Strange Country

by Deborah Coates

  “You’ll never get him to admit it,” Margaret Otis said.

  She was tall, large-boned and broad-shouldered, looked as if she could wrestle steers, though as far as Boyd knew, she’d grown up in Rapid City and had never even ridden a horse. She had long, thick light brown hair that usually hung down her back in a single braid, though tonight she had it pinned up in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She was wearing jeans, a blue and yellow sweatshirt that said, SDSU JACKS on the front, and a fleece-and-canvas vest. “You want to come in the house?” she asked. “We’ve got coffee.”

  “We called the fire department,” Nate announced. “They were fast! They had the siren and the lights and everything. It was loud!”

  “The siren?”

  “Your house exploded!” He made a noise and threw his hands wide to demonstrate.

  “I know,” Boyd said. “Was it scary?”

  “It was a little scary,” Nate admitted. “But there wasn’t very much fire. Just smoke and stuff.” Boyd thought he sounded disappointed. “Do you think someone was trying to kill you? Like in the movies?” Nate asked.

  “No one’s trying to kill me,” Boyd said. “It was an accident.” He’d pulled off his gloves as he crossed the yard and he looked at his hands, which were filthy, dirt and soot etched into the creases of his knuckles like he’d been cleaning battleships with toothbrushes. He’d given his handkerchief to Hallie, which left him nothing to wipe his hands on now except his khaki pants, which were already soaked and covered with mud.

  “Accidents don’t just happen,” Nate said.

  “What?” Boyd asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said with an exaggerated shrug, “that’s what my dad says.”

  Your dad’s wrong, Boyd thought, though he didn’t say it. Sometimes accidents were just accidents—not that this was, but he remembered when he’d wrecked his Jeep Cherokee down in Iowa. That had been an accident. Sometimes things actually did just happen.

  “He misses his dad,” Margaret Otis said in her blunt way. She tousled Nate’s hair until he jerked his head away.

  “I’m sorry if your sons were frightened,” Boyd said. “They’re not worried about your house, are they? Because what happened here won’t happen to you.”

  “What did happen?” Meg asked. “And don’t tell me it was a gas leak. Because I didn’t believe that the last time, and it’s completely unlikely that it was the cause this time. If it had been your kitchen or even the back bedroom, you might get me to believe the furnace was involved. But that wall?” She shook her head. “There’s no way. There’s no ductwork along there. There’s no gas line on this side of the house either. Besides, whatever it was blew out not up.”

  She grinned. “I installed gas furnaces for a living before the kids.”

  “I can’t really explain it,” Boyd said.

  “Mom.” Nate tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “I thought we were going to show him.”

  Meg Otis looked up the street, then across Boyd’s yard to the gap in the side of his house, where Hallie had tarp and ladders and three people including Ole to help her seal things up. She looked all the way down the street the other way. “Nate wants to show you something. He found it,” she said. “Afterwards.”

  Without seeming to, Boyd moved Meg and Nate and himself so the hedge that separated their yards was now between them and any few remaining onlookers.

  “Nate says it talks to him.” Meg said it apologetically, like—crazy kid—but also as if she couldn’t help believing it a little, and it scared and angered her in approximately equal measure.

  Boyd didn’t ask what talked to Nate. He already knew. “Can you show it to me?” he asked. He squatted down so he could see the boy’s face. It had started to rain again, gentle but cold, the drops making a pattering sound as they hit Boyd’s slicker. Nate pulled the stone out of his pocket, the large dark one, and let it lie in the palm of his hand. “It told me where to find it,” he confided.

  “Where was that?” Boyd asked.

  Nate pointed straight to the spot Boyd had planned to search, just inside the Otis yard in a straight line from his office.

  “What else does it tell you?”

  Nate shrugged. “Just stuff,” he said.

  “Different voices?” He didn’t want to ask if they were the voices of dead people, because it sounded really crazy, not just a little, and because he didn’t want to scare Nate or his mother any more than they possibly already were, but he did want to know. He hoped knowing would tell him more about the nature of the stones, about what sort of affinity Nate had. Whatever it was, was probably going to be hell for him someday, and Boyd was sorry the boy had been the one to pick the stone up.

