Coyote Ugly

by Pati Nagle

  “Ms. Trujillo?”

  There were no other doors; not even a closet, just a rack of costumes in one corner, some of which I recognized. The feather cape was there, white plumes flickering slightly in the breeze.

  Breeze?

  No fan in the room. There was an air duct in the ceiling, but when I reached up toward it I felt nothing. I held my hand over the feather cape, and caught a whisper of air coming from behind the costume rack. I pulled it aside and reached a hand toward the bare wall behind it. It went through.

  “Shit!”

  I took a deep breath and stepped through the wall. Weird feeling—all my imagination, of course—but only ghosts and superheros are supposed to walk through walls.

  I was in a short, dark corridor. Light at the other end, and carpet that looked like some part of the casino, but no sign of Ms. Trujillo. I went toward the light, stepped out into it and stopped cold. Across the hall and down a few feet stood the Blue Corn Maiden.

  “Jesus.”

  I turned around, and found myself facing a blank wall. Reached out, and through; another hologram. Security feature, Chase had said. I remembered my confusion over the lounge. They were moving the damn walls!

  Things started clicking in my brain. Private entrance to the star’s dressing room. Alan Malone had a perfectly good reason to be in the hall by the Blue Corn Maiden; he was on his way into the theater.

  The killer was someone who knew about the concealed corridor, maybe even hid there. Didn’t look good for Daniel Stauffer. Then again, Kyler might have known it was there; his assistant certainly did. For someone who didn’t like holograms, Ms. Trujillo sure knew a lot about them.

  Oh.

  I started through the casino, trying not to run. I crossed the lobby and passed the elevators, then hopped on the escalator and took the steps two at a time. The doors to the office were gone; a solid wall now stood at the top of the escalator. I put a hand through it and felt the carved doors behind. They were unlocked.

  Dark. I felt around on the wall for a light switch, then gave up and started down the hallway. Arroyo-light from the picture windows in Kyler’s office spilled across the carpet.

  Kyler had an alibi. Stauffer had three alibis. And Sally the Receptionist said Trujillo had been on the phone all morning. On the phone, talking to no one. Just sitting at her desk.

  I nearly tripped myself getting to Trujillo’s office. Butterfly Maiden still stood in the corner, glowing in the dark room. It hadn’t occurred to me before to wonder why Trujillo had put the hologram behind her desk, where she couldn’t see it. I fumbled with the projectors, found the button, pushed it, stepped back.

  Butterfly Maiden vanished. In her place, seated in a holographic desk chair and murmuring into a holographic phone, was Emily Trujillo in her pretty cream-colored suit.

  “Holy shit!”

  I stopped thinking at that point. All I knew was that Trujillo had killed her very dear friend, and that I had to find her. I tore out of there and back down to the casino, but of course she was nowhere in sight.

  I headed for the theater, intending to get Chase. The maitre d’ let me in and I stood in the dark at the back of the house, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I wouldn’t fall on my face on the steps.

  The stage lights were low. Hanes was alone, kneeling in front of a holographic fire, chanting low and loud, unaccompanied.

  Some small movement to my right caught my eye; I saw a pale shape moving down the far aisle, and a shiver went down my back. I went toward it.

  Hanes chanted louder and waved his arms over the fire as if casting some magic spell. A darker shape loomed between me and the pale blob, and my stomach lurched as I hurried toward them both, touching the backs of chairs and shoulders, whispering “Sorry, sorry,” and trying to keep half an eye on the stage.

  Hanes reached into the false fire, brought out the little plain rattle I’d seen on the prop table, and raised it over his head. At the same time a pale arm was raised ahead of me, and I saw it was Emily Trujillo’s arm, holding a gun. Then the shadow between us blocked it.

  I screamed “No!” and the gun went off, and all hell broke loose.

  I ran the last few feet between me and Trujillo, barked my shin on something, cussed as I saw the shadow-shape crumple. The gun went off again, flash nearly blinding me, screams all around not the least of which was Benjamin Hanes shrieking like a lunatic and blowing out the house speakers.

