Halloween costumes.
It was still warm outside, even at night—this was, after all, west Texas—and jack-o-lanterns and ghosts, vampires, and witches had sprouted all over town. The fire stations decorated their windows and the cops all handed out candy.
In those dreams, I remembered it all. The blue smocks the Gibson’s employees wore, the cobwebs and black paper that arced over the aisles and gave the section the feel of a haunted house, the moans and groans and screams and squeaking gates that played from speakers I never managed to find.
In dreams, I remembered everything.
Then I remembered the last thing.
The costume.
It had been a monk’s robe and how had I forgotten that? How had I not remembered that I walked the streets that Halloween, chanting like a monk and then hitting myself in the head with a Styrofoam board like the Monty Python monks?
Mama and Kurston thought it was hysterical. Every time I did it, they laughed themselves damn near into a heart attack. It had been Kurston’s idea and I didn’t really understand it, but loved that they both laughed when I did it.
Years later, sitting at another Halloween party with my high school friends, dressed up as Poe’s Red Death, we watched Monty Python and finally I understood. It was damned funny. It was red-faced laughing funny, bust a colon laughing so hard funny.
Except now it wasn’t.
Now it was real priests, their heads split not by Styrofoam boards, but by bullets.
In these dreams, while sweat trickled down my forehead, every single one of those priests was Fagan. In the chapel, the cop shot at the man and woman and their hoods came down and I found myself drowning in a sea of Fagan.
And I shot and shot and shot. Shot until the barrel of the gun was warm and then hot and then red and maybe melting. Shot each and every Fagan until they were all dead, saving Mama and Kurston from the bad guys, finishing them off in a big, epic way that left Mama and Kurston alive and smiling and oh so proud of their heroic son.
The shit of it was: Even in dreams I knew that if all the bad guys looked like Fagan then they looked like me, too.
Sixteen Hours, Thirty-Three Minutes Ago
As I dragged myself from the shadows of sleep, Kurston was already awake. He sat in the number four chair; a high neck on the back and foot rests out in front. He watched me with veiled eyes and lips so tight it was as though someone had drawn a straight line with a ruler across his face. A dirty white bandage wrapped his head, a Revolutionary War soldier. There were faint traces of pink where the blood had slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether. He held one of the pill bottles tightly.
“I guess it hurts.”
“I’ve been hurt worse than this.” Kurston stared at me for a long, drawn out moment. “What I meant was,” he said slowly, “that I’ve been beaten up worse than this before.”
“Sure. Yeah. I know.”
Val’s Barbershop had four chairs and a rack of magazines against the far wall. A window ran the entire width of the shop, a solid door at the far end of the window. Through the window, the red and white striped pole turned slowly; endlessly drilling into the ground.
The place was usually full of old guys talking ninety miles an hour about a million different things while the TV blared ESPN Classic in the background. Didn’t even matter that all the old guys were from completely different backgrounds, had different likes and loves, different politics and beliefs. When they sat in that shop, asses comfortable in one of Val’s four chairs, when they sat with a cold RC Cola between their legs, they were all just guys watching basketball, popping down quarters on which shot would fall, which wouldn’t.
It was Kurston’s hiding place. Where Val let him sit and sleep if he needed to, where Val let him cool his jets and try to outwait the worries and fears and demons.
Newsflash, I thought. Those bastards have got a ton of patience.
Along the mirror behind the chairs, Val always kept school pictures of the kids whose hair he cut. Mine was still up there, circa fourth grade. Yellowed, faded just like every other picture hanging around the edges of that big-assed mirror.
“Where’s Val?” I asked.
“Vacation all month. He gave me a key.”
And in giving that key, I realized as I planted my ass in the first chair, the one Val always called Evileen, “after a woman I once’t knew,” Val had unknowingly given us a place to stay until we figured out the next thing.
“You think Johnny’s people will tell the cops?”
Kurston nodded. “You bet. They saw Johnny get whacked. You bet they’ll spill everything they know.” He paused. “I guess I’m glad you brought me here.”
