Authors: Christopher Rice
“Did your manager see who left it?”
She shook her head. It didn’t take John much effort to trace Duncan’s motions. After leaving the trailer park, he had headed for Patsy’s bar. Patsy had held on to her last name, so it hadn’t been that hard to trace the connection. Maybe Duncan had been waiting for him, expecting him to run to her, and when he hadn’t, he dropped the letter. The spot marked with an X was just a short drive north from Patsy’s bar.
“Stay with him,” John said. Patsy started shouting questions at him, but he was already walking toward his truck, and in his mind he was already gunning it down the blacktop.
He was going seventy-five down Old Woman Springs Road, weaving in and out among camper-shell-crowned pickup trucks on their way to work in Morongo Basin, when he saw the green Jeep Grand Cherokee following from about five car lengths away. When he reached the spot marked on the map, his sister was gaining on him, and within less than a minute, the Jeep joined him on an unpaved road that had been ground down by tire tracks, which kept the unobstructed sand-shifting winds from covering it over entirely. They passed a lone trailer, then a second one that looked abandoned, then there was nothing but open sand leading to a wide valley between two mountains, chocolate islands in a sea of chalk dust.
Something blinded him briefly: harsh sunlight reflected off a nearby surface. When he parked the truck, his sister did the same behind him and hopped to the ground.
“I wanted you to stay with him!” he called to her.
“Yeah, and I want a nice, healthy husband and a private plane. What the hell was in that envelope?”
Instead of answering her, he headed toward the spot the reflection had come from, heard her footsteps behind him and then several crunches of sand that indicated they had been joined by a third party. When he turned he saw his sister frozen in her tracks a few paces behind him, her open palms in front of her, as if she were trying to hold the sand in place. A three-foot-long sidewinder curled its way through the sand between them, its rough scales giving it traction. John held his ground as well, waiting for it to depart and waiting for Patsy to run back to her Jeep because she hated snakes more then anyone he had ever met. But she did no such thing. Once their unwelcome visitor had departed, she lifted her eyes to John’s; then her eyes focused on something behind him, and she pointed to it.
A shovel had been driven into the sand several yards away, and a tiny shaving mirror had been duct-taped to the top of the handle. When John pulled the shovel free, an envelope slid across the sand; it had been slightly buried under the tip of the blade. He opened it and removed a single sheet of paper with a single line of text in the center: CUT HIM LOOSE AND WALK AWAY, OR…John started digging. A few minutes later he hit something solid, got down on his hands and knees, and unearthed a metal cash box that could be purchased at any office supply store. A second envelope was taped to the lid.
He opened it and pulled out a note that said…IT ALL GOES TO PIECES.
From behind him, his sister said his first name as if she thought she could imbue its single syllable with all the warning in the world. But before he could entertain the idea that there even was such a thing as fear, John opened the box.
Inside was a severed hand covered in dried blood. On the index finger was a silver ring with a red ruby in the center, the same University of Arizona graduation ring Mike Bowers had worn on a chain around his neck during their deployment. Behind him his sister started cursing into her palms.
John rarely prayed, but he did believe moments of silence could work some effect on the soul. For just a short time they allowed him to imagine he was hollow and that the evils of the world could pass through him like a mist, leaving only a light stain on his insides. But the severed hand in front of him had held him safely against the ground as a storm of shrapnel and white flame had swept over him; there was no breathing that out.
When he turned around, he saw that Patsy was hunched over, as if she were sick to her stomach, her wide-eyed stare fixated on the blackened fingers visible in the open cash box. Her hands were still covering her mouth and she didn’t seem to see her younger brother at all.
“Give me your phone,” John heard himself say.
She stared at him for a few seconds. Then, when she saw his outstretched hand, she seemed to remember his request and handed over her cell phone. Her cell carrier’s information service put him right through to the Owensville Sheriff’s Department at no charge, and when a female deputy answered, John said, “I need to speak to Ray Duncan.”
