The Dispatcher (25 page)

No: she knew he wasn’t dead.

‘That’s my dad.’

A slap across the back of the head.

‘Shut the fuck up.’

She looks at Henry and sees that he means it.

He looks from her to the windshield.

‘Fuck.’

She thought Daddy was dead but he is not dead. It makes her chest feel warm in its center. As if she had her own personal sun. A sun on the inside. She thinks maybe she does.

‘Daddy,’ she says, waving her arms, hoping he looks in his rearview mirror.

Another slap to the back of the head.

‘I fucking mean it, Sarah.’

‘I told you he was coming for me,’ she says. ‘I
told
you.’

Mouthy little bitch. Where does she get off talking to him like that? If it weren’t for Bee, he’d just get rid of her. Put her in the ground. She’s nothing but trouble at this point. All of this is because of her: his having to kill Chief Davis and that county boy Bill Finch, his having to kill Flint and Naomi, their being on the run, all of it. She brought this upon them. She brought this upon them and she deserves to pay for that betrayal.

If it weren’t for Bee, she would pay for it.

Unless a man wants to find hisself with a bloody feeding-hand some day, his daddy had told him once before getting out his .22 and putting it into Henry’s hands, it’s best to kill a bad pup before it gets to be a big dog. Now let’s take care of this. I’ll get the shovel.

If it weren’t for Bee, he’d take care of Sarah. She’s a bad pup if ever there was one. But women don’t understand facts. They just see something cute and want to cuddle it. They don’t understand that cute has nothing to do with whether something needs to be put down.

He can’t believe that son of a bitch Ian Hunt found them. Found out where they were heading, anyway. And must have managed to get in front of them while Henry was busy burying the previous owners of the truck he’s now driving. It occurs to him that there was only one person from whom Ian could have gotten that information. But Donald would never give him up. Henry practically raised him. After Dad had the stroke when Donald was seven Henry did raise him. Donald would never give him up. He would sit through any and all threats of imprisonment giving nothing but a dead pan to the cops and answering nothing.

Unless someone did something much worse than merely threaten him.

But Hunt is a cop.

Except he ain’t exactly acting like a cop right now, is he? Out here in his own car and no other cops in sight.

If the police knew where he and Bee were heading they’d be all over this stretch of road. He’d have seen them. Seen them and holed up someplace. Or else he wouldn’t have seen them but they’d have seen him. They’d have seen him and flashed their lights and he’d be in a high-speed chase or captured or escaped. Or there’d be roadblocks. Something would have happened. But nothing has. Which means the police don’t know where he’s heading, even if Ian Hunt does.

And there’s only one way Donald would have given Henry up.

And there’s only one reason Ian Hunt wouldn’t get the real police involved.

‘Motherfucker.’

‘Henry.’

‘Shut up, Bee.’

She looks at him a moment, then looks down at her lap. She flattens the fabric of her dress, rubs out the wrinkles, and stares down at the backs of her hands with an expression that suggests she doesn’t recognize them. Ever since last night she has not been acting herself. He’s never hidden what he is from her, but even so she has never seen the worst of what is in him. Not until last night. She has always loved him unconditionally, through drunken arrests and even through the times he lost his temper and maybe got too rough, but last night he thinks may have been too much for her. It happened right in front of her and she could not pretend she did not see it or did not understand it—and it might have been too much for her.

He sensed her troubled mind in the silent darkness last night after they went to bed, while they lay side by side, and he feels it now. He does not like the silence. It makes him nervous. Beatrice is not one to keep her thoughts to herself. But today she is almost without voice. What is she thinking? What’s going on in that head of hers? He’s going to have to make her understand that what he did last night was necessary. That he didn’t like it any better than she did, but it was necessary. Sometimes bloodletting is the only choice. All survivors know this.

The world is a hard place with lots of sharp corners, and sometimes to survive you have to put someone else between you and the worst of it. He doesn’t like it any more than she does. But he accepts it as the way things are.

