Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  Depending on who else is at the scene, things could get awkward. But awkward I can handle, especially if it means I can give Aunt Elodie some billable time before I drift away.

  FORTY

  Copper Hollow

  As I cross the spine of Shatter Hill, the rising half-moon paints the landscape silvery gray. There’s no bonfire at the crossroad, no party—no ghosts to slow me down. The desert almost seems to be holding its breath. In Crestview, the only lights blaze at the Mercantile and the twenty-four-hour gas station. I continue on, winding through forest on the north spur of Lost Brother. A small jet takes off from the airfield as I pass.

  The GPS guides me through the main entrance of the Dryer Lake Resort, then to the right around the golf course. Faux-natural rock walls and plantings of bristlecone pine help hide the sprawling houses with terraced lawns that merge into the rough and fairway.

  The address Dr. Varney texted is on the desert side of the street. Still exclusive, but of a different order from the homes on the course itself. The GPS turns me onto a gently descending gravel driveway wide enough for two cars. Irrigated lawn gives way to desert landscaping. A hundred feet further, the driveway ends at a concrete pad big enough to land a helicopter. My phone announces, “You have arrived.”

  I can hear Paddle Creek even with the Stiff’s windows up. Aspen leaves fluttering in the moonlight mark the location of the stream off to my right. Ahead, I can just make out a large, low-slung stone house behind clumps of switchgrass and a trio of spindly pines. A yellow glow softened by curtains shines from a corner room.

  There are no other cars, but as I reach for my phone to call Dr. Varney, headlights shine down the driveway behind me. The doctor’s Escalade passes on my left. He performs a languid two-point turn in the parking area, then comes to a stop beside me. Before he kills the engine, he lowers his window, so I open mine too.

  “Hey, Mel.” Out on the desert, a coyote barks as a breeze stirs the aspens. Varney looks past me into the darkness, then climbs out of the Escalade. I get the vague sense he’s not quite here.

  “Dr. Varney?”

  He shakes his head like someone awakening from a long sleep. “Sorry.” He leans through the open window of the Escalade and pops back out with a tall to-go cup, the Dryer Lake Resort logo on the side. “I almost forgot. I got you a mocha. Girls like chocolate, right?”

  I can’t tell if he’s actually trying to flirt. “That’s the rumor.” As the chill night air fills the Stiff, I accept the cup more for its warmth than its contents.

  He retrieves a second cup from the SUV. “Drank most of mine already.”

  Maybe I should give him mine. “So what’s the story?” I gesture at the house, if only to get him talking. “Where are the EMTs?”

  “Oh. It’s not like that.” He twists around to look at the house. “It’s a hospice thing.”

  That explains the callout despite my suspension. Whoever died in this house may even be a Bouton preplan client. It also explains why we’re not rushing in. Survivors aren’t always ready for decedents to be moved. Inside, a son or daughter, husband or wife may be trying to make sense of a room suddenly more silent than it was an hour ago. There’s no telling what they’re feeling. With hospice deaths, the grieving may have started days, weeks, even months ago. But sometimes no one believed death would come until it finally did.

  After the last week, I’m struck by how ordinary a mere death feels, something that happens more than six thousand times an hour around the world. In Barlow County alone, on average someone dies every sixty hours. Even with Swarthmore handling some of the work, a removal call is as common as dinner out.

  “One of your patients?”

  “Yeah.” He shakes his head sadly.

  “Were you here when—?”

  “I was over at the hotel.” I wonder how much he’s had to drink. Word is, the hotel lounge has a large selection of artisan whiskeys.

  I sip the mocha and manage to avoid making a face. “What’s in this?”

  “It’s the summer special, the bartender said.” I see a quick flash of teeth. “Is it okay?”

  Tastes like cough syrup mixed with ash. I remember the green-haired barista at Paiute Crossing making a hard pitch for the black cherry mocha. Must be a resort-wide thing. “I’ll just have to be grateful for the medicinal effect.”

  His head tilts, and then he laughs a little. “Yeah, right.” He takes a big sip from his own cup. “Like a fancy truffle, right? Only hot. I think it’s pretty good.”

