A Dark Path

by Robert E. Dunn

  Again I hit my brakes and fell back. Just as quickly, I slammed the gas pedal to the floor.

  The GMC must have looked huge and angry to the woman in the Chevy as it ran up on her. She accelerated. The old truck had a modern, custom engine. It was able to stay ahead of me, but only barely. It didn’t matter. Her job was to cut me out of the convoy and we were coming up quick. She took the desperate route and stood on her brakes.

  The skid turned the Chevy sideways in the double lanes and I had nowhere to go. I could either stop—or T-bone the hot rod. I stopped in a tire-smoking skid.

  Even before my truck was completely stilled, the Chevy was peeling out and running again. I did the same. In a few seconds, I was back on her ass and she was weaving to keep me from passing. She didn’t understand I was finished playing. For a few moments, I held my speed and path without trying to get by. She got tired of the side to side pattern and settled down right in front of me. Just where I wanted her.

  The van and bikers were probably a mile ahead of us by then. I saw them climbing the top of the next hill as we were diving into the valley. Our speed was about sixty when I surged. She saw me coming and went into overdrive as well. I’m sure she was waiting for me to go right or left and ready to react in either direction. I’m just as sure that she wasn’t ready for me coming straight on again. I didn’t barrel up on the Chevy. I caught up and eased in. When there were only a few feet between us, I pushed right and gave the GMC more speed. It’s called a PIT Maneuver: precision immobilization technique. By ramming her bumper in the right, it pushed her front to the left. She corrected by jerking the wheel to the right and losing control. I fell back as she fishtailed and spun out. We were both lucky she didn’t hit a rail or roll the truck. The bump and go thing works better at city speeds. On the highway, it’s pretty dicey and definitely dangerous. I wasn’t worried about her safety at that point, but if she cracked up hard I would have been obligated to stop.

  As it was, I waited for her to settle—facing the wrong way in the middle of the road—then I raced ahead. The van was out of sight, and I didn’t want to give them any time to take a turn that I couldn’t see. The GMC powered forward—eating road with hard rubber teeth. The roar of the tires and the engine worked in my mind and, for a moment, I was in the back of a racing Humvee on a broken Iraqi road.

  People like me, survivors of trauma, have triggers. Sounds, tastes, smells, words—anything can make a connection in our brains to the moments we most want to avoid. As recently as the beginning of the summer, the memory induced by the low hum of tires on asphalt would have shut me down. That was before I stopped fighting therapy. That was before I stopped feeling guilty and fighting the feelings I had for Billy.

  Absently, I reached and touched the scar around my eye. It was a habit, self-soothing and not nearly as important as it had been for a long time. The touch let me relax and think through the feeling. I realized I had let up off the gas. With new resolve, I pressed it to the floor again. At the same time, I picked up the radio and called in for any Highway Patrol assistance.

  No one was close. They would have had to be right behind me to do any good. When I came over the next hill, the van was in sight and going slow. The bikers were forcing it toward an unmarked dirt cut off.

  That was when I lit up the emergency lights behind the grill and hit the siren. Coming off the hill I was going about eighty-five and accelerated going down. I gave a warning because I didn’t plan on stopping.

  The Nightriders must have seen me coming and got the message. Before they could make their turn, the three of them swung back onto the highway and twisted everything they could out of their throttles.

  They had a long head start and the big V-twin bikes were fast. So was I. By the time my truck screamed past the coroner’s van I was going over a hundred.

  At that speed, traffic—which had been light headed north—got dense. I caught the bikes but couldn’t really do anything other than scare them a little. So I scared them a lot by pulling up close behind their exposed tires. When cars came up in our path, the bikers were able to weave in and out. I had to let the sirens clear my path.

  I called in a BOLO, a be-on-the-look-out, for the bikes and the custom Chevy, then pulled aside to let the van catch up.

  We spent a few minutes on the shoulder. The CA was rattled so we talked and let the adrenaline drain. He seemed to be a good kid—and gun-waving bikers were not a usual part of his job. A highway patrol cruiser pulled up behind the van. I recognized the officer and we spent a little more time briefing each other.

  The custom Chevy was gone. So were the bikers. It was no great surprise. There were any number of unmarked drives and trails that intersected the highway. They could have gone into any of them. To be cautious, I asked the patrolman to provide additional escort as we continued on to the pathologist. He called it in and we got on our way.

  The rest of the trip was uneventful. The body was taken into the facility. When the CA and the patrolman had gone, I idled the GMC and called the sheriff. After I gave him a short synopsis of the trip, I asked how he knew something would happen.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “But Johnson Rath and his militia buddies have a history of using intimidation and tampering to cover their tracks. Most of them have military backgrounds too.”

  “If you don’t need me there, I think I’d like to stick around up here.” I told him. “At least for the night. I have my appointment in the morning anyway.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re not fighting the bit on that so much these days.”