He needed their truck. He needed their truck and Flint suspected something. From the very beginning Flint was suspicious of them. They simply couldn’t leave him alive. He would have called the police. With him dead, with him and his wife dead, they have a clean vehicle for the next two or three days. Long enough to get them to his older brother’s place in California.

Of course he’ll have to get rid of Ian Hunt at some point before they get there. He can do that. Maybe he can even do that today. He’ll just follow Hunt from a distance, hang back and follow. If he’s careful he can go unnoticed. The man doesn’t know he got in front of them. It might be difficult to remain unnoticed once traffic thins out and the land becomes more barren in West Texas, but even there it should be possible. He’ll follow Hunt, wait for the man to settle down for the night. Then he’ll make the fucker bleed.

He’ll make him sorry he didn’t die the first time.

And that’ll be the end of his troubles. After that they can lie low in California for a few months. Even if the police decide to nose around Ron’s house, there are places to hide. Ron has lots of places in which to wait out trouble. An underground bomb shelter with canned food and five hundred gallons of drinking water and a two-hundred-gallon gray-water tank. Abandoned buildings where he has stored supplies. According to his letters, once the iron mine dried up the town blew away with the dust and he’s one of only twenty or thirty residents left. And that was years ago. It could be he’s the last person in town. There will be plenty of shadows to hide in, even beneath the California sun. They’ll wait it out, wait till things cool off, and then head down to Mexico. Or maybe up to Canada. But probably Mexico.

It’ll be safer to cross the border in California than in Texas. And he’ll have a chance to get some money before they head down. He doesn’t want to be flat broke in Mexico. A different country will take some getting used to, but it’s better than the alternative. The important thing is staying out of prison, staying out of prison and staying together.

But first Ian Hunt has to die.

 

 

 

In the two hundred miles between Junction and Fort Stockton, Texas, the landscape changes. The trees give way to shrubbery and low yellow flowers. The yellow flowers stretch from dry earth or dead grass. Desert hills erupt from the flat earth like goiters, and Interstate 10 cuts through many of them, leaving dynamited and scraped cliffs butting up to the asphalt and stacked up beside you in multi-colored layers descending into the past. The moisture leaves the air, and cacti soak up the sun, their fat pads like the flippers of some lost exotic underwater creature waving at you from the side of the road. Ancient stripper-well pumpjacks like prehistoric birds peck at the ground in the Permian Basin oil fields, moving in slow, sleepy, repetitious motion. The traffic thins to nothing but the occasional Mack truck hauling a load from coast to coast, driver red eyed and tweaked out, or some other lonesome traveler. Occasional desert rabbits splatter the shoulders of the road, revealing their hearts to you. Past the halfway point between these two towns, somewhere around Bakersfield, great fields of windmills turn slowly in the distance like ceiling fans on a mild day. Everything seems to move slowly in this mean desert heat, even your vehicle with the needle past eighty. You drive and drive but never seem to get anywhere. Then you arrive in Fort Stockton and are greeted by a large statue of a roadrunner, the world’s largest, they say (every town needs a point of pride), standing behind a short brick wall faced with a sign welcoming you to town.

 

 

 

It’s two thirty when Hunt pulls off Interstate 10. Henry follows, glad to have a chance to step out of this hot fucking truck and stretch a bit. They’ve been on the road for hours, his back is killing him, and Bee’s complained of a leak in the canoe at least a half dozen times. Also, gas needle is south of the E, and he’s spent the last twenty minutes worrying about puttering to a stop on the side of the road, miles from a gas station.

Hunt pulls into a Chevron station on the corner of Front Street and US 285, and Henry pulls into a competing station across the street from it.

He watches the man step from his Mustang and stretch his arms. His left arm, anyway. His right arm doesn’t get above his shoulder. Arms stretched, he twists his neck around. There’s a satchel in his right hand and after he stretches he straps it over his shoulder.

Henry wonders what’s inside. Probably guns.

The man does not look like he was shot in the chest yesterday. He should be bedridden.

Well, it don’t matter. He’ll be dead by the time the sun kisses the horizon. By the time the sun shines on tomorrow at the latest.

Henry reaches for his pocket and finds it empty. He swallows back the sharp taste of stomach acid.

