Depths: Southern Watch #2 (6 page)

Arch’s key hit the lock and he turned the handle with gentle pressure. The door swung open and Arch stepped into a mirror image of his own apartment, everything a perfect opposite save for the missing wall hangings and the countless boxes that were still unpacked since the move. He shut the door behind him as quietly as he could, wondering if Alison was about. The lights were on, but that meant nothing; lately she kept the lights on when she slept.

He stood paused in the entry alcove, listening, to see if he could hear her. Nothing. After a moment he laid his keys on the small table in front of him and turned to look into the living room/kitchen area. He caught a glimpse of long blond hair on the couch, and realized she was just sitting there. The sound of the rain tapping at the windows was just background noise, and a peal of thunder crackled in the distance. The place smelled faintly of her perfume, but it was lingering and not fresh, a ghostly reminder of her getting-ready-for-work routine.

“Hey,” he said as he entered the room. His khaki uniform was spotted with water and was starting to chill him in the cooler indoor air. The air conditioner, a small wall-mounted unit hung high on the wall, was humming faintly in the background,.

“Hey,” she returned, but the word was as lifeless and motionless as the woman herself. Alison’s blond hair hung limp and wet, and he noticed she wore a bathrobe as he came into the room. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and got not even a trace of a smile in return.

“How was work?” He laid a hand on the side of her neck, running his dark fingers down her tanned skin. He could see little goosebumps as he did it, pulling back the edge of the robe.

She adjusted herself on the sofa, pulling the neck of the white terrycloth robe tight. “Fine.” She didn’t sound angry or resentful, just flat.

He pulled his hand back to rest on the back of the sofa. She didn’t turn to face him, just kept staring ahead. This was how it had been since the attack, since the demons had smashed into their apartment. She still had the barest discoloration on her neck where one of them had held her by the throat. He wanted to touch it, to touch her, but she always seemed to shift away.

“Going to bed?” Arch asked. He could feel the pull of the bed, the barely conscious realization that he had an early shift tomorrow. It was probably not going to be a very busy day, if tradition held. He hadn’t really had a busy day yet, save for the ones where he was fighting demons after work.

And he and Hendricks had just killed the ones they’d gotten a lead on. It was all listening to rumors about strange out-of-towners so far, but it’d paid off a couple times. Arch enjoyed the scrapes, really, though he didn’t necessarily want to admit it to anyone, least of all himself. He could feel it, though, the glow that came from knowing he’d punched the ticket of something really bad earlier in the night.

He stared down at his wife’s exposed neck, wanting to let his fingers drift lower. The terrycloth robe was closed tight, though. He shrugged, though she didn’t see him, and turned away to undress in the bathroom so he could hang his uniform up to dry.

Alison remained behind and made not a sound as he left. He felt the chill as he undressed and wondered if it was just the air conditioning unit fighting against the humid Tennessee summer, or if it was the wife who hadn’t said more than a few words to him in a week that was causing him to shiver.

If it was possible, Hendricks awoke feeling even shittier than he had when he went to sleep. His right eye was swollen shut, his ribs hurt like someone had kicked him while he was down, and his lips felt like they’d been transformed into Polish sausages filled with flaming, screaming nerve endings. He moaned and rolled over, forgetting that someone was in the bed with him.

His one good eye caught sight of Erin lying there next to him, her short-cropped blond hair more than a little tousled from the night of sleep. She was looking at him kind of pityingly, like she was uncomfortable with him being there or with the way he looked, or maybe even both.

“Good morning,” he mumbled through his swollen lips. It came out more than a little twisted, and he wondered for a beat if it was even comprehensible.

“You look like holy hell, Hendricks,” she said. She reached a tentative hand across the white sheets, and Hendricks caught a whiff of the flowery scent she wore on her wrist as she touched his forehead. Her thumb traced a delicate path around his eye, causing the pain to flare even so. “What were you thinking?”

“I’m asking myself that very same question this morning,” Hendricks said and rolled to the side of the bed. His hip cried out in pain as he did, and he wondered what he’d done to offend it so. The bedroom was flooded with light, the carpeted floors and grey walls dimly illuminated in the light of the early morning sun. He placed a hand gently upon his eye and felt the pain radiate outward in waves.

