Comanche

by Brett Riley

  He reached his office door, opened it, and then closed it hard enough for Gomez to hear. A moment later, the phone at the front desk rang. Gomez answered it. Good.

  Bradley slipped down the hall, moving past the break area and the two interrogation rooms, easing by records and the armory. At evidence, he took out his keys, taking care not to jingle them, and let himself in.

  Walking up and down the rows, peering into the dimness at taped cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other like a child’s building blocks, the chief soon reached the back of the room, where the boots and gun belt had been piled on a middle shelf. I’m glad they ain’t real evidence. Otherwise, I’d be crawlin around with a flashlight, readin labels and hurtin my back. He grabbed the Kid’s gear and stuffed it in his duffel.

  He exited and locked the door. So far, so good. Odd to feel grateful that the city had not ponied up for new security cameras inside the station. Creeping back down the hall to his office, Bradley was about to turn the corner when he heard C.W. Roark’s voice booming down the hallway, asking after Gomez’s wife and two-year-old daughter. Cursing under his breath, the chief dashed into his office and sat behind his desk, cramming the duffel underneath it. He took some papers from his inbox and pretended to examine them.

  Heavy footfalls in the hallway and then a sharp rap on the door.

  Yeah, he called.

  Roark walked in. Hey, Bob. We need to go over the security schedule for the Pow Wow.

  Shit. Bradley tried to keep his expression neutral. Okay, he said.

  The mayor pulled up a chair and sat down. Outside, the wind picked up, the sun riding high in the sky.

  McDowell pulled into the Roarks’ driveway at 2:45 p.m. Rennie’s car was parked near the house, but the mayor’s was gone. Overhead, a long line of thick, white clouds bordered the blue sky to the west. The wind had risen, blowing grit across the yard. Weather reports that morning predicted a late-afternoon storm and, by evening, hard rains and high winds that would lash Comanche for most of the night. Hopefully, Bradley could burn the boots long before then, but if Hurricane Katrina and what happened afterward had proved anything, it was that no plan was ever executed perfectly. Back in ’05, McDowell had gotten out of town just ahead of contraflow, planning to spend the night in Baton Rouge, but the only available hotels, mostly cheap places catering to out-of-town construction crews and the like, had jacked up prices far beyond a fortune-teller’s budget. She had traveled well into central Arkansas before she found a place to stay. McDowell had spent nearly a week in that cruddy motel, eating lousy food and watching the news, before heading back to make more stable arrangements.

  Who knew what would go wrong today?

  After she parked, she rapped on the door, the painted wood grainy against her knuckles. She had always enjoyed texture—the roughness of pilled sheets, the minuscule roadways in wood’s grain. Despite the heat and the goat-head sticker she had stepped on the one time she had gone barefoot, she enjoyed Texas for the textures alone.

  Rennie opened the door, a telephone held to one ear.

  Yeah, Rennie said, nodding to McDowell. She just got here. Right. Right. We’ll do our best. Y’all be careful. She ended her call and stuck the phone in her pants pocket. Hey, hon. That was Raymond. Come on in.

  McDowell entered. Where’s Mr. Roark?

  Rennie shut the door and led her into the house. At the police station. You might wanna call your teacher friend. He’s likely got a long wait ahead.

  She took McDowell into the kitchen and poured tall glasses of sweet iced tea. Then she took some lemon slices out of the refrigerator and stuck a wedge in each glass as McDowell dug her phone out of her purse and dialed Jacob Frost. Rennie carried the glasses out of the room, giving McDowell her privacy.

  Frost answered after three rings. Hello?

  Hey. I’m here. The mayor’s at the police station, so I reckon the chief’s gonna be late. Try not to boil alive out there.

  Shit. Thanks for the heads-up. Be careful.

  You, too.

  In the den, Rennie sat on the couch. McDowell joined her and took a glass of tea.

  Rennie sipped hers. Raymond told me everything, she said. I thought he’d been drinkin again. A ghost—Lord above.

  After what we saw out there and what happened to Ray’s hand, we can’t deny it anymore. If there’s a logical explanation, we ain’t smart enough to figure it out.

  What if that thing shows up here? Rennie said. I doubt you can stop it with your good looks.

  McDowell laughed. You’re right, I expect. But if it really is a ghost, we got an edge. Jake says there’s rules. A ghost would be bound to a certain place or a certain item.

  I like you. You got no bullshit about you. But you didn’t answer me. What do we do?

  Get in the car and drive as fast as we can, McDowell said.

  And what if it’s a man after all?

  I reckon you got guns around here somewhere.

  Rennie raised one eyebrow, as if McDowell had proposed they break the laws of physics. Honey, this is Texas.

  Then get a couple. If trouble comes, and we can’t get away, we shoot.

  Rennie reached behind the couch cushion and pulled out a .38 snub-nosed revolver.

  There’s a .45 on top of that curio cabinet yonder, she said. If it comes to that.

  McDowell glanced at the cabinet and said, When’s your boy get outta school?

  He always comes straight home from football practice and gets a shower, so probably around five thiry or six.

