The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (9 page)

“Uh,” he said again, taking off his hat, careful not to show the gun, and shaking his head. “I’m sorry. My head’s spinning a bit from the chemicals in the air. I’m sure y’all don’t notice, but I’m a virgin when it comes to this stuff.”

“Pure in heart and soul,” Gabe said, grinning. “A real fucking cowboy.”

“I don’t know about pure,” Jack said. “Just unfamiliar is all.”

He was feeling better and better.

“Where you from, boy?” Gabe said, imitating Jack’s accent.

Jack opened his mouth and almost said Montana. He caught himself and said, “Wyoming. I’m coming back from L.A., where my little sister was into some stuff. I’m taking her home, but I just need to get her a quick fix so I can get her back and into a program of some sort.”

Gabe just looked at him.

“I’m sorry to show up at your door like this. I just need enough to get her through till Wyoming. She’s pretty sick right now.”

Holding his hat in his lap, Jack reached in and fingered the Derringer. He wished he’d brought a knife. He’d never guessed he’d get an opportunity to be alone with this guy.

Gabe shifted in the water, getting more comfortable. “You remind me of a friend of mine,” he said.

The Glock sat on the board, but both the guy’s hands were in the water.

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“Had an accent like yours. Probably a lot like your sister. From the middle of nowhere. Got involved in some shit he wasn’t ready for. Good kid, though. He was a fucking hoot.”

“Yeah.”

“I could just listen to him talk all night long, man. Just get high and listen to him.”

“What was his name?”

“Jamie,” Gabe said. “From Montana.”

Jack half thought the guy was messing with him and any second he would grab the Glock and point it at him.

“What happened to him?” Jack asked.

“Jamie. He pissed me off. We’re not on speaking terms right now.”

Jack remembered his brother: napping on the couch, smiling with pure happiness after taking a big trout out of the river, sneaking in drunk at two in the morning and unable to keep himself from laughing while Pa yelled at him, wiping sweat from his face and complaining while they made hay in the barn. He saw Jamie hooting as the two of them rode through the pasture together, pushing their horses into a lope and heading home for supper. Jack saw his brother’s face, expressionless and plastic, on the slab in the morgue, his throat open like a second wide grinning mouth, his windpipe visible like a limp white tongue.

“Say something country, man,” Gabe said. “Say something like,
tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season.
Or
hotter than a whore on dollar day. As nervous as a fart in a windstorm.
Say something country and I’ll sell you what you came for.”

“I got one,” Jack said. “I got one y’all are gonna love.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

He pulled out the Derringer and lunged forward, sending his hat flying. He put his left hand over the Glock, holding it down, and thrust the Derringer into Gabe’s face. Gabe pulled back against the porcelain wall behind him and Jack jammed the gun into his eye. Jack saw terror on Gabe’s face and felt a thrill from it.

“James Fisher was my brother,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.

He’d shot enough deer to know that bullet wounds didn’t look like they do in the movies. This was no different. He’d shot Gabe in the left eye, but blood was coming out both sockets. And his nose and his ears. Like a grenade had gone off inside the man’s brain.

Jack forced himself to stop looking. The sound had been more a pop than a loud blast, but Jack knew it would be enough to get the attention of everyone else in the house. He tried to move as fast as he could. He shoved the Glock into his waistband, then locked the door. It was cheap fiberboard and could be busted apart in seconds, but it might buy him some time. He grabbed the shotgun.

“What the hell’s going on in there?” The voice sounded like Misfit. Right on the other side of the door.

Jack glanced at Gabe. Half the water was red now, and Jack’s hat was floating at Gabe’s crotch.

Something crashed against the door. The lock held, but Jack heard wood splinter. He didn’t think it would take many more hits like that. He pointed the shotgun at the window above the tub and squeezed both triggers. There was a double click. He broke the gun and saw both barrels were empty.

“Damn,” he said, and tossed the gun into the bathwater.

Misfit crashed against the door again. More splintering.

“Hey, Misfit,” Jack yelled, pulling out the Glock.

“Huh?”

