The Hard Death
Black drove to the Marsh house an hour off dawn. The roof of the farmhouse had caved three storms back so Merle lived in the barn behind. He drew the cruiser close to the building and left the lights rolling blue and red. He’d driven Peach to the hospital, stayed long enough for the doc to say it was just bruising. Anger coursed hot in his veins.
He hammered the door a couple times. “Merle, open the door.”
Merle appeared a couple minutes later, unshaved and grousin’ about the hour like he knew what it was.
“Took your time,” Black said.
Merle glanced at the sky and shook his head. “Fuckin’ devil droppin’ down on us,” he mumbled as Black followed him in.
There was a roll of old carpet underfoot, laid straight onto the dirt. Merle slept on a couch. When it rained he pulled a sheet of tarp over himself ’cause the roof weren’t tight.
“Fuckin’ mess in the square,” Merle said. “Got them reporters. Those news girls though –”
“Had a late night?”
Merle shrugged. “Ray Bowdoin, poker, guy’s a fuckin’ animal. Willie burned him with a straight and Ray tipped the table over, walked out without settlin’. Willie chased him down, I told him not to.”
“How bad?”
Merle shrugged. “Weren’t just the beatin’, Ray put a cigarette out on his eye, nastiest shit I ever saw. Willie ain’t gonna talk, case you get any ideas.”
Black nodded.
“Heard you got into it with Tommy Ryan the other day.”
Merle looked around and then down and then shook his head. “Not me.”
“Where were you the day Della Palmer went missin’?” Black said.
Merle looked up with a stare so red Black could feel the hangover worse than his own.
“Do I look like the kinda man that keeps a diary?”
Black had the information already and knew it wouldn’t take long for Merle to roll. He’d been inside a couple times before, the longest stretch fifteen bruising months. Merle was approaching seventy years old.
“You were fishin’ Wheeler Lake with Tommy Ryan.”
Merle’s eyes widened and he half stood, his hands shaking bad. “Yeah. Yes, I was. Wheeler Lake, with Tommy. That’s right.”
Black sighed. “The Kinley girl, Anna, she got a flat that mornin’. You changed the tire for her, up by Gaston Lee Road.”
“Not that day. Couldn’t have been.”
“She paid you cash, then her daddy came by the shop and asked for a receipt. They’re careful like that, the Kinleys. All that money to protect, don’t wanna go the way of Bob Butler, all that he lost to the IRS.”
“They got that date wrong,” Merle said, his voice flat. He looked around the barn, maybe for a way outta the mess he was getting in.
“I thought that. So I got Milk to call Arlene.”
“That bitch’d say anything to see me in shit.”
Arlene was married to Merle for a while. She got half the garage in the settlement, kept the books straight enough to make sure she earned from it.
Merle sat again, sighed, bit his black thumbnail, and weighed his options.
“I’ll lock you up, Merle. I don’t want to, got enough on at the moment. I’ll bus you to county jail, let you sweat there for a few weeks. Ernie will put you in with the drunks and pushers. Perverting the course, you’ll serve a decent stretch.”
Merle closed his eyes.
Black glanced up at the rafters and saw the cloud through the gaps. “How much do you owe Tommy?”
“Too much.”
*
They left the cruiser in the bushes and hiked in. They carried flashlights but didn’t use them.
Tommy Ryan had cleared a track from the edge of Route 43, a quarter mile to his place. Black had checked the registry and the land had belonged to Tommy’s great-grandfather. Rumor had it he won it from a Kinley in a poker game.
“I’m gonna try a rain dance,” Milk said, glancing up.
“I’ll ready my camera,” Black said.
They walked along a tract of woodland that ran parallel to Tommy’s land then cut in by a clearing. Milk shined his flashlight out and they saw the house fall into view.
The timber was stained a rich brown, the porch wrapped the front. They watched awhile but stood in the kinda silence that told them they wouldn’t be bothered. They’d left the Ryans in the square where they were settling in for another evening of waiting and watching.
“How come you sat on this?” Milk said.
Black shrugged. “Alibi checked out, that lady at Pinegrove. Then Noah said he saw Tommy gettin’ into it with Merle so I thought I’d roll the dice.”
