Allegories of the Tarot (15 page)

“
eeping
Woma?” King squinted at
me, unhappy with the little bit of nothing clue to his son’s whereabouts.

“It was part of a word. I could see other letters, but
the angle was wrong.” I took out a cigarette, but my hands shook too bad to
light it. King lit it for me, staring into my eyes. His eyes held almost as
much emotion as a lizard’s.

“Might know where that’s at.” The owner of the hoarse
voice approached the table. The name on his vest was Trench Coat. I didn’t want
to think about how he got it.

“Oh yeah?”
King
acknolwedged Trench Coat with a disinterested nod.

“I grew up in Bandera.
Used to be a
place right outside the county line called Weeping Woman Creek.
Nothing
out there back then. We’d go to drink and party.”

“This makes sense.” Corman leaned across the table.
“They were headed west, gonna take Justice to see Ashley’s mom.” He grabbed a
faded, stained map off the table and traced a route with one freckled finger.
“Her mom lives in Edwards County.
Right here.”
He
tapped the map. “See? They’d have gone that way.”

“That’s Holy Roller Country.” Trench Coat probably
hadn’t seen his dick in years if his huge belly was any indication. “Think
those sumbitches got ‘em?”

That inspired a low rumble throughout the room.

“So where is Weeping Woman Creek?” Corman had more
finesse than his father, but his tone of voice indicated his patience was
headed the way of the dinosaur.

“Right here.”
Trench Coat
pointed one dirty finger at the map.

“My boy’s dead?” King narrowed his eyes and pinned me
with his arctic stare.

I closed my eyes.
“Probably.
They either hit him or shot him in the head. If you ain’t heard from him in ten
days…”

“We’ll go there,” Corman said.
“Find
Justice.
Maybe Ashley.
See what those fucking
Holy Rollers had to do with this.”

I sagged with relief, grateful to see this little job
done and me no worse for the wear. I turned to Wade, expecting to see his grin,
to see him standing, ready to take me out of here. Instead, he hunched over the
table, holding his beer in both hands.

“She needs more clothes if we’re riding that far. Dry
ones.”

I could have cried. Defeated, I sat at the table tracing
the names carved into it while the men looked for clothes.

I found myself wearing a pair of assless leather pants
over my jeans, a dry t-shirt scented with cheap men’s cologne, and a beat up
denim button down shirt. Wade found a woman’s leather jacket and told me I’d
want it after dark, especially if it rained.

“I don’t understand why I have to go.” I didn’t want to
ride motorcycles all the way to the Hill Country in the gray rain.
Especially not with the Six Gun Revolutionaries.
I wanted to
be at my grandmother’s house, exchanging pornographic text messages with my
boring cop boyfriend. Guilt for running off with Wade ate at me. If something
happened to me, what would my grandmother do?

“Because you ain’t finished finding
Isaac and his family yet.
And you ain’t figured out who’s responsible.”
Wade stuffed the leather jacket into his fiberglass saddlebag. He looked up
from his task and winced at the expression on my face. He put his hand on my
arm. “I’m sorry about this. But there’s nothing I can do that won’t make things
worse. And I couldn’t blow them off. Please try to understand.”

“How’d you get involved with them?” I leaned close to
him and pitched my voice low. He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Met Corman in Iraq.
Became friends.
We saved each other’s asses a few times. Got
home, my girl had married another guy, and there wasn’t much to ground me to
civilian life. I got in trouble.” He watched me. “Corman and King got me out of
it. Understand?”

“Yeah.”
I knew about that kind
of trouble.

Wade leaned in close. I noticed, for the first time, his
black beard had threads of gray running through it.

“I’ll make you a promise,” he said in a near whisper,
his breath tickling my face. “You will get out of this alive. Or we’ll both be
dead because they’ll have to kill me first. You’re the first real friend
outside these dudes I’ve had in a long time, and I will take care of you.”

There was nothing else to say. Wade threw his leg over
his big two-wheeler. I climbed on behind him. Around us, more Six Gun Revolutionaries
mounted their bikes. Several other members loaded a white paneled van nearly
hidden at clubhouse’s edge.