“So you just walked into the bar and the fight started?” Erin asked over his shoulder as she got up, bed creaking beneath her. Hendricks ran a hand over his chest, feeling the curly hairs that sprang out of his skin and the bruises beneath.

“Kinda,” Hendricks said. “Well, not really. I was there for a while, and this guy started some shit with McInness, the owner—”

“Oh, God!” Erin cut him off. “You were at the Charnel House? Why?”

“I dunno,” Hendricks said. “I just was. It’s where the road took me.”

She closed her eyes tightly at this. She was standing at an angle, leaning heavily on one leg, face in her palm like she was trying to think of a way to ask what was on her mind but couldn’t find a way to do it. She was wearing a thin wife beater shirt over her tiny frame, pink panties underneath it. If Hendricks hadn’t been feeling like shit scraped onto toast, he knew he’d be trying to get her hair even more tousled than it already was.

As it was, she probably wouldn’t have any of it. He was aching too much, anyway, and not in any of the right places.

“People do not just wander into random establishments in the backwoods and get into bar fights,” Erin said finally, opening her eyes. “It’s not normal.”

Hendricks just stood there. “I wear a black cowboy hat and a drover coat everywhere I go. Where would you get the idea I’m normal in any way?”

She opened her mouth to respond but probably couldn’t figure out what to say to that, so she shut it a moment later.

“Look,” he said, “I didn’t go looking for a fight.” A blatant lie, but hopefully he carried it off well. “Some out-of-towners jumped McInness and the regulars, and I stepped in to help them when it went wrong. McInness got the shit kicked out of him, too, had to go to the hospital and everything—”

“Jesus,” Erin said.

“Yeah, he didn’t look too good,” Hendricks said. “But Arch helped, and we ran the guys off. You can’t expect me to just sit back while people are getting the holy hell hammered out of them. It’s not who I am.”

Erin had positioned her hands over her mouth while waiting for him to finish. She watched him through skeptical eyes, or at least that was how he would describe them. “And who are you, exactly?”

Hendricks stood there for a second. Wasn’t it obvious? “I’m Lafayette Hendricks—”

“I know your fucking name, jackass.” Erin wasn’t too harsh with it, Hendricks reflected, but she also could have been gentler. “I’m asking
who
you are. Some cowboy drifter that blows into town, doesn’t seem to work at all—at least not that I can see—just kind of hangs out, apparently jumps into bar fights from time to time.” She ran a hand through her tangled hair. “I don’t really know anything about you.”

“Well … I mean, you know a little bit about me,” Hendricks said, and he felt heat on his cheeks. “We’ve been sleeping together for a couple weeks.”

“We’ve been fucking for a couple weeks,” Erin replied matter-of-factly. “We haven’t exactly had deep and epic conversations.” She changed posture, and he thought she looked a little more standoffish now. “Look, I slept with you because—I’ll be honest—you really own that whole cowboy thing. It’s a good look, and you wear it well, even with the coat, which
is
weird, by the way. Arch knew you, and he’s about the nicest and most stand-up guy around, so I figured you couldn’t be too bad. I mean,” she said with a mirthless laugh, “I didn’t even make you wear a condom.” She blushed a little at this. “But I
don’t
know you, not really. I know your name, I know you were in the Marines, but that’s about it.” She shrugged. “I know you get into fights, based on the bruises I’ve seen. So I guess I know you’re not that good at fighting.”

Hendricks frowned and felt his hackles rise. “You don’t tell a Marine he’s not any good at fighting unless you want an argument.”

“Maybe I want an argument,” Erin said, and he could tell by the testy way she said it that she probably did.

“Well, let me oblige—” Hendricks said, but the trilling of a cell phone cut him short.

She held up a hand palm out, like he was a kid on a trike and she was telling him to stop. She pulled the cell phone off her nightstand and answered it. “Hello?”

