Trinity (15 page)

21

There was a flat
pop
as the tire went dead.

Of course, in the rain. Always in the rain, only in the rain. Gabriela Correa cursed and eased the car to the side of the narrow dirt road, careful to avoid the deep gully which the downpour had filled with rushing water. She didn’t need this. Eddie sat in the back seat, oblivious and quiet. He wasn’t feeling well. Not since the rest area outside Lott. He’d let her drive in peace, no yelling, singing, talking. When she asked him about it, he gave sullen, one word answers. She’d been thankful for the quiet at first, now she felt bad about that. One more thing to worry about.

The rain didn’t look like it would let up any time soon. She got out of the car, looking away from the headlights, unable to see in the dark after the brightness of the car’s dome light. The rain beat her back with its downpour.

One of the back tires. Of course it was the one on the edge of the road. She fought back tears as she used the key to pop open the elderly Civic’s trunk. Work-roughened hands pushed aside the trunk’s carpet, revealing the jack and tire iron beneath. Fate told her this was a mission she shouldn’t be taking. But even if she was deported, she’d made damn sure Eddie was born here.

They’d passed a trailer a few minutes ago, she hoped she could do this herself; that she wouldn’t need to go and wake anyone up to use their phone. She couldn’t afford a tow truck.

“What happened?” he asked in Spanish, from right behind her. She jumped and knocked her head on the open trunk, dropping the tire iron. It clattered down on top of the spare tire, clanging in the night. He stood in the road, shoulders stooped; his yellow rain slicker unzipped.

“Get back in the car, sweetie,” she said, also in Spanish, pulse pounding in her ears. “It’s too wet out here.”

“What are you doing?”

“We had a flat tire. Go sit down, I’ll only be a minute.”

The boy didn’t move. Looked past her, down the dark dirt road. Away from Mexico. She went back to the tire, pulling on it, wrestling it from the floor of the trunk. Rain dripped into her eyes, stinging them. She blinked it away.

“Eddie,” she called.

The yellow of his slicker caught her eye, yellow against the darkness. “Get back in the car! We don’t have time for this.”

He didn’t listen. Didn’t stop. Kept walking. Again, she set the tire down, and stepped after him.

“Eddie!”

He didn’t even turn his head. Gabriela left the keys dangling from the trunk lid and went after him.

Gravel from the road skittered somewhere, audible under the sound of the shower. A deer? Did squirrels come out at night?

She strained her ears, looked out into the wet blackness beside the car.

Maybe there was more out here to be afraid of than being deported.

She went back to the car and picked up the tire iron, the metal cold and slick with rain.

Something stepped out of the rain. It advanced on her son like a tiger stalks its prey, one foot in front of the other.

What was it?

What was wrong with its feet?

“Get away!”

Her voice seemed so loud, even against the downpour. She ran for her son, who walked on, oblivious.

It pounced, its feet unfolding, revealing knives in its paws. Knives? Claws?

They were on her son, but she brought the tire iron down on its shoulder, a blow that strained her muscles. It turned to look at her, its eyes were deep black pools, shaped like diamonds, reflecting the yellow light of the car’s blinker. It opened a circular mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, but didn’t make a sound. She swung again, hitting across its face. It looked at the boy—oh god, so much blood—and back at her, then disappeared in a tawny flash.

The night was quiet again.

She scooped her son up in her arms, able to see pink meat under his yellow slicker, so much blood all over it.

There was a driveway back there, wasn’t there? A trailer tucked back from the road?

His face was so white, even his lips were white.

She scooped him up in her arms, tugging the slicker closed over the slices in his leg and his belly. Cradling him like an infant, she left the tire iron behind as she struggled down the road to where she hoped she’d seen a trailer.

22

The rain started after he staggered back into the trailer. He didn’t feel drunk anymore, not really, more mystified, empty and sad.

Kate had waited up for him, but he’d only barely acknowledged her before falling into bed.

He woke up from a white dream, the room seeming all the more black in comparison. The hum made his head feel crowded and muffled.

Something struck the side of the trailer hard enough to make the windows rattle. Kate was awake. They both turned towards the sound, and when she turned back he was staring at her.

