Jonah Man (23 page)

He coasted downhill, pulled off road. He could follow Swain inside, attempt an arrest. But if the supply were not there, he would only tip his hand. And then, judging by the number of cars, he would be outmanned. Still, if he failed to act, there was a chance that the people he’d been chasing would once again elude him.

He felt on the cusp of deciding when Swain exited the cabin with two men, both wearing straw hats and overalls, both taller and thinner than the man who had fetched him earlier. The Inspector watched them cross through the trees, saw Swain stumble, clutch at his side. As he climbed into the truck, the Inspector noticed that the prosthetic was gone, that the man directly behind Swain was holding a gun. At first he wondered why, and then he knew: Swain had again confessed to setting the fire.

Careless
, he thought.

He had meant for Swain to reveal the suppliers, but he had not intended to put the man’s life in danger. He shifted the Packard into reverse, maneuvered back onto the dirt path.

From the summit of the first hill, he watched them spin onto the main road, head away from the town, moving faster over flat terrain than he could on the uneven slope. Turning after them, he shifted to the highest gear, forced the gas pedal to the floor. The truck was again in sight when the Packard lurched forward, ceased responding to the wheel, went careering along the edge of a gulley. The Inspector pumped the brake, brought the car to a halt on the road’s slim shoulder.

Swain sits stiff-backed between the men who’d beaten him, his calves straddling the gear box, his ribs throbbing. His captors are city folk costumed in overalls and brogans. It’s the outfits, Swain thinks, that make them appear uneasy. He glances up at the rearview mirror, sees the Packard is gone.

The driver stops at the summit of a hill. Larger hills extend into the distance; a sparse forest of pinyon and juniper descends the slope they have just climbed. There’s a woodshed in a clearing a few yards off. The driver steps from the truck but does not cut the motor. His partner backs out of the cab, waves for Swain to follow. The air is cold at this elevation. Blue sky makes it colder still.

The driver stops before they reach the shed, holds up a hand.

On the ground, he says.

What?

Now.

Swain hesitates. A heel buckles his knee, a hand grabs his collar, forces him down. He blinks dust from his eyes. There’s a sting in the back of his neck, a sharp pain as the tip of the needle pulls free. He feels his pulse slow to nothing.

They drag him into the shed, prop him against a wall. A lock clicks shut.

By the time he calls out, they are gone.

His breathing remains labored though his heartbeat has steadied. The shed is no larger than an outhouse. With his back flat against one wall, he cannot extend his legs. Slant rays of light pass through gaps in the planks. Gazing up, he finds spider webs clogged with desiccated husks.

He stands, peers between the beams. A vista emerges through a cluster of knurled trees—the opposite side of a mountain valley, an arid landscape showing its dullest colors in the afternoon sun. He takes a half-step back, focuses on the structure itself. The wood is dry and withered, but the planks are sturdy. There is no distance from which to launch a kick, no room to dig his way free. The hinges sit on the exterior of the door. Had they not taken his prosthetic, he might have wedged the hook between two boards, used one for leverage and prized the other loose. He might have scraped at a plank until it was thin enough to cave with his hand.

He sits again, the back and sides of his shirt soaked despite the cold. He is schooled enough to know that the periods of lucidity will become briefer and less frequent as the substance moves through his blood stream.

The Inspector watches the truck recede, navigate a sharp bend, disappear. Cursing, he steps onto the gravel shoulder, walks the periphery of the car. Rubber sloughs from the rim of the back right tire. He kneels, finds a thick shard of glass embedded in the sidewall.

Stupid
, he thinks, tossing his jacket atop the hood.

Idiotic, he says aloud, lifting the spare from the sideboard.

He crouches, lays his weight into the jack crank. His palms slip from the handle and he stumbles forward, tearing his trousers at the knee.

All wrong
, he tells himself.

He slides a hand over his body, finds his shirt unbuttoned, his pants pockets turned out. Rising up on his elbows, he can distinguish degrees of darkness, silhouettes suggesting a distant window or lamp. He stands, scans the space in every direction, walks toward what he takes to be a crack in the masonry, though when he reaches it he discovers not a crack, but rather a thin strip of window where the gauze drape falls short. The window is small, the type one might find embedded in a door. He runs his palms over the surrounding wall, feels no knob, no hinges, no other pause in the stone and mortar. He pulls the curtain back. Outside, it is night. The light comes from a fire, a building ablaze in a large and otherwise abandoned lot.

