This Burning Man (Future Arizona Book 1)

by Kris Holt

  My balls were still throbbing, but slamming Waylon's head on the factory wall had been quite therapeutic. 'I got nothin',' I said.

  'Excellent.' Carter motioned in the back for a corporal to cuff Waylon and take him through to the cells. I'd already turned to go when Carter called after me. 'Wait up. You looking for something new right now?'

  'Oh, soon,' I said. 'But first I gotta go see a man about a gun.'

  Chapter 3 – Preacher Man

  Being back at Twelve was like walking back to childhood, except everything you see has shrunk.

  Actually, check that. The deacons on the door remained as large as ever, offering me God's blessing as I stepped through the gate. A certain bulkiness in their robes hinted at handguns in chest holsters. I checked my mom's gun and my taser in the office at the front and a rector with wispy grey hair showed me through to a back room where I found Preacher Man lighting a censer with shaking hands.

  'A surprise for you, Padre Reyes,' the rector said, a little too loudly, before bowing and retreating.

  'Fifty years I have lived here,' the old man said in a raspy voice. 'Fifty years, and I remember the ceremony like it was yesterday. “For my yoke is easy and my burden light”. Matthew, 11:30. And after all this time, they treat me like a silly, sad old fool. Me, a veteran of five thousand services, able to recite the passages of Leviticus from memory even though I haven't read them since my nineteenth birthday. I tell them, I might not have my sight but I can still hear, and every single man's footfalls sound different to me.'

  I waited patiently, hat in hands. Preacher Man never used ten words when a hundred would do.

  'Will you step forward, son, and receive my blessing?'

  'Surely, Padre, I would like that very much.' I stepped forward and he embraced me. He'd been taller in my younger days, but the weight of the world and advanced age was pressing him down. Stooping, he was now shorter than me.

  He said, 'Every time you leave I wonder if you'll ever return. How long has it been, Phineas?'

  'A little over three months, Padre. And we've been through this before. Mom called me Phoenix after the place. You know that.'

  He nodded, an acknowledgement rather than agreement. 'I always hoped you might take to the name I suggested instead.'

  'Not a hope in h...no. Not a hope.'

  'Phoenix is gone, boy. It sank into the Sands more than a decade ago. The last residents abandoned it and came to Hole Town. Soon it'll be a place forgotten in the minds of all but those who come from hereabouts,' he said.

  'I was born local,' I told him. 'Everywhere I go, I still am.'

  He put an arm around my shoulder, both a comradely gesture and one that enabled him to walk without a stick. 'Whatever they call you, you're a virtuous son of Hole Town. A righter of wrongs, that's what they tell me.'

  'They make it sound better than it is,' I said.

  'It's not just the scripture writers of the ages that had a gift for words,' he said, smiling toothlessly under his rheumy eyes. 'Will you dine with me?'

  We ate thin cornmeal soup from wooden bowls with wooden spoons. Preacher Man hadn't left the compound in years, so we mostly talked about the town. The church was pressing for repairs to the Fallen Cross, but no-one had the cash to pay the bill. He chastised me when I mentioned the bordellos, and urged me to avoid the numerous follies of youth. In so many respects, it was like I'd never left. The company here was never too slow for me. If a man's life is measured by his gusto, Preacher Man was ageless, mashing his way through his soup in next to no time at all.

  'As delighted as I am to have you here, boy, I know what young men are like and they don't just show up uninvited to share a meal with their older counterparts. More's the pity! So how can I help you? Do you come seeking absolution for your sins?'

  'Well,' I said, suddenly twelve years old again, a guilty itch all round my scalp. 'Basically, I'm still looking for my mom.'

  Before I'd even finished the sentence, the old man had his hands up to his head and was groaning.

  'This again,' he said. 'This waste of time! My son, you were a good boy and you grew up to be a good man. But part of being a man is letting go of what you were when you were a boy. Since the moment your mother left you here, you've been aching to return to her, and you know full well that I don't know where she is.'

  'It's been a long time,' I said, trying to stay patient. 'I wanted to know if you remembered anything more. It's not easy, growing up without a family. And while I appreciate all that you did for me, you can never be a parent. That's just how it is.'

  'Plenty of people turn sixteen having never known their parents. In these trying times, we look to one another, and we look to God for guidance.'

  'God's been guiding my hand since the day I left here,' I said, 'and every time He delivers me, it's from evil and temptation. I ain't saying I ain't thankful, but one of these times, I'd like Him to deliver me to somewhere, rather than from. That's all.'

  Preacher Man wiped his mouth with a napkin and swallowed. 'God deliver me from foolish boys.'

  'All I'm asking you to do is think, Padre. Is there anyone else who knew her? Anyone you could put me in touch with? Someone who could help me track her down. I can handle it if she's dead, if doesn't remember me. I can even handle it if she doesn't care. But I have to know, you get me? I have to know.'

  'You must let it be. All things are as they are meant to be.'

