Who knows, maybe I’d managed to get out of the church without getting shot. Or maybe I had been shot, but then died and so there was no more pain. There was a certain beauty in that notion.
That was a notion I didn’t believe for shit.
So in this darkness, I saw everything blown away. The church, the guns, the priests, the cop. Everyone in the church glared at me like it was all my fucking fault. Dead or dreaming or both, my guts twisted. Last thing I wanted to see was their faces...or the blood rain from their bodies.
But I saw something else, too.
A skanky tattoo shop, sandwiched between two flea-bag hotels, walls thin enough that everyone could hear how good business was for the five-spot whores. Squalid neon advertising that painted the street in lurid reds and blues, purples and greens, and bent the shadows throughout the wet and scummy streets. Music poured through the open window, sometimes rap, sometimes 1970s soul, sometimes twangy country. The rap came from gangsta wannabees, black and white, who cruised with their hands hanging out windows holding cell phones to look the slightest bit like guns. The twang came from tough country boys who’d grown up on the ranches forgotten in the Zachary County outback and who came to town on the weekends looking to trade their homemade meth for a quick roll with a city chick, preferably dark skinned but don’t tell anybody.
A single, hanging bulb cast the room in the same yellow as the sanctuary, and exactly as in the church, the yellow didn’t hide the blood. The main chair, where the artist had done his work, and the two benches where people waited, were both bloody.
And it was pretty much my fault.
That much I knew. But seeing the room didn’t tell me anything else about that night.
Didn’t tell me who else might have been dead besides my father. Didn’t tell me how they died. Didn’t tell me why I’d killed my father. Or why I’d chopped his foot off and taken it with me.
All of that was lost in repressed memories or drunken memories or just a cheap black hole of fear.
The question was why did that black hole of fear smell like pig shit?
I opened my eyes as we drove past a muddy yard filled to overflowing with swine. Had to be a hundred porkers there, farting and snorting and staring at me with an odd complacency.
“Y’all gonna live or what?”
Live? Probably not. I was, after all, in the side car of a broken down piece of crap that would absolutely kill me. “The hell am I doing here? Where’s my damned cooler?”
“Relax, White-Boy Darcy. Down by y’all’s feet.”
Blue, beat up, and scarred. With a cracked handle. Somehow, Cope had managed to get both the cooler and me out of the church.
“I put my veggie in there, right on top. Why’n’t y’all hand it to me?”
“Keep your food out of my cooler,” I said as I handed the man his cuke. “You did a good job, boy scout, saving me and all. Now stop this thing and let me out.”
“Ain’t happening. Gotta get us safe.” Cope jerked his head toward the church and crunched into the cuke.
My stomach rolled. Above the church, orange fingers scratched at a black smoke that burned the entire Valentine, Texas, sky.
“Holy fucking Mary of God.”
A quick sting snapped my face; not Cope’s hand, but the cucumber he held. He growled. “Blasphemer. Watch your language.”
“Ease up with banging on me, Cope. I get’cha, no problem, but I don’t—”
“Speaking of problems, that li’l fire ain’t our only one.”
Sirens filled the air, a soundtrack to the burning. Squad cars—Jeff Davis County deputies and Valentine police and probably squads from Culberson and Brewster Counties—as well as fire engines and ambulances, blasted through town, smearing screams through the afternoon air while those orange fingers kept gigging at that sky.
Beneath the racket of the sirens, I clearly heard the pops of aluminum melting and wood snapping and the moans of the dying. But I could smell, as though I were standing there in the middle of it, burning flesh.
I leaned over the side and threw up. Ropes of vomitus trailed behind us.
“They all ever’where.” Cope’s voice fought with the sound of the bike engine. “Robe’s trailing.”
I grabbed my robe, which had been flapping out behind us, and stuffed it under my ass.
“We got Five-O behind us right now.” Cope eased up on the accelerator.
“Shit fire.”
Though I couldn’t see the cop, I felt him big as day. Cruising behind us, nose up our butts, watching. Probably running the license plate.
“Son of a bitch, he’s going to run the plate.”