King and Corman walked to their bikes, positioned
closest to the mouth of the concrete parking lot. Movements around us grew
frenzied as the other men finished their preparations. The air stilled in
anticipation.

King mounted his bike first and hit the starter. The
engine turned over on the first try and killed the silence. Maybe one second
passed before the air boomed with deafening mechanical thunder.

Wade turned to me, his face split by the widest of
grins. Cupped in his palm was a set of orange earplugs. I took them gratefully
and shoved them in my ears. They blunted the noise but did not erase it.

The sound vibrated every inch of my body, all the way to
the root of every hair follicle. In perfectly timed intervals, the Six Gun
Revolutionaries took off in staggered pairs. By the time we got to the main
highway, the noise and the utter intensity of it swallowed me. I was in the
belly of the monster.

After three hours, my toes went numb. After five hours,
my back ached, and I’d learned I could sleep with my forehead pressed between
Wade’s shoulders. His light pat on my knee woke me from a half doze in which I
dreamed of a place that didn’t vibrate or smell like gasoline, or hot tire
rubber. He pointed at the Bandera county limits sign as we passed it.

We slowed, and I became aware of the roar of a
motorcycle approaching fast. The guy who went to high school in Bandera flew
past us, leaning over his handlebars, his wild hair flying behind him like a
flag. He took the lead position and led us through the town’s main street where
tourists dressed in bright colors pointed and waved. The Six Guns grinned and
waved back.

We found our way to the two-lane road in my vision and
pulled to a stop in front of the sign reading “Weeping Woman Creek.” The
motorcycles shut off one here and one there until all were silent. Even in the
silence, my ears rang.

Wade helped me off the motorcycle, and it was all I could
do not to rock, imitating the constant motion of the last few hours. King and
Corman came straight at me, both faces set in grim lines. Corman snatched my
arm and dragged me to the bridge from my vision. I jerked out of his grip and
went to the spot where Isaac, the man in my vision, had knelt. A rust colored
stain peppered the white rocks in the creek bed. I gestured at it. Corman and
King crowded next to me.

“Where is my brother, ghost girl?” Corman barked the
words at me.

I ignored him and opened my second sight, something I’d
been learning to do, and scanned the area. The white sand on the ground hurt my
eyes in the late afternoon sun. I squinted into the shadows, praying I found
King’s missing family. And fast. King and Corman’s veneer of nice could wear
off any second, and I didn’t want to be around when it did.

I didn’t want to see a child’s ghost, but I looked for a
smaller figure thinking the spirit of a baby might be confused enough to hang
around. The thought of a child hurt over Six Gun Revolutionary
business
sickened and angered me. But the thought of what
the Six Guns might do if I didn’t fulfill my end of our bargain worried me
more. I believed Wade. He’d die fighting for me. But he would die. Then, I
would, too. I had to make myself do this thing, like it or not.

A movement in the monochrome shadows caught my eye. The
apparition flickered and jerked, flitting at the edge of my field of vision. I
motioned at King and Corman and headed toward the shadow, sliding down the
rocky embankment in my hurry.

“Show us,” I called out to Isaac’s ghost, knowing he
would take us to his earthly remains. Despite the heat, a cool otherworldliness
burned at me, and I shivered in my damp clothes. Isaac’s ghost appeared a few
feet away, and I led my entourage along, dread at what I was about to see
beating at me.

Poor Isaac.
He looked no older
than thirty, my age. Further proof I could meet an end like this, maybe today.
Fifty more
steps,
and we stood before his corpse.
Animals had been at him, but the fist-sized hole in his head was done by a man.
The wind shifted, and the stench hit me. A low moan went up from the men around
me, and I covered my face.

The hum of flies a few feet away drew my attention.
Shouldn’t they be here with Issac? I broke off from the pack and walked a few
feet deeper into the woods, whispering a mantra of “please not the baby.” What
I saw struck me speechless.

I barely recognized Ashley from the photo on King’s
phone. Scavengers had picked away half the skin on her face and one eye. Her
captors had tied her to a tree. The splash of blood on her inner thighs
suggested they’d done quite a bit to her after tying her up. I backed away,
holding my hands over my mouth, the horror of her last minutes playing in my
mind.

