Playing Dead

by Julia Heaberlin

  When Sheriff Joe Bob Woolsey entered, he radiated nuclear Oklahoma heat. His body raised the room’s temperature five degrees.

  “Sorry I’m runnin’ behind.” He sounded slightly out of breath. “I been out workin’ cattle on my ranch. This sheriff deal don’t pay enough for me to give up my day job.”

  This is something I love about native southerners—a hello includes more personal information than a Yankee would parse out in an hour. Actually, the hello often doesn’t include the word hello.

  Sheriff Joe Bob, who had run unopposed for twelve years running, was a large red-faced man on his way to a coronary. Tributaries of burst blood vessels on his cheeks and nose were a better advertisement for not drinking than his own posters.

  He stood well over six feet and was dressed in jeans, a pair of scuffed brown Justin boots, a sweaty blue plaid work shirt, and a crooked badge that I suspected he’d stuck on in his pickup on the way over. The holster and gun that rested comfortably around his hips like a second skin—those he probably wore to bed.

  Big, calloused hands that reminded me of my father held a thin file, which he slid across the table to me before he took a swig of some black, oily-looking coffee. He slurped from the Styrofoam cup like a needy alcoholic.

  “I’d offer ya some, but it might kill ya,” he said, grinning. “That there is the case file for Jennifer Coogan. Biggest thing that ever happened here, but you wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at that. I got bigger files on the town drunks. The way I hear it, the FBI guys took it over almost from the git-go, pissin’ everybody off.”

  “Is the sheriff who worked the case still alive?” I asked.

  “Nope. Died a few years back. Most everybody who had an inside track to that case is in the ground. We live hard and die young ’round here. If cancer don’t git you, your wife’s naggin’ will.” He winked as if I’d never heard that one before. “Nope, pretty much what you got is those few pieces of paper.”

  He wiped his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. “It’s hotter than my Meemaw’s griddle out there.”

  I flipped over the ten or so single pages of the file, thinking that I’d driven a lot of miles for a few folksy metaphors. The meager police report didn’t even mention the cans of hominy and nacho cheese sauce. Jack said they’d been strapped to her body to weigh her down in the river. The coroner’s report was incomplete. Interviews were sketchy. Useless.

  I reluctantly turned over the second to last page, feeling a lousy dead end.

  A blurry, mimeographed picture stared up at me. I had to look twice, then one more time to be sure. I glanced up at the sheriff, wondering if this was a joke and he was in on it, but common sense said that was impossible.

  It seemed more logical that Idabel, Oklahoma, was just a shortcut to Oz.

  I blinked, and the men were still there on the page, unaware they’d been caught by the camera.

  A hobbit and a giant.

  A giant with a big heart tattoo.

  CHAPTER 26

  I heard a commotion outside the door, but it seemed miles away from the fantasyland where I’d retreated with a giant and a dwarf.

  Hudson snapped me right back.

  He stood at the door to the interview room, radiating his own kind of nuclear energy, instantly raising my temperature ten degrees. The man kept showing up no matter what. Not letting go.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Tommie?” Controlled rage. The tip-top of Hudson’s temper scale.

  Sheriff Woolsey surprised me by rising with the quick grace of an old movie cowboy, his hand resting on the .45 in his holster. “Ma’am, do you want me to draw?” he asked politely.

  “No. No! I know him. He’s a friend. It’s OK.” The sheriff didn’t move, his eyes traveling to the bulge at Hudson’s waist.

  “We’re in a relationship,” Hudson said, tossing over his security firm’s card.

  “Who says?” I spit at him, while inside I hoped that he meant it.

  “Oh.” Sheriff Joe Bob relaxed, as if that explained everything, sitting back down and propping his boots up on the table. “Go right to it.”

  “We’re leaving.” Hudson gestured for me to get up.

  Uh, have you met me before?

  “How did you find me?” I asked, not moving, trying to keep my voice level. Then, grudgingly, “I was planning to check in with you again shortly.”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said. “You rented a car under your real name with your MasterCard. The car had a GPS device in the trunk. I have enough special abilities to charm minimum-wage rental car agents.” His voice grew more sarcastic, which I didn’t think was possible. “Oh, yeah, and Lyle called and told me where you were. My ten-year-old nephew could have found you, Tommie.”

