Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  Who couldn’t move.

  When they reached him, Stone made Lauder stop, looked down, and said hoarsely, bewildered, not a little afraid, “What kind of priest are you?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You’re going to die anyway.” And nodded for Lauder to take him away.

  * * * *

  Casey heard the gunfire brought in by the wind, watched as Reed half crawled to his side, saw the blood seeping between the boy’s fingers.

  “He could have killed me,” Reed said, not understanding, glancing back at the office door. “He could have killed me, but he didn’t.” He stared at what was left of the peacock window. “Aw, shit, my hand hurts. Are you okay? Reverend Chisholm, are you okay? Say something.”

  There was nothing to say.

  Not until he stopped listening to the scream.

  * * * *

  6

  T

  he wind stopped.

  * * * *

  An arm around Reed’s waist, Casey made his way down the stairs to the lobby. He wasn’t hurt, but his legs had a hard time keeping him up, and his lungs refused to fill, keeping his mouth open to gulp for air. Neither had said a word since leaving the mayor’s office, and the last they’d seen of Cribbs, he’d been trying to pull himself into his leather swivel chair.

  * * * *

  The wind stopped.

  * * * *

  At first Casey thought he’d been struck deaf; he couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat, his own footsteps. But as they approached the door, a shoe kicked a piece of glass and it skittered across the marble floor. Scraping like a file drawn across a blackboard.

  The crackle, then, of flames; a woman’s enraged wailing; a stuck car horn; glass falling somewhere down the street; a man groaning nearby; a fast-approaching siren; voices, lots of voices.

  They stood in the doorway, and Reed said, “God.”

  The Teague’s car spat flame from the backseat, acrid smoke fanning upward, almost masking the fire that curled up and around the pickup’s crumpled hood.

  With a look to be sure Reed was all right, Casey stepped outside, swaying until he forced his equilibrium back in line. He went directly to the sheriff, just as Verna left the department building. With only a glance at each other, they straightened the man’s legs, and she laid a jacket over what was left of his face. Casey laid a hand on the jacket lightly and whispered a prayer, stood slowly, stiffly, and headed across the street.

  Billy Ray Teague still lay half in and out of the Weekly’s shattered window, blood slithering down the wall to gather beneath his legs. The first coils of smoke drifted through the ragged gap.

  Stump and Cord were gone, Ronnie left to sit on the sidewalk, her father’s bloodied head in her lap. A red smear across her brow, a sleeve torn and gone from an elbow, she looked up at his approach, tears drowning her cheeks, dripping from her chin.

  He crouched beside her, brushed a leaf from the old man’s unmoving chest.

  “He hardly ever went to church,” she said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he told her, and closed his eyes for a moment, left hand lightly holding the gold cross.

  The car horn was cut off.

  He rose and looked down Landward, and saw two automobiles buckled against the side of the sheriff’s department building, commuters who had apparently tried to avoid the battle at the intersection and couldn’t turn sharply enough. A man sat dazed at the curb, another beside him, gripping his shoulder, looking angry.

  A patrol car, lights blaring, screamed up the road, followed by a fire engine and another cruiser.

  He watched as Verna took immediate charge, stepping into the street, waving them down, calling out instructions as she pointed, waved her arms. People ran up both streets, some wearing coats, others in shirtsleeves. Most of them stopped half a block away, unable to understand what they saw; the others moved forward cautiously, listening to Verna, and Deputy Salter, who had taken it upon himself to create a makeshift police line, grabbing a few people he knew to help keep the others back.

  Casey turned away and walked up the street. Stepped off the curb. Put his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the road, looking down at Billy Freck, who had landed with his head against the opposite curb, glass spread around him catching the last light, glowing in the neon of the barbershop window. Incredibly, he still had his gun in his hand; incredibly, there was no visible blood.

  God forgive me, I killed you, Casey thought.

  Verna puffed up beside him. “Damn,” she said, “who’s the lucky son of a bitch who did this?”

  Casey stared at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, not sounding apologetic at all. “But it happens, Reverend, you know? Sometimes you just don’t care.” She called for a paramedic or a doctor, stared as if committing the dead man’s image to memory, and strode away. There was fire to attend to, some injured and wounded; the dead, right now, was the last thing on her mind.

  Suddenly he spun around in near panic, unable to believe he’d forgotten Bannock and Lisse. A step toward Reed, who was sitting on the Town Hall steps, and he spotted John in the small park, back to him, kneeling beside a fallen woman.

  Casey stumbled into a ran, brusquely waving off Reed’s call, calling himself until John looked back, his face grim as he swayed to his feet.

  “She ran right out,” he said as Casey slowed, and stopped. “I tried to grab her, but she ran right out.”