“What was that?” she asked. “The wind?”

It was never the wind. Why couldn’t it just this once be the wind?

“Doubtful,” Val said.

And he was right. Wind didn’t forcefully pound on a door, screaming words muffled by a wall and the rain.

Val stood and pulled on his jeans. “If that’s your goddamn brother…” He opened the drawer of the bedside table. “Damn. Gun’s still in the truck. I guess I won’t shoot him.” Kate followed him into the hall, pulling on a pair of sweatpants.

“Why is the gun in the truck?” Kate asked, trailing after him.

“I took it with me tonight. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

Val went to the door, paused a beat. The pounding, accented by the driving rain, continued. He put a hand on the doorknob, took a knife from the nearby drawer, and threw open the door.

A woman stood on the ground where the steps should have been, drenched and non-threatening, holding a crumpled, bloody, humanoid mess in her arms.

“
Ayúdeme
,” she breathed. Kate and Val blinked at one another. He stood there, staring through the screen door.

“Let her in!” Kate snapped, and Val opened the torn screen door and held it for the woman. Setting the knife on the counter, he took her wrist and helped her inside.

“
Ayúdenos
!” the woman brayed, thrusting the mess at Val, a child, an offering.

Kate swept a few beer cans off the counter, and the woman lay the child down. Val still stood, holding open the door, looking like a deer in headlights. Kate called his name and he let it bang shut.

“What happened?” Kate asked.

“
Un animal. Con las garras
.”

Claws. Val thought of his new friend. Those were the biggest claws he’d ever seen.

Lightning lit the sky, followed by a window-rattling crash of thunder. Had the first bang been the woman, or thunder?

“Puma?” Val asked. He took a step away from the door. The off-white Formica surface of the counter turned pink with blood and water.

Kate reached for the phone on the wall. The line was dead. Out here the phone went out whenever the wind blew. At least they’d had the sense to bury the power lines. She went to the bedroom and pulled her cell out of the pocket of her jeans. She came back to the kitchen, dialing 911.

The child was a boy, maybe seven years old. They’d removed his yellow rain slicker and his pants. Ashen gray on the table, he lay there in a soaked T-shirt and colorful briefs. Val stared at him a moment, those deep gashes; the red making his skin look even more lifeless. Val whipped the leather studded belt out of his pants and fashioned a tourniquet at the boy’s groin. He’d seen it in a movie.

“They’ve got me on hold,” Kate said, her panic barely contained.

“Fuck!” Val started CPR on the boy. The woman kept coming up to Val, standing too close, looking down at what he was doing and praying in Spanish. Blood spurted from the wounds in time with Val’s beating. Someone answered the phone and Kate told them where to come. It would take at least half an hour from Lott to get here, worse if any of the roads had washed out. She explained the boy wasn’t breathing, and someone was doing CPR. The operator asked to be given to Val.

“Looks like his femoral artery is slashed. He’s bleeding all over the place. And the slices in his stomach…I can’t do anything about those. I’ve got compresses on them. He’s lost a lot of blood. I—I got his heart going again. I don’t know if it will last.” Val was silent, listening. He wiped his bloody hands on his pants. “They look like claw marks. She says an animal did it. They showed up at my door, I’m the nearest house, I guess.” He listened again, for a moment. “Big goddamn animal.”

He pumped and breathed for the boy, ignoring the light pink whatever he was fairly sure was an intestine peeking out. Val hung up the phone and looked at Kate.

“He needs a million things I can’t do,” Val said. He applied pressure to the stomach wounds. “Hold this,” he said to the boy’s mother. She did, calling out after them in frustration as they left the room.

Val led Kate to the bedroom. “You need to get the gun out of my truck. Do something with Rich’s Mossberg.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He is going to die. The cops are going to come. And I’m going to get arrested.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hello. What did I just get out of jail for? What kinds of people aren’t I supposed to be around?” He paced back and forth, and she sat on the bed.

“But…they can’t…”

“Sure they can. I had my mouth on his mouth—“

“To save his life.”

