The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (8 page)

Jack thought as he approached the house, If we can’t kill the sons of bitches, if it all goes to hell, please just let David get away.

He’d been nervous from the start about bringing David. But just because he was sixteen didn’t mean he had any less right to want to avenge Jamie than Jack did. Jack had never been as close to David as he had been to Jamie, and Jamie had probably been closer to his little brother than his older. Jack was eight years older than David; Jamie had been born right in between them. When Jack had gone into the army, David was a kid still; when he came back, his baby brother was a young man, already shaving and dipping snuff, with a pretty girlfriend and a deer mounted on the wall bigger than any he or Jamie had ever shot. And Jamie was gone to college in Reno. Jack had been in such a hurry to get away from Montana, but when he was away he missed the ranch and the mountains and waking up in the morning in the house and having breakfast with his brothers. When he came back, though, it was all different. And then there was this; how had it gotten so bad that he was here now, walking down some Carson City street with a gun under his hat?

The neighborhood wasn’t bad, some crappy houses and some nice ones. A white cat hurried across the street in front of him. An automated sprinkler kicked on at one house; one nozzle was busted and sprayed water all over the sidewalk. Jack walked right down the center of the street. He thought of a gunfighter in an old western walking down Main Street and into trouble; he told himself this was going to be different from the movies he’d watched growing up.

The house was nondescript. Beige siding. Roof in need of repair. A couple of brown patches in the lawn. A few trees out front, nothing too big.

He ignored the camera. He stepped over a dead bird. He tried to control the shaking in his hands. The door swung open even before he raised his hand to knock. A white guy in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. The guy was thin; he had red hair and an unruly beard. Could have been thirty-five, but probably was twenty-five and just worn the hell out. His shirt said
Misfits
on it in green letters; Jack wondered if that was some kind of rock band. The guy had one hand behind his back. A skinny Mexican kid who couldn’t have been eighteen stood behind him, wearing jeans and no shirt. His ribs stood out like slats on a fence.

“What the hell you want, cowboy?” the redheaded guy asked.

Jack tried to keep his voice confident but reverential. “Sorry to just show up like this, man, but I need some crystal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said without hesitating.

“Stu Kicking Bird told me this was the place to come. He’s dry, and I can’t wait.”

Misfit looked at him for a moment.

“Come on. Let’s talk inside.”

Jack fought the urge to turn and look down the street toward David.

When the door was shut, the one with the
Misfits
shirt pulled his hand out from behind his back. He didn’t point the gun at Jack but just showed him that it was there. It was a .357 Magnum with a sandalwood grip, like something a gun collector might have, not a drug dealer. Jack pretended it didn’t bother him.

They were in a small foyer, closed in by a second thick oak door that looked a heck of a lot more secure than the one in front. Jack hadn’t expected this. He’d wanted to get in, find an opportunity, shoot one or two guys real quick, grab a gun, then head out the door, shooting as he went. A second door was an obstacle. Not a big one, but anything was trouble when he didn’t have much room for mistakes anyway.

“Arms up,” Misfit said.

Jack raised his arms, and the Mexican came in to pat him down. If they checked his hat, he’d have to make a move for Misfit’s gun, but he probably wouldn’t be able to get it. The Mexican was thorough, even checking Jack’s boots, but he ignored the hat.

“I know y’all are a distributor and you wouldn’t normally deal with a guy like me,” Jack said. “But Stu was dry and I ain’t got time to keep looking.”

“Why the hurry?” Misfit said.

“I’m just driving through from L.A.,” Jack said, wanting to get the story out quickly. “My sister was down there using and I’m trying to get her back home to Wyoming where I can get her some help. But I’m a realistic man and I know she can’t just quit. I’m just trying to get enough to get home so I can get her some help.”

Both men stared at him suspiciously.

“I ain’t a user but I ain’t judging y’all. I just want to get my sister through this. I been out looking all night and all I found was Stu. All I want is to get some stuff an y’all won’t never see me no more.”

“Where’s your sister at?” Misfit asked.

“She’s at a motel, sicker’n a dog.”

“Well,” Misfit said, “you’re going to have to talk to Gabe. He makes the decisions.”

