A Taste of Blood and Ashes

by Jaden Terrell

  I eased to the corner and peered around it, staying in the shadows, pressed against the stalls.

  Gerardo stood with his back three-quarters toward me. His bandaged hands gripped Carlin’s upper arms, and his back was rigid with anger, or perhaps pain.

  Carlin lifted her chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you today. You and the detective. This afternoon.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Gerardo. He’s just—”

  He gave her a small shake, shoulders trembling with barely controlled rage. “I saw you in his arms!”

  She put a hand on each of his forearms, pushed out of his grasp. “I was tired and sad and frightened. I needed a friend.”

  “You have friends,” he said softly. “You wanted a man.”

  The accusation hung between them. His lips were an angry line, his empty hands curled into fists. My muscles tensed, ready to move if he struck her, or if it looked like he might.

  Her voice broke. “Gerardo—”

  “He carries a few boxes, helps you lift your husband from the ground. Your husband, Señora!” He held up his hands, and the bandages glowed in the lamplight. “Would he do this for you?”

  Her small hands clenched. “What is it that’s bothering you? That I was in a man’s arms, or that they weren’t yours?” She reached for his belt, tugged him toward her by the loops. “Is this what you want?” With her other hand, she yanked open her blouse. Buttons flew, and the blouse gaped to reveal small perfect breasts in a white lace bra. A sob burst from her throat, harsh and aching. “Is this what you want? Is it?”

  His shoulder muscles bunched, and for a moment, I thought he might strike her. Maybe he thought so too. Then he sucked in a ragged breath and said, “You know what I want.”

  Gently, he closed his hands over hers and laid her palms flat against his chest. He pulled the edges of her blouse together, tilted her face upward, and kissed her lightly on the eyelids.

  “You know what I want, mi amor,” he repeated, as she came into his arms. “And we both know why I can never have it.”

  I left them standing in the darkness and walked back to the campground with heavy feet. Things had just gotten complicated.

  The night smelled of sugar and grease with an undertone of sawdust and pine. As I neared the camping area, I could see the glow of an occasional campfire, smell burning wood and the singed-fat aroma of grilling steaks.

  I passed a trailer where five people sat around a campfire in director’s chairs, sipping beers and laughing as an old man in a straw hat regaled them with a story about collecting semen from a bull. The light of a television flickered from a nearby camper. Most of the others were dark and quiet, their owners still at the arena or maybe at the cowboy bar in town.

  The light was on in Eli’s camper, the Dodge parked catty-corner on the far side. There were things I might have asked him, but I didn’t care for company. Instead I found myself walking in concentric circles, or as near as I could manage, from the outside edges of the camping area toward the center. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but moving felt better than not moving, and I wanted to feel like I was doing something.

  I felt bad for Zane, and maybe that, more than anything, was what drew me toward the Underwoods’ Featherlite. I slowed as I came near it. It was dark inside, the door half open, swinging gently in the breeze.

  The hair on my arms prickled.

  From inside came two quick thumps and a muffled cry, then a metallic clang and an explosive hiss.

  I drew the Glock from my waistband and broke into a run.

  17.

  I burst through the door of the trailer into shadow. The figure bent over Zane’s hospital bed snapped upright, lifting his weight from the pillow pressed against Zane’s face. Zane sucked for breath, scrabbled at the pillow with clawed hands. A sliver of light spilled through the doorway and onto the man in black. Even in the dimness, I could see the dark ski mask, both hands on the pillow, no visible weapon.

  The hiss was coming from the overturned oxygen canister. Maybe the regulator had snapped off when it fell. Maybe it had been punctured somehow in the struggle. Even if I could have shot an unarmed man in the dark and with Zane in danger of being hit with a through-and-through or a ricochet, there was no way to know how damaged the container was or how much oxygen was already in the air. The charred cockpit of Apollo 1 flashed through my mind, and suddenly the thought of muzzle flash in an enclosed room filling with oxygen was enough to make me slide the Glock back into its place just to the left of my spine. As it settled into position, the man in black flung himself at me.

