The Far Empty (21 page)

CHRIS

H
e was at home, thinking about pillowcases. The ones he and Mel were using on their bed. Floral print, old, they no longer held any color because they’d been washed so often. They’d been in his family since he was a kid. His parents probably got them when they were first married. His mother’s head had once graced them, her hair turning as gray as the cotton itself before it had all fallen out. He was just thinking about going to the Dollar General and buying new ones, something he knew he should have already done, when his cell rang.

It was an unfamiliar voice, calling from far away. A man with a southern accent—not anywhere in Texas, but from back east somewhere—and he said his name was Garrison.

“I’m a friend of Darin Braccio and Morgan Emerson.” Chris first said he didn’t know them.

The man laughed, said, “Sure you do, Deputy Cherry, sure you do.”

•   •   •

“Darin wasn’t much of a report writer, worse about reporting in. He had what you might gently call
an authority problem
. Morgan was better, really good. So new she hadn’t learned how to take shortcuts. She’d already e-mailed me some of her notes for the reports she never had a chance to write. You made an impression on both of them that night you stopped them outside Murfee, a week before they were attacked.”

Chris wasn’t sure what to say, his long silence almost enough for both of them. Finally, “I think you should talk to Sheriff Ross.”

Garrison brushed it off. “No, I think he’s really the last person I want to talk to. Unfortunately, you’re about the only person in that ass-end of Texas I do feel comfortable talking to right now.”

“Why me? Why did you call me? Who are you?”

Now Garrison started with a long silence. “I’m
curious
, Deputy Cherry, like you. I’m curious why you checked with Lajitas about Darin and Morgan staying there. Curious why you’re pushing the DPS lab over those remains you found. Is it just good instincts, Deputy? Are you just a good investigator, like Darin Braccio, one of the best I’ve ever seen? Or something else?”

Whoever this Garrison was, and he still hadn’t made that clear, Chris understood then he’d been monitoring him, checking up on him. He had his cell number and who knew what else. “I don’t know anything about what happened to those two out in Valentine.”

“And that’s what I’m most curious about. You’re one of the few people who can probably guess my agents weren’t really interested in Valentine, never were. Instead, they were up your way, being curious,
for a reason. You’ve figured that out, but as near as I can tell, you haven’t said anything to anyone about it. Why is that?”

His agents.
“You think I had something to do with what happened to them? If so, this conversation is done.”

“Deputy, if I already thought that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.”

•   •   •

“Darin and Morgan weren’t killed in Valentine or even down by the Rio Grande. I know that, courtesy of the same DPS evidence and forensic techs you’re becoming so familiar with. Someone drove them there and then set their car on fire, probably after realizing they’d killed two federal agents. Their guns were found in the water, but their badges and creds were left to burn with them.” Garrison paused, remembering. “So here’s what I’d ask myself, Deputy, if I lived like you do all the way out there in the middle of fucking nowhere. First, where did they get ambushed, and why? Because it was a pure ambush, make no mistake about it. They never had a chance, not at all. Second, who drove their car all the way down to the river? And third, how’d that murderous fuck get back home? It’s a helluva long walk from anywhere, so he probably had help . . . a few friends, maybe a whole bunch of them. I guess the only question that really matters is, who do you trust, Deputy Cherry? Can you trust everyone in your department? Can you trust anyone in Murfee at all?”

“And that’s what I’m supposed to do now, trust you?”

“I’m betting we’re supposed to trust each other.”

Chris held the phone away, thinking. “That woman, your agent Emerson, will she live?”

Garrison breathed, hard. “I don’t know. No one does. I want more than anything for her to open her eyes and tell me what happened. I want her to point out the person or persons who did this to her and Darin. Do you want that, Deputy Cherry?”

Chris ignored him. “But you already know, right? Or think you do. That’s why you called me.”

“I have some ideas, Deputy. I’m not clear on everything, but I’m clear enough. I’m getting there.”

“So why aren’t you down here taking care of it?”

Chris could hear Garrison struggle, imagined the other man carrying a great weight and praying for a chance to set it down, even for just a moment. It reminded him of his father caring for his mom, both of them carrying her through to the end. How Chris had washed the pillowcase he’d been staring at through this whole conversation, a day after she died.

