wooden figure standing on the rickety looking porch, and what might be a totem in the small overgrown yard.

Parked out front is a beat-up old Dodge.

Well I’ll be damned.

Brody smiles and steps off the road onto the path.

* * *

The cabin is painted gray with crimson shutters. Dreamcatchers and wind chimes dangle from the eaves, tinkling away like tin-eared men trying to play a tune. A six-foot cigar store Indian either presides over the porch, complete with headdress, war paint, and battle scars. He’s stationed right next to the small bungalow’s warped and scarred front door, sharp-boned face upraised, ocean blue eyes staring reverently upward. There’s a quiver of arrows on his back, a bow slung over one shoulder, and a curved wooden blade strapped to one muscular thigh.

Brody stoops to pick up a dusty rock, half-expecting to find a door key hidden underneath, but is disappointed. Nothing but a few earwigs and earthworms, and after a second, even those are gone. He sighs, but keeps the rock in his hand, nods at the chief respectfully as he mounts the creaky porch steps. Now there’s a guy who’d have taken no shit from cowboys, he thinks as he raps a knuckle on the door. Immediately there comes a shuffling sound from inside the house. “Who’s that?”

“Yeah, hi,” Brody says, in as cheerful a tone as he can summon out of his aching head. “My car broke down a ways down the road there. I was wondering if maybe you had some jumper cables or something.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ like that. Be on your way.”

“Well, how about a phone so I can call someone?”

A dry chuckle. “You know where you are, boy?”

Brody groans silently. This is all he needs. Of course the option to just jump the car is still available to him, but if it turns out there’s a real life Geronimo behind that door, he’d rather not end up with a couple of arrows in his back. Better to just make sure the guy’s incapacitated one way or another.

“I need a ride is all. Doesn’t seem to be much traffic out here this time of the day. Thought folks would be coming home from work at least.”

“There’s no work in Milestone, boy, least not the kind you’d understand.”

“That so? Well, if you could help me out—”

“I know who you are.”

Brody stops, sentence unfinished, and straightens. “That so?”

“Yep.”

“Well I don’t see how you’d know.”

“I heard.”

Brody puts his hands to the sides of his head, massages his temple. Jesus on a cornstalk. This is all he needs. Obviously the guy is watching him through a peephole or something, though Brody doesn’t see one, and has recognized him. Could be his mug shot is showing on the guy’s TV right at this moment, or on the front page of a newspaper spread across the kitchen table. But just as he’s about to concede defeat, the guy mumbles something that gives Brody pause. “What did you say?”

Clearer: “I said the wind told me about you.”

“The wind?” Brody rolls his eyes. Another loon. “And what did the wind say?”

“Said not to trust you. Said you murdered some folks, one of ’em a drifter who looked like Dean Martin, your girl’s favorite singer. Said you tried to kill the Sheriff when he was just tryin’ to get to his son. That sound about right?”

Brody grits his teeth. “Wow, that’s quite a wind. Better than the main evening news.”

“You best get out of here now. I have nothin’ you need.”

Brody glances over his shoulder. The Dodge is a rustbucket, but the tires aren’t flat and he can see through the dirty window a set of keys in the ignition. With a smile he turns back to the door. “I need your car.”

“Take it.”

Brody stares at the door for a moment. Then: “Take it? Just like that?”

“Sure. I ain’t got no use for it anymore.”

“Why’s that? You a cripple or something?”

“Nope. I just don’t leave the house.”

Brody smirks, already starting to feel better about things, even if his head still hurts like hell. “Town like this, can’t say I blame you.” Eager to be gone, he slaps a palm on the door. “Much obliged to you for the car. Can’t say as it’s ever likely you’re going to see it again.”

“Don’t expect to.”

“Right. You take care now.”

Grinning, Brody turns, but halts so abruptly on the top step he almost falls. “The fuck?”

From behind him, the old man’s panicked voice: “What is it? What do you see?”

Brody opens his mouth, but quickly closes it again, smiles uncertainly. “It’s nothing,” he says.

But it isn’t.

No birds are singing, and the breeze has died.

There’s no sound at all, even from the hundreds of deer that have somehow gathered in the old man’s yard and are now standing motionless, heads lowered slightly, their dark eyes fixed on the house.

On Brody.

“It’s nothing,” he says again. “Just a bunch of dumb old deer.”

“I’m afraid,” the old man whispers. “They’re a little more than that.”

* * *

It’s time to go. I’ve only slept a few hours, but it’ll do. Iris’s hand is cool against my bare chest, and though we’re both naked and in her bed, we’ve done nothing except lie together. I didn’t ask for anything more, and she didn’t offer, and that sits just fine with me. It’s not why I came here.

The breeze through the window has the candles snapping at shadows. In the kitchen a sink is dripping water with the sound of a clock ticking in an empty room.

I take a moment to breathe in the scent of her, of this woman I hardly know and likely never will, then I carefully remove her hand from my chest and set it down next to her. Despite my efforts to make as little noise as I can getting out of bed, I’m heavy enough to make the springs squeal and when I stand and look back at her, her eyes are open, and clear, as if she hasn’t been sleeping at all.

“Leavin’?”

I nod.

“What’s your hurry?”

“I have to get going. Have to ‘tie up some loose ends’ as they say in the cop shows.” I’m trying to sound casual, like the darkness locked inside me isn’t trying to eat its way out, but she’s not fooled. She props her head up with the palm of her hand, her elbow digging into the mattress.

“What kinda loose ends?”

I avoid answering by pretending my clothes are proving tough to locate, even though they’re laid out right here at my feet.

“Tom?”

It isn’t until I have my underwear and pants on that I answer her. She’s looking impatient, worried, ready to reach for something to threaten the information out of me.

“I’m turning over my badge tonight,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because it’s the way it’s supposed to go.”

“That sounds like a crock of shit.”

I smile at her and sit back down on the bed. “Does, doesn’t it?”

She scoots close, drapes her arms over my shoulders, rests her head against my back. “If you’re plannin’ some kind of heroic exit, that’s one thing, but if you’re figurin’ to walk out of here without tellin’ me why, you’ll be doin’ it without your balls.”

“Nice.”

This is a tough one, and I’m not sure how much I can say, how much I’m allowed

Вы читаете Currency of Souls
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