Over Yonder, page 1
Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook
Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my dad. The last time I saw my dad, he was being arrested by the county sheriff’s department. He would have served time in prison if he hadn’t taken his own life in the interim before his trial. The circumstances surrounding his life were nothing like the circumstances of the character in this book. But people (people smarter than me) say that in novels you write the characters you know. And it became clear to me within the first few chapters of this book that I was writing my dad.
Daddy was a good man; he just didn’t know it. He was a religious man—anyone honest enough to grapple with one’s own religion is the most devout there is. He was a father, though he believed he didn’t deserve the honor. He loved to smoke and yet was a fitness enthusiast and long-distance runner who often ate vegetarian. He was a hard guy to understand. He fit no mold.
My father was a blue-collar man with white-collar sensibilities and a neck that showed very red. An ironworker who listened to Bach. A stick welder who read Michener. He was funny. Kind. Sarcastic. Pensive. And he loved boats.
People were drawn to him. He coached Little League. He read books obsessively. He taught me to pray without speaking. He had more sorrow than any man I ever knew, felt pain deeper than anyone who ever lived, and he instilled in me that it was okay for a man to cry publicly. He had many nicknames, but the boys on my Little League team called him “Woody.”
I never knew why.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Epilogue
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Back Ad
Praise for Sean Dietrich
Also by Sean Dietrich
Copyright
Prologue
The girl was dead before she ever got to the hospital. Melinda could tell she was dead because the EMTs were unloading her slowly. They don’t move slowly when you’re alive. The killer had probably not expected the girl to be able to call an ambulance when the vomiting began. Odds are he had not expected the girl to call Melinda either. Melinda was praying the ambulance had arrived at the girl’s apartment before the killer had.
When the ambulance pulled in, Melinda was waiting. She stood at a distance in the rain-slicked parking lot, beneath the vapor lights, smoking a cigarette in earnest, a pile of butts around her feet. She coughed between nearly every inhalation. The chemo had made her weak and wrecked her lungs. For the last hour she had been watching vehicles come and go from the ER entrance. She had come directly from work, which was why she still wore her Taco Bell outfit, minus the stupid obligatory visor. The corporate-approved shirt hung on her emaciated frame, tucked into faded black jeans that were size 0 but still a little too big on her wasted body.
Over the course of the last eleven cigarettes, twenty-two patients had entered the ER’s sliding doors in varying states of disrepair. She had seen one gunshot victim. One stabbing. She saw parents rushing into the ER, tugging their kids by the hands, carrying their children in their arms. She had seen dozens of patients discharged too, wrapped in gauze, holding piles of paperwork, sitting in wheelchairs, marked with bracelets, doomed to wait for a ride. Or worse. Call an Uber.
The cigarette hissed when Melinda stepped on it. She trotted toward the entrance. Her boots clicked against the pavement. Her bleached, fried hair caught the moonglow, like an ʼ80s heavy-metal band singer beneath the stage lights.
When Melinda got to the young woman, she felt tears swell to the surface. The EMTs told her to step back, but Melinda would not. It was her, all right. Her hair had streaks of Pepto-Bismol pink, like all the young kids were doing.
“Crystal!” Melinda shouted. “Oh my God, Crystal!”
“Ma’am, you’re going to need to back away, please.”
“What’s wrong with my friend?” she shouted.
“Ma’am, please.”
“We’re roommates! You can tell me!”
Melinda flung herself atop the body. She pressed her cheek against the girl’s forehead, which was as cold as a slab of marble.
“Crystal! No!”
The EMTs relented and gave her a moment. But after a few seconds, they gently removed Melinda from the deceased, albeit kicking and screaming. They wheeled the gurney past the ER doors, leaving Melinda on the sidewalk alone, mascara trails like two black spider legs crawling down her cheeks.
In her hand was the USB-C flash drive.
On her journey back through the parking lot toward her car, she could see a dark shape moving in tandem with her. She caught glimpses of him beneath the halide lights. He was moving a little too casually.
She walked faster.
So did he.
She slowed down.
He did too.
Her car was only a few feet away when he attacked. He was a big guy. Not tall but solid. Thick cowboy mustache in the shape of a horseshoe. Smooth head, shaved clean. She knew him. She had dated him once. They had both been members of the same organization. Just like Crystal had been.
He tackled her. He shoved her skull into the pavement as she hissed and swore at him. He pressed a knee upon her flailing left wrist, pinning her forearm to the ground.