  “No”—Nate said it like Boyd was just being dumb—“not different voices. It’s like another kid,” he said. He looked at the stone, then sighed. “It tells me what people think. Like right now? My mom is thinking that her feet are cold and she hopes she turned off the stove before she came out here and Stevie my brother is probably jumping on the bed right now and it better not break. And you’re thinking that it’s cold and you think I must be cold but I’m not and how much is it going to cost to fix your house and what will the insurance say and how will it get done because Stalking Horse and it’s important and what if the world ends or someone dies. And there’s someone over there”—he didn’t pause to give Boyd time to say anything, but waved vaguely across the street—“thinking that you better not go looking for any more things that aren’t your business because you’re not stupid or maybe you are stupid and if you don’t watch out … Well, you better watch out,” he finished with a half-startled look on his face.

  Boyd stood and walked out to the sidewalk, looked up and down the street. There was no one on the sidewalk he didn’t recognize. Two cars and a pickup drove past slow. The cars belonged to Mrs. Pierce from over on Main and Jed Klein, and he was pretty sure the pickup was Patty Littlejohn’s. There were headlights at the end of the street, someone turning around in someone’s driveway, and there could be other people he couldn’t see or someone who’d turned away or driven by when he wasn’t looking. He returned, put a hand on Nate’s shoulder and said, “Who? Your mom and me and who else?”

  “It doesn’t tell me who,” Nate said, shifting the stone from one hand to the other, “but I know what my mom sounds like. And you. And the other one is just … loud. Not like they’re right here like you or my mom. Like they’re yelling.”

  “I have to take it back,” Boyd said.

  “Yeah,” Nate sighed. “Can I come look at it sometimes?”

  “Maybe,” Boyd said. Even without the stone, Nate had something—empathy? Sensitivity? The stones enhanced things that were already there, as far as Boyd could tell. It couldn’t create abilities in someone who didn’t already have them.

  “Tel Sigurdson was here earlier,” Meg said suddenly.

  “Tel Sigurdson?”

  “He was looking for you—knocked on your door, then came over to see if I’d seen you or knew when you’d be back. He seemed angry, which was why I mention it. Because of what Nate said about someone’s—” She stumbled over the words. Hard to believe, what her son had just demonstrated, but she was practical and she knew what she’d been thinking and whether it matched what Nate had said. “—someone’s thoughts. Maybe it was him.”

  “It doesn’t sound like him,” Boyd said doubtfully. Tel Sigurdson owned a majority of the land in Taylor County and was one of the few truly successful ranchers in the area.

  Meg frowned. “No. In general, he’s pretty easygoing. That’s been my experience. Although … I heard he lost a bundle on that whole Uku-Weber disaster. Had to sell off a bunch of cattle. For bad prices too. You know he wanted to buy the Packer place, which I expect he thought he’d get for pretty much nothing. I heard he can’t even scrape up the money for that.”

  “How do you know all this?” Boyd asked.

  Meg grinned. “Tel’s wife, Pat, and I did the lunch for
Delores Pabahar’s funeral. You know, over to the Lutheran church? Pat’s mad as fire at Tel, even though she thought Uku-Weber was a good investment too, at the time. Or maybe because of that. Pat Sigurdson doesn’t care all that much about jewelry or fancy cars, but she likes property. If it’s for sale in Taylor County, she’s interested in it. I don’t think she cares that the ranch is struggling or that they have to pinch pennies, but I think she cares that they lost some land and some cattle over it.”

  “So you think Tel is looking for ways to make money?” Boyd asked.

  Meg raised an eyebrow. “He’s always looking for ways to make money,” she said. “Why?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on,” Boyd told her. “Why he’d want to talk to me particularly.”

  “Seems like there’s a lot going on,” she said. “I’m home most days, and since that ‘gas leak’”—Boyd could hear the skepticism in her voice—“I’ve paid particular attention to what goes on right on this street. Which, frankly, isn’t all that much most of the time. Except your house. Lots happening there,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to worry.”

