Coates, Deborah - [Wide Open 03] - Strange Country

by Deborah Coates

  2

  After a moment that was mostly silent, Boyd unzipped his jacket halfway, unbuttoned the flap on his shirt pocket, and pulled out a small notebook and a ballpoint pen. He clicked the top of the pen and flipped the notebook open to an empty page. He did it all slowly and deliberately, wanted to give her time to see him do it, to take a breath, to get what she wanted to tell him straight in her head.

  She blinked when he clicked his pen, looked at the notebook in his left hand, at the pen in his right, then looked at him. “Yes,” she said. Another brief pause. “Well, yes.” She made a gesture toward the hall. “Let’s go back to the kitchen, Deputy…” She paused again.

  “Davies.”

  “Davies,” she repeated. The word sounded rich, the way she said it, as if it described azure skies, mountain meadows, the faint sweet scent of clover in late spring, and the lazy hum of bumblebees. Boyd looked at her more closely. “I’ll make coffee,” she said. As if this were a social call, as if whatever the danger was, whoever the prowler was, it was over.

  Or she wanted to believe it was.

  The kitchen was a sharp contrast to the living room, bright and warm, the walls pale yellow, the trim bright white, accessorized in sage green and brick red with stainless-steel appliances, granite countertops, and a stone tile floor. Boyd removed his jacket, hung it on a chair, and sat.

  One of the lights over the stove buzzed. The room smelled of nutmeg and freshly turned soil. The door to the cellar was wide open, though Prue had to walk awkwardly around it when she went to the counter. The back door was closed and locked, chained. There were locked dead bolts below and above the doorknob. Both looked brand-new. Not a usual thing—triple locks—for West Prairie City, South Dakota.

  Prue’s next words seemed to echo Boyd’s thoughts. “I don’t lock my doors. Usually. No one does around here. But lately, there’s been … well, it’s seemed like a good idea. When I got home tonight, the light was on by the garage. I didn’t think a lot of it. It comes on when there’s a storm, when the wind is strong, or a raccoon wanders through.” She put the filter in the coffeemaker, added water from the tap, and turned it on. She took two white cups with a chased silver design and matching saucers from the cupboard. When she set the cups and saucers on the table, her right hand shook and one of the cups jumped sideways. Boyd caught it before it fell and set it back on the saucer. “Thank you,” Prue said. For a moment, there was just the sound of the coffeemaker and the sharp odor of brewing coffee.

  Prue sat down across from Boyd. She took hold of one of the cups by the handle and moved it back and forth as if to watch the silver catch the light. Boyd’s radio crackled. When the coffee finished brewing, Prue retrieved the pot. She poured coffee into each of the cups and slid one toward Boyd. She didn’t ask if he wanted cream or sugar, and he didn’t know if it didn’t occur to her or if she already knew he didn’t.

  Boyd put his arm on the table and looked at her, though she wasn’t looking at him. “The prowler,” he said.

  “I came in the back door,” she said, as if she’d simply been waiting for him to ask before she continued. “It was closed, but I realized when I grasped the doorknob that it wasn’t latched. That was the first thing. The light over the sink was on, as I’d left it. Nothing seemed to be disturbed. Then I heard it. A noise from upstairs.” She looked at him then, which she hadn’t done since she’d sat down, had told him the story while looking down at the coffee in her cup, like secrets had been written there. Or she was writing them as she spoke. “That’s when I called you.”

  Boyd didn’t say, Why didn’t you tell me you heard a noise upstairs when I walked in the door? Why did you tell me the prowler was outside when you already knew he wasn’t? Because she hadn’t and they couldn’t go back and do it over.

  Instead, he crossed to the back door and checked that it really was locked even though there were three locks and it was obvious that it was. “Stay here,” he said.

  Prue raised the coffee cup to her lips and took a sip as she watched him. He couldn’t get a gauge on her and that bothered him, alternately relaxed and nervous and he couldn’t understand what caused one reaction or the other. Hallie had told him once that everything Prue did was calculated. If so, she was good, each action or reaction seeming genuine in itself, just that it made no sense when it was all put together.

