Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  “This afternoon,” Duniway says at last, “I spoke with Trae Fowler’s father. He and Kendrick Pride have known each other for years.” He shakes his head, mulling. “Mr. Fowler admits he allowed Mr. Pride to handle things for him. The sort of thing a friend would do.”

  “So …?” I shift as the silence stretches. “There you have it.”

  “Right. There I have it.” He raises the cigarette again, then gives me a sour look. “But why come here when he could make arrangements by fax or phone? It’s not like he was gonna haul the kid back to Portland in the trunk of his car.”

  “Have you tried questioning him?”

  He ignores my sarcasm. “He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Maybe he went home.”

  “Perhaps.” He shakes his head again as if he doesn’t believe that. “Mr. Fowler also suggested he could be something of a nuisance to the local police.”

  “How so?”

  Duniway doesn’t answer. Waiting for my thoughts on the matter? I suppose I could tell him about the bullet casings, but that would only invite more questions I can’t answer.

  “Are we done?”

  “You didn’t, by chance, invite Mr. Pride to town, did you?”

  A sudden metallic taste fills my mouth. “I never even heard of him before—” I swallow and press my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

  Duniway’s lips stretch into a thin smile, then he climbs out of the car. Welcome heat blasts me as he opens his door. He circles the Tahoe then, outside my door, lights his cigarette. After a couple of deep drags, he opens my door as well, and steps aside. I catch a face full of smoke as I climb out.

  He offers me his business card. “If you think of anything, give me a call.”

  I accept the card—as if I don’t have the department number saved in my phone—and flee before he can change his mind. As the engine revs, I slip inside the New Mortuary, latching the door behind me. The lobby is cold as a tomb and suffused with the scent of old flowers.

  At first, all I do is breathe. I’m struck by unexpected relief that Duniway cared more about Pride than me—even as memory of his last question stirs the unease in my stomach. It had all seemed like an elaborate performance—the trap, the drive to the New Mortuary, the questions. But why? If he thought I would confess, I have news for him. Him and Quince both.

  The lobby credenza draws my eye. We keep it clear except for flowers and, during events, a guest book or display in memoriam of the deceased. Now, a sheaf of pages lies on the polished wooden surface beside the vase.

  Search Warrant and Seize Order

  County of Barlow

  State of Oregon

  For Probable Cause Shown and Supported by the Attached Affidavit, Sworn Deputies of the Barlow County Sheriff’s Department are Hereby Commanded to Search the Premises of the Bouton Funerary Service, Samuelton, Oregon, with Particular Attention to the Areas Assigned to and Frequented by Melisende Dulac, Including Lockers or Work Areas Where She Would Have a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy, and to Seize Any and All Effects Belonging to or Associated with the Decedents Trae Fowler, Uriah Skeevis, and Tucker Gill. Officers are Further Commanded to Search, Test, and/or Analyze these Items and Their Contents for Evidence Relating to the Crimes of Burglary I (ORS 164.225), Abuse of a Corpse I (ORS 166.087), and Abuse of a Corpse II (ORS 166.085).

  So ordered by a judge whose name I don’t recognize and stamped “Executed” with today’s date and Chief Deputy Omar Duniway’s signature.

  SEVENTEEN

  Lost and Found

  There’s been another death.

  People are talking about it at the Whistle Pig when I stop in to score some overdue tots. About the time I was talking to Paulette this afternoon, a man opened his door and collapsed into the arms of a UPS driver. Heart attack, probable occlusion of the left coronary artery. The Widow Maker.

  The body will be held in the hospital morgue until Swarthmore makes the pickup. For all I know, the fellow had preplanned with them, but it feels like another nail in the Bouton coffin.

  “Good grief, Mellie. Have a drink.”

  The Whistle Pig is full of noise and earthy pigment, but there’s no sign of Barb. In response to my quick text, she says, “Still grading. These kids couldn’t find the derivative of a function if their parents hid it in their liquor cabinets.” I place my order to go. I’m still a little mossy from Dailie’s bourbon, but I order a sangria while I wait for my basket of deep-fried solace at one end of the bar. Too near, a troop of hikers—sunburnt dudebros crusted with dirt—drink and laugh at random strings of grunts and woofs—a cipher I don’t understand.

