Lost Echoes

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Oh, now there’s a compliment for a girl.”

  “It’s just all been so good I can’t take any more.”

  “That’s better,” Kayla said. “Was it good with Talia?”

  “Oh, come on, Kayla. To men, the worst is good.”

  “Was she the worst?”

  “Yes.” He thought it was the proper lie to tell.

  “I can whip her ass, you know.”

  “Never doubted it.”

  “What say we sleep a little? I have to go back to work later.”

  “Sure.”

  Kayla set the alarm. While she was stretched out, messing with the clock radio, Harry took a moment to look at her. It was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out the long, lean shape of her body, and he enjoyed seeing it.

  When the clock was set, she turned back to him and they shifted comfortably together.

  “Maybe just one more time,” she said. “Just so we won’t forget how.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kayla said.

  The radio was playing, and had been for a while. Kayla rolled out of bed, said, “I set it for an hour ago. I’m going to have to quick-shower and go. Sorry, Harry.”

  Harry leaned up on one elbow while Kayla darted for the bathroom. A moment later he heard the shower running. He padded a couple of pillows together and sat up in bed with his back against them, savoring the darkness.

  After a short time the bathroom door opened and gave the room some light and some steam from the shower. Kayla stood drying herself with a towel, another one turban-wrapped around her head. He watched as she finished drying and pulled on her panties. They were black, and there was very little of them.

  It was like watching the Venus de Milo put on her first set of clothes. Not a bad way to spend time.

  “Damn,” Kayla said as she danced around the room, one leg in her uniform pants. She finally got settled, pulled the pants on, then her shirt over her bra. She sat on the bed and put on socks and shoes in the light from the bathroom. Harry kissed her neck.

  “Don’t do that, or I’m going to be late for work.”

  He pulled back.

  “Well, you can do it just a little, while I tie my shoes.”

  He did.

  “Damn, what did I do with my gun? Sorry, got to turn on the overhead.”

  She did. Her gun and holster were on a chair. Harry saw a photo on the night table. He had seen it in the dark, but couldn’t make it out, hadn’t been interested. In the overhead light he could see that it was an actual photo of the newspaper picture he had seen when Kayla became a local cop. This was a sharper, cleaner version, and more widely cropped. You could see that there were people to the left and right in the photo. Other cops watching the ceremony.

  Harry rolled out of bed quickly, grabbed the photo, and looked at it closely.

  “Kayla?”

  Kayla looked up from fastening her gun belt.

  “This man,” Harry said. “At the corner of the photo here.”

  “What?”

  “This guy. Who is he?”

  Kayla looked. It was a tall, big-bodied, gray-haired man. He looked like the grandpa who would take you to your first movie, maybe buy you a snow cone and slip you dollars. He was staring at the proceedings from the wings, looking very grandfatherly and proud.

  “That’s the chief.”

  “Chief of police?” Harry said.

  “Yeah…What’s with you, Harry?”

  “Shit,” Harry said. “That’s the guy. That’s the guy in the garage with your father, and on the hill, one that raped the woman. He was with your father and the guy who fired the gun.”

  Kayla sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the photo.

  “The chief? He and my dad, they were so close.”

  “It’s him, Kayla.”

  “He helped me get in the academy.”

  “Maybe he felt sorry for what he did.”

  “If he did what you said he did, he doesn’t seem like a man who feels real sorry.”

  “I have to agree.”

  “Jesus. Not the chief. Could you be wrong?”

  “For all I know I got a tumor.”

  “You don’t have a tumor.”

  Kayla sat for a couple of minutes in silence, and Harry didn’t break it. What had been a perfect day now had shit on it.

  “All right,” Kayla said. “I’ve got an idea or two. I’m going to do a bit of investigating myself. This couple in the car, for one thing. Going to give a fresh eye to my dad’s murder, knowing what I know now, what you’ve told me. Can you come see me when I get off tomorrow morning?”

  “I got school and work. Can you call me midday?”

