Kingdom of the Seven

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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For Tom Doherty, who believed
THE ARIZONA DESERT:
MONDAY; 1:00 P.M.
 
 
 
“What d’ya make of that?”
Officer Joe Langhorn applied the brakes and inched the Arizona Highway Patrol car toward the shape on the side of Route 181. At first glance he had passed it off as a Hefty bag discarded by some lunk in a Winnebago too impatient to wait for the next rest stop. But now he was thinking it could be a coyote or even a mountain lion. Roadkill of a bumper bending sort.
“Jesus Christ, Wayne … Is that a …”
His partner, Wayne Denbo, held a hand up to shield his eyes from the bright sun, then pulled it away along with his sunglasses.
“Shit,” Denbo muttered. “Pull over.”
“I’ll call it in,” from Langhorn, reaching for the mike stand that connected their cruiser to the highway patrol’s southern headquarters a hundred miles away in Tucson.
“Wait till we’re sure.”
Denbo climbed out his door the moment the cruiser had ground to a halt on the gritty pavement. He redonned his
sunglasses and unsnapped his gun flap out of habit. Joe Langhorn advanced a step past him and stopped. He looked back at Denbo through a blast of windblown sand.
“I’m sure enough now, Wayne.”
Denbo nodded and started forward. The shape suspended halfway over the shoulder embankment belonged to a man. The flapping of a black shirt spilling out of his pants accounted for the illusion of a discarded Hefty bag. His outstretched, sand-caked arms were tawny enough to look like the limbs of some unfortunate mountain predator. Not a coyote, but roadkill quite possibly after all.
Langhorn waited, one eye on the cruiser, while his partner leaned over the body and felt about its neck for a pulse.
“He’s still alive,” Denbo said, looking up.
“I’m calling this in now.”
Denbo eased the man over onto his back. “The fuck, Joe. Bring my thermos over.”
It was a Dunkin Donuts jumbo, the kind that came free with enough coffee to fill it. Except Wayne Denbo always filled it with iced tea. Every day that Joe Langhorn could remember since they’d been paired up on this route.
“He hasn’t been here long,” Denbo reported. “Couple hours at most.”
“Hit by a car maybe?” Langhorn asked from the cruiser.
“Nope. He’s got no bruises or abrasions I can find.”
Langhorn grabbed the thermos from the backseat and gazed around into the emptiness of the desert that stretched in all directions. “Where’s his car? How the fuck he get out here?”
The shape moaned. Denbo lifted the man’s head and tapped his cheek lightly.
“Mister? Come on, mister, wake up. Come on …” He looked back at Langhorn. “Hurry up with that thermos!”
The ice had long since melted, and what contents had survived the morning sloshed about inside. Joe Langhorn handed it to his partner.
“You check for ID?”
With his free hand, Denbo flipped his partner a wallet he had pulled from the man’s pants pocket. Langhorn bobbled it briefly, then grabbed hold.
“Name’s Frank McBride,” he reported, after locating the man’s driver’s license. “From Beaver Falls.” Langhorn looked up. “Just off Route 10 north of Courtland, near forty miles away.”
“Less than half that, walking ’cross the sand.”
“You figure that’s how he got himself here?”
“Look at him.”
Langhorn didn’t really want to. Whatever would make a man walk maybe twenty miles straight into the heat of the desert with only tumbleweeds and sagebrush for company was beyond anything he could conceive of.
Denbo had Frank McBride’s head cradled in one hand, while the other lowered a half cup of brown-black iced tea toward his lips. He saw something tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket and reached for it, easing McBride’s head briefly back to the ground.
“What’s that?” Langhorn asked.
“Airline ticket envelope.” Denbo opened it. “Empty.” He lifted McBride’s head up gently again and rested the rim of the cup against the unconscious man’s lips. “Come on, Mr. McBride. It’s okay now. You’re all right. Wake up. Wake up.”
The shape stirred slightly. His eyes opened; uncertain, wavering, frightened. He began to swallow the tea, trying to raise himself high enough to gulp it down.
“That’s it. There we go. Not too fast now …”
Denbo pulled the cup away and McBride was left with dark brown droplets washing the sand off his chin. His lips trembled, then opened, moving.
“I think he’s trying to talk, Wayne,” pronounced Langhorn. “I think he’s trying to say something.”
Denbo moved his left ear closer. “Did you walk here from home, Mr. McBride? Did you walk here from Beaver Falls?”
The shape tried to force out a word and spit sand forth
in its place. His hand latched desperately on to Denbo’s sleeve and drew the patrolman’s ear almost to his lips.
Joe Langhorn heard a muttered rasp, something like air bleeding from a tire. The rasp came again and then Wayne Denbo pulled away.
“What’d he say, Wayne?”
Denbo drained the rest of the tea himself. “One word.”
“What
word, for the love of Christ?”
Denbo looked up from the empty cup. “Gone, Joe. I think he said ‘gone.’”
 
By the time the officers got him into the back of their patrol car, McBride was out again, eyelids jittering like a dreaming dog’s.
“What do you think he meant, Wayne?” raised Joe Langhorn. “What do you think he meant when he said ‘gone’?”
“Dunno.” Denbo paused, frowning. “What do you know about Beaver Falls?”
“Population of seven hundred, seven fifty maybe. A big influx moved in once they got the water problems straightened out a few months ago. Only folks know Beaver Falls even exists are the ones who pass by the signs for it on the way south to Tombstone.” Langhorn met Denbo’s stare and got the message. “Local jurisdiction, case I need to remind you.”
The senior man’s eyes flicked toward the backseat. “We should run him home.”
“Call it in’s what we should do.”
“Beaver Falls got a deputy sheriff on site?”
Langhorn was paging through a thick pamphlet he kept on the visor listing all Arizona municipalities and the names of their head law enforcement officials. “Yup,” he said. “Name is John Toulan.”
“What say we drive into Beaver Falls and leave Mr. McBride with him?”
Now it was Langhorn who stole a glance at the unconscious
form in the backseat. “I was thinking maybe we just call for an ambulance and let them take over.”
“An hour for them to get here, if we’re lucky,” Denbo told his partner. “We can have Mr. McBride home safe and sound in half that.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Start the car, Joe,” Denbo ordered. “Beaver Falls is barely out of our way.”
 
