The Dispatcher (16 page)

‘I didn’t weasel my way—’

‘Look,’ Ian says. ‘This isn’t up for debate. I’m going.’

They walk out onto the street and into the sunlight.

‘Fine,’ Chief Davis says, ‘but I don’t even want you to get out of your car unless we need you. I mean it.’

‘Okay,’ Ian says, walking toward his Mustang. ‘Fair enough.’ His mouth is very dry.

Maggie paces the floor and looks at the ceiling. Strange noises come from above: banging and talking, footsteps back and forth, and things sliding and shifting. The sounds are making her nervous. Usually the only noise from upstairs is the drone of the television—daytime dreaming with eyes wide open. But this is different. She does not like different. She does not want different. It is worrying her.

What’s going on up there? Maybe they know her plans and are building some terrible torture device with which to punish her. Maybe they’re—

One two three four five six seven eight.

They don’t know anything. It is true that they’re making strange noises, and it is true that they’re talking about something, something that’s causing Henry to raise his voice at Beatrice, but she doesn’t think it has anything to do with her. When Henry is mad at her she knows it right away. Still: it makes her nervous.

Today is her day for escape and, except for that escape, she wants today to be like every other day. She wants today to be more like every other day than any day has been yet. She wants it to be perfectly normal. Normal is predictable and predictable is what she needs if she’s to escape, and she needs to escape: fresh air in her lungs and sunshine on her skin and Daddy’s arms wrapped around her.

If strange things are happening upstairs, and they are, that might ruin her plan.

No. It will work out. It has to work out, so it will. That’s all there is to it. There’s no point in thinking about it not working out.

She walks to the back of the stairs and pulls the weapon from the shadows for the third or fourth time today. She does not hesitate. The thought of staying here even one more day is much worse than anything she can imagine lurking in darkness.

It makes her sick when she thinks of what she plans to do with this weapon in her hand, it makes her stomach feel like rotten milk, but she also wants it done. She wants to be through it and up the stairs and through the front door and standing outside beneath the yellow sun.

She closes her eyes and imagines the sharp edge of the weapon hacking into the flesh of Beatrice’s ankle. She imagines seeing beneath the skin, seeing the opening in the skin like a slit in a piece of thick leather, seeing all the organic levers and pulleys that make up the moving parts of a human being, seeing blood pour from within and splash in great red drops on the dirty wooden step before the woman tilts like a great tree felled.

She can do this. She just has to be patient. In another two hours Beatrice will come down here and she will—

A metal thwack as, from the other side of the door, the lock is turned and the deadbolt retracts.

She looks out the window. It is too early for this to be happening. Donald’s El Camino has not yet even rolled down the driveway. It is far too early for this to be happening.

Should she do it now, anyway? Should she make her move now or should she wait? Something is happening, something she doesn’t understand, and if she waits she might never have another chance. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This is all wrong. Everything about this is wrong and wrong and wrong.

Borden told. He is real after all and he told. He wants her stuck here in the Nightmare World forever and ever. He wants her to suffer and—

Borden is imaginary. He’s not real. He’s never been real.

The door at the top of the stairs creaks open and a bulging silhouette fills the doorway. Beatrice. It’s Beatrice and she’s coming down. She’s not carrying a plate. She’s not bringing dinner down. Maggie knew she wouldn’t be. It’s too early for dinner. Henry is still home and the shadows are not yet long, so it’s too early for dinner. She can hear his deep voice vibrating through the wood floor and into the basement. There are other voices up there, too. She can feel them but she cannot hear them. But they’re there and they vibrate differently than Henry’s voice. Something is wrong.

She ducks once more behind the stairs, hiding in the shadows there with the weapon gripped in her now sweating hands. She can’t decide what to do. She can’t decide whether to put the weapon away or use it. If she doesn’t do this now she might not have another chance. There are strange voices upstairs, there was banging earlier, and Henry yelling.

But the plan was to wait for Henry to leave. Another couple hours, no more.