“Whoa, dial it down on that praise, don’t overwhelm me.” It was a crappy thing to say and as soon as it came out, my face burned.
Kurston grimaced. He was hurting, but not enough to suck down those painkillers. He kept the bottle tightly in his hand, as though simply squeezing it would help the pain. Maybe he got pharmaceutical value through osmosis. Or maybe it was like gunfighters in the old west: Drink the whiskey and bite the bullet and soon enough it’ll all be over one way or another.
“I was a little surprised to see you at Johnny’s.”
“Not as surprised as I am to see you awake.” I stretched out in the chair and wondered how long he’d been out.
“Looking for a dead old man, huh?”
Kurston stared, his face unreadable, his body language unreadable, his tone of voice unreadable. The man gave nothing away, rarely had. For all those years, it had been impossible to read him, to know what went on inside him.
“So, what’s your friend’s story?” Kurston asked.
A good man. Only one who’s tried to do anything with me, tried to save me from myself.
“Just a guy. Good man. Has some baggage.”
“Yeah, I got that. Some baggage about cops?”
I banged my hand against the chair and stood. “Jesus Christ, Kurston, it’s not always about cops, okay? Not everything is about cops and the brotherhood.”
I wanted to stop it, wanted to get all the words back and stuff them deep down inside, where they could never get out. Hell, lock them up in Fagan’s deposit box, toss the key in the friggin’ Pecos River. Instead, I turned and looked my step-father full in the face. “It’s not always about that badge.”
Kurston frowned. “I don’t understand that.”
I snorted. “You used that fucking badge constantly. ‘Do it because I said so.’ ‘Do it because I’m in charge.’ ‘Because I’m a fucking cop.’ ‘Because I’m wearing a badge.’ Everything came outta that goddamned badge.”
Kurston’s eyes bored in on me. “Are you crazy? I never wore that badge around the house.”
Frustration boiled up through me. “You didn’t have to. Didn’t need to pin it to your dick, SuperCop. It was there, it was part of you, even if it would have been a thousand miles away.”
“Well, yeah.... That’s who I was—am—Darcy. I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“Damnit.” My voice bounced off the walls as I stormed the barbershop. Was it that hard to see? That had to understand? “The problem is I didn’t want a cop.”
Kurston brought his voice down low, slowed the speed of his words down. A standard calming trick he used on suspects all the time. “Well, what did you—”
“I wanted a fucking father.”
The words hung there, stark as an obelisk, harsh as an acid rain storm.
“Okay?” I turned away from the man and realized it took everything I had not to look at him, not to get down on my knees and damn near beg. I ground my teeth together. “A father, okay? That’s all I wanted. All I ever wanted.”
Kurston slipped up behind me, placed a hand gently on my shoulder and turned me around. “Talk to me, Darcy. Tell me what’s going on in your head.”
I jabbed a finger against Kurston’s chest. “You were a cop. Always a cop. Hell, you’re being a cop now, talking quiet,
talking slow, verbal judo to make me calm down. Don’t be Officer Friendly. Be my father.”
My words were corrosive as a chemical bath. Even if I’d wanted to, I was dead certain I’d never be able to stop them. They were out and alive, they wanted to breathe, they wanted to be heard, to be understood and acknowledged.
“I am your father.”
“No.” Flat, a punch to the head. “You are not my father. A father doesn’t arrest his son.”
“Arrest?”
“Damnit, Kurston, you arrested me...I don’t know...eight or nine times.” I held up a hand. “I’ve got permanent ink stains on my fingers because you arrested me so much.”
“That was all bullshit stuff, Darcy, penny-ante charges.”
My voice exploded in the room. “Not to me, it wasn’t. To me it was my fucking father arresting me. Don’t you get it?”
Kurston’s mouth flapped, but nothing came out.
“You aren’t my father.”