“Calm down,” Cope said. “Don’t worry ’bout that plate.”
He signaled, turned, and I wrenched the right side rearview mirror around so I could see. A Valentine city car came around with us, then abruptly stopped, backed up, blasted its siren and headed down another street.
“Jesus Christ, that was close.”
“Y’all best not take that name in vain.”
I chuckled, but Cope did not. He kept his eyes on the road while his lips tightened.
“I ain’t playing. I am a lot of things, White-Boy Darcy, but I ain’t blasphemous.”
“Uh...okay. Sorry.” I swallowed. “The cops can’t find us.”
“Y’all think?”
“Listen to me. They. Can’t. Find. Us. They’ll ask all kinds of questions. Damnit, they’ll want to take us in.”
“I know, Darcy, I know.”
“Fuck. We can’t let them—”
“I know.” Cope’s voice boomed. “Shut up and let me drive.”
“Damnit. It was just a little fire.”
“Little got big.”
All those cops and deputies. They led back to SuperCop. It was inevitable. SuperCop would hear about the fire and he’d know I was involved. He was that kind of detective, made those kinds of intuitive leaps. Ninety percent inspiration, eight percent shoe leather, and two percent Pop-Tarts and Dr Pepper. That’s how he worked, always had been and always would be until they laid him and his shoe leather in a nice rosewood coffin and shoved him six feet down.
“We’ve got to get out of town.”
“Ain’t going anywhere any time soon,” Cope said.
He whipped the handle bars and the bike shot across the street and down an alley. Cope crouched close to the gas tank, maybe looking to disappear into it. He slung us into a driveway, then into a wide garage. A tiny car filled a little more than half the garage. Cope angled the bike sideways and killed the engine.
“Are you crazy? Don’t stop, they’ll find us.”
“We keep going they gonna find us. Got to hunker down.” Jumping off the bike, Cope slammed the garage door. It was an old garage, with a creaky door and loose slats. Cope peered through those slats. “God’s lookin’ out for us, ain’t She? Leaving this garage open?”
When I looked through those slats, a county car crept through the alley. In front of the garage, the deputy stopped. His face was clear. He fixed on the garage and took a long, serious look at the door.
Because of our tracks.
Right into the garage. Rather, from the dirt alley onto the paved driveway where they ended. But they ended pointing to the garage.
“Y’all gimme that board.”
Together, and as quietly as we could, we put the board through one end of the door frame and tied the other end with a bit of wire hanging against the wall.
The deputy—he looked like a Davis County cop—climbed from his cruiser, radioed something on his portable, and headed for the garage. His hand wasn’t on his gun, but he was twitching to put it there. The town was burning down and he had no idea what was going on. He stopped and listened, his head cocked.
Our breath stopped. Behind us, a dull metal tick came from the bike’s engine.
I think he heard that tick. His frown deepened as his gaze slid smoothly over the door twice. Finally, he headed back to his car. When he climbed
in, Cope sighed hard enough to blow cobwebs off the dirty wall in front of him.
“Not yet.” I quickly found an old tarp and tossed it over the bike. “Get under the car or the tarp.”
Dropping to the dirt, Cope scrabbled under the car while I slipped under the tarp. Fear sweat, covering me as hot and sticky as it had that night at the parlor, glued the thing to me.
When the flashlight banged against the door, I almost shit. Then the light laid a tight beam through the loose slats and across the tarp. A second later, it snapped off and the man’s heavy boots thunked against the driveway. The cruiser’s engine was a soft purr that belied its power. How I loved hearing that purr disappear down the alley.
I helped pull Cope out and coughed up a wad of dirt. “This is bad. This is so bad. This is going straight to hell bad.”
A squeak of a laugh slipped from Cope. “Man, we all of us are going to hell...and for shit we done long before this.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done.” I sounded defensive, though I wanted to be big and strong. In this garage, with half the cops in Texas looking for me, I wasn’t a man in his prime on a soul-defining search for the meaning of his life. I was just a scared thirty-eight-year-old who’d stumbled his way through day after day.