“You thieving little Judas,” he said.
He searched her pockets with both hands.
And this was his first mistake. The man was so busy searching her that he didn’t see what was in her right hand and thus didn’t know what to do when she stabbed him with it. She jammed the two prong-like electrodes into his rib cage, squeezed the trigger, and released 150,000 volts into his body.
He hit the pavement, unable to move, his face frozen in a silent cry. He sounded like he was choking on his own spit. She hit him two more times with the stun gun until the man had thoroughly wet his pants. She hit him one more time for Crystal’s sake.
Then Melinda crawled off the asphalt, dusted herself off, and plucked the flash drive from his clenched fist. She lit her final cigarette, drew in a cleansing inhalation, and released a breath of fog into the autumn eve.
“Don’t tread on me, Peter,” she said.
Chapter 1
Inmates don’t cry. They can’t. If a guy cries inside, it’s rare. And it doesn’t last. Like a lunar eclipse. Over before it even begins. This is because crying gets you nowhere in prison. When they let you out of prison, however, you want to cry. You need to cry. You need it so badly it’s frustrating. You want to experience the enormous release of celebrative emotion. You want to sob. Heave. Let go of all the accumulated sorrow. Fall onto your knees. Howl and scream. But you just stand there.
Your emotions are missing a few keys in the upper octaves.
Numb. That was how Woody Barker felt as he walked the long, sterile hallway toward the Receiving and Discharging desk. The corridor was gray and featureless, made of cinder blocks. After ten years inside, his hair was the same shade of white as his jumpsuit. And he was a lot leaner than he’d been back when he was fifty.
“This way,” said one of the officers with a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. The officer used his key card to open a large, green steel door. “You get to see what’s behind door number three today, Woody.”
He was escorted by two officers whose faces were made of wood. They were both young and solidly built, like pro wrestlers with badges.
&
Woody checked in with the R&D clerk. She gave him a small envelope containing his Social Security card, birth certificate, and a prepaid Visa with the rest of his inmate account money on it. They gave him some cash. There were purple watermarks on the money. He’d never seen these marks on US currency before.
“What’s wrong?” asked the clerk behind the discharge desk.
“Money looks different,” he said.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Just different.”
“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
His release clothes came in a plastic bag, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And in true BOP fashion, they were prodigiously crappy clothes. Dollar Store Polo shirt, brandless jeans, Nike knockoffs, and cheap underpants that bunched up in your main crevice like thong underwear made of cling wrap. When he emerged from the bathroom wearing his new clothes, tugging at the seat of his pants, he felt odd and out of place. The jeans were rough against his skin. His shirt smelled like plastic. He had also nearly forgotten how to tie his own shoes since he’d gone so long wearing rubber sandals.
“Don’t you clean up nice?” said a female officer who was waiting for him outside the bathroom. The lady guard was imposing, with broad shoulders. The prison had started hiring female guards about five years earlier.
“I feel ridiculous in these clothes.”
“How you think I feel wearing this every day?”
They made Woody wait for about an hour in R&D while they got his paperwork ready. He saw a guy in a nearby office making morning PA announcements. Woody was dumbstruck. He’d heard this man’s voice reading announcements every morning for ten years but had never seen the guy’s face. The guy came out of his office and shook Woody’s hand.
Woody felt like he was meeting a celebrity.
Next, they led Woody to another waiting room, past electronic gates, steel doors, and chicken-wire windows. Finally, he was in the main lobby. The room had cushioned chairs. New carpet. People magazines on sofa tables. The CO and the lieutenant met him in the waiting room. Woody knew them both. But today they were acting differently. The decorum of authority was gone. In this room, they were all just guys. Just regular people.
“It’s going to be a shock to the system out there,” the CO said. “You take care of yourself, boss.”
“Thanks,” said Woody.
“And if you ever get lonely,” added the lieutenant, “you can always come back, and we’ll give you your old room.”
The guards all laughed. But Woody wasn’t certain whether he should join in or lower his head or what. You didn’t laugh with an officer in Wallace Correctional.
After that, the guards fell into quoting many of the prototypical clichés you hear at funerals, weddings, and used car dealership grand openings. There is nothing more human than using a cliché to ruin a ceremonious moment.
“Just take it one day at a time.”
“Live life to the fullest.”
“Be a blessing to others.”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
“Take time to smell the roses.”
