“No, none at all. He’s a good student. Quiet.” She paused, chose her words carefully. “I’m not sure he has a lot of friends.”
“No, he never has. More of a loner that way, like his mother, actually. After his mother left, it got worse.”
“I’ve heard that. I’m so sorry. It must have been hard for both of you.”
The sheriff blinked, slow, as a new round of drinks arrived, unordered. “I think Murfee was too small for her, Anne. Nothing more than that.”
• • •
During the rest of dinner he never mentioned Evelyn again or asked her anything else about Marc. His lost wife was a ghost the sheriff didn’t believe in and refused to be haunted by, and if nothing else, she admired that will, that commitment. Instead, they talked about their respective lives, about the safe parts for her that didn’t raise specters. Sheriff Ross proved to be charming, surprisingly eloquent; good-looking in a rugged, weather-stained way. But their ages surfaced nearly everywhere, their frame of references so different. She wasn’t sure, but he was probably twenty-five years older than she was, maybe a little more. It wasn’t that he tried to act younger—he was comfortable enough with his age not to be silly about it—and spending time with him didn’t feel like being with her father, but it still felt off. Like that dinner in Austin long ago, or at least what felt like long ago, where she’d caught him looking at her—studying her, his eyes a few degrees cooler than the rest of his expression, which at any given moment might have been smiling or laughing.
By the end of it all she was tired, ready to be home, ready to curl up with Chris Cherry’s old book, but just before ordering a dessert she didn’t really want, she brought up the deputy in passing—how well the sheriff knew him when he was growing up in Murfee. The sheriff answered politely, went on about a couple of his football games and how more than half the town owed their teeth to Chris’s father, but it was clear he hadn’t driven to Artesia to talk about one of his deputies. Those eyes again gave it away. She didn’t ask about Chris Cherry anymore.
Sheriff Ross had an undeniable presence—heavy, ambient. Under a bright sun, he might cast two long shadows instead of one. And he had that will, but so had Lucas Neill, until the very end.
• • •
Lucas Neill didn’t grow up in Austin. The press liked to claim he hadn’t really grown up anywhere at all, living with a man thought to be his father for a while, then his mother, finally an aunt in Austin, where he settled for the longest time and attended James Bowie. He was a good student when he chose to be. Like Caleb Ross, he didn’t have a lot of friends. Much later they would call that troubled. But she knew that from the start.
It began with those texts, the first ones on that rainy day in her classroom. She caught up with him after school that very day and told him his texts were flattering but inappropriate. Wildly inappropriate. She wouldn’t bring it to the school’s attention, but she wanted him to stop. He had to. He ran from her into the rain; pale, angry, his dark hair plastered onto his head, looking all of twelve rather than seventeen. It was the cover of a bad romance novel. The press was right, he never had grown up. She yelled after him to calm down, her words lost to thunder. But he did stop, for a little while. Before starting up again about three weeks later, the texts coming at various times both inside and outside school, her phone blinking at three a.m. while Marc slept or was on shift. She didn’t respond, never responded, just deleted them as fast as they came in, but then there were other little things as well: a flower tucked under her car’s wiper blade; a small, handwritten note slipped into a desk drawer; things appearing, disappearing, like smoke. Most of the later texts and notes weren’t even about her, but his problems at school, at his aunt’s home, vague suggestions of even vaguer abuse.
If his words had gotten intimate, too sexual, too fast, she might have shut it down just as fast—gone to the front office, asked for a transfer; just changed her goddamn number like she did after it was too late anyway, when it was only the media and worse calling her. Instead, she’d started worrying about him, pulled under by his rising tide of sadness and loneliness and frustration. Slow, inexorable, encroaching, so that she was up to her chin, then deeper, before she even knew it.
One night the phone had buzzed again and again, LED flickering, text after text. Marc was out and she’d tried to ignore it, curled up on their couch, but it kept on. It was Luke’s way of yelling for attention. Something bad had happened. When she finally broke down and read his texts they hadn’t made any sense, trailing off into random letters, numbers—half words or just her name, over and over again. He was hurt or being hurt. She tried to put the phone away, but came back to it again.
Where r u? Where r u? Pls don’t fckn ignore me. Can u hear me?
She’d tried calling Marc, but he never picked up. Maybe if he had, if they could’ve talked for a few minutes about something, anything—about what they were doing for the weekend or his new pain-in-the-ass sergeant at work or even Christmas, which was still two months away—she’d have gotten up the courage to admit right then and there that there was a crazy boy from her school drowning her. How she was in way over her head and didn’t know what to do about it anymore and couldn’t make it stop. But he hadn’t answered, and her phone had continued to act like a thing possessed, as if Luke knew she was alone. And it was possible he did know—that he’d been watching her all along—so it was no risk keeping it up until she finally broke down and texted back for the first time.
Three words, that was all. Three words to make him stop, though she should’ve known how wrong she was. Not even words, not really. R u okay?
• • •
“Are you okay?”