  He moved lightly down the hall, unsnapping his holster and removing his pistol as he did so. There had been no sounds from upstairs since he arrived; if there had been an intruder inside the house, he or she was probably gone. But the gap between probability and certainty was wide. And dangerous. He thought again about Prue at the table watching him. She was playing a game, had probably been playing one since the moment she called the station. But he didn’t know what her game was, and if there was even the slimmest possibility that there really was a prowler, he had to check it out.

  At the top of the stairs was a narrow landing with four doors that led to what Boyd guessed were three bedrooms and a bathroom. He paused. Nothing. He opened the first door to his left—the bathroom, long and narrow—checked behind the door and the shower curtain. Nothing. The next room was filled with boxes, a long table and two armoires on opposite walls. Moonlight filtered in through the uncurtained window, and the room felt cold. There was an acrid smell, like burnt motor oil, and a low hum that Boyd felt more in his chest than actually heard. He flipped the switch, but the single overhead light didn’t come on, so he worked his way along the wall, checking the corners before he moved on to the furniture. The first armoire was locked; the second was empty.

  The third room, visible by a night-light in an outlet by the bed, looked like a guest room—bed, nightstand, narrow painted dresser, wooden rocking chair. Boyd checked behind the door, checked the closet. No other sounds than his own footsteps as he moved though the rooms. Still, he checked.

  The last room was the largest, clearly Prue’s own bedroom, with a night-light in the outlet near the door, and a second one to the left of the nightstand by the bed. Boyd checked behind the door and in the closet. He could see all the corners and he’d already lowered his pistol when he noticed that the window on the far side of the bed had been raised approximately six inches.

  He approached with his hand on his gun.

  There was a three-foot drop to the porch roof. The window and the storm window were both open, but not far enough for anyone to squeeze through. Cold from outside barely penetrated the warmth of the room, stymied by insulated curtains and the general stillness of the night. He tried the window himself. It lowered, but it wouldn’t open any farther than the six inches it had already been raised.

  After studying both the window and the porch roof below for several minutes, Boyd returned to the closet, turned on the light, and looked up. He saw a trapdoor with a pull rope attached. When he stood to the side and pulled, steps unfolded into the narrow closet space. He waited, didn’t hear anything, and went carefully up the stairs. He could have called another deputy out, gotten them out of bed, and waited while they drove across town or ten miles in from a trailer on CR54, but even then, one of them still would have had to be the first one up the ladder.

  He went up fast, pistol ready, and found what he’d expected—boxes, some dust. No intruder, but he could see that dust had been disturbed on a couple of boxes and a shelf on the near wall where there appeared to be something missing, a clear spot left behind in the shape of a small rectangle.

  He refolded the attic stairs, reholstered his pistol, brushed nonexistent dust off his pants leg, and went back downstairs.

  Chelly checked in on the way down, which meant he’d been there half an hour. “Five minutes,” he told her.

  He went back to the kitchen, where he found Prue still in the same spot at the table, looking at the cooling coffee in her cup, her cell phone laid on the table as if she’d just made a call or was waiting for one. She didn’t look up until he approached the table. “Nothing,” he said as he crossed behind he
r and retrieved his jacket. “The window was open in your bedroom,” he said. “I don’t think anyone could have come through or gone out that way.” He shrugged into his jacket and zipped it. “There’s no one up there now. Have you been in the attic lately?” he asked.

  She looked startled for maybe half a second; then she smiled, looked at the open cellar door, and said, “Yes. Last week, maybe?” Like it was a question he could answer. She added, “Cleaning, you know. Always something to put away.”

  “To put something up there or take something out?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing valuable in the attic,” she said, not actually answering his question. “There’s nothing up there to take.”