  Out of misplaced courtesy, I match him. Cloying, but at least it’s warm and caffeinated. Given the silence from the house, we might be here for a while.

  “You want to walk down by the creek?”

  “Not especially.”

  “We won’t go far.” He takes a few steps. “I have my phone.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” Without waiting for an answer, he disappears into the darkness. Annoyed, I climb out of the Stiff, slipping my phone into my back pocket as I push the door shut.

  “Why can’t we talk here?”

  “I don’t want to disturb them in the house.”

  Worried he’ll fall into the creek, I follow. Under the aspens, the moonlight is more decorative than functional. Glints of reflected moonlight and the sound of water rushing over stones tell me the creek is uncomfortably near. “Dr. Varney? Where are you?”

  “Stay there,” he says.

  Gladly.

  His voice, somewhere to my left, startles me and the top pops off my cup, splashing me with warm, sticky liquid. “Jesus.” The cherry smell makes me feel queasy, so I dump what’s left in a clump of grass.

  “Dr. Varney, how much have you had to drink?”

  He laughs, though he doesn’t sound amused. “Maybe more than I should have.”

  I may have lost bodies and looted the dead, but at least I never showed up for a removal half lit. To think Carrie once suggested this guy was a good catch.

  “I’m going back to the van.”

  Suddenly he’s right in front of me.

  “It’s darker out here than I thought it would be.” His breath is a foggy wisp. He puts his hand on my forearm. I tense but don’t jerk away.

  “I just—” His mouth is a dark hole in his pale face. “I owe you an apology.”

  A shiver runs through me, and my head starts to throb. “For what?”

  “I really screwed the pooch with that guy in the gorge, Mel.” His voice hitches. “I made a terrible mistake, and now you’re paying the price.”

  Any moment, I’ll be expected to wrestle a body from the house to the Stiff. Dealing with a drunk, maudlin medical examiner isn’t supposed to be part of the job.

  A wave of nausea hits me. I bend over and put my hands on my knees. I’m regretting the mocha.

  “Mel?”

  “That drink tasted like ass. I feel sick.”

  “I feel okay.”

  “Good for you.” I put the sound of the creek at my back and take a few steps, but the nausea hammers me again. “I’m going back to the van.”

  “Let me help you.”

  It’s too cold, too dark, the rushing creek too loud. I look for the Stiff, but aside from the stars above and the half-moon in the corner of my eye, the darkness is all but complete. Dr. Varney calls my name, but the sound seems to come from far away and all around me at once.

  Use your phone, dumbass.

  Yes. Good idea. I fumble at my back pocket, get my fingers on my phone. Nearly drop it before I find the home button and squint at the bright screen. I can’t focus on the icons, can’t tell which is for calls, which is for looking up dead teenage boys on the internet. I tap and swipe almost at random, manage to flood the ground at my feet with light.

  “What are you doing, Mel?”

  Vision swimming, I lurch forward, the phone’s glare dancing over thorny scrub and jagged stone.

  “Slow down. You’ll hurt yoursel
f.”

  I turn toward Dr. Varney’s voice, cringe at the sight of leaping shadows. I lunge the other away, try to run, but my feet give out. I land facedown like Pride on the Cerise Creek Trail. My mouth fills with blood and dirt.

  “You all right?”

  I try to rise, but all I can do is squirm when Dr. Varney kneels at my side. “I’m so sorry, Mel.”

  “Whuh—” My tongue is numb, my throat a knot. I want to say wait, to ask what he did to me. The words won’t come, but a distant corner of my mind guesses. Drugs. Drugs in the coffee, a taste like cherry cough syrup but much stronger. Fresh panic surges through me.

  Wait!

  “I’m sorry. I was supposed to rule the death an accident. I was supposed to make it go away.” He puts a cold hand on the back of my neck. I jerk and manage to push up onto my knees. But it’s not enough. Nothing left, I slip sideways and roll onto my back, exhausted.

  “You had to go and notice the lividity.”

  My phone is somewhere to my side, a painful spark in the black. I paw the ground, but Dr. Varney is quicker. With a grunt, he heaves the phone like he’s tossing a grenade. For a long, strange moment, I watch it tumble skyward, tracking along the path of the Milky Way.

