Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  “I had a crush on him since I was in junior high school, and he literally did not know I existed. I didn’t have a lot of friends then, just one or two really close girlfriends. I wasn’t shy, but I wasn’t one of the cool kids, and I stayed out of the cliques. And then I grew boobs.” Amy giggled. The sound of it made you smile. “One day I was a triple-A training bra, and the next a thirty-two D. My mama like to have a heart attack. Part of her was proud—the women on her side of the family had always had big bosoms, was how she put it. But we had to special order my bras, and suddenly boys started calling, and she went from glad I was making friends, to worried that the friends were all male.

  “And I loved every minute of it, let me tell you. Lot’s of girls don’t like the attention, and I can understand the viewpoint, but it just wasn’t me. I wore tight little Tshirts that stopped right over my belly button and I could walk down the halls and turn those heads, and I liked it, it made me feel powerful.”

  “You’re an exhibitionist, Amy,” Elyse said.

  “Don’t I know it.” Amy took a long drag from her cigarette and blew smoke out of her mouth slowly, with a satisfied ecstasy that made me want to light up a Marlboro myself.

  “I wasn’t stupid, either. I knew it wasn’t love they was wanting, but honey, my hormones were kicking in, and it wasn’t love I wanted myself. Oh, Lord, boys that age—they don’t know a lot, but there’s something to say for enthusiasm.”

  Elyse shook her head, cheeks going pink, but Milly laughed out loud.

  Amy squinted her eyes. “But the one boy I wouldn’t have sex with was Cory Edgers. Tell you the truth, I didn’t like him once he started noticing me. I thought he was boring. He was so regulated, so precise, everything had to be just so. And Mister Proper. Ask you for a date, tell you what time he was picking you up, and what time he was taking you home. He double-booked, too, and I didn’t put up with that. He’d take one girl out from six to nine, the other from nine to twelve, and didn’t care if both of them knew it. I must have turned him down a dozen times.

  “But Cory, now, is the kind of man who can’t stand being told no. The more I told him to go away, the more he wanted to date me. So I made up all kinds of rules for him. Like he had to wear a certain shirt, and get his hair cut a certain way, and eat what I told him for lunch, just to show me how much he really wanted to take me to a movie. And then when he’d do everything I told him to do, I’d call and cancel the date.”

  “You dog,” Milly said.

  Adrianne pushed away from the kitchen counter and settled into a chair. “Better listen to her, Milly, it wouldn’t hurt to give Mark a little shake-up.”

  “I don’t do that kind of manipulation,” Milly said.

  Elyse used a pair of scissors to cut most of the length off the glued-on nails. “And that’s why you spend every Saturday night just sitting on the couch watching the TV.”

  Milly rolled her eyes.

  This was a conversation that could last a year. I looked at Amy, who was lighting yet another cigarette. “So how did Cory finally get you to go out with him?”

  “He took me horseback riding. He found out from my cousin that I loved horses, and that was the one thing I couldn’t turn down. I mean, he did his homework. That’s Cory all over.” She set the Marlboro in the ashtray, grabbed the bag of Skittles and passed them over to me. I took as many as I could fit into my free hand and passed them back.

  “You know, Cory really was good to me. We’d still be married if it hadn’t been that I just didn’t want to settle down, you know? Because when Cory really loves you, he will do anything for you. But I drank and I run around on him a lot, and then I got pregnant. And when I miscarried the baby, Cory just give up on me. He wanted a family and losing that baby broke his heart. He blamed my drinking, you know, and smoking and being wild, and he was probably right. He’s funny. He really did love me, but when he turned, that was it. He could barely stand to look at me after that. Didn’t want a thing to do with me. And as far as I was concerned, it was a relief. I never did love him, not really. But he provided good, and he handled things for me, and it’s nice sometimes to be looked after. It’s just that when he does, he’s got to have things his way. And let’s face it, I’m an alcohol addict—the only thing I loved was Jim Beam.”

  “So you miss him ever?” Elyse said. “You wish you stopped drinking before the marriage broke up?”