‘Can I pee now?’

‘Yeah, go ahead,’ he says. ‘Take Sarah with you, and don’t let her talk to nobody. You know what? Never mind. I’ll take her when you get back. She can sit with me for now. But get me some Rolaids or Tums or something like that.’ He pulls a sweaty five spot from the pocket of his Levis and hands it to Bee.

‘Okay,’ she says, taking the damp money in her fist and stepping from the truck. ‘Can I get something to drink?’

‘Sure.’

She limp-waddles toward the convenience store.

He watches her go. She isn’t the same since last night. She isn’t the same at all. He really needs to talk to her, but he doesn’t want to do it in front of Sarah. He doesn’t know why, but her presence makes him feel vulnerable, and he does not like to feel vulnerable. He does not like to talk about what he’s feeling or thinking under even the best of circumstances, and this ain’t the best of circumstances. He can ramble on about any nonsense you like, grinning and boozing and patting backs, but he cannot open his mouth and let out what he is really feeling without great effort. It wants to catch in his throat and stay there, hidden in darkness. But he needs to talk to Bee. He’s afraid he might lose her if he does not.

He glances past the traffic to Ian Hunt across the street. The man is sticking a gas nozzle into his car and squinting at the horizon. For a moment Henry thinks Hunt is staring directly at him, but he’s not. Just squinting at the horizon, that’s all.

Ian squints over the hood of his car at a gray Dodge Ram pickup truck across the intersection. A work truck, from the looks of it. Covered in dirt. Big white toolbox in the back. Tailgate down and hanging a little low, like someone put too much weight on it and bent it out of shape. It’s been behind him for a few hours now. Every once in a while he catches sight of it, white-hot sun reflecting a shiny-nickel-on-the-sidewalk star of light on the hood. The intersection is wide and Ian’s vision isn’t quite what it once was (there was a time he boasted twenty-fifteen eyesight, better than perfect, he told people), and he can’t see the face of the man sitting behind the wheel, but as he stands there pumping gas a part of him believes it must be Henry Dean.

Ian feels a terrible urge to grab the rifled shotgun from the back seat of his car, rest it in the crook of his shoulder, and fire a deer slug into the head of the man behind the wheel. He can envision the clear glass turning instantly white as the slug hits and sends millions of cracks through it. He can envision the glass falling away from the frame seconds later, revealing a man with a hole in his temple. Big enough to stick the fat end of a pool cue into. The blood and brains splattered inside the truck like a cherry bomb was planted in a wad of raw hamburger. The man falling forward, head on the steering wheel, weighing against the horn as it blares its single idiot note.

He can picture it so clearly.

But even if he knew it was Henry, now would not be the time, here would not be the place. Here he would have but one chance, and if he missed some cowboy would tackle him to the ground, and Henry would be able to drive away to freedom with Maggie still in his possession. If he missed Henry he might hit Maggie. Even if he didn’t miss, shotgun slugs have a lot of push and it might go clean through Henry and hit Maggie.

Or some other innocent.

He hasn’t given much thought to what he’s become, to how far he is willing to go down this road of degradation, but he knows he is unwilling to shoot innocents in order to achieve his ends. For now he is unwilling to do that. Unless he has to.

And anyway, he is not certain it’s Henry. He believes it is, he believes it might be, but he is old enough and has been wrong often enough to know that reality and what he believes don’t always align with one another.

The gas nozzle clicks in his hand and stops pumping, tank full. He tops it off, getting the price to an even thirty-five bucks, then puts the nozzle back into its cradle on the pump. He screws on his gas cap. He squints once more across the intersection, then heads toward the convenience store. Halfway there he starts coughing and staggers left, into a woman and her husband leaving the store.

‘Whoa there, fella,’ the man says, catching him.

Ian puts a hand on the man’s shoulder, trying to hold himself up, and the gunshot wound cored through him screams. He grunts in pain, then closes his eyes as sweat runs down his cheeks. He swallows back the urge to cough again. He stands upright, then wipes at his cheeks with the backs of his hands, left then right.