The Dead Run Page 7

  Starting with the impossible living heart lashed to his torso.

  Disobeying the—what had he called it?—the dictate didn’t seem like an auspicious way to start. More like the kind of shit the dumbest motherfucker in a horror movie would do.

  Best to keep the team intact, Galvan decided. At least for the time being.

  Give it the ol’ college try, anyhow.

  “We’ve got a job to do,” he declared. “Walking away is not an option.”

  The man sneered, turned on his heel, began to do just that.

  Galvan’s move. Again, he felt their eyes. Fuck. It was a no-win. He could tackle the guy, give him a beating, but then what? A protector who was just looking to run was no protector at all. Galvan would only be saving face.

  That, and giving the others a perfect excuse to jump in, tear him apart, go their merry ways.

  The hell with it. Sometimes you just had to play out a bad hand.

  The song of the day chose that moment to reassert itself, Kodiak Brinks’ baritone thundering unbidden through his head.

  Manchild in the promised land / My name known, plus I got it sewn / like a monogram / in man / stomp a man who carry contraband if I gotta, fam . . .

  Galvan stepped forward, then froze as Britannica, of all people, piped up.

  “You leave and you’re as good as dead, Charniss.”

  The man stopped and smirked over his shoulder.

  “I know you ain’t makin’ threats, Britannica.”

  “It’s no threat.” The con man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They slid instantly back down. “You’ve been made a protector. You’re bound to him now, same as the rest of us.”

  Payaso, still worrying the ground with his shoe: “The fuck you mean, bound?”

  Britannica gazed into the featureless distance. “We are the evil that wards off evil. The Messenger cannot succeed without us. But we may be sacrificed so that he does.”

  Galvan sidled up to Britannica. “How do you know so much?” he asked quietly.

  “I was a priest once. I’ve studied the ancient religions. The Aztec cults. Anything I could get my hands on.”

  Payaso snorted. “You weren’t no fuckin’ priest. You impersonated one and robbed a whole lot of pobres blind.”

  Britannica pushed his glasses again. They slalomed down a river of sweat, caught on the very tip of his nose.

  “I know what I know,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Charniss. “So you can shove that mumbo-jumbo up your ass. Best of luck, pendejos.”

  He turned and stalked away.

  Ten feet. Twenty. With each passing moment, as no calamity befell him, Galvan waited for the rest to follow.

  Instead, Gutierrez thundered into action.

  Charniss barely had time to realize what was happening before the brute was on him. He snapped Charniss’s neck between his hands, the body spinning full around before it hit the sand.

  Gutierrez didn’t even bother to watch it tumble, just squared his shoulders and marched back the other way. He came to a stop in front of Galvan.

  “You saved my life,” he said in a voice like gargled gravel, and extended a hand. “Nobody gonna fuck around with you as long as I’m around.”

  Galvan nodded and shook. Over Gutierrez’s shoulder, a thin tendril of black smoke twirled up from the ground.

  Galvan craned his neck. “The hell is that?”

  Gutierrez turned for a look. “What’s what, boss?”

  “That smoke. Looks like it’s coming from his body.”

  “I don’t see nothing, boss.”

  “Right there.” Galvan pointed. “You guys don’t see that?”

  “It’s not smoke,” said Britannica, at Galvan’s side. “You’re watching his spirit leave. And no, we can’t see it.” He nodded meaningfully at the box affixed to Galvan’s back. “The . . . message has many effects on the Messenger.”

  Galvan couldn’t tear his eyes off the smoke. It was gathering into a ball now, some fifteen feet above the ground, like yarn gathered by an invisible hand. “That so,” he muttered.

  “Reality may grow blurred. You’re straddling several planes at once. The physical. The ephemeral. And the demonic.”

  “I got something right here you can straddle, Padre,” Payaso called, grabbing his crotch. “Hey, gringo, we gonna move or stand here waiting for the vultures?”