“We gotta find somethin’ soon. Press are chewin’ us for this. The eyes of the country are trained on Grace and all they can see is some fuckin’ freak show playin’ out on the green. The crazies from the church and the fuckin’ rednecks, eyeballin’ each other over sandbags while they pass round snacks like they’re at the movies.”
Black laughed and kept watch while Milk worked on the lock. It didn’t take him long, maybe ’cause Tommy weren’t all that worried about break-ins.
They closed the door behind. One room, large and neat, the wood stripped and buffed and a deep rug on the floor. There was a fireplace, a small kitchen, and a door off to the left.
The roof arched at the far end.
“Ain’t gonna take long to search,” Milk said.
They didn’t have a warrant. Paperwork never held them up. Black wanted to take a look, to do the groundwork before he tipped his hand. Tommy was at a rodeo that Della Palmer went to. Tommy went to the Baptist church on Route 84. Tommy lied about being with Merle. Tommy was close to Summer Ryan. Tommy was tall—maybe knew Hell’s Gate better than any man alive. Put it all together and there weren’t a doubt he was interesting.
They found a stash of guns under a false floor beneath the couch. There was a closet that held a lot of hunting gear. Black noticed a lock-up beside the generator so guessed he kept more in there.
There were photos of the twins, from when they were babies to recent.
“You reckon Tommy Ryan is the Bird?”
Black sighed, shook his head, and rubbed his neck.
“Fuckin’ surprise that’d be, if he was livin’ in Grace this whole time.”
Milk disappeared into the bedroom while Black went through the kitchen cupboards. “Black.”
Black walked into the bedroom. Milk held up a necklace, gold and delicate, a couple letters on it. SR.
“What do you reckon?”
Black felt the heat rise to his cheeks. The past weeks, the past year, all the girls, Peach Palmer. He thought about Tommy and Merle and the lies. He ran a hand over his gun and took a deep breath.
“I reckon I’m tired of being lied to. Whatever it means, I’ll find out right now.”
And then he was out the door, and he was moving fast through Hell’s Gate, back toward the cruiser. And Milk was calling out and telling him to calm down, but Black was so mad he didn’t break stride.
*
Black ran the cruiser up onto the sidewalk and left the lights burning full as he got out. Milk followed, eyeing the bustling square and looking for Austin Ray and Joe in case Black did something foolish.
Black moved fast. He saw the church folk staring. They had lanterns; the flames dancing hypnotic, spiked into dying grass. There were people spilling from Mae’s holding greasy paper and eating hot dogs and fries and drinking Cokes. Big guys, with baseball caps pulled low, bearded and tired.
There were a couple reporters, their backs to the crowd as they recorded evening pieces and spoke of the rumors stealing through the town, that the devil himself was living in Hell’s Gate and the cops weren’t brave enough to go get him.
Milk jogged to keep up, his eyes darting.
Black saw Tommy standing by the benches, his eyes low and scouting, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
Black picked up to a fast run and charged Tommy hard, sent him sprawling over and landed on him heavy.
Milk drew, people screamed, and cameras trained.
Rusty was looking out and grabbed some men and before long there was chaos in the square. Joe made to help his brother but Milk was ready. He stepped forward, gun raised and aimed. Joe raised a hand, glanced over at Tommy who was down with Black kneeling on his chest.
Joe’s men angled to draw so Rusty fired a shot toward the cloud and the chaos was drowned by a taut silence that stretched a mile wide.
“Get off me,” Tommy said, his eyes burning.
“You lied to me, Tommy. I was holdin’ off, watchin’ and waitin’ but now I’m tired and I’m right on the edge so I could shoot you soon as ask you any more questions.”
“Black,” Joe said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Milk said, raising the barrel to Joe’s head.
“I ain’t got time for games, Tommy. I don’t give a fuck about all these people watchin’, let ’em film it. Y’all reckon I ain’t got it no more but I’ll blow a clean hole in your skull. I got you connected, I got Briar girls to find and you’re my link. And that might be bullshit, but you called it on by leadin’ me on this dance.”
Milk glanced around, met Pastor Lumen’s good eye, and thought he saw something of a smile on the old man’s face. The reckoning, like he’d called it.
“Where were you the day Della went missin’? Where were you the night Summer ran?”
Tommy was breathing hard, flat down on his back, looking past Black and up at the sky.
“Tell him,” Joe said.
