Bean’s breath was full of the dry sting of the desert, of dirt and heat, of early night. “We’re a couple hours out. Watch your ass. Don’t get killed before I get there.”
Digger laughed but it was strained and it put ice water into Bean’s balls. “Do what I can, Judge. Don’t get killed before you get here.”
“Do what I can.”
25
The World was in his car’s rearview mirror.
In the breath and heartbeat of whoever was following him. In the man’s gaze and how he might walk, in the way he pulled the trigger remorselessly. In the way he cut down anyone Bean spoke to.
“A fucking scythe is what he is.”
“Who?” Faith asked.
“Somebody’s following us.” He banged his hand against the wheel. “I should’a never stopped. Damnit.”
He glanced again in the mirror. The Entire. Fucking. World.
Bean shook his head. No. First of all, it wasn’t the entire world. Second, even if it was, it was a damned good bet the entire world had already passed him by. What does the World look like? Is it driving a car or truck? Blue or white? Chevy or Ford? Or some fucking environmental, electric-hybrid bullshit car?
He bit his lip to cut off the laugh. No way a killer was driving a hybrid.
The problem was that the World had become an unscratchable itch. The more Bean tried not to look in his rear view mirror or stare at passing cars, the more he had to. The more he ignored the itch, the worse it got.
It’s like your itch for the needle, Jeremiah.
Exactly like my itch for the needle.
So Bean tried to sate that itch by shoving his nose deep into the desert’s browns and burned tans, its sandstones and olive greens; each color passed in a rhythm broken only by dirty white rock and the yellow road stripes. But every one of those yellow stripes, dirty and broken as they were, refocused Bean on the road, which brought back the itch and forced him to look in the mirror again.
To see what? Random cars, trucks behind him only by chance and accident? Maybe that driver had a mustache, maybe he didn’t. Maybe that other man eyed Bean and Faith intently as he drove by, maybe he didn’t.
“Faith...is that guy...”
“Is he what?”
It sounded so stupid. “Is he watching us?”
Faith looked at Bean, then at the truck passing. “He’s texting. Ain’t paying us no mind.”
Bean glanced in the mirror. “What about him?”
Faith looked, then eyed Bean. “Him who?”
“Behind us, damnit. Is that a car...an SUV? I can’t see it very well.”
“’Cause it doesn’t exist.” Faith glared at him. “Dude, you’re freaking me out. There ain’t nobody behind us.”
Grinding his teeth, he looked again. The road was empty. So now I imagine killers everywhere. That was hardly a surprise. That was how the madness had taken his grandmother and his father. It had put non-existent pictures in front of their eyes. It had tortured his father with things imagined, people long dead or never born, filled his ears with words never uttered and even unwritten songs. Eventually, convinced his own blood poisoned him by letting the madness swim to every part of his body, the man had taken a hunting knife to his own throat.
“Got to bleed it out,” he’d said when Bean had stumbled into the shed. “It’s the blood that kills. Exit the blood and save the soul.”
Just like Gramma knew before she killed herself.
His father had become a cutter and twenty-four-year-old Bean hadn’t said a word. His father’s death was inevitable and both silently counted the days; as Bean’s father had quietly counted down the days with his own grandfather. Bean’s grandfather hadn’t made any grand pronouncements. He had simply blown the top of his head off with a shotgun.
And thus had Bean always counted down his own days.
“How long?” Faith asked.
“Maybe thirty minutes. And just so you know, my guy’s already working to get you home.”
“I mean...how long as she been gone. Mariana.”
His knuckles bled white on the steering wheel. “Twenty-one years.”
“Long time.”
“Yeah. Long and slow.”
“My Grandmother used to say time sped up as she got older.”
“Not for me.”
“Not for me, either, at least since I’ve been away from my family.” Her voice hitched and she wiped her face, almost angrily. “Slower and slower until I get back home.”
He understood. Because right now Bean was as homeless as she was. Emotionally. Barefield was home, but not since he’d fled south on Route 349. Langtry West? Sure, his house was there, but it wasn’t home no matter how many years he put in.
The truth was that nowhere was home.
Not since Mariana died.
Back when he’d been pushing the plunger, mixing his lunatic blood with heroin, he was as home as he was ever going to get. When he’d handed sweaty dollars to dealers in Barefield’s back alleys and shooting galleries, he understood what he was doing. There was no bullshit fed by a guilty heart about how heroin was the only way he could deal with the shit his life had become. He was a fucking lawyer, for God’s sake. He was a University of Texas Law School graduate, editor of the Texas Law Review. He was not a fucking idiot, he was not a two-bit junkie breaking into people’s homes and cars or rolling them on the street for whatever change they carried in their pocket.
He was a judge.
And he was a user.
He understood that.
And he didn’t give a shit.
Using eased the ugly memories and let him revel in what home had once been. It erased the nastiness that stood between him and home. It hid investigations and campaign cash, shadowed needles and nuns, forgot disputes between idiots.
Another glance at the mirror.
And he almost shit a brick.
A car. The World was back, banging at his door along this lonely stretch of State Route 349. Black and shiny, a politician’s car. Moving fast, kicking up dust. Bearing down on them.
