Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Where’s your badge?”

  “It’s pinned to my uniform.”

  “Let me get you out of those cuffs.”

  Loren’s nerves sang relief as his hands were released. He rubbed his wrists and turned to look at the man.

  “Who’d you think I was?”

  “Two men broke out of state prison. One’s a double murderer. They were reported heading south on this road in a silver Taurus full of guns, just like yours.”

  Loren sagged against the car. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  Cold nervous laughter bubbled from the state trooper. “No shit. I thought it was shoot-out time.”

  “You had the right goddamn weapon. How’d you get a Thompson, anyway?”

  “It’s my personal weapon. I gotta cover about eight hundred miles of road by myself, I want a friend with me.”

  “I’ve got to congratulate you on your restraint, man.”

  “You just didn’t look like a killer.”

  Loren shook his head. “Some coincidence, huh?”

  “I’m probably the only cop within thirty miles. I thought my goose was cooked.”

  Talking fast, babbling really, both of them happy to be alive.

  It wasn’t until later, heading south again, the car weaving along the blacktop through burned-out stands of pine, that Loren wondered who had given that description to the police, the description that so exactly matched his own. A telephone ghost, he wondered, with Patience’s voice, floating down from a satellite relay to some state police switchboard in Santa Fe? Just on the off chance that some trigger-happy rookie would be patrolling a dark county two-lane and spot Loren heading home?

  Too weird, Loren thought, too chancy. He’d drive himself crazy if he kept on thinking this kind of thing.

  Virtual particles. Time dimensions. Ghosts given form, then not-form . . . It was reality itself that was crazy, that defied logic.

  Loren wondered about his family, about how they moved in his orbit. He had thought their orbits fixed, but his recent observations had not confirmed this. What were they, he wondered, when he wasn’t looking?

  Dust and ash, carried by the high wind, swirled against the windshield. Black, dead trees cut the skyline. The Taurus, alone on a burned-over plateau, seemed to be moving in its own cloud of uncertainty, amid a constantly changing cast of ghosts, virtual beings that haunted the night, pressing their insubstantial presence against the windscreen . . . Randal Dudenhof, brought back from the dead, killed again, then proved not to exist; Jernigan and Vlasic, who died as if they were particles in one of their own experiments, accelerated and slammed head-on into a target; Patience and his crew of gun-toting villains, as sinister as any western gang of bank robbers; lost souls like Roberts the prophet or Jerry, unable, through some inexplicable absence of the proper energies, to fully materialize entirely as substantial beings; hosts of even more subtle, abstruse particles, particles from farther down the t-axis, the past that held the county in the grips of its unseen field— the Mimbres and Apaches, the miners delving for silver and copper, the unseen Anaconda, the Mormon polygamists and Spanish patróns, the upright Apostles singing psalms as they came on the train from Pennsylvania; and religions of faith and miracles, of a God closer than a neighbor, as all-encompassing and imminent as Dirac’s sea of electrons . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Loren walked into his house to find Jerry snoring on the open convertible couch in the living room. A duck hunter’s camouflage jacket and pants had been thrown over Loren’s easy chair; Jerry’s Iver Johnson shotgun sat atop them. One lamp was burning, and there was a smell of gin. Jerry had always seemed to find friends who would take him to the Line, get him drunk, then let him walk home. In this case it appeared that he’d only made it as far as Loren’s house.

  Jerry offered one last wrenching glottal spasm as Loren shut the front door, then opened his eyes and sat up. He seemed perfectly alert, unnaturally so. For him it was one of the effects of drinking. He was alert, he was convivial, he was chatty. Then he passed out.

  “Howdy,” he said. “What time is it?”

  “Around three.”

  “Deb was nice enough to let me sleep here.”

  “So I see.”

  Loren leaned the shotgun in the corner. A spasm of pain rolled through his back. Jerry leaned forward with interest. “Get anything?”

  “Solved three murders, I reckon.”

  “Good for you!” Brightly. “Are we still going to shoot some duck tomorrow? I mean today?”

