The Dispatcher

by Jahn, Ryan David

  The FBI is probably already awaiting his arrival at a roadblock somewhere to the west.

  He knew he should have cleaned Donald’s place up—he knew that—but by the time he was finished with him, he was simply finished. He had neither the mental nor the physical energy to dispose of Donald’s body. He did not know what to do with it, and even if he had, he’d just been shot: he barely managed to do what he’d gone there to do. And when he woke in the dark of morning he felt only a great urge to get on the road.

  But that was a mistake. That Diego is calling him makes it obvious it was a mistake.

  ‘I’ve been to your apartment. And to Donald’s place.’

  ‘I know.’

  He coughs into his open hand and tastes blood. He looks down at the catheter winding its way out from under his shirt and to the passenger-side floorboard where he put the satchel, and sees a knot of white liquid working its way down. He wonders what it means, this liquid in his lungs. He should have brought antibiotics with him. Grabbed some from his medicine cabinet. He had some left over from something or other. At least he got some pain meds stronger than Tylenol. They make him feel strange and drowsy, but he can function.

  ‘It’s not too late to straighten this out, Ian.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Straighten this out.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re going about this—’

  ‘Who else knows about Donald?’

  A long pause, then: ‘No one.’

  ‘You didn’t report it?’

  ‘I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt my feelings. You’re my friend.’

  ‘I am, but—’

  ‘I’m loyal to my friends.’

  ‘Then turn around and go back to Bulls Mouth and let me finish this thing.’

  ‘I’m even loyal to my suicidal friends.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Henry will kill you.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do know that, and so do you.’

  ‘He has my daughter, Diego. He stole my life.’

  ‘Your life is what you made it.’

  Ian doesn’t respond for a long time. He knows what Diego says is true. He is what he is and has done what he’s done and it produced the life he lives. These are just facts and there is no point in pretending otherwise.

  ‘Ian?’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘You’re right. That’s why I’m doing this.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to happen like this. I burned Donald’s trailer. They’ll think he had an accident with the stove. We’ll get the FBI or somebody involved, tell them what’s going on, and then we—’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Come home. The FBI has resources. They can—’

  ‘The sheriff had resources too. I appreciate what you’re doing, Diego, you don’t know how much, I know you put yourself on the line here, but I’m not stopping.’

  ‘Ian, goddamn it, would you just listen to—’

  ‘Go home to Cordelia, Diego, and leave me alone.’

  ‘If you—’

  ‘I’m throwing this phone out the window now. Give my best to Cord.’

  ‘You selfish son of a bitch, would you fucking—’

  He rolls the window down, the summer heat blowing into the car at sixty-eight miles per hour. He turns his face to it a brief moment, then throws his phone out the window. It seems to hang in the air a second, and then flies backwards, flipping end over end. In the rearview mirror he watches it hit asphalt and disintegrate, twisting and throwing off pieces of itself until there are no more pieces to throw off and it is gone. He rolls the window back up and turns on the radio.

  He knows Diego. The man will keep coming after him. Ian just hopes he’ll be able to stay ahead of him and take care of what needs taking care of before Diego catches up. He doesn’t want to put anyone else in danger. He doesn’t want what happened to Bill Finch and Chief Davis to happen to anyone else.

  Nor does he want what happened to him to happen to anyone else.

  Diego is a good man with a loving wife and a beautiful boy he is raising as his son. He should remain a good man with a loving wife and a beautiful boy he is raising as his son. For that to happen he needs to keep his distance. Which means Ian has to stay ahead of him and take care of Henry on his own.

  When he decided how far he was willing to go with Donald—all the way—he knew it was a negation of things he had believed all his life, of things he still believes, but he did not care, nor does he now. His only want was for the information he knew Donald had and he was willing to do everything to get it. He knew the cost going in and he was willing to pay it. He knows there will be greater costs ahead. He will pay those too. He is getting Maggie back. He knows he won’t get his life back with her, but that doesn’t matter: it will make his life mean something again. And that does matter.