  Time slowed.

  I sidestepped, sending a lance of pain through my bruised ribs. He lashed out with an elbow, caught me in the shoulder. Grunted as I rabbit punched him in the kidneys. A punch to his solar plexus whooshed the breath from his diaphragm. Then, gasping for air, he lowered his head and rammed it into my injured side.

  Pain exploded through my torso, as if every bone in my rib cage had shattered, as if all the nerves on my left side had ruptured and been set on fire. The man’s weight carried me backward through the open door. Momentum took us past the step and into open air. I hit the ground hard, flat on my back, half a second before his weight crashed onto my chest. His head bounced off my chin. For a moment, I was deaf and blind, nothing but a pulsing black hole of pain. My vision cleared, and I felt his weight lighten as he rolled away and stumbled to his feet.

  His footsteps faded as I lay there listening to my heart pound, unable to move. Gradually my arms and legs began to tingle. Another few minutes, and I pushed myself over and onto my knees and vomited. The spasm sent another wave of pain and nausea through me.

  Two inches, I thought. If the Glock had been at the center of my back and not two inches to the left, it would have snapped my spine.

  I ground my teeth against another small explosion in my ribs and pushed to my feet, then limped back to the trailer on wobbling legs and paused at the steps. I couldn’t do it.

  My palm found the controls for the lift, and I rode it up, afraid of what I might find. Above the whirr of the lift, I heard Zane’s whistling breaths, and a flood of relief rushed through me. He was lying on his back on the bed, breathing hard and fast, the pillow half across his face. A broken nail clung to the cloth.

  I pushed the pillow aside. “You okay?”

  He shook his head, eyes wild.

  “Okay, buddy. Try to slow it down. Breathe two counts in, two counts out. Slow and easy. Now try three.” I pulled out my cell and punched in Carlin’s number. She answered on the third ring.

  “Carlin? I’m at your trailer. Zane’s okay. I think he’s okay. But I need you to bring Doc.”

  She was gone before I finished. I put the phone back in my pocket and sat on the bed next to Zane, counting long breaths in and long breaths out until the whistling stopped and his breathing evened out. By the time the cavalry arrived, I was pretty sure we were both going to live, and pretty sure that, for the next few days, we were both going to wish we hadn’t.

  “He looks okay to me,” Doc said, after taking Zane’s pulse and shining a light into his eyes. “But you might want to get him over to the hospital to make sure.”

  Zane shook his head, shot a meaningful look toward his DynaVox.

  There were five of us crammed into the trailer—Doc, Carlin, Gerardo, Zane, and me. I’d propped myself against the far wall where no one was likely to bump into my injured ribs. Gerardo sat on the leather sofa, his head in his hands, while Doc sat on the edge of Zane’s bed and Carlin hovered beside him, dressed in her show pants and a faded flannel shirt she must have had at the barn.

  She handed the DynaVox to Zane, and he typed, “NO HOSPITAL.”

  Doc shook his head. “You need to get checked out by a real doctor.”

  “YOU’RE A REAL DOCTOR.”

  “I’m a vet with an EMT license.”

  “I TRUST YOU,” Zane said.

  Doc’s ey
es misted, and he laid a callused hand on Zane’s shoulder. “I know, Zane, and you’ve no idea how that honors me. But I don’t have the right equipment here to make sure nothing’s going wrong inside. Seriously, you ought to get checked out.”

  Carlin closed her hand over his. “Please, baby. You know all the things that could go wrong. Just let them take a look.” Zane’s eyes squeezed shut. “FINE,” he typed. “DO WHAT YOU WANT.”

  Carlin ran her fingers over the veins in the back of his hand. “I get why someone set that fire,” she said. “They ruin us, discredit me. But why would anybody want to hurt Zane?”

  As if she were in the room with us, I heard Eleanor’s smoker’s voice. If he isn’t dead, he might as well be. I hadn’t fought Zane’s mother in that trailer, but that meant nothing. She had money and influence, which meant other people did her dirty work. Would she really try to kill her own son? It was anybody’s guess.

