Currency of Souls (11 page)

There's dirt caked beneath my fingernails and my knuckles are throbbing something fierce. Should've asked Gracie if she could conjure me up a shovel, but it's a little late. The whore's not buried deep, but she's planted all the same. If I put all my weight on the earth when I pack it down, it sinks until if I poked a finger into the grave I'd be able to feel her under there, so I go gentle, patting it with my hands until there's only a slight soggy hump in the earth to say anyone's here at all.

In a few hours there'll be stragglers on the streets as folks make their way to the church on Hymn Street. They don't want to go, not when they know God has fled the place, but they'll be there same as they always are, afraid Reverend Hill will come find them if they don't, as he's done in the past. They don't yet know he's dead, of course, so maybe if there's time and I'm still breathing I'll cruise on by the place and let them know. It'll be worth it just to see their relief that the old bastard is finally gone from their lives.

But what's gotta be done's gotta be done soon before there are too many people around to see it. Business of this kind always goes on when the town's quiet, so people can wake up in the morning and tell themselves nothing strange has happened while they've slept and the world's just as dark and shitty as it ever was without being helped along by sinners.

I finish patting down the grave, then retrieve the bottle of whiskey Gracie was good enough to send along with me without me asking for it, and I head for my truck.

I'm going to drive with the windows down so the cold keeps me awake, and alert, so I can try to pull some inspiration from my ass and figure out how I'm going to handle Kyle, who Gracie tells me is all set to sell me out.

"Can I get out?"

I know what Brody wants, and I guess I should give it to him. The man has a right to say goodbye to his woman. But I'm not going to. I doubt he gave the family and friends of the people he's killed such consideration.

Rich coming from me, I know.

"Just sit back and keep quiet."

"C'mon man...just a few minutes. I'm not going to run."

"Maybe later. Right now I've got some business to attend to."

I put the truck in gear and ignore his protests from the back seat. He's putting on quite a show, thrashing, spitting, cursing, but for all of that I've got the strangest feeling he really doesn't care all that much that his girl's dead. Not sure why that suspicion takes hold of me, but there it is. Maybe I'm way off base; maybe not. For now there's no way of knowing.

"I can't believe you, you hick son of a bitch. This isn't fair and you know it."

"Yeah, I do, but your little crime spree took away any privileges you might think you deserve."

"She told me it was a mistake coming this way, you know. Should have listened to her."

"Yeah, you should have."

The truck rolls down the hill, the tires splashing through potholes in the dirt road that have filled with rain. Eddie's burns but the light is growing dim, the flames appear caged behind walls that grow more solid as their shadows band together. Brody keeps talking, but I've stopped listening. There's too much else on my mind. Kyle, for one, and where I might find him.

I decide to head for Winter Street, and Iris Gale's place of business.

* * *

Most folks think Doctor Hendricks came to Milestone to make his fortune, ignoring the fact that most of what he gets are corpses, or the living dancing at death's door, like the dead girl the Sheriff and his boy brought earlier. There's no money to be made here, but just because he insists on dressing real nice and being respectful toward anyone who crosses his path, he's labeled a gold digger. It's almost funny. There hasn't been anything worth having in this town for as long as he's lived here.

Good thing then that he came here to die.

As he sits watching the embers dying in the fireplace, a freshly brewed cup of tea warming his palms, he's aware, as always, of the long shadow above the mantel. It's his father's Winchester rifle. Now there was a man who decided young that he was going to be rich and didn't stop until he was, no matter how many people he had to step on to get there. There was your 48-carat gold-digger, a man who only ever smiled in the company of people he was going to ruin.

At home, Hendricks saw his father smile a lot.

A breeze against the window makes the curtains shift a little. There is no keeping it out. The house is old and draughty. Upstairs, Queenie's asleep, piled beneath enough covers to ensure she stays warm. She's not alone though. Never alone. She's got the cancer to keep her company, infecting her dreams with its promises of death, eating away at her brain while she snatches as much peace from her final days as she's permitted. For Hendricks, who despite his profession can do nothing but sedate her and feed her painkillers in near-lethal doses, it's become a lottery. First, he wonders if this morning will be the one he goes up to the room to find her dead. Then he wonders, if she does wake up, will she attack him, or scream hysterically because she's forgotten who he is? And lastly, he wonders if today's the day he takes that shotgun down and puts them both out of their misery once and for all.

He intends for it to happen, accepts that it must. The gun's loaded, ready to go. It's just a matter of when, and how many bullets he'll need. The thought does not disturb him. He has watched his beautiful wife lapse into psychotic rages and foul-mouthed fits for almost two years now. He has sat with her while she wept, and thanked the Almighty Jesus for her spells of lucidity and apparent health. For the past two weeks, there have been no episodes, no late night panic attacks or spells of spouting gibberish like a possessed thing. It's almost as if she's been his, and his alone. As if he hasn't had to share her with a parasite.

The lull won't last though. It never does, and he fears that this is merely the calm before the final devastating storm that takes her for good. If it does so before he takes that shotgun down, so be it, but he has no intention of surviving her.

There is a knock on the door. It surprises him, jerks the cup in his hand and sends tea sloshing over the side. He grumbles, checks his watch, then rises, sets the cup aside, and casts a final glance at the shadow over the mantel.

Chapter Ten

Though Milestone's creeping toward dawn, it always feels like deep night on Winter Street, and if you're looking for sunshine, you'd best look up on over the roofs and not through the windows.