He turns from the window. Flickering light plays over mannequin torsos, stacks of ill-sorted fabric, a littered drafting table. He finds a light switch, flicks it on. There is a moment before the room comes fully lit. He surveys the ceiling, discovers no bulb. He surveys the walls, discovers no door.
Since I am here
, he reasons,
there must be an entrance, an exit.

The room ends in a burlap curtain extending from wall to wall, ceiling to floor. He starts back, stumbles over a toppled mannequin, turns sideways to pass between a heap of shoddy and rolls of cloth piled chest high. He stops at the drafting table, crouches, studies a series of drawings sketched on tracing paper—gems of all kinds and cuts, shaded with colored pencil, arranged in no discernible pattern, intended for no discernible purpose beyond the practice of sketching them.

He passes through a part in the burlap. The light from the first room does not carry to this second room. Instead, the large open space is illuminated by a single candle set in a small iron stove. He scans the walls, looking for a door or false panel. He searches the floor, the ceiling. Nothing. His eyes land on the
only object in the room apart from the stove: a cot, centered against the far wall. From across the room he can make out a flounced bed sheet, a form beneath.

Hello, he calls.

The form does not answer. He steps closer, distinguishes a face but not its features. He claps his hands together. The sheet does not move.

He crosses to the stove, removes the candle—a fat chunk of wax with the wick burnt halfway down. He places it on his palm, allows the dripping wax to congeal on his skin.

He sits on the edge of the cot. The sheet is pulled to the neck. There is no pillow. He balances the candle beside the head. The features are masculine, but the face is made up like a woman’s—false eyelashes, cheeks caked with rouge, lips painted pink, scalp covered by a blond wig. Beneath the mask is a person Swain recognizes, though from where he cannot say. He tugs the sheet up, rubs the edge against the dead man’s skin. The make-up smears. Swain takes up the box of wine, tilts it back, sniffs at the mouth. White, long since fermented. He spills a little onto a clean patch of sheet. Soon, the cheeks are bare, the lips pallid. He pulls on one set of eye lashes. The lids rise above the orbs, fall back with a slapping sound when the glue gives. A dark pupil stares up at him. Swain leans back, studying this new face, trying to imagine it animate, a voice speaking through the lips.

There is nothing from the chin up to say how the man died. Swain grips the edge of the sheet between his thumbs and index fingers, hesitates, peels it back. The torso is bare, cast in shadow. He lifts the candle, holds it on the flat of his palm so that it hovers above the man’s chest. A surgical scar passes diagonally between the nipples; the breasts are spotted with vermiculate moles. Below the sternum, an outbreak of pimples that Swain would not have thought possible in an old man. He lifts the
candle higher, watches the flame play across a livid imprint at the base of the neck, a deep and continuous bruise.

He sinks back to the floor, sets the candle on the concrete beside him. The pace of his breathing doubles, as though he’s breathing for himself and the corpse. The longer he thinks, the more he remembers. The more he remembers, the more frequently he returns to the notion that he murdered the tailor.

His calf muscles spasm. His mouth has gone dry. He reaches for the box of wine, swallows the dregs. Acid stings the back of his throat, clears the film from his tongue.

He stands, leans one knee against the frame of the cot, swings his other leg over so that he is straddling the tailor’s abdomen. Hunched forward, he fits his thumbs to the blood-colored prints beneath the windpipe, wraps his splayed fingers around the gelid neck.

Asphalt turns to dirt as the road progresses deeper into the foothills. A few miles in, he comes to the first gate. He slows, pulls off. There is nothing to say how recently the gate has been opened. The Inspector follows the side road with his eyes. A half-mile distant, maybe less, it begins its ascent, disappearing into stub-forest, then reappearing higher up. He searches for dust clouds, for a glimpse of blue between the trees.

There is nothing to do, he thinks, but guess. At the very least, he will be able to survey the countryside from the summit.

He leaves the gate open behind him, pushes the Packard as fast as it will go. The slope is steep. He steers around small boulders, feels the tires spin over a patch of pebbles before gaining traction. The road seems to rise toward a single destination with no turn offs or side paths.

He reaches the vertex, stops, searches out his binoculars
from the back seat. Climbing onto the hood of his car, he turns a slow 360 degrees, glassing the landscape above and below. He spots a blue pickup on the highway, speeding toward town. He loses it in the trees, finds it again, manages to fix the cab in the lenses. Two figures, two straw hats. The bed is empty.