  Kayla nodded, and then she trembled.

  “Shit. The chief. He murdered my father. The lying, two-faced son of a bitch.”

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Harry said. “I know how hot-tempered you are.”

  “I want to shoot him.”

  “Your first idea is the best. No one’s going to believe some nut who gets images through sounds, not without evidence. You do the cop work, and I’ll help you any way I can.”

  Kayla nodded.

  “Promise?” Harry said.

  Kayla reached out and took Harry’s hand. “Promise.”

  52

  When Harry got to the top of the stairs and touched his door, he discovered it was open. Had he left it open? He couldn’t remember. That wasn’t like him, but sometimes, things he had on his mind, the old brain went on vacation.

  He entered cautiously, reached for the light, flicked it.

  Nothing happened.

  Joey. Goddamn it. Joey was supposed to come by, and he had forgotten. It didn’t break his heart that he had, but he did sort of regret standing the dumb shit up. Though, considering what his night had been like, not much.

  Then he saw a shadow dangling from the ceiling, from the light fixture. He pushed the door wider so the streetlight entered the room.

  The light fixture had come loose from the ceiling, so there was raw wire hanging down about a foot before the fixture. All the bulbs were knocked out of the fixture itself, and Joey was hanging from that. His feet should have touched the ground, but they were cranked up behind him and tied. His knees were less than an inch from the floor, and his head and shoulders were covered in ceiling plaster. The room smelled of shit. Joey, in death, had let it go.

  Harry moved toward him slowly, his knees feeling as if they were going to give way. He touched Joey, hoping. But the moment he touched him he knew he was dead. The wire fastened to the fixture and to Joey’s neck caused the body to turn. The light fixture squeaked, and there was a flash—

  —and out of the flash came a black dot, and the black dot expanded and there were shapes in the black dot, and soon the dot was gone and what he saw standing in his dark apartment was the chief and the other man, and now he knew who the other man was, because he could see the scar. The sergeant. It had been him before, but the scar had not been there then. That’s why the man had been familiar in the visions out there on Humper’s Hill. But Harry couldn’t place him. Not without the scar. That event was yet to happen. The sergeant was the guy who had shot the black kid in the front seat, had probably taken his turn with the woman.

  They were watching Joey hang. Joey was still alive. Struggling. Thrashing. The fixture was still fastened to the ceiling, but it was beginning to sag. Joey vibrated for a moment as if trying to crawl out of his skin, and his fear jumped around the room like a kangaroo. And in that flash Harry felt every nasty thing that had ever happened to Joey. That had never happened before, but this time it was everywhere. Every time Joey had taken a slap, been called a name, it rushed over him in a flood of voices and images that knocked him to his knees.

  The images dissolved into a black swirl, then they were gone, leaving Harry looking at the results. One very dead Joey, his tongue poking out of his mouth, his head twisted a little too far. The smell of shit was so strong it seemed to
be in the walls.

  Harry struggled to his feet, his face popped with sweat, his heart pounding against his chest, and looked about the room. The couch had been moved. Harry took a deep breath, kicked it so that it slid, and at the same time he spun the wire that held Joey.

  Squeaks and slides became loud, and out of them fear shot in patterns of light and images formed.

  —Joey wrestling against the couch, two men grappling with him. One of them, the scarred man, had his legs. They rolled him on his side. The sergeant tied Joey’s legs behind him with wire, fastening his hands to his feet.

  With Joey on his knees, the chief came up behind him, slipped another wire, a kind of cable, over Joey’s head, pulled it taut, and choked him with it. As the chief reared back, his knee in Joey’s spine, he looked up, paused, slowly lifted his head, took in the light fixture. And smiled.

  His face transformed from grandfatherly to something quite different. His eyes rolled into his head like a shark about to bite. His lips went thin and the veins stood out on his neck like cables. He looked like a man about to have an ejaculation.