  Galvan forced himself to look away. “Payaso’s right. Let’s get going. Two rules. Don’t drink too much, and don’t drink too little. We’re gonna be out here a long time. And another thing.”

  He walked over to Payaso. “Cut the gringo shit. I’m half Mexican and another quarter Ecuadorian, okay, homes? Just happened to be born on the other side of the border. Me entiendes?”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Payaso raised a fist. “La Raza unida, homes. Aztlán forever.”

  Despite everything, Galvan had to laugh.

  The baling wire extracted a stiff price for that. He winced, the mirth evaporating.

  Gutierrez caught ahold of the joke, grinning through his busted lips. “Want me to break his jaw?” he asked, throwing Payaso in a headlock.

  “Ask me again in half an hour.”

  They trudged in silence for at least that long, the high sun crisping their skin and casting midget shadows on the sand.

  Too hot to talk. Too hot to think.

  That was probably for the best.

  Galvan and Britannica fell into the lead. Payaso labored behind them, and Gutierrez brought up the rear—not because he was the slowest, Galvan knew, but because he wanted to keep an eye on everything and everybody. Picking him was starting to feel like the best decision Galvan had ever made. Not that there was a whole lotta competition in that field.

  Suddenly, a chill ran through Galvan, and he pulled up short.

  Britannica stopped on a dime. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. I just felt . . . cold, for a second.”

  The others were beside him now, too, Payaso hipping his hands at the holdup and Gutierrez turning in a slow circle, eyes peeled for signs of danger.

  Britannica didn’t look surprised. “Something probably happened here, in the past. Or the future. A death, most likely.”

  “If you say so, Padre. Gutierrez, kill Payaso.”

  The big man’s face darkened. “Boss?”

  “I’m joking.”

  Payaso launched a bullet of spit through the gap in his front teeth. “Look who’s a fuckin’ comedian.”

  A flurry of motion at the corner of his eye caught Galvan’s attention. He whirled toward it and found himself facing a high bluff with a scraggly beard of scrub brush clinging to the ridge.

  “Tell me you guys saw that.”

  “Here we go again,” from Payaso. “Whatchu see this time, man? Obi-Wan fuckin’ Kenobi?”

  “I thought I saw a kid, up there. A little boy. Watching us.” Galvan shaded his eyes. “That make any sense to you, Padre?”

  Britannica stared up at the bluff. “Anything’s possible.”

  “Yeah,” said Payaso, “if you’re hallucinating. Most guys in the desert, they think they see water. You must really like little boys, huh, Galvan? That what got you locked up?”

  Galvan ignored him. Kept on staring at the spot.

  “There!” They all saw him this time: a Mexican kid, maybe ten years old, shaggy-haired, with ragged clothes. He peered down at them for a split second, eyes big and brown, then turned and ran, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  “I’m going after him,” Galvan decided.

  “All due respect, chief . . . ,” Payaso said, tentative. “But why in the fuck would you do that?”

  “Because he’s in trouble.”

  “And that’s our problem why?”

  Galva
n raised his chin at Gutierrez. “Keep them here ’til I get back. No use all of us wasting our strength.” The enforcer nodded.

  Galvan sprinted up the bluff.

  In his head, the last words he’d heard as a free man played on a loop, and Galvan reflected that apparently, the whole life-ruining affair hadn’t taught him one single goddamn thing.

  Look who turns out to be a fuckin’ Boy Scout.

  A leopard can’t change its spots, he told himself. If you stop caring about the helpless, what are you?

  No kind of man.

  Galvan ran on.

  CHAPTER 9

  You can’t,” Sherry hissed. “It’s too dangerous. He’s got a rifle. And he looks like he knows how to use it.”

  She and Eric crouched behind a jutting, knee-high rock, staring at the last obstacle between them and escape: a sentry who paced in lazy, indiscriminate loops, worn shit-kickers raising clouds of knee-high dust. He looked about forty-five, sandy-haired with a bristle-brush mustache, gun slung over the shoulder of his cowboy shirt. Every few seconds, a stream of tobacco juice squirted from his mouth.