“Y’all were at the church so I know it’s got blood behind it.”
After pulling the tarp off the bike, we opened the door and I took a careful look up and down the alley. We moved through Valentine an alley at a time, checking the cross streets for the police. Cars raced back and forth, their sirens as heavy on the air as the fire’s black smoke.
“Church of the Bloody Souls, boy,” Cope said. “Y’all cain’t get in you ain’t spilled blood.”
“Got that base covered.”
A sheriff’s deputy, this one from Brewster County, ripped down the street, a cloud of dust hanging behind the dirty white squad car. I watched it pass, saw the cop’s concentration on getting to the fire.
A single, simple look down the alley and he would nail us down. “Man, we gotta get different clothes.”
“What I was thinking. Gotta get to ground for a few hours, too.”
Down another alley. Along a narrow dirt road.
“What happened back there?”
“Pretty sure y’all died,” said Cope. “Good thing I was able to save your ass.”
“By stuffing me in this sidecar?”
“No.” Cope’s voice was thin, getting beaten down by the wind. “By giving y’all fucking mouth-to-mouth, getting some good air in them lungs. Then I stuffed y’all in the sidecar.”
“I told you I didn’t want to ride in this death-trap.”
“Didn’t tell much of anything when y’all was dead.”
“I wasn’t dead.”
“Looked dead. Shoulda been dead, the way y’all got tossed.” Cope nodded. “Blew your ass about twenty feet. Smashed against the wall. Lucky y’all ain’t got a broken back.”
“Then you came and saved me.”
“Sure did.”
“So you’ve had a pretty good day, being the hero and all.”
Cope shrugged. “The good day is probably y’all’s...not being dead and all?”
“Fair point.”
“Hang on, we’re almost there. New clothes. A little dinner maybe. A place we can disappear for the night.” He grinned. “Whatever else we can find.”
He jerked the bike into a huge, overgrown parking lot. The asphalt was cracked, nothing more than hard-packed dirt in some places. At the back side stood a Victorian-style house. Three stories, each level done in different shades of color coordinated paint. The woodwork, the styles and shutters, the handrail around the gigantic front porch, were all brightly colored.
At one edge of the parking lot, facing the road, stood a giant sign. The Valentine Cultural Arts Playhouse, it said. Performances Weekly. Now Showing: Arsenic and Old Lace.
Cope killed the bike as a large woman burst through the theater’s back door. She stood on the landing, her hands on the rail, leaning over just enough for me to catch a glimpse of her ample cleavage.
“Ah, Esther,” Cope said.
“Well, Mr. Elmer DiFranco,” she said, drawing each word out. “Didn’t think you’d ever darken my doorstep again.”
“Elmer?” I asked.
Cope glared at me. “Don’t gimme no sass.” He climbed off the bike. “Darken? That a racial slur?”
“Racial slur? Me?” Gracefully, she reached inside the door and withdrew a shotgun. It sat intimately in her hands.
“Uh...Cope?”
“You remember my friend Diamond here, right?” she asked.
“I do, Esther. A Beretta Diamond, I remember correctly. A .410?”
“Cope, we oughta talk,” I said.
“Hush up, Darcy, we’re good.”
“Not so good from this end,” Esther said. She racked the slide.
“Why’s that, baby?” Cope said.
“Because I’m gonna shoot him.”
“Why him?” Cope asked.
“He’s with you, ain’t he?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good enough for me.”
Cope laughed. “What about me?”
“I’m gonna shoot you, too, but I’m gonna get me some manliness first.” She pulled the hammer and that metallic click was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.
A Little More Than One Week Ago
Valentine Cultural Arts Playhouse
Valentine, Texas
Esther was a beautiful woman, no doubt, but she was a big girl. Easily three hundred pounds. In spite of that weight, everything she did, even the way she threatened me with the shotgun, was surprisingly graceful. Her dress was full-length, but cut low in the bodice and her cleavage went on for miles, getting lost in the long flow of red hair above and around it.
“Who the hell is she?” I asked Cope. “Why the hell is she waving a shot—” When she fired, a blast of white fire screamed past my face. I hit the ground hard.