  Loren rubbed his back and thought about it. He knew how Randal had died, but he couldn’t prove a thing, and he wasn’t a cop anymore in any case. “Might as well,” he said. “We’ll get started in a few hours.”

  “Aren’t we going to church?”

  Loren thought about that as well. “What sin is left?”

  Jerry held up one hand and counted silently on his fingers.

  “Wrath.”

  Loren considered. Word would have got out about his being placed on leave; he didn’t relish dealing with a whole crowd of people who would know about it. Loren looked at the shotgun propped in the corner.

  “I figure I already know as much about wrath as I need to,” he said.

  “Sounds good to me.” Jerry turned to the end table and picked up a slip of paper from under his wristwatch and ring. “You got a message. Cipriano called. He wants you to call back, whatever time you get in.”

  Loren started for the phone, then came to a stop. He sighed and turned around.

  “Where you going?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  Loren drove to Port Royal and Cipriano’s home. The house was pueblo style, flat-roofed, cinder block plastered and painted brown to look like adobe. There was a wall around the property, similarly plastered, with a graceful southwestern arch above the gate. Loren let himself in and walked across the bare-earth yard to the side of the house and Cipriano’s window. A rusty swamp cooler stood on a platform below the window, slowly leaking moisture into a heavy patch of weed. Loren reached above the cooler to knock on the glass.

  After a few seconds the curtains twitched and Cipriano’s startled face peered out. He looked resentfully at Loren for a moment, then gestured toward the front door and vanished. Loren walked to the door and waited for it to open. A light turned on inside, then the door opened and Cipriano appeared, standing barefoot in the door wearing a threadbare terry bathrobe.

  Loren grinned at him. “Yo, bubba.”

  “Shit, jefe. Don’t you ever get tired?”

  “Guess I’m just a night person.”

  Cipriano gestured for Loren to enter, then padded inside. Loren crossed an old Indian rug and sat on the brown simulated leather of the sofa. Cipriano rubbed his tousled hair and sat carefully in a spindly rocking chair he’d probably inherited from his great-grandfather.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”

  “Patience probably has our phones tapped.”

  Cipriano rolled his eyes. “Jesus.”

  “He’s got tapping gear. I’m just being careful.”

  “Jesus,” Cipriano repeated. He cleared his throat. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been calling for hours.”

  “I was checking around. I found out what happened with our John Doe. Who he was, what he was doing, who killed him, and why.”

  There was a long silence. Then, “Listen, jefe.” Then another silence.

  “I’m listening.”

  Cipriano’s face was expressionless. “The report from the criminalistics lab came in. The two guns found in the train wreck were the ones used in the Doe killing. The firing pins had been changed, but not the barrels.”

  “Huh. Any record relating to their serial numbers?”

  “Not yet. We’re looking. But look, jefe. I’m gonna close the case, okay? Jernigan must have been the shooter. That’s what the evidence says.”

  Heat danced through Loren’s frame. “Two-Gun Tim? Are you serious?”
He shook his head. “No way, ése. Listen to me. The thing with the firing pins makes sense. The two killers changed their barrels and firing pins after the shooting, then hid the barrels someplace and broke the pins. When they decided to frame Jernigan, they dug up the barrels, but they had to use the new firing pins because they broke the old ones.”

  “Jefe.” Cipriano’s voice was pained. “The damn case is closed. Don’t you understand?”

  Loren waved his hand in a calming gesture. “Let me talk to you tomorrow afternoon, after I get back from duck hunting. And I’ll talk to Luis, too. I’ll explain everything. Then you can decide.” Loren leaned close. “You really want to spend the rest of your life living next to a bunch of killers?”

  Cipriano gazed at him stonily. “I’ll do whatever I have to do, jefe. But I’ll listen to what you have to say, okay?”

  “Fine.” Loren stood. “I’ll let you get back to bed.”

  Cipriano rose, studied Loren’s face. “Loren? How long’s it been since you got any sleep?”

  “A couple days maybe.”

  “Will you get some rest, guy? You’re beginning to worry me.”

  “I’ll do that. When this shit is over.”

