The Dispatcher Read online

  Henry forces a surprised whistle and the shake of a head. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What kind of bastard would go and kill little girls?’

  ‘The sick kind. Probably raped ’em first.’

  Henry feels his face go hot, feels anger clamp down on his chest like a pair of channel-lock pliers. He’s no rapist. He’s a family man. He loves his wife and would never cheat on her. Especially not with a rape to no little girls. He feels an urge to reach out his window and grab the deputy by the collar and slam his face against the metal door of the truck. Instead he nods and says, ‘Probably did. It’s a sick world. I hope you catch the son of a bitch.’

  ‘I’m sure we will,’ the deputy says.

  ‘Well, good luck to you,’ Henry says, tossing off a sharp salute.

  He puts the truck into gear and lets off the clutch and presses the gas and continues south on Main Street. As soon as he knows the deputy can no longer see him the life drains from his face and his friendly expression sags into a dead scowl. The light leaves his eyes and his mouth curls down at the corners.

  His mind is a gray fog which no thought can penetrate, which nothing can penetrate but an uncomprehending animal dread. But as he approaches Hackberry Street he sees Chief Davis’s car heading toward him, and behind it a red 1965 Mustang, and that clears the fog in a hurry.

  They found the bodies. It won’t be long before the police figure that two plus two equals four. Even if there’s no evidence on the bodies themselves—and his guess is that with all the science they got these days the police will find him all over them—they’re on his property. He’ll be the first person they question. They may even get a search warrant. Sheriff Sizemore is friendly with some judges that might make it happen in a hurry. If they get a search warrant they’ll find Sarah. If they find Sarah it’s over.

  The little bitch said she’d called her daddy. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. It meant his life would shortly be falling apart. Which meant it couldn’t be true. Except it was true. It was true and it still is. He doesn’t know how she knew about the bodies, but she did, she must have known about them, and—

  After the two cars pass by, he makes a u-turn.

  The beer is canceled. Work is canceled. His life is canceled.

  It’s time for a new plan. He drives toward home, toward what has been home for over forty years, and thinks about what he should do. His brother Ron has a place in California, in a practically deserted mining town called Kaiser just other side of the Arizona state line. He and Beatrice and Sarah can go there. They’ll hide out there till the heat dies down. He has no doubt that there will be heat. People care about dead little girls. He’ll be tried and convicted on the news shows within days. The media need a villain. But they can hide out in Kaiser till the heat dies down, and once it does . . . well, that’s where things break down a little bit in his mind.

  If the police don’t have enough to arrest him he might be able to come back home. His running will be suspicious, but suspicious behavior ain’t evidence. It seems more likely, though, that Bulls Mouth is about to become a part of his past. In which case they’ll head down to Mexico. It won’t be safe to try for Mexico till things quiet down, but once they do quiet down they should be able to make it across the border without too much trouble. Most eyes are usually focused on those trying to enter the United States, not on those trying to leave it. He’s not sure how exactly they’ll get by in Mexico, but he’s sure they will get by. Maybe they can even get a house on the ocean. He’s always wanted to see the ocean. Or maybe Canada instead. They speak English there. He can work that out later.

  Up ahead Chief Davis’s car and the Mustang pull to the shoulder of the road. Henry drives by them a moment later. He maintains his speed despite a great urge to put the gas pedal to the floorboard. He can’t act suspicious.

  At Crouch Avenue he turns right, and again into his driveway two minutes later. Gravel kicks out from the tires and shotguns against the side of the house as he brings the truck to a stop.

  He storms up the wood stairs to the porch, takes two steps across the porch, and pushes his way through the door and into the house.

  ‘Bee!’

  ‘What?’

  He walks into the kitchen.

  Beatrice stands at the sink, a soapy plate in her hands. She looks at him, her eyes searching his face. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Put that down. We gotta get out of here.’

  ‘Get out of here? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about we gotta get out of here. Pack some shit. Whatever you want to take with you. Whatever you can get into boxes in the next twenty minutes or so. We’re leaving town and my gut says we gotta make it snappy.’

