel or a gopher or a rabbit. But every once in a while someone will hit a deer with their car, and it could be a leg bone from one of those. Not a full-grown one, but still.
Three years ago Carney Dodd, now stuck in a wheelchair as a result of a different accident, slammed his pickup truck into a monster buck must have weighed a quarter ton, and Carney, never one to wear a safety belt, was propelled through the windshield. According to his own version of the story he landed on the asphalt twenty feet away, hitting it face first, and he had the skin missing from the bridge of his nose and his forehead to prove it. As soon as he landed, though, again according to him, he got to his feet and stomped to his truck and pulled out his Remington 1100 and finished the fucking thing off with a deer slug to the face. ‘Take that, y’son of a bitch.’
Maybe somebody other than Carney Dodd hit a deer that didn’t die immediately, that made it out into the woods before dropping, and maybe this little floppy-eared dachshund found it and decided to take a piece.
That’s what Diego thinks at first.
But as the dog approaches a seed of dread sprouts in his belly.
The bone is white and meatless. On one end, a knot. A few black strings, maybe tendons, maybe plant matter, hang there like tassels. On the other end, though, Jesus fuck, a small hand. A small human hand. The ends of the first three fingers are eaten away to the bone, and in fact part of the first finger is gone altogether, but black skin or decomposed muscle
, or something, still clings in places to the rest of the hand like a driving glove.
When the dachshund reaches him he grabs it by the scruff of its neck and pulls it to him and pries the jaw open. He doesn’t think; he just knows that he must get this small limb out of this dog’s mouth. After a moment of prying it falls to the grass. It does not look real lying there on the ground. It cannot be real. Real arms are attached to people. This thing just lies there like a discarded beer bottle after a drunken Friday night.
He picks up the dog and gets to his feet and looks down at the arm on the ground.
It cannot be real, but it is.
The dog struggles against him and tries to nip at his face. Diego pulls his head back just in time, and then carries the dog to his cruiser. He puts it into the back with the windows cracked, and then pops the trunk. He finds a pair of gloves and a large plastic bag, puts on the gloves, and walks back into the field.
He feels strange approaching it. A bodiless arm lying on the football field behind Bulls Mouth High School. He picks it up and puts it into the plastic bag. He has to bend the fingers down to get the bag sealed.
When he returns to his car he sets the bag on the passenger’s seat and grabs his radio.
Diego steps into the woods with a roll of yellow tape in his right hand. He feels sick to his stomach. He’s been a cop for six years now and this will be his third body. If he can find it. The Deans own a decent chunk of land and there’s no telling how deep into it the body might be. Of course, if someone killed a child and simply used the woods as a convenient place to dispose of it it’s probably no more than twenty or thirty yards from Main Street, just far enough into the trees that a person could park on the shoulder of the road, carry a corpse and a shovel, and dig a shallow grave without being seen by anyone driving past. People’s cars break down all the time. No one would think twice about someone’s old banger sitting on the shoulder of the road. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it unless it belonged to someone they knew.
The Dispatcher Page 10