  “It’s already over, jefe.”

  “I haven’t heard the fat lady sing, pachuco.”

  Loren opened the door and stepped out into the deep morning. He heard Cipriano give another long sigh before the door thudded shut behind him.

  When he got home, Jerry was snoring on the couch again. Jerry didn’t wake up this time, and Loren padded quietly past him to the bedroom, closing the door behind him to shut out the snores. He took off his clothes and eased into bed.

  “Loren?” Debra’s voice, rising from the next pillow. She didn’t sound sleepy at all; maybe she’d been lying awake.

  “I’m back.”

  “Did you get what you needed?”

  “Yeah. I know what happened.”

  Her hand reached out, took his. “Can you tell me?”

  Loren took a breath, let it out. A cold grudge stood like a steel door in the way of his speech: he just didn’t feel the proper level of intimacy anymore.

  Still. There was no reason not to.

  “I will,” he said, “after I get some rest.”

  They fell silent. Loren stared sightlessly at the ceiling, his mind spinning. He couldn’t tell whether Debra was asleep or not.

  He didn’t think he fell asleep himself. The darkness and silence seemed to intensify his concentration, heighten the way his mind moved along lengthy chains of thought and image.

  He didn’t have enough evidence even to bring in Patience and his men for an interrogation, let alone convict them. He would simply have to maneuver around them.

  He would talk to Luis and convert him. Luis had an interest in keeping the county stable. He obviously had contacts within the ATL structure; he could use them. Luis could point out to Patience’s superiors that one of their own employees was dangerously unstable. Patience had sabotaged one of ATL’s own multimillion-dollar projects and killed two of the company’s top men. ATL could launch its own internal investigation. Once they realized that there was no national security issue at stake, that ATL was not on the verge of developing a form of travel that could send commandos back into time to right history’s wrongs, normal justice could take its course. Patience could be isolated from his followers, his followers from one another. Sooner or later one of them would talk.

  They had held a stranger as prisoner, killed him, and tried to cover it up, killing two more people in the process. That was all that the investigators would allege, all they would need to prove— any speculation concerning the origins of the stranger were irrelevant to the crimes themselves. If the evidence was presented properly, if one of the guards turned state’s evidence, if the judge was careful not to allow evidence concerning the more esoteric physics . . .

  Loren could get a conviction. He could do it.

  And after that he’d talk to Luis again. The mail would have to stop, and Luis would have to understand that. It was too embarrassing in this day and age, too unnecessary.

  “Loren.” Debra’s voice. “You’re grinding your teeth.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked at the clock; it was nearly six. He slipped out of the bed and found his clothes where he’d left them.

  “I didn’t want to chase you out of bed,” Debra said.

  “You aren’t. I wasn’t sleeping, anyway.”

  He put on his clothes and went to the gun rack. He unlocked it with one of the keys on his belt, took the double-barreled Heym, a box of shells, and his cleaning kit, and left the room. Jerry, thank God, had stopped snoring. Loren picked up Jerry’s Iver Johnson from atop his pile of clothing and went out to the back porch.

  There was dust in the air, the persistent hot Mexican wind beating against the town for yet another day. Loren decided he didn’t want the dust clinging to his gun and so he went back indoors, to the breakfast nook, and turned on a light. He cleaned and oiled the guns, regular methodical movements, a slow beat that paced out his thoughts.

  In the quiet house he heard an alarm clock go off. He rose from his seat and made it to the other end of the house just in time to see Debra knocking on the door to Kelly’s room. Debra turned to walk back down the hall.

  “Jerry and I decided to go hunting early,” Loren said. “I was just going to say that church is an option this morning.”

  Debra, without her glasses, squinted at him. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “You can go if you want. Or the girls.”

  “You’re the religious one. Not me.”

  Loren looked at her with surprise. “I never made you go.”

  She gave him a look. “You never hog-tied me and threw me in the car, no.”

  Annoyance warmed Loren’s nerves. “Go back to bed, then. I’ll get breakfast for me and Jerry.”