  “There’s no other way,” Eric whispered back. “I can take that fat old fuck. I have to.” He handed her his keys. “The next time he comes close, I’ll rush the son of a bitch. Soon as I do, you make a break for the car. I’ll meet you there.”

  Sherry nodded. She could see Eric’s Jeep, parked on the shoulder of the road, no more than a hundred yards away.

  Sherry didn’t know how far a rifle could shoot, but she was pretty sure that was well within its range.

  Eric rose up off his haunches, tensed to spring.

  If this were a movie, Sherry thought, I’d grab him right now and give him a kiss and say “For luck” or something. We’d have, like, a moment.

  In a movie, I wouldn’t be shaking like a leaf.

  And trying not to piss my pants.

  Not that Eric seemed to be in any mood for distractions. His focus on the sentry was total.

  Sherry realized she had seen this exact look on his face before, the one time she’d gone to a school swim meet and caught a glimpse of Eric standing on the block, waiting to dive. It was a look of coiled readiness, bespeaking an utter singularity of purpose.

  He’d won by a full second that day.

  The sentry turned and strolled in their direction. Sherry dug her nails into her palm and rose partway up. Recollections of this place were beginning to unspool inside her—things she’d forgotten or repressed, who could tell which—and this was no time to be traipsing down memory lane.

  She shook her head clear, jammed her flip-flops deeper into the back pockets of her jeans.

  And inspiration struck.

  She nudged Eric, removed the pink scrunchie holding back her hair, and wiggled it at him. Pointed toward the sentry, then leaned around the rock just far enough to toss the thing.

  It arced low through the air, a crippled butterfly, and landed soundlessly, paces from his feet, the guy leaning the other way to send another brown stream sluicing from his maw.

  He faced front, looked down, and furrowed his brow. Bent at the knees to contemplate the bright elasticized thing snared in the scraggly, dry grass—Did I not see that before?

  Eric seized the moment and sprinted at him. The sentry heard the noise; he looked up in time to straighten, but not fast enough to swing the rifle around. Eric tackled him to the ground, cocked back a fist.

  Adrenaline filled Sherry’s body, and she ran.

  A body thumped against the ground, and she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Eric springing up and heading for her. Instead, the sentry was on top. Sherry froze, horrified, as he swung and swung again, Eric invisible between his legs, no sound except the muffled crack of flesh meeting bone.

  The sentry punched again, then raised his bulk partway to reach behind him for the rifle.

  Sherry raced toward it.

  He was three feet away. She was thirty.

  It was like running in a dream—a nightmare, one of those in which the body is a weak and distant thing. An impediment. An enemy.

  And then Eric worked a leg up, slid it between himself and his assailant, knee to his own chin. His foot shot straight out, caught the guy full in the chest. He toppled over, with a sound that threw Sherry’s life in reverse, pulled her backward through time.

  She was four years old, dropping coconuts onto the driveway with her dad, giggling with delight as they cracked open.

  Oh.

  Eric was up now, running toward her, urging Sherry on with wide sweeps of his hand. The sentry lay motionless, a crown of blood pooling around his skull and the rock on which it had landed.

  The next thing Sherry knew, she was in the passenger seat of Eric’s Jeep, filmed head to toe with sweat, the wind snarling her hair as they tore down the road. Eric gripped the wheel with two sets of skinned knuckles. The metallic scent of blood filled up the car.

  Sherry let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Are you all right?”

  Eric grimaced and spit out the window. “Guy knocked out my tooth.” He opened his mouth and tongued the empty space where his top right incisor had been, like a six-year-old waiting for the tooth fairy.

  “What about you?” he asked, looking her up and down. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  Sherry shook her head. “But they would have. I know it.”

  It was all coming back to her. The visits. The endless weekends, spent entirely in that clammy, barebones church. Low-voiced, shaky women with growling stomachs. The palest children Sherry had ever seen, forever clutching at their mothers’ skirts. The addled, snake-slippery theology, disseminated in tiny dribs and drabs as the guests “visited” with the members, each woman’s version different from the next’s.

