High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  It was the booze talking, or the lack of it. The bottle of Teacher’s had gone far, but not far enough. And with your dead nephew in the backseat, threatening to get up and say a few words, maybe no amount of liquor would. There could never be enough.

  The first of the rain grazed the car, like spots of blood. He had the AC blasting, hoping to blow away the stink around him. He was shaking, but it didn’t have anything to do with the temperature.

  He squinted through the windshield, trying to make sense of the road, trying to stay between the lines. It had been a drought for months and now the whole world was slowly being covered in water. The only thing still and forever parched was his throat, dry as a bone, desperate for a drink. That’s what no one understood, not Little B or Jesse or even JW. That goddamn animal thirst—hot like rabies—that only plagued a real drinker. T-Bob, almost ten years older than JW, had been a teetotaler into his twenties since he’d been the one mostly responsible for his younger brother, what with their daddy’s comings and goings and his own drunken demons. But once he had his taste, a little Jim Beam single barrel or some Maker’s, he’d followed Daddy right down to the bottom of the bottle. It was the only thing they’d ever shared, their one family bond. JW had been Daddy’s favorite from the get-go, and that had only been truer after T-Bob took up drinking—all of his mistakes magnified, all of his problems multiplied.

  He’d ended up exactly like Daddy, and Mason William Earl had somehow hated him for it, blaming him for all of the Earl family ills.

  When JW got sent up the first time, his daddy had sat in his trailer and listened to KTEX out of Beaumont, singing along with the Johnny Rodriguez songs he loved, drinking his tears away one glass after another. He wouldn’t look at T-Bob, wouldn’t hardly say his name, as if they both knew the wrong son had been locked up and Mason William was locked up right along with him, and as his brain went bad and he got more difficult to deal with, sometimes he’d call out for the son who wasn’t there and lash out with his weakened fists at the one who was. Mason was dead and gone before JW was released, so it had been T-Bob who’d put him in the ground, and his brother had never once asked him about it or even where their daddy was buried.

  That was all JW, though, single-minded. Like with this damn car. He’d moved heaven and earth to get it, and it was going to cost him at least one son, maybe the other. Not that JW would see it that way or even care. A part of T-Bob knew that none of this was about him or those boys and never had been. There was nothing in this damn car for any of them, not even Sunny. Little B was dead for a handful of that nothing, but it didn’t change the fact that it was T-Bob’s fault; that it would be laid at his feet.

  He could almost feel Daddy’s eyes pressing on him from the backseat, judging him; his corpse or ghost or whatever it was sitting back there in Little B’s blood and holding the boy’s dead hand, nodding in agreement.

  Damn right it’s your fault . . . always is . . . always was . . .

  That was almost enough to make T-Bob turn the car around and drive right out of Texas altogether, maybe on to California or Nevada. First there was that fuckup at the Wikiup with Jesse, and then the run-ins with the law in Murfee, and now this thing with Little B. He’d been there for all of it, so that every bad thing that had happened since they’d come to Killing was marked up with his fingerprints. He needed a drink something fierce to make his dead daddy in the backseat stop looking at him that way, and to make his dead nephew stop whispering shit he didn’t want to hear. Soon enough, he was also going to have to face a brother who’d probably just as well kill him as look at him, and who, in the right moment, T-Bob could admit to himself that he pretty well fucking hated, too.

  He did hate JW, but could no more abandon him than he could their daddy, who’d called him all those names and one time, in a real mad fit—his brain burning out its last fuse—had pointed that old Ruger at his face and asked him where his real boy was.

  His real boy.

  But no matter what, he couldn’t leave Sunny behind, either; and really, how far could he get with that body in the backseat and carrying all those other dead around with him?

  JW had been very clear about where he’d wanted T-Bob to stash the car. He’d drawn it on a little scrap of paper and made him memorize it and then tore it up. He wasn’t supposed to drive it right up to the ranch house, because Earl didn’t want Flowers or Clutts seeing it. With the fresh rain and mud, T-Bob wasn’t sure that was a good idea—it’s not like this little Jap car was good for off-roading—but he wasn’t going to fuck up again.

  JW always told him not to think, just do what he was told, so come hell or high water, that was exactly what he was going to do—he’d get this goddamn car to his brother.

  He laughed at that . . . hell or high water . . . as the rain started even harder and washed the night clean away in front of the car and his dead nephew watched him.

  He pressed some buttons, trying to get the windshield wipers working and the radio going, maybe even a little Johnny Rodriguez singing “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” or “Pass Me By”—anything to stop the murmurings from the backseat—when the AC cut out, followed by a weird grating noise. He yelled, thinking at first it was Little B crawling over the backseat to sit up front with him, but realized it was just something shifting beneath the dashboard, a little panel popping open. He’d never have found it even if he had been looking for it, and couldn’t imagine what he’d done to get it going. The wipers were now locked in place, though, useless and not moving, and though the AC stuttered and kicked back on, it was only blowing hot air this time.

  When it did, a piece of paper also spun out from under the dash into T-Bob’s lap.