“No.” The word drew out, a blade slipping from between two ribs. Kurston sighed. “No, I’m not. I am not the man you think you love. I’m the other man...at best I’m the other man, the guy who slipped into your mama’s bed and fucked everything up.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly who you are.” My eyes burning, my fists clenched and in my pockets for fear I’d use them, I got into Kurston’s face. “You are the man who kept my father from coming back for me.”
“Is that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I yelled. “For Christ’s sake, yes. Yes, yes, yes. I wanted him to come back; I wanted him to come claim me. I wanted to belong to him. I wanted this blood—” I scratched at my wrists savagely, but couldn’t rip my skin open. “To mean something.”
I wanted the blood to say I was somebody, not just the son of some guy who ducked out and drank himself sick in a shitty roadhouse somewhere in New Mexico or Oklahoma or wherever the hell his car might have broken down.
Hot, burning tears finally spilled down my cheeks, burned lines into my face, fell to the floor and burned there, too. “I wanted him to come back and he couldn’t do that with you there.”
Kurston never moved, but his eyes cooled, his face lost its edges. “Darcy, listen to me. Fagan was never going to come—”
I let fly a punch. Hard and fast and out of nowhere. It slammed against Kurston’s head, knocked the cop sideways to the floor. “Don’t you ever fucking say that. He would have come back.”
Kurston looked shocked, but not surprised. He didn’t move, but stayed on the floor as I stood over him and waited for him to get up so I could smash his face in and blast his teeth down his throat. Maybe he’d even choke on them and be dead and finally, everything would be fine.
There are no problems death can’t fix.
His voice soft, Kurston said, “Darcy, you have to know it by now.”
“Don’t talk like that. Don’t talk to me like a fucking cop. I don’t need calming down. I’m not a suspect.”
“Right now,” Kurston said, his voice as loud, as pissed-off, as mine, “You’re an asshole.”
I jumped into him and took a solid punch to my gut. All my air was gone, as easily and quickly as a breath. I fell to my knees, gasping for breath.
Kurston jumped up, stood over me. “You’re thirty-eight fucking years old. How long was Fagan going to wait before he came back?”
“He—” A deep breath. “He would have, you son of a bitch.”
“No. I’m not the bad guy here. He left. He wasn’t ever coming back. He left you—”
“Shut up.”
“—and your mother—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“—alone. He wasn’t ever coming—”
“Shut up shut up shut up.”
I slammed into my step-father. Kneed the man. Punched the man. Tried to get the man’s head between my hands, tried to squeeze him in a vise grip. I wanted to hear him scream, to hear him apologize, to admit he fucked up my life.
“You did this,” I said. “You screwed up everything.”
Somewhere, a thin pop sounded, then heavy steps across the floor.
“The fuck y’all doing?”
Hard hands grabbed me around the neck and shoulders, spun me around. And so I let fly with another punch.
Cope crumpled to the floor.
Sixteen Hours, Three Minutes Ago
“Whoa whoa,” Kurston said. He grabbed me around the middle, pinning my arms to my sides, turning me away from Cope.
“Ain’t that a how d’y’all do?” On the floor, one leg under him, staring up at us, Cope grinned and rubbed his cheek.
“Son of a bitch.” I struggled away from Kurston and went to Cope. “I can’t believe I did that. Jesus God, Cope, I am so sorry, I had no idea—”
It wasn’t a slap this time. More of a punch. Good and hard. Square to my temple. “I told y’all about that language.”
I rocked back, surprised, maybe a little scared. “Yeah...uh...right.”
“That’s not how he usually slaps, is it?” Kurston asked in a stage-whisper voice.
“Uh...no.” I held a hand to the old black man. “I’m really sorry, Cope, I didn’t know.”
Cope stood without any help. “What in hell y’all two doing?”
“Welcome to what passes for love in our family,” Kurston said.
“That’s bullshit and we all knowing it.” Cope pointed a thin finger—minus one more ring, I noticed—at me. “He lovin’ y’all harder than either of y’all care to admit. What the fuck for cain’t it be easier?”