  Melinda had loved the piety, the fervor, the sisterhood. All Sherry had known of it was fear.

  A sudden jolt of terror tore through her now, and she grabbed Eric’s arm.

  “Oh my God—my mom! She’s in danger. We’ve got to find her.”

  CANTWELL’S AUDI JERKED to a stop in front of the compound’s meetinghouse, inches from Seth’s humble Buick. They hadn’t seen a soul on the way in, nor any sign of fortification. Any of the outlying buildings could’ve been the barn of which Melinda Richards was so terrified, but none was accessible by car. Not without risking your muffler, anyway.

  Nichols had revised his investigative approach accordingly.

  Walk up to the front door, ring the bell, grin like an idiot.

  He gave himself a routine pat-down, making sure his gun, badge, balls, and Ray-Bans were properly situated, then heaved his bulk out into the sweltering afternoon and had a look around.

  Cantwell stared at him across the car’s roof, Nichols’s own fish-eyed visage bouncing off her shades.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, nodding at the shotgun.

  Nichols unfolded his sunglasses and slid them on, the metal frames still cool from the air-conditioned ride.

  “Heavy artillery tends to make folks less cooperative. I like to start with a nice friendly chat, build my way up to the armed standoff from there. That work for you, doc, or would you rather wait in the car? ’Cause technically, you know, you really shouldn’t be here at all.”

  And neither should I, Nichols thought.

  Cantwell’s reply was low and even. “These are bad people, Sheriff.”

  “And yet, amazingly, they have rights. Some of them even take to a court of law to defend those rights when they get trampled.” Nichols squared his shoulders to her. “Look, whenever it’s humanly possible, I do things by the book, because that book was written by smarter sons of bitches than me, and it was written to keep sons of bitches like me alive. It’s bad enough I’m investigating outside my jurisdiction, on your tip. But until I find some
evidence, that’s all it is—a tip. So forgive me if I don’t start blasting away at everything that moves like this is Grand Theft Auto. We understand each other?”

  Cantwell’s mouth was drawn tight. “Yes.”

  “Peachy. Come on, then.” Nichols hitched up his belt and headed for the building. Halfway there, he turned to her.

  “For the record, I got nothing against Grand Theft Auto. It’s a damn fun game.”

  She dirty-eyeballed him, but one mouth corner twitched upward.

  Friends once more.

  Nichols, you old softie.

  He raised his fist and gave the door a solid double rap.

  “One moment, please,” came a call from inside, the voice middle-aged and male.

  Nichols banged again, One moment, please often a euphemism for Hold on while I flush my stash, or Gimme a sec to tell my wife that she fell down a flight of stairs. You had to keep the pressure on, make them think you might bust down the door instead of waiting.

  “Sir, this is Sheriff Nichols, Del Verde County police. Open up. We need to talk to you.”

  “Coming, coming.”

  The door opened beneath Nichols’s fist, and a balding man with a mild face blinked up at him.

  “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I’ve got some questions for an Aaron Seth.”

  “I’m Reverend Seth.” He stepped aside, revealing a simple, spotless foyer of blond wood. “Please, come in. May I offer you a glass of iced tea?”

  “We’re fine, thanks.”

  Nichols and Cantwell followed him into a sparse sitting room, organized around a large stone fireplace. The rattle of an unseen, barely felt air conditioner was the only sound. A hint of lemon Pledge tinged the air.

  Seth lowered himself onto a wicker-framed couch and beckoned them into a pair of matching chairs. “You’re a long way from Del Verde County,” he said with a smile. “I hope you had a pleasant drive.”

  Nichols leaned forward. “I’ll get right to the point, sir. We’re investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl named Sherry Richards. That name ring a bell?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t,” said Seth. He cocked his head at Cantwell. “Speaking of names, I don’t believe I got yours.”