Bean floored the gas and his car took a deep breath before jumping forward.
“What are you doing?” Faith’s voice shot up a notch or three.
“Company.”
She looked and her silence told him it wasn’t imaginary. Not this time.
It was a couple miles back, though it darted in and out of view every time they went around a bend. Every time, Bean hoped the thing might disappear for good.
It never did.
Okay, then, Bean thought. So here we go. Mr. Mustache is here. He knows this car is me, has a game plan all ready to go.
And I got a handful of dick.
“You obviously found the bullets in the glovebox.” He gave her the .380. “There are three mags total. Make damn sure they’re loaded. And one in the pipe. Otherwise...we’re fucked.”
She didn’t hesitate, her fingers veteran at loading. “Fucked? This guy another friend of yours?” Bullets stacked, pressed into the magazine, slide racked and mag popped out to refill that one missing bullet. She’d been down this road before.
The car eased its way up behind Bean. He had trouble seeing the driver because of the late afternoon sun banging off the windshield. More juice and Bean put a little space between them and the car behind.
“Damnit, Judge, who is this guy?”
“He’s just a little problem.”
“Your life is full of little problems, ain’t it?”
“You have no idea.”
“Starting to.”
Bean put the car in the left lane and slowed a little. “When he passes us...kill him.”
Faith’s eyes bugged. “What?”
“Put a bullet in his brain.”
“Are you insane?”
Bean laughed. He hated the hysterical taste of that laughter, metallic and bitter, angry.
“I ain’t killing that guy. Why you want me to do that?”
“Because he was in my
dream. He’s the man with the mustache, the one who killed everybody.” He raised a finger for each name he ticked off. “Echo...Tommy-Blue...Andy.”
Her face went white. “What? We were just there. How’s he dead?”
“Because this guy is killing everyone and he’ll kill us, too.” His grip tightened on the wheel. Somewhere, deep in his guts, a white hot blade cut at him. Pain rocketed up through his entire body, exploded in his head. “Just fucking shoot him, okay?”
“’Cause you saw him in your dreams?”
“Didn’t see him, damnit, Mariana did. She told me about him.”
“Uh...yeah, I’ll pass on that bit of bullshit.”
Bean grabbed the gun from her as the car drew alongside. “Then I’ll fucking do it.” But his hands were sweaty and the gun slipped. It hit the floorboard beneath his feet.
“Damnit.” He tried to drag it closer to him and managed to shove it under the seat. His car meandered back into the right lane. “Shit.”
“Man, watch the road before you crash us dead.”
The killer’s car inched up behind them, moved gently to the left lane to pass them. The gun was somewhere beyond Bean’s fingers, caught on something under the seat.
Go go go...get this guy...NOW.
He stretched further, tried to will the gun to come to him. The front end of the guy’s car passed Bean, then the middle...door to door...and still the gun toyed with Bean.
“Damnit. Get the gun.” He barked at her. She startled and shrank back. “He’s gonna kill us.”
“No, he ain’t. He’s just a guy.”
“He’s killing everyone.”
“Judge, he ain’t got nothing to do with—”
Bean howled and jerked his wheel left. Their car shot into the next lane, smacked the killer’s black ride, front end to back end. The man jumped, yanked his wheel left to get away, and laid on the horn. The sound peeled back the afternoon air.
“Then I’ll just run your ass over.” Bean hammered the gas. His car shot forward, pushed the guy’s car around until it was flying down the road nearly broadside.
“Judge, stop it.”
Bean kept pushing the man’s car, spinning it around until the killer was facing the opposite direction on 349. “Now you’re fucking leaving Langtry, right? Not coming, but going.”
Bean’s car shot out on the far side of the road, the back end spun into and violently out of the ditch. Bean whipped the wheel and headed his car back toward the killer’s. He’d slam into him, hopefully send his ass through the front windshield and kill him dead as those damned goats.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Faith grabbed the dash. “You’re going to kill us.”
But he wasn’t, couldn’t she see that? Couldn’t she understand he was saving them? Dead didn’t have to be a bullet.
Bean floored the accelerator. The tires came out of the shoulder sand, caught, and the car shot straight for the black car. The man—the killer—stared at Bean, his mouth open and screaming and Bean so wanted to hear it.
Before metal bit metal, the killer yanked his wheel and his car flew onto and through the shoulder to the desert beyond. The car bounced over mesquite and cactus, missed one scraggy pile of rocks, and then hit another head first.
The collision snapped the car sideways, the back end up a good three feet off the ground. As it lurched sideways, the force of the collision began to twist the car over.
“Shit, he’s rollin’,” Faith said.
“Good riddance,” Bean said, his skin hot, his heart a twenty-five-pound sledgehammer breaking his ribs. “Fuck you, bastard. You won’t kill me. I’ll kill me. You understand that, you piece of shit?”
He laughed as the man’s car continued to roll, almost in slow motion, as though God wanted Bean to see it clearly, to see every dimple of metal, every tear of rubber and snap of plastic. It crashed hard to the ground, crumpling the driver’s side. Onto the top, then over onto the passenger side and onto its tires. Dust hung like a suffocating cloud, obscuring the mess.