  I took his hand, something that I immediately realized I'd never done before. He noticed it too. We both stared down at the table, spoke without looking at one another. 'Padre, please. If you know anything at all, tell me. This really matters to me. As the Lord is my witness, it might be the only thing that does.'

  'Okay, okay.' Preacher Man shook a little, caught his breath. Behind him, the lights on the candles scattered and reformed into flames. 'You've already followed up on all of the leads I've given you before, yes? Well, against my better judgement, I have this. There's one man, a man I haven't mentioned before. A Dominican called Emmanuel. He used to be in the parish before your time, but he stopped coming shortly after your mother arrived here. He moved on, the way that people do. I remember that on more than one occasion, they stopped to talk at the end of services. That's it. I don't know if they were close, but she never seemed to talk to anyone else, so maybe it's something.'

  'Why have you never mentioned him before?' I said.

  'I never expected to see him again. But...Emmanuel came back here two days ago.'

  The old man was trembling. I wondered if his health was failing, or if it was due to something else. I said, 'I appreciate you telling me this, Padre. It means a lot. I'll ask around, see if I can find him.'

  I already had one hand on the door when Preacher Man stopped me. 'Wait. There's more.'

  'What?'

  'When Emmanuel came in, he was...troubled.'

  'Troubled?'

  'Yes,' the old man said. 'At the beginning, he was okay, but when the anger took him, it was like he became someone else. He was furious, cursing. The Deacons had to remove him. His own actions were driving him mad. He was looking for absolution, but I couldn't give it to him.'

  'Padre,' I said gently, 'he would have had to have done something really, really bad for you to refuse him absolution.'

  The old priest bit his lip, like there was something he really wanted to say but an equally powerful force held him back.

  'If I'm going to find this man, I really need to know what I'm getting myself into,' I said. I hated to exploit the emotions of someone I cared about, but I knew I wasn't going to get the information any other way.

  Down within his cassock somewhere, the old man's layered bones racked up into a shrug. 'You know I can't tell you what he said to me.'

  'And yet you want me to know it,' I said, ''cause you haven't told me off for asking.'

  He flinched, busied himself with the rosary within his hands. Counting off the prayers. Thinking through the consequences.

  'You can te
ll me,' I said.

  'My yoke is easy,' he replied, 'and my burden is light.'

  I looked him in the eye. 'Padre, my yoke is anything but easy, and my burden is knowing I might not come home tomorrow.'

  He turned his head and looked away from me. I wondered too late if maybe I'd pushed Preacher Man too far. Still, this Emmanuel and the promise of new answers hovered just outside my reach, teasing in close and then flying away when I stretched out to them.

  'Phoenix,' he said finally, 'His full name is Emmanuel Duguid. When he left here, he was very, very angry. I can tell you that he went north, out towards the Sands, and you already know what he wants most. The things that he did won't have escaped the attention of the people you do jobs for. I suggest you ask them back in the town.'

  'Thank you, Padre,' I said, picking up my hat. 'I'll do that.'

  'Just so you know...I wouldn't suggest that you look for him, much less approach him. But then I guess that whatever I say isn't going to make much difference, so consider yourself keeper of this information. Do with it what you will.' I bent my head to the old man, kissed the fake ruby ring on his claw-like fingers, and promised to return to him with good news the next time I had some.

  By the time I stepped back over the threshold, the light was fading. The heat had drained out of the day and it left me glad of my jacket. Behind me, the lights of the compound poured into the void, and God's own home in the desert became the coldest place on earth.

  Chapter 4 – God in the Sands

  Carter definitely knew about Emmanuel Duguid.

  'Duguid is a wanted man, and he ain't your standard bottom-feeder. He's as dangerous as they come, build of a longhorn steer and about a tenth of the charm.'

  'I've brought in big men before,' I said.

  'You want to be careful,' Carter said to me. 'This one gets the red mists. When he's cold, he's stone cold.'

  She showed me the file they kept on Duguid. There had been a business deal, a family willing to sell Duguid a ranch at a knockdown price. When they unexpectedly came into some money, the deal was off. It's fair to say that it didn't go down too well for anyone concerned.

  'He figures they lied to him. He can't stand it, so he shoots the owner's wife, their three children and all of their dogs. Then when he's done with the rest of the family, he strangles the owner, right there, at the head of his own table.'

  Carter took her time flicking through the file. Finally, she came across a single photo and passed it across to me.

  Emmanuel Duguid was maybe forty years old. In the picture Carter gave me, he was standing on decking next to one of those old-style rocking chairs, reaching out with an arm to grab some child's toy that was stuck on the roof.

  'You weren't lying about him being big,' I said.

  Carter sipped her coffee. 'I got reports saying he's all of seven feet tall. Now, I know some of those good ol' boys get a bit free and easy with the details when they've had a few, but make no mistake, this guy is huge. You ain't going toe-to-toe with him, that's for sure.'

  The bounty was significant, enough to live on comfortably for six months. The government had put it up. That only happened for people they really, really wanted out of the Sands. A crime like this wasn't bread and butter for every hunter. Some people preferred to paddle in the pool rather than swim in the sea.