  He removed the wire, and Joey coughed. The chief grabbed a chair, went to the center of the room. From under his coat he pulled a pistol, climbed on the chair, whacked the lights out of the overhead. They dragged Joey over. The chief climbed onto the chair, hooked the wire on the fixture, then they lifted Joey up and looped the cable around his neck, let go of him. Joey twirled and twisted, couldn’t even kick his legs, not pulled up behind him like that. His feet, in the center of his back, flexed like little flippers, then the image began to fade and Joey’s pain faded with it—

  And now Harry realized he was sitting on the floor, right next to Joey, looking up at the body, still spinning slightly from where he had touched him.

  Life had finally worked out just as shitty for Joey as he always expected.

  Harry got his feet under him. His whole body was racked with Joey’s fear, the anger, hatred, the repulsiveness of the chief and the sergeant—the goddamn police themselves.

  Jesus. The perfect cover for a killer.

  “What am I going to do?”

  Harry was sitting on the bottom of the outside stairs, talking on his cell phone with Tad, who was still sleepy.

  “Shit, Harry. You got to tell the police.”

  “The police killed him. Are you fucking crazy?”

  “I know. But you can’t just walk off. It could look worse, you did that.”

  “No shit.”

  “Take it easy, Harry.”

  “Easy? Joey is swinging from my goddamn light, and I’m supposed to take it easy? I feel naked sitting out here. They could come back. They were probably waiting for me. The sergeant, he interviewed me. He knew I was telling the truth, Tad. He knew it because he and the chief killed Vincent. The sergeant has a scar now. That’s why when I saw him in the vision he looked familiar. He didn’t have the scar then. But now he’s got it. Him and the chief, they got to thinking, thought they might ought to get rid of a loose end. My sound business may be hard to prove. They could make me look like a nut. But dead—that works real good.

  “I think they killed Joey ’cause they were waiting for me. They couldn’t let him go; he’d seen their faces. So they killed him. Maybe they killed him as a warning to me. Shit…No. I’ll tell you why they did it. Because they don’t have any problem doing it. It’s not like it’s the first time. They like it, Tad. And now it looks like I did it.”

  “All right. Here’s what we do. We call a cop. But we call Kayla. Can you get in touch with her?”

  “She’s at work. I don’t know how to do that without giving something away. I make a call, that isn’t going to look so good for her.”

  “The cell phone is registered to me, if anyone checks later. Never mind, kid. Hang on. I’m coming. We’ll take care of it. Hard as it is, I suggest you go back in the apartment, close the door, and wait for me. Do you have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Probably best. You’d shoot your dick off. Go in and lock the door.”

  “I locked it when I left. It was unlocked when I got here. They can pick a lock, Tad. Besides, I don’t think the lock works anymore.”

  “Go behind the apartment and wait. I’ll come right over.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’re gonna get rid of the body.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m gonna be in deeper yet.”

  “Kid, you’re already in deep. Only thing now is to get down so deep we come out on the other side.”

  “This puts you in too, you know?”

  “What the fuck are friends for? Someday I might want you to loan me some money.”

  53

  There were icicles under his nose. His eyes, though open, were frosted over. Where there had been snot on his upper lip was now a sheen like glazed sugar. His hands and legs were still tied up with wire, and his mouth was wide-open, and his tongue, black as coal tar, jutted out like some kind of critter poking its head from a den.

  At least this way he didn’t stink.

  Trembling, Harry closed the freezer lid.

  “Oh, shit,” Kayla said.

  “We get caught with him in the freezer,” Harry said, “it won’t look so good, will it?”

  “Shit,” Kayla said. “That was Joey.”

  “Yep.”

  “Shit. You know, except for the tongue, the icicles, and such, he looks just the same.”

  “And there’s the being-dead part.”

  “I know you were still friends. This has got to be rough. Shit. I’m so sorry.”

  “The friendship was on the fringe, to tell the truth, and now we can kind of figure it isn’t going to get patched up.”

  “Shit,” Kayla said again.

