Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  “One … two … three … four … five … six …” he counted, and then he stopped. “Son of a bitch!” he said, and then he stepped back and did this little dance. Like an Irish jig, like someone was playing a fiddle or something, and he just couldn’t help himself from having a little dance to celebrate the moment. He stopped dancing, came back to face Marlon, and he put the guns right where they’d been.

  “Where was I?” he asked, and then he nodded. “Sure … six … seven … eight … nine …” He paused again. “You ready for some fireworks, Marlon Juneau from … where was it you was from?”

  Marlon didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He had his eyes shut tight. He had a lump in his throat like a fist.

  Digger frowned. He lowered the guns. He tucked the revolver in his waistband, made a fist and then tapped the top of Marlon’s head like he was knocking on a door.

  “Marlon!” he shouted. “Hey, Marlon! You home?”

  Digger took the revolver in his hand again.

  Marlon opened one eye. He looked up at the crazy kid.

  “Sas-Saskatchewan,” he whispered.

  “Saskatchewan! Too right, motherfucker!”

  Digger put the revolver against the left side of Marlon’s head, the .45 against the right. He hesitated for just a second. “Ten,” he said, and then he pulled both triggers simultaneously.

  It was as if someone had released a grenade inside a watermelon. The body that knelt there continued kneeling right there. The top of his head just disappeared in a cloud of something, and there he was—Marlon Juneau from Wynyard near Quill Lakes, his shoulders, his neck, and then pretty much everything gone from the nose upward.

  Even his sister wouldn’t have recognized him, but that didn’t matter anyway.

  Digger was stunned. Then he started laughing, and then he did his dance again, waving the guns in the air like a drunken cowboy on Independence Day.

  He stopped suddenly, took a step toward Marlon, and looked again at the mess that had been the man’s head.

  “Shee-it,” he said, and with his knee he pushed the man over. “Shee-it and Shinola with sugar on top.”

  And then he started puking. It was a reflex. It was the thrill, the excitement, the horror, the disgust, the sheer amazement at what he himself had just done. He dropped both the guns, put his hands on his knees, leaned forward, and puked violently, and he just kept on going until there seemed to be nothing left inside.

  When he eventually raised his head he couldn’t believe how good he felt.

  In that moment it felt like eighteen years of disrespect and shame had just vanished with the breeze. Digger believed he’d become a man. He had been tried, and this time he had come through. He had not been found wanting. Nothing like it in the world.

  He could feel everything and nothing. He believed he was someone and then no one in the same instant. It was as if a wind had blown into one ear and out the other, and in passing through it had taken everything bad with it. He felt clear and simple and as straight as a Texas highway. He could see the past, the present, and the future all in one go, and he could see himself rushing on into that future like a freight train. Wasn’t nothing gonna stop him now. There wasn’t no one gonna make a fool of him again.

  Digger walked around the body for a good while longer. He kept getting up close and looking at the mess he’d made. He wanted to feel nothing. He just wanted to reach a point where he could look and look and look and feel nothing—no nausea, no fear, no regret, nothing. He wanted to feel like this kind of thing was the most natural thing in the world. He could sense Marlon’s blood on his face, could taste it on his lips, feel it drying on his eyelids and on his hands. Even his clothes were beginning to stiffen. There were bits of bone on his boots, and he had no doubt that just a short while earlier those bones had been right there inside Marlon Juneau’s discourteous and disrespectful head. Well, he wasn’t gonna be discourteous and disrespectful again anytime soon.

  Digger felt centered. He felt calm. He believed he had made it through the other side of something real important.

  And then it was a matter of practicality and reason. He needed to get cleaned up. He needed to get rid of the clothes, get rid of the body, get himself straightened up and flying right.

  In the trunk of Marlon’s car Digger found a suitcase. In it were pants, shirts, socks. They were clean, pretty much the right size, and would serve the purpose. There was also a can of gasoline and some rags.

  Digger stripped down to his shorts. He used the rags and a little gasoline to wipe the blood from his hands and face. It evaporated quickly, but the smell gave him a high that he liked. He threw his own blood-spattered clothes into the back of the car, and then dragged Marlon’s body back into the driver’s seat. Then he dressed in the clothes from the suitcase, used the rags to wipe off his boots, and he was set. He surveyed the scene once more. He could see Marlon sitting there in the driver’s seat, half his head gone, the rest of it sprayed across the ground where Marlon had been kneeling.

  Digger couldn’t help but grin.

  He grinned like a fool; like some inbred, mouth-breathing wild man out of the backwoods of beyond.

  And then he leaned his head back and howled like a coyote into the evening sky.

