"I didn't order you in my window, did I? I'd be just as happy you left, get rid of all that Brooks baggage."
"That wouldn't do it. You stole his money." She giggled but there was an edge to it. "And you stole his wife."
He looked sideways at her, watched her watch the city. Her hands twitched, her slim, deliciously pink tongue wet her lips but it wasn't seductive, it was scary. This woman is near the end, he thought. Who knew what that might mean.
And let's think about that badge, boys and girls. She's got a badge and she was carrying a .380 and a shitload of ammo. What else was she carrying? And what about this "from when I was a cop" bullshit? When had she ever been a cop? Why wasn't she one now? Or was she?
His head spun, a cheap carnival ride going 'round and 'round. Gonna throw up this goes on much longer, he thought.
"God, I'm tired of driving," she howled. "This is Texas, Hal, we're here. You've made it home. We've got to stop, I need to get out."
His arm throbbed. "Can't stop now, we' got a ways to go."
"I thought you said Texas."
"Big damn state, Shawn. We're at the wrong end. Nine hundred more miles, maybe more. East side we're looking for. Huntsville."
"Son of a bitch." She leaned against the driver's door, banged her head hard against the glass. "I can't believe this. Some white knight you turned out to be. Just another two-bit criminal with his head so far up his ass he can taste his own throat."
"We can stop, I can let you right the hell out, no sweat. Your choice."
Surprisingly, she exited the highway, pulled over near a bodega. Two old men sitting at a bus stop watched them. "You want to travel solo?" She climbed out of the car, standing straight and proud on the sidewalk. "Good luck, dumbass, don't let Brooks kill you."
With a nod, she slammed the door, he moved behind the wheel, and took off.
Quiet rolled like a wave into the car. It hadn't really been quiet since he'd first pulled up at the sewage plant. Even when they hadn't said anything, it wasn't quiet. Call it the atmosphere factor. Even if they had driven in silence, he knew she was there. She got into his space, filled his brain with the fact that she was there.
At a red light, the highway blasted through on an overpass. Straight through this intersection, back on the damned thing and then east. By early tomorrow morning, he'd be where he needed to be. Two days later, he'd be back in Theresa's arms.
But not without a twinge of guilt. Hell, it already rode high and hard in his head. He'd left a woman back there--a woman he knew a man was trying to kill--in a city she'd never seen, with no money. Yeah, she was armed but that probably wouldn't get her fed or a bed for the night, it would just get her shot.
That's good, Hal. Leave a woman on the street. Be sure you tell Hanford all about it, let him revel in the rightness of that decision. Let him know that when the chips were down, you dumped them outta your car.
Behind him, a car honked for the green light. In the rear view mirror, he saw the bus stop half a block back. Shawn watched him. Sighing, angry at himself for doing it, he reached across and opened the door.
A long moment passed, long enough for the car behind him to honk again and then jerk out around him on the left. Driver passed with his finger tossing a grand salute.
"Yeah, yeah," Hal said.
He watched her, and was fairly certain she was watching him, for about a million years. Another car came and went, its driver also saluting. More of this and the cops would appear and then his magnanimous gesture would mean dick.
Finally, she headed toward the car. When she climbed in, he saw a streak of tears on her face.
"Don't leave me here, Hal."
"Yeah."
He jammed the gas, slipped through the yellow light, and was back on the highway in a breath.
"Don't leave me anywhere."
"Yeah. Uh…look…I'm sorry about that. I was being an ass."
"You and me both."
He rolled down the window. Why was it so hot in the car suddenly? Just you, he thought. You're embarrassed at being a pig. "I'm sorry. I thought you wanted out."
"I don't want out, I want…."
"What?"
For two or three mile markers on the highway, she didn't say anything. Angry heat radiated from her like heat from desert rocks. Her hands toyed with themselves, then with her elbows, then ran up and down her thighs.
"Your arm is bleeding again."
"It's fine. What do you want?"
She licked her lips. "I want--Shit. I just want to be done. I want him to leave me alone." Her legs came up under her until they all but disappeared beneath her knees. "I'm just so tired of him."