King approached me, stepping into my personal space. He
yanked me against his chest, which was like hitting a brick wall. “Where’s my
grandson? Where’s Justice?”

I shook my head, unable to speak. He was about to hurt
me, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. A hand closed around my arm
and jerked me away from King.

“Don’t touch her. She ain’t property of this club. She’s
helping us.” Wade’s calm voice carried only an edge of menace.
That small rebuke made the men around us stiffen
, some of
them reaching into waistbands for weapons.

“Forget it, Daddy.” Corman plucked something from the
scrub grass near the body and stood, holding it up.
A silver
cross.
“Holy Rollers.
One of them must have
lost it in the struggle. Bet they got Justice.”

What struggle? In the vision, King’s other son hadn’t
struggled at all. He’d been resigned to his fate, only worried about his wife
and son. And how much of a struggle had poor Ashley put up? Finding that cross
was awfully convenient, but I sure as hell wouldn’t argue about it. The sooner
I got out of this situation, the better.

“Sonsabitches.
Bet they want
money to get him back.” King narrowed his eyes.
“All right.
Teeter and Mook is behind us in the van. Then, we’re gonna get those fuckers.”

I glanced at Wade, silently asking if we could leave. He
gave me a slight nod. I edged toward him. About halfway there, my cell phone
rang. All eyes turned to me, and I wished I could shrink into a little ball. I
groaned and punched the ignore button. The phone immediately began ringing
again.

“Answer it.” I didn’t even see who gave the order. With
all those mean eyes boring into my skin, I just did it.

“Oh god, please don’t take my baby.” The woman’s scream
roughened voice raised the hair on the back of my neck. Helplessly, I hit the
speakerphone button and held up the phone. “Don’t do that. No, please, no. I
never would’ve called you if I’d realized it was going to be like this.”

King cut through the cluster of men, elbowing people out
of his way and snatched the phone from me and held it close to his ear.

“Somebody shut her up.” The male voice sound cold, calm,
as if he listened to women beg every day. The sound of flesh striking flesh
came over the speaker, and I swallowed hard, desperate to get away from this
scene, these people. The call ended.

Conclusions and questions raced through my mind. Of
course, Ashley couldn’t have called me. She was dead right in front of us. I’d
never had a ghost call my cell phone. It might have been funny had it not
scared me so damn bad.

“She knew who killed Isaac,” one of the men said.

“Sounds to me like she set it up,” another voice said.

King and Corman exchanged a glance. Betrayal, especially
from a woman, threw their authority into question. The air grew pregnant with
tension. Wade gripped my arm and pulled me against him.

“I think I recognized that voice, and it ain’t
no
Holy Roller.” The young man speaking only had part of the
Six Gun Revolutionaries emblem on the back of his jacket. His patch read “Prospect”.
I knew enough about this culture to understand he was new, trying to earn full
membership.

Corman appeared next to the younger man. “Who is it
Dolan?”

“I think
it’s
Ashley’s brother.
I talk to him every month when I pick up…” He glanced at me and gulped.
“Shipments in Austin.”

King’s gaze shot to me and then back at Dolan who nearly
cowered. He’d given away something in front of an outsider. The little turd
just put me in more danger from these thugs.
Idiot.
I
wanted to kick the shrimpy little fool where it hurt.

“How sure are you?” Corman gripped Dolan’s shoulder and
spoke kindly, playing good cop to King’s bad cop.

“Sure as I can be.” Dolan swallowed hard, and a bead of
sweat rolled down his forehead and dripped off his jawbone. “They got a place
somewhere out here. Just don’t know quite where it is.”

“Toad went to school with Ashley,” Corman said. “He’s at
work, but I can call him.”

“Do that,” King said and turned to me. “I heard you date
a cop.”

King held my eyes. In that second, I thought my fate was
sealed. I knew something about shipments. I knew the Sixguns planned on making
their own justice for Isaac’s—and now probably Ashley’s—murder. Begging
wouldn’t do any good. All I could do was act tough and hope it worked.