  “Maybe.” He paused. “This is an old house. Are you sure you heard something inside the house?” He found it difficult to believe she’d imagined the whole thing. Mostly because he didn’t think of people that way. But also because Prue Stalking Horse didn’t jump at shadows or mistake the sound of a creaking door for an intruder. And then, there was the question he didn’t ask, the one that hung between them—why did you stay in the house if you thought there was someone upstairs?

  Prue rose in a single fluid motion.

  “When you were upstairs, did you notice anything … odd?” she asked. The way she looked as she said it was unsettling, like it was at least partly for this, this question, that she’d made the call to central dispatch in the first place.

  “Odd in what way, ma’am?” he asked her. It wasn’t that he minded wasting his time—and this increasingly seemed like a waste of time—it was that it seemed like she did want something. She just wasn’t going to come right out and ask.

  She seemed relaxed and cool once again. She tilted her head. “You have certain … talents, don’t you?” she asked.

  For a horrible moment he thought she was actually propositioning him. Which had happened more than once. Women seemed to like him—until they figured out how much of a Boy Scout he really was.

  “I mean”—she looked amused—“psychic talents. So I hear.”

  “I’ve had … dealings,” he said. Hallie was the only person he’d ever talked to about his prescient dreams. Prue Stalking Horse wasn’t going to become the second.

  “This house has a certain … aura,” she said. “I thought you might sense it. And if you did, there might be something you could help me with.”

  “Ma’am,” Boyd said. “It is not appropriate to make nonemergency calls to emergency dispatch. People depend on me being where I’m supposed to be.”

  “Well, I do think there was someone,” Prue said, though Boyd wasn’t sure he believed her. “Just not … problematic.”

  “I’ll make another circuit outside,” he said, “before I leave.” He was tempted to issue her a written warning about the emergency call, but she’d just say she really did think there was a prowler and it wouldn’t go anywhere or make any difference to her anyway.

  She walked back up the hall with him. “I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. “Maybe it was a raccoon.” She opened the front door and walked out onto the porch with him, flipping on the porch light as she came.

  Something poked at him, like the undercurrent of an approaching storm, something not right that he couldn’t articulate, about the way she was acting, about one of the rooms upstairs, about something he’d seen that didn’t entirely register. Prue opened the porch door and a blast of icy winter air rushed in. “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  He walked down the three porch steps, then stopped and turned back. He meant to tell her it was no trouble to come out, that it was his job.

  He meant to tell her to be careful.

  The crack of a rifle shot and the burst of blood on Prue’s forehead happened simultaneously. In one swift motion, Boyd grabbed her around the waist and threw her to the porch floor. He scrambled for the light switch and plunged them both into darkness. His breath came quick and sharp, puffing out in bands of silver. It was the only sound in the room other than the soft hiss of the storm door closing slowly on its pneumatics. He slid back to Prue and took her wrist. She had no pulse.

  He hadn’t expected one.

  “Chelly,” he said quietly into his radio. “Shots fired.” He gave her Prue’s address.

  “What?”

  Whatever she’d trained for, prepared herself for, thought she knew how to handle, it hadn’t been those words. She probably hadn’t heard anything remotely like them since she started working night dispatch for Taylor County or probably ever in her life. “Oh. Jesus.”

  “Chelly,” Boyd said. His voice was still quiet, but insistent. Steady too, and he appreciated that, because his heart was thumping so loud, he was having trouble hearing. “Call the sheriff. Wake him up. Tell him Prue Stalking Horse has been shot and give him this address.”

  He heard her take a deep shuddering breath. “Okay. Yes. Okay. Jesus.” Then she was gone.

  Boyd figured it would be at least fifteen minutes before anyone arrived. He sat tight up against the inside wall with his pistol drawn as Prue’s body turned cold beside him and waited.

  3

  The phone woke Hallie while it was still dark outside.

  She blinked, sitting up before she was even awake, but disoriented because it was dark and she’d been having a dream that she didn’t actually remember, except it was about escape and wanting and things that had never been promised, but could still be taken.