  ‘Leaving town? Why would we leave town?’

  ‘There’s some trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble? Did we do something wrong?’

  ‘We didn’t do nothing wrong, but people will say we did. Pack some shit. We gotta go.’

  ‘Well, how long we going for?’

  ‘Probably forever. Goddamn it, Bee, we don’t have time for questions.’

  ‘How are we supposed to pack everything in twenty m—’

  ‘We’re not packing everything. Only things we have to take. Now, goddamn it, get your fat ass moving. We don’t have time to fuck around. I got no idea when the police will be here, but I fucking know they will be. So move.’

  Beatrice’s chin begins to tremble and her eyes get glossy with tears. A strange, sad squeak escapes her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you, Bee, but we need to leave. I don’t have time to answer a lotta questions. What I need is for you to go to the garage, find some cardboard boxes, and start packing whatever you can think to pack. Can you do that?’ He strokes her round smooth cheek with a callused hand. ‘Can you do that, Bee?’

  She nods.

  ‘Good girl. Now get to it.’

  He gives her a quick kiss on the mouth, then turns to the bedroom.

  ‘Bill’s Liquor.’

  ‘Donald.’

  ‘Henry. What’s up?’

  ‘Me and Bee are leaving town. You might want to do the same, though I don’t know for sure if it’s necessary for you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Seventeen minutes later there’s a knock at the front door. It came faster than he’d expected. He was hoping to be out of town before this could happen. They shouldn’t have tried to pack anything. They should have simply got in the truck and gone. But the idea of leaving behind all those years of life without taking even—

  ‘Henry?’

  ‘I’ll get it, Bee!’

  ‘Okay.’

  He closes his eyes and exhales and opens his eyes. Then slips a hand between his mattress and box spring and wraps it around a Lupara and pulls it out. He breaks it open and checks both barrels are loaded. They are. He tucks the gun into the back of his Levis, then grabs a few more shells and stuffs them into his pockets. He doesn’t think it will come to gunfire, but he’s not counting it out only to find hisself with his face in the gravel while some cocksucker from the sheriff ’s department is slapping cuffs on his wrists and ramming a knee up into his balls. His hope is that it’s just Chief Davis come by to let him know what’s going on. Sorry to bother you, Henry, how you been? Good to hear it. Just stopping by because, well, have you ever seen anything suspicious out in your woods? Any trespassers or anything? He hopes that will be the beginning and the end of it, but he’s not counting on it. As he heads out of the bedroom, he stops at the closet and grabs a .22 rifle from the shelf.

  No one ever went into battle with too many weapons.

  He walks into the kitchen where Beatrice is packing dishes. He grabs her by the arm and spins her around. A plate slips from her hands. It drops to the floor and shatters.

  ‘Not dishes, Bee. Goddamn it, we don’t need to take no fucking dishes.’

  ‘But—’


  ‘Look, just head downstairs till I say so.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nods at him, looking like she’s fighting back tears.

  There’s another knock at the front door. Buckshot barks at the people on the other side.

  ‘On my way.’

  He glances over his shoulder to see Beatrice pulling open the basement door and disappearing behind it.

  He nods to himself. Good, she’ll be safe down there. He heads to the front door. Buckshot sits staring at it. He barks once. Two human shapes behind the yellow pebbled glass. He leans the .22 against the wall where they won’t be able to see it with the door open.

  He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of Rolaids and thumbs one of them into his mouth and chews it with his eyes closed. Nothing going on here. Everything is finer than frog hairs. No, sir, I didn’t see nothing out of the ordinary, but truth is, I don’t really keep too close an eye on that land. Trees don’t tend to cause much trouble unless they get a few drinks in ’em, you know, and these ones are twelve-stepping it. Ha-ha.

  He tongues chalky powder from a molar.

  ‘It’s okay, boy,’ he says, petting the dog’s head.

  A fist rises into the air on the other side of the glass, ready to knock a third time.

