No one ever went into battle with too many weapons.
He walks into the kitchen where Beatrice is packing dishes. He grabs her by the arm and spins her around. A plate slips from her hands. It drops to the floor and shatters.
‘Not dishes, Bee. Goddamn it, we don’t need to take no fucking dishes.’
‘But-’
‘Look, just head downstairs till I say so.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Go.’
‘Okay.’ She nods at him, looking like she’s fighting back tears.
There’s another knock at the front door. Buckshot barks at the people on the other side.
‘On my way.’
He glances over his shoulder to see Beatrice pulling open the basement door and disappearing behind it.
He nods to himself. Good, she’ll be safe down there. He heads to the front door. Buckshot sits staring at it. He barks once. Two human shapes behind the yellow pebbled glass. He leans the.22 against the wall where they won’t be able to see it with the door open.
He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of Rolaids and thumbs one of them into his mouth and chews it with his eyes closed. Nothing going on here. Everything is finer than frog hairs. No, sir, I didn’t see nothing out of the ordinary, but truth is, I don’t really keep too close an eye on that land. Trees don’t tend to cause much trouble unless they get a few drinks in ’em, you know, and these ones are twelve-stepping it. Ha-ha.
He tongues chalky powder from a molar.
‘It’s okay, boy,’ he says, petting the dog’s head.
A fist rises into the air on the other side of the glass, ready to knock a third time.
He grabs the door handle, thumbs the paddle, and yanks open the door before it can.
Ian sits in his car watching Chief Davis and Bill Finch walk across the gravel driveway to the front door. He wants to be there with them. He wants to look into the man’s eyes. If he could look into the man’s eyes he would know. Instead he is here in his car. The window’s rolled down and a convection-oven wind is blowing against his face. His stomach feels sour and his mouth is dry and his eyes are burning. He pulls a plug of cigar from his ashtray and stabs his mouth with it and chews on it but does not light it.
Chief Davis raises his hand and knocks on the yellow pebbled glass that fills the top half of the front door. The muffled sound of a dog barking.
Ian leans forward, waiting. The door does not move. For a long time it does not move.
‘Knock again,’ Ian says under his breath.
After a moment Chief Davis raises his hand to do so, but Bill Finch grabs his wrist before the fist can make contact.
‘I’m in charge here,’ he says.
Chief Davis shrugs and blinks. ‘If it makes you feel manly.’
Finch stares at him a long moment. Then turns to the door and knocks himself.
The dog on the other side of the door barks again. Then the sound of a voice from within, though Ian cannot hear the words from this distance. And still the door does not move. Chief Davis and Bill Finch stand side by side before it, motionless, and wait. And wait.
‘Fuck this,’ Ian says under his breath. He pulls the wet cigar from his mouth and drops it into the ashtray, then pushes open the car door and steps out onto the driveway. Stones grind beneath his feet and Chief Davis throws him a look that stops him. He remains outside the car, but only stands there with his hand holding his car’s open door, neither shutting it and heading toward the front door nor getting back into the vehicle.
Bill Finch is raising his hand to knock again when the door is pulled open.
The dog barks.
‘Hush now,’ Henry Dean says, petting him.
And there he is. Is he the man who kidnapped Maggie, the man who stole Ian’s daughter? Sagging face, bald head, dead eyes like unpolished stones pressed into sucking mud, veined nose bursting forth. Ian can think of at least a dozen times he’s seen him around town. They’ve nodded to one another, maybe even exchanged howdys. It makes him sick to think about. All those times he could have grabbed the man and choked him till he was dead. All those times he was but one violent move from his daughter. Seven years and only this fat old man has stood between them. If he’s the one.
As Henry Dean looks at the cops a light enters his eyes and a smile broadens across his face. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We need to talk,’ Chief Davis says.
Bill Finch glares at Davis a moment, then turns back to Henry Dean. ‘It’s a serious matter,’ he says.
Henry Dean licks his lips. ‘Shit.’
‘Shit?’
‘You know why we’re here?’