  Every time the cowbell on the door clanks, I expect Duniway, reconsidering jail, or Jeremy, making excuses for his part in the trap. Or Pride himself. For what, I can’t begin to guess. Duniway had said it. Pride could have made the arrangements from Portland, with Wanda handling things at this end.

  So why drive all the way out here? To collect bullet casings like empty returnables?

  “You should find out, Mellie.”

  “Give me a break.”

  Notch, the bartender, plunks down my sangria. “Talking to ghosts, Mel?”

  Thanks, Fitz. I try to laugh it off. “Just babbling to myself.”

  I can see by his expression it was the wrong thing to say. Notch has been brusque with me since the Landry thing. That I can handle, but this is my first visit to the Pig since the bodies found their way from the New Mortuary to the Old. I’m treading uncharted ground.

  “Wait!” The shouted word hits me like a sonic boom. “Wait a frakking minute!”

  Against my better judgment, I glance sideways.

  “Are you her?” One of the hikers, shaggy and reeking of trail funk, eyeballs me. “Seriously, are you the chick who saw the Shatter Hill Spirit?”

  I shake my head and hunker down over my sangria, my little glass cauldron of regret. Notch’s lips curl into a nasty grin as the guy points with both hands. “She saw the goddamn Spirit!” His voice is a jubilant singsong, a kid who’s discovered buried treasure in his backyard. “We’re out there days and frakking nights and don’t see nothing.” His friends, bleary from beer or sunstroke, don’t seem to care about me. One of them calls for another pitcher.

  “You gotta tell us, man. Did you shit your pants?”

  Notch’s smirk is like a needle in my eye. “You shouldn’t believe everything some dickhead bartender tells you.”

  Dudebro just laughs. “Prolly scarier for you. Ain’t no one gonna confuse us for Molly Claire’s Girls.” Exuberant, he drapes an arm over my shoulders.

  The touch is like an electric shock. “Hands off, asshole.”

  With another beery laugh, he starts to wrap me up. Electricity flares into heat. I twist free and push him, hard.

  He stumbles back against one of his buddies. “Whoa, girl—” His friend lets out a bark and shoves Dudebro back hard enough to pinball me into a group of women crowding the bar.

  I keep my feet and manage to catch one of the women before she falls, but her margarita soaks her blouse.

  “Sorry. This guy—”

  “Back off, bitch!” Her face—local, nameless but familiar—twists into a snarl as she throws a glancing punch into my chin. I fall against the dudebro, and his hands fly into the air like he touched a hot stove. “Whoa, whoa,” he’s saying. “I just want—”

  Just wants, sure. Just wants to talk, just wants to know what I saw, to hear about the ghost. Just wants to grab me, to claim a share of my life. Like he’s owed. Voices clamor all around. I wish it would all stop. But no is a word from a dead language. Leave me alone, mere gibberish. He and his buddies searched for the goddamn ghost for days. Came from Corvallis for some high desert color, don’t you know. He’ll buy me a beer. “Just tell me the story.” His voice burrs like a swarm of yellow jackets. “You owe us that much.” The woman calls me crazy, a lowlife, a skank. Everyone knows it. Someone says Landry’s name, and then she punches me again. I pitch u
p against the bar.

  “Who ya gonna call, Mel?” Notch’s lips peel back from yellow teeth. “Ghostbusters?”

  I want to throw cash on the bar and storm out, but I emptied my wallet at Dailie’s. As voices crash around me in waves, I wait for Notch to run my debit card, skin burning at the touch of so many eyeballs. How long does it take the Barlow Telegraph to broadcast from one end of the county to the other? I already see faces bent over screens, thumbs probably tapping out the news. When Notch brings the slip at last, I scrawl “Fuck you, Asshole” on the tip line.

  Halfway up Route 55, I realize I never got my tots.

  * * *

  The sun is doing its slow mosey toward the shoulder of Lost Brother Butte when I reach the crossroad. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve pulled off next to the fire circle. I’m still riding the adrenalin crest from the Pig, and all I want to do is inhale the cooling desert air and let the tension bleed out of me.