*
They went into the station ’cause Tommy wouldn’t talk outside. The cameras flashed as they walked up the steps and the story ran on the evening news.
Black led him into the back office. Tommy said he didn’t want a lawyer and Black reckoned he knew the system well enough. So his heart slowed and the exhaustion swept over him like a blanket pulled up high and heavy on his bones. He didn’t know what was coming but Tommy looked about as beat as he did.
Trix brought in two cups of coffee, set them down, then closed the door behind.
Black pulled out the necklace and set it on the table.
Tommy looked at it, then at Black, then the fight left him and he slumped low.
“It’s Savannah,” Tommy said.
“What is?”
“Who I was with. It’s Savannah Ritter.”
“Pastor Bobby’s wife, Savannah?”
“Yeah.”
Black closed his eyes for a long time. “Shit, Tommy.”
“High cotton like to slum it sometimes.”
“I gotta worry about fallout from this now?”
“She broke it off. First time I been dropped.”
“I have to speak to her.”
“I know.”
Black rubbed his eyes. “How’d you meet her?”
“Pinegrove, I got dragged there by Greta. I mean, I saw Savannah round town before but didn’t ever speak to her.”
“Right.”
“So Greta was doin’ her thing, workin’ the desk, and I went out for a smoke and saw Savannah and she was sittin’ in the sun, upset, maybe she’d been cryin’.”
“Saw your chance and took it.”
Tommy shook his head. “Weren’t like that, not with her. You talked to her before?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know. She ain’t the type that’ll fall for what I got, the way I do it, tell them they’re pretty and all that.” He cleared his throat. “She’s had it rough.”
“She told you about her boy?”
“Not right off. But . . . she’s sad, Black.”
“So you were there for her?”
“I listened. Didn’t think nothin’ of it but she showed at my place late one night and said she couldn’t take it no more, being alone like that. I was just, I was there and there weren’t more to it.”
Blacked nodded like he was sad. “I get it. And I nearly killed you for it. In front of all those cameras.” Black sighed. “A pastor’s wife. No wonder Grace is dark and burnin’.”
When Tommy left Black reached for the bottle of Crown in his desk drawer. He was done in all ways, the girls kept falling and he’d run outta leads. There weren’t nowhere left to turn.
He drank all that he found and then slipped out the back of the station, the bustle and the noise so deafening he couldn’t barely stand it no more.
*
“That how you do it? Leave a message on my machine,” Peach said.
He sat on the porch and watched the cloud.
Her eyes were still swollen. There was a cut on her forehead.
“I can’t keep doin’ this, Black. Whatever it is we got, I can’t keep doin’ it.”
“So don’t,” he said, cold and dead. His sleeve was rolled, tracks marched down his arm.
She settled on the porch beside him and stared at the sky. “They weren’t kiddin’.”
He followed her eye. “I like it now. I want it to stay.”
She took his hand in hers and grasped it tight. “They said I ain’t strong enough for this. At Pinegrove, they say I need time to look after myself.”
He watched the treetops. “You know where the door is.”
“Why are you like this? Why don’t you care about nothin’? I know, about your wife and your kids, and about your partner –”
He turned sharp. “What do you know, Peach?”
“I know what you’re doin’. All this, you don’t sleep, you drink so much. You ain’t got no life, Black. You want to die, is that it?”
He tried to reach for the bottle but it tipped from the porch and smashed on the stone path.
“Jesus, Black.” She stared at him and he lay back, flat on the wood grain as he stared up at the cloud.
“It makes you realize how helpless we are,” he said. “How we don’t know shit, how there’s always someone nastier in the wings, waitin’ for their moment to shine. Who’d be a cop now, can’t even dent the numbers. Ain’t for me. I’m retired from life and all of everything.”
She pulled him up and he leaned back against the siding.
“We were always using each other, Peach.”
“Maybe, at the start maybe.”
He looked at her and needed her far from him ’cause that was best for both of them. He’d make her see that now. He thought of what Pastor Lumen said, how well he knew him and how sick that made him feel.
“I can’t find Della. I can’t keep you safe. I can’t be relied on for nothin’ . . . Mitch. Noah looks at me like he can’t understand what I was.”
“Self-pity is ugly on you, Black.”
She stood.
“Peach,” he said.
She turned.
“I don’t pity myself. I pity you.”
She nodded and he closed his eyes tight to the world.