Stag, page 18
They sat in the Bronco watching the door as if waiting for someone to come out. Finally Batey turned off the engine.
Okay, he said.
The dome light shined for a moment as both doors opened and for a moment Fielding watched his shadow over the concrete and it seemed to be moving of its own volition and he had the urge to warn it to go no further. To shout out the mistake it was making. But then he closed the door behind him and the shadow disappeared. Batey came around the truck and the two stood side by side looking at the door leading in.
You know that feeling you get watching a scary movie, Batey said, when the character is about to do something dumb and you’re sitting there yelling at the screen telling him not to go through that spooky door of an old, abandoned paper mill?
Sure do, Fielding said.
Me too.
Well.
Yep.
The handle of the door was cold against Fielding’s hand as he touched it. The metal was rusted and the rust was boiling up and was so thin in spots you could put your finger through it. Fielding tried the handle. He thought it would be locked but the handle swung down and the door opened.
Convenient, Fielding said. He pulled the door.
The smell that came from inside was like a cave. Within was a blackness absolute. A void without end. The rain had started up again. Batey snapped on his flashlight and the bigger drops fell through the beam with a kind of impatient determination. They stepped through the door. There was water at their feet.
Don’t let that shut behind yeh, Fielding said.
Batey wedged a rock in the jamb and then lifted his flashlight to the room. There were miles of overhead tubing. Bent pipes. Tanks and valve wheels. Dials with shattered glass faces and the indicator pins frozen in place. There were prison-like elevated walkways. It looked at once orderly and chaotic. The flashlight caught only glimpses of it in its narrow spectrum as Batey swung it around. Fielding was squinting as if it were blinding. The roof was leaking and there were pools of stagnant water all over the floor. They stood and listened. They didn’t know what for but still they listened. There was only the sound of the rain on the roof. The water dripping through.
Yeh want to lead the way? Fielding asked. I’m already lost.
Batey led them down the only way they could go. At the end of the corridor was an airtight door like in a ship. It had been left open. They stepped through one at a time. The air seemed to be getting worse. Sulfuric. A faint smell of sweet rot. And heavy. Like they could drape it over their shoulders. Like it could smother out their lungs.
This lookin familiar? Fielding asked.
He pointed his light across the room.
Through that door, Batey said.
Stinks in here.
I’m hoping that bad smell isn’t what I think it is. Here.
He handed Fielding his gun.
What am I goin a do with this?
Shoot it, Batey said. If it comes to that.
They walked to the door on the far side of the room. Batey put his hand on the handle.
Ready?
Fielding nodded. He raised the gun. Batey opened the door slowly. The hinges didn’t make a sound. The door eased in. It was like it was being inhaled. Neither man moved. The flashlight cut a stark line over the floor where the door had stopped. They waited as if something was going to cross the path of light but nothing did. Not even a single speck of dust.
Yeh keep that trained upward, Fielding said. Don’t let it go dark in here.
He walked through the door with the gun raised. Neither of them knew what they were expecting but what they saw was not it. The room was large with high ceilings and was completely empty. Every bit of machinery had been removed. The tanks, the boilers. Not even a forgotten bolt. As if the place had been scrubbed clean. All the glass was gone from the windows near the ceiling and the rain was coming in.
Where’d everythin go? Fielding asked.
I don’t know.
This is the room, Fielding said. I recognize it.
Yep.
They walked out to the middle of the room and stood in the very spot where the girl on the video had been tied to the table and murdered. Batey looked down at the cement floor where a stain should have been. But there was no stain. Only the anemic gray of the concrete. Batey walked around with the flashlight trained on the ground in an attempt to find a bloodstain but he couldn’t find anything. Fielding was looking up at the punched-out windows where a lighter shade of black was printed in the open frames.
Maybe we got it wrong? Fielding said.
No, Batey said. This is the place.
Blood don’t come out of concrete easily.