  “It may seem inappropriate,” Tad said, coming into the laundry room where the freezer was stored, “but if you two are finished looking at the weasel, would either of you like something to drink?”

  “That’s not very nice,” Kayla said.

  “Dead or alive,” Tad said, “he was a fucking weasel. Drinks?”

  In the living room, drinking diet colas, and in Tad’s case, coffee, Tad said, “I guess we could bury the motherfucker. Maybe take him out somewhere in the deep woods and plant his ass. That might work. You know, when the shuttle exploded over East Texas, over in Nacogdoches County, when they were looking for debris, the bodies of those poor astronauts, they found five or six bodies that weren’t the astronauts’. Barring another shuttle blowup, we might could lose that little fucker out there under some dirt and leaves from about now until forever.”

  “Joey was a little shitty,” Harry said, “and I guess I’m so upset I don’t know I’m upset anymore…. I mean, I don’t know how to feel. But maybe you might not want to call the poor murdered guy a motherfucker or a weasel with him lying in there dead, getting frozen and all.”

  “You say so, kid. He was your weasel, so have it your way. Besides, it isn’t like it’s hurting his feelings.”

  “That is pretty cold, Tad,” Kayla said.

  “Call ’em like I see ’em.”

  “What do I do?” Harry said. “I’ve sort of got it in the wringer, you know?”

  “What do you and I do?” Tad said. “Way I see it, it’s you and me, kid.”

  “What do we do?” Kayla said. “We’re all in on it.”

  “This is like a goddamn musketeer meeting,” Tad said.

  “Thanks for coming over,” Harry said to Kayla.

  “Guess I should say thanks for thinking of me,” Kayla said.

  “We invited someone we trusted,” Harry said.

  “In fact,” Tad said, “this exhausts the list. Us three. Problem here is that the cops, present company excluded, are in on it. They know the kid is having, like, TV spots in his head, running film on events. That puts Harry, as he said, with his tallywhacker in the wringer. This chief is a fucking murderer, and so is the scar-faced man. So what we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know if it
would work well to tell the police,” Kayla said. “Even if you got past the chief and the sergeant on the matter, there’s still that pesky sound business, Harry. It’s all in your head, the evidence. But the body, Tad, it’s in your freezer.”

  “That is a drawback,” Tad said.

  “Thing that’s confused me,” Kayla said, “is why and how does it connect with my father? But now…well, it’s not pleasant, and none of it works out real favorably, but I’m starting to put it together.”

  “Enlighten us, would you?” Harry said. “I’m the one seeing this stuff in my head, and I don’t know any more about what’s going on than I do about college algebra, which I failed, by the way.”

  “I snuck some research today,” Kayla said. “I get caught, I’m out on my ass. Maybe worse. Thing kills me is, the chief, he complains about my perfume like it’s a crime, but isn’t bothered by hanging some kid, killing my father, the kids in the car out at Humper’s Hill. Others.”

  “You could back off on the perfume some, dear,” Tad said. “It’s making my eyes water.”

  “I know. I mean to. It’s a habit. Growing up, we didn’t always have running water. Started using it to hide that fact. It’s like a security blanket.”

  “And as thick as one,” Tad said.

  “Shit, Tad,” Harry said, “lighten up.”

  “Sorry, sweetie,” Tad said. “But to get back on the subject, think you got more to worry about than how much perfume you got on, or sneaking some shit from the cop shop. Thing that’s bigger is we got that weasel-dick in the freezer, and someone finds him, we got to explain that shit. Try and do that. See how that works out. What we gonna tell them? He got sick, tied himself up, crawled in the freezer, and fucking died?”

  “Freezer was your idea,” Harry said.

  “I take credit for it,” Tad said, “but the thing to do now is figure out what to do with his dead weasel ass.”

  “You’re going to stay on the weasel stuff, aren’t you?” Harry said.

  “I might as well be straight with you. I can’t let it go.”

  “You want to hear this or not?” Kayla said.

  “Lay it on us,” Harry said.