  Twenty-five minutes later Tate Bradford would arrive at his estranged wife’s house in Alamogordo. An argument would ensue, all the while Helen praying that the headlights of Marlon’s car would be suddenly visible through the front windows, but they would never come. Just as Marlon’s last thought had been for Helen, so Helen’s last thought would be for Marlon. At 9:43 that evening—Tuesday, November 24—Tate Bradford grabbed his wife by the throat and banged her head against the corner of the mantel above the fireplace. She went down immediately, was dead before she hit the ground, and then he stood there for a long time before calling the police. The Alamogordo Sheriff’s Department was out there by ten thirty, and Tate Bradford confessed to killing his wife in a rage. Even as they took his confession Digger Danziger was driving away from the burning wreckage of Marlon Juneau’s car. He’d doused the thing in gasoline, and set it alight. By the time it was reported Digger was an hour away, outside of Las Cruces and heading along the I-10 toward Anthony and El Paso. He was hungry, could’ve eaten a dead skunk given enough ketchup, but he didn’t plan to stop until his heart slowed down and was beating right again. Marlon Juneau had been the best thing ever. The way his head exploded. The way it felt when the guns went off together. The sound and the fury. Where had he heard that expression?

  That’s what it was for him: the sound and the fury.

  The control. The power. The life and death thing all going on. He had to do it. He couldn’t help himself. He’d wanted to do something like that ever since that old guy had whacked him with the cane. Now who was the chief, eh? Now who was the big boss of the hot sauce?

  Earl Sheridan had been right all along, God bless him. It was the realest thing he’d ever done, the realest thing he’d ever experienced.

  The road came up at him ceaselessly, and then span out behind him like a black ribbon, and the headlights picked out the white lines as he followed them toward the next rush. He had never been happier in his life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  They ran until they gasped for air. They ran until their legs were rubber and their hearts were pounding, and they laughed like foolish hyenas, and at one point Clay stumbled and whacked his knee on thick root and the pain was sudden and sharp and it made him laugh even harder despite the fact that it now hurt when he ran. They didn’t stop running until the light of the movie screen was a dim and distant ghost some five hundred yards away. And then they stopped because no one was chasing them, and because they believed that if they took another single step they would die.

  They collapsed on the ground—some barren field with stones and dry roots and the rigid imprints of heavy boots—and they lay there heaving air in and out of their lungs, and every once in a while turning sideways to tuck knees into ch
ests and laugh some more.

  “God Al-almighty,” Clay said, and that started Bailey laughing some more, and the sound of her laughter made him feel somehow better, as if this ridiculous escapade had helped to jar loose the memories of the last few days. Tragedy was overcome by living life. Best way to deal with loss was to gain as much as possible every place else.

  Minutes later they were quiet, just the sound of breathing, the night sky growing brighter as their eyes became accustomed to the shadows, and then the question of what they would do now arrived in Clay Luckman’s mind.

  “How much?” he asked her, and she turned out her pockets and he did the same, and they set the coins down in the dirt and started counting.

  “Fourteen dollars and twenty-eight cents,” he said. “Not much, is it?”

  “I ain’t never seen that much before … not that was mine.”

  “Gonna feed us for a few days, maybe a week if we skip a couple of meals.”

  “Better than no dollars at all,” she replied. She sat back on her haunches, wrapped her arms around her knees, and then she looked up at the sky and sighed.

  “What are we doing?” she said.

  “Runnin’ away,” Clay replied.

  “From your brother and the other one?”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. I think they’re long gone. I think we’ve lost them for good.”

  “So where are we going?”

  The silence between them was thick like oatmeal.

  “Where?” she repeated after a while, and Clay sat in the dirt with fourteen dollars and change and wondered what he could say that would make either of them feel better.

  “Tell you the truth, Bailey,” he said, “I don’t know what we’re doing. They get ahold on me I’m goin’ back to Hesperia, and this time they’ll find a reason to keep me until I’m an old man. And you? You’re still a kid as far as the state is concerned, so Lord only knows what they’d do with you.”

  “We could hide out from everyone until we’re eighteen years old and then we could do what the damn hell we wanted.”

  “Sure we could, but we ain’t gonna live on what we steal from drive-in movie theaters.”

  This time it was Bailey who stayed silent. She lay on her back, stretched out her legs, and put her arms up straight behind her head.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “Best go get something to eat, then,” Clay replied.

  “And tired.”

  “We’ll eat, then we’ll sleep.”

  “Where we gonna sleep?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, Bailey. Your guess is as good as mine. Figure we’ll find some old house or somethin’ like we done before.”

  “We should get some blankets or something. Maybe like a coat or whatever. Something that’s gonna keep us warm. Ain’t the time of year to be sleepin’ rough outside with no blankets or nothin’.”

  Clay lay down beside her. He folded his arms across his chest and looked at the stars. She was right. Soon it would be cold enough to see your own breath. And then what? The pair of them dead-frozen, hypothermic and stiff and useless for anything. Another couple of nameless graves in the potter’s field.

  “This is bullshit,” she said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Ripest kind of bullshit I ever heard of.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  “So where d’you think we should go?” She rolled over on her side, crooked her arm and rested her chin in her hand. From where Clay was looking, the moonlight, the shadows, Bailey Redman looked like the kind of girl who would grow up ever so pretty. She was going to break some hearts he figured, more than likely his own just to get the pattern started.

  “You remember I told you about that place called Eldorado?” he said.

  “Yeah sure, what about it?”

  “It’s in Texas. Schleicher County in Texas. I really think that’s where we should go.”

  “Because of that dumb advertisement you showed me?”