"And he ain't letting you out, is he?"
She shook her head. "This is how it's been since the beginning. He was my FTO and--"
"The hell's that?"
"Field training officer. Every cop gets one. You get out of the academy and you know all the book material but the books and the streets are very different."
"You think?"
"I fell in love with him," she said simply. "He was this big, decorated cop, tons of friends and everybody in town knew him and it was great. I knew all the inside jokes and got invited, with him, to all the great parties. I met the mayor and the governor and all kinds of movie stars."
"Yeah?"
"Mostly in Reno and Tahoe. We went all the time." She sighed. "I loved it."
"What happened?"
She shrugged. "I got seduced. By the lights, by the celebrities, by him, by all of it. Mostly by him. He was perfect."
"Ain't looking too perfect to me."
She chuckled but it was tired sound. "Yeah, well, we're all a little smarter now, aren't we?"
"Asked you to get hitched and you said sure without even thinking. Wouldn't'a mattered, though, 'cause this was Prince Charming."
"No, this was the King of the World. We got married and the very first night, he slapped me. Just enough to show me the lay of the land. He apologized all over himself but even the apology put the violence on me."
"It was your fault."
Her hair danced dispiritedly when she nodded. "When I left he went nuts. I moved down to Vegas and worked there. After a few months, I went back and worked for a little while, then got hooked up with Dogwood and some other stuff."
"And Dogwood was dealing Brooks' drugs."
"Yep. I was with Dogwood but Brooks raped me two or three times, just enough to let me know he was around. Eventually, he'd have come for me and it would have been go with him or get shot."
"Nobody could help you out?"
"Nobody had balls big enough. I'm scared, Hal, is all. Damn scared."
"Worse than when you left him?"
She chuckled, an angst-filled sound that touched him with his own little finger of fear. "I never left him. Even when I was with Dogwood, I didn't leave him, understand? This is entirely a different proposition. He's after us and it doesn't matter whether it's me for leaving him or you for stealing from him. The result is the same."
Hal punched the car a bit, nosed it up to about seventy-five as they left El Paso behind.
"Where are we going, Hal?"
"Huntsville."
"What the hell is in Huntsville?"
"Whole lotta nothing."
"Oh, well, by all means, let's go there. So the Rangers or the highway patrol will just ignore the murder warrant?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Ain't really thought that far ahead."
"Fucking great, that's just fucking great. Everything I've done since I got to Nevada has been in association with a murder suspect. Freedom is right over that border right there, it's out the fucking window, but by all means, let's take a nice drive through Texas."
"Shut up, ho-kay, and let me drive."
"Try not to get any blood on the car, it'll hurt the resale value."
His arm was mostly covered in blood now, bleeding freely and profusely. Driving with one hand, he used his other to bind the bandage more tight
ly. Maybe that would staunch the bleeding. And maybe not. It might well be that he'd bled to death before he ever got to Huntsville or Theresa.
"We could stop at a hospital," she said.
"Yeah, good plan. Every gunshot wound--or suspicious injury--has to be reported in Texas."
"This just gets better and better, doesn't it?"
He nodded. "Welcome to my life."
752 Miles
For whatever reason, she was there. Not Apple Shawn. Not Theresa or even Natalie.
The other one. Missy.
Standing on the street and it confused the hell outta Hal. He shouldn't have been standing on any street with any dead girl. He should have been in the car, behind the wheel, pushing the accelerator to the friggin' floor. He should have been moving, hustling to Huntsville.
Instead he was with the dead girl.
"Did you kill me?" she asked. "I don't remember you."
His mouth was thick with sand. It was as hot as a glass bottle left in the sun. And it sure as hell tasted like the dirt around Barefield, Texas. "I didn't kill anybody."
She nodded thoughtfully. "But you knew it was going to happen, Hal." Not a question.