  He grabbed it, nearly sliding off the road, and when he crumpled it up, realized it wasn’t quite paper at all. He held it up close, held it up high, so his nephew and Daddy in the back could get a good long look, too.

  It was a hundred-dollar bill.

  57

  Murfee burned.

  And the first house Kasper and Little B burned belonged to Amé Reynosa.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE MURFEE FIRE DEPARTMENT had recently purchased a used Ferrara Intruder 2 custom pumper. It was their Engine 1, their primary fire truck, with a seven-hundred-fifty-gallon main water tank. Counting the fire chief, Ross Everly, and the first and second captains—his brothers, Ron and Rick—and every current, reserve, and probationary firefighter (including Ross’s twenty-year-old daughter, Becky, who was sometimes dating Tommy Milford), the entire department counted eight people, many of whom were Everlys or closely related, and all of whom handled double duties as paramedics, EMTs, and even the department’s treasurer. Their last callout had been two weeks earlier to a one-vehicle rollover, and the week before that, they’d dealt with brushfire ignited by a blown-out truck tire on Highway 90. That had stretched for about seventy-five to a hundred yards along the road, setting three fence posts ablaze as well, and took them close to two hours and over seventeen hundred gallons of water to contain.

  The fires in Beantown were going to be a hell of a lot worse.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT WOULD LATER BE DEBATED just how bad the final damage would have been if it hadn’t been for the storm. When it hit, those eight firefighters had been battling for at least thirty minutes across an area of roughly three acres, encompassing about two blocks of small, close-set houses. Everything was dry and brittle from the drought and many of the houses weren’t up to any sort of code and they were all filled with stuff that was ready and eager to burn.

  The flames had free range to bounce from yard to yard, roof to roof, and they did.

  Still, those eight fought them every step of the way, with Second Captain Rick Everly sustaining second-degree burns on both arms when a porch roof partially collapsed, as the vinyl siding of the home he’d been searching melted around him.
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  The fires were so hot that even the homes not burning suffered radiant heat exposure: baby pools boiled, plastic yard statues ran like wax candles, and the rubber tires of old bicycles and baby strollers blistered and popped.

  A family chicken ran around in circles in the street, flaming, leaving ashy feathers and embers in its wake.

  The Everlys drained Engine 1 almost immediately, went to the backup tanks, depleted every bit of Class A foam, and brought out their reserve pumper. They tried to use the one hydrant in the area, but hydrants had been an issue around Murfee for a while and a constant source of complaint for Chief Everly. They were painted in random colors, from traditional red to yellow to green, making color-coding them nearly impossible. Some didn’t work at all, others didn’t have enough water pressure, and a few weren’t even hooked to a water line. This was true for the nearest hydrant to the Beantown fire, and when the chief realized they were going to run out of water, and fast, he said a small prayer, and started calling his counterparts in Artesia and Nathan, even though he knew the fire would be well out of control before they could arrive.

  But then the rain came.

  The storm that had swept up from the Chisos and followed Sheriff Cherry into Murfee slammed into town.

  It was the first rain in over sixteen weeks—a brutal, heavy downpour—and in less than an hour, it dropped nearly twenty-nine thousand gallons of water on those three burning acres.

  58

  He was aware they were all watching him.

  Watching and waiting to see what he would do next, as if he hadn’t done anything at all.

  But he’d already called Nichols, staying calm at first with his hand choking the phone, then gripping tighter with each measured word as he recounted the chaos John Wesley Earl had brought down on his town, his home, before finally demanding Nichols get his ass down to Murfee and help him unfuck this situation. Nichols had told him he was already on the way, and ordered Chris and his people to stand down; that Nichols and the FBI would handle the situation from here on out.

  Chris had told him he already had a front-row seat to how Nichols handled things, and ended the call by throwing the phone across the room.

  And there were also the other calls he’d made, but from a different phone. He’d alerted Bethel Turner and the Rangers and all the green and blue shirts in the area, making sure a Nissan Maxima or any of the other cars or motorcycles the Earls might have couldn’t pass through any of the checkpoints or points of entry, and he’d reached out to the sheriffs in Midland and Pecos and Terrell, and had Till Greer fax out the names and photos of everyone from Killing whom Danny had been able to identify for them. With each phone call, each fax, each e-mail, a noose was being drawn tighter around the Big Bend, fitted for Earl like the one tattooed around his neck, and anyone with him.

  But still, Danny Ford and Amé remained watching him through the open door of his office, not quite accusing, but expecting something . . . more. They’d been waiting there since they all came in from the impound lot, after they told him everything that had transpired at the Lights. Dale Holt was dealing with their prisoner and Till was dealing with the bodies.

  The bodies.

  He sat back, closed his eyes, but still he could see them—Harp and Buck. Not just as they were now, those broken things they’d pulled from the Lights and the lot, but as they had been before.

  Harp listening to his jazz and telling his stories on a bar stool at Earlys. Laughing at something Chris had said and complaining about something Chris had done.

