The Dispatcher Read online

  The first few weeks were strange and sleepless. Not because he missed Deb—he did not exactly miss her—but because he was used to having someone sleeping beside him. Soon enough, though, he got comfortable with the absence. His body learned to spread out across the full width of the bed. He stopped sitting up at night to call Debbie’s name. He stopped believing she was merely in the next room.

  Ian knocks on the front door and waits.

  He scratches the top of his head where the blond hair is thinnest, then arms the sweat off his forehead. It’s still hellish out.

  Debbie pulls open the front door from inside. She’s wearing beige shorts and her white work T-shirt with PINK’S SALON written in cursive across the right breast. She manages the place for Vicki Dodd—who’s the only reason the Dodd family has any money left at all, her brother Carney being useless—and must have just got home. When she sees Ian she frowns. It’s brief, and the frown is immediately followed by a polite smile, but the frown was true and the smile is false. Ian understands this. As far as Debbie is concerned he can be nothing more than a walking reminder of the biggest loss she’s ever suffered. He just looks too much like the daughter she has spent the last seven years trying to forget. She’s tried to bury her again and again. He’s from a part of her life she no longer wants to think about.

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Deb.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Have you heard from Bill or Sheriff Sizemore?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mind if I come in?’

  ‘Did something happen? Is Bill okay?’

  ‘Bill’s fine. I thought he might have called you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I think you might want to sit down for this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He doesn’t answer. He simply stands there and waits.

  She searches his face for clues, but he gives her none. He keeps his expression blank.

  After a moment Debbie steps aside to let him in.

  Ian watches Deb as she sits on the couch and looks up at him. Her shoulders are tense, the cords in her neck taut, hands clenching her knees. There was a time when Debbie touched him with those hands, when she caressed him with them. But that was long ago, and he cannot even feel her touch in his memory anymore.

  ‘What is it?’ she says.

  ‘It’s Maggie.’

  Debbie sighs and the tension leaves her body and she relaxes into familiar bad posture.

  ‘They found her body,’ she says.

  The relief in her voice, the unspoken but nearly audible ‘Thank God,’ makes Ian want to grab her shoulders and shake her and shout at her. What is wrong with you, Debbie? This is your daughter we’re talking about. Your daughter. How dare you sound relieved when discussing her death?

  But he knows what’s wrong with her. She wants to move on. The funeral wasn’t enough. It didn’t provide the closure she thinks she needs. Coffins can’t contain memories and dirt cannot cover them. She wants a corpse. She doesn’t understand that even a corpse would not give her what she desires. She doesn’t understand that the dead don’t die until everyone who ever knew them and loved them dies too.

  Ian shakes his head.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘There’s no body to find,’ he says. ‘She’s alive,’ he says.

  And she is no longer seven years old, no longer frozen in time. She is fourteen, fifteen in September, and she called for help today. Right into his ear.

  He won’t let her die again.

  TWO

  Ian opens his eyes. He is lying on the couch, head turned to the right. With one eye he is looking at his work shoes on the floor near the wall opposite. The other eye can see only his out-of-focus shirtsleeve, his arm folded up over his head. One of his shoes is on its side. There is a blackened piece of chewing gum sticking to the heel. He sits up. His neck hurts. Sunlight shines through the dirty living-room window. Six empty Guinness bottles stand like bowling pins on the coffee table, the labels peeled from two of them and stuffed inside like messages floated in on the tide. Near the bottles is a saucepan, the bottom blackened by flame, with a fork poking out of it. Ramen noodles and a small slice of overcooked carrot cling to the inside of the pan. On the far corner of the coffee table, a chessboard with several pieces resting on it, revealing a partially played game. He puts his face into his open hands and rubs at it. Beard stubble against his palms like sandpaper.

  His watch’s alarm sounds. He looks at his wrist, but his watch is not there. It’s on the kitchen counter. That means he must stand up.

  ‘Fuck.’

  He gets to his feet and walks to the kitchen and thumbs the watch silent. Then he rinses the ramen pan he used last night, puts two eggs inside, puts enough water into the pan to cover the eggs, and sets the pan on the stove. The turn of a knob makes a clicking sound which is followed after a moment by the poof of orange-tipped blue flames. With that going he gets the coffee pot started as well, scooping coffee into a filter and pouring water into a tank. He presses a button. A red light flashes green. Liquid drips into the coffee-stained carafe. The drops sizzle, dancing on the heated surface.

  After pouring a cup of black coffee and peeling his soft-boiled eggs he walks back to the couch and sits down. He pushes the empty beer bottles aside and pulls the chessboard toward him. He looks at the game in progress. It seems ancient to him, some relic of an era lost in time, but he refuses to consider it abandoned. He bought the chess set from a junk store. It’s a cheap wooden case, lined inside with plaid fabric, one side of its exterior inlaid with veined marble squares to form a playing surface. The pieces were carved also from cheap marble by an apprentice or an old man with shaky hands, and because of the failing of the pieces the set was especially inexpensive. Both the board and the pieces are covered in dust. Ian hasn’t ever brushed them off for fear of disturbing the game, though he has sat and stared at it so frequently, replaying each move in his head, that if knocked to the four corners of the room he could still gather the pieces and reassemble the game in a matter of minutes.