  Christ. I might have to find somewhere else to drink.

  A semi going at least seventy rips past. The wind whack in its wake shakes the Stiff and leaves behind a gasp of diesel exhaust. Had he been the one to run up on Nathan, Trae, and the Cadillac, there’d have been no bodies to steal from the Bouton fridge—just bags of jelly and crushed bone.

  If only.

  Eyes on the outcrop, I try to imagine another life—one where Fitz lived and I died, and Cricket and Stedman somehow learned to live with it. The thought of oblivion is more appealing than their unassailable indifference. My hands clench the steering wheel. I’ve forgotten to breathe. My parents are three thousand miles away. I repeat it in my mind. Three thousand miles … three thousand miles. Shadows of sage and rabbitbrush lengthen across the desert floor, a canvas of buff and brown. A harsh, empty refuge.

  Except it isn’t empty. Something is there. An upright figure out beyond the place where Nathan Harper died. Vaguely human, wavering and uncertain.

  I count backward from ten.

  Pride?

  In the two and a half days since we found Nathan Harper, he’s had plenty of time to search the area.

  “Maybe it’s the ghost.”

  “It’s not the ghost.”

  “Only one way to find out, little sis.”

  “I hate you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Right now I do. But I get out of the Stiff, making sure the door doesn’t slam. Whoever’s out there—Pride, some stranger, or the Shatter Hill Spirit—I don’t want them to know I’m coming.

  Orange-fingered clouds reach through the deepening blue sky. Sun and shadow cast a confusing spell of light and dark. The diesel exhaust has given way to the scents of earth and sage. I follow the wheel tracks left by Fire and Rescue’s gurney. The hollow where we found Nathan Harper is smaller than I remember. In the darkness after midnight, it must have seemed like a cavern to a boy who only wanted to hide.

  It’s too early for the moon. With twilight deepening, I’ve lost sight of the figure, unless it’s somewhere still ahead. Distance in the desert is deceptive, especially at sunset. I look back toward the crossroad. The Stiff is a dark hump. No cars have passed since the semi.

  I’m alone.

  “You sure about that?”

  Empty talk has filled my thoughts with phantoms. Head pounding, I rub my temples and look toward the hills rising toward Crestview. A glimmer flits between the dark trees.

  “Definitely the ghost, Mellie.”

  I drop my hands. “It’s not the fucking ghost.”

  A sudden shadow looms, and a breathy snort breaks behind me. My foot catches on a stone or root, toppling me onto my ass as a mule deer leaps out of the juniper. Before I can even suck in a breath, the thump of its hooves fades. I’m left gazing up at the first stars as my heart pounds in my chest.

  “Jesus.”

  “You didn’t see that thing coming? It was huge.”

  The sun drops behind Lost Brother Butte, darkness chasing after it.

  “Go home, Melisende,” I tell myself.

  As the night’s chill settles around me, I roll onto my hands and knees. In the dirt where I fell, there’s a faint, metallic gleam. I scrape the soil, exposing a pendant on a silver chain. I get to my feet, letting it dangle from my fingers to catch what little light lingers after sunset. Then I wake my phone and tap the flashlight icon, illuminating an oval locket an inch wide and half again as tall. I brush away the clinging soil to reveal an ornate monogram engraved on one side.

  K&S.

  I trace the fine filigree with my fingertips, then, with a click, pop the locket open. Inside are two photos—formal shots of a white man and woman in their early twenties oriented to face each other across the hinge. The man seems familiar, but the woman, fair-haired and smiling, could be anyone.

  I switch off the light. The pale figure in the trees is gone. If it was ever there.

  “Which initial is hers, do you think? K or S? S or K?”

  My headache has spread to the base of my skull. Fitz starts to chant in my head, a singsong earworm.

  “K and S, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”

  And then it hits me.

  K.

  The man in the locket is young, almost boyish, but without a doubt—Kendrick Pride.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Shatter Hill Spirit

  “Melisende. What a lovely sight to wake up to.”