A sound came careening from the far side of the room and Batey wheeled around with the flashlight and stunned there in the yellow light was a wharf rat the size of a house cat. Its tail more than a foot long. The oily hair on its back was clumped with wet. It hunched there blinking at them. Fielding raised the gun and aimed it at the animal and said, Git. Then the rat ran off and again they were left with an empty room.
Well? Batey said.
Yeah.
They retraced their steps back to the Bronco. Outside the rain was coming harder. Inside the Bronco the rain was loud as it crashed against the roof. They sat there silent. Fielding handed Batey back the gun. Then he faced the window looking out at the mill.
Bit of a wasted trip, Batey said. Not even sure what we were looking for.
Wasn’t a waste, Fielding said. Got Thursday night after all. Might tell us somethin.
Yeah, Batey said. How you going to navigate that, by the way?
I do not know, Fielding said. Suppose I’ll have to beat it out of him.
Batey grinned but when he turned to look at Fielding he saw Fielding was not grinning and judging by the look on his face they were thinking the same thing. That by the end of this someone was going to die. Batey did not know who was going to die, if it was going to be one of them or someone else, but someone was going to die. That he knew.
46
THE GUN PRICE CARRIED HAUNTED WILSON IN THE FOLLOWING days of his recovery. It was an odd gun. It was more like an emblem, a stance. There was some kind of pride in it that a typical lawman would not foster. It nagged at Wilson. It was the kind of symbol that demands attention. One that forces you to take notice and never forget.
For three days and nights he lay in that hospital bed. A cycle of nurses. A doctor or two. A gale on the second night throwing water at the stalwart institution like a child with a garden hose. The morphine drip tilted the weather to something out of The Odyssey. Being there in bed with no company and no one to hold him accountable to separate fiction from reality, Wilson turned the image of Price’s gun over and over in his head. Had no idea why he was fixated on it. But it became an obsession. Every time he closed his eyes he saw it. Behind the black curtain of his eyelids the polished metal winked. It was on display. It taunted him. Cried out to be touched.
Then on the third night Wilson came reeling awake. Sweat coursing past his temples, the hospital gown wet against his skin. He sat up and pulled the IV from his arm. He rubbed his face. He kicked his feet to the floor. Went to the window and looked down the corridor toward the nurses’ station. At that late of an hour the post was held by three sleepy-eyed women. They were talking and drinking coffee. Wilson found his clothes in a drawer. He dressed in the dark room then went to the window again. He waited there ten minutes. Fifteen. Two of the nurses had left the station to do rounds. One still sat there looking at a magazine. He waited until he was sure she wouldn’t look up. Then he opened the door and walked down the corridor away from the nurses’ station, turning once to check that no one was following him. Slipped under a sign marked EXIT and then loped-ran down the stairs and out of the hospital.
At his hotel the night clerk nodded at him.
They let you out? he asked.
Something like that, Wilson said. He was holding his side. The clerk looked where Wilson’s hand was pressed. Wilson didn’t dare move his hand. He was afraid that if he did it would come away all full of blood.
Anyone to see me? Wilson said.
No one.
Don’t let anyone know I’m here quite yet. Can you do that?
Of course.
He went up to his room and sat down on the bed. Took his hand away from his side. He went to the bathroom and took a hand towel from the rack and pressed it into the blood. Then he went back to the bed and looked at the corkboard.
Doesn’t make sense, he said. Two guys with no record just happen to be found dead? Chief of police just standing around? Doesn’t make sense.
Then he picked up the phone and dialed a number.
Hello?
Deputy, Wilson said. Did I wake you?
Agent Wilson?
I wake you?
No sir. What can I do you for?
You hear anything back from the coroner on those two men, Evan Nesbit and Conor Hogan.
Yessir.
What’d you hear?
One asphyxiated. One from a gunshot.
How about the woman? Kimberly Roma.
Gunshot.
