He picks up his dusty black queen and moves it to the new square and looks at it. He sips his coffee. Problem is if Jeffrey doesn’t know about it the move hasn’t been made. Ian puts the queen back and pushes the board aside. Maybe he’ll call Jeffrey later today.
He salts and peppers a soft-boiled egg and shoves it whole into his mouth. He chews slowly and washes it down with a swig of coffee.
Strange how the longer you wait to do something the harder it is to do it. You push a task forward rather than pick it up, knowing you can take care of it later, always later, but as it rolls it gathers mass, like a snowball, and what you could once have picked up with one hand and put into your pocket now has to it the weight of planets.
Ian burps and salts his second egg.
He steps onto the elevator.
His apartment building was constructed as a hotel in 1924 by Carl Dodd. For some reason known only to him he thought Bulls Mouth was going to grow into the major metropolis between Houston and San Antonio. But it never happened. He died and left the place, as well as Dodd Dairy, to his children Carney and Vicki, who turned around and sold the hotel to a Houston realtor in 1996. The realtor converted the hotel into apartments for college kids who wanted out from under daddy’s thumb, but the conversion consisted of little more than knocking down the old sign and putting up a new one. Certainly a repairman hasn’t so much as glanced at the elevator in twenty years or more. Every day Ian steps into it he’s certain that today will be the day the cables finally snap.
The doors creak shut and Ian presses a button. The elevator shakes violently, as if the mere thought of movement frightens it, and then begins its descent.
The doors open on the ground floor.
Ian glances at his watch. He has twenty minutes to get to work.
Maggie hardly slept all night. Her thoughts kept turning to escape. Even counting did not help. She kept losing track and having to start over. She tossed and turned and found herself tangled in her sheets. She could not get comfortable and her brain could not find peace.
Now morning is here and she is standing beneath the basement’s sole window, on tippy-toe so that she can put her face into a bright beam of morning sunlight. The heat feels good on her skin. She wants to be out there again. She wants once more to feel fallen leaves and soil beneath her feet. To hear birds sing. To hear the still air come to life as a gust of hot summer wind forces itself through the leaves of the trees.
‘He might kill you if you try to escape again.’
She glances to the left.
A horse’s head poking from the dark shadows, flaring nostrils, a single black eye glistening in the small gray light reaching him from the window while the other is hidden in darkness, the toes of a pair of Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. That is all she can see of Borden. The rest of him in darkness.
‘I think he’s killed others.’
His mouth does not move when he speaks. The words seem to simply float from his mind, scatter on the air, and reform in hers.
‘I think so too,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay.’
‘Don’t you remember what he did yesterday?’
‘I remember.’ She touches the scab bracelets on her wrists.
‘Then how can you think what you’re thinking?’
She does not respond. She looks back toward the window and lets the light fall upon her face once more.
‘It will be worse next time.’
‘I know.’
‘Even if he doesn’t kill you it will be worse.’
She nods silently. And now he has made her picture it in her mind. Hanging from the punishment hook, her hands purple and numb, her wrists bleeding, the rest of her body helpless, defenseless as she swings. She has been there before, at least two dozen times, and it is always terrible.
She can kick. Kicking keeps Henry away, but only temporarily, and when she stops kicking, as she has to eventually, Henry’s punishment is even worse than it would have been. The mere thought of the punishment hook has kept her obedient on many occasions when every part of her down to the last cell cried out for rebellion against the horrors of the Nightmare World.
‘I know,’ she says again.
But with the morning light falling upon her face she does not care. She does care, she is terrified, but even caring and being terrified she believes it will be worth the risk. She cannot stay here any longer. Not after yesterday. It’s worth the risk.
‘Even if he kills you?’
‘Even then.’
‘But what about me?’
‘You can come.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can never leave. This is my home.’
‘It doesn’t have to be.’
‘This is where I was born. I can’t live out there.’
‘You can try.’
‘I know better. I can never leave.’
‘Why?’
Only silence in response.
‘Borden?’
More silence. Then: ‘If you try to leave, I’ll tell.’
‘You can’t.’
‘If you leave. .’
‘If I leave, what?’
‘You can’t leave.’
‘You can’t tell.’
‘I can never leave and you can never leave.’
‘You can’t tell!’
He steps back into the shadows.
‘Borden?’
He does not respond. She closes her eyes imagining herself swinging from the punishment hook, imagining blood running down her arms from her bloody wrists, imagining the terrible pain in her shoulders and hands, imagining the blows she will receive.
She opens her eyes and looks to the shadows. They are dense as cloth and she cannot see through them. Anything could be in that darkness.
You can never leave.
Diego Peña hates the sun: it’s mocking him up there above the trees, shining its white light into his eyes and cooking his throbbing brain as he drives east along Flatland Avenue. If he could draw his service weapon and shoot the thing down he thinks he might actually do it. Watch it drop like a dead bird and go out like a candle.
He burps, almost vomits, and swallows it back.
He doesn’t know how many drinks he had last night at Roberta’s but it was at least half a dozen too many. He should just stop going there and make O’Connell’s his regular place. He’s incapable of regulating himself at Roberta’s.