  Meg waved a hand toward Boyd’s house. “I’m not worried about that,” she said. “About our house exploding or anything.” Her voice dropped. “What I’m worried about is Nate, about stones that talk to him, about what all that means. I’m worried that you know about things like that, that you’re not even surprised. I’m worried about what it says about the world and what I always thought I knew.”

  “Yeah,” Boyd said. “I know.”

  * * *

  It was nearly ten o’clock when Hallie pulled back into the yard at the ranch. There were no notes on posts, no shadows in fields, and the rain had stopped, which was something. Boyd had said he’d be right behind her, but she couldn’t see his lights down the road. She headed out to the corral to check the horses. The gelding came to the fence and she rubbed his neck. He pushed his nose against her shoulder.

  She’d been thinking about Prue’s ghost, about why it wasn’t following her. She’d expected it. Had been waiting for it every time she left the ranch the last few days, but there had been nothing. Maybe Prue didn’t think she had unfinished business. Maybe she didn’t care who’d killed her. It was hard for Hallie to imagine, just drifting away as if none of it really mattered, as if your whole life came to nothing in the end. At least that’s how it would have felt to her. Hallie sure wouldn’t do it. She wasn’t leaving this place or her life without a fight.

  She heard a car down the road and she waited, leaning against the gate. Headlights illuminated the yard, reflected off the windshield of her pickup and an upstairs window on the house. A minute later, Boyd’s SUV pulled in. His brake lights flashed. The engine idled for several seconds and then died. When the door opened and he got out, Hallie could see he was still wearing his yellow rain slicker, and even streaked with mud, it was like a beacon in the darkness.

  “Boyd.”

  Hallie didn’t say it very loudly, not much above her regular speaking voice, but he turned and looked in her direction. It made her heart jump, that he was attuned, that he would know, that there was someone in her life who listened, who knew what she knew, who was so not her type, and yet everything she’d ever wanted. She was wearing a black Carhartt vest, a blue and black buffalo plaid shirt, and was standing underneath the overhang of the corral lean-to. She didn’t think he could see her, but he headed her way unerringly. He didn’t say anything when he reached her, put his arms around her, and kissed her. She kissed him back, and though she’d already decided not to be afraid anymore, to face what came, there was a—she didn’t know what to call it—peacefulness, maybe, from standing there with him. It wasn’t even a new feeling, more one she forgot each time or couldn’t let herself believe in when she was dealing with the world and Taylor County.

  “Let’s go inside,” she finally said. “There’s a lot to talk about.”

  She made coffee, had drunk enough coffee the last few days, she felt like she should be floating. Boyd shed his slicker and rain pants, went upstairs to wash, and came back down in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair spiked up, like he’d forgotten to comb it.

  “I put one of the stones in the bedroom,” he said. “One of them in your office. Where are the others?”

  Hallie dug them out of her back pocket. Boyd unwrapped them. He put one of them in the dining room on a shelf and brought the other one back into the kitchen and placed it on the table.

  Hallie looked at it. It was small and smooth and it looked, well, ordinary.

  “Tomorrow I’ll take one of them into town and put it in a safe deposit box,” Boyd said. “That should keep things safe.”

  “Jesus, I hope Laddie doesn’t show up before you go,” Hallie said.

  Boyd looked startled, like that scenario hadn’t occurred to him yet. Without a word he took the stone off the kitchen table and headed out the back door. A minute later he was back. “I put it in my SUV,” he said. He poured coffee for himself and Hallie before sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. “Maybe that’s why they buried one of them,” he said. “So there wouldn’t be any mistakes.”

  “Yeah. And I suppose they wouldn’t actually do anything here, inside the ring. But we’re not testing it,” she said firmly. She pulled out a chair and sat. “Who do you think ‘they’ are, anyway?”