  He looks out at the unpeopled land to his left and his right. He imagines his daughter in a yellow dress with the wind blowing through her golden hair. Just her and the landscape. She is beautiful. She is everything that ever meant anything in this entire fucked-up world, all of it within those green eyes. Everything his heart ever needed in four words from her lips: I love you, Daddy.

  And that does matter.

  Maggie sits between Henry and Beatrice in a gray Dodge Ram pickup truck, sweat trickling down her face. The cab smells of their sweat, a dense odor that makes Maggie’s eyes water. Henry will not turn on the air conditioner. He refuses to do so, saying it’ll ruin their gas mileage and he doesn’t want to be stopping to fill up every hundred miles.

  They’re about an hour out of San Antonio now. Maggie thinks it’s been about an hour, anyway. She counted to four-thousand-two, four-thousand-three, four-thousand-four, and there are only three thousand six hundred seconds in an hour, so unless she was counting far too fast, it should have been just over an hour.

  She thought that she might have a chance to escape while there, but she did not. They stopped and got fast-food sandwiches for breakfast, and ate them in the truck, Maggie the entire time squeezed between Henry and Beatrice.

  Every time she took a bite she would think of the people Henry buried earlier this morning. They would never eat again. She doesn’t understand why Henry had to do that. He didn’t have to do that. He said he had to because he needed their truck, he said he didn’t have a choice, but Maggie thinks that is a lie. Maybe a lie he believes himself, but a lie nonetheless. There had to have been ways of getting a new vehicle without killing anybody. Maggie thinks that maybe Henry likes to—

  ‘I’ll be goddamned,’ Henry says.

  ‘What?’ Beatrice says.

  ‘Look.’ He points through the bug-spattered windshield.

  ‘A Volkswagen?’

  ‘No, just in front of it.’

  Now Maggie sees it too: a 1965 Mustang. It could be Daddy’s. It almost has to be Daddy’s. It’s red except for the trunk, which is primer gray.

  She remembers riding with Daddy in his Mustang. Sometimes he would let her shift the car if they were alone and no one else was on the road. He’d push down on the crutch—clutch, Mags, with an L—and she would move the shifter, jamming it into gear. It was fun and exciting: she could feel the whole car’s power in the black knob at the end of the shifter, and it vibrated into her body through the palm of her hand. That made it scary, too, but that was part of why she liked it, part of why it was fun. Sometimes he let her sit in his lap and steer. She would swerve all over the road, laughing and honking the horn, and when it was over Daddy would be covered in sweat and saying she was the bravest person he ever met or the craziest. And she would stick out her tongue and shake her head and make crazy noises and laugh.

  ‘Well,’ Daddy would say, ‘that answers that.’

  Henry closes the distance between the Dodge pickup and the Mustang. He has to change lanes a
nd pass the Volkswagen and then swing in front of it to do so, and the driver of the Volkswagen honks and Henry waves his middle finger at him through the truck’s rear window.

  Maggie looks at the Mustang in front of them. It is Daddy. She can tell by the back of his head, the shape of it, the thin blond hair. It is him. She was afraid it might not be, she was afraid that he was dead and it couldn’t be him, but he isn’t dead and it is him. After yesterday, with all that blood, with the way he just lay on the gravel after Henry kicked him in the head, with the way his head fell limp and he just lay there, she was so afraid he was dead. She told herself he wasn’t, but she was afraid he was.

  No: she knew he wasn’t dead.

  ‘That’s my dad.’

  A slap across the back of the head.

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  She looks at Henry and sees that he means it.

  He looks from her to the windshield.

  ‘Fuck.’

  She thought Daddy was dead but he is not dead. It makes her chest feel warm in its center. As if she had her own personal sun. A sun on the inside. She thinks maybe she does.

  ‘Daddy,’ she says, waving her arms, hoping he looks in his rearview mirror.