  “I’ve given up trying to understand people,” Doc said. “That’s why I work on animals. Do you need me to call an ambulance?”

  “NO AMBULANCE,” Zane said.

  Gerardo shifted on the couch. His face was ashen beneath his tan, and the skin beneath his eyes looked bruised. “I will drive to the hospital.”

  “What about you?” Carlin said to me. “You look like fifty miles of bad road.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I flicked my tongue across a split in my lower lip. Tried on a smile.

  A hint of mischief lit her eyes. “I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  Doc said, “She’s right though. You should get those ribs looked at.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Uh huh,” she said. “We’ll drive you.”

  “I hate to bring this up,” Doc said, “but we need to call the sheriff.”

  Zane wagged his head from side to side until the wayward curl fell across his forehead.

  Carlin snorted. “What would be the point? He’ll make a lot of noises like he’s going to do something, and then he won’t.”

  “Maybe. Probably. But I still have to tell him.” Doc sighed and ran his big hands through his hair. “He’s not a bad man, Carlin.”

  Her narrowed eyes said what she thought of that, but she let it go, as if she knew there was no point in arguing.

  “Seriously,” Doc said. “Somebody tried to kill Zane tonight. There needs to be a watch set on his room.”

  Carlin snorted. “I wouldn’t trust Hap or his men to guard my outhouse.”

  I said, “I know a guy.”

  “He’s good?” she asked.

  “He’s very good. But he’s not cheap.”

  She looked at Zane, his broken nails, his grayed complexion. For a moment, I could see her waver, weighing the economics against the danger. Then she said, “I don’t care how much it costs. Call him.”

  I went outside to make the call, and as I stepped off the lift and glanced around, I saw a small dark lump beside the back wheel of the trailer.

  I eased myself down to pick it up, held it up by the edges with two fingers.

  A black bandana with skulls on it, still damp with sweat. On the inner surface, someone had scrawled his initials in Sharpie. M.E. The last time I’d seen that bandana, Mace Ewing had been wearing it.

  18.

  My friend’s name was Billy Mean. He’d been Special Forces in Vietnam and now ran a shelter and rehab center for homeless veterans. He was old enough to be my father, but I’d still rather have him at my back than a dozen younger men.

  “Be there in an hour,” he said, after I’d filled him in and given him directions and an address for his GPS. “As long as these directions don’t lead me to the butt end of nowhere.”

  I grinned, though he couldn’t see it. “When you get to the butt end of nowhere, you’re halfway there.”

  In actuality, Braydon County hospital was a straight shot from I-24, half an hour off the interstate on a highway that widened and narrowed from two lanes to four and then back again. The hospital was a block off the main road. Remarkably, there was no wait at the emergency room.

  We filled out paperwork. Then Zane and I were whisked to separate examining rooms, while Doc and Gerardo waited in the check-in area and Carlin trailed in her husband’s wake.

  X-rays showed hairline fractures in two of my ribs. I’d been lucky with the shovel, but breaking the assailant’s fall and the head-butt to the midsection must have been too much to take. The doctor, a no-nonsense woman with tortoise-shell glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, showed me the films and said, “There’s not much we can do about a break like this. Back in the day, I would have taped you up, which would have made you feel a little better, but as it turns out, could restrict your breathing and lead to pneumonia. I’d recommend staying out of fistfights for the foreseeable future. Another hard hit to the rib cage could snap the bone and puncture a lung.”

  I looked at her name badge. Dr. Anne Genaro.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “But then, I didn’t plan on this one.”

  She tapped her pen on the edge of her clipboard. “You’re going to want to take shallow breaths. Try to resist the temptation. Breathing normally is going to hurt, but you should do it as much as you can. And be sure to breathe deeply or cough at least once an hour.”

  “Why do I think that’s going to hurt like hell?”

  “Probably because it will.” She peered at me over her glasses. “I’ll write you a prescription for the pain. You can take an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory if you prefer, but you might as well have the other if you need it.”