  It’s his move. It has been his move for three years. For over three years. And he’s known what his move would be for just as long. It took him an hour of semi-drunken study to figure it out. Queen to b4. But by the time he did figure it out it was late, even in California where Jeffrey was still living with his mother, Lisa, so he decided he would call the next day. Instead he opened up another twelve pack and drank his way through it, drank till the sun rose and he had to drive to work. Three years ago he was still allowing more than a six pack into his apartment at a time. When he got home from work that day the alcohol was finally wearing off and he was hung-over and did not feel up to calling Jeffrey, so another day passed. And another. Then a week passed. Then six months. And how do you call a son to whom you haven’t spoken in six months and say ‘Queen to b4’?

  He picks up his dusty black queen and moves it to the new square and looks at it. He sips his coffee. Problem is if Jeffrey doesn’t know about it the move hasn’t been made. Ian puts the queen back and pushes the board aside. Maybe he’ll call Jeffrey later today.

  He salts and peppers a soft-boiled egg and shoves it whole into his mouth. He chews slowly and washes it down with a swig of coffee.

  Strange how the longer you wait to do something the harder it is to do it. You push a task forward rather than pick it up, knowing you can take care of it later, always later, but as it rolls it gathers mass, like a snowball, and what you could once have picked up with one hand and put into your pocket now has to it the weight of planets.

  Ian burps and salts his second egg.

  He steps onto the elevator.

  His apartment building was constructed as a hotel in 1924 by Carl Dodd. For some reason known only to him he thought Bulls Mouth was going to grow into the major metropolis between Houston and San Antonio. But it never happened. He died and left the place, as well as Dodd Dairy, to his children Carney and Vicki, who turned around and sold the hotel
to a Houston realtor in 1996. The realtor converted the hotel into apartments for college kids who wanted out from under daddy’s thumb, but the conversion consisted of little more than knocking down the old sign and putting up a new one. Certainly a repairman hasn’t so much as glanced at the elevator in twenty years or more. Every day Ian steps into it he’s certain that today will be the day the cables finally snap.

  The doors creak shut and Ian presses a button. The elevator shakes violently, as if the mere thought of movement frightens it, and then begins its descent.

  The doors open on the ground floor.

  Ian glances at his watch. He has twenty minutes to get to work.

  Maggie hardly slept all night. Her thoughts kept turning to escape. Even counting did not help. She kept losing track and having to start over. She tossed and turned and found herself tangled in her sheets. She could not get comfortable and her brain could not find peace.

  Now morning is here and she is standing beneath the basement’s sole window, on tippy-toe so that she can put her face into a bright beam of morning sunlight. The heat feels good on her skin. She wants to be out there again. She wants once more to feel fallen leaves and soil beneath her feet. To hear birds sing. To hear the still air come to life as a gust of hot summer wind forces itself through the leaves of the trees.

  ‘He might kill you if you try to escape again.’

  She glances to the left.

  A horse’s head poking from the dark shadows, flaring nostrils, a single black eye glistening in the small gray light reaching him from the window while the other is hidden in darkness, the toes of a pair of Chuck Taylor basketball shoes. That is all she can see of Borden. The rest of him in darkness.

  ‘I think he’s killed others.’

  His mouth does not move when he speaks. The words seem to simply float from his mind, scatter on the air, and reform in hers.

  ‘I think so too,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay.’

  ‘Don’t you remember what he did yesterday?’

  ‘I remember.’ She touches the scab bracelets on her wrists.

  ‘Then how can you think what you’re thinking?’

  She does not respond. She looks back toward the window and lets the light fall upon her face once more.

  ‘It will be worse next time.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Even if he doesn’t kill you it will be worse.’

  She nods silently. And now he has made her picture it in her mind. Hanging from the punishment hook, her hands purple and numb, her wrists bleeding, the rest of her body helpless, defenseless as she swings. She has been there before, at least two dozen times, and it is always terrible.

  She can kick. Kicking keeps Henry away, but only temporarily, and when she stops kicking, as she has to eventually, Henry’s punishment is even worse than it would have been. The mere thought of the punishment hook has kept her obedient on many occasions when every part of her down to the last cell cried out for rebellion against the horrors of the Nightmare World.

  ‘I know,’ she says again.

  But with the morning light falling upon her face she does not care. She does care, she is terrified, but even caring and being terrified she believes it will be worth the risk. She cannot stay here any longer. Not after yesterday. It’s worth the risk.

  ‘Even if he kills you?’

  ‘Even then.’

  ‘But what about me?’

  ‘You can come.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can never leave. This is my home.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘This is where I was born. I can’t live out there.’

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘I know better. I can never leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  Only silence in response.

  ‘Borden?’

  More silence. Then: ‘If you try to leave, I’ll tell.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘If you leave . . .’

  ‘If I leave, what?’

  ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘You can’t tell.’

  ‘I can never leave and you can never leave.’

  ‘You can’t tell!’

  He steps back into the shadows.

  ‘Borden?’