“
Captain
Duncan is not in right now,” the deputy responded.
“Is there something I can help you with, sir?”
“Yeah. Give him a message for me. Tell him when he gets to the middle he’s going to hit steel.”
When they got back, Alex was inside, nursing a cup of coffee at a tiny kitchen table exactly like the one in John’s trailer, his rigid posture suggesting he was afraid of breaking one of the many ceramic animals that lined the shelves above his head.
John set the cash box down on the table in front of Alex and opened the lid with both hands. As soon as he saw what was inside, Alex reared up as if the table had caught on fire, one hand shooting to his mouth, the other holding his gut as if it had been pierced. He made a sound that John didn’t have words for, then shook his head violently as tears sprouted from his eyes.
A necessary evil,
John told himself.
You couldn’t have made this easier for him. He had to see this the same way you saw it.
“This is how Duncan is going to play this. So think hard about how you’re going to play it. Real hard. Because this came with a note: ‘Cut him loose and walk away, or it all goes to pieces.’ Do you understand what that means, Alex?”
Still frozen halfway between sitting and standing, his eyes screwed shut, his hands clasped against lips in tortured prayer, Alex had no response except to shake his head as if he were turning down an invitation to jump into a wood chipper headfirst. John heard his sister say his name softly from across the room, and he held up one hand to silence her.
“Now, I know you don’t think there’s any authority that can help you in this, but you need to think real hard about that, Alex. Real hard. Because this man has Mike’s body, and if we don’t do something about it, he’s going to send it to us in pieces. So you take some time and you
think
.”
When she saw he was headed for the front door, Patsy stepped out of it ahead of him and held it open behind her. He had one foot across the threshold when Alex said, “What about
your
decision?”
“I’ve made it!” John said. “I’m not cutting you loose. Mike Bowers saved my life, and you’re the only thing he left behind. That’s not up for debate.”
He drew the door shut behind him before Alex could use any words to distract himself from what sat right in front of him.
After John finished telling her the story of how Bowers had saved his life and lost an eye for it, Patsy cracked the driver-side window of her Jeep Grand Cherokee and lit a Virginia Slim. “And if he doesn’t go to the authorities? What then?”
“I teach him how to defend himself.”
“Against who? Ray Duncan?”
“Against whoever he runs into on the road to being a complete fucking idiot.”
“So you teach him how to fight? Then what? You wash your hands of him?”
“I’ll get out of California, probably. I’ve always wanted to see Montana.” He thought of the CHP study guide sitting in the kitchen drawer of a trailer he didn’t feel safe returning to.
After a few seconds of silence, he realized she was glaring at him as if he had cut wind. “You’re shitting me, right?” Patsy asked.
“It’s not going to come to that,” he said, with a glance back toward the trailer. “Not after what I just showed him.”
“
The Hunt for Red October,
” she said quietly. “The Russian guy. Sean Connery’s friend. The whole movie he’s talking about how he wants to see Montana. Then he gets shot at the end and before he dies he says, ‘I would have liked to have seen Montana.’ Just like you did right now.”
“I don’t remember the film that well, Patsy.”
“Well, sometimes when we’re scared and stupid, old shit just comes up. Old memories we didn’t know we had.” She pursed her lips and stared back at the seemingly lifeless trailer a few yards away. “Montana,” she whispered. “What the fuck, John?”
“California hasn’t been so kind to me, Patsy.”
“Iraq was nicer?” she asked. The anger in her tone told him she had taken the comment as an indictment of her parenting skills. “Maybe you should look at how you’ve treated California.”
“I’m trying to do something
right now,
Pats. Something good.”
“And you’re already planning the vacation you’re going to go on afterward.”
“I was going to start cadet training in a few weeks. For the CHP.”
“You’re not exactly paving the way for a career in law enforcement here.”
“Yeah, well, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to wear a uniform again until I set things right with Bowers.”
“Good. So go back in there, get what’s in that cash box, and take it to the police.”
“That won’t work.”
“Why the hell not, John?”