  McDowell drank her tea and looked at her watch. 3:20 p.m. She hoped the mayor would arrive first. He would be easier to corral if he had to wait on his son.

  Frost followed the GPS to the gravel road Bradley had indicated and parked with the passenger-side tires in the sloping ditch. The rocks on the road looked dull, like tarnished metal. On the other side, another grassy ditch led to a barbed-wire fence, beyond which lay a field that rolled over hills like cresting waves. In the distance, a handful of cows stood in ankle-high grass. They stared at each other, not moving except for the occasional swish of their tails. What did cows think about all day—being milked or finding the best clover in Texas or a world in which they dined on peopleburgers? God, I must be bored out of my mind. All these trees and fields, all this open space—it’s too damn quiet to hear yourself think.

  Jacob Frost had been born in Connecticut and completed his undergraduate degree at UConn before earning his MA and PhD from SUNY–Buffalo. His first postdoctoral instructorship took him to the University of Chicago, where he stayed until the job in New Orleans brought him south for the first time in his life. Whenever he drove through sleepy small towns, he knew that, should he ever find himself living in such a place, he would blow his brains out. He loved New Orleans, even after Katrina and everything that happened—the dirty politics and the gentrification and the shattered culture that stubbornly refused to die no matter who tried to kill it, president or nature or the steady and unforgiving march of history. He loved walking the Quarter and stumbling over street musicians, finding the little-known dives where real jazz ripped itself from the bones of old men and assaulted you with its urgency. He loved sniffing the air at lunchtime when the po’ boys were hot, and spices drifted through the air like fog. Nature scenes had their appeal, certainly, but in the end, Frost wanted a city that would reveal not the unchanging grandeur of a pastoral scene but the mutability of humans in close contact.

  One of the cows mooed. A fly settled on the truck’s windshield. Soon enough, Frost would have to turn off the engine, after which he would start to broil. Plus, he had to pee, and he did not relish the thought of tramping into the woods, hoping to find a tree big enough to hide behind.

  Would I even recognize poison ivy?

  Frost looked at his watch. He had studied folklore all his life, including some intense ghost stories
and fairy tales. Vengeful spirits, creatures of fang and claw and bristling fur, human deviancy in all its forms. Now, just such a tale unfolded right here, but so far he had missed it all. The desire to experience whatever might happen next ached in his bones. Even if this errand with Bradley came to nothing, which it probably would, he could tell the story to his children, should he ever get around to having any.

  2:55 p.m. The gas tank was full, but Frost could not leave the truck running while it pumped carbon into the air and fueled this furnace of a state even more. Twenty minutes more, and if Bradley had not arrived, Frost would shut off the engine.

  A black bull joined the cows. It mounted a spotted one and humped away, careless of who might be watching. At least somebody was having fun. The fly buzzed away, leaving Frost alone with his thoughts.

  At 4:15, Raymond and LeBlanc parked on the perimeter of the diner’s lot. Despite another BC, the deep, throbbing ache in Raymond’s hand was cycling up. LeBlanc cranked down the window and shut off the engine, letting in the hot summer air. The lot was half full already, the sky still blue for the most part, though some clouds were rolling in from the west—tall white structures like cotton ball buildings sculpted by children. Farther out, they darkened, light grays giving way to near black. The agency needed fair weather. If the Kid showed up, they might not see him in the rain.

  LeBlanc looked to the west. What the hell do we do if it comes a turd floater in the middle of a gunfight?

  Raymond watched the front doors. Get wet, I reckon. Think I can slip up yonder every now and then and get us somethin to drink?

  If you don’t, we’re gonna turn to dust and blow away.

  If only they had a case of beer. It would have quenched Raymond’s thirst even as it took the edge off his pain. If wishes were horses. Don’t dwell on the heat. Or beer. Or whiskey on the rocks.

  They watched the incoming vehicles. Roark would likely appear later in the evening, but in a situation like this, you could never be too careful.

  All this ghost shit, LeBlanc said. You ever think about Marie? Whether you could see her again this side of heaven?

  It was the kind of question you seemed to hear on half the TV shows or movies you ever watched: What would you do, what would you give up, for one last moment with your dead father, sister, daughter, wife? What would it be like to see Marie, to tell her all the things he had never gotten around to saying? If anyone had asked him before the Piney Woods Kid materialized out of nowhere and shot his hand to hell—well, Raymond probably would not have invited them to fuck off. But if he had answered, he would have said he would brave any danger, make any sacrifice.

  Things were different now. He had seen a real spirit, and it was no glowing-around-the-edges angel come to comfort and speak kind words. It was an angry, hateful thing. The Kid had died hard, but so had Marie—her body smashed, her brain jostled enough to put her into a coma. She had lingered in that godforsaken hospital for weeks, a ventilator forcing oxygen into her lungs and deflating them again, her body creating and excreting waste, pumping blood. She had lain that way until the insurance ran out and then some, until Raymond sobered up long enough to see what she had become, and then he had signed the papers. The doctors had unplugged her machines, and she had slipped away. He held her hand until she passed, and then the orderlies came in and pulled him away, prying his fingers from hers. Tears spilled out of him as if his body hid aquifers as bottomless as grief. He had been drunk at her funeral and, for months afterward, had soiled her house with his carelessness, had not visited her grave for nearly a year, afraid the very sight of her tombstone would blind him, drive him insane—or worse, that it would do nothing at all. That, in his own way, he would be as comatose as Marie had been. When LeBlanc forced him to go, the wracking, chest-bursting sobs erupting from him felt like the kind of relief that could kill.