  I roll onto my side and lift my head. Out of the roiling shadows, a beam of light appears, bright enough to blot out the moon.

  “Watch yourself there, chippy.”

  The acrid stench of tobacco overwhelms me as hard hands slam me back down. Pain shoots down my spine, but with it comes a brief, fractured clarity. Dr. Varney is gone. In his place, Quince Kinsrow looms in the flashlight’s glare. I writhe, helpless, as he clamps his gnarled hand over my face.

  My last thought before he cracks my head against the ground is regret I won’t be there in the morning to water Uncle Rémy’s lawn.

  FORTY-ONE

  The Stiff

  Someone spilled whiskey. A shot, maybe two fingers from a lowball glass. Tipped over on the bar, knocked off the kitchen table. The sweet, smoky scent surrounds me, tickling my nose, drilling into my brain. Bourbon. Not the silky Blanton’s Aunt Elodie poured, nor the rotgut I usually drink. Elijah Craig, maybe.

  “What, you’re some kinda hootch connoisseur, Mellie?”

  Barb would say anyone who can’t distinguish between top shelf, bottom shelf, and the fertile bourbon midlands should stick with Long Island iced tea.

  “Only if she could hear me.”

  My right eye feels like someone is pulling a nail from the socket with a claw hammer. My teeth taste of blood. Cold seeps into my flesh and curls around my bones like fingers of ice and fog. An awful, droning vibration burrs through me. I need to get up, need to run. But my hands, my head, my feet—all so heavy, like I’ve been buried in sand. I force my mouth open but can’t draw a breath. The pressure on my chest is too much. I’m buried—they buried me. Fitz laughs again, yet it’s not Fitz. It’s a whine like a straining engine. The sound rises and falls as light particles streak through the endless darkness, and the blood rushes head to toe and back again.

  Open your eyes, Melisende.

  “She’s right, little sister.”

  Who?

  The answer seeps in with the fog.

  Me. Melisende.

  My right eye doesn’t work. Nailed shut, plucked out? Out, vile jelly. The left flutters enough to reveal a metallic gleam, cold and close and strangely familiar. Then the world shakes and my head bounces. The gleam shatters into a million specular flashes. I gasp, and the flashes coalesce into a silver sheen against a formless gray field. Teeth chattering, gut churning, I squeeze my eye shut and force myself to breathe until all I feel is vibration. “Count back from ten,” a quiet voice says. When I reach one, my eyelids separate like tearing paper. Both eyes. A straight line, a bar—cold and lustrous—slices the darkness above. I stare at it until my eyes ache.

  At least I’m not dead.

  And not floating, not buried underground. I’m in the back of the van. My van. The Stiff. Wedged between the wall and the legs of the cot, my head jammed against the cargo bins mounted near the rear doors. The engine growls, the tires whir on pavement. The air stinks of bourbon and puke. When this is over, I’ll need to pull the entire transport assembly to clean it.

  “Don’t fret, Mellie. After this, the Stiff is gonna be Quince’s problem again.”

  With the suddenness of a snapping bone it comes back to me. The dark driveway … the doctor and the mocha … moonlight glinting off the creek … and Quince’s calloused hand on my face. I let myself be lured like it was any other removal—a hospice thing. As common as dinner out. They drugged me and tossed me into the Stiff like any old body.

  Except a body would be strapped to the cot, handled carefully and with respect. Quince dumped me like a sack of garbage.

  I remember falling, trying to rise, falling again. Varney put his cold hand on my neck. Quince appeared, and someone spoke.

  “Watch yourself there, chippy.”

  Chief Deputy Duniway.

  I try to sit up. It’s like fighting a tangle of rope. Whatever Dr. Varney put in that shit mocha must still be affecting me. Exhausted, I sag. The Stiff rounds a curve, and inertia presses me against the wheel well.

  I tilt my head and can just make out the two front seats in the glow of the instrument panel. Duniway’s arm drapes over the armrest on the passenger side. Quince is driving.

  The van makes a turn and starts to climb. “Slow down! You want to get us killed?”

  “What I want is to get this shit over with.”

  “All well and good, but the idea is we’re not still on board when this damn thing goes into the draw.”