  Hudson was always good with reality checks. I’d been playing a dangerous game on this trip, fooling myself. Thinking I’d left my hunters behind.

  Before I could respond, Sheriff Woolsey flipped his chair around and sat it down hard inches from me, probably one of his tried-and-true witness intimidation techniques. One move closer and I’d get poked by the toothpick getting a workout in his mouth. His breath smelled like Skoal and bitter coffee.

  “She can’t leave yet. If I’m not mistaken, she recognized these boys.” He tapped the paper in front of me.

  It wasn’t like I’d forgotten. Dear God.

  “Do you know these men?”

  With the sheet in my hand, I moved over to the light by the window, buying a little time for Hudson to calm down. In the old days, I timed him at sixteen minutes but this was a fairly egregious offense on my part. I examined the men in the picture closely, thrilled I’d found a connection but even more confused. How was Jennifer Coogan’s death tied to Jack Smith and Anthony Marchetti?

  Less than twenty-four hours ago, Jack had rambled drunkenly to me about a seemingly mythical hobbit, a giant, and the lying ways of the Chicago mobster who just might be my father. Now here, in the murder file of Jennifer Coogan, in a small Oklahoma town, the Hobbit and the Giant had sprung to life.

  The Hobbit stood about three feet tall. “Little person” would be the politically correct term. Because I’m rarely politically correct, he looked to me like a malevolent Sneezy, with a bulbous red nose and pockmarked cheeks. Genetics had not been kind. The Giant stood four feet taller and two feet wider, with tree trunks for arms and an enormous shaved vegetable of a head.

  I imagined a gentle tap from him would send me into outer space. He wore size giant jeans that he must have special-ordered and a cutoff white Harley T-shirt that bared pumped-up arms. A cupid’s heart tattoo the size of a baseball curved around his left bicep. I couldn’t read the name that arced around the top of it.

  “I don’t know these men,” I said firmly, now that I could catch my breath. That was true. “Who are they?”

  “Strangers in town who got caught on a video exiting a local bar two nights before Jennifer’s body was found. Their looks made folks remember them. The bar owner had just put in a newfangled camera outside his dump to keep the drug pushers away. He watched every frame for the first month until he got bored of it. He brought this in right away.”

  “Did the FBI know about these two? I didn’t read anything about these guys as suspects.”

  “Nope. Don’t think so. Like I said, they treated us like a bunch of local yokels with our heads up our asses. So the sheriff kept a few clues to hisself.”

  Great, I thought. Prove the FBI right by hiding information that could lead to solving Jennifer’s murder. It occurred to me that Sheriff Joe Bob knew this meager case file surprisingly well.

  “How old were you when this happened?” I asked.

  “Sixteen goin’ on thirty. Scared the pee out of all of us. Shut down our Saturday night make-out and beer parties for a month or so.” For a second, I felt the panic of trying to get the beer and cigarette smell out of Sadie’s favorite jeans before Granny got hold of them for Monday’s wash. I was familiar with the thrill of illicit parties that s
pilled into hay fields from the backs of pickup trucks, the cheap beer, the amateur groping.

  “Her younger sister was a wild thing when she was growing up.” The sheriff paused. “Not pretty like Jenny, but she put out. I hear she’s finally settling down. Some psychologist fellow in Broken Bow.” My hope for Amanda took a hit. “Y’all want to see where they pulled Jennifer out of the water?”

  Now he sounded like a forty-year-old going on sixteen.

  There seemed to be no reason, other than morbid fascination, to say yes. Hudson gave a mute nod. His face was unreadable.

  Minutes later, the three of us sat in intimate discomfort bumping along in the front cab of the sheriff’s fully loaded shiny black Eddie Bauer Ford truck, the portable flashing red cherry on the roof giving us the eighty-mile-an-hour right-of-way down the highway. I was squashed in the middle and none of us smelled very good.

  The speedometer tipped up toward ninety.

  “All the sudden, I’m guessin’ you’re not a reporter,” the sheriff said.