Yes, Wilson said. Anything in that report regarding their blood? Anything in their system?
No sir.
Nothing?
No sir.
Thank you, deputy, Wilson said. He hung up the phone without saying goodbye.
He went to the television and turned on the VCR and pressed rewind till he saw it. For three days and nights it had eluded him. He pressed pause. He stood there shaking his head. He was almost embarrassed. But there it was. Very discreet, seemingly out of the shot. Hanging from the wall. Slung in its holster. Desert Eagle .50.
47
WEDNESDAY DAWNED COLD AND BRITTLE. THE RAIN HAD turned to snow sometime in the night. It was a wet snow and all the branches of the cedars were heavy and they frowned toward the white ground like they bore the weight of not only the snow but also something else. It was just after eight when Fielding awoke. The yard was white, the pasture. Reefs of purple clouds stacked toward the paling eastern sky.
Fielding put the coffee on. He made a morning fire in the stove. When the coffee was done he took it in bed with the down comforter pulled to his chest. The room felt cold. The heeler lay asleep at the foot of the bed. Sometimes he would yip at the deer or grouse he was chasing in his dreams. Fielding listened to the cedarwood popping in the stove. Listened for anything else but there was nothing else to hear. Totally quiet. Like every morning.
Late in the morning he went to see the horses. When he opened the door of the barn their heads swung up from the stallboards. Their eyes were big and wet. Snake was looking through the hair of his mane. Fielding walked toward Snake and Snake tossed his head. He pressed his long face into Fielding’s hand.
Yeh boys warm enough? Fielding asked. Got cold last night.
He rubbed Snake between the eyes. Rubbed down the long bridge of his nose. Snake’s nostrils were working the air. The bone beneath the skin was like rock. Fielding let his hand rest where it was. Through the caged mane Snake’s dark eyes looked back at him and dished within that dark world Fielding saw himself and the somber expression on his face. And looking into them he knew there were things in this world he would never know or even care to. And he said to the horse, Yeh got no idea what’s goin on out there, do yeh? The Appaloosa blinked at him. Fielding said, I envy that.
He opened the stall door and walked in and closed the door behind him. Snake turned his head and watched him. Fielding took down the hackamore from the nail in the wall. The bosal was a pale color and made of rawhide and the rope cinched to the bosal was made of horsehair. Fielding liked the way it felt in his hands. There was a certain amount of weight to it, like it would never wear out. Like it would outlive the horse it was used on. Outlive the rider. He slipped the bosal over Snake’s nose and laced the thin leather strap behind his ears and buckled it just below his eyes. Snake tossed his head once.
I know, Fielding said. But we’ll get it.
He led the horse from the stall and dallied the rope and went to get the saddle. The tack room was at the far end of the barn and Snake watched him as he walked the length. Inside the room was nice and dry. Fielding snapped on the light. The old Rowell saddle hung on a thick wooden post. He lifted the saddle and the Navajo blanket and carried them out and snapped off the light and shut the door and walked them back down the barn where Snake stood watching him. He draped the blanket over Snake’s back. Then he lifted the saddle and buckled the girth strap. He undallied the rope and led Snake through the barn and into the falling snow.
The wind was perfectly still. The snow fell in silence. The snow was wet on the ground and wherever the pair stepped their prints turned dark in the mud. Snake’s breath smoked in the waxen light.
He stopped Snake and told him what he was about to do. Said, Just let me get my boot in here.
He stuck a boot in the stirrup and then said, Just goin a swing my leg up.
He sat the horse for a moment and together they watched the falling snow. He snapped his tongue and tapped his boot-heels into Snake.
Uh-oh, he said.
And once again the horse took off in a pounding gallop. More than once he attempted to stop him by reining back but it was like trying to pull a log from water. With the bosal taut against his nose Snake ran with his neck erect and his face turned down in a calamitous fashion. Again Fielding lost his hat. With his head jostling and hands and reins aloft, he looked the part of an ill-fated buckaroo. And not sure what to do with the fence line approaching, he kicked his right foot out of the stirrup and leapt from the saddle.