  Duniway’s snarled words hit me like ice water. The spilled bourbon, the girl tossed around like so much garbage. Quince and Duniway mean to crash the Stiff. Maybe stick me behind the wheel before pushing it down some steep gully. My body will reek of booze. Maybe an empty bottle turns up in the wreckage. Dr. Varney will attribute any wounds or bruises to the crash, declaring my sad end an accident, with alcohol a contributing factor. The Barlow County grapevine will note my thing for sangria. And Aunt Elodie will remember our shared Blanton’s.

  The only reason I’m still alive is they can’t risk making the same mistake twice. I have to die in the crash, or near enough to avoid inconvenient lividity.

  Before I get a chance to panic, Quince burps out a startled bleat as lights start flashing in the Stiff’s rear windows, red and blue, blue and red.

  “Christ on a cracker, Omar. I thought you had this under control.”

  “Chapman thinks he’s a detective.”

  “The fuck am I supposed to do?” Stripped of its usual orator’s warmth, Quince’s drawl has slipped into a high-pitched twang.

  “Punch it.” Duniway’s tone is sharp and sibilant like he’s forcing the words through his teeth.

  “This thing can’t outrun him.”

  “That’s okay. I just want him riled.”

  The lights brighten in the Stiff’s tinted windows. Brighter and nearer. Quince knows it too.

  “Ain’t no one ever told me I should try to rile a cop.”

  “Stop grousing and pull off up there.”

  Gravel crunches under the tires as the van rolls onto the shoulder. The vibration of the idling engine makes my teeth ache. The red and blue lights keep flashing. A car door slams.

  I’m in here.

  The words fail on my numb, swollen tongue. I try to move, to bang the wall beside me, to make any noise at all.

  “Cover your ears.”

  “Fuck me, Omar, you can’t—”

  The footsteps fall heavily, as if Jeremy’s already exhausted by the encounter he expects with me when he reaches the driver’s side door.

  “I said cover your ears, Quince!”

  Too late, I realize what Duniway means to do.

  And then I’m rising. Too slow, far too slow. A crazy thought—the Stiff was built for hauling bodies, not ass. Tendons strain in my wrist. Heat
shoots through my neck and my back and my arms. I am not the Stiff. A shadow darkens the rear window as I reach for the glass.

  Jeremy doesn’t see me. No one sees me. The lights oscillate, blue and red, red and blue. Forward, Duniway leans across the center console, arm outstretched. I don’t need to see it to know what’s in his hand.

  As the gun fires, I scream and throw myself against the wall. I can’t see anything, can’t tell what happened. Quince is hollering, Duniway shouting. My own cries must be just part of the cacophony.

  “Go, go, go!”

  I fall against the rear doors as the Stiff jerks forward with all the pep of a petting zoo pony. Through the tinted glass, I see blue and red, red and blue. In another life, an earnest, frustrated Jeremy dropped out of my rearview mirror. In this one, all that remains is a shapeless heap in the road.

  FORTY-TWO

  The Draw

  Fitz roars as the Stiff gathers speed. Varney’s drug has mostly worn off, but lingering vertigo gives everything a sickening tilt. With a desperation fueled by fragmented memory, I tear into the cargo bins. Straps and bungee cords, sheets and body bags. Deodorizer and nitrile gloves. An emergency change of clothes.

  Then I grip something hard and metallic, slightly oily, and the memory comes rushing back.

  … scattered wreckage and bodies … dying flames in the engine compartment of the F-350 … the horse huffing out on the desert … and a chunk of debris that isn’t debris—but an object as common as a coffee cup in Barlow County.

  A gun.

  In the heat of the moment, I had Zachariah Urban to worry about, so I tucked the gun in with my spare clothes. Any other time, I’d have discovered it again while cleaning the Stiff, but the next day the world turned upside down, and I haven’t gotten into the back of the Stiff since, let alone rifled the cargo bins.

  “What? You gonna shoot ’em?”

  Hell yes, I’m gonna shoot them. All Jeremy wanted was to earn his degree and land that job in Portland. Whatever his faults—like I’m one to judge—he didn’t deserve to die alone on a dark road.