Except Henry may not leave. She has no idea what’s going on and she cannot count on things happening like they normally do.

This might be her only chance.

She’s not going to wait. When she attacks Beatrice the woman will scream. She’ll scream and that will draw Henry. When Henry comes running down to see what happened she’ll slice his ankles too. He probably won’t be down for good, but that doesn’t matter. As long as she has time enough to get upstairs and out the front door that doesn’t matter at all.

She can do this.

It can all still be okay.

The stairs creak as Beatrice makes her way down. Her breathing is heavy and somehow thick. Her feet drag across the wooden steps, and the steps sag beneath her weight.

‘Sarah?’ she says.

Maggie does not answer. She stands in the shadows beneath the stairs gripping the weapon. Her breath is still in her throat: dead air: waiting for what happens next.

Another step down from Beatrice and her right ankle is now in front of Maggie’s eyes, visible between two planks of wood. White and soft and easy to reach—easy to cut.

She can do this.

Her heart pounds in her chest.

Her face feels numb.

She can do this. She knows she can. She has to do it, so she
can
do it. That’s how it works. She is not too weak for what must be done. She is strong. She is strong and brave. Her daddy said so. Her daddy once told her she was the bravest person he ever met.

Beatrice lifts her left leg to bring it down next to the right.

Maggie lifts the weapon with both hands and hacks at the flesh between the boards, drawing a red line where before was unblemished white skin.

Blood splashes on Maggie’s hands and arms. It is hot. Much hotter than she expected it would be.

Beatrice screams.

Back up. Watch the sun rise from the western horizon. See clouds in the bleached denim sky once blown apart by the wind pull themselves together again. Cars reverse down streets. A shattered drinking glass reconstructs itself and flies up from a tile floor and into Roberta Block’s right hand and she sets it into a sink full of soapy water and unwashes it. A turkey vulture flies backwards through the sky. Genevieve Paulson sits in bed in her parents’ guest bedroom and tears roll up her cheeks and vanish into the corners of her eyes. Her daughter Thalia unsays something that unbreaks her heart and walks backwards out of the bedroom door and down the hallway to where her grandma is unbaking cookies. The hour hands on all the time pieces spin counter-clockwise, pulling their ticks and their tocks back out of the time stream to be spent once more. Now stop.

The same turkey vulture hangs motionless in the sky above the Deans’ house just south of Crouch Avenue like it was nailed into the blue.

For a moment everything is very still. Then—after a beat: exhale—time moves forward once more. The turkey vulture flies over the house and toward the woods, trying to catch a scent of death in its nostrils.

And Henry Dean steps through the front door of his house, keys dangling from his index finger. He’s out of beer and wants a couple-three more before heading to work. And for work. A good buzz helps the night pass. He walks down the steps and across the gravel driveway to his truck. He yanks open the door and slides the seat of his Levis across the seat of the truck, stopping behind the wheel. He starts the engine and shoves the transmission into first, releases the clutch, and gasses the thing with a booted foot. The tires spit gravel and the truck gets moving.

When he hits the street he makes a left, and then cracks the window to get a breeze in the cab of this Ford-brand oven. But he doesn’t turn on the air conditioner. Henry refuses to use an air conditioner. People managed for thousands of years without them and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna prove frail and womanish by using one hisself.

Sweat trickles down his forehead, catches on a thick gray eyebrow, and holds there a moment before rolling along the arc of hair and running down the side of his face. He smears it away with his palm, pushing it into his retreating hairline.

Then he turns left on Main Street and heads toward Bill’s Liquor.

Some ways down, through heat fumes rising from the cracked asphalt, he sees several cars parked on the shoulder of the road up ahead and pulls his foot off the gas.

‘What the hell?’

He downshifts to third, then second, then first as he approaches. Two cars from the Tonkawa County Sheriff’s Department and one from the Bulls Mouth Police Department. A sheriff’s deputy is sitting on the hood of one of the county cars, staring at nothing in particular and smoking a cigarette.

Henry brings his truck to a stop and rolls down his window.