  “Prue Stalking Horse, for one,” Boyd said. He ran a hand through his hair and spiked the front up even more. “Her sister? I don’t know. I’d like to find out more about her, the sister. Though she couldn’t have had anything to do with Prue’s death. She’s been gone twenty years. But maybe if we knew more about what happened then, we’d know more about what is going on now.”

  “The fourth stone,” Hallie said. “You found it in Jasper?”

  Boyd nodded. “You know where that old farmhouse was? It was buried in the cellar.”

  “Martin Weber’s grandmother’s house?” Hallie said.

  “Yeah,” Boyd said. “You wouldn’t expect that to be a coincidence.”

  “So, Prue Stalking Horse had a body and three stones in her cellar. An old farmhouse that was destroyed twenty years ago had a fourth stone buried in that cellar. And it just happens that the woman who used to live in that house practiced perversion magic and had a grandson who tried to use that same magic and blood sacrifice to control the world.”

  “The world’s weather, anyway. Do you know how it was destroyed? The Weber house?” Boyd asked.

  “In the tornado, I’m assuming, when Jasper was destroyed. Are you hungry?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer, but got up and opened the refrigerator.

  “I don’t think so,” Boyd said. “It burned.”

  Hallie looked at him. “Really?” She took a plate of cold cuts, bread, cheese, and milk out of the refrigerator and a bag of chips off a shelf. She brought everything over to the table and grabbed plates and silverware and glasses.

  “Besides, the stone was buried after the house was destroyed,” Boyd added. “At least according to the photographs I found.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Hallie said. She went back to the refrigerator and got mustard and sliced tomatoes and lettuce.

  “It makes sense,” Boyd said. “It has to make sense. We just don’t know what kind of sense it makes.”

  “Well, who?” Hallie asked. “Who wanted Prue dead? Who are your suspects?”

  “Same as before. Laddie Kennedy. Tel Sigurdson. That’s a long shot. But there’s some connection there, I think. Random unknown killer. Someone we don’t suspect and have no evidence for.”

  “So, not much progress,” Hallie said. “Haven’t you heard anything new from DCI?”

  “No, they’ve had this other thing in Rapid City, which shouldn’t involve them since Rapid City has its own detectives, but apparently does.”

  His cell phone rang and he answered it. Hallie got up while he was talking and went upstairs, having pretty muc
h just that minute realized that she was cold, her jeans still damp from the rain and walking out into the field earlier in the day.

  When she returned in an old pair of jeans and an oversized sweatshirt, Boyd was putting his phone back in his pocket. “That was Gerson,” he said. “She heard about the explosion and wanted to know if it was related to the investigation.”

  Hallie laughed. “What did you tell her?”

  “Maybe? She’s going to be in town tomorrow, says they think they’ve identified the body.”

  Hallie was putting together a sandwich, and she stopped with a piece of bread in her hand. “Who?”

  “William Packer.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” Boyd rubbed his eyes. “She’s bringing more information tomorrow.”

  “Eat something,” Hallie said.

  Boyd laid a hand on Hallie’s arm. “Tell me what’s been going on here. Are you okay?” There was an underlying urgency in his voice that made Hallie lay down the sandwich she’d just finished making and face him.

  “I’m fine,” Hallie said. Better, at least. At least she thought she was better.

  Boyd took a breath. “I had a dream about you. I dreamed that you died.”

  Hallie put her hand over his. “I did die,” she said. “You’ve had that dream before.”

  He shook his head. “This was different. This was now. It was new.”

  “I’m not going to die,” she said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  She hoped like hell that it was true.

  20

  Hallie woke while it was still dark. She could feel Boyd beside her, hear him breathing. She liked that, liked that he was there. She shifted onto her elbow and looked at him. He still looked too young, too pretty—not handsome, not exactly, more like the lead singer in a boy band or the teenaged son on a bad sitcom.

  “Are you looking at me?” he asked without opening his eyes.

  “Yes.” She kissed him.

  He put a hand on the back of her neck and pulled her closer. The kiss deepened. She slipped the tip of her tongue into his mouth and moved so she was above him. There was time; for once there was time enough. Wind rattled against the window.