Gabe—the name he and David had heard over and over again. That’s the guy, Jack thought. No matter what happens afterward, I’ll get him at least.

The Mexican pounded against the second door; there wasn’t a handle on this side.

“Open up!”

A white guy with a nose ring and a shaved head opened it. As Jack stepped inside the house, the smell of the cooking meth hit him. It stank like chemical cleaners. He was instantly light-headed, like he’d stood too fast. He tried to walk straight, to pretend it wasn’t bothering him. The others didn’t seem to notice.

Misfit led him into the kitchen. A group of people were sitting at a table working. Jack tried to get his bearings, tried to count the people and determine what kind of situation he was in. But his wooziness wasn’t going away—it was getting worse. He felt nauseous, dizzy. Not all that different from the time in boot camp when they had to go into the tear-gas chamber. He saw a table full of equipment: burners, pans, boxes of cleaning supplies. He saw bags of powder on the counter, lots of them. An AK-47 was leaning against the wall and an Uzi was sitting by the sink next to a box of Cheez-Its.

Misfit led him through the house and he followed. A couple guys were sitting on the sofa watching an old Clint Eastwood western. Jack couldn’t tell which one. Beer bottles and ashtrays were all over the coffee table, and a sawed-off shotgun. A pit bull in the corner stood up and started barking at him, then someone—Jack couldn’t figure out who—yelled at it. It sat back down. Jack noticed the dog was lying near a rusty brown stain about the size of a stop sign on the gray carpet. Jack wondered if it was blood.

They went down a hall and Misfit knocked on a door.

“There’s a cowboy here to see you.”

“A what?” It was a girl’s voice.

Misfit cracked the door.

“A cowboy. He’s just passing through. Said Stuart Kicking Bird told him where to go.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A male voice this time. “Okay. What the fuck ever.”

Misfit opened the door, and Jack looked past him and saw it was a bathroom. A pretty Indian girl sat on a chair facing the tub, where a man was lying in bathwater. Several candles were burning. Incense. A two-by-four lay across the tub, spanning the guy like a bridge. A black rubber strap and an empty syringe sat on the wood. A pistol sat on the linoleum floor by the tub.

“Wow,” the girl said. “He really is a cowboy.”

Jack reached up and tipped his hat.

“Ma’am,” he said.

It wasn’t something he would normally do. He felt giddy.

The guy in the tub shifted to get a better look at Jack. He had brown hair, shaggy and almost to his shoulders. The hair on his face was an unruly mess somewhere between a beard and a few days’ stubble. His eyes were so bloodshot Jack could see the red from where he was.

“Well, come on in, cowboy,” Gabe said, his smile suggesting he found this funny in a way no one else quite would.

The girl stood.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said.

She walked past Jack and stared at him as she passed by, so close that he could smell her over the chemicals. She was so pretty he couldn’t believe it. Not pretty in any done-up way. Just cute. Long straight brown hair. Clean almond-colored skin. Eyes dark like rich fertile soil. Why couldn’t he meet a girl like this back home?

“Be nice to him,” she said to Gabe, not taking her eyes off Jack. “He’s a cute cowboy.”

Jack smiled at her. He wondered if there was still hope for her. He thought about not going through with it all, then he stepped into the bathroom, telling himself to get his head straight.

“Pedro frisked him,” Misfit said. “Motherfucker’s clean.”

Misfit shut the door behind him, leaving Jack alone with Gabe.

“Sit down,” Gabe said, picking up the pistol, a Glock, and laying it on the two-by-four.

Jack sat.

Jack stared, unblinking, at the campfire. He and David had hardly spoken all evening. They built the fire, cooked hot dogs over the flames, and sipped beers in a sort of robotic daze. Now a mound of red and orange coals lay beneath the few logs. The coals were hot, twisting with orange and red and black shapes. Jack could see images in the coals, like flaming clouds. Faces, tortured visages. But he couldn’t seem to make himself look away. He felt almost like he was losing his mind. He’d looked at his brother’s dead body in the Carson City morgue that afternoon, and now he couldn’t quite make sense of anything.