Ever since he answered a domestic disturbance call and took a roll of barbed wire to the face from her ex-husband Jimmy Block, Roberta has given him free drinks. Ever since she got the bar in the divorce settlement six months later and changed the name from Jimmy’s to Roberta’s, anyway, though some few partisans refused to go along with the name change and even now call it Jimmy’s. Diego burps again and swallows back what comes up. He shouldn’t have eaten the leftover rabo de toro for breakfast. But he’d thought his time kneeling before the toilet was finished. He thought a little food might soak up what alcohol was left in him.
If the look on Cordelia’s face this morning was any indication, his wife thinks over four years of free drinks has been enough. Of course he was hunched over the toilet at the time, and when he looked up with spittle on his chin she turned and walked away, so maybe he misread her expression in that brief moment before her back was to him and she was saying, ‘. . hace lo que le sale de los cojones.’
What he needs is a red rooster: light beer, tomato juice, hot sauce, a splash of clam juice, and one raw egg. That would do him well. He glances at his watch. Seven thirty. Roberta’s morning bartender won’t even be in for another two and a half hours. He’ll have to suffer this.
He guesses he’s on duty then.
Kind of.
Pastor Warden came into Roberta’s last night around eight thirty, just as the place was coming to life, and announced he’d pay ten dollars a head for each dachshund returned.
‘Dead or alive?’ Andy Paulson said from his stool at the b
ar, glancing over his shoulder, grinning through his broken china teeth, beer foam hanging from his ridiculous waxed mustaches.
‘Alive,’ Warden said. ‘Dead’ll get you a six-hour sermon on the sins of intoxication come Sunday morning.’
Then he turned and left. As soon as he was out the door half the bar burst out laughing. But now it’s morning and ten bucks a head doesn’t strike Diego as a bad deal, even if he is feeling under the weather. After the way Cordelia was looking at him this morning he might just need that money to buy her some flowers at Albertsons on his way home.
He makes a right on Main Street and cruises past Flatland Park, looking to see if any dogs are running around there. But he sees nothing, so he continues south, past the Bulls Mouth Nine where Fred Paulson-Andy Paulson’s brother and owner of the U-Haul rental place next to Andy’s feed store over on Wallace-looks to be finishing up a round. He’s cursing and hacking away at a sand trap with a pitching wedge, face pink with rage, mouth shotgunning curses like he bought a batch on sale at Wal-Mart. Finally he slams down his club and picks up the golf ball and throws it up onto the green. He snags up his club and stomps his way up to greet it, not bothering to rake the sand trap into decent condition for the next guy.
A left turn puts Diego on Underhill Avenue. He continues along, looking left to the golf course and right to woods and blackberry bushes with fat overripe berries rotting on the ground beneath them. He’s about halfway to Crockett Street when he sees a dachshund digging furiously in a kidney-shaped sand trap hooking its way around the fourth green.
He pulls his car to the shoulder of the road and swings open his door. Dizziness overwhelms him as he stands and he grabs on to the car for balance and blinks several times as he swallows back bile. Soon enough the blood gets to his head and the gray dizziness retreats and he squints in the sunlight. He looks toward the golf course. The dog is still digging. He runs toward the chain-link fence surrounding the Bulls Mouth Nine-it’s only waist-level-and hurls himself over it. This turns out to be a mistake.
He lands on his feet, manages two steps, then falls to his knees and vomits. It’s mostly liquid, what’s left of last night’s fun, and what breakfast he managed to eat this morning. He spits a couple times and gets to his feet. Then, blocking each nostril with a thumb, he blows his nose into the grass. He wipes at his watery eyes. His stomach is a bit less sour. Maybe that was the last of it and this is the turning point for this hangover. Maybe he’ll start to feel human again. He spits once more and dusts the grass off his knees and looks to where he saw the dachshund.
It’s now squatting in the rough just north of the fourth hole. He runs toward it, then thinks better of that, and walks briskly.
‘Come here, doggy,’ he says.
After putting the dog into the back of the car he slips in behind the wheel. He reaches to the glove box and flips it open. He fumbles around in there, finding and discarding pens and napkins and other shit he’s stored there, till his fingers find what they were feeling for. He pulls out a travel-size mouthwash he keeps for just these occasions, takes a swig, gargles, and spits out the window.
Then he’s on his way. His goal for the day is fifty bucks.
As he drives past College Avenue he sees Ian Hunt’s Mustang stopped at the intersection, waiting for traffic. They wave to one another, and then Diego is past and Ian’s Mustang is making a right onto Crockett behind him, presumably heading toward the police station, though that’s not where Diego is headed himself.
Now that most of the alcohol is out of his system he’s hungry again.
Ian pushes into the police station. Chief Davis is sitting at his desk flipping through paperwork. He looks up as Ian walks in and says, ‘Mornin’.’
‘Yup. What’s Diego working so early for?’
‘He’s not working.’
‘No?’
Chief Davis shakes his head. ‘Someone crashed into Pastor Warden’s fence and all his dogs got out. Came into Roberta’s last night and offered ten bucks a head for their return.’