Anne pulled away from the window, where darkness ran past her and stars were faint and fading. “No, no, I’m sorry. I got lost in a thought.”
Sheriff Ross nodded. “There’s an area up here alongside the road. It’s famous, known for its ghost lights. People say they’ve seen things out there, so the town built a little pavilion, like a picnic spot, for those with an interest to keep watch. Kids come out here, been doing it since . . . well, since I was still a kid.”
“So have you ever seen any lights out here, any ghosts left behind?”
“Me? No, of course not. I don’t believe in stuff like that, never have. Of course, can’t say I ever took the time to look, either.”
Like you didn’t look for your wife? she wondered—a dark thought, probably uncalled for—as they passed the pavilion he’d just mentioned, a rickety wooden affair with a handful of small white signs and a little gravel turnabout. It was there, then gone.
“I enjoyed tonight, Anne. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to get out. It was good of you to agree to come to Murfee. I hope at the end of the school year, you’ll consider staying. I’ve talked to Phil Tanner, he let me know how much trouble we’ll have filling Tancy Garner’s spot. If you don’t at least consider it, we’ll be back to square one.”
“That’s very kind. I’ve enjoyed being here as well. I guess it’s too early for me to say what will be best—for the school or for me—but I’ll think about it.”
“Please do. If I can put in a personal appeal, I wouldn’t mind you staying on. New faces in our little old town aren’t a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.”
“No, I guess not.”
He tapped his fingers as if a thought had just occurred to him, but not really. “Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of weeks. Unless you have other plans or were planning on getting out of town, well, Caleb and I would love to have you up to the house.”
“That’s nice, but I really couldn’t impose.”
“Not at all. I may head up to a piece of land I have and see about grabbing an elk. Have you ever had it?” He caught her expression, laughed. “Now, don’t make a face. Cooked up proper, it’s not half as bad as you’d think, and I’m not a half-bad cook. The
re’ll be all the traditional plates as well, and I’ll get Modelle Greer to whip up a couple of pies, which are not my specialty. I’ll invite a few others and it’ll be fine, I promise.”
R u okay?
The sheriff waited for her reply even as she fought another dark thought, a sudden suspicion that she’d be alone with him at Thanksgiving—all these “others” he’d mentioned suddenly having other plans, other commitments.
R u okay?
She wondered then about the real reason for her being in Murfee. Like that thing with her address in Austin and the notes he’d sent; all his calls to a cell number that she’d changed more than once in the last year. She could, with only a little effort, trace a faint but nearly straight line from their first meeting in that steakhouse in Austin to that call from Dial Johnson to this moment right here, right now, sitting in the truck with the sheriff. She struggled with the improbable idea that he’d somehow planned this all along, made it happen through sheer force of will—his will. Imagining too just how long he must have been thinking about it, thinking about her, while biding his time. And as crazy as it all sounded, now that she’d let those awful thoughts loose, she couldn’t catch hold of them again, remembering each handwritten note and each call and each wave hello. His eyes kept hidden behind mirrored sunglasses but still watching her, and how she’d caught a glimpse of someone she thought was the sheriff sitting outside in the dark outside her house. Remembering, finally, the way he’d looked at her in Austin all those months ago, not long before his wife disappeared . . .
Murfee wouldn’t be a new start for her even if she’d really hoped it could be. It was never going to be an honest chance to leave Austin and Lucas Neill behind, free and clear. She hadn’t guessed it until now, but the sheriff had been the price of escape all along. As bad as she wanted right at that moment to get out of the moving truck, to run and put miles of desert emptiness between them, there was nowhere to go. Not now, not until the end of school. She had committed to being here, was committed to seeing it through. She had no good choices, just like she had no good excuse for Thanksgiving, either, which left her probably stopping in for dinner, at least for a little while. There was no polite or easy way to avoid it, but of course he knew that already, like he seemed to know so many other things about her. As long as she was here, she didn’t want to anger him or upset him, even though she couldn’t exactly say why. She didn’t want him staring at her through his sunglasses, waiting outside in the night. But after the holiday, she’d do her best to pleasantly avoid him and finish up the last of the school year and then get the hell out of Murfee and Texas altogether. She was finally done, and she almost laughed out loud just to hide how badly she wanted to cry.
Is this how Evelyn Ross felt?
“Of course, I’d be happy to come up to the house for Thanksgiving.”
12
CALEB
Amé once asked me about the last moment I remember with my mom. Was she worried, sad? Afraid? Was there any hint of what was going to happen next?
You can’t live in my house, with my father, without sadness, without fear. It comes with the territory. She struggled with all of those things, and so do I now. Always. But that last morning I saw my mom, I saw none of that. She chatted with me, asked me about the upcoming week. She volunteered at school, but it wasn’t her scheduled day. She said she had errands to run, might meet my father for lunch. She hummed in the kitchen, and early sunlight, not quite bright, fell on her face when she turned away from me.
I remember it so clear . . . how young she still looked with the sun on her. It lit her face, her eyes closed, lost in thought. It looked unreal. She looked unreal—beautiful, like a painting. Then I got up and grabbed my books and headed out and never saw her again.