He stood there, kind of slack-jawed, wondering what the hell kind of argument this was. Wondering what kind of man he was, just able to be put on hold like this in the middle of what was kinda, sorta their first fight. He wondered if there would be another. He could feel his temper flaring, that sense of stubborn irritation and embarrassment, and he realized he was standing there in his boxer shorts while Erin was just listening to the phone.

“Fuck this,” he muttered and started to pull his jeans on.

She walked out of the bedroom and pulled the door nearly shut behind her. He could hear her mutter, “Are you fucking kidding me?” into the phone as she went.

Hendricks pulled his shirt on, the cold chill of anger washing down into his guts. He tugged his shirt on, grimacing the entire time from the pain. He pulled on his socks as he heard a faint voice saying something indecipherable in the next room. He put on his cowboy boots one by one then pulled his coat out of the pile he’d made of it and put it on, careful to keep the sword hidden in its depths.

He grabbed his hat off the bottom post of her bed and put it on, checking himself once in the mirror. Yep, still looked like shit. There wasn’t much he could do about it, though.

He walked through the apartment without bothering to glance at her. He saw her still on the phone, her mouth slightly open, out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t stop to say anything. She didn’t get off the phone anyway, so he just walked over to the door, unlocked it, and left without saying a word.

She didn’t say anything either.

* * *

Arch was on the scene less than ten minutes after Sheriff Reeve called him. He’d heard the basics from the sheriff, and it sounded like nothing he’d dealt with in his time with the department. Reeve was calling in everyone, Arch knew that for a fact, because that was what you did in a situation like this; you called for all hands on deck and got to work solving the crime.

Arch had gotten the thumbnail sketch from Reeve, but he still wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he got there. It left him with a kind of nervous tension in his stomach, belly rumbling at him for leaving home without anything to eat or drink. He hadn’t even bothered to shower, just tossed on his uniform and sprinted out the door without saying a word to Alison. He knew she was faking sleep, but he didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment.

The Explorer’s engine rumbled as he took it down a side street. He was only a few blocks from home, here in the heart of Midian. If there was such a thing. The town square was only a few blocks away also. He pulled onto Crosser Street and saw the squad cars. They were the older models, the Crown Victorias driven by Sheriff Reeve and the other deputies, three of them lining the road in front of a big white house. Arch flipped on his lights but not his siren. He hadn’t even needed them to get here. Midian didn’t exactly have a roaring rush hour.

The red and blue lights flickered in the dim early morning. Clouds covered the sky and cast a grey pall over the day. It was the kind of day that would be perfect for a funeral, Arch thought. The clouds were sapping all the joy and light, leaving nothing but a lifeless feeling over the usually vibrant town.

And as Arch stepped up to the white picket fence and opened the gate, he reflected that it would probably be an appropriate feeling.

He took the steps to the front porch in one bound, heard the squeak of the floorboard he landed on as he did so. The front door was open, and he could hear talk from inside. He recognized the voice of Ernesto Reines, the second-most junior patrolman in the department, one rung up the ladder from him. Reines was speaking in a low voice with Ed Fries, a portly officer in his early forties. Arch stepped in and saw them both, just off to the side of the dim entry hall.

Reines nodded to Arch as he entered, and Fries turned to him to do the same. Reines had a soul patch, a little growth of black hair just under his lower lip that was probably not department regulation, at least not the way Arch read the regs. Sheriff Reeve never said a word, though, probably figuring that in Midian, Tennessee, there were better uses of one’s time than enforcing regulations about the length and location of facial hair.

“Man, Arch,” Fries said in his low, drawling voice, “you better bring a damned plastic bag in there with you.” Fries was looking unusually pale today, Arch thought, his chubby jowls bereft of their usual ruddy color. “I ain’t never even seen anything like that.”

“Reeve said on the phone it was Corey Hughes?” Arch had heard Hughes’ name before but didn’t really know the man. Worked at the paper mill, according to Reeve, just a single man living in a city house by himself.

“Yeah,” Reines spoke up, his voice a little gruffer than usual. “But you wouldn’t know it by looking at him.”

“Right,” Arch said. “The scene’s a real mess?”

Reines and Fries exchanged a look. “You could say that.” Fries shook his head, jowls flapping as he did so.