  The Quantico boys would have been proud. More by feel than by sight I tackled Trujillo, sat on her and took the gun away.

  The house lights came up. On the floor nearby Chase lay bleeding, looking very surprised. I stared down at Trujillo, and managed to refrain from smacking her.

  Her black eyes were narrowed to slits—like the rectangle eyes of the kachinas—then she closed them. She never gave in, even then.

  She was charged with premeditated murder and assault with a deadly weapon. She hadn’t hit Hanes, and I still think she never meant to. Her second shot shattered the rattle that Uncle Joe Vigil—the oldest, and incidentally the most senile man in Sandia Pueblo—had given to Alan Malone.

  Mondo told me it had been a ceremonial rattle, and it should never have been seen by a white man, much less taken from the pueblo. But Alan Malone was a charmer; he made his living making people like him, and he’d fooled even Emily Trujillo.

  She’d brought him to Sandia, and doubtless she felt responsible when he took the rattle. I wondered what he’d said when she asked for its return, and if he’d actually realized what it meant to her and her people.

  I went to her arraignment, which was really just the usual, but I’d promised Chase a full report. He was stuck in the hospital for a few days, and maybe another junior agent would have resented being sent to fetch chocolate and ice cream and jelly beans, but I had learned something.

  Of all the masks I’d encountered, Chase’s was the easiest to see through if you bothered to look. His was just shyness, and underneath it was a wonderful being.

  I stayed at the back of the courtroom, so Trujillo didn’t see me until she was being led away. The eyes she turned on me were flat black, with no more emotion in them than the Blue Corn Maiden’s black rectangles.

  She had her own mask. We all do.

  It’s my job to notice little things, though, and as she looked away, I saw the flicker of grief. Maybe for Malone, maybe for a deeper loss, or maybe more than one.

  No regret, though. She’d done what she felt was necessary to make things right.

  I went away sad, but satisfied. I had seen the gentle and determined soul who had taken Alan Malone’s life, and then reached out to close his eyes.

  The Folsom Suit

  Sunlight, gray and chilled by stone walls, moved the stale air when the closet door was opened. The souls within the suit stirred.

  A jacket and trousers, plainly cut and made of sturdy black broadcloth, were accompanied by a simple tie and white shirt. No other clothes resided in the tiny closet at the end of the long, gray corridor. Most days the suit hung in darkened silence, alone with the echoes of its past.

  A man named Cox reached for the hanger, his face set in something just short of a grimace. He carried the suit out into the corridor lit by a pearly December dawn and paused to examine it.

  The suit, which had once been good but was now desiccated and weary-looking, dangled limply from the wooden hanger. It had been worn many times, though never twice by the same man.

  Still, it was aging. “Good thing it doesn’t have to last much longer,” Cox muttered.

  He shut the closet door and turned away, carrying the suit with him down the corridor. No more than a dozen strides were required to take it to #1, where he handed it in to Lambert.

  “There you go,” Cox said. “Make it quick.”

  The suit’s souls fluttered like trapped moths. Mutterings, the voices of men, echoed from the stone walls.

  “—Yeah, time’s a wastin’!”

  “—You hea
rd the man, Maxie, don’t dawdle!”

  “—Hurry, hurry, I can’t wait to move up!”

  “Shut up, you,” Cox shouted down the corridor. For emphasis he struck his heavy stick against the iron bars. “No talking!”

  The whispers ceased, and the souls within the suit subsided. Max Lambert, the man in #1, hooked the hanger onto his light and began to put the suit on.

  The shirt was too big for him. The jacket was tight across his shoulders, drawn taut by the strength in them—dangerous strength—all too easy for him to use for destruction. The snapping of a bone, perhaps. The staving of a skull.

  The souls shivered in sympathy, flecks of memory firing into momentary brilliance. The hair on Lambert’s neck rose.

  His hands were inexpert or perhaps affected by the cold. He fumbled at the necktie until Cox, waiting outside, lost his patience and came in to tie it for him.