‘’Course I know,’ Henry says. ‘It can only be one thing.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Someone saw my truck and put two and two together.’
‘Your truck?’
‘All them scratches.’
‘What about them?’
Henry thumbs something into his mouth, a mint or an antacid, and looks at them perplexedly. ‘You ain’t here ’cause I run into Pastor Warden’s fence?’
Chief Davis shakes his head.
Bill Finch says, ‘It’s a more serious matter than that.’
‘Oh. Shit. Forget I said anything, then. What’s going on?’
Sweat runs down Ian’s face. His hand clenches his car door till the bones ache with the pressure of it.
‘Just arrest the motherfucker already,’ he says under his breath.
Henry Dean couldn’t possibly have heard him, but his eyes dart toward him for a fraction of a second before moving back to the men standing nearest.
‘Maybe it would be best if you stepped outside,’ Bill Finch says.
‘Stepped outside?’ Henry says, and laughs. ‘What the hell for?’
Chief Davis puts his hand on his service weapon. ‘Is there anyone else in the house, Henry?’
‘Chief. Todd. We grown up together. What are you doing with your hand on a gun?’
‘Answer the question,’ Bill Finch says.
‘My wife,’ Henry says.
‘We need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.’
‘What about?’
‘Step outside.’
The faint sound of a woman screaming.
Both Chief Davis and Bill Finch look past Henry toward the sound of the scream. In that moment Henry Dean produces a weapon from behind him, a sawed-off shotgun, and Bill Finch’s chest explodes.
The dog at Henry’s side starts barking wildly.
A mist of blood hangs in the air even as the man drops to the weathered porch and rolls down the three steps to the gravel driveway. He lies face up, staring at the wild blue sky.
Chief Davis jumps left, but still catches one from the second barrel. Catches it in the face. There isn’t even a scream. There isn’t time for one. One second his face is fine, the next it’s a mask of blood and musculature, and white teeth and pieces of bone splatter on the driveway behind him in a thick and widening triangle of red liquid like his head is a ketchup packet that’s been stomped on.
By the time Ian is once again looking to the doorway Henry Dean has dropped his sawed-off shotgun to the ground and is pulling a rifle from behind the door.
Ian dives behind his car, unlatching his holster and drawing his SIG in one smooth motion. He pokes his head up briefly to get an idea of where he is in relation to Henry Dean and hears a shot explode on the air. It carries death though it sounds no more harmful than someone popping a paper lunch bag. The bullet grazes the trunk lid and chips of gray metal cut into his head and cheek.
The dog continues to bark wildly.
Ian drops to the ground again, gravel digging into his arm and his side, and tries to catch a glimpse of the man from under the car, but the angle is wrong. He can’t see anything but more gravel and the base of the house.
‘Go get ’im, Buckshot! Get ’im!’
Running acros
s gravel. Barking. A brown blur seen from under the car.
Ian turns around in time to see the dog coming around the back of the vehicle with teeth bared, its eyes black, foam hanging from its jaw in frothy strings. It leaps at Ian and Ian has just enough time to pull the gun around toward it and pull the trigger.
There is a brief yelp and then silence.
The dog continues through the air, lifeless, and drops on top of him, its dead open mouth on his throat. Hot spittle runs down his neck. Hot blood soaks into his uniform. He pushes the dog off and it falls to the gravel with a meat-sack thump, wet and viscous, and lies there, still.
‘You son of a bitch,’ Henry says, and there is another shot. It only kicks up gravel.
Ian pulls himself up into a crouching position, making sure his head is below the level of the trunk. Inhale. Exhale. He’ll be on the porch waiting for him. He’ll have to get his own shot off quick and drop again if he doesn’t want to take one in the face like Chief Davis did. The man is fast. Inhale. Exhale.
He catches his breath in his throat and jumps to his feet, ready to take a shot. But he never has the chance.