“Remember, you’re only as strong as the tables you dance on.”
They all shook hands. Woody marveled at the firmness of their handshakes. He had not shaken another man’s hand more than a few times in over a decade.
The doors of the Wallace Correctional swung open at 1:19 p.m. Woody walked out holding a plastic bag of belongings. His dad’s truck was idling at the curb. His father’s arm was hanging out the open window with the butt of a cigar cupped in it.
Nobody waved goodbye. Nobody did anything, really. He could feel the officers watching another former inmate exit hell on two legs.
And just like that, Reverend Woodrow Barker was a free man.
Chapter 2
The beat-up Honda looked like a porta-john on wheels, only with more rust. The engine backfired and coughed black exhaust into the atmosphere, puncturing nearly visible holes into the ozone above. It had left a hundred-mile trail of sooty atmosphere all the way from Black Creek, Kentucky, to Knoxville. Caroline could hear a heavy grinding beneath the car each time her boyfriend shifted into third. It sounded like the vehicle was going to rattle apart into a heap of nuts and bolts on Interstate 40. The car had no suspension. There was a tetanus-rimmed hole in Caroline’s floorboard; she could see the highway speeding beneath her.
The car was a ’93.
The girl was seventeen and pregnant.
Caroline stared out the lace-like cracks of the passenger window’s single bullet hole at downtown Knoxville as they rode past all the franchise chains that have transformed American townships into carbon duplicates of themselves. Her hair was the color of a carrot. She was 94 percent freckles. Her small, upturned nose, full cheeks, and cherub face brought to mind a character from the highly successful Cabbage Patch Kids product line.
Caroline lowered her book and tapped on the cracked window with the bullet hole in it.
“Pull over here,” said Caroline. “I need to stop by Bath and Body Works.”
Her boyfriend, Tater, glanced out the window at the shopping area’s sea of cars glinting in the sunlight and snow.
“Bath and Body Works?”
“I need to get Selina a thank-you gift.”
Tater ignored her. “We are not going shopping.”
“It’s not shopping. It’s a gift.”
“What does Bath and Body Works even sell?”
“Happiness.”
He snorted. “We’re definitely not going.”
Tater wore a ballcap with a table-flat brim. Around his neck was a thick golden chain bearing a marijuana leaf medallion the size of a baseball glove. His bare torso was painted with a quilt of tattoos, which was why he was shirtless in twenty-nine-degree weather. There was a spider on his left pectoral. Buzz Lightyear was on his other one, flying in a victory pose as he plunged through outer space, hovering directly over Tater’s right nipple as though it were Neptune.
He took a hit from his vape pen. “Selina can buy her own freaking perfume.”
“She’s covering my shifts.”
“So?”
“So it’s a way of saying thank you. She had to get a babysitter and everything.”
He laughed. “She’s stealing your hours. She should be buying you perfume.”
He sped past Bath and Body Works.
“Are you serious right now?” she said.
Tater Bunson was indeed serious. Short men usually were, and her boyfriend was barely five feet tall with shoes on. He wore a baby-hair mustache on his upper lip that was only visible in certain lighting. They had been together for a year, and it had not been a good year.
“Where’s my next turn?” he said.
She looked at Tater’s phone GPS. “It’s right here.”
Caroline was multitasking, calling out turns, but also reading a Richard Russo novel in her other hand. They shared one phone between them, and it belonged to Tater. Tater was the Keeper of the Phone because he was male. Caroline had never owned her own phone, and like most seventeen-year-olds, there was nothing she wanted out of life more than the latest model of Apple phone.
Tater spun the wheel right.
The car made a sound not unlike a Folgers can of rocks falling down a public stairwell. The Honda Civic EJ1 was a mutant vehicle, composed entirely of spare parts, forming a checkerboard of salvage-lot steel. The hood was primer gray, caked with clods of Tennessee dirt. The tires were a curated collection of four differently aged junkyard donuts. The spiderweb crack on the passenger window came from a .22 caliber bullet that had passed through the glass during Tater’s last heated disagreement with his mom.
“Wait,” said Caroline. “Why are you turning right?”
“You just said turn right here.”
“No,” Caroline said. “I said turn right here. You’re supposed to turn left right here.”
“What the hell, Caroline! Which is it? Right or left?”
She lowered her book and pointed out the windshield. “Can’t you see the hospital on your left?”