  “The advertisement, yes, but I also think anyplace called Eldorado is gonna be lucky, you know? It’s the same as that South American city that was made of gold.”

  Bailey looked at Clay askance, like there was something loose and rattling behind his forehead.

  “You got a better suggestion?” he asked.

  Bailey Redman thought for a while, and then shook her head. “Don’t s’pose I do.”

  “Better to have somewhere to head for. If you ain’t headin’ somewhere then you’re either wanderin’ or lost.”

  “And you know how to get there?”

  “Texas is east, that’s all I know,” he replied. “We just keep going east until we see signs or we find a map or somethin’.”

  She didn’t say anything. Clay Luckman took a deep breath. He figured there was rain on the way. He got up and brushed down his clothes. “Don’t know how far Texas is, but it ain’t around the corner. Seems we got a way to go.”

  “Everybody’s got a way to go,” Bailey said.

  “You gonna be this philosophical all the way there?”

  She nodded, hid a smile.

  Clay buried his hands in his pockets. “Let’s walk back into Tucson and get hot dogs and root beer.”

  Bailey sat up, came to her feet, stood looking back toward the drive-in theater.

  “Someone see you back there?”

  “Yeah, the cook I think. He came out back when I was running past.”

  “They’ll call the cops for sure.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the waitresses’ll just think that they didn’t get no tips. Maybe the people in the cars will think that the change they left was already taken by the waitresses. The cook’ll just think I was sneakin’ out after seein’ the movie for free. He ain’t gonna report that to no one. Bet that happens all the time.”

  “Yeah.”

  Clay started walking, Bailey following on behind. Now that they’d slowed down, now that they weren’t running like banshees, he realized how cold it was. Bailey had been right. They’d need coats or blankets or something if they were going to sleep rough. And Texas? This Eldorado place? A crazy idea, but then any idea right now was as crazy as any other. He sure as hell wasn’t planning on going back to Hesperia, and he didn’t want Bailey Redman in some juvenile place either. That was no way to start your life. He’d done it, and look how things had turned out for him.

  They didn’t speak. They walked side by side. The lights of Tucson grew brighter. Clay Luckman wondered if things were going to work out, if they were going to get better, or if the dark star he’d been born under was just going to follow him all the way to the end.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sleep did not come easily. A little before ten thirty John Cassidy rose from his bed and made his way quietly from the room. Down in the kitchen he poured a glass of cold milk and sat at the table. All he could think about was Elliott Danziger, the boy that Clarence Luckman and Earl Sheridan had killed. Maybe the federal agents were right in their suppositions, maybe Sheridan and Luckman were homosexual lovers and the second hostage had been killed. There was little that surprised Cassidy anymore. But was that all they knew? What had Sheridan actually said in his dying moments? Had he told them how Danziger had been killed? Had he told them where Danziger’s body was? Had they found it, and if not, were they looking for it?

  These questions turned around in his mind, and they continued to turn without resolution until he heard Alice coming down the stairs.

  “I hadn’t meant to wake you,” he said.

  “I woke anyway,” she said. She placed her hands on her stomach. “Seems I can’t go two hours without needing to pee these days.”

  She stepped up behind him, placed her hands on his shoulders. “You’re troubled about this case?”

  “I am,” he replied. “Not just the Parselle girl, but the other things. I am finding it very hard to understand how someone could change so rapidly. A teenager, an orphan, never been in any real trouble, and all of a su
dden he’s a homicidal maniac … so much so that he colludes in the murder of his own half brother.”

  “Well, like you’ve been saying for I don’t know how long, there’s a great deal that the police and the federal authorities don’t understand about the criminal mind.”

  “I know that, Alice, but this …” He shook his head. “There’s just something about this that doesn’t make sense.”

  She came around the table and sat facing him. “What?” she said. “What is it that doesn’t make sense?”

  “That, for starters. The fact that this kid, all of seventeen years old, could suddenly be in cahoots with someone like this escaped convict, killing people, robbing banks, Lord knows what. And then the convict, this terrible mentor that he’s suddenly adopted, is killed, and the kid goes off on his own spree.” Cassidy inhaled deeply. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Well, there isn’t a great deal you can do about it right now, and the other thing you have to take into consideration is that it isn’t your case, and in all likelihood it isn’t ever going to be.”

  “I want to call the people who were at the bank,” he said. “The ones who were there when the convict was shot. He must have said something more when he died. He must have said something more about the other boy that they killed.”

  “And if he did?”

  “Then maybe I can suggest—”

  “Suggest what, John?” Alice interjected. “Suggest nothing is what. This is a federal case. Those two men who came this evening, they didn’t come to invite your cooperation in anything more than the attack on the Parselle girl. They want you to investigate what happened, and if you find out anything that could be helpful to them then they want you to report it. That’s all they want, John.”

  He was nodding before she was done. “You’re right,” he said.

  She reached out and closed her hand over his. “I know how mad you get about these things,” she said. “I know how much you want to help, but when you’re sheriff—”

  “Mike Rousseau won’t be sheriff for another ten years yet, and then he’s going to serve for—what?—twenty years? By the time I get there I’ll be retiring.”