  Milli Grummond lay on her stomach, skirt pulled to her knees, purse lying beside her, its contents spilled on the ground. A large stain in the middle of her back.

  “Casey, I swear I tried to stop her.” He looked around, head shaking, before he said, “It was that deputy. Freck. She ran out and got in his way and, Jesus Christ, Casey, he just shot her. He just shot her. I was so ... I couldn’t do anything. Those guys were ... the shotguns ... I couldn’t do anything, and he ran right past me and, damn, but why didn’t he shoot me too?” He stepped over Milli’s body and sat hard on the bench, hands helpless in his lap. “He just shot her, Casey. The son of a bitch just shot her.”

  * * * *

  He wandered back to the sidewalk, into the stench of smoke and burning metal and blood and fire; into a slow-growing chaos as Verna and Salter did their best to organize and contain with what little they had at hand.

  He looked back. “Where’s Lisse, John?”

  Bannock stared at him, rubbed his eyes. “In the sheriff’s office. She’s okay. She wanted...she’s making calls for that deputy. More cops, doctors, I guess.”

  Casey nodded absently, jerked to his left when he heard Reed cry out in pain, saw him sprawled on the ground, scrabbling for Norville Cutler’s ankles as the man tried to run. Cutler kicked him in the face, Reed cried out again and rolled over, and Cutler took off.

  “No,” Casey whispered, and ran.

  Half a block later he raised a fist and clubbed the man between the shoulders, grabbed him before he fell, spun him around and lifted him off the ground by the lapels of his coat. Cutler almost screamed at the look on his face, struggled feebly as Casey carried him that way back to the station. Glaring. Daring him to try something without saying a word. He sensed people staring, and didn’t care; saw Verna hustle over, uncertain until he said, “He’s part of it, Deputy, the Teagues were following his orders.”

  Amazingly, she grinned. “Follow me, I’ll show you where to dump him.”

  Into the station, through a door on the left and down a short flight of stairs.

  Cutler’s struggles increased, and Casey snarled and shook him, and when Verna opened the middle of three cells, carried him in and threw him down on the cot. Stood over him, breathing heavily, hands still in tight fists.

  “Get him out of here,” Cutler begged, frantically pushing himself back until he was blocked by the cinder block wall. “For God’s sake, get him outta here.”

  * * * *

  In the relative quiet of the main office, Verna slumped against her desk, took off her glasses, and pus
hed hair out of her eyes. Lisse came out of Oakman’s office, grinned when she saw him, and sobered instantly when she saw his face.

  “I think I got everybody,” she told Verna.

  Verna nodded. “Thanks. Appreciate it.” With a sigh she pushed back to her feet. “Got to get back out there,” she said to Casey with a wan smile. “If I stay here, I think I’ll just... you know, Father?”

  He nodded.

  She shook herself, rubbed a thumb under her nose. “All those people,” she said as she headed for the door. “Damn, all those people.” She paused then. “Maybe you’d like to know, Father, but they found Cord, Cord Teague? in the alley behind the Weekly. Took a bullet in the hip. Can’t find Stump nowhere.” And she left, letting the door swing slowly shut behind her.

  Casey held out his hand, left it there until Lisse took it and squeezed it. “You’re not doing so hot, are you?”

  “No, can’t say that I am.”

  She pressed her head briefly against, his arm. “Is John all right?”

  “He’s in the park. He’s not so hot, either. I think he could use you right about now.”

  “What about you?”

  He looked down at her and smiled. “I get along.”

  She hesitated, skeptical, then left, and he exhaled sharply, stepped back until he felt the railing against his legs, and sat on it gingerly, testing its ability to hold his weight. Through the glass door he watched her disappear into the smoke that diffused the moving lights, the steady lights, and the flickering light of the several fires that couldn’t quite keep the dusk from turning into full dark.

  Lyman Baylor rushed past without a sideways glance.

  An ambulance whooped and left, leaving Ronnie Hull standing alone in the street until Rick Jordan came up behind her, put his arm around her shoulders, and led her away. There was a bandage around his head, his left leg was stiff.

  Ghosts moved through the thickening smoke, some running, some wandering.

  One of them stopped and looked his way, waving at the haze in front of its eyes, then pushed at the door, scowled, and pulled it open.

  “Are you responsible for all that?” Beatrice said, gesturing awkwardly behind her.

  A weary shrug. “Some.”

  “My.” She perched beside him. “I don’t suppose your middle name is Michael, is it?”

  He took a long time before he turned his head. “Are you an angel?” he asked in return.

  Her smile made him think for no reason of a summer’s soft moon. “I’ll tell you when it’s over.” He nodded.

  “All right. Me, too.”

  * * * *

  The wind returned, and brought the clouds with it.