"Of course he knew," Tyler said. He was on the street, too, but not quite away from the Walls, was he? Leaning against a telephone pole with an IV stuck in his arm. The three bottles of drugs that would paralyze him and stop his heart lay in the dirt. "He was there that night; at the Palace. Least, that's what we all called it, isn't it? We were both there. Drinking and carrying on."
"Did you know I was there?" Missy asked. Her feet were tiny, as delicate as crystal, even covered in dirt. She moved them slowly as she came toward him.
Hal took a deep breath. "I knew the Mayor had certain tastes. I knew he was there that night. I didn't know you personally were there. Maybe I knew someone was there."
Missy nodded, as though none of it really mattered. "They sexed me, you know."
"Read it in the papers."
"I did make the papers, didn't I?" She looked at him, a harsh frown on her face. "But that's not where you get your grief, is it?"
Not even close. His grief came from Hanford. Accusations and then six years of licking the inside of whiskey bottles and tequila bottles and even--at one point--a rubbing alcohol bottle. Shit, staring at her right now, he'd have given his left nut for a toot. But as his alcoholic friend Alan always said: one drink was both too many and not anywhere near enough.
Missy walked over to Tyler and sat on the ground near his feet.
"So now you're clearing your conscience?" Tyler asked.
Hal sighed and spit out a mouthful of dirt. Damned if the wind wasn't blowing just like along the border. And he realized the dirt didn't taste of Barefield at all, it tasted of Nueva Rosita. "I'm trying to."
"Trying to what, Halford?" Theresa said.
Damn sure wasn't Barefield anymore. Dirt tasted like Nueva Rosita 'cause that's where he was now.
Wake up, he thought, watch the road, keep the car on the damned road. But he didn't want to wake, he wanted to see Theresa. He wanted her to soothe his aches and pains, the fire in his throat where he got stabbed, the dull thud where he'd been shot.
She was a vision in the swirling dust. She stood at the far end of a dusty street, a breeze swooshing the brown around her, tossing her hair carelessly. Single story buildings rose around them, some framed, some adobe but all poor, stained with poverty. As stained as the air, which carried the stench of failure; the bitter and thick and nauseating odor of sweat and piss and maybe blood and blown second chances.
Actually, it pretty much smelled like the sewage plant.
But when he looked at her, the air smelled different. When he looked at her, it was lilacs. The dust cleared, too, when he looked at her, and the honking of old cars stopped and the howls of angry kids became the squeals of delighted children.
"Theresa."
"Halford."
She held her arms out for him and he ran toward her. It was all for that, wasn't it? For a hug and a kiss and warm breath on his neck. It was all for a white dress and a black tuxedo and a priest standing in front of them reading from a Bible and Hanford handing him a beautiful--but inexpensive--ring and people throwing rice and taking a car to San Antonio and a plane to St. Thomas, Nassau and then maybe, just maybe, never coming back to the World.
It was about getting to Huntsville on an empty road, no obstacles, no problems, no bullshit.
"Hombre."
Her brother's perpetually angry face flashed in the dry heat. The sun stood directly above them, casting shadows straight down. "You come back here? I told you to stay away."
"I came back for her," Hal said.
Theresa faded into the dust, hardly more than an outline.
Her brother laughed. "You didn't come back for her, hombre, you didn't come back at all. But it's good to see you in a church. Maybe you can find your alma."
He groped for the word. "Uh…soul?"
"Maybe it got tossed in the garbage can after Missy died." Domingo laughed but it was a hollow sound. "You remember that garbage can? Where you threw-up when they were raping her? Maybe your alma came out then."
He had forgotten about the garbage can. He had nearly forgotten about the throwing up. The rest--the rape, the murder--he had been unable to forget.
"Where am I?"
The same laugh, now laced with sadism, bubbled out of Domingo. "You're in Valentine, gringo. What the fuck for, I don't know. But like I said, it's good to see you in church, you got a lot of praying to do."
"For my alma."
Domingo shrugged. "We all got to pray, but you got a lot more to do than the rest of us."
"'Cause you're pure as the driven snow, right, Domingo?"