  “Can’t quite put my finger on why, but I think the relationship between me and Cory would have been over a whole lot sooner if I’d been sober. But actually, the marriage ain’t officially over. We never got a divorce. We meant to, we just never did get around to it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Janis always tucks her hair in a John Deere ball cap when she goes to the meetings. She doesn’t like the way the men look at her when she wears it down—long blond hair gives them thoughts she does not want them to have, not around her, anyway. Not that any of them would touch her. She is the liaison—she is the Rodeo Assassin’s “woman,” because Rodeo is too smart, too careful, and too mysterious to come to the meetings himself. But the word to the wise is that he is out there, watching.

  It is dark out and very late. Nobody sees her leave.

  It’s a long drive. She makes it just as the sun comes up. She does not like to meet in the dark. Daylight is better, so they know she sees their faces.

  There are four of them today. The spokesman, the one who stands a little in front, the one the others look to, has a gray crew cut and a smile like milk gone bad. He has a Smith & Wesson .38 tucked into the back of his pants. Janis smiles a little. She knows at least five true stories of people who carried a gun tucked into the back of their pants and shot themselves in the ass. Which is all these guys are good for. She hates them as much as she hated the Enemy.

  They are all of them part and parcel of the whole thing. Every one of them had a role in Emma’s death, from the cult members, to the Feds who would not help her when she asked, to the ones who wound up burning the whole thing down and ruining any chance of a happy ending in her life.

  She is honest enough to know that she has no idea if she’d have handled Waco any better, once everything got out of hand. Too many bosses, too many opinions, too many rulebooks written by sideline experts. But she does know there didn’t have to be a Waco. She does know she’d tried to tell them, all of them; she went for help and no one listened. She tried the local police, the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the ATF. By the time she got to the ATF they were expecting her—just another nutcase from the cult fallout. We can’t help you, I’m sorry, go home. She wonders sometimes what set the whole thing off, what turn of events turned the federal guns at long last on David Koresh and Mount Carmel? What took them so long?

  Janis finds the survivalist groupies predictable, thus useful. All of them watching each other in their own bizarre universe of fanaticism, stupidity, surveillance, national security, and pissing contests. It is a pleasure to use the one to bait the other.

  There’s a new guy today. Janis doesn’t like him. He talks too much, and he looks at her, which he thinks she doesn’t notice. She wonders if he is a cop. He is too tall, too young, too pulled together and too buff to belong with the beer bellies and blowhards that made up the usual suspects. He seems a little stupid for any intelligent law enforcement agency to send undercover, but hell, nobody’s perfect.

  Lately Janis thinks of finding a little place near home, and just living quietly, riding a horse again. She has saved almost all of her money, and she knows that one of these days there will be a cop or a Fed she doesn’t spot. She is prepared. And, being Janis, she is not afraid. The last Fed had been good, and gotten closer than anyone. The woman had looked like one of the usual types, a girl with big hair, tight jeans, and a hubcap belt buckle, hanging around the cowboys. She called herself Candy.

  Janis had taken care of Candy on a Saturday night after the last show, and before the cowboys had their Sunday morning coffee.

  She pull
s a sealed envelope out of her jacket pocket and sets it down on the ground. The rule is they can’t pick it up until she leaves. The only reason she made the rule was to have a rule. Dealing with Koresh taught her a few things.

  Crew Cut looks at the envelope, then looks at her, and licks his lips. “Hey, girl, does he tell you the name?”

  Janis does not like being called “girl.”

  “I bet you look in that envelope, don’t you? Just so you know? I bet you can’t help but look.”

  “Who told you to talk?” Janis asks. Even from several yards away she can see his complexion grow darker.

  “It will happen in the next thirty-eight to forty-two hours,” Janis tells them. “Make your first broadcast at midnight.”

  Janis turns abruptly and gets back into her truck, aware that she’s added another chapter to the Rodeo Assassin Legend. Like all legends, this one has elements of fact and fiction. There isn’t a “he” and Janis is herself the assassin.