Jack pointed the Glock at the door where he thought Misfit would be and started pulling the trigger. He lost count at four rounds and stopped himself a few shots later. The noise was deafening in the little room. His ears rang. Gunsmoke filled the air in a thick cloud. He pointed the Derringer at the window and fired. It only put a small hole in the glass, so he shot it again with the Glock. Glass came down onto Gabe and into the red water.

Jack heard shouting from behind the door. Screaming. The dog was barking. A baby started crying.

What the hell they got a baby in a place like this for? Jack thought.

His heart was pounding hard, even harder than when he jumped out of an airplane for the first time. He put one foot on the tub, kicking the two-by-four and a candle into the water, then stopped. How many bullets do I got left? Two? One? None?

He stepped away from the tub. He unlocked the door and yanked it open. Misfit lay on the floor, bleeding into the carpet like a gutted deer staining the snow. Two men were down at the end of the hall, both with guns. Jack fired at them and they jumped for cover. His gun went
click click click.
He dropped the Glock, grabbed Misfit’s .357, and darted back into the bathroom. The AK-47 started up like a buzz saw and ripped into the door. Chunks of wood exploded into the bathroom. Jack jumped out the window headfirst, diving over Gabe and the tub. He heard bullets whine by. He hit the ground hard. He felt pain—in his knees, elbows, chest—and he thought he might not be able to get up in time. He took a deep breath; he tasted fresh air. Then he ignored the hurt and was up and running.

Jack had been the fastest running back in the state in high school, but he’d never run with the football like he ran now. He felt like he was almost flying as he sped around the house, through the yard, and across the street. He jumped and slid across the hood of an LTD. The AK-47 started firing again behind him, and he fell onto the sidewalk, scraping his elbows and forearms on the concrete. He still held the Derringer in one hand, the .357 in the other. He hid behind the wheel, and heard more shots. A shotgun. A pistol. The shooting stopped for a second, and he tried to peek up over the hood. He heard the bullet zip by his head before he heard the blast of the gun. He jerked back down, and more gunfire began. The Ford shook from the bullets slamming into it.

Then Jack heard the familiar crack of David’s 30.06. There was screaming, then a second crack, then the screaming stopped.

Jack felt a swelling of pride about David’s shooting skill, then he wondered if this was something he should be proud of.

After the third crack of the rifle, all shooting stopped.

Did he get two or three already?

Jack pointed Misfit’s revolver at the passenger-side mirror and squeezed the trigger. He jammed the Derringer into his pocket and picked up the biggest chunk of mirror he could find and held it up. It took him a few seconds to orient himself through the glass, but then he spotted two bodies, one slumped over in a bush, the other lying in the yard. Then he glimpsed a figure crouched behind a tree. The person had no shirt on—the Mexican kid who’d frisked him? Others were hiding inside the front doorway. There was another crack, and the guy behind the tree went down. The figures in the doorway backed up into the house. He saw, in the side yard, one of the victims of David’s shooting had been the pretty Indian girl. She was lying facedown in the grass, her brown hair spread around her in tendrils.

He realized what they were doing in a way he hadn’t before. It punched him in the gut. Jack wanted this to be over. He wanted to go back in time and make a different decision.

Then he heard the crack of David’s .270. He’d switched rifles, which had been the plan all along. Don’t bother to reload until both were empty. Another crack. Falling glass. David was shooting at the house now.

Don’t do that, Jack thought. There’s a baby in there.

Jack took off running, hunched low. David kept shooting, but no one returned fire from the house.

Only about twenty-five yards away now. He saw a figure coming round the back of the truck, sneaking up behind David. His brother was hanging out the driver’s side window, using the window frame to rest his elbow and steady his gun. Who was the guy? Someone he hadn’t seen before. Someone who hadn’t been in the house maybe. Just coming home.

“Davey,” Jack tried to yell, but his voice was just a hoarse whisper. “Davey,” he tried again, but it wasn’t much louder.

“Goddamn drug dealers,” the man said, and shot.

David jerked into the truck. His rifle fell to the pavement. The barrel made a dinging sound when it hit. Jack ran full speed into the street.