Across the fire, David pulled out his can of Kodiak, hit it against his palm to pack it, and then put a pinch in his lip. He spit into the fire.

“Want some?” he said.

Jack shook his head no.

David took a deep breath. “I tell you what,” he said.

Jack knew immediately that his brother had been planning to say what he was about to, had been mulling it over all evening, waiting for the right moment.

“That lawman ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Nope.” Jack put another log on the fire without looking at David. The wood caught immediately, and the flames rose. The night was chilly—it was summer, but they were in the mountains—and Jack’s back was cold while his knees, close to the fire, were hot.

“He might as well have said, ‘He’s just some drug dealer; it ain’t like he was somebody who mattered.’” David spat onto the log. The tobacco juice sizzled like hot grease. “Like they got better things to do. This is Carson City. How many murders they got here?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, taking his hat off, setting it on a log.

He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, running his fingers back and forth through his hair. He closed his eyes but could still see flashes of orange on the inside of his black lids. The fire was dry against his face and hands. All he could think about was what he should have done differently. He’d seen something was wrong with Jamie when he was home for Christmas, and he suspected it was drugs. But he never guessed how far Jamie must have been involved in that world. He’d wanted to say something, take him aside and give him a good talking-to. Instead, though, when he drove him to the airport, they were silent most of the way, and as he shook his hand and said goodbye, all he’d said was, “If you ever need anything, let me know, okay?” Jamie nodded and that was it. The last time he saw his brother alive.

“Well, if the law ain’t gonna do nothing,” David said, “I think we should.”

Jack looked into the fire again and not at David. He’d been thinking the same thing, speculating on how realistic it would be for him to ask around town and track down who Jamie had been hanging around with. Then, if he could figure it out, could he go through with killing those who’d done in his brother? Jack’s four years in the army fell between the two Gulf wars; he’d never been in combat but felt confident he’d be able to handle himself.

“I say we go home, get some shit—guns—and come back and start asking questions.” David spat. “What do you think?”

“I been thinking the same thing.” Jack paused for a long time and then, still looking into the fire, said, “Only just me, not you.”

“He was my brother too,” David said.

He was right. Even at sixteen, David was old enough to want his brother’s murderers brought to justice.

“I know,” Jack said. “Still.”

“I ain’t a kid no more. I can shoot as well as you. I—”

“Just shut up and let me think,” Jack said.

Jack thought about going home, telling his ma and pa what happened, and trying to put the whole thing behind him like a bad memory. But he already had memories in his mind that he couldn’t push away, things he wished he’d done to help Jamie before it got this far. He hadn’t said anything when Jamie failed out of the University of Nevada and moved to Carson City with friends. He just figured it was his brother’s life to do what he wanted with. And then at Christmas, with Jamie looking so pale and as thin as a post, Jack hadn’t done anything. Jamie had smiled just like always, like nothing bothered him. His grin had always been infectious, but in December all Jack could think about was how yellow his teeth seemed to look. And yet he still didn’t say anything.

So, he thought, staring into the fire, you gonna fail your brother again?

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll come back and ask some questions, see what happens.”

“And kill them that killed Jamie?”

He looked up from the flames at David. “If we can.”

David smiled. His face was stained with shadows cast upward from the fire. His eye sockets were dark holes; his forehead was in darkness. Only his grin was aglow from the orange flames. Jack shuddered, wondering if he’d just made a mistake. David spat into the fire, and the juice sizzled.

The air was clearer in the bathroom and Jack immediately began to feel better.

“What brings you to my home?” Gabe asked, settling back into the water. He didn’t seem to care that he was meeting a stranger while naked in a bathtub.

Jack looked around. There was a big window above the tub, stained white with shower scum but not covered by any curtain. The mirror over the sink was cracked. The toilet was open and the water inside was yellow. A double-barrel shotgun leaned against the wall by a pile of
Penthouse
magazines.

“Uh,” Jack said, looking into the tub. He saw Gabe’s penis, floating in the water, pointing up. He saw the dark hair on the man’s stomach and chest swaying in the water like weeds in a pond. He looked Gabe in the face. He was afraid and he didn’t want to be.