  “Gonna give me one of your special custom neckties, eh, Coxie?” Lambert’s grin was sickly.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Now get out of here.”

  Cox herded Lambert into a nearby room that was brighter. A white sheet hung on one wall, reflecting back the daylight.

  Lambert sat on a worn wooden chair in front of the sheet to have his picture taken. As the photographer fussed and fiddled with his equipment, Lambert began to sweat, his sour musk seeping through the shirt and into the fabric of the suit. He tugged at the necktie and sighed.

  At last the photographer told him to hold still, and with a flash immortalized Lambert’s image in the suit. The man turned to Cox. “Last one,” he said, with a trace of sadness.

  Cox gave a derisive snort. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling sentimental.”

  The photographer shrugged. “No. It’s just—history, I suppose. You could call this a historic moment.”

  Cox hauled Lambert to his feet, grinning as he began to tie Lambert’s hands in front of him. “How do you like that, Maxie? You’re a historic moment.”

  Lambert’s eyes narrowed. “Swell.”

  The souls buzzed. The suit prickled like a stabbed hornet’s nest.

  “All, right, move it,” Cox said.

  They went out to the corridor and down the long row of men. Some peered out at them, others pretended not to see. Cox paused beside a locked door, holding Lambert in check until the guard opened it.

  “Go ahead and put Schofield in number one,” Cox told him. “Might as well get them all moved up.”

  The guard nodded. Cox pushed Lambert through the door, and the guard locked it behind them.

  Lambert’s fear was heavy in the air, now. The suit’s souls swam in agitated spirals.

  Cox took him through more doors, past more guards, and outside at last into the cold sunshine. Lambert swallowed as he looked at the tall wooden platform that awaited him. The motion sent a shudder through the souls.

  Cox’s stick prodded the suit in the back. Lambert slowly began to climb the wooden steps. The suit rode awkwardly on him, trousers creeping up his legs a bit by the time he reached the platform. No one pointed this out, and Lambert didn’t bother to adjust the trouser legs.

  Cox had followed him up, and now stepped forward to check his handiwork. Lambert waited, sweating despite the cold.

  The souls remembered—in their broken, scattered way—this platform, this place. Their agitation grew. Lambert flinched as if flies were at his ears, though no flies lived in December.

  “Come on, Maxie.” Cox beckoned, his tone almost kind, now.

  Lambert stepped forward. Cox slipped the rope around Lambert’s neck and adjusted the knot.

  “Give you a nice, clean break, Maxie,” he said gently.

  Lambert’s parched lips parted. “Thanks.”

  “You’re my last one, I guess. You’re lucky. That gas room is just a horrible thing. I seen it when I went down to San Quentin last week.”

  Lambert said nothing. The souls were screaming now, flying through their prison of black cloth so fast that his skin prickled all over. Lambert closed his eyes.

  Cox stepped back and nodded to the man on the lever. The trap fell, the rope went taut, and Lambert’s neck snapped.

  Cox let the others do their jobs, waiting while the executioner took down Lambert’s body and the prison doctor certified his death. His own job was done, except for one detail.

  He followed Lambert’s body back into the gray stone prison and waited while the suit was stripped off it. He had the bucket ready as usual. No one wanted to handle the suit after a hanging; the prisoner always soiled it.

  The black jacket, trousers, shirt and rumpled necktie were tossed into the bucket. Cox picked it up, sneering at the smell of excrement, and hesitated.

  Usually he would take the suit to the prison laundry to be cleaned for the next execution. Lambert had been the last at Folsom, though. The other twelve on Death Row were being moved to San Quentin.

  Cox gazed down at the suit, thinking of all the custom neckties, as the other guards called them, that he had made for its wearers. He was good at it. He did a clean job. There had only been a couple who deserved to swing a little before they went.

  He looked up out a window at the winter sky, all glazed over with thin clouds. The air had a shimmery look to it.

  He carried the bucket down to the incinerator room. The man working the furnace glanced up at him and gestured toward the heavy iron door. Cox nodded and the man opened the hatch. Heat roared out at him. He swung the bucket so that he wouldn’t have to touch the suit. The jumbled black and white cloth flew into the furnace and blazed instantly.