“Because it’s not what he would have wanted! Bowers was about the man standing next to him. It’s what made him a great Marine. It’s the reason he saved my life and never asked for any credit for it. He wasn’t a lawyer. He wasn’t about justice. He wasn’t about
setting the record straight
. He left those jobs to God, the president, and the men they chose to do their work for them. What he did was take care of the man standing next to him, and whether I like it or not—and believe me, I don’t, Patsy—that man is Alex Martin. So that’s what I have to do.”
“You’re still a Marine, John. You’re still repeating words you never bothered to learn the meaning of.”
“What would you know about being a Marine?”
“Don’t you try to pull rank on me, little brother. I was cleaning up after devil dogs when you were still jerking off down the hall to my Victoria’s Secret catalogs. I’ve been in this valley a decade, and it’s full of the messes Marines make after their M-4s get taken away. Most of those messes have names like Debi and Kristina, and they come into my bar with their arms in slings thinking I’m actually going to believe them when they tell me they fell down the front steps.”
“I’ve never lifted a hand to a woman in my life. You know that.”
“Do I? It’s been ten years, John. Honestly, what do I really know about you?”
“You know what I’m telling you right now. Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.”
She dropped the butt of her exhausted cigarette through the crack in the window and rolled it all the way up. The AC blew strands of her chocolate-colored hair back over her left shoulder, making her look like something out of a music video. John said, “You do the job that gets put in front of you. Not the one you want. Not the one you picked ahead of time. The one that gets put in front of you by war or by God or whatever. That’s what it means to be a Marine.”
Patsy fought an eye roll by rubbing her temples with the middle three fingers on each hand. Her loud exhalation turned into a groan. Then she said, “So, what do you want from me then? Money?”
“We’re going need a place to stay for a little while, no matter what he decides.”
“A hideout,” she whispered. “Jesus. I thought I might have to bail you out of prison someday, but this I wasn’t prepared for.”
“Why’d you think you’d have to bail me out someday?”
Her smirk vanished, and with what looked like effort, she met his eyes. “I was pretty sure that as soon as you weren’t a Marine anymore, you would try to kill Danny Oster.”
The remark blindsided him, reminded him of how close he had come to driving to Redlands, even with someone else’s nine-year-old child in the front seat of his truck. Patsy furrowed her brow and stared down at her clasped hands as if she had just imparted terrible news. Maybe the name Danny Oster was too much even for her to bear.
Then he saw a figure out in the sandy distance, walking toward them across the expanse behind the trailer, vaguely familiar but too far away for him to make out. Patsy saw it, too. “Who is that?” John stepped out of the Jeep and pulled the Sig from the holster at his waist. Patsy followed him, and then stopped cold when she saw he had drawn his weapon.
After a minute, John recognized Alex’s blond hair. He had taken off the light jacket he’d been wearing the night before and untucked his dark green polo shirt.
“I didn’t even see him leave,” John said.
He holstered his weapon and passed through the back gate in the chain-link fence. He and Alex were a few yards apart when Alex stopped walking. His shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his hands were caked with sand.
“You buried it,” John said.
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” Alex said.
“It is if you don’t want to take it to the authorities.”
Alex was silent.
“Or if you don’t want
me
to take it to the authorities.”
“I love the way you say that word, John—
authorities
. Like it gives you a warm feeling all over. Is that how it feels to be protected by the system?”
“You tell me, Mr. Cathedral Beach.”
“I don’t live in Cathedral Beach anymore. And you never did. So we don’t have that working in our favor now, do we?” John had no response to this. “So tell me—what’s next? Since you’re not going to cut me loose.”
Before he could answer, John looked back over his shoulder at his sister. She was holding the fence with one hand and studying Alex with a pinched expression, like he was a girlfriend of hers who had demanded her real opinion of a dress that didn’t fit her. She hadn’t mentioned the possibility of turning them in herself, and he was willing to bank that she was grateful enough to have him back in her life that she would go a good ways with them.