  Carter said, 'I wouldn't blame you if you walked away from this one, Phoenix. I don't think anyone would.'

  Honest truth, I didn't want anything to do with Emmanuel Duguid. It was probably a miracle that the Deacons had got him out of Twelve without him gutting half the clergy. But he was maybe the only chance I had of finding my mom.

  'It's fine,' I said.

  'Give me your tag for the peg,' Carter said, in her most procedural voice.

  Dog-tags got hung on a peg till hunters got back to claim them. After two weeks, the tags went from the pegs to the lost property drawer, at which point they got claimed by your next of kin.

  As I watched, Carter hung my tag on a peg that was already occupied. That only happened when multiple people were looking for the same bad. It shouldn't have been so surprising, what with the sum of the bounty and all, but most tags were military style, plain and engraved with a name. The tag I was sharing a peg with this time was different. It was perfectly black, with the face and whiskers of a little cat at the top.

  'Who's tag is that?' I asked?

  'Clemence,' Carter said.

  'I don't think I know Clemence.'

  'You know Jayci Clemence.'

  It took me a moment. 'Clemence the emo girl? All five-feet-nothing of her? You're shitting me, right?'

  Carter raised an eyebrow. 'Do I frequently shit you, Phoenix?'

  There were all the mental images I didn't need. 'No, ma'am.'

  'Well then.'

  'So you let Jayci Clemence go after our stone-cold killer?'

  'Let her?' Oh my, was that wording a mistake on my part. 'Now pardon me, Mister, but my job involves giving you all the facts and letting you make your own mind up about what you can and can't do. Clemence knows what you know, and all evidence points to the fact that she's got a smarter head on her shoulders than you do. If you think that she needs a helping hand just because she's a woman-'

  I whipped my hat off my head and held it across my chest. 'No ma'am, I would never think that.'

  'Damn right you wouldn't.' Carter settled down behind her desk and opened one of the technical manuals that were sitting there. 'Get your ass outta here.'

  I did just that while I still had an ass worth saving.

  ---

  Don't get me wrong. It wasn't that female bounty hunters weren't a thing. My mom was one, don't forget. It's just that Jayci Clemence didn't exactly fit the mold. I could have reached my thumb and forefinger round her arm at the widest point. She had this pinched face and a temper that always seemed like she'd been dragged out of bed before sunrise. Her braids hung down so far it was a wonder she didn't trip over'em when walking. From her eyebrows, you could see her hair was naturally light, but the braids were black as midnight. Rumour was she dipped 'em in tar.

  That said, I didn't know Clemence so well. Maybe she had a partner out there. Some of the most famous bounty hunters were those that hunted in pairs – when you had someone watching your back, it was all the more likely you'd come home. Even so, economies and human natures being what they are, it was no real surprise that it wasn't really that common. Trust took time to build, and when you were scraping by, you didn't want to share your bounties with someone else – especially when that someone else was soon as likely to cut your throat in the night and steal your water chit.

  Basic hunter gear wasn't so hard to come by. I could believe that Clemence could rustle up a cattle-prod big enough to take down a drunken rancher, but I was struggling to imagine her rolling up alone at the depot with Duguid hogtied on the back of her trailer. I figured that maybe she was playing Bonnie to someone else's Clyde.

  Carter wasn't about to tell me any more about what Clemence had planned, so I figured I was good to just go ahead and chase down the bad myself. I had that advantage of knowing where to look. After what had happened at Twelve, it didn't seem likely that Duguid was gonna be welcome at any other compound, so my rough plan was to head out north and check out all the premises on the road. Men looking for God often found Him, so I had to make sure I caught up with him before that happened.

  I checked out a few places along the road itself, all of which turned out to be empty. When the obvious places were checked, I moved on to those that were a bit more off the beaten track. Ten miles outside of Hole Town, I took a left down a narrow path behind a sandstone outcrop. Out here in the middle of nowhere, I knew of an abandoned church with a sharply-sloped roof. The community it supported had long since headed for the shelter of the big town, and just the stark, whitewashed walls of this lost house of the Lord remained. This was a shady place indeed, one where a man concerned about his mortal soul could seek absolution un
disturbed.

  I pulled the motorbike up where the path gave way to dunes and laid it down in a dip in the sand. There was no movement in or outside that I could see, but circling around slowly, I could see a Chevy parked among the dunes out back. That had to be Duguid's car.

  There was just the main doors that I could see from the ground level, but if I trapped him in the space, there was every chance he was gonna try to shoot his way out. I wasn't concerned about the bounty; I needed to have the conversation.

  It's a well-worn observation that man cannot live by bread alone; so it is that a hunter can't get by with just his gun and his taser – he's gotta have his wits and one or two other tools that'll help him out too. One of those tools is rope, and mine was tagged onto a grappling hook that went up over the top of the building. I tugged on it, and judged it good to hold my skinny ass up as far as the bell tower.