  She scrawled something on a prescription pad and handed it to me. I glanced at it. No sage advice about minding my own business, just an illegible scrawl I presumed would mean something to a pharmacist well versed in code breaking. I thanked her and put it in my shirt pocket.

  She said, “Should I be asking what the other guy looks like?”

  “Probably a lot better, since he was on top.”

  “TMI,” she said, and laughed. The laugh made her seem more human.

  My cheeks warmed. “I mean, I broke his fall.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “Next time, let him break his own fall.”

  “Next time, I’ll just shoot him.”

  She snapped her pen into place on her clipboard. “Don’t tell me that. I don’t have time to testify at your trial. Or worse, at mine.”

  “You’re not culpable,” I said. “Just say you didn’t report it because you thought I was out of my mind with pain.”

  “You are out of your mind with pain. But how about you just don’t shoot anybody? That way neither one of us is culpable.”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I said. “Since I’m not sure who the son of a bitch is.”

  She pushed her glasses up and gave my back a gentle pat. “All kidding aside, they told me what you did for Mr. Underwood. I wish I could give you a medal, but maybe you could settle for a lollipop.”

  By the time a nurse in Cat in the Hat scrubs wheeled me back to the waiting room, Carlin and Gerardo were gone and Doc was pacing like a caged lynx. Window to door to coffee machine and back again. He paused in his trajectory when the nurse tipped me out at the doorway.

  He said, “Is that a Tootsie Pop?”

  “I was a very good boy. How’s Zane?”

  “They’re moving him to a regular room for observation. We’re supposed to join them there. Room 318. What did they say about your ribs?”

  “Cracked in two places, but as long as I don’t get hit again, I should be okay.”

  He laughed without mirth. “What are the odds of that? You scared this guy off, but there’s no way he’s not going to try again.”

  “He wasn’t trying for me,” I pointed out. “Seems like if we can keep someone on Zane and Carlin, we can put a kink in his plans.”

  “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

  “No, I don’t. Do you?”

  He hesitated. Then he spread his big hands. “I kno
w he tried to suffocate a crippled man. I’m guessing he’s not the type to lose sleep over collateral damage.”

  The elevator opened on a tiled corridor, a window at one end, an open T at the other. Room 318 was three doors down and across the hall. Carlin leaned against the wall outside Zane’s room. Her head was bowed, her fists clenched. She looked up when she heard us coming. “Sheriff’s in there with him, said he needed to take his statement right now, without me. And him so wrung out he can hardly hold his head up. I’m so mad now I could spit.”

  I didn’t answer, just put my fingertips against the door and pushed. The sheriff, standing beside Zane’s bed with his arms crossed, looked up with a scowl. “I’ll get to you soon enough.”

  “If we were going to taint each other’s statements, we’d have done it by now.”

  “I know that. I just want to hear what happened while it’s still fresh on your minds.” His frown deepened. “Not that I owe you an explanation.”

  “No, you don’t. I just popped in to make sure you didn’t have a pillow over his face.”

  He looked at me through narrowed eyes. “And why would I do a thing like that?”

  “Family business. Your brother has a few thousand reasons. Maybe a few million.”

  “You overestimate Zane Underwood’s importance.”

  “He’s a small cog in the cosmos,” I acknowledged. “But people hardly ever try to kill you if they don’t think you’re important.”

  From the bed, a tinny voice said, “SILVER LINING. FIRST TIME IN A YEAR I FEEL IMPORTANT.”

  The sheriff shifted his weight, looked at his feet. “I reckon I’m done here, Zane. You sleep tight.” He looked at me. “Okay, McKean, let’s take a walk.”

  I would have made a smart-ass comment about not being that kind of guy, but I didn’t feel up to it. I held the door so he could pass. My plan to fall into step beside him was foiled by a protest from my battered ribs. I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth and dropped back. I might have tried to push through the pain, but there was no upside to stressing my body any further tonight. He could damn well trudge along with me.