“What are we going to do with him?” Kyle asks, looking back toward the truck.
“I don’t know yet.”
“I could take him back.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d feel a lot better taking him in.”
“You don’t trust me?”
I look up at him and shrug. “You just killed a man, Kyle. I bet you’re even wondering if you’ve got the nerve to kill me, so no, I don’t trust you. In fact, I’d rather set that guy free than let you take him in.”
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
“Yeah well…doesn’t change the color of that bullseye on my back, now does it?”
“Fuck you.” He stands there for another moment, a black ghost with the flames of hell behind him, then he turns and walks away. I watch him go, waiting for him to lunge toward my truck and the unsuspecting guy handcuffed in back of it, because as little as I’ve known about this son of mine, I know even less about the one with the cold look in his eyes and the big goddamn gun in his hand, so I’m watching, waiting to see what he’ll do next.
But he doesn’t go to my truck. He goes to his Chevy, and doesn’t look back. The car’s lights make gray funnels in the smoke as he reverses out of the lot and back down the hill.
I’m left to ponder the irony of protecting a murderer from my son when I was all too willing to leave the guy in Cobb’s care. Could be I trusted Cobb when I had no right to. Could be not letting Kyle take the guy in was my way of protecting, not Brody, but my son, keeping him out of further trouble. Yeah, sure.
With a sigh, I circle the fire as close as it will let me get without burning the hair out of my ears. There’s a plot of land back here where no one should rightly be put to rest. It’s stony ground and hard, and its closeness to a tavern should disqualify it if the fact that its unconsecrated doesn’t. And when the toilets quit working, as they often did in Eddie’s, people pissed out here. That’s the smell I’m getting now, despite the rain and the smoke, because the smell of piss is stubborn like that. It’ll hang around, get stronger, no matter what you try and do to get rid of it.
Here’s where the whore’s going to get planted, in rocky unblessed earth that smells like the men’s room.
The fire’s close. If I stood up right now, turned and took a dozen strides I’d be right on the edge of it feeling what little hair I have left shrivel up. It dries my back as I lay the girl down and set about finding a rock with enough of a point to work as a tool. I’d use my hands but it would take me until this time tomorrow to get it deep enough that the coyotes and other scavengers would let her be. Takes me a minute, but I find what I’m looking for. It’s a spade-shaped rock half-buried in the wormy earth, and though it takes some persuading, I eventually get it free and start hacking at the earth.
Nothing here to say it’s a graveyard. No markers, no lumps in the ground where the dead have pulled the covers up over themselves, and no flowers. There’s a reason for that. Anyone planted here isn’t meant to be mourned, and so far they haven’t been disappointed. Looks like a damn vegetable patch that’s been let go to seed, but under all that stone and dirt and weeds, there are a number of folks I used to know and don’t miss. Among them is ’ol Eddie, a rat-bastard of the highest order and, I’m guessing, another reason this patch of ground reeks of piss.
Kyle’s got a girl. She’s not much, but she’s company. Used to be she ran a pretty good store out of one of the old buildings on Winter Street, selling clothes and trinkets and such. But in Milestone, the days of prosperous business for all but bartenders, undertakers and whores has ended, and Iris Gale knows that well, which is why she’s now self-employed in the latter trade. I figure she doesn’t charge Kyle for her services, on account of how he’s got no money, or at least none that I know about outside of the odd jobs he does for those willing to open their doors to him. Maybe that’s why he was so concerned about Carla. Maybe Iris has changed his opinion on whores and the like.
Doesn’t matter.
He’s gone, and now it’s just the dead girl and me with her boyfriend sulking in the passenger seat of my truck.
Or maybe not, because all of a sudden the back of my neck’s cold and that’s not right at all, not with the fire still fighting its blazing fight against the wind and rain. Someone’s watching me. I’m sure of it, and I cast a quick glance at the whore before standing, both knees crackling loud enough to make me wince. “I’ll get you there in a minute,” I let her know by way of an apology. “Just hang on.” That damn spied-on feeling grows stronger, until it makes my skin crawl. I have to wonder if it’s the rain after all. Maybe it’s just gotten colder. Maybe the fire’s finally admitting defeat. Maybe Brody’s throwing daggers at me from my truck. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s all bullshit. My way of trying to pretend I’ve gone through all I’m going to for one night.
I start to turn around and I’m full sure I’ll see Cadaver coming back out of the tavern, or studying me from the inferno. But it isn’t Cadaver.
The fire’s getting a little lower as it runs out of fuel to feed on, the heads of those flames whipping hungrily to the left, toward town, but with no way to get there, I reckon in an hour or two, they’ll be nothing the rain can’t handle. It’s still hotter than hell though, except here near the back, where I’m standing. The cold is coming from the almost perfect circle that has appeared through the smoke and the flames, forcing them to bend around it. Goddamndest thing I’ve ever seen, but sure as I’m standing here with a dead girl at my feet there’s a tunnel, tall enough to step into, drilled into the fire and stretching about ten feet into the tavern, like someone just stuck a great big glass tube right into the blaze.
At the end of that tunnel, brass foot rails reflecting the shunned fire, sits the bar itself. It should be a charred hunk of nothing right now, but there it is, untouched, and as always, unpolished. And behind it, busy fixing a couple of glasses of whiskey, and looking equally untouched and unpolished, is Gracie.
Chapter Eight
For a moment I just stand there, nudging my right foot against Carla’s cold body to make sure I’m really here. The cold air wafting from that tunnel makes me shiver. The combination of temperatures is going to leave me with one raging bitch of a head cold on top of everything else, so I do what I guess I’m supposed to do, and make my way toward the bar.
It’s like stepping into a freezer, or jumping into a lake of ice.
“Jesus Henry,” I moan and rub my arms like a worried housewife. The cold makes me instantly aware of every spot on my body the fire didn’t dry, and my breath turns to mist. I have to question why it needs to be
Strange, but I figure it’s better not to analyze too deeply something that’s keeping me from being roasted alive, so I focus on Gracie, who for all I know might at any moment give me a little finger-wave and vanish, along with her little invisible asbestos test tube. I speed up my approach, and the closer I get, the less cold it becomes.
Gracie looks up at me. She doesn’t smile, but nods a greeting and tucks that rogue lock of hair behind her ear. If she’s dead, it’s been kind to her, but the drab unflattering outfit she supposedly burned to death in hasn’t been improved any.
“Sheriff.”
“Gracie.”
I test the reality of the bar by brushing my fingers across its surface. They come away black with soot, but underneath, the bar is there.
“Sit,” Gracie says. It’s not a request.
There’s only one stool, and I’m about to take it when it occurs to me to ask, “This wasn’t Cobb’s, was