Time was you came here for your groceries, or for a haircut, or for some new clothes to impress your latest date. If you wanted the fancy stuff, you'd have to carry your ass clear into Saddleback, which I've always thought is a long haul just to spend twice as much as you would in Milestone for more or less the same damn thing. Doesn't matter now though. These days, you come here to get laid or listen to the wisdom of Horace Dudds, one of only three town drunks who haven't yet realized the town's died around them. The others are Maggie, Horace's unofficial girlfriend, and Kirk Vess, though he tends to wander and isn't welcome on Horace and Maggie's turf. Apparently they have standards he doesn't meet. Politics of the homeless, I guess. If Maggie has a second name, she has never seen fit to reveal it, and no one ever asks. I guess we all figure when you've got nothing else to call your own, no one will begrudge you keeping your name to yourself.

I pull up outside a narrow gray building that looks like something from an angry child's drawing with its funny angles and not-quite-straight edges, boarded up windows and trash stuffed in the wide cracks between the short run of steps leading to main door. Through the gaps in the boards nailed over the store's plate glass window, a blinking florescent light shows a bunch of mannequins stripped of their clothes, and lewdly posed so they look like they've been frozen mid-orgy. A faded wooden plaque above the door bears the legend THE HOUSE OF IRIS.

On the opposite side of the road stands what used to be a clothing store for children before people stopped having them. Beneath the tattered red-and-white striped awning, sit two figures huddled against the weather.

"Evenin' Sheriff," Horace says, and offers me a toothy grin, at the same time drawing his bottle closer to his chest, like he's afraid I'm going to snatch it. Horace may be a drunk, but he's got a long memory, and can probably recall every bit of graffiti in my old drunk tank.

I nod my head, "Horace, Maggie," and slam the truck door behind me. The sound echoes along the street and returns as thunder. I join them under the awning.

"Bad night. You two should be indoors, by the fire."

Horace wears a purple peaked cap he won in a card game from an Irishman. A week later he played another game and lost everything he owned. Claims to this day it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't beaten that 'potato-eatin' Mick', who he says, "Went home with my luck snug in his ass pocket." Beneath the cap's peak, a huge nose keeps a pair of piercing gray eyes from meeting, though they seem determined, the pupils like black balloons anchored by dark red threads. His belt is a stretch of skipping rope with the wooden handles lopped off. People call him old, and he looks damn old, but the thing is, he's been in Milestone his whole life and it seems he's always looked exactly as he does now.

"Plenty of fire," Horace says sagely, "But it's too wet to walk a'far as Eddie's."

"What happened up there anyway?" Maggie asks. She's dressed in her signature floral print dress—sky-blue barely visible beneath an explosion of pink roses. Maggie's a formidable woman, heavy, and quick to anger. A tornado with a head of hazel curls. There's no doubt in my mind she could throw me from one end of the street to the other if I pissed her off. So I don't, even in the past when she's given me reason to. See the problem is that when Maggie's not sitting by Horace's side wherever he's chosen to settle, she's standing in the town square, blocking traffic and hollering her damn fool head off about the government and how they're going to round us up one by one and brainwash us to their way of thinking (whatever the hell
that
is). As if that wasn't bad enough, her pontificating and gesticulating is usually enough to allow certain parts of her to spill out of her loose-fitting dress, causing quite a stir among those who don't have the sense to drive around her. I've always thought that in another life she and Cobb would have made a happy couple.

"Cobb lost it," I tell her. "Burnt the place up."

"Oh," Maggie says with a shake of her head. "He had a lovely voice."

"Anyone inside?" Horace asks, after a puzzled look at Maggie. I know how he feels. No one I know ever heard Cobb sing, assuming that's what Maggie means.

"Yeah."

"Don't suppose the Reverend was one of 'em?"

"Matter of fact he was."

Horace nods his satisfaction. "Good. Bastard ruined this town. Place had a hope afore him."

Maggie shakes her head, effortlessly snatches the bottle, which I see is a flagon of cider, from Horace's protective clutches. "I wouldn't say he done ruined it. Minin' comp'ny and greed did that. Hill just helped is all. Set the stage for the men in suits and too-tight ties to come waltzin' in and make us regret ever settlin' down here." She ponders this for a moment, then takes a swig from the bottle that's so generous, Horace's eyes widen and he makes a grab for it. They scowl at one another for a few seconds like two dogs over a piece of meat, then Horace shakes his head and looks at me. "Your boy's okay though. Counts for somethin'."

"He's alive, if that's what you mean."

Horace smiles a little, and his bloodshot eyes gleam dully. "Yeah, that's what I mean."

"I'm assuming you've seen him around tonight, then?"

Horace shrugs. "Went in Miss Iris's place. Gone again now though."

Maggie grins. "He didn't stay long, did he Horace? Which is a shame, because usually them two put on some kind of a show for us less-fortunate types." She nods toward the double windows on the first floor of Iris's building—which, much like the main window on the ground floor, isn't boarded over enough to prevent the curious from seeing clear into the room, especially if the room is lit—and elbows Horace in the ribs. "I'm afraid one of these days it's going to put ideas into your head."

This is a conversation I have no interest in being a part of, so I bid them good night.

"Sheriff...?"

I stop, turn, look at Maggie. "Yeah?"

"You leavin' us?"

"What do you mean?"

"You look like a man flirtin' with the idea of runnin'."

"No," I reply. "Not yet anyway."

"Man's got a boy to look out for," Horace adds. "Man with responsibilities can't rightly run away from 'em or they'll dog him for the rest of his life. Ain't that right, Sheriff?"

"That's right." I get the feeling he's talking from experience.

"Well you tell that handsome boy of yours Maggie says hello, and that if he ever gets tired of that young gussied-up whore, he can come see
me
." She laughs uproariously and thumps a hand on Horace's back, nearly sending him sprawling into the street.

"I will."

"Hey, and Sheriff?" Horace again.