  Now, he shook his head. Marie was the sweetest woman I ever knew, he said. Gentle. Kind. I wouldn’t wanna see her like this. It would be blasphemy.

  LeBlanc watched him for a second and then nodded. They both turned toward the diner and fanned themselves with their hands. Again, Raymond wished for a beer, a Percocet. Outside, a dry wind blew dust off the bare patches in the courtyard, the graying, hard-packed earth as tough and solid as iron. What would a hard rain do to the ground? He did not want to find out while a ghost stalked them. He closed his eyes and breathed, trying and failing to will the heat and clouds away, to ignore the pain.

  Roark left Bradley’s office after 5 p.m. The chief had tried to sneak away three times, but whenever he managed to get out of his office, Roark found him, even following him to the bathroom and talking while he took a shit. Once the clock hit 3, and the mayor kept bird-dogging him, it seemed Roark was keeping him in pocket on purpose.

  When the mayor finally left, Bradley thought about calling Frost but feared any delay might give Roark an opportunity to come back. Walking out of the station with the duffel on his shoulder, Bradley opened the door to his cruiser, tossed the bag into the passenger seat, and got in. Shadows of buildings and trees lengthened as the day limped onward. Dusk was still a couple of hours away, but it felt later, as if time itself were against them. The chief backed out of his parking space and pulled onto the road.

  Minutes later, Bradley turned onto the back road down which Frost had traveled hours ago. He hoped the professor would still be there. He did not want to conduct this business alone.

  The cracked and pot-holed pavement gave way to gravel that pinged against the undercarriage like thick hail on a tin roof. Bradley did not slow down. A sense of urgency built inside him until his chest felt tight, as if the buttons might pop off his shirt. He half expected to see the Kid on the road, leveling those legendary pistols.

  Red Thornapple’s truck was parked across from a barbed-wire fence. In the field beyond, a bull and eight or nine cows stood motionless. They seemed like a good omen. Bradley had always found cattle soothing—their peacefulness, their stoicism in the face of bad weather and stupid high-school kids with pellet guns and summer days that threatened to cook them alive. Bradley pulled up behind the truck and parked, taking several deep breaths, eyes closed, the shotgun beside him, his sidearm heavy against his hip. Frost waited in the truck, one arm crooked out the window. Things will be fine. Two grown men can burn a pair of boots in broad daylight. They would do it in the road so old Trip Allen’s meadows and hills would not burn to a crisp. He turned off the car and got out, hauling the duffel. He shut his door and walked up to the truck’s driver’s-side window.

  Frost turned to him, his red face dripping sweat, and said, That bull has fucked half a dozen cows since I got here. I was beginning to think I was delirious.

  Bradley laughed. Sorry about that. C.W. showed up and stayed all afternoon.

  Bradley stood back while Frost got out. The professor stretched and grunted.

  I’ve pissed three times, Frost said. Probably got poison oak on my balls. Next time, I’m bringing a porta potty.

  Ain’t gonna be a next time.

  Frost regarded him. Do you believe in the ghost?

  I believe in coverin my backside. Come on. Let’s get this done.

  Together, they knelt in the hot gravel and opened the bag. Bradley pulled out the boots and the gun belt and dumped them in the center of the road. Frost dug out the lighter fluid and the matches.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  September 15, 2016, Concurrent—Comanche, Texas

  McDowell spent the afternoon drinking Rennie Roark’s iced tea and watching the windows. The clock on the wall read 5:10 when a vehicle pulled into the driveway. McDowell looked at Rennie, eyebrows raised. Rennie got up and went to the window, peering between the curtains.

  It’s Will, she said. He’s early.

  Rennie came back and stood by the couch. McDowell kept her seat. A moment later, the boy walked in. Taller than his mother but shorter than the
mayor, around 180 pounds, he wore a Dallas Cowboys number 82 jersey. He grinned when he saw McDowell and then looked away. His hair was wet with sweat.

  Hey, he said.

  Hay is for horses, said Rennie. Say a proper hello to our guest. This is Miss Betsy McDowell.

  His face reddened. He looked at the floor. Hello, Ms. McDowell.

  Betsy, said McDowell. Pleased to meet you.

  How was school? asked Rennie.

  Fine, he said. I gotta shower.

  He stole another glance at McDowell and scurried from the room. Rennie watched him go, her brow furrowed. It was nearing suppertime for people like the Roarks, small-town conservatives who probably went to bed by 10 and would likely die of shock on a Bourbon Street Saturday night. The mayor could arrive at any time.

  Some minutes passed, and then another vehicle pulled up. Rennie turned, her hand covering her mouth for a second.

  It’s C.W., she said.