  She drives away, well aware that the buff guy has memorized the details of her truck. Except, of course, it isn’t her truck. It belongs to one of the tourists spending the night near the fairgrounds, and Janis made sure he had enough Jack Daniel’s the night before so that there is plenty of time to get the truck back before the tourist knows it’s gone.

  Janis takes off the ball cap and rolls the window down an inch. The cold air keeps her awake. She glances once into the rearview mirror, and sees the same dark brown Toyota that she saw just as she was leaving the meet. She has not seen it in the twenty minutes she has been driving since. There are no other cars and the road is long and flat, and yet for the last twenty minutes this car has stayed out of sight.

  She decreases her speed to twenty miles an hour. The Toyota is there, edging closer. Janis chews her bottom lip, thinking that someone from the group is following. Which is not in the rules. It will be that new guy, the talker. And it is as if he wants her to see him, so she pulls the truck to the side of the road and waits. Whoever he is, he’ll be sorry. She brings the cattle prod out from under the seat.

  The Toyota approaches slowly, as if the driver is making up his mind. She could be wrong, Janis thinks, and whoever it is may pass her by.

  The Toyota comes close enough for Janis to see the driver, a young woman, with curly brown hair. The Toyota pulls right in front of her truck, and the woman gets out of the car, slams the car door very hard, and faces her, hands on her hips, feet spread. Janis does not know this woman, who acts as if they have unfinished business of some kind. She gets out of the truck and leans against the grille of the pickup.

  “So what’s up?” Janis asks. She is almost amused, as well as annoyed.

  “Who are you?” the girl says.

  Janis does not reply.

  “You might as well tell me. I saw you go into the woods. I saw him go into the woods. I know the two of you had some kind of assignation, and I want to know what about.”

  “Who are you?” Janis asks.

  “Me? I’m Miranda. Cory’s girlfriend. The woman he will marry as soon as the divorce goes through with the wife. And if he’s been seeing you, I want to know it. And I want you to know exactly what you are up against here.”

  “Seeing him? As in … fucking him?”

  Miranda’s face goes dusky red. “So it’s true.”

  “That I’m fucking him? No, it’s not.”

  “You’re lying. And why bother? Why else would he meet you like that at the crack of dawn?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Very funny. But don’t give me that cop crap. This isn’t his jurisdiction.”

  Janis drums a finger on the hood of the truck. So the son of a bitch really is a cop. She is turned sideways, looking at Miranda. A stupid cop, with a stupid jealous girlfriend.

  “How long have you been seeing him?”

  “This is the first time,” Janis says.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  “But you wanted to.”

  “No. But he definitely wanted to sleep with me.”

  Miranda is quick and she uses her nails. Janis feels the skin of her cheeks sting and bleed, and she sweeps her foot between Miranda’s legs and drops the girl.

  Janis is quick now, and strong, and she grabs Miranda by the skirt and drags her to the back of the truck. The girl is screaming, but it is rage and not fear, and she kicks like a calf being roped, connecting more often than not. Janis pulls the girl up by the collar of her shirt, and grabs both arms behind her back, making sure to cause a good amount of pain.

  “Bitch.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Janis says. She is out of breath. “Now be still, if you want to know who I am.”

  Miranda kicks again, and it connects, but then she stops.

  “He’s a cop, your boyfriend?”

  “Yes, damn you.” Miranda’s chest is heaving and her face is red and swollen with tears.

  “Federal?”

  “Not yet, but he will be. He’s working with the ATF. Why, what did he tell you? That he was already hired? He will be, don’t worry. He’s one of the best, believe me. And he’s working on something that will put him at the top of the heap.”

  Janis nods, more to herself than to Miranda. Always trust that first instinct, she thinks. She’d known he was a cop on some subconscious level.

  “I have some good news for you, Miranda.”

  “And what could that possibly be?”