“Pretty much the $64,000 question, I guess,” I said. “It’s been that way forever.”
“So, find what you were looking for?” Kurston asked.
“It’s not what,” I said. “It’s who.”
“Ain’t no kiss and tell man.” Cope’s unease with Kurston was palpable. He talked to Kurston, answered the man’s questions, but mostly looked at me when he did it. “Uh...yeah, I found who I was looking for, fine and purty and ever’thing I needed just now.” He tossed me a look, then sat in the far chair. “How’s that head doing, Five-O?”
Kurston smiled, but not a happy smile, not a pleasant smile. It was the kind of smile I’d seen him give suspects during interviews, a smile that said, yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say, it doesn’t mean anything to me.
“Not bad until Joe Frazier started banging on it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Right. Don’t worry about it. Fucking tough guy. Don’t worry about me, save my partner. Like a fucking war movie.”
“You know your mama hated that word.”
“Hated me, too.”
“Oh, stop it,” Kurston said with a snort. “For cripe’s sake stop. She didn’t hate you, neither of us did. But we were concerned.”
“Are you still?”
Kurston’s gaze grabbed me and held tightly. “What do you think?”
“I heard you at Johnny’s. You said you lost me.”
Kurston nodded.
“You mean like a set of keys?”
For the first time since long before I had left, Kurston cracked a smile. “Yeah, that’s what I meant, like a set of keys.” He laughed and wrapped his arm around my head, drawing us firmly together. “Fuck me, but I missed you.”
Surprised, I could only let myself be hugged. Finally, wondering if maybe I was still dreaming, I draped my arms, my sore fingers, around my father’s neck. “I missed you, too.”
And then we cried.
“Two old biddies after a wedding,” Cope said. “Or maybe a funeral.”
The barbershop was silent except for the crying, slobbering and sniffling, gasping for air when our noses got plugged with snot.
“Goddamnit, boy, don’t ever leave me again. Don’t ever walk away from me like that.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
Wounded or not, old man or not, Kurston’s grip wa
s strong and the longer we stayed together, the tighter it became.
Kurston took a deep, hesitant breath. “I thought you were dead.”
“I—” I let go. “I am.”
Kurston wiped his tears away. “You’ve got one hellacious sense of melodrama, don’t you? What the hell does that mean?”
“Execution. I’m a killer.”
Grimacing, Kurston pressed a hand to the wound. The pink had gone darker, closer to red. “What are you looking for? In the banks?”
“Shit, y’all tell him, we’ll all three of us know.”
“You know about the banks?” I said. “The Judge give it to you?”
“Well, the Judge filled in some blanks, but I had some of it already. Ain’t much of a surprise, Darcy. Shit, you’re all over TCIC. Didn’t you think you would be?”
“I figured. Those reports must make for some good reading.”
“Couldn’t tell you, I haven’t seen them.”
Hadn’t seen them?
“Suspended.”
Nasty word. Bigger and longer and more powerful than it had any right to be. Once Kurston said it, that damned word sat between us, as embarrassing as a rotting corpse on a perfectly prepared dinner table.
I breathed slowly, let the shock work through my system. I couldn’t fathom Detective Kurston...SuperCop...suspended. The man who’d made more cases in the last twenty years than any other single cop in Barefield’s history. The man who’d snapped open a kiddie porn ring running from Barefield to Dallas to New York to Thailand, where it was run by a lame ass musician/writer who claimed diplomatic immunity because he knew the royal family. Shit, SuperCop was the one who’d found illegal missiles in a crate at the airport destined for Iran back in ‘93. How the hell could they suspend him?
“I got the call, Darcy. Staind Skin. A uniform got called there for a noise complaint. Didn’t hear anything but found a shitload of blood.”
“I think y’all’s boy done seen that part.”
Kurston fingered a pain pill, but refused to eat it. “I came out to poke around.” He paused. “Tell me about the tattoo.”
Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2) Page 16