  Another slap to the back of the head.

  ‘I fucking mean it, Sarah.’

  ‘I told you he was coming for me,’ she says. ‘I told you.’

  Mouthy little bitch. Where does she get off talking to him like that? If it weren’t for Bee, he’d just get rid of her. Put her in the ground. She’s nothing but trouble at this point. All of this is because of her: his having to kill Chief Davis and that county boy Bill Finch, his having to kill Flint and Naomi, their being on the run, all of it. She brought this upon them. She brought this upon them and she deserves to pay for that betrayal.

  If it weren’t for Bee, she would pay for it.

  Unless a man wants to find hisself with a bloody feeding-hand some day, his daddy had told him once before getting out his .22 and putting it into Henry’s hands, it’s best to kill a bad pup before it gets to be a big dog. Now let’s take care of this. I’ll get the shovel.

  If it weren’t for Bee, he’d take care of Sarah. She’s a bad pup if ever there was one. But women don’t understand facts. They just see something cute and want to cuddle it. They don’t understand that cute has nothing to do with whether something needs to be put down.

  He can’t believe that son of a bitch Ian Hunt found them. Found out where they were heading, anyway. And must have managed to get in front of them while Henry was busy burying the previous owners of the truck he’s now driving. It occurs to him that there was only one person from whom Ian could have gotten that information. But Donald would never give him up. Henry practically raised him. After Dad had the stroke when Donald was seven Henry did raise him. Donald would never give him up. He would sit through any and all threats of imprisonment giving nothing but a dead pan to the cops and answering nothing.

  Unless someone did something much worse than merely threaten him.

  But Hunt is a cop.

  Except he ain’t exactly acting like a cop right now, is he? Out here in his own car and no other cops in sight.

  If the police knew where he and Bee were heading they’d be all over this stretch of road. He’d have seen them. Seen them and holed up someplace. Or else he wouldn’t have seen them but they’d have seen him. They’d have seen him and flashed their lights and he’d be in a high-speed chase or captured or escaped. Or there’d be roadblocks. Something would have happened. But nothing has. Which means the police don’t know where he’s heading, even if Ian Hunt does.

  And there’s only one way Donald would have given Henry up.

  And there’s only one reason Ian Hunt wouldn’t get the real police involved.

  ‘Motherfucker.’

  ‘Henry.’

  ‘Shut up, Bee.’

  She looks at him a moment, then looks down at her lap. She flattens the fabric of her dress, rubs out the wrinkles, and stares down at the backs of her hands with an expression that suggests she doesn’t recognize them. Ever since last night she has not been acting herself. He’s never hidden what he is from her, but even so she has never seen the worst of what is in him. Not until last night. She has always loved him unconditionally, through drunken arrests and even through the times he lost his temper and maybe got too rough, but last night he thinks may have been too much for her. It happened right in front of her and she could not pretend she did not see it or did not understand it—and it might have been too much for her.

  He sensed her troubled mind in the silent darkness last night after they went to bed, while they lay side by side, and he feels it now. He does not like the silence. It makes him nervous. Beatrice is not one to keep her thoughts to herself. But today she is almost without voice. What is she thinking? What’s going on in that head of hers? He’s going to have to make her understand that what he did last night was necessary. That he didn’t like it any better than she did, but it was necessary. Sometimes bloodletting is the only choice. All survivors know this.

  The world is a hard place with lots of sharp corners, and sometimes to survive you have to put someone else between you and the worst of it. He doesn’t like it any more than she does. But he accepts it as the way things are.

  He needed their truck. He needed their truck and Flint suspected something. From the very beginning Flint was suspicious of them. They simply couldn’t leave him alive. He would have called the police. With him dead, with him and his wife dead, they have a clean vehicle for the next two or three days. Long enough to get them to his older brother’s place in California.