  “You’re the sheriff. If you say I have to go to therapy to keep my job, I go to therapy.”

  “There’s showing up, and there is learning from the process.” He waited but I didn’t say anything. “I can see the difference in you lately.”

  “Thanks.” It was hard to say, but I meant it.

  “Be careful.”

  Despite their brazen action on the highway, I thought there was little chance that the bikers would try anything at the pathology facility in the bright light of day. I left the parking lot and made a stop at the police station. They needed to know what had happened. I asked that they keep an eye on the pathologist’s building. After that, I made a circle of town. Nixa, Missouri was my hometown. Every time I visited, it seemed to have drifted further from me and grown a little more.

  After a quick circuit, I went to my father’s empty house. His funeral had been early this past spring. Like Billy, he was caught up in the government’s conspiracy to break its own laws. My father, a US Army veteran, was killed in the turmoil. If anyone asks, I say I’m not bitter. That’s part of what therapy is for.

  At the house, I parked and sat for a long time—putting off the moment I walked through the door. It wasn’t the first time I had been back, but returning no longer felt like a homecoming. It was more like a visit to a cemetery. Home had become a place for talking to ghosts. The house itself was a headstone inscribed with memories and memorials. It struck me that, as bad as I was feeling about it, I was lucky to have the house and my father’s genuine grave to visit. The people who were buried in the field we found that morning were cut off from memory and mourning. UNKNOWN seems like a curse of loss, rather than any kind of remembrance.

  Even with the windows down, the truck was hotter than a sane woman would put up with. I got out and stretched under the shade of a maple. There was no breeze to be had. I climbed the porch steps and waited at the door with my key poised. Something, procrastination, made me turn around. Brick houses stood in long parallel lines—surrounding them was brown foliage. The grass was dead—except for one house that poured away gallons of water each night to preserve a lawn that served as a home for gnomes. Everything else was a dun-colored waste. Leaves curled and browned, rather than turning for the fall.

  A surge of gritty wind kicked up. It rasped over me, rough as spite, and I was back in
Iraq. The officers who had raped and cut the tracks of their hate into my skin left me for dead behind a mud wall. Creeping wind spit the dust of ages over me—as though the whole world was ashamed of my naked, bleeding body. The red of my life poured onto the dirt, becoming just another shade of brown in a wasted world.

  PTSD flashbacks are more than memory. They have the substance of reality. They are real moments and experiences simply shifted in time. I was slowly learning not to live in those moments when they came.

  I gripped the porch rail and forced my lungs to work. Breathing is my first step. It is active, focused, and deliberate. I had to think about the process. Doing so helped to calm my raging mind. Any bit of calm in the current of trauma is a lifeline. I grabbed it and concentrated. I thought about my heart and worked to slow the pounding. I imagined the muscles in my hands, and one by one, loosened my fingers from the wrought iron.

  When I opened my eyes again, a black shine loomed large in the roiling brown. It took a moment to understand it, but the glare of glossy paint resolved into a pickup truck shape. The custom Chevy was parked across the street.

  I hadn’t heard it approach. Was it possible that it had been there all along?

  The truck was situated in such a way that I could see the woman behind the wheel. She was slim to the point of being boney. Her hair was short, but it caught the light—reflecting something between copper and rust.

  She watched me.

  I watched her.

  My legs were immobile. My breath was not yet completely under my control. If the woman in the truck wanted to hurt me, she had the perfect chance.

  “What do you want?” My voice was so weak I doubt it carried to the maple—let alone past the limit of the yard and across the street.

  My answer was a firing of the engine. It was a loud, rumbling growl that communicated nothing I could understand.

  The woman in the truck made the engine race and then let it fall back to idle.

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked. My mind was split. Part of it struggled with the past and part with the present. Neither part was strong enough on its own. I was the fulcrum over which two worlds teetered. I had the feeling that no part of me needed the part that was standing on the porch, shaking with the effort of remaining upright.

  “Get out of here,” I said—not exactly sure which world I was speaking to. Only the truck answered. The woman pressed the gas again.

  Another blast of hot wind and flying grime prickled my skin. I managed to let go of the past and grab the present. I pulled my hand from the railing and put it to the grip of the pistol on my hip. I lifted a foot high enough to take a step toward the end of the porch. It was the freedom of my voice that gave me the most strength. I shouted. I bellowed out my anger. “Bitch. I’m coming now.”

  Ordinarily, I would never use that slur against another woman. It seems like an epithet aimed at femaleness. There is enough of that in the world. Men are a different story. I’ve used it against a particular kind of man many times.

  Despite my choice of invective, the woman probably reacted more to my movement than my words. The truck spun its tires and ran as soon as I took my first—and only—step.

  I let her go. There wasn’t much I could do. I was in no condition to run or to climb into the GMC chase after her. In the house, I called the locals and told them what happened—or at least I told them most of what happened.