But if I really concentrate on that last moment, and if I’m really honest, I can’t say that she was afraid or sad, angry or hurt. If anything, in that moment—with light on her face and her eyes closed—she looked relieved.
• • •
Ms. Hart is avoiding me. I know she saw me after school yesterday, but she made a U-turn and headed out the other door to the parking lot. The day before, she saw me near her house and instead of parking, drove on down the street, disappearing, making sure not to look at me as she went by, and still hadn’t come home an hour later. Today I tried to hang back after class to speak with her, but she stayed close to the other teachers and there was never a good opportunity. Later, she even spent a half hour talking to Principal Tanner, waiting me out.
Maybe she thinks it has to do with her having dinner with my father in Artesia, and in all the wrong ways, she’s right. I need her to get Chris Cherry to meet with me. If I can make him see the truth about Rudy Reynosa, maybe he’ll see all the truths about my father, too. Something has to happen soon. For Amé, for Ms. Hart, for all of us.
• • •
There was one moment after my mother was gone I thought about hurting myself. I got the Ruger out of the gun locker, put it deep in my mouth, making sure my arms were long enough to reach the trigger. The barrel tasted nothing like metal. I was still there with that gun in my mouth, my stolen shells chambered and tears on my face, when my father drove up to the house.
The garage door went up, loud, and the engine of his truck echoed like thunder below me. I had enough warning to take a position at the top of the second-floor stairs; crouched down, on one knee, the Ruger steadied against the wall. Back in the shadows, I was invisible. I had clear aim down the stairs, nearly into the kitchen. But for a man who’s never been late to anything, he took too damn long in the garage, messing around, and I never found out what he was doing in there. That was my moment to handle my business, our horrible family business. But with so many minutes to think about it, I got scared and didn’t do anything at all. I had more than enough time to slip the gun under my bed, leave it there for later, when I could get it back safe into the gun cabinet.
13
THE JUDGE
He didn’t dream, so much. But he remembered things that only surfaced at night. Conversations he might have had, things that had happened to him as a boy. Things he’d done. More and more he remembered her hair. She’d kept it pulled up and he hated that, figuring she did it up so often because he hated it. He loved it when it was down, when it hung around her shoulders, falling like daybreak. It was blond and not blond, there and not there, the color of distant desert lightning. Lightning that came alone, without rain. He was always afraid to run his fingers through it, afraid of how sharp and electric it’d be and how it might hurt him. She wanted to color it once, darker, and he told her he’d kill her if she did. His moods regarding such things were unpredictable. But he remembered her hair, now more than ever, and he couldn’t say why.
• • •
Dupree stank, sitting in the office chair across from his desk, a can of pop at hand. His eyes were deep in his head, lost, his skin paper-thin and greasy. If he hadn’t known Dupree’s history, he would have thought Dupree was coming off a three-day drunk, but his chief deputy had never taken a drop of alcohol. He was rank as a dead body, though—something someone had dug up and propped up in front of him.
He sat back in his chair, waited for whatever Dupree had to say. Dupree had caught him, trapped him. The other man rolled his eyes like marbles in his head, like he was trying to see backward through his own damn skull, casting around as if he’d never been in this office, in that chair. His fingers danced, did a little a jig, and he picked at invisible things on his shirt—dirt, maybe. Or blood.
“Been a while, you know? You and me, like this.”
He sighed, tapped a penknife. “Like what, Duane? Like what exactly?”
Duane lost focus on whatever was on his shirt, rubbed at it, and sat up straight like he was now paying full attention. “I thought we was friends, always thought we was the best of friends.”
“Have I done anything
to make you feel different, Duane?”
Dupree laughed, little more than a giggle. “You don’t call, you don’t write. I was beginning to think you’d washed your hands of me, so to speak.”
He stared at Dupree, trying to back him down with a look that had worked so often on so many. But whatever Dupree saw behind his own bloodshot eyes was more sharp-edged and dangerous than he was. Then it fell together—the arterial cast to Dupree’s eye, and his yellow skin. He wasn’t drunk or being crazy, he was wasted, burned out. How, and for how long, he didn’t know, but it looked bad, very bad. His chief deputy might have been getting it from Eddie Corazon, or anywhere, really. God only knew who he’d been talking to or who had seen him like this. Duane didn’t have the sense anymore to be afraid, not of the things that mattered.
“I understand, Duane.”
Dupree cocked his head, one eye shut like he was thinking hard. “Do you now, do you really?” He rolled his head the other way. “It seems to me you don’t even know the damn question yet.”
“Fair enough. You tell me, then.”
Duane grinned with teeth too big for his head. “You get a piece of that little teacher yet?”
He hesitated, not sure where Dupree was going. “What’s that got to do with—”
Dupree stopped him short, something he had never, ever done. “Seems to me you been spendin’ time trying to get in her panties, not paying sufficient mind to other things . . . important things.”
“Like what?” Like you, Duane Dupree.
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