“It’s complicated. Messy and political and I wish it wasn’t, but there it is, all the same. You have some popular, powerful people down there. The wheels might turn slowly, but I promise you they will turn, Deputy Cherry, even if I have to turn them by hand.”

Chris knew nothing about this Garrison, but didn’t doubt him. Despite how he’d said it, everyone knew there was only one powerful person in Murfee. That’s all there’d ever been.
I think that’s really the last person I want to talk to.

“Okay, what happens next?”

“I want to meet you, Deputy, sooner rather later. Put our heads together . . . help each other out with this thing.”

Chris turned it over, thought about what that might mean, what it would have to mean. “Maybe . . . I’ll think about it.”

“That’s a start, at least, but don’t think too goddamn long.”
Garrison’s anger, his frustration, was clear and real across the distance between them. It was
heavy
. “I don’t know exactly what the fuck is going on down there, and maybe you don’t either, but I do know this—one way or another, it doesn’t end with what happened on that riverbank, not like that.
They were my friends.
”

“Is that a threat?”

“Absolutely.”

Chris thought Garrison had hung up on him when he heard that voice again, faint, one more time. “Don’t be a fucking hero, Deputy. Heroes end up dead. Just like Darin Braccio.”

ANNE

H
e picked her up in his truck, held the door for her like a gentleman. They made small talk, his work and hers, on the drive to a little place he liked in Artesia—all smoke and dark wood and deer antlers on the walls; old pictures of places that didn’t even look like Texas. It wasn’t too romantic, more casual. The waiter knew him, everyone did, so she didn’t even need to look at a menu. He ordered for them both. He was different in jeans and a button-down shirt, even with the gun and badge clearly visible on his hip, but not too different. Still recognizable. There was no mistaking Sheriff Ross. He’d followed through with his dinner invitation after all, caught her after school, and with no easy way to say no, she’d said the only other thing she could.

She’d seen him like this once before, in Austin at a Texas Narcotics Officers Association convention. He’d been the keynote speaker, and she and Marc and several others had met him for dinner afterward at a steakhouse with sawdust on the floor. He’d been funny, engaging—
entertaining the table with stories of his time as sheriff. She couldn’t remember what, if anything, the two of them had talked about or if they had spoken together much at all, but she had caught him staring at her a few times, never inappropriately, just intense, focused. Right after Marc had died, he sent a condolence card to the house and may have attended the memorial, but there’d been so many people, she wasn’t sure. Later, when things got really bad for her, he’d sent another hand-addressed note that she never opened.

She never figured out how he had their home address and didn’t think much of it again—not at all, really—until Dial Johnson called about the job in Murfee. An old friend of his, Sheriff Stanford Ross, had asked about Anne personally—asked for her
by name
. The sheriff had remembered her from the convention and knew about her situation in Austin, but didn’t care about all that—the school needed the help, and with the sheriff’s own son enrolled there, it’d mean a lot if she was available. The sheriff wouldn’t have needed Dial to tell him no school in Texas would have her.

•   •   •

“Everyone says you’ve settled in well, Anne. I’m glad to hear it.” Sheriff Ross smiled at her, a Shiner Bock in his hand.

“Thank you, I appreciate your help. I’m sure your word had more than a little to do with it.”

He kept smiling, faking embarrassment behind a long sip from the bottle. “I’ve been around a long time, gotten to know more than my fair share of people. Texas often works on handshakes and favors, and I’ve done plenty of both.”

“Well, thank you anyway. I wasn’t sure I was going to teach again, not in Texas.”

He nodded. “To be honest, I was surprised you were still here. Pleasantly, but surprised all the same.”

She toyed with her fork. “Me too, I guess. So were my parents, my friends. It would have been easier to go back to Virginia, but I just couldn’t, not yet. Marc wouldn’t have wanted it. He liked Texas, it was our home.”

“And you met in college?”

“Well, I was in college, Mary Washington. He was stationed at Fort Belvoir. By the time he was transferred to Fort Hood, we were married. After that horrible shooting there, he didn’t reenlist. It changed him, affected him more than he wanted to admit, and he joined the police department in Killeen. He enjoyed police work more than anything he ever did in the army.”

