Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  “Thank you,” Rachel said with far more patience than Zeke was feeling. “What did she say?”

  The volunteer smiled apologetically and blushed. “That you should keep your boyfriends straight. She said she wasn’t bothering them about such a trivial—”

  His tolerance at its end, Zeke burst out, “This isn’t about any boyfriend. Someone’s playing games with Ms. Copeland, trying to scare her with a message from a—”

  “That’s enough, Zeke,” Rachel interrupted before looking at the clearly startled volunteer. “You’ve given me a place to start, and I appreciate that.”

  Worry lines creased the woman’s forehead. “You’ll be calling the law then, won’t you, dear?”

  “I’m living in Marfa, so I’ll contact the sheriff there once I’m home. Speaking of which, is Dr. Franconi ever going to get here so I can leave? My dad’s been waiting all afternoon for the call to pick me up.”

  “I’ll take you if you’re ready,” Zeke offered. “If the doctor doesn’t show, we’ll just leave. This isn’t a prison, is it?”

  The volunteer looked nervous about this suggested breach of protocol. “I just saw Dr. Franconi at the nurses’ station checking charts on my way in. So I expect he’ll be here any minute. I’ll go and find out for you.”

  Mrs. Dixon swept out, her blue skirt swirling behind her.

  Zeke lifted the card. “Why didn’t you tell me about this as soon as I came in?”

  Rachel sighed. “I’ve been living with worse threats than flowers for a long time. The police in Philadelphia didn’t take me seriously when I reported them, and I can’t imagine Sheriff Castillo getting too excited either. For one thing, the crime—if there’s even really been a crime—probably took place outside his jurisdiction.”

  “That call you got in the café. You thought it came from Marfa.”

  “True.”

  “And your glider crashed inside the county, too.”

  “That was an accident, a faulty latch—or at least that’s what everyone thinks. The official word hasn’t come down yet.”

  “The least Castillo could do is make a few calls, try to track down the name of the customer who sent the flowers,” Zeke suggested.

  Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “So far, I haven’t seen much evidence of the law working in my favor. Back in Philadelphia, the only thing anyone cared about was those awful—those photographs of me with Kyle. The detectives investigating, and then the assistant prosecutor were all convinced I’d—”

  “I heard some talk about those pictures,” Zeke admitted. Now that he knew her, it made him sick to think back to what those men in the barbershop had said about them. About what Rachel had been doing with Kyle Underwood.

  She flushed deeply. “Those were faked. You know that, don’t you? My experts proved it. And they’ll prove it with these new ones.”

  “I know they’re fakes,” he assured her. Yet still, the thought of such trash drifting around the Internet, where anyone could see it, made him want to smash all the computers in the world on her behalf. “And I know, too, that Marfa isn’t Philadelphia. You have family looking after you, and a lot more folks who’ve got no argument with a woman protecting herself with firepower. And you’ve got at least one friend, right here.”

  She laid a hand on the gift he’d brought her before flashing a smile that sliced straight through his self-delusion. “So we’re friends, is that it?”

  He nodded, sensing she was asking, Is that all?

  “Best I can do,” he said. No matter how much I wish things could be different.

  She reached for his hand and lifted it to her mouth, where she kissed it reverently. Looking up through lowered lashes, she whispered words that vibrated in the narrow space between them. “That’s another gift, Zeke, one I’ll tuck inside this trea sure box and guard like the crown jewels.”

  By the time Zeke dropped Rachel at her grandmother’s house, the new moon visible at twilight had dissolved into the black of a night sky lit with a myriad of stars.

  Walter Copeland opened the front door and hugged his daughter before stepping back to shake Zeke’s hand. “Come on in, Mr. Pike—”

  “It’s Zeke,” he said.

  “Just Zeke.” Rachel flashed a grin before blocking the charge of a barking, black-and-white dog. “Oh, no you don’t, J.D. You’re staying in to night. And hush.”