  He does not respond. She closes her eyes imagining herself swinging from the punishment hook, imagining blood running down her arms from her bloody wrists, imagining the terrible pain in her shoulders and hands, imagining the blows she will receive.

  She opens her eyes and looks to the shadows. They are dense as cloth and she cannot see through them. Anything could be in that darkness.

  You can never leave.

  Diego Peña hates the sun: it’s mocking him up there above the trees, shining its white light into his eyes and cooking his throbbing brain as he drives east along Flatland Avenue. If he could draw his service weapon and shoot the thing down he thinks he might actually do it. Watch it drop like a dead bird and go out like a candle.

  He burps, almost vomits, and swallows it back.

  He doesn’t know how many drinks he had last night at Roberta’s but it was at least half a dozen too many. He should just stop going there and make O’Connell’s his regular place. He’s incapable of regulating himself at Roberta’s.

  Ever since he answered a domestic disturbance call and took a roll of barbed wire to the face from her ex-husband Jimmy Block, Roberta has given him free drinks. Ever since she got the bar in the divorce settlement six months later and changed the name from Jimmy’s to Roberta’s, anyway, though some few partisans refused to go along with the name change and even now call it Jimmy’s. Diego burps again and swallows back what comes up. He shouldn’t have eaten the leftover rabo de toro for breakfast. But he’d thought his time kneeling before the toilet was finished. He thought a little food might soak up what alcohol was left in him.

  If the look on Cordelia’s face this morning was any indication, his wife thinks over four years of free drinks has been enough. Of course he was hunched over the toilet at the time, and when he looked up with spittle on his chin she turned and walked away, so maybe he misread her expression in that brief moment before her back was to him and she was saying, ‘. . . hace lo que le sale de los cojones.’

  What he needs is a red rooster: light beer, tomato juice, hot sauce, a splash of clam juice, and one raw egg. That would do him well. He glances at his watch. Seven thirty. Roberta’s morning bartender won’t even be in for another two and a half hours. He’ll have to suffer this.

  He guesses he’s on duty then.

  Kind of.

  Pastor Warden came into Roberta’s last night around eight thirty, just as the place was coming to life, and announced he’d pay ten dollars a head for each dachshund returned.

  ‘Dead or alive?’ Andy Paulson said from his stool at the bar, glancing over his shoulder, grinning through his broken china teeth, beer foam hanging from his ridiculous waxed mustaches.

  ‘Alive,’ Warden said. ‘Dead’ll get you a six-hour sermon on the sins of intoxication come Sunday morning.’

  Then he turned and left. As soon as he was out the door half the bar burst out laughing. But now it’s morning and ten bucks a head doesn’t strike Diego as a bad deal, even if he is feeling under the weather. After the way Cordelia was looking at him this morning he might just need that money to buy her some flowers at Albertsons on his way home.

  He makes a right on Main Street and cruises past Flatland Park, looking to see if any dogs are running around there. But he sees nothing, so he continues south, past the Bulls Mouth Nine where Fred Paulson—Andy Paulson’s brother and owner of the U-Haul rental place next to Andy’s feed store over on Wallace—looks to be finishing up a round. He’s cursing and hacking away at a sand trap with a pitching wedge, face pink with rage, mouth shotgunning curses like he bought a batch on sale at Wal-Mart. Finally he slams down his club and picks up the golf ball and throws it up onto the green. He snags up h
is club and stomps his way up to greet it, not bothering to rake the sand trap into decent condition for the next guy.

  A left turn puts Diego on Underhill Avenue. He continues along, looking left to the golf course and right to woods and blackberry bushes with fat overripe berries rotting on the ground beneath them. He’s about halfway to Crockett Street when he sees a dachshund digging furiously in a kidney-shaped sand trap hooking its way around the fourth green.

  He pulls his car to the shoulder of the road and swings open his door. Dizziness overwhelms him as he stands and he grabs on to the car for balance and blinks several times as he swallows back bile. Soon enough the blood gets to his head and the gray dizziness retreats and he squints in the sunlight. He looks toward the golf course. The dog is still digging. He runs toward the chain-link fence surrounding the Bulls Mouth Nine—it’s only waist-level—and hurls himself over it. This turns out to be a mistake.

  He lands on his feet, manages two steps, then falls to his knees and vomits. It’s mostly liquid, what’s left of last night’s fun, and what breakfast he managed to eat this morning. He spits a couple times and gets to his feet. Then, blocking each nostril with a thumb, he blows his nose into the grass. He wipes at his watery eyes. His stomach is a bit less sour. Maybe that was the last of it and this is the turning point for this hangover. Maybe he’ll start to feel human again. He spits once more and dusts the grass off his knees and looks to where he saw the dachshund.

  It’s now squatting in the rough just north of the fourth hole. He runs toward it, then thinks better of that, and walks briskly.

  ‘Come here, doggy,’ he says.

  After putting the dog into the back of the car he slips in behind the wheel. He reaches to the glove box and flips it open. He fumbles around in there, finding and discarding pens and napkins and other shit he’s stored there, till his fingers find what they were feeling for. He pulls out a travel-size mouthwash he keeps for just these occasions, takes a swig, gargles, and spits out the window.