Ian nods. ‘Any news about Maggie?’
Chief Davis was smiling when talking about the dogs, but the smile’s gone now. ‘No. Old man at the shoe shop didn’t recognize any pictures and the rendering Sizemore’s boys got from him looks like a bald John Goodman. Useless old fucker. We’re still waiting on prints from the phone, though. Hopefully that’ll lead to something. Also, Sizemore’s got Bill Finch and John Nance looking through records of any missing kids in the county, seeing if he can find a connection between them.’
‘Finch?’
Chief Davis shrugs. ‘Wasn’t my call.’
‘I know it.’ Ian turns toward the dispatch office, then turns back. ‘Think you could call Sizemore, see if we can’t get copies of those files they’re looking at? Maybe I can poke through them myself.’
Chief Davis nods. ‘I’ll do that. Maybe send Thompson over to pick them up. By the way, you see this?’ He holds up a copy of the Tonkawa County Democrat. Ian walks over and grabs it. On the first page of the twenty-page broadsheet, above the fold, this:
KIDNAPPED GIRL ONCE THOUGHT DEAD DISCOVERED ALIVE
Ian begins reading the opening paragraph thinking she was discovered alive the same way a man punched in the nose discovers a fist.
He reads about Maggie being kidnapped while her parents were ‘out of the house on a date’, about how she was declared dead, about how there was a funeral ‘despite a body never being discovered’. He reads a description of the kidnapper that could be a description of anybody of a certain age. He throws the paper onto Davis’s desk.
‘Did you call them?’
Chief Davis shakes his head. ‘Sizemore. He made a statement to local news channels too. It got her picture out, and a description of her kidnapper. And it put his number in people’s faces. “If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Magdalene Hunt or her kidnapper please call the Tonkawa County Sheriff’s Department.” You know the drill. We need it out there. Improves our odds.’
‘Kidnapped while both her parents were out of the house on a date.’ Ian shakes his head. ‘Makes it sound like we just left a seven-year-old alone to fend for herself.’
‘You weren’t there. It’s the truth, ain’t it?’
‘It’s the facts,’ Ian says. ‘It’s not the truth.’
‘It got her picture into the paper, anyway, and on the TV.’
Ian nods, then walks to the dispatch office. At the doorway he says, ‘Don’t forget to call the sheriff for those files, huh?’
‘I won’t.’
Ian walks to the coffee pot and gets it started, then to his desk where he falls into his chair. He exhales a heavy sigh and puts on his headset.
Doing this feels strange. Wrong. He should be out looking for Maggie. He should be out finding her. That’s what he should be doing and it’s what he wants to be doing. But until there are some fingerprint matches with known criminals, or until he gets those files from the sheriff’s office, or until some piece of evidence reveals itself, there’s really nothing to go on. Here, at least, he can accomplish something. It’s a small town and often his days are slow, but in his time in Bulls Mouth he’s helped save more than one life. If he can’t save Maggie’s yet, well, maybe he can save someone else’s. It might help to expend some of this sick energy building in his gut that comes from needing to move forward while being simultaneously locked into place by circumstance. Like trying to fire a live round through a leaded barrel, he’s afraid the whole thing might blow up. If he can feel useful in some way maybe he can relieve a bit of the pressure, making the wait tolerable.
‘Nine-one-one,’ he says. ‘What is your emergency?’
‘I can’t find my car keys.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m late and I can’t find my car keys.’
Ian sighs. ‘What do you want me to do about it, Thompson?’
‘I don’t know, look around.’
‘They’re not here or you coul
dn’t have driven home.’
‘Well, shit.’
‘Did you check your pocket?’
‘Did I. .’ A startled laugh. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned.’
Ian pours himself a cup of coffee and drinks it in near silence, the only sound the swamp cooler rattling in the window.
‘Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?’
‘Hello.’ A small girl’s small voice.
‘Hello. Are you playing with the phone?’
‘No.’
‘Who are you calling?’
‘I’m calling emburgancy.’
‘You are?’
‘Uh-huh. Are you emburgancy?’
‘Yes, I’m emergency. What’s your name?’
‘Thalia.’
‘Hi, Thalia, why are you calling emergency?’
‘My mommy.’
‘What’s wrong with your mommy?’
‘She won’t get up.’
‘What happened, Thalia?’
‘Daddy stopped her.’
‘Daddy stopped her?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘What did he stop her doing?’
‘Packing a suitcase.’
‘Was she trying to leave?’
There is silence from the other end of the line.
After a moment: ‘Thalia?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you just nod your head?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Mommy was trying to leave?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Mommy was packing a suitcase and Daddy stopped her?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he stop her?’
‘He hitted her.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He went to gone.’
‘He’s not at home anymore?’
‘No.’
‘Where’s Mommy, Thalia?’
‘She’s tired.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In her bedroom.’
‘Is she asleep?’
‘Daddy hitted her and made her take a nap.’
‘When?’
‘Before he went to gone. She won’t wake up. I’m hungry.’
‘Is Mommy bleeding?’
‘Is it okay to call emburgancy to be hungry?’
The Dispatcher Page 7