  “Don’t you worry about his noise.” A gray-haired older woman, comfortably plump and wearing thick, square glasses, came to the entryway to kiss Rachel on the cheek. “James Dean’s always been partial to men.”

  “And here I thought that was an ugly rumor,” Rachel quipped.

  “Now you hush, too, child,” her grandmother scolded, affection brightening her eyes. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your handsome friend?”

  “Oops, sorry,” Rachel said. “Grandma, this is Zeke Pike. Zeke, say hello to my grandmother.”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Copeland.” Zeke had seen her a couple of times at The Roost, had nodded hello at the post office, but he wasn’t surprised at the lack of recognition in her eyes.

  “Benita’s fine, and pleased to meet you,” she said. “Please come in, Zeke. Before my angel decides to make a break for the neighbors’ trash cans after all.”

  “Thanks, ma’am, but I’d better go.”

  Patsy propped open a door and stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Come on in and join us. I made some bison chili and jalapeño corn bread, and there’s plenty.”

  “Seems like the least we can do is feed you for saving us a drive.” Rachel’s father’s smile was relaxed and friendly.

  The elder Mrs. Copeland lit up, “And you can play a round of Scrabble with us later. We can do teams. It’ll be fun.”

  Rachel touched his elbow and whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s not quite as horrifying as it seems.”

  To Zeke, it sounded like a taste of heaven, a rich stew of family bonds and laughter spiced with subtle conflicts that had evolved over the years. It would be easy, far too easy, to let his guard down in such a situation. Ignoring the ache in his chest—and his stomach’s growl of hunger at the aromas drifting from the kitchen, he set Rachel’s overnight bag inside the door. “Thanks for the invitation, but I can’t stay. I’ve got animals that need their dinner, and if I don’t get to it, one of ’em will take a notion to kick down the feed shed door.”

  Before he’d left for Alpine, he had given the mule and horses extra hay to tide them over, but he needed an excuse, and livestock was as good as any.

  “Hang on a minute, then,” Patsy called. “Let me at least pack you some dinner.”

  He stepped inside to wait, his gaze taking in the framed family photos that hung on yellow walls and decorated every available flat surface. In a number of them, he recognized Rachel’s budding talent, but the one that captured his attention was a candid shot taken of her as a young teen, her hand half-hiding the tinsel glitter of her braces, her freckles far more obvious than they were now. She was a little shy of pretty, but those big, brown eyes had held promise. Promise she’d grown into beautifully.

  “Thanks again,” Rachel told him as she bent to grab her overnight case.

  “Hand that over, Rusty.” Her dad swooped in to take it from her. “I’ll put it on your bed. Put you to bed, too, if you’re still feeling puny.”

  “I’m better,” she protested.

  After fluttering a wave in Zeke’s direction, Rachel followed her father down the hallway, words trailing behind her. “There’s something packed in there I have to show you. Zeke made me a get-well present.”

  Zeke felt heat rise to his face. When Patsy came out to hand him a plastic container with the chili and a foil-wrapped square that must have been the corn bread, her expression told him she’d heard what Rachel had said, too. And she wasn’t pleased about it.

  “What on earth are you playing at?” she asked through clenched teeth, keeping her voice low so Rachel’s grandmother, who had drifted toward a game s
how on the TV, wouldn’t hear.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just, I had an errand to run today in Alpine anyhow, and—”

  “You took Rachel a gift, Zeke. And you hung around the other day to watch her.”

  “I had some scrap material around, and—and, yeah, I felt bad about her getting hurt the way she did. Just a friendly gesture, that’s all.”

  “When’s the last time you made anybody else a ‘friendly gesture,’ Zeke Pike?” Sarcasm smoldered in the depths of her blue eyes. “I can see what’s going on, and I have to tell you I don’t like it. That girl’s got trouble enough on her plate without some man adding to it. Especially some man who likes to keep to himself the way you do.”

  “And here I thought you were warning me off for my own good.” He tried a smile.