“Which I’m sure I didn’t do. That boy is going to die.” Val lowered his voice. “Why didn’t it kill me? I sat right there with it, tonight, and it looked at me. It’s killed everyone else, why not me?” He began to pace. “Should I run? If you think I should, I will.” Before she could answer, he rubbed his eyes and said. “No. That would be stupid. I’m not smart enough to run from the cops. I can’t keep my mouth shut about anything. Fuck, Kate. I don’t want to go back there.”

The mother called from the kitchen, panic in her voice. Val bet the world the heartbeat was gone.

“He’s gone,” Val said. “Get the gun, do something with it. Something smart so hopefully I can find it again.” He ran for the kitchen.

No heartbeat, too much blood. He started CPR, the boy’s lips like cool, flaccid rubber under his own. He lost himself in the rhythm, keeping time in his head with the song
Another One Bites the Dust
. Kate stepped out into the rain, as the hum and
Queen
resonated in his head.

23

Kate stepped out the screen door into the rain. It lambasted her, flattening her hair to her head, soaking her T-shirt and pressing it against her body. She ran to the truck and jumped in on the driver’s side.

When she slammed the door, the dome light went out, and everything seemed very, very black. The rain drummed on the metal roof. She opened the glove box and she reached over, groped around, and picked up the gun. She looked at it in the low light, little more than a blacker spot in the dark.

Would the police look in his dead mother’s room? Above the drop ceiling in her closet? Would they look anywhere at all? Should she move her car? She looked over at it, yellow and inauspicious in the rain. There would be no reason to look in the car. Right?

The kitchen lights were long and distorted by the sluices of rainwater flowing down the truck’s window. Darkness pressed from outside.

What if the thing was out here? She’d seen it, Val had seen it, there was no doubt that’s what got to the little boy. And TJ. And the frat boy. Why hadn’t it gotten Maria? She looked out into the rain, trying to scan the yard for the animal.

It wasn’t far to the house. She could make it there in time. And also before the police arrived, she mused. It wouldn’t do to be caught standing in the driveway, armed and dangerous, when they arrived.

Everything exploded in a flash of blinding white light and an accompanying crash. Across the yard, by the gnarled shape of some scrub brush, Kate saw something, a lithe animal shape crouching. Or a rock.

She might not be able to make it inside after all. She chewed on her lip and stared as hard as she could at the corner of the house, but the lightning had destroyed her night vision.

She had a gun.

She could shoot it, if there was something out there. That could at least slow it down, and let her get in the house. She thought of the flimsy two-ply door, and wondered what good it would do. Stupid Val. This was all his fault. Except it wasn’t. All he’d done was get out of jail. And he wasn’t stupid.

She groped around on the dark floor. Opening the door for the dome light was an option. Then her antagonist would have a clear view of where she was, and the little bit of vision that came back would be gone. She opened the door.

Feeling the rain blowing into the truck, cool wetness in the warm night, she ran. She held the gun in her left hand then she threw the truck door shut with her right and sprinted across the gravel driveway in her bare feet. And nothing happened.

She sort of tucked the gun under her soggy T-shirt and went inside. Looking between Val and the mother, she saw their faces were grim. They both looked at her. The mother dropped her eyes, cradling the boy’s limp, wet body to her. Val wasn’t giving the boy CPR anymore. He followed Kate down the hall.

“You might want to change your shirt.”

“I think I saw something outside.”

“Something?”

“Crouching over by the corner of the trailer, near the brush.” She took the gun to the bathroom, wiped it down. She pulled aside the tile in the closet ceiling, and placed the gun up there. Val handed her the Mossberg, and she placed it next to the handgun. Over the wail of a siren, soft and faint, she replaced the tile.

“Too late, boys,” Val said. “Seriously, change your shirt. Or don’t. Maybe they’ll be less likely to arrest me.”

Kate changed her shirt.

The paramedics came in and started in on the boy, replacing Val’s belt with a real tourniquet. They worked for maybe ten minutes, asked questions of Val, asked the boy’s mother in Spanish. Kate couldn’t understand what she said, but her answers didn’t seem to be what the paramedics were looking for. Then the police arrived.