The sheriff smiled, serious. “Did you know he and I spoke a few times after we all met in Austin? I tried to sell him on Murfee’s charms, but I think he figured it was too small for him, at least at that point.”

She hesitated, finding it hard to imagine Marc talking with this man without mentioning it to her, harder to imagine his ever considering a job in Murfee.

“What do you think, Anne? Is Murfee too small?”

She laughed. “Too small? Too small for what? Murfee’s very nice. I can see why people love it, how someone can live here their whole life and never miss a thing. It has an undeniable charm.”

He raised his beer. “I like that. I’ve heard Murfee described many ways. ‘Charming’ is not often one of them.”

She played with her napkin, folding and unfolding it. “So what about you? And Caleb? You’ve never had a desire to leave?”

The sheriff shook his head. “I’ve been here so long even I tend to forget that I’m not a Murfee native. My roots aren’t natural, but they
run deep. Work takes me away quite a bit, but I always come back. I’ve had offers to do other things, someone always wants me to run for a state office, but nothing I’ve seriously entertained. Caleb, of course, will go off to school, and after that, I guess we’ll see.” The sheriff finished his beer, raised his hand for another. “How’s Caleb doing, by the way? No problem, I hope?”

“No, none at all. He’s a good student. Quiet.” She paused, chose her words carefully. “I’m not sure he has a lot of friends.”

“No, he never has. More of a loner that way, like his mother, actually. After his mother left, it got worse.”

“I’ve heard that. I’m so sorry. It must have been hard for both of you.”

The sheriff blinked, slow, as a new round of drinks arrived, unordered. “I think Murfee was too small for her, Anne. Nothing more than that.”

•   •   •

During the rest of dinner he never mentioned Evelyn again or asked her anything else about Marc. His lost wife was a ghost the sheriff didn’t believe in and refused to be haunted by, and if nothing else, she admired that will, that commitment. Instead, they talked about their respective lives, about the safe parts for her that didn’t raise specters. Sheriff Ross proved to be charming, surprisingly eloquent; good-looking in a rugged, weather-stained way. But their ages surfaced nearly everywhere, their frame of references so different. She wasn’t sure, but he was probably twenty-five years older than she was, maybe a little more. It wasn’t that he tried to act younger—he was comfortable enough with his age not to be silly about it—and spending time with him didn’t feel like being with her father, but it still felt
off
.
Like that dinner in Austin long ago, or at least what felt like long ago, where she’d caught him looking at her—
studying
her, his eyes a few degrees cooler than the rest of his expression, which at any given moment might have been smiling or laughing.

By the end of it all she was tired, ready to be home, ready to curl up with Chris Cherry’s old book, but just before ordering a dessert she didn’t really want, she brought up the deputy in passing—how well the sheriff knew him when he was growing up in Murfee. The sheriff answered politely, went on about a couple of his football games and how more than half the town owed their teeth to Chris’s father, but it was clear he hadn’t driven to Artesia to talk about one of his deputies. Those eyes again gave it away. She didn’t ask about Chris Cherry anymore.

Sheriff Ross had an undeniable presence—heavy, ambient. Under a bright sun, he might cast two long shadows instead of one. And he had that will, but so had Lucas Neill, until the very end.

•   •   •

Lucas Neill didn’t grow up in Austin. The press liked to claim he hadn’t really grown up anywhere at all, living with a man thought to be his father for a while, then his mother, finally an aunt in Austin, where he settled for the longest time and attended James Bowie. He was a good student when he chose to be. Like Caleb Ross, he didn’t have a lot of friends. Much later they would call that troubled. But she knew that from the start.

It began with those texts, the first ones on that rainy day in her classroom. She caught up with him after school that very day and told him his texts were flattering but inappropriate. Wildly inappropriate. She wouldn’t bring it to the school’s attention, but she wanted him to stop.
He had to. He ran from her into the rain; pale, angry, his dark hair plastered onto his head, looking all of twelve rather than seventeen. It was the cover of a bad romance novel. The press was right, he never had grown up. She yelled after him to calm down, her words lost to thunder. But he did stop, for a little while. Before starting up again about three weeks later, the texts coming at various times both inside and outside school, her phone blinking at three a.m. while Marc slept or was on shift. She didn’t respond, never responded, just deleted them as fast as they came in, but then there were other little things as well: a flower tucked under her car’s wiper blade; a small, handwritten note slipped into a desk drawer; things appearing, disappearing, like smoke. Most of the later texts and notes weren’t even about her, but his problems at school, at his aunt’s home, vague suggestions of even vaguer abuse.