The man, wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top, saw him and raised his pistol. He fired but missed. He was middle-aged, with a mustache and a gut. Jack swung his revolver up. He had the flash of a memory of going out into the field with Jamie and David and seeing how fast they could draw and shoot like cowboys. He’d been the best of the three, even good enough to shoot from his hip and hit a bottle thrown into the air. He pointed the gun at the man and held down the trigger and fanned the hammer with his left hand, shooting the guy five times, all in the chest, and kept on firing until the gun clicked three times. The guy went to his knees first, then fell over in the street. Jack had seen people die just like that in the movies—Hollywood had got it right on that one. Behind the man, Jack could see the sun just coming up over the hills to the east, bright, orange, red.

Jack sprinted to the truck, out of breath, a lump in his throat just like the one he’d had when the Nevada policeman called to tell him Jamie was found in a dumpster, his throat slit.

“Davey,” he said, coming around and looking in the window.

“Damn it,” David said.

He was slumped against the other door, holding his head with one hand. David’s fingers were red, and his hair was wet.

“It hurts,” David said.

“Ah hell,” Jack said, yanking the door open and getting in. He tossed the .357 on the seat. “Talk to me, Davey.”

“Shot me in the head,” David muttered.

Please, Jack thought. Please let it be one of those miracle shots where the bullet didn’t hurt his brain. Please.

“Did we win?” David asked.

“We sure did,” Jack said, starting the truck.

He heard a scream and looked up to see a woman running through a yard, heading his way, her eyes focused on the guy lying in the street. She was wailing. Jack grabbed the shotgun and pointed it out the window. He saw she wasn’t armed, but he shot anyway. The woman crumpled into the street. She had graying hair, sweatpants, a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was turning red. Jack looked at the man lying by her feet. Some regular Joe fed up with a drug war happening on his street, playing vigilante. And the lady was his wife.

For a moment the neighborhood was completely quiet. Jack had never heard such silence in his life. Then he heard the sound of the sprinkler. He heard a dog barking. He heard a screen door slam. He heard screaming. He heard sirens.

“Hellfire and damnation,” Jack said, and stomped on the gas.

He yanked the wheel to do a U-turn and almost ran over the bodies of the man and woman lying in the street. The back wheels spun, screeching on the pavement, then tearing up over the curb and spitting dirt and grass. The truck jerked like when he took it off-roading, then all four tires were on pavement and he sped away. The sirens were loud now. Behind him, someone ran into the street and shot once at the truck. But the truck was too far away.

“Keep talking,” Jack said, glancing at his brother as he ran a stop sign.

“I’m okay,” David muttered, but his hand fell away, and his head rolled down so his chin almost rested on his chest. He looked like a drunk unable to keep from passing out. Blood dripped out of his hair and streaked down his face, bright red against his pale skin.

“You’re going to be okay, Davey,” Jack said, but he heard the panic in his voice. “Trust me, little brother. Just trust me.”

Jack’s hands shook. His eyes were blurry with tears. He was having trouble seeing. He didn’t know where he was going. He screeched around a corner onto Highway 50 and floored the gas, heading east, not knowing why.

“Talk to me, Davey.”

Jack’s brother muttered something incomprehensible.

Jack pushed the truck to a hundred miles an hour, zipping around cars on the four-lane highway. The sun was up now, a bright, almost blinding blood-red bullet hole in the blue sky in front of him. He realized no police were following him. No drug dealers. But he didn’t slow down.

TOMIKO M. BRELAND

FROM
Ploughshares

I

W
HEN
C
HARLOTTE WAS
very small, she played a game called Pretty Pretty Princess with her older sisters, and she never once won. One of them always became the prettiest princess, draped in pink or blue or purple plastic beads and a shiny plastic crown.

At eight, she was accepted into the circle of Ashlee, Tabatha, and Danielle, and even though they said to her,
You’re not as pretty as us, but we’ll let you play with us anyway
, Charlotte conceded to their haughty governance with fawning displays of appreciation and unmitigated devotion and loyalty.

In sixth grade, Charlotte fell in love with Scotty Marlowe. She sat behind him in geography class and mapped the spattering of copper freckles on the back of his neck instead of the primary-colored countries on the blackboard.