  She thrust the food toward him. “If you have any sense, you’d think of that, too. But I know men get stupid around pretty women. I might not be one, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it when I see it.”

  “Thanks for the dinner.” He left, wondering if part of Patsy’s problem with her stepdaughter was the fact that Rachel had grown into a face and body that commanded the type of male attention Patsy had never had. Though she was in general nearly as tight-lipped as Zeke about her background, over the years she’d dropped a few hints about a rough, hardscrabble childhood, followed by a brief marriage to the current sheriff, a man half the county knew had ditched her in favor of a former Miss Teen West Texas runner-up. She’d been securely married to Walter Copeland for as long as Zeke had known her, but he wondered if those early experiences had left her bitter. Or maybe he was imagining such things because of the toll his own youth had taken on his life.

  “Like father, like son,” he remembered hearing a teacher say after he’d been caught fighting in the halls. Fighting because some shit-for-brains punk had made the mistake of spreading it around school that his dad was buried in a pauper’s grave outside the prison because they lacked the money to bring Joe Langley home.

  That happened in another life, Zeke told himself. To another person. Because that boy had been snuffed out as surely as his father.

  But as his truck slipped through the quiet streets, Zeke felt a restless melancholy overtake him, a growing dissatisfaction with the thought of returning to a place that felt cold and hollow compared to the warmth and fullness of the little, brown adobe where the Copeland family were gathered. For the first time in a long time—years, maybe—he couldn’t bear the thought of going home, so instead he turned his pickup to the one place where he knew he could eat in peace within earshot of other human voices.

  Nine miles east of town, he found it, the viewing area where locals and visitors alike could wait in the communal darkness for the famous mystery lights to put in an appearance. As he’d suspected, there were several vehicles in the parking area on this clear, Saturday evening.

  After digging a wrapped plastic spoon—a relic from a fast food stop during one of his supply trips—from his glove box, Zeke walked up the rise to reach the viewing platform. Once there, he settled on a section of stone wall some distance from the spots staked out by ten or eleven visitors, some in pairs or groups of three, some apparently alone as he was. Whether sitting and talking or standing in silence, each stared across a dark plain obstructed by nothing but low scrub brush.

  A good night for viewing, Zeke thought, not too chilly and plenty dark without the moon’s glow. Not a half-bad night for brooding either, with the soft murmur of conversations taking place around him. Balancing his bowl, he sat there eating, enjoying the flavors of ground bison and black beans and jalapeños and the corn bread and struggling to pretend this no-strings companionship could fill the empty spot within him.

  “Look, there’s one.” A middle-aged man with a long ponytail pointed excitedly in the direction of the distant mountains, where a glowing ball of brilliance bobbed a slow path to the west.

  “I see it,” a teenaged girl cried and flipped on—rather pointlessly—the flashlight she was holding.

  Another man yelled, “Turn that damned thing off, you moron. You’re blinding me, for one thing.”

  The harshness of his voice had Zeke glancing his way. He found himself looking at the profile of the same man he’d seen leaving the hangar area after Rachel’s crash.

  “Hey,” Zeke called, putting down his food and rising as he pointed. “I need to talk to you a minute about what happened Thursday.”

  Perhaps he’d moved too abruptly, or perhaps the man perceived the edge in Zeke’s voice as a threat. Whatever it was, he leapt over the wall and took off running…disappearing into a darkness lit only by the indifferent stars and the pale, receding light.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  At the door of life, by the gate of breath,

  There are worse things waiting for men than death.

  —Algernon Charles Swinburne,

  from “The Triumph of Time”

  “Where’re they going?” The blonde girl shone her flashlight after Zeke and the man he chased, but all too soon, both passed beyond the limits of its illumination.

  Zeke squinted, struggling to spot movement, and strained to hear the sound of the man’s progress.

  Shouts from the viewing area drifted toward him, from “Don’t run that way” to the warning, “You’ll get lost out there.”