“The fuck y’all doing’, Esther?”
I covered my head and scrambled behind the motorcycle. “Bitch is crazy, Cope.”
“Well, yeah, I know that...but—”
She fired again. Another roar and Cope yelled while I snaked my ass into the sidecar. Curled up into a ball the size of my fist.
This isn’t happening. Not with a million cops looking for me, not with Detective Kurston just waiting for me to stick my head up so he can pounce.
The call of sirens continued to rise and fall, like the breath from a sleeping lover.
“Dangit, Esther, y’all gonna kill somebody.” Rather than scared, Cope sounded annoyed.
“I’m not planning to kill somebody,” she said.
Gingerly, I looked up. A soft grin sat on her porcelain face. Her eyelashes, so long I saw them clearly from twenty feet away, batted once. A long pink tongue slipped out and wetted fire engine red lips. “I’m planning to kill you.”
Cope motioned toward me. “Yeah? What about Darcy?”
“He’s not bad looking. Didn’t scream like a woman when I shot at him.” With a curt nod, she smiled. “He can go, I won’t kill him today.”
Relief coursed through me, a double whiskey on a cold night. Not enough relief though to make me crawl out of this sidecar.
“Sadly, you ain’t gonna be so lucky. Get to saying your prayers, boy.”
“Now, Esther.” Cope took a few steps toward her. “If y’all were gonna do any killing, y’all woulda done it already.”
Her grin slipped. “Day ain’t over yet, Elmer.”
The threat hung between them. I watched Cope watch Esther, watched her do the same to him. Their eyes never strayed, their body language never changed; his self-assured, but with a hint of caution; hers with no caution at all.
“Esther. I tried to explain—”
“You didn’t really.” She pointed the gun at the ground. “I mean, yeah, you tried, but it was a pretty shitty try.”
&n
bsp; “That might be true, but y’all know I ain’t got no way with words.”
She squeezed her legs together. “True, words ain’t your strong point, boy.”
When Cope took another few steps toward her, she raised the shotgun.
“You sniffing? You about to be killed and you’re sniffing around for some leg?”
“Ain’t you? Y’all said you wanted some before you shot me.”
She lowered the gun, broke the breech, popped the spent shells out. “I did, didn’t I?” She boomed a full-throated laugh as she held a hand out to him. “Well, let’s get that part done. Then we can get to the shooting.”
Cope took her hand and followed up the short flight of stairs to the back door.
“Wait, wait, wait.” From deep in the sidecar, I stood. “You’re going to screw? You threaten to kill us...and actually shoot at me...and now you’re going for some bedroom time? I’m just supposed to wait here, hope the cops don’t come investigate a shots-fired report?”
Esther laughed. “First, Roy the Poh-leece loves me.” She winked at Cope. “All the mens do. Second off, I shoot this gun all the time. Godda—” Her eyes darted to Cope. “Those friggin’ wetbacks coming across my property all hours of the night. ‘No fucking habla engles,’ but they sure as hell understand a blast of rocksalt to their asses, don’t they? Third of all, I think maybe they got their hands full with what’cha’ll done to the church.”
Cope waved a finger. “Wasn’t us.”
Esther shoved Cope into the house. “Anyway, it’s not like it’ll take Elmer too long. Six...seven minutes and he’ll be sweaty and I’ll be washing off. I just put some coffee on, if you want some. I’ve got part of a sticky bun left from breakfast, too. Make yourself at home.”
And they were gone.
Easy as that. As though there hadn’t been gunplay. As though there weren’t a burning church with dead monks. As though Kurston weren’t after me. I stood for a few minutes, listening to the world pass me by in a flash of fire-heat and feeling completely helpless.
Eventually, I breathed deep. Coffee sounded fine. Maybe that sticky bun. Maybe a piss, too. But none of that until I checked the cooler. The ice was probably done for and I had no freakin’ clue where I was going to get more. I yanked it from under the seat, popped it open, and grinned. Somehow, that fucking idiot Cope had taken care of my problem.
Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2) Page 2