  “No.” The right tires caught the rough, unpaved berm and he swung the wheel back, but his focus stayed on me, the speedometer holding steady. “But I do have a legitimate reason for being here.”

  “That’s what they all say. You leaving town soon?”

  “Yes. Soon. Very, very soon.”

  “Then I reckon I don’t need to know about your legitimate reasons.” He gunned the motor.

  This seemed to be the general approach to law enforcement in Idabel. Machismo and benign neglect.

  Minutes later, the sheriff brought the pickup to a halt on the side of the road right before an old bridge that hovered over a slow-drifting, rusty river. We sidestepped broken beer bottles as we worked our way down a marshy path of trampled grass toward the water. I remembered that two boys out fishing had discovered Jennifer’s corpse.

  “Can’t keep the kids out, unless I physically post somebody here. Her ghost brings ’em. Freshman football initiations, séances, first-time lovers, double-dares—you name it.”

  Surely, I thought, swatting at mosquitoes, anyone idiotic enough to lose their virginity at a murder site must wind up with some pretty big hang-ups.

  It took about five minutes to walk the path, five minutes for my anxiety to start thrumming again. My white T-shirt, soaked with sweat, clung to my breasts. The mud-caked leopard-print cork wedge sandals on my feet appeared to be yet another piece of my new Nordstrom wardrobe headed for a hotel trashcan. Thorns found their way up the hem of my jeans and bit my ankles.

  I stepped into the clearing with a sense of dread and involuntarily grabbed Hudson’s hand. To my surprise, he didn’t pull away.

  Someone had stuck a small white cross in the ground near the water’s edge. A used, cream-colored candle lay toppled on its side, wet with river muck and dripping with hard tears of wax. Candy wrappers, diet drink cans, and a couple of broken tequila bottles littered the area. I saw three used condoms and a pair of muddy purple thong panties.

  Almost as soon as we got there, I asked to leave.

  Hudson and I silently shared wrinkled hot dogs and soggy crinkle fries in a green plastic booth at Burger Barn, a small converted dry-cleaner shop smack in the middle of the Idabel loop. We probably should have been dissuaded by the fact that the word “Burger” on the sign had been changed to “Booger” by some spray-paint-happy teenagers. At least we were smart enough to pass on the special of the day, jalapeño tater tots.

  I did venture a hesitant question.

  “Did you … see Jack?”

  “The Jeep was gone by the time my friend got there.” He said it curtly.

  That’s all he was giving me. He knew a lot more, I was sure. He was Hudson, the legend.

  In as few words as possible, we determined that the most sensible thing was to spend the night at my motel before heading home. We stopped at Walmart on the way back so I could buy a pair of pajamas. The choices in my size were covered with ducks, cupcakes, or Britney Spears’s face. I picked cupcakes.

  When we stepped through our motel room doorway, I announced I was taking a shower. Anything to avoid him.

  Every molecule in the room was charged with the potent combination of anger, cheap pine-scented air freshener, and sexual tension. Hudson ignored me. He flipped on the TV, trying to find something other than gray fuzz. While I dug through my backpack for clean underwear, he adjusted the aluminum foil on the rabbit ears for a recognizable image of Diane Sawyer. Or maybe it was Brian Williams.

  I yanked out a T-shirt. That’s when my gun hit the floor.

  But he didn’t seem perturbed at all. He picked it up off the floor and handed it back to me, butt first.

  “I used to love watching you shoot Miller Lite cans off the fence at twenty-five yards,” he said.

  “Thirty-five yards,” I corrected. “And I can do it on a horse at full trot.”

  “I don’t think I can do this again, Tommie.” His voice was tired, not angry. He sat on the edge of the bed, eyes wet. “I thought we could make it work this time, but I was wrong. As soon as we get back, I’m assigning a friend of mine to see you through this. He owes me a favor. And he’s almost as good as I am.”

  I stood there, stunned, feeling an awful weight in my stomach, not at all sure I believed him.

  “What do you mean, ‘again’? I asked. “You said you couldn’t do this again.”