Before he even catches sight of the man-standing at the bottom of the steps now, feet distanced, rifle pressed into the crook of his shoulder, left eye closed, aiming at where he rightly reckons Ian will pop up-there is a dull thwack in his chest just to the right of his sternum, like someone thumped him with a rubber mallet. It doesn’t even hurt. Not at first. But suddenly he can’t breathe. He inhales and hears a strange sucking sound from beneath his shirt. He looks down at himself, confused. A small dot of blood appears on the fabric. He looks up at Henry Dean to ask him just what the hell happened, but the man is heading up the steps and into his house. Ian drops to his knees, both of them popping on impact. Gravel digs into the flesh, and though he is aware of it he hardly feels it at all. He looks down again and sees drops of blood splashing to the gravel.
This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Then he’s face down, sucking in chalky white dust. He spits. Whenever he tries to breathe his chest makes that wheezing noise: a low whistle, like a punctured tire.
Sounds of feet on gravel stepping quick.
Ian rolls onto his side to see what’s happening.
Henry Dean is helping his wife Beatrice into a green Ford Ranger pickup truck. That seems like it should be impossible. Henry was just standing on the gravel aiming a gun at him and a curl of white smoke was slipping from its barrel. It doesn’t seem like he should have had time to go inside and get his wife and bring her outside and put her into their truck. She is crying and her right foot is covered in blood and a skin flap hangs from her ankle.
Ian blinks.
In the next moment Beatrice is sitting in the truck and the door is shut and Henry Dean is halfway up the steps leading to the house.
What’s happened to time? Someone broke time.
I need my gun. I can get him if I can get to my gun.
He rolls in the other direction. It hurts and the sharp points of stones dig into his back. He looks for his gun. There it is, just over three feet away; within reach, if he’s lucky. He puts his arm out toward it, fingers stretched. His fingers touch it. He pulls it toward him. Then wraps his hand around it. He rolls back toward the house.
Henry Dean is now dragging Maggie out the front door of the house. She is pale and thin and her nose is bleeding, but it is Maggie. His daughter. She’s so grown up. Practically a woman. And that man with his hand clutching her wrist stole her from him and stole her childhood.
Ian raises the gun in his hand.
But Henry Dean sees him and pulls Maggie to him and lifts her and uses her as a shield. She tries to pry his hands away, but cannot manage it. Blood drips from her nose and onto the man’s large arms.
‘You gonna shoot your own daughter, Hunt?’
Ian tries to aim at the man’s legs, to shoot them out from under him, but his hand is too shaky, and he is afraid of hitting Maggie. He would never forgive himself for that.
The man walks toward him, using Maggie as a shield, and once he’s close enough, he kicks the gun away.
‘Help me, Daddy! Daddy!’
She reaches for him and a bloody snot bubble grows in her left nostril and pops. Tears stream down her face. Her teeth have blood on them.
Ian reaches for her.
‘Baby,’ he says. ‘My Maggie.’
But then a boot swings toward him at great speed, a blur of motion, and kicks him in the face. Hello, darkness.
He comes to to the sound of that punctured-tire wheeze. That strange sound of air leaking from his chest. The pain is greater now, overwhelming. Something in his chest feels closed off. Like a door slammed shut. He cannot seem to breathe.
His eyes are open and staring at the back tire of his car. Rust and splattered mud. And beyond his car is Chief Davis’s car. And in Chief Davis’s car is a radio. He turns over on all fours. He grabs the rear bumper of his car and pushes himself to his feet. Chief Davis’s car is only twenty feet away. If he can get to it everything will be fine. Thompson is working the phones and if he can get to the radio everything will be fine. He takes a step and his knees buckle and he falls. First to his knees, then to his side.
Thompson is working the phones.
He has a phone.
He reaches into his pocket for his cell phone. He can feel it. He doesn’t need to get to the car. He can just call nine-one-one. He’s never been on this end of an emergency call. If he can get Thompson on the line everything will be okay.
Everything will be fine.