A laugh clawed out of his throat, razored nails digging into him. “Fuck you, motherfucker. I got you this time, didn’t I?”
Bean jerked the car around until he faced Langtry and then hammered the gas. He kept his eyes on the road, there was nothing in his rearview mirror anymore; the World was dead.
Faith looked at him as the yellow stripes started escorting them once again. “He never got out. I didn’t see him get out.”
“I don’t care. He was trying to kill us...me.”
26
Twenty-two miles down the line, she took a breath, opened her mouth, hesitated, then snapped it shut. Her teeth clicked audibly.
“What?” Bean said.
She hesitated. “You guys had a daughter?”
The air in the car was heavy and expectant, and reminded him of a pregnant Mariana.
“Angela. A beautiful, healthy little girl. Pudgy.” He chuckled. “A giant mess of red hair. Like her head was on fire, but it went black pretty quick. Her mother had black hair. Black hair and brown eyes. Dark skin. She was a Mex.”
Faith’s eyes cut sharply to Bean. “Racist much?”
“What?”
“‘A Mex?’”
Bean laughed, heard Mariana laughing with him. “Racist is greaser. Or beaner. Or ’back. No, Mariana was actually from Mexico. A Mexican national. Naturalized, married, and pregnant.”
Red crept across Faith’s face. “Whatever.”
“They were both beautiful. Like mother like daughter, I guess.”
“How’d your wife die?”
Bean said nothing for nearly a mile, sorting the answer out in his head. There were so many reasons he wasn’t sure which one to give voice.
“Bled to death.” He put as much finality in his voice as he could.
“You still love her?”
“Fuck yeah, I do.”
Faith shook her head. “Ain’t what I meant. You ever rehitch?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because madness is my business and I didn’t want to burden any new family—or new child—with the knowledge they’d ultimately lose their minds. Because I fucked up my first attempt at family and even if I could have gotten over Mariana, I was terrified to ever try again. But mostly? Because I am the most selfish person I’ve ever known and there’s no fucking way I could be a good husband or father.
“Family is everything,” she said. “Especially when it’s gone.”
“Mariana would have liked you. She was a woman of faith, too.”
Faith eyed him.
“What?” he said.
“You’re not.”
“A woman of faith? No.”
“Funny. Can kill people and has a sense of humor. A winning combination.” She stuck her tongue out at him and in a blast of vertigo and nostalgia trimmed with bitterness, Bean saw Mariana. Baring her tongue was her prime choice for putting him in his place.
But if she did it when he was close enough, Bean would grab Mariana suddenly and suck her tongue deep into his own mouth, caressing it with his own tongue and lips. It never failed to make her eyelids flutter and her breath to catch. More than once, doing that would become prelude to a serious couple of hours together, deeply inside each other and each other’s psyche, turning the other’s soul inside out and molding their own body and soul into it.
Why do you think I let you do that to me, Jeremiah?
I always knew, baby, I always knew.
You did not but I’ll let you have that one.
Her laugh trailed off in the gathering dusk.
“I am not a man of faith,” he said. “I don’t believe in faith or belief. I didn’t lose those things in some melodramatic way...at the precipice of my own humanity or anything like that. I think...” He paused, having so rarely put it into words that he wasn’t sure which words actually fit the subject. “I think I just never had it.”
Faith nodded and stared out the far side of the car. Behind her
, the desert, rocks and mesquite, the occasional silver road sign posts, blurred like an amateur’s photo. “Maybe someday you’ll find it.”
Bean chuckled. “Mariana certainly hopes so. She doesn’t think it’s too late.”
“She’s right. It’s never too late. How old is your daughter?”
Bean said nothing for many miles, unable to shake an imagined image of Angela. Like a computer program that aged her, replaced baby fat with a teenager’s tautness, then replaced that with the bright call of a woman entering the world. What then? The glow of a graduate and then valued employee? Then of a wife and mother?
“Twenty-one,” he said.
Faith’s head cocked, chewing on the information. “Mariana bled to death?”
Bean chewed his lip. “Yes.”
“Twenty-one years ago?”
“Yes.”
Faith fell silent. The truth floated around them, as thick and stifling as amniotic fluid. “During childbirth.”
“Yes.”
Faith reached out, almost touched his arm. “Sorry. I shoudn’t’a said dick.” She shook her head. “But at least you still have family.”
He bit his tongue and warm blood flooded his mouth. He swallowed it, just as he always had when the needle had torn his skin too much and blood trickled down his arm and he sucked it clean. “No.”
“What?”
“I have no daughter.”
Faith shook her head. “I don’t—”
“She’s dead.”
Silence, as terrible as the night Mariana died, as thick as the blood that had poured out of her and covered the OB/GYN floor, as piercing as he’d been told Angela’s very first cry had been, fell over them. Faith stared at him, then looked at the front windshield. Then back at him, then out the side window, then back at him, unable to see him for too long.
Same here, he thought. Hated seeing himself in the mirror. Hated looking at the man who’d killed his family.
“I ain’t—” She swallowed loudly. “I ain’t got the words.”
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 15