  “Hello?” For a split second, she thought it was Death on the phone, thought he’d found a way to reach her through the hex ring.

  “Hallie Michaels?”

  She didn’t recognize the voice, couldn’t have recognized it, because it was mechanical, spoken through what she suspected was some sort of computerized voice synthesizer, deep and slow and flat like something ground from stone.

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Hallie Michaels?”

  The same two words a second time, like a recording, or like she should know who it was, which she didn’t and which, she figured, she couldn’t, given that it wasn’t anyone’s real voice; of that much she was certain.

  She threw back the blankets, dropped her bare feet onto the cold wood floor, and started looking for jeans and a shirt. Nothing good was going to come from a computer-created voice calling her in the middle of the night, and she thought she’d want to be dressed before finding out what did come of it.

  “Tell me who you are and what you want or I’m hanging up right now,” she said. She said it slowly, like maybe the problem was the person on the other end of the line couldn’t understand her.

  There was a long silence and she almost did hang up, would have hung up except she was awake now and she wouldn’t get back to sleep wondering who was calling her at whatever the hell time this was.

  “What do you fear?”

  “What?”

  “Do you fear death?”

  “Who is this?”

  Static filled the line, a sound in the background like sparks and shorting electrical wires, then silence.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Damn.

  Hallie looked at her phone. Dead.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling like she hadn’t slept and trying to figure out what had just happened—who that had been on the phone and why they were calling her. She wanted it to be nothing, to be a continuation of the dream she couldn’t quite remember. But the part of her that accepted ghosts and black dogs and everything else that had happened in the last half year, the part that moved forward in the face of things she didn’t want and didn’t need and hadn’t asked for knew that it hadn’t been.

  She pulled on her jeans and a gray T-shirt, scrubbed her hands through her hair, and stalked downstairs. She plugged her phone into a wall socket on the far counter, flipped on the overhead light, and looked at the clock—five o’clock. So, not quite the middle of the night, though it felt like it. She’d have been up in an hour anyway.

  Since she and Boyd had come ba
ck from the under, Hallie’d been waking regularly at two or three in the morning from dark dreams she didn’t really remember. They weren’t like the dreams she had when she’d first come home, all blood and screaming and the explosive sound of gunfire. Or even the ones she’d had right after the whole thing with Martin, when ghosts cold as winter nights had drifted through her sleeping hours, each one wanting something and each time not able to tell her what that something was.

  These dreams were different. She wasn’t even certain they were dreams at all. She thought maybe it was Death, trying to talk to her again, come to repeat the question he had asked her once already—to take his place in the under. And even though she knew what her answer was, what it absolutely would be no matter what or how he asked, she didn’t want him to ask, didn’t want to answer. What if he didn’t accept no? What if he took her anyway? He was Death. He’d spared her once, back in Afghanistan. He could change his mind.

  And now, someone had called in the middle of the night to ask her what she feared. Why? Was it a joke? It had to be someone she knew. But if so, who? Almost no one knew about Hallie’s encounters with Death. And most of them were dead.

  She stood in the middle of the room for a minute, then let out a breath, like a horse’s huff on a frost-sharpened morning. She moved to the kitchen table, sat in one of the battered straight chairs, and pulled on her boots. It felt like someone else’s kitchen table, which it had been and technically still was until probate was settled. Hallie had permission to stay there, though, to take care of the property and the horses. Pabby—Delores Pabahar—had left the ranch and everything on it to Hallie in her will, which wasn’t so much of a windfall as it sounded, or as Don Pabahar, Pabby’s son, tried to make it sound. The ranch was small; it had water problems. No one had made a living on it in years.

  She pulled on a hooded sweatshirt and her barn coat, grabbed a cap and gloves and an iron fireplace poker, and went outside. It was too early, really, to move hay to the racks for the horses and check that the water in their troughs hadn’t frozen, but she was up and she needed something to do, so she did it anyway.