Spence hurried in, and Duane Harvey. Duane was two years ahead of Kate’s class, but he and Rich had been pretty tight, smoking pot together and some pickup basketball games, and for that reason Duane had something of a personal vendetta against Val.

“Hey, Slade, why don’t you get in the car?” Harvey asked, as the call to the coroner was placed.

“Can I grab a shirt first?”

“We’re not arresting you. We need to talk to both of you at the station for questioning,” Spence said, sounding kinder.

“No thanks,” Val said, ignoring Spence and locking eyes with Harvey.

“Come on, Val. You don’t even have to wear the bracelets. We want to ask you some questions about what happened tonight.” Spence kept his tone even, like someone dealing with a skittish dog.

“Like why you got a dead kid on your table. I thought you weren’t supposed to be around kids.”

“I’m the only child he’s ever molested and you know it,” Kate said. Spence gave a half smile and Harvey looked her up and down. Kate crossed her arms over her chest, glad she’d gotten out of the wet T-shirt. She saw Val’s eyes narrow, and she put a hand on his back.

“I don’t know why Rich hasn’t cleaned your clock,” Harvey said, turning towards the paramedics and the boy.

She could see Val weighing the pros and cons of some smart-ass remark.

“I’ll be right behind you in the truck,” she said to him.

“You’re serious,” Val said to Spence, all good humor bleeding from his voice.

“Just for questions. Grab your shirt and some shoes.”

“Can I sit up front?”

Harvey rolled his eyes and went to talk to the dead boy’s mother.

“Yeah, you can sit up front,” Spence said.

“Then why can’t I ride with her?”

“I need both of you. If you come, I know she’s going to come. If I don’t bring either of you, it’s something of a crapshoot. You hear me?”

Val let a long breath out of his nose. “I hear you. Okay.” Val disappeared down the hall for his shirt, and Spence joined Harvey. Kate stood alone as the boy was gently placed into a big black bag, too big for his small body. His mother cried, and Spence spoke soothingly to her in Spanish. Kate picked up a few words, like
muerto
and
mi hijo
, but that was about it.

Val came out of the bedroom and chucked the truck keys at her. She barely caught them.

“Can we go?” he asked Spence.

Spence excused himself, and turned to Kate and Val. “Yeah. You following, Kate?” She nodded and fetched her own shoes.

Val got like this. She knew he would probably cry if he took a moment to say goodbye to her. The first few months visiting him in jail had all been like this, she reflected, heading out to the truck. He’d been keeping his own emotions in, and keeping her at bay.

It wasn’t until the truck roared to life and the headlights came on, joining the flashing red ambulance lights and the flashing blue police lights that Kate remembered how afraid she’d felt out here not long ago. The truck’s headlights were angled in such a way that they alone illuminated the scrub brush in the side yard. She looked for movement, any sign of life, but in the drumming rain, everything was still.

The police cruiser behind her turned around on the lawn, and headed for Lott, switching off its lights. Kate switched the radio to a country station Val hated, and followed. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through for Felix’s number. Call him? Don’t call him? Val wasn’t okay, and regardless of how Felix unsettled her at the bar, he was Val’s closest friend. She looked at the clock, and as the phone rang in her ear, debated doing this in the morning.

“Hello?” It didn’t sound like she’d wakened him.

“Hi, Felix?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Kate Fulton—”

“Val’s Kate?” Felix’s tone changed.

“Yes, Val’s Kate.”

“How are you? Is Val all right?”

“I don’t know,” she said, keeping her tone cautious. She kept the red taillights of the police cruiser in sight. “His mother died. And…He’s been taken in for questioning.”

“What kind of questioning? About his mother? The police have him?” His voice was like syrup, or like butter, smooth and sexy, yet something about it still put her on edge.

“The sheriff has him.”

“For what?”

“A boy was killed tonight, and Val tried to save him. The deputy we talked to told us he’s just being questioned. I’m even being brought in for questioning, and I don’t know anything.”

“I’ll come by. He’s at the sheriff’s office?”

Kate said yes, and they said goodbye.

They hung up and she sat in the dark for a moment, trying to pin down what she didn’t like about him.

They rolled into Lott’s downtown.