Joe Langhorn never would have admitted it, but he breathed a silent sigh of relief when the town of Beaver Falls came into view three miles west of Route 10. A part of him deep within had feared it was going to be … gone. Melted into the ground or reduced to rubble, like in some thriller novel they sold in the discount paperback section of Wal-Mart. But it was there, faded storefronts baking in the midday sun.
A squat collection of buildings no more than three stories high formed the town center along a half-mile drag. There was a church on one side of town. A K-twelve school rested on the other. Two restaurants, a bar, post office, and bank. The parking lot adjacent to the grocery store was half-full.
Joe Langhorn snailed the squad car through the outskirts past some of the residents’ homes and headed into the center of town. He pulled into a parking space in front of the sheriff’s station marked RESERVED.
In the backseat Frank McBride shifted uneasily, threatening to come awake.
“Wait here,” Wayne Denbo instructed.
“The fuck I will,” snapped Langhorn, joining him on the hot pavement. They entered the sheriff’s office one behind the other.
It was empty. A cup of coffee that had long lost its steam sat on a big desk with a SHERIFF JOHN TOULAN nameplate. A half-eaten doughnut rested next to it on a napkin. There were three other desks and a counter for the receptionist/dispatcher, all unoccupied.
“Musta left in a hurry,” said Langhorn.
Wayne Denbo moved behind the counter and reached for the microphone attached to the communications base unit.
“Sheriff Toulan, this is the Arizona Highway Patrol. Come in, please. Over.”
Silence.
“Sheriff Toulan, come in, please. Over.”
More silence.
Langhorn and Denbo looked at each other. They started for the door.
“Maybe they’re out looking for McBride,” Langhorn offered.
Back outside, Denbo stiffened. “Look over there. ’Cross the street.”
Langhorn followed his eyes to an old-fashioned diner called Ruby’s, its interior dominated by a long counter.
“What do you see, Joe?”
“Nothing.”
“Right. Even though it’s lunchtime …”
Denbo started moving, and Langhorn followed in step. Bells jangled when the senior cop entered the diner lined by empty stools and unoccupied booths. Half of the stools had plates of breakfast food resting on the counter before them, most partially eaten. A blackboard advertised a western omelet special, and three orders with varying amounts left were set on the table in one of the booths.
Langhorn stuck his hand in a half-gone cup of coffee and swept his tongue across his fingers. “Hours old. Looks like they never got past breakfast, never mind lunch.”
“Enough time maybe for Mr. McBride to walk himself across the desert?”
“What the fuck, Wayne? What the
fuck
?”
They backed out through the door. The bells jingling sounded so loud in the stillness that they startled Langhorn and he unsnapped the flap on his holster.
“Let’s take a walk,” Denbo suggested.
In the post office, four letters rested atop the abandoned counter. Four stamps waited nearby to be licked.
The bank, too, was empty, its floor dotted with stray forms, a few checks, and deposit slips.
At Beaver Falls’ single filling station, a Chevy Cavalier waited at the pump with the nozzle from the regular slot jammed into its tank. The gas had come to an automatic stop. The Cavalier’s driver’s door was open, key still in the ignition and no driver to be seen.
Each window Langhorn and Denbo passed, each closed door they stopped to knock on, brought the same results: nothing.
Langhorn was palming his gun butt now, flirting with the idea of drawing it. “Where the fuck is everybody, Wayne?”
“Whatever it was musta happened fast … .”
“Let’s just get the fuck out of—”
“If they were all together, where would they be?” Denbo asked out loud, his eyes drifting up the street toward the school.
“We got to call this in, Wayne.”
“One more thing to check.”
 
The school door closed behind them with a rattling clang. The main office was just on the right, and Wayne Denbo led the way in.
Beyond the front counter, a trio of secretaries’ desks were empty.
The two highway patrolmen advanced down the narrow hall separating the offices of the principal and guidance counselors. The first three were empty as well. They continued on toward a fourth door, attracted by a dull hum emanating from a space-age Xerox machine with multiple paper slots protruding from its side. The top slot had overflowed and spit neatly printed paper everywhere. The machine’s small LED readout flashed a continuous message:
PAPER OUT
The Mr. Coffee against the far wall brimmed with a steaming full pot. Three Styrofoam cups had been set out as if to await its contents.
“Nothing,” Joe Langhorn said from the doorway. “Fucking nothing.”
“You take the back end of the building,” Wayne Denbo told him. “I’ll take the front.” He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Stay in touch.”
Judging by the maps dangling from the front wall in the first classroom he entered, Denbo figured this must be the school’s social studies section. Textbooks and notebooks lay open on unoccupied desks, some with pens dropped haphazardly upon them. What little of the blackboard the maps left exposed showed a sentence uncompleted, abandoned in the middle.
Denbo moved on to the next classroom.
Identical sheets rested atop each desk. Denbo stopped near one in the rear and hovered over the chair, as if the kid were still seated there. Social studies quiz. Twenty questions, all multiple choice. Junior high school stuff. Kid from this desk had gotten through the first nine. Denbo started thinking again about what it had been like for Frank McBride, coming home to find his whole town missing.

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