  Of course he’ll have to get rid of Ian Hunt at some point before they get there. He can do that. Maybe he can even do that today. He’ll just follow Hunt from a distance, hang back and follow. If he’s careful he can go unnoticed. The man doesn’t know he got in front of them. It might be difficult to remain unnoticed once traffic thins out and the land becomes more barren in West Texas, but even there it should be possible. He’ll follow Hunt, wait for the man to settle down for the night. Then he’ll make the fucker bleed.

  He’ll make him sorry he didn’t die the first time.

  And that’ll be the end of his troubles. After that they can lie low in California for a few months. Even if the police decide to nose around Ron’s house, there are places to hide. Ron has lots of places in which to wait out trouble. An underground bomb shelter with canned food and five hundred gallons of drinking water and a two-hundred-gallon gray-water tank. Abandoned buildings where he has stored supplies. According to his letters, once the iron mine dried up the town blew away with the dust and he’s one of only twenty or thirty residents left. And that was years ago. It could be he’s the last person in town. There will be plenty of shadows to hide in, even beneath the California sun. They’ll wait it out, wait till things cool off, and then head down to Mexico. Or maybe up to Canada. But probably Mexico.

  It’ll be safer to cross the border in California than in Texas. And he’ll have a chance to get some money before they head down. He doesn’t want to be flat broke in Mexico. A different country will take some getting used to, but it’s better than the alternative. The important thing is staying out of prison, staying out of prison and staying together.

  But first Ian Hunt has to die.

  In the two hundred miles between Junction and Fort Stockton, Texas, the landscape changes. The trees give way to shrubbery and low yellow flowers. The yellow flowers stretch from dry earth or dead grass. Desert hills erupt from the flat earth like goiters, and Interstate 10 cuts through many of them, leaving dynamited and scraped cliffs butting up to the asphalt and stacked up beside you in multi-colored layers descending into the past. The moisture leaves the air, and cacti soak up the sun, their fat pads like the flippers of some lost exotic underwater creature waving at you from the side of the road. Ancient stripper-well pumpjacks like prehistoric birds peck at the ground in the Permian Basin oil fields, mov
ing in slow, sleepy, repetitious motion. The traffic thins to nothing but the occasional Mack truck hauling a load from coast to coast, driver red eyed and tweaked out, or some other lonesome traveler. Occasional desert rabbits splatter the shoulders of the road, revealing their hearts to you. Past the halfway point between these two towns, somewhere around Bakersfield, great fields of windmills turn slowly in the distance like ceiling fans on a mild day. Everything seems to move slowly in this mean desert heat, even your vehicle with the needle past eighty. You drive and drive but never seem to get anywhere. Then you arrive in Fort Stockton and are greeted by a large statue of a roadrunner, the world’s largest, they say (every town needs a point of pride), standing behind a short brick wall faced with a sign welcoming you to town.

  It’s two thirty when Hunt pulls off Interstate 10. Henry follows, glad to have a chance to step out of this hot fucking truck and stretch a bit. They’ve been on the road for hours, his back is killing him, and Bee’s complained of a leak in the canoe at least a half dozen times. Also, gas needle is south of the E, and he’s spent the last twenty minutes worrying about puttering to a stop on the side of the road, miles from a gas station.

  Hunt pulls into a Chevron station on the corner of Front Street and US 285, and Henry pulls into a competing station across the street from it.

  He watches the man step from his Mustang and stretch his arms. His left arm, anyway. His right arm doesn’t get above his shoulder. Arms stretched, he twists his neck around. There’s a satchel in his right hand and after he stretches he straps it over his shoulder.

  Henry wonders what’s inside. Probably guns.

  The man does not look like he was shot in the chest yesterday. He should be bedridden.

  Well, it don’t matter. He’ll be dead by the time the sun kisses the horizon. By the time the sun shines on tomorrow at the latest.

  Henry reaches for his pocket and finds it empty. He swallows back the sharp taste of stomach acid.

  ‘Can I pee now?’