  Janis takes the cattle prod out of her belt. Miranda is listening now, and it is easy to hold her with one hand. “I’m not sleeping with your boyfriend, honey, and I reckon anything between us is strictly business. Unfortunately, Miranda, the business happens to be the big case he’s been working on.”

  A singe and electric crack, and Miranda drops like a brick. The cattle prod has been enhanced, and it delivers one hundred thousand volts. Miranda will not be able to move for a while. Janis moves the girl’s hair off her face. Her eyes are shut; she’s out. Janis looks up and down the road, considering. There is plenty of wire in the kit, but by the side of the road is a bad idea no matter what time of the day. And the farther away the body is from the girl’s car, the longer it will take for the cops to make an ID, and pick up a trail. But she will use the wire. So they’ll know who it is. So the cop will know, if he lives that long. Janis chews her bottom lip. All she has to do is let the group know about the infiltration. They’ll take care of him themselves.

  Miranda isn’t moving. Janis picks the girl up like a feed sack and loads her into the bed of the pickup. She brushes dirt off the hem of her Wranglers, and climbs back into the truck. Somewhere between here and there, she’ll find a place.

  Thirty minutes later, Janis takes a side road that leads to a patch of woods and a creek. Janis is tired. She drives off the little road through the field to the edge of the woods. The truck will leave tracks, the ground is damp; but she is too tired to carry Miranda across that field, and she’ll be ditching the truck soon anyway.

  Janis slings the double strap of a navy blue polyester satchel over her shoulder. Her kit. She closes the truck door gently, and walks around to the back.

  No Miranda.

  Janis frowns, circles the truck all the way around, and looks again. The back divider has been unlatched and let down. This kid has recovered from the stun in bizarrely quick time, and jumped out somewhere along the way. She is a mental, Janis thinks. Only a really crazy person could recover from a stun like that, and then have the guts to jump out of a moving truck. Janis looks back over her shoulder. She would like to go back after this girl. Likely she will find her, hurt or walking by the side of the road.

  But it is getting late, and the owner of the truck will be waking up soon. The last thing Janis needs is for the truck to be reported stolen, especially since the man spent yesterday at the rodeo, and part of last night in a bar with her.

  Miranda, she thinks. I’ll catch up with you later. You and th
e cop.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It is at worst a three-hour drive from Lexington to Clinton/Norris where Kate Edgers lived. It didn’t seem kind to call her with a hey, you don’t know me but sort of pitch that slammed her with the news that her so-called husband actually wasn’t. Kate Edgers didn’t know me; she wouldn’t believe me. She might check my story out, and find I was right, but that wouldn’t get me time and conversation.

  It seemed reasonable at three this afternoon when I took the Raccoon Valley Road exit off I-75 to find her house and talk to her face-to-face. It was now past seven, pitch-dark and windy, and I was on some road called Kent’s Ferry, which was patchy with ice, and clearly a death trap for possums, whose remains appeared regularly on the side of the road. I had no idea how to get back to the interstate, much less to the Edgers’s house. On my right was a mobile home, with three cars in pieces to one side, and at least twelve dogs in and around the property. All of them were barking. I had just passed a sizable two-story house, newly built, with a circular driveway and a Ford Explorer out front. Before that was some kind of a chicken farm. Although I had lived in the South all my life, I had never been this far out of the real world. It was dark this far out from the city (any city) and patches of fog floated across the road. I felt sure I was going in circles, but nothing looked familiar, and there were no recognizable landmarks that meant I had been this way before.

  I pulled off the side of the road and flipped the cell phone open. There was service. This was still Earth.

  I dialed information and found that Bell South was alive and well. “Edgers, please. On Kent’s Ferry Road.”

  Information gave me the number, then dialed it for me, and a woman answered on the second ring.

  “My name is Lena Padget, and I’d like to talk to Kate Edgers, please.”

  “I’m Kate Edgers. I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

  “Please don’t hang up. I’m really lost out here.” I didn’t fake the panic in my voice. “I got off on Raccoon Valley Road at three o’clock this afternoon and I have been wandering around this mountain ever since.”