If his words had gotten intimate, too sexual, too fast, she might have shut it down just as fast—gone to the front office, asked for a transfer; just changed her goddamn number like she did after it was too late anyway, when it was only the media and worse calling her. Instead, she’d started
worrying
about him, pulled under by his rising tide of sadness and loneliness and frustration. Slow, inexorable, encroaching, so that she was up to her chin, then deeper, before she even knew it.

One night the phone had buzzed again and again, LED flickering, text after text. Marc was out and she’d tried to ignore it, curled up on their couch, but it kept on. It was Luke’s way of yelling for attention. Something bad had happened. When she finally broke down and read his texts they hadn’t made any sense, trailing off into random letters, numbers—half words or just her name, over and over again. He was hurt or being hurt. She tried to put the phone away, but came back to it again.

Where r u? Where r u? Pls don’t fckn ignore me. Can u hear me?

She’d tried calling Marc, but he never picked up. Maybe if he had, if they could’ve talked for a few minutes about something, anything—about what they were doing for the weekend or his new pain-in-the-ass sergeant at work or even Christmas, which was still two months away—she’d have gotten up the courage to admit right then and there that there was a crazy boy from her school drowning her. How she was in way over her head and didn’t know what to do about it anymore and couldn’t make it stop. But he hadn’t answered, and her phone had continued to act like a thing possessed, as if Luke knew she was alone. And it was possible he
did
know—that he’d been watching her all along—so it was no risk keeping it up until she finally broke down and texted back for the first time.

Three words, that was all. Three words to make him stop, though she should’ve known how wrong she was. Not even words, not really.
R u okay?

•   •   •

“Are you okay?”

Anne pulled away from the window, where darkness ran past her and stars were faint and fading. “No, no, I’m sorry. I got lost in a thought.”

Sheriff Ross nodded. “There’s an area up here alongside the road. It’s famous, known for its ghost lights. People say they’ve seen things out there, so the town built a little pavilion, like a picnic spot, for those with an interest to keep watch. Kids come out here, been doing it since . . . well, since I was still a kid.”

“So have you ever seen any lights out here, any ghosts left behind?”

“Me? No, of course not. I don’t believe in stuff like that, never have. Of course, can’t say I ever took the time to look, either.”

Like you didn’t look for your wife?
she wondered—a dark thought, probably uncalled for—as they passed the pavilion he’d just mentioned, a rickety wooden affair with a handful of small white signs and a little gravel turnabout. It was there, then gone.

“I enjoyed tonight, Anne. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to get out. It was good of you to agree to come to Murfee. I hope at the end of the school year, you’ll consider staying. I’ve talked to Phil Tanner, he let me know how much trouble we’ll have filling Tancy Garner’s spot. If you don’t at least consider it, we’ll be back to square one.”

“That’s very kind. I’ve enjoyed being here as well. I guess it’s too early for me to say what will be best—for the school or for me—but I’ll think about it.”

“Please do. If I can put in a personal appeal, I wouldn’t mind you staying on. New faces in our little old town aren’t a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.”

“No, I guess not.”

He tapped his fingers as if a thought had just occurred to him, but not really. “Thanksgiving is coming up in a couple of weeks. Unless you have other plans or were planning on getting out of town, well, Caleb and I would love to have you up to the house.”

“That’s nice, but I really couldn’t impose.”

“Not at all. I may head up to a piece of land I have and see about grabbing an elk. Have you ever had it?” He caught her expression, laughed. “Now, don’t make a face. Cooked up proper, it’s not half as bad as you’d think, and I’m not a half-bad cook. There’ll be all the traditional plates as well, and I’ll get Modelle Greer to whip up a
couple of pies, which are not my specialty. I’ll invite a few others and it’ll be fine, I promise.”

R u okay?

The sheriff waited for her reply even as she fought another dark thought, a sudden suspicion that she’d be alone with him at Thanksgiving—all these “others” he’d mentioned suddenly having other plans, other commitments.