  He grabs the door handle, thumbs the paddle, and yanks open the door before it can.

  Ian sits in his car watching Chief Davis and Bill Finch walk across the gravel driveway to the front door. He wants to be there with them. He wants to look into the man’s eyes. If he could look into the man’s eyes he would know. Instead he is here in his car. The window’s rolled down and a convection-oven wind is blowing against his face. His stomach feels sour and his mouth is dry and his eyes are burning. He pulls a plug of cigar from his ashtray and stabs his mouth with it and chews on it but does not light it.

  Chief Davis raises his hand and knocks on the yellow pebbled glass that fills the top half of the front door. The muffled sound of a dog barking.

  Ian leans forward, waiting. The door does not move. For a long time it does not move.

  ‘Knock again,’ Ian says under his breath.

  After a moment Chief Davis raises his hand to do so, but Bill Finch grabs his wrist before the fist can make contact.

  ‘I’m in charge here,’ he says.

  Chief Davis shrugs and blinks. ‘If it makes you feel manly.’

  Finch stares at him a long moment. Then turns to the door and knocks himself.

  The dog on the other side of the door barks again. Then the sound of a voice from within, though Ian cannot hear the words from this distance. And still the door does not move. Chief Davis and Bill Finch stand side by side before it, motionless, and wait. And wait.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Ian says under his breath. He pulls the wet cigar from his mouth and drops it into the ashtray, then pushes open the car door and steps out onto the driveway. Stones grind beneath his feet and Chief Davis throws him a look that stops him. He remains outside the car, but only stands there with his hand holding his car’s open door, neither shutting it and heading toward the front door nor getting back into the vehicle.

  Bill Finch is raising his hand to knock again when the door is pulled open.

  The dog barks.

  ‘Hush now,’ Henry Dean says, petting him.

  And there he is. Is he the man who kidnapped Maggie, the man who stole Ian’s daughter? Sagging face, bald head, dead eyes like unpolished stones pressed into sucking mud, veined nose bursting forth. Ian can think of at least a dozen times he’s seen him around town. They’ve nodded to one another, maybe even exchanged howdys. It makes him sick to think about. All those times he could have grabbed the man and choked him till he was dead. All those times he was but one violent move from his daughter. Seven years and only this fat old man has stood between them. If he’s the one.

  As Henry Dean looks at the cops a light enters his eyes and a smile broadens across his face. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ Chief Davis says.

  Bill Finch glares at Davis a moment, then turns back to Henry Dean. ‘It’s a serious matter,’ he says.

  Henry Dean licks his lips. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Shit?’

  ‘You know why we’re here?’

  ‘’Course I know,’ Henry says. ‘It can only be one thing.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Someone saw my truck and put two and two together.’

  ‘Your truck?’

  ‘All them scratches.’

  ‘What about them?’

  Henry thumbs something into his mouth, a mint or an antacid, and looks at them perplexedly. ‘You ain’t here ’cause I run into Pastor Warden’s fence?’

  Chief Davis shakes his head.

  Bill Finch says, ‘It’s a more serious matter than that.’

  ‘Oh. Shit. Forget I said anything, then. What’s going on?’

  Sweat runs down Ian’s face. His hand clenches his car door till the bones ache with the pressure of it.

  ‘Just arrest the motherfucker already,’ he says under his breath.

  Henry Dean couldn’t possibly have heard him, but his eyes dart toward him for a fraction of a second before moving back to the men standing nearest.

  ‘Maybe it would be best if you stepped outside,’ Bill Finch says.

  ‘Stepped outside?’ Henry says, and laughs. ‘What the hell for?’

  Chief Davis puts his hand on his service weapon. ‘Is there anyone else in the house, Henry?’

  ‘Chief. Todd. We grown up together. What are you doing with your hand on a gun?’

  ‘Answer the question,’ Bill Finch says.

  ‘My wife,’ Henry says.

  ‘We need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Step outside.’

  The faint sound of a woman screaming.

