The Dispatcher (20 page)

Henry wants to tell him to enjoy it; it’ll likely be his last.

 

 

 

The skinny man, whose name turns out to be Flint, helps Beatrice inside and kicks a wooden chair out from the dining table and gets her sitting in it. His wife Naomi, a pretty woman in her early- or mid-twenties, paces back and forth wringing her hands and then stops and says, ‘What can I do, Flint?’

‘Call Doc Peterson.’

‘No,’ Henry says, maybe a bit too forcefully.

Flint squints at him. ‘No?’

‘I . . . I’d rather we just take care of it ourselves. Ain’t so bad it requires a doctor.’

Flint continues to squint at him for a moment, tongues the wad of tobacco tucked under his lip. He picks up a Coke can from the dining-room table and squirts a stream of brown spit into it. Then wipes at the bit that dribbled onto his chin and sets down the can.

‘How’d she really hurt her ankle, friend?’

‘Just like I said she did. You calling me a liar?’

‘I ain’t calling you anything.’

‘Sounds like you are.’

‘What d’you got against doctors?’

‘Can’t afford ’em.’

‘Peterson’s just a vet. Prolly won’t cost fifty bucks.’

‘If you got some needle and thread I’ll just stitch her up myself. Or even a fishhook and some line. Clip the barb off and it’ll work fine.’

‘I don’t know,’ Flint says.

‘Can you move your ankle, Bee?’

‘I think so.’

‘Try.’

Beatrice straightens her leg and tries to turn her ankle. She cringes, but she manages some movement as well. ‘Yeah,’ she says.

‘I still think she should see a doctor,’ Flint says.

‘I appreciate your help and all, Flint, but this ain’t a debate.’

Flint scratches his cheek. ‘Get my tackle box, Nam.’

Ian puts the off-white telephone into its cradle, letting it simply slip off his fingertips and rattle to a resting position. He feels numb.

‘What’s wrong?’ Debbie says.

He swallows. It hurts to swallow.

‘Help me up,’ he says. ‘I don’t have time to lie around.’

‘What did Diego say?’

‘He said Sheriff Sizemore released Henry Dean’s little brother. Didn’t find anything incriminated him at Henry’s house or the mobile home—at least not till lab results come back—and he didn’t slip under questioning so they let him go. Told him to stay in town in case anything came up, but that’s all.’ Ian pushes the blankets off himself and puts his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet feel very cold and look very white.

He looks around the room. ‘Do you know where my clothes are?’

‘Ian, you’ve been shot.’

‘Donald is lying. He as much as said it was his brother when I talked to him at the liquor store the day Maggie called. I should have realized it at the time. He knows something. I can’t just lie around waiting for someone to find Maggie’s mutilated body on the side of the road somewhere between here and—’

The words are cut off by coughing. It’s a deep lung-cough that brings up blood which splatters into his palm and runs down his chin. He looks at his palm, then wipes it off on the bedding. He wipes at his chin with the back of a wrist. The pain, though constant and worsened by the coughing, is tolerable. He must still be full of painkillers. His swimming mind is evidence of that. He closes his eyes to try to center himself.

‘Jesus,’ he says.

‘You should lie back down.’

He opens his eyes and looks to Debbie. ‘That’s not gonna happen.’

‘Ian.’

‘Do you know where my clothes are?’

‘They threw your clothes out. They cut your shirt off of you, and your pants were covered in blood.’

‘Shoes?’

‘Ian.’

‘Shoes?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Wallet? Phone?’

She reaches into her purse and removes a clear plastic bag with a wallet, a cell phone, some loose change, a book of matches, and a watch inside. He must have left his keys in his car’s ignition.

‘Good,’ he says.

He looks at the IV bag hanging from a pole by the head of the bed. The tube twisting off it, the needle stabbed into the back of his hand and taped in place. He has no idea what it is. Fuck it. He yanks the needle from his hand and scratches at the hole. A small bead of blood grows there. He smears it into the skin, then pushes himself off the bed and onto his feet. The floor is cold. His head swims. Everything goes gray and small black specks float before his eyes. For a moment he thinks he’s going to lose consciousness, but he doesn’t. He manages to hold on to it. Just.

Once he’s sure of himself he looks at Debbie and smiles.

‘Your car’s in the lot, right?’

‘I’m not doing it.’

‘Do you want to get Maggie back or don’t you?’

‘Don’t do that. You know I do.’

‘Then let me get her back.’

‘This isn’t about that. Don’t make it about—’

‘That’s all this is about.’

 

 

 

The car is quiet as they drive from Mencken down to Bulls Mouth. Ian looks out the window at the sun sinking into the earth. Just the top of it is visible above the horizon. He is cold and hot simultaneously. He believes he has a fever. The Pleur-evac chest drainage system sits on the floor between his feet. He can feel Debbie glancing at him as she drives but refuses to look back. If they make eye contact she might see how sick he really is. If that happens she’ll try to stop him. He will not be stopped.

‘You can drop me off at the police station,’ he says. ‘I reckon that’s where they moved my car to.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Whatever I have to do,’ he says.

‘What the hell does that mean?’

Ian doesn’t respond. Instead he cracks the window and says, ‘Still hot out, isn’t it?’

 

 

 

She pulls the car into the police station parking lot and drives around to the back where Ian’s Mustang is parked. She brings her Toyota to a stop beside it and puts the transmission into park and simply sits there. She stares straight ahead at the brick wall that is the back of the station, both hands gripping the wheel.

‘I’ll get her back,’ Ian says.

Debbie says nothing. She does not even nod. She simply continues to stare ahead.

‘Deb?’

After a long moment: ‘Just go, Ian.’

He nods and pushes the door open and steps barefoot onto the asphalt. He grabs the Pleur-evac drainage system by the handle at the top with his left hand and painfully uses his right to push himself to his feet.