  “This push-pull thing. I think I’ve made my intentions pretty damn clear all along but you still go your own way at the end of the day. This time, you might get yourself killed. Go on, take your shower.” He lay back, faceup on the bedspread, eyes closed.

  “I want to know why you think we broke up.”

  He opened his eyes and regarded me thoughtfully. “Partly because you were too young. Partly because I’m an ass. But mostly because I was never going to live up to your Daddy.”

  I looked around for something to throw at him but the choices were limited. The pillows weren’t hard enough and the bedside lamps were screwed to the tables. I stalked off and slammed the bathroom door.

  I waited to cry until I stripped and leaned into the tepid stream of water, so Hudson couldn’t hear. I didn’t indulge myself for long.

  The shower was the size of a coffin standing on end. It took all my concentration to wash myself while dodging alien life-forms that grew in black patches on the walls. The mildewed shower curtain brushed up against my skin like a dog’s cold wet nose. With evil timing, the shower spurted boiling hot water down my spine, followed shortly by an icy blast. I let out a tiny shriek. At least it sounded tiny to me.

  Not three seconds later, a shadowy figure hovered outside the curtain. I screamed.

  The bathroom erupted in a stream of angry words. Hudson, busting in on me again. Thankfully, the scummy plastic shower curtain obscured his view. Until he slung it open.

  I scrambled to cover myself with the Sunset’s rag of a washcloth and pointed wordlessly to the showerhead. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed, a sound I loved.

  He whipped the curtain back across and I heard him mutter either, “Oklahoma’s version of Psycho,” or “Omigod, she’s a psycho,” before making his exit. I figured on the latter.

  The shower had settled on a temperature right below freezing, and I reached for a towel. The air-conditioning draft from the gap left by the open door woke up every goose bump on my body. I shivered into the pajamas and then took a good half-hour to blow out my hair into the long, soft mane that Hudson used to bury his face in.

  Push. Pull.

  I stared at my face in the milky mirror. A small, good nose, defined cheekbones, pearl-white poreless skin that needed the regular attention of a self-tanner, green eyes, arched eyebrows. And fear. I saw fear.

  By the time I exited the bathroom, it was after nine. All the lights were out, except for a small lamp shedding a half-moon glow on my side of the bed. I say my side because Hudson’s long lean form took over the other side. No chivalrous pallet on the floor for him,
I guess. He lay under the tiny pinecone forest, his back to me speaking volumes.

  The door chain was in place and a brittle-looking unfinished pine chair, the only one in the room, was jammed under the doorknob. The setup didn’t give me confidence that it would hold a determined person from getting in, but maybe just long enough for us to draw or hit the floor. I slipped the gun out of my backpack and placed it as quietly as possible near the lamp, although I imagined the evil outside transforming into wisps of smoke and snaking under the crack of the door. In that scenario, a bullet would not help.

  I glanced at Hudson’s still form on the bed. I knew he was awake, the jerk. I slipped in beside him, a foot of sexual tension between us. I turned over and faced the wall, making out the face of a monster in the knotty pine. Maybe he was asleep. Oh, God, was that a brown recluse crawling on the back of my neck? I thought I’d seen a carcass in the bathroom. I slapped at it, the worst thing to do with a legendary poisonous spider that eats a hole in your skin.

  “Hmm, I guess that’s not one of your top ten erogenous zones,” Hudson said. “I was misinformed in eighth grade by my sister’s Cosmo.” His finger continued to trail up my neck, disturbing every nerve ending in my body.

  “Turn around,” he urged, pulling me over. “Let’s not go to sleep angry.”

  The window air conditioner was rattling like a truck. My body, still cool, melted against his warm one. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and my hands moved on his back, feeling the hard curve of muscle. I couldn’t tell what, if anything, he was wearing below the waist.

  This simple hug in Idabel’s Bargain Bed with scratchy 100-thread-count sheets was the safest place I’d been in days. Maybe years.

  When he finally bent to kiss me, I lost track of everything. It was like falling into an endless stream. We came up for air and he tipped my chin and planted a light kiss on my forehead.

  “Good night,” he said gently, and turned over, his back now a wall, leaving me wide awake, body pulsing, thinking I was screwing this up again.