"Oh, yeah, pure as the driven dust, that's true." Domingo fixed a hard stare on Hal. "Theresa is pure. You forget that, hombre, and things might get ugly."
"Uglier than now?"
"This ain't ugly, hombre, ugly's still coming down the road."
Hal woke then, the grit and shit-taste of border dirt still in his mouth.
It was a small room, hardly fifteen steps across. The only furniture was a single chair and the bed he was on. A large cross hung on the wall but there were no windows and only a single door, surprising in its simplicity. The walls were beige and seemed to be textured. Adobe, Hal realized. Old, stained adobe. Slashes of brown marked the walls in nearly perfect lines. The lines pointed every direction but each line was straight, larger at one end before trailing off. Some of the lines were interrupted where hunks of adobe had fallen out. The dust of worn adobe coated the floor and the single chair and the bed.
And the body.
"Jesus H." Hal scrambled from the bed. His foot caught in the simple cover and he fell to the floor at Shawn's feet.
"Holy fucking shithole Christ."
She sat against the wall, one leg tucked awkwardly beneath her, the other straight out. What had been beautiful red hair was now matted and clumped with mud. A single lock covered her closed eyes. One of those eyes was black, the edges already turning to purple. Not too long and that whole shiner would fade to diaper-shit yellow. One of Shawn's arms crossed her chest and held the neck of her shirt tightly.
And from the other arm, which was as straight as her leg, a syringe stuck out like a fucking knife. Blood spilled beneath where it stabbed her. Pooled and dried rusty brown in her palm.
"What the shit is this?" His voice shattered the air.
She startled but her head never came up off her chest. A terrible moan slithered from her lips.
Hal threw himself at her. Anger boiled through him, a blowtorch through plate metal. His head and arm throbbed as though some invisible thug whacked him over and over with a hammer. "Shawn. What's going on?"
Her head bounced back and forth, struck the wall at least twice. She winced and a tired hand went to the back of her head. "Lemme alone."
Hal dragged her to the bed, tossed her to the near side, as far
from the body as he could get her in the tiny bed.
"Wake the hell up." He stormed to the door. It was locked from the outside. "Let us out. Where are we?"
"Texas." She slurred a giggle. "'S where you asked for." She flung her arms wide open. "We're here. Now what, boss?"
"Damnit."
Hal slapped her hard. Her head bounced back and forth and blood flooded her cheeks.
"Don't hit me." She howled and held her hands up in front of her face.
"What?" Hal backed up. "Hey, I didn't mean to--"
"Please, Captain." Her voice screeched. Her hands waved and she tried to back up, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the sheet. "Don't hit me, I'll do whatever you want. Captain, please. I'll swallow next time, I promise."
"Shawn, what's--"
He reached for her and when his skin touched hers, it was an electric shock. She screamed and shot across the bed. The body tangled her. The dead man's hands reached for her, the dead man's feet pushed at her. Her own feet pushed and scrabbled, shoving the man's legs askew. They looked like sex fiends crawling all over each other.
"Shawn, what's going on?"
Crying, open and jagged she fell off the far side of the bed, thumped loudly against the floor.
"Are you okay in there?" The voice was meek, maybe a little scared. A timid knock sounded at the door, followed by a quiet throat clearing. "Hello?"
"Yeah, we're fine." Who in the fuck was this? Hal's head spun. Christ, Shawn, what have you gotten us into?
"Anything you want, Captain." She had gotten herself in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands in front of her face, hiding her eyes from the world. If you can't see the world, Hal thought, maybe it can't get you.
"Anybody hurt? We've got some bandages."
"No, we're fine." Hal wiped the sweat from his forehead, licked it from his upper lip. "We'll be fine." He turned to Shawn, lowered his voice, held his hands in front of him, palms up. "Shawn, listen to me." He kept his voice low and quiet, non-threatening. "Everything's going to be just fine, don't you worry, ho-kay? The captain ain't here. He ain't anywhere near here, ho-kay? Whatever he done, it ain't gonna happen here."
2,000 Miles to Open Road (Barefield) Page 12