‘My stuff.’

She pulls the plastic bag with his things in it from her purse and hands it to him.

‘Thank you.’

He’s about to slam the door home when the sound of Debbie’s voice stops him.

‘Ian,’ she says.

He looks at her.

She tilts her head up and sideways to look at him. Her eyes sparkle in the fading light.

‘Be safe,’ she says.

He stares at her for a long time, but does not say anything. He doesn’t really think there’s anything
to
say. Instead he simply nods and pushes the door shut. He stands there and looks at her through the glass. After a moment she reaches down, slides the transmission into reverse, and backs her car out of its spot. Then she is out in the street.

He watches the red taillights shrink as she recedes.

Armando Gonzales is sitting at the dispatch desk and clicking through a game of computer backgammon, saying, ‘You
would
roll a fucking six, you cocksucker,’ when Ian glances in on him. Ian walks unnoticed past the door. He walks to Chief Davis’s desk and pulls open the top right drawer. There he finds his keys as he knew he would. Car key, apartment key, police station key, and a small fob with a mechanic’s logo and phone number printed on it. He pulls them from the drawer and pushes the drawer closed.

Then he walks to the back of the station, past the interrogation room and the small kitchen, and into a storage room. The room is about fifteen feet wide and twelve feet deep and filled with rows of metal-framed shelves. On the shelves are boxes stacked upon boxes, loose file folders with last names scrawled upon them, stacks of photographs, orange cones, hand signs suggesting people YIELD or SLOW or STOP, yellow vests adorned with reflective tape, yellow tape for cordoning off crime scenes, Sam Browne belts, loose bottles of pepper spray, loose speed loaders for service revolvers they no longer use, old clips, handcuffs, and PR-24s. And against the wall to Ian’s left sits a locker about the size of a grandfather clock. Inside is a clutter of guns the Bulls Mouth PD has confiscated over the years.

He walks to it and unlocks it and pulls it open to take a look at what’s available: not much, as it turns out. But he does find a pump-action Remington shotgun with a six-inch barrel and the stock cut down. He grabs that and continues to look through the stockpile. He’d like something for long-distance shooting, but there’s nothing here for that purpose. He’ll just have to stop by Sally’s Gun & Rifle.

He walks back down the hallway, shotgun in one hand, Pleur-evac system in the other. He glances in at Armando before heading out, but Armando doesn’t notice him.

Once outside he allows himself to lean against a wall and cough. Just doing this has worn him out, and he still has a long night ahead of him.

He pushes himself off the wall and walks to his car.

 

 

 

At home, he changes into a pair of Levis and a button-up shirt, letting the catheter in his chest feed out the bottom. Then he straps a satchel over his shoulder. He extends the strap to hang as low as possible so there will be no backflow to his lung. Then he puts the Pleur-evac system into the satchel. He’s going to need both his hands free.

Twenty minutes after arriving he leaves his apartment.

 

 

 

Sally’s stays open till eight, and it’s seven forty-five when Ian pulls his Mustang into the lot on the corner of Crouch and Reservoir.

She’s standing behind the counter, the most anomalous thing you ever saw, like a tiger sipping tea. Look at her: five feet eight inches of Italian sucker punch ready to send you into the fourth dimension, wearing a Versace dress and fuck-me pumps, lips smeared red, breasts spilling out, hips cocked to the right and waiting for someone to pull the trigger. It’s unbelievable that she owns a gun shop in Noplace, Texas, and though Ian’s asked she’s never told him how it happened.

‘Ian Hunt,’ she says as he walks through the door. ‘I am surprised to see you.’

‘The rumors of my death,’ he says, ‘are greatly exaggerated.’ He coughs into his hand, then wipes it off on his Levis. ‘Slightly exaggerated, anyway.’

‘How are you, honey?’

‘Like two hundred and twenty pounds of offal.’

‘Come here.’

She walks around the counter and holds out her arms.

‘Be careful,’ he says as he walks to her, ‘I’m delicate right now.’

They hug, painfully for Ian, and Sally plants a wet kiss full on his mouth.

‘You look good for a dead man.’

‘You look good, period.’

‘Then how come we never hooked up?’

‘You’d kill me, Sally. It’d be like a teddy bear trying to cuddle dynamite.’

She laughs long and loud. ‘Then what can I do for you?’

‘Two things. First, I need a rifled shotgun that’ll shoot deer slugs accurate up to a hundred and fifty yards.’

‘Done.’

‘And second, I need a long-distance rifle.’

‘How long-distance?’

‘I dunno, thousand yards. Fifteen hundred.’

‘Oh.’

‘You got something like that?’

Sally purses her red lips and a smile glimmers behind her eyes. ‘What kind do you want?’

After a few minutes of discussion she decides she’ll lose a DPMS Panther .308. She sets it on the counter, beside a Remington 11-87 with a rifled barrel, and then gets out three boxes of ammunition and stacks them one on top of the other.

‘Are you shooting tonight?’

Ian shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘Tonight will require more intimacy than that.’

Sally smiles. ‘Well, then, I wish I could be there.’

‘No,’ Ian says, thinking of his plans for the evening. ‘I don’t think you do.’

Maggie sits at the foot of the dinner table. Across from her, at the head of the table, Henry sits hunched over his plate, fork gripped in his fist. Flint and Naomi sit side by side to her left. Beatrice to her right. They all have pieces of chicken on their plates and mounds of mashed potatoes from which slices of roasted garlic jut and piles of buttery peas. Maggie pokes at the peas with her fork, trying to only get them onto the leftmost prong. One by one she gets them onto the fork, lined up like a string of pearls. Once she has six of them skewered she sucks them off the fork one at a time.