He hit the ground with his back against the earth. His face staring up at the sky. He lay unmoving for fear something was broken. But he felt around and everything felt as it should. Nothing busted, only his ego.
Snake returned and stood above him, blinking his large eyes like he’d never seen a man lying on the ground before.
If yeh kill me, Fielding said, who’s goin a feed yeh?
A little breath of wind kicked up and Snake’s long mane lifted with it.
I’d yell at yeh if yeh weren’t so pretty, he said.
Out over the snow he heard the hooves of another horse. He thought at first it might be Buckshot escaped from his stall but the gait was not the gait of a mule. He lifted himself up to sit with his elbows propping him and he saw a rider approaching over the white pasture. The horse was a dun-colored Morgan with a dark mane. The woman riding it had a long black braid over her shoulder and a broad flat-brimmed hat the color of flour and she had set the Morgan into a trot and she moved with the horse in a way Fielding had never seen before. Closer she came he could tell she was smiling. She slowed the horse and then sat it with her hands laid one atop the other on the saddle horn.
So this is what happens when yeh die? he said.
Excuse me, she said.
Some pretty lady on a horse comes to take yeh away.
You aren’t dead, Mr Fielding.
Mrs Batey, Fielding said. To what do I owe the pleasure?
Figured it might be a good morning for a ride.
Yer too late, he said. Already rode him.
She was wearing a worn Carhartt jacket and a pair of Wranglers that came up high on her waist and they made her legs look longer than they already were.
Can’t help but wonder, Coraline said.
What’s that?
Why a grown man is lying in all this wet snow when there’s a perfectly good horse standing over him.
Thought I’d give him a break, Fielding said.
She leaned in her saddle and offered him a hand.
My knight in shining Wranglers, he said.
He took her hand and made a painful kind of sound and stood and tried to clean his hands on the thighs of his jeans. Coraline swung out of her saddle. She draped the reins over the Morgan’s neck and the Morgan stood there without moving. She went over to Snake and leaned into him and spoke Spanish in a soft voice Fielding couldn’t understand. She closed her eyes as she spoke and she rubbed Snake’s neck and spoke to him some more. She slipped her fingers under the girth strap to check it. Oh, she said. Pobrecito. She unbuckled it and loosened it by a notch. Then she went around him and looked at every part of him. Snake tossed his tail like it was chasing flies. She came around again and held Snake’s face in her hands and looked into his eyes.
What made you choose him? she asked.
Yeh mean Snake?
I mean an Appaloosa.
What’s wrong with an Appaloosa?
Absolutely nothing.
Then why yeh askin me?
They’re a bit spirited is all.
Spirited is good.
Sure, Coraline said.
What’s that look for?
Nothing.
That look yer givin me, Fielding said. That ain’t nothin.
You want my unsolicited opinion?
I got a choice?
I’d have you set up with a quarter horse. Around nine years old. Broke and trained so even a toddler could ride him. And you’re riding a hackamore?
Yes mam.
Ran through your hands, didn’t he?
Yeh saw that, did yeh?
Caught a glimpse.
She rubbed Snake between the eyes. She rubbed her hand down his nose.
Why are you riding a hackamore, Coraline asked, and not a snaffle?
I don’t know, Fielding said. I don’t know what a snaffle is.
It’s a bit, she said.
She put her finger between her teeth and bit down.
A bit?
A bit.
So a hackamore ain’t a bit?
No, she said. A hackamore’s a hackamore.
What’s the difference?
It’d be like driving a race car in roller skates.
Yeh mean it’d be tricky?
Means you better be a good driver.
I haven’t worn roller skates in years.
Then I wouldn’t recommend taking them to Daytona.
Come to think of it, Fielding said, I ain’t ever driven a race car either.