Henry throws Maggie into the truck and gets in after her. She looks through the back window at her daddy. She hasn’t seen him in forever and there he is. He’s lying on the gravel. He’s on his right side and his chest is bleeding and his head is tilted down to the gravel and red blood is flowing from his nose and down his face and his eyes are closed. He isn’t moving at all. His right arm is stretched out before him. It’s flat on the gravel, palm up. Several feet from it is a gun. Maggie wishes he would pick it up and shoot out one of the truck tires. He could still stop Henry. Unless he’s dead. He isn’t moving.
‘Sit down, you little bitch,’ Henry says. He grabs her by the shoulder and shoves her down into a sitting position.
The truck roars around in a half circle, spitting gravel, and heads out of the driveway. Past a man with no face. A policeman with no face. She can tell by the uniform that he’s a policeman, but he has no face. And past another policeman whose chest is a red bowl filled with a thick black liquid that can only be blood.
‘Henry, I’m bleeding,’ Beatrice says.
‘I know it, Bee.’
‘Why am I bleeding? What happened?’
‘Not now.’
‘But why am I-’
‘Not now. Just hush up. I need to think.’
The truck screeches out to Crouch Avenue, burning black rubber onto the ancient gray asphalt as it hooks right.
‘But why am I bleeding?’
‘Would you shut the ever-loving fuck up?’
‘Oh,’ Beatrice says. ‘Okay. Sorry.’
She looks out the window.
Maggie looks down at Beatrice’s right ankle. It is sliced open and pouring blood. The blood is pooling on the floorboard. It makes Maggie sick to look at, but she can’t look away. She almost escaped.
‘Fuck,’ Henry says.
Maggie looks at him, but he’s staring straight ahead.
In another five minutes they’re headed west on Interstate 10.
Diego rolls down the driveway, dread heavy upon him. Based on the call Ian made, things went bad, very bad, and he’s anticipating some ugliness. But a moment later, as he rounds the last turn in the driveway and is facing it, he knows he wasn’t ready for it. He was not at all ready for this kind of ugliness. There’s an ambulance on the way, but he radios for a second before he steps from the car.
Chief Davis lies on the blood-soaked gravel with a miss
ing face. The fingers on his left hand twitch spasmodically, but Diego cannot tell whether the man is conscious and trying to accomplish some goal or if the movement is merely the result of his dying brain emitting a last few electric impulses before going silent as stone.
A few feet beyond him lies Bill Finch. He is flat on his back. His chest is concaved and filled with blood, air bubbles rising from within him and popping on the dark surface. His open eyes stare at the blue sky. The wide open blue sky, lighted by a white sun.
He does not move at all.
Nor does Ian, further down the driveway, lying on his back with a cell phone in his hand and a bullet hole in his chest. His eyes are open, red-rimmed slits in a pale face translucent with exhaustion and clenched into a grimace. He is looking at Diego. Beside him, in a pool of blood, lies a dead dog.
‘Ian, what the hell happened here?’
‘I think they’re dead.’ Barely a whisper.
‘How are you?’
‘Not. . dead.’
Diego nods, then walks toward Chief Davis and looks down at the man. His face ends just below his upper lip in a line of shattered teeth like the serrated edge of a bread knife. Diego could toe the roof of the man’s mouth if he wanted to. He does not want to. The skin on the upper part of Chief Davis’s face has been wiped off completely, and one eye is gone, replaced by a steak-red hollow, half-filled with black liquid. The other eye, brown and alive with fear and pain, shifts toward Diego, and Diego has to fight the urge to step back from him.
‘Ambulance is on the way, Chief.’
A gurgle from the hole at the back of his throat. A slow ooze of blood runs down onto his neck and is soaked up by the collar of his shirt.
‘You’re not gonna die.’
Another gurgle.
Chief Davis’s eye twitches left, toward his hand. His ring finger twitches.
‘Betty knows you love her, Chief. I’ve got to check on the others.’
Diego steps away from him. He walks to Bill Finch, and though he’s never liked the man-he stole a friend’s wife-he likes the blank stare he’s throwing at the sky even less.
Diego leans down.
‘Bill?’
The Dispatcher Page 13