  Both Chief Davis and Bill Finch look past Henry toward the sound of the scream. In that moment Henry Dean produces a weapon from behind him, a sawed-off shotgun, and Bill Finch’s chest explodes.

  The dog at Henry’s side starts barking wildly.

  A mist of blood hangs in the air even as the man drops to the weathered porch and rolls down the three steps to the gravel driveway. He lies face up, staring at the wild blue sky.

  Chief Davis jumps left, but still catches one from the second barrel. Catches it in the face. There isn’t even a scream. There isn’t time for one. One second his face is fine, the next it’s a mask of blood and musculature, and white teeth and pieces of bone splatter on the driveway behind him in a thick and widening triangle of red liquid like his head is a ketchup packet that’s been stomped on.

  By the time Ian is once again looking to the doorway Henry Dean has dropped his sawed-off shotgun to the ground and is pulling a rifle from behind the door.

  Ian dives behind his car, unlatching his holster and drawing his SIG in one smooth motion. He pokes his head up briefly to get an idea of where he is in relation to Henry Dean and hears a shot explode on the air. It carries death though it sounds no more harmful than someone popping a paper lunch bag. The bullet grazes the trunk lid and chips of gray metal cut into his head and cheek.

  The dog continues to bark wildly.

  Ian drops to the ground again, gravel digging into his arm and his side, and tries to catch a glimpse of the man from under the car, but the angle is wrong. He can’t see anything but more gravel and the base of the house.

  ‘Go get ’im, Buckshot! Get ’im!’

  Running across gravel. Barking. A brown blur seen from under the car.

  Ian turns around in time to see the dog coming around the back of the vehicle with teeth bared, its eyes black, foam hanging from its jaw in frothy strings. It leaps at Ian and Ian has just enough time to pull the gun around toward it and pull the trigger.

  There is a brief yelp and then silence.

/>   The dog continues through the air, lifeless, and drops on top of him, its dead open mouth on his throat. Hot spittle runs down his neck. Hot blood soaks into his uniform. He pushes the dog off and it falls to the gravel with a meat-sack thump, wet and viscous, and lies there, still.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ Henry says, and there is another shot. It only kicks up gravel.

  Ian pulls himself up into a crouching position, making sure his head is below the level of the trunk. Inhale. Exhale. He’ll be on the porch waiting for him. He’ll have to get his own shot off quick and drop again if he doesn’t want to take one in the face like Chief Davis did. The man is fast. Inhale. Exhale.

  He catches his breath in his throat and jumps to his feet, ready to take a shot. But he never has the chance.

  Before he even catches sight of the man—standing at the bottom of the steps now, feet distanced, rifle pressed into the crook of his shoulder, left eye closed, aiming at where he rightly reckons Ian will pop up—there is a dull thwack in his chest just to the right of his sternum, like someone thumped him with a rubber mallet. It doesn’t even hurt. Not at first. But suddenly he can’t breathe. He inhales and hears a strange sucking sound from beneath his shirt. He looks down at himself, confused. A small dot of blood appears on the fabric. He looks up at Henry Dean to ask him just what the hell happened, but the man is heading up the steps and into his house. Ian drops to his knees, both of them popping on impact. Gravel digs into the flesh, and though he is aware of it he hardly feels it at all. He looks down again and sees drops of blood splashing to the gravel.

  This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

  Then he’s face down, sucking in chalky white dust. He spits. Whenever he tries to breathe his chest makes that wheezing noise: a low whistle, like a punctured tire.

  Sounds of feet on gravel stepping quick.

  Ian rolls onto his side to see what’s happening.

  Henry Dean is helping his wife Beatrice into a green Ford Ranger pickup truck. That seems like it should be impossible. Henry was just standing on the gravel aiming a gun at him and a curl of white smoke was slipping from its barrel. It doesn’t seem like he should have had time to go inside and get his wife and bring her outside and put her into their truck. She is crying and her right foot is covered in blood and a skin flap hangs from her ankle.