  Debra pushed lank blond hair back from her face. “I might as well do it. I’m awake.”

  Loren walked past Debra to Kelly’s door and knocked, then entered. Kelly, dressed in a nightshirt and dusty white socks, brushed her hair as she stared blearily at a vanity mirror that rose from among an overwhelming pile of hair- and skin-care products. Loren could hear the sound of running water from the bathroom, and that meant Katrina was up as well.

  “Jerry and I are going hunting,” Loren said. “You don’t have to go to church if you don’t want.”

  Kelly looked at the brush in her hand and sighed. “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, put down the brush, and climbed into bed.

  Loren knocked on the bathroom door. “Did you hear?”

  “I’m awake!” Katrina’s voice. “I might as well get up and use the weight room at school.”

  Which meant she’d have maybe a sliver of dry toast for breakfast, work up an appetite, then gorge on junk food for lunch. Loren knew there was nothing he could do about it, so he turned and went to the living room.

  Jerry slept on, oblivious. The coffee machine threaded the air with the smell of hot coffee. Loren shook his older brother awake, then watched as Jerry stumbled off, hangover written across his unshaven face, to the bathroom. Loren went to clear his guns from the table.

  By the time Jerry had his second cup of coffee he was in fine form, going on at the breakfast table about tunnels built under Mount Shasta by the same extraterrestrials who were buzzing about the atmosphere in UFOs.

  “Anyone seen these tunnels?” Loren said.

  “Sure. Lots of people.”

  “They take any videos?”

  “Well.” Jerry looked uncomfortable. “They couldn’t have. They were traveling by astral projection.”

  “Ah.” Loren picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. “Somehow I thought so.”

  “If they tried to go in person, they’d disappear. The government doesn’t want that kind of information getting out.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jer,” Katrina said. She was nibbling, as
Loren expected, on a thin piece of dry toast. “How come you didn’t join the UFO people here in Atocha for the millennium?”

  “Because Jerry didn’t have any money to give them,” Loren said.

  “Naw.” Jerry was unoffended by this skepticism. “It’s because they were contactees. People who say they get contacted in person by the saucers are obviously crazy or lying.”

  Loren looked at Jerry, finding this example of good sense suspicious. “Yeah? How so?”

  “Because the only way to really contact UFOs is through telepathy.”

  “Oh.” Loren thought about it for a moment, then grinned. “I think you’re very likely exactly right.”

  Jerry, pleased with himself, reached for another waffle. Debra came to the table with her own waffle, poured herself coffee.

  “When we’re out this morning,” Loren told Jerry, “I’ll tell you about my John Doe and who he was. I think you have just the type of mind to appreciate it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Daddy!” Katrina said. “Tell us now. I wanna hear.”

  “Later. Tonight, after everybody’s home.”

  “I have a date tonight. It’s Friday.”

  “At dinner, then.” He turned to Jerry. “Where’ll we look for duck?”

  Jerry’s mouth was full of waffle. “We don’t have any dogs with us. And I don’t want to have to go swimming.”

  “La Ciénega, then.”

  “Good.”

  La Ciénega was a bit of flat ground where the Rio Frio, rushing from the mountains toward its junction with the Rio Seco, spread out and formed a bit of marsh. There was good cover amid the tangle of cottonwood, willows, and underbrush, and the water wasn’t very deep. The water was unusable by human beings, contaminated by heavy metals washed down from nineteenth-century gold and silver diggings, but the ducks were plentiful.

  “We’ll take water bottles,” Loren said.

  “I’ll have to wash mine out. I think it’s still got some Coke in it from last year.”

  “We should get moving.”

  “Yeah.”

  Loren left the table and changed into his camouflage jacket, cap, and pants. When he opened the bedroom blinds, he could see the first touch of light in the eastern sky. It was time to get to La Ciénega before the ducks took flight. Loren got back to the living room in time to see Jerry, in his camos, carrying the two shotguns out the door. He could hear Debra moving in the kitchen. Katrina was crossing the room, sipping at a glass of the orange-flavored energy drink she used before working out.