  * * * *

  The State Police arrived in force within the hour, taking over most of the operations without, Casey noted, being officious about it.

  Within two hours, the mayor had appointed Verna Dewitt Acting Sheriff. Five minutes after that, she threw him in the cell next to Cutler.

  A grim-faced sergeant took Casey’s statement; it took over two hours, and not once did the man react to any of his mild jokes or other attempts to lighten the mood. The trooper asked questions, wrote the answers down, checked the tape recorder on the desk to be sure the batteries were still working, and once in a while conferred with his colleagues or a superior to cross-check a response against another witness’s declaration.

  For several hours Casey could hear the distinctive sound of helicopters flying low over town.

  He overheard one trooper tell another that his mother-in-law was moving in that night because the approaching storm was going to be a beaut, and why the hell didn’t she live in Florida, for crying out loud, the woman was the kind who gave witches and bitches a bad name.

  Someone wanted to know, loudly, what Oakman had been doing with a packed suitcase in his office.

  Casey said nothing; he couldn’t read a dead man’s mind.

  When at last they were through with him, it was nearly midnight, and Sheriff Dewitt told him he could go.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, trying vainly to rub some of the weariness from his eyes.

  She looked him up and down frankly. “Well, isn’t like you’re gonna be able to hide all that well, Father.”

  He grinned and shook her hand, stretched his back, massaged his sides as he picked up his coat and left the building. The wind nearly toppled him, not for its strength but because he was so tired. Hoses crisscrossed the street; puddles lay everywhere, reflecting flame and light. He put his back to it all and walked away, not wanting to watch the firefighters still working, not wanting to see the sparks dancing on the wind’s back. Beyond the police line he saw John waiting by the car, blowing on his hands, stamping his feet to get warm.

  “Why didn’t you sit inside?” he said, opening the passenger door.

  “Too warm, Case. I’d be asleep in less than a minute, and you’d never get me up again, not for a week.”

  * * * *

  On the way home, John said, “Casey, is this their doing? I mean, is this the start?”

  “To the first,” he said, “I think yes. I don’t know about the other.”

  “Casey, what are we going to do? We’re exhausted, we’re beat up ... what are we going to do?”

  “You want a sermon or do you want an answer?”

  “An answer. No offense, but I’ll sleep during the sermon.”

  Casey laughed, leaned back, closed his eyes. “I have no idea, John. I have absolutely no idea.”

  * * * *

  Although he couldn’t see them when he walked through the door, he knew they were all here, scattered throughout the house. The kids were in the living room, watching television, Cora on the couch next to Reed, who sported a cast from wrist to elbow and a new sling; someone was upstairs taking a shower, someone else paced the hallway impatiently.

  Beatrice was in the kitchen, pouring coffee into cups she had lined up on the counter.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. A wave toward the front. “No one wanted to be alone tonight.”

  I did, he answered silently, and went to the back door. There was nothing out there but the night, and the feel of the wind as it careened around the houses.

  “Casey,” she began, and he waggled a hand to hush her.

  “John already asked me, and I don’t know.”

  “Why here, then? So many places, why here?”

  He laid his palm against the pane, felt the cold, the tremor of the wind.

  “Ask God.”

  “I did. He’s not answering, so I’m asking you.”

  He smiled, and saw his reflection smile back.

  “Bea, this is no time for philosophy, for dancing with angels on the heads of bloody pins. It’s here because it’s here?. And if I had an explanation, it wouldn’t satisfy you anyway. It’s here because it’s here.”

  “And we are... what, then? The last bastion of hope against Armageddon?” He heard the coffeepot rattle as she placed it on its stand. He almost didn’t hear her ask, “Am I going to die, Casey? Is this my last night?”

  The door shook in its frame when the wind punched it.

  He put his other hand on the glass and lowered his head.

  “Listen to me,” he said.

  * * * *

  A very long time ago, a very good man, who happened to be my bishop, told me I had a great violence inside. One of the reasons he sent me to Maple Landing, in fact. One of the reasons I accepted the assignment without arguing.

  Momma, she tried to control me, and God bless her, she did her best, but she couldn’t.

  The bishop was no better at that than she was.

  I killed a man tonight, Bea, and damn near throttled another. I lost my temper ... I lost control... and a man is dead because of it. The odd thing is, no one mourns him but me.

  Maybe Whittaker’s death is my fault too, and the Teagues, maybe others I don’t even know about yet.

  But forgive me, Bea, if I sound cold and uncaring, but I can’t wo
rry about that now. I just can’t. I’ve been given something to do, and I’ve tried like hell to give it back, and it turns out I can’t. I thought I could do it—give it back, go away—I thought I had done it, yet... here it is. Bad penny keeps turning up no matter how far I fling it.

  Damn thing just keeps turning up.

  * * * *