  The furnace man slammed the door. Cox glanced at him.

  “Well. That’s that.”

  Cox left, going back to Death Row to help move the other prisoners up. The next in line was always in cell #1, and there were thirteen cells on the row. Cox had always thought that a pretty hokey joke.

  Above the stone walls, a wisp of paler smoke climbed skyward as the souls that had been imprisoned for so long, and one that had dwelt in the suit for mere moments, soared free.

  ~

  Ninety-three men were hanged at Folsom Prison between December 13, 1895 and December 3, 1937. Many of them were photographed wearing the same suit for their execution.

  Draw

  Dimitri noticed the time counter was way past 21:00, and paused his Robo-Warriors Invasion game. Dad should have been back from his rounds by now.

  He took off his headset and gloves and looked around the apartment like maybe he’d missed something, but he knew Dad would have said hi when he came in. Would have rubbed his head and probably thrown off his score.

  Dimitri got up and went to the big observation bubble that stuck out into the ocean from the living room. There was a cushion in it and he knelt on it, his breath misting on the cold surface of the bubble as he leaned against the thick plex, peering into the dark water outside.

  It was night up top, and the light from the apartment only reached a short distance past the window. He could see sand drifting around on the ocean floor, stirred by the ever-restless current, and he could just see the edge of the kelp beds beyond the nearest pump, fading into the blackness.

  He shivered and backed away from the bubble. He was old enough not to be scared of the ocean, but at night it still bugged him sometimes. He didn’t like being alone in the apartment at night.

  He took his comcard out of his pocket and stroked it, then said, “Dad.” Held the card to his ear and waited, but his dad didn’t answer. After five tones the message box kicked in and Dimitri disconnected.

  Could there be something wrong? Dad had gone out to do the evening check on the pump system. That was part of his job as maintainer of the desalination plant. He checked all the pumps and the seals first thing every morning and last thing at night. Often Dimitri went with him on the morning run, but not at night.

  Not at night, when the great, dark vastness of the ocean could swallow you faster than you could blink. Not at night, when the hunters were out, gia
nt shadows sliding through the water. Dimitri shivered, thinking about his dad out there alone in the dark.

  “Stop it,” he said aloud. This was no time to be giving himself the willies.

  He called up some zaffa music to cheer him up and went over to Dad’s monitor station to see if there were any alarms blinking on the diagram of the plant. Nothing.

  He checked his message box, but there was nothing from Dad. His friend Collin had left a message about their homework assignment. That was it.

  Maybe he should call Collin back and ask if Collin’s dad would come over. Except Collin’s dad wasn’t an outside worker, he was a city administrator. He probably wouldn’t know what to do other than call emergency services, and Dimitri could do that himself.

  Was it an emergency, though?

  It was starting to feel like one, but Dimitri didn’t want to make a fool of himself and call out the rescue team when they weren’t really needed. Dad always scoffed at people who did that. Usually they were new to Pacific City, recent arrivals who panicked over some simple problem.

  Dimitri tried calling his Dad’s com again, then looked all over the apartment for a note or a message, then called a third time. He checked the equipment bay by the dive hatch. Dad’s wetsuit and tank were gone, so he’d definitely gone out.

  His own, smaller wetsuit hung there, gaping at him. Get into it, a whisper in the back of his head urged him. A wave of fear bubbled up through his limbs.

  Dimitri frowned and turned away. He hadn’t tried everything else yet.

  He went back to the monitor station and started cycling through the cameras, looking for his dad at any of the sites they covered. There were lots of cameras—one at every critical junction or piece of equipment in the desalination plant—and none of them showed a diver. A spotted shark glided by on one screen and made Dimitri jump, then the cycle clicked to the next camera.

  He could call Dad’s boss, maybe. Except Mr. Whitmore lived topside, so all he’d be able to do would be call Pacific City emergency, too. And it was night. Dad might get mad if Dimitri bothered his boss at night.