  Buck talking about hunting with his brother and his big hands trying to relay the size of an even bigger antler rack they’d taken. The way Buck was always the first one in the department, sitting at his desk and typing his reports one finger at a time, and reading the words out loud.

  Chris knew he’d be seeing both men like this—before and after—for a long time, long past the moment when they were put into the ground. Like Major Dyer and even Garrison had said, they were his men, and always would be.

  They’d passed on his watch.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN HE OPENED HIS EYES AGAIN, Amé and Danny were sitting in his office. Danny’s wound had been tended by Becky Everly, but he needed to be over at Hancock Hill, getting real attention. This was the first time Chris had put real eyes on Danny, and he was taller than he’d appeared in his pictures, his head shaved close but just starting to grow out. He was wearing a spare deputy’s shirt over the bandages, since his original T-shirt had been scissored off by Becky, but it didn’t hide the swirl of tattoos on his chest and up his arms. Eagles, guns, skulls, superheroes . . . comic book stuff. Becky had bagged up the cut strips of the T-shirt, the blood turning the clear plastic red, while Danny had talked about how Ben Harper had jumped in front of the bullet Jesse Earl meant for him.

  “Where do you need me?” Amé asked.

  Chris wasn’t sure. “Here, I guess, for now. We’re going to have folks showing up later tonight, more in the morning, so we’re not going to run around chasing the Earls in the dark. With the storm and the BOLOs, they don’t have a lot of options, at least for a while. They’re trapped down there.” He couldn’t even tell her to go home, because her house was gone, one of eight that had burned down. The gunshots Till Greer had dodged while responding with the fire department had been all of her spare ammunition and guns popping off in the heat. When Ross Everly told her that the house and everything in it had burned to the ground, she’d started laughing. It was something he’d ask her about later, but not now.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Danny suggested, from where he was sitting behind Amé. He was trying hard to look at the old map hanging on the wall behind Chris’s desk.

  “Not sure about what?”

  “That they’re trapped in Killing, at least not Earl. I think I know what he’s going to do. He’s been planning this awhile, and if we wait, he’ll be gone.”

  Chris pointed at him. “There is no we, got that? You’re a civilian, nothing more, and you need to be in a hospital.”

  “I understand the way you feel, Sheriff, I do. But—”

  “But what?” Chris cut him off, reaching for anger he didn’t really feel. He’d lost his anger after he’d thrown his desk phone across the room, with Nichols still talking. Now he was only numb, empty. “Look around you, look at what’s happened here tonight. This has gone so far beyond you and your father and whatever the hell it was you thought you were doing.”

  Danny said, “I know, I know. But I watched a good man take a bullet for me tonight. He barely knew me and he died trying to help me, and the one who set that in motion is still out there hurting people. People you know, people you care about, your town. We can sit here or I can help you do something about that. I need to.”

  Chris yelled past Amé, who stayed silent. “You need to? Now? You’re a goddamn visitor here, and an unwelcome one at that. My people, my town? You had your chance to play judge, jury, and executioner, and right now I’m not sure if Earl set all this in motion or you did. You’re not a cop anymore, Danny, no matter what Harp and Dyer wanted me to believe. Right here, right now, this is a police matter.”

  Danny looked out past the door, to where the bodies of Chris’s friends had been wheeled away. “So what are you going to do, arrest me?”

  Chris stood, some of that anger he thought he’d lost coming back. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to have Deputy Holt come in here and escort you under guard to the medical center at Hancock Hill, where you’re going to stay until the FBI shows up. Then they can deal with you. Don’t you dare tell me my duty—”

  “Sheriff, please,” Amé said, but Chris turned on her, too.

  “No, not you, either. You and Harp were hiding information from me. You knew about the car and Avalos and then you went to meet Danny without telling me. I half expected that sor
t of bullshit from Harp, I should have predicted it. But not from you, Amé.”

  “I thought Ben had called you. And the rest of it—”

  “Is this where you say you couldn’t trust me, after everything we’ve been through?”

  “No.” Amé shook her head. “Not that, I thought I was protecting you.”

  “From what, my job?”

  “From me, from the things I’ve done and what Avalos knew about me and mi familia. But it doesn’t matter, not now. Ben and Buck are dead and I can’t let the men who did that get away, and I don’t think you can, either.”

  “Can’t? You are both out of your minds.” But Chris wouldn’t look at her.

  Amé stood, stepped closer. “No, Sheriff, but if Danny’s right about the things he’s been telling us, we’re almost out of time. Just listen to him.”

  Just then, Dale stuck his head in the door. “Sheriff, it’s Mel. She came over from Earlys.”

  Chris nodded. “Send her in. I need to talk to her. And Dale?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Chris gestured at Amé and Danny. “Take these two out there and watch them. They’re not to leave or make a call or do anything, is that clear?”

  Dale swallowed hard and wouldn’t meet Amé’s glare. “Even America, sir?”

  “Yes, especially her.”

  * * *

  Mel already knew about Ben and Buck, so when she came in she grabbed Chris right off, held him tight, as much for her sake as his. She also didn’t want him to see how much she’d been crying.