‘Hey, dep,’ he says, ‘how the hell are you?’

‘All right, Henry. How you doing?’

‘Can’t complain.’ He smiles. ‘Hot, though, ain’t it?’

‘Shit yeah, man. Hotter’n a pussycat in a pepper patch.’

‘What’s with all the police?’

The deputy glances over his shoulder, sees nothing of concern, and leans toward Henry conspiratorially.

‘You really wanna know?’

‘No, I ast ’cause I wanted you to lie to me.’

‘Bodies.’

Henry’s face goes numb. He tries not to show it.

‘Bodies?’

‘Little girls. Two or three of ’em buried in the woods.’

‘No shit?’

‘None.’

Henry forces a surprised whistle and the shake of a head. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned.’

‘Indeed.’

‘What kind of bastard would go and kill little girls?’

‘The sick kind. Probably raped ’em first.’

Henry feels his face go hot, feels anger clamp down on his chest like a pair of channel-lock pliers. He’s no rapist. He’s a family man. He loves his wife and would never cheat on her. Especially not with a rape to no little girls. He feels an urge to reach out his window and grab the deputy by the collar and slam his face against the metal door of the truck. Instead he nods and says, ‘Probably did. It’s a sick world. I hope you catch the son of a bitch.’

‘I’m sure we will,’ the deputy says.

‘Well, good luck to you,’ Henry says, tossing off a sharp salute.

He puts the truck into gear and lets off the clutch and presses the gas and continues south on Main Street. As soon as he knows the deputy can no longer see him the life drains from his face and his friendly expression sags into a dead scowl. The light leaves his eyes and his mouth curls down at the corners.

His mind is a gray fog which no thought can penetrate, which nothing can penetrate but an uncomprehending animal dread. But as he approaches Hackberry Street he sees Chief Davis’s car heading toward him, and behind it a red 1965 Mustang, and that clears the fog in a hurry.

They found the bodies. It won’t be long before the police figure that two plus two equals four. Even if there’s no evidence on the bodies themselves—and his guess is that with all the science they got these days the police will find him all over them—they’re on his property. He’ll be the first person they question. They may even get a search warrant. Sheriff Sizemore is friendly with some judges that might make it happen in a hurry. If they get a search warrant they’ll find Sarah. If they find Sarah it’s over.

The little bitch said she’d called her daddy. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. It meant his life would shortly be falling apart. Which meant it couldn’t be true. Except it was true. It was true and it still is. He doesn’t know how she knew about the bodies, but she did, she must have known about them, and—

After the two cars pass by, he makes a u-turn.

The beer is canceled. Work is canceled. His life is canceled.

It’s time for a new plan. He drives toward home, toward what has been home for over forty years, and thinks about what he should do. His brother Ron has a place in California, in a practically deserted mining town called Kaiser just other side of the Arizona state line. He and Beatrice and Sarah can go there. They’ll hide out there till the heat dies down. He has no doubt that there will be heat. People care about dead little girls. He’ll be tried and convicted on the news shows within days. The media need a villain. But they can hide out in Kaiser till the heat dies down, and once it does . . . well, that’s where things break down a little bit in his mind.

If the police don’t have enough to arrest him he might be able to come back home. His running will be suspicious, but suspicious behavior ain’t evidence. It seems more likely, though, that Bulls Mouth is about to become a part of his past. In which case they’ll head down to Mexico. It won’t be safe to try for Mexico till things quiet down, but once they do quiet down they should be able to make it across the border without too much trouble. Most eyes are usually focused on those trying to enter the United States, not on those trying to leave it. He’s not sure how exactly they’ll get by in Mexico, but he’s sure they will get by. Maybe they can even get a house on the ocean. He’s always wanted to see the ocean. Or maybe Canada instead. They speak English there. He can work that out later.

Up ahead Chief Davis’s car and the Mustang pull to the shoulder of the road. Henry drives by them a moment later. He maintains his speed despite a great urge to put the gas pedal to the floorboard. He can’t act suspicious.