  “You’ve got a strange idea of lovely, Uncle.”

  “I’m not so far gone I don’t know a pretty woman when I see her.”

  The surprise must register on my face. He waves a bony, dismissive hand. “I know why I’m here.”

  “Your hip—”

  “My hip, right.” He scoffs. “The damn thing is better now than it’s been in ten years.” He taps his temple. “My noggin is what’s gone catawampus.”

  “You’re going to be fine.” But my voice lacks conviction. The day has barely started and I’m ready to surrender.

  I’d awakened with the magpies and hit the road before seven—before Aunt Elodie could intercept me. Last night when she came home from Crestview Assisted Living, the hollows under her eyes were so deep I didn’t have the courage to mention the search warrant. Instead, I insisted she let me look after Uncle Rémy today.

  “You could use the break, Aunt Elodie.” She’s been staying overnight there. While the overstuffed wing chair might be fine for cross-stitch, she doesn’t look like she’s slept well.

  I think she was too tired to argue.

  I arrived at Crestview Assisted Living as Uncle Rémy’s breakfast tray was being delivered. Under the morning light from the window, his sharp gaze makes me feel guilty Aunt Elodie isn’t here to see it.

  After he eats, I set his tray on the counter near the door. “Do you want to walk now?”

  “No, but I suppose I have to.” With a groan, he swings his feet off the bed and into his slippers. At least he no longer has to contend with monitors or the IV.

  “Let me help you, Uncle.”

  “I can help my own goddamn self.” I flinch, and his expression softens. “I’m sorry, Melisende. I just …” I wait, but he doesn’t finish the thought. Instead, he reaches for his walker and pulls himself to his feet. His lips draw back from his teeth, but he mutters, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He shuffles into the bathroom and closes the door. A few minutes later I hear a flush and running water. When the door opens, his face is red.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Christ, yes. Let’s do this thing.”

  This thing is a full lap from one end of the floor to the other, part of his graduated walking program. He moves with grim determination, a firm grip on his walker. I keep pace beside him, watching his feet rise and fall in time with his breathing. As we pass the nurses station, he manages a wave and tight smile, but doesn’t pause. At the end of the corridor, he taps the window looking out over the facility grounds and the forest beyond.

  “Tag, I’m it.”

  The only sound is the c
hatter of the nurses. “They sure as hell jabber a lot around here, you notice?” As if she heard, the charge nurse emits a loud cackle.

  “Have you been eavesdropping, Uncle Rémy?”

  “What the hell else do I have to do?” His eyes twinkle. “They say you got in a ten-car pileup the other night, then you kicked a baby.”

  “Actually, it was two babies.”

  “That’s my girl.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m guessing the tale has grown with the telling.”

  “A bit, yes.”

  “So.” He raises one shaggy eyebrow. “Did you really see her?”

  I think of the figure who led—or lured—me onto the desert last night. My fingers feel for the lump in my jeans, the locket. The most likely explanation is Pride lost it when he was out there poking around, except Pride doesn’t seem like someone who’s careless with personal keepsakes. Nathan Harper was the only other person out there, and he seems unlikely.

  Unless it was the Spirit.

  “I probably imagined the whole thing,” I say to Uncle Rémy.

  In the distance, a long, unbroken spine of stone peeks above the ponderosa forest surrounding the Crestview grounds. For the first time, I realize you can see Shatter Hill from here.

  A faint wheeze, reminiscent of the injured rancher at the crossroad, pulls my eyes back inside. Uncle Rémy’s eyes have gone glassy. I wonder if he’s still with me or if his mind has drifted into the darkness he’s increasingly inhabited since the surgery, if not before.

  But then he draws a breath and blinks. It’s like a light coming on.

  “You know the story, don’t you?”

  “There’s a story?” I say with a little smile. There’s always a story, whether it’s about the natural history of the high desert or some piece of Old Barlow lore. It’s one of the things I cherish about Uncle Rémy.

  “What makes this one interesting is, it’s part of our family history.”

  I don’t remind him I’m only a faux-Bouton, a hanger-on. “Don’t you want to finish your walk?”