  Zeke knew they were right. Only a fool went blundering into the desert after nightfall, with its rocks and thorny scrub brush hidden among dry grasses, its cactus and its deceptively uneven ground. At least the rattlesnakes would be inactive during the cool evening, but the nocturnal scorpions and tarantulas, though not fatal, could be damned unpleasant if a man happened to come down on one as he fell.

  And fall he would, if he continued running blindly. So Zeke pulled up short, breathing hard.

  Cursing, he turned back toward the low, stone wall that rimmed the platform, where people eyed him with suspicion. Several of them had turned on flashlights they’d brought with them.

  “Why’d you chase him?” a balding man called.

  Uncomfortable with the attention, Zeke shook his head. “Didn’t want him to hurt himself out there, that’s all. Mighty nervous fella.”

  “Did you know him?” someone else asked. “You said something to him.”

  “Thought he looked familiar, that’s all. But no, I don’t know him.”

  A woman with long, brown curls spiraling from the bottom of a knit hat pulled a cell phone from her bag. “Should we call the authorities?”

  Zeke wasn’t certain how to answer. Now more than ever, he wanted to speak to the man about the day Rachel had been injured. But the idea of involving the law—of speaking personally to the sheriff—was disturbing. Surely, Harlan Castillo would have long ago come calling if he’d guessed Zeke’s past. But there was no sense tempting fate if he could help it.

  “It’s no crime—only stupid—to go running out there,” Zeke said. “Besides, he has to come back. He must’ve left a car or truck here. Unless one of you brought him?”

  No one present would admit to having done so.

  “Someone ought to wait around to see he makes it back here,” said the woman with the cell phone, “but I’m starting to get chilly, so I’m packing it in for the night.”

  She didn’t want to be involved, Zeke figured, or responsible. And judging from the exodus that followed, she wasn’t alone. Within twenty minutes, they had all departed, leaving Zeke to clean up the remnants of his dinner and then check the parking area.

  His own pickup was the last vehicle remaining.

  “So how the hell did he get way out here?” Zeke asked himself. But the desert returned no answers, only the subtle glow of yet another mystery light.

  Through a slim, white telescope, the observer watched and wondered. How hard could it be to scare off a man who acted spooked by everything and everyone already? A man who spoke to few and trusted fewer shouldn’t require a whole lot of persuading to understand he was better of
f keeping his mind on his own concerns.

  With the lights’ return—thank God they had come back, despite the failure that had taken place two days before—it was simple to see clearly. Easy to see how little it would take to discourage Zeke Pike’s interference. A broken windshield, maybe, or, a few items smashed in a workshop that was often left untended.

  One of the lights returned then, venomous green and blinking a staccato message that chilled the observer to the marrow. A message that whispered much more would be required—enough to slash through the thorny tendrils of whatever attachment Pike thought that he felt for Rachel Copeland.

  The light warned he would be stubborn, as man is on the scent of woman, and that Pike wouldn’t hesitate to use his muscle to get answers, or to punish where he saw fit.

  No more punishments, The Child whimpered. Locked down in the darkness, it picked at scabs from wounds that festered, wounds that never healed. In the cold crawlspace beneath the trailer, it rocked itself for consolation, trying not to whimper when the wasps flew near.

  But there had been no peace until the lights came.

  And the lights, for all their blessings, at times demanded blood.

  No use staying out here any longer, Zeke decided. Either the man he’d sought had hiked someplace up the road or he was lying low, squatting behind some bush and waiting for Zeke to go away. Either a cold hike or a cold wait, since there was no shelter within walking distance and the few drivers who might happen by on their way to or from Alpine wouldn’t be likely to pick up a hitchhiker at this hour. But they might well notify the sheriff of his presence. In such rough and empty country, people tended to look out even for strangers.

  Zeke, on the other hand, was annoyed enough, after an hour’s wait, to hope the jackass froze his ass off out here. Why the hell was the man hiding? Could he really have something to do with Rachel’s supposedly accidental crash, or had he seen something that day at the airport—something he was terrified to divulge for some reason?