  After that, I went around pulling all the curtains and darkened the house until it had the feel of an upholstered tomb. When everything was dark and quiet, I sat without moving for two hours. For the first time in my life, I was glad to have an appointment with my therapist on Monday.

  Chapter 4

  I rose out of the darkened house into a blaze of heat and light. The sun was the kind of searing yellow that made shadows on my closed eyelids. It pulsed like a spike hammered into my optic nerve, as I stood back on the front porch and waited for everything to adjust. It didn’t happen quickly. The desire to return to darkness and cloistering silence made me feel like a vampire.

  There was a time when I would have given in and gone. There was a time—before—that I would have gotten drunk instead.

  Suck it up, buttercup.

  I pulled my phone and called Billy.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask,” I answered right back. “This thing is as much a mess as I am.”

  He listened as I detailed the drive and the told him about the black truck.

  “Go see Roy Finley,” he said.

  It made me feel like an idiot. I should have thought about that myself. Roy Finley was a guy I had gone to school with. I had introduced Billy to him at a Branson car show. I’m not usually a car show kind of girl, but Billy was booked there. He and his guitar—moonlight singing old 1970s country rock. He plays and sings the kind of soft oldies that half the world makes fun of, and the other half has forgotten. He does it so well, though, I would go and listen when I could.

  Billy and Roy hit it off right away—talking about hot rods and old cars they admired. Billy admitted he was saving up for an El Camino. Roy had promised to do the body work, and they had fallen right into talking ideas for the nonexistent car. I had no idea what an El Camino was, until that day.

  If anyone around would know anything about the Chevy, it would be Roy. Chances were good that he had a hand in the custom work.

  “I think I want rally stripes,” Billy said.

  “What?”

  “On the El Camino,” he explained. “I want either a cherry red or orange soda paint job with white rally stripes.”

  “You know I don’t care.”

  “Yes. I do know that. It doesn’t mean you won’t listen.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you like to hear my voice.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself aren’t you?”

  “No.” Even through the phone, I could see him shake his head and take a drink through a straw. “I’m sure of you.”

  “What are you so sure of?”

  “I’m sure you need a little peace in your life. And I’m sure you don’t mind me going on about a car or a song that you’ve never heard because you know I want that peace for you.”

  “I had a couple of bad hours,” I admitted.

  “I heard it in your voice.”

  “I thought I was getting better.”

  “You are.”

  “I don’t feel like it right now. I didn’t feel it when I couldn’t move or even shout at the woman in the truck.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Everything I remember—”

  “That’s not it.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “You’ve been through that. It’s behind you. What are you afraid of that’s in front of you?”

  “I couldn’t move.”

  “I don’t think it’s about movement, is it?” he asked. His voice reminded me of the words I’d been told in the back of a racing Humvee. The medic, the one I believed was Billy Blevins, looked at me with big eyes after he cut the clothing from me. He looked like he’d never seen a naked woman. I’m sure he’d never seen one as cut and ragged as I was. The fear in his face was smoothed out by his calm voice and his words. ‘You’re going to be all right.’

  “I couldn’t act.” I finally said. “What kind of a cop can I be if I let that happen at the wrong time?”

  “Has that ever happened to you?”

  I thought about it. “It’s come close.”

  “But no cigar.”

  I laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

  “You’re a woman with options,” he told me earnestly. “More than almost anyone. You don’t have to make your whole life about the worst moments.”

  Billy always gave good advice.

  We talk
ed for a while, and I felt better for it. We would have stayed on the line even longer—except I got another call. Sheriff Benson.

  “I need you to do something up there,” the sheriff said as soon as we connected. “Two somethings.”

  “What do you need?” My fear and tension were gone. Billy had soothed me and the idea of work had steeled me. I released the worry for the time being.

  “Goddamnit,” he moaned into the phone. The sheriff was the best man you would ever know, but everyone sweats under stress. He just happens to sweat vulgarities. “This is shit I don’t want to dump on you but. . .”

  “But?”

  “But I’m going to.”

  “Is it about the autopsy?”

  “It’s about the kid being autopsied.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Know. Believe. Hell I’m fucking sure, Hurricane.” I hadn’t heard so much pain in his voice since his wife passed away. Whatever was bothering him was personal. I didn’t want to press so I waited for him to tell me. “His name is Tyrell Turner. He’s the grandson of Earl Turner—the man Riley told you about.”

  “The one Johnson Rath almost killed.”

  “It was more than almost. He was a heartbeat away from murder in the eyes of the law. Even closer than that—if you think about what was done to Earl’s life. It was taken away just as surely as if he had been laid in the ground.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go into Springfield tomorrow and meet Earl Turner. Talk with him. Get a statement.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That should be enough. It won’t be easy. There’s a lot of anger. A lot of hurt. But you’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “There is more. I want you to meet with Devon Birch.”