The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (35 page)

But that was the pure hell of it. Because Glen Barlow wasn’t another kind of guy . . . and the worst thing about it was he knew that better than anyone. Even better than the other kind of guy who at that moment was stepping through Lisa Allen’s front door.

That guy’s name was J. J. Bryce.

The deputy put a sixer on the counter, and set the bag with the tortillas and carnitas he’d bought at that Mexican grocery store next to it. He undid his gunbelt and put it on a chair. Then he bent low, gave Lisa a kiss, and passed her a beer.

“Has Barlow been here yet?”

Lisa shook her head. But that was just a comment about Glen, not an answer to J. J.’s question.

The real answer took a minute . . . a popped bottle cap . . . a deep swallow.

“Oh, yeah,” she said finally. “He’s been, and he’s gone.”

J. J. sighed loud and long, staring down at the place the phone should have been.

“Jesus,” he said. “This guy.”

“I told you how he is. And you said you could handle him.”

“For that little job, I would have needed some of those gloves the bomb-disposal boys use. Man, what a handful of dynamite. Your boy Barlow was ready to go to war as soon as he stepped into my office. One quick chew of my ass and he was out of there. I didn’t get to say a word about Kale and Kim getting married—”

“Yeah. I noticed. I got to drop that bomb myself.”

“Did you tell him about us?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Hell, someone’s got to tell him.”

“Oh, sure. That would have been a sweet followup to the news about his sister marrying the guy who used to beat the crap out of her. Hey, maybe we should invite him over to dinner and break the news. We could hold hands, and he could carve out his own heart with a steak knife.”

“Don’t play that, Lisa. Barlow walked out on you . . .
and
his sister. If he wants someone to blame for that, he can go find himself a mirror.”

Lisa laughed sharply. “Funny thing is, I think he’d agree with you.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean squat to me. He walked out six months ago, and you didn’t hear from him until today. I’ll bet he didn’t keep in touch with his sister, either. Now, I’m not exactly sure what happened to Kim out there at Tres Manos. Hell, I’m not even sure Kale Howard didn’t have something to do with it. But one thing I’m sure of is that Glen Barlow did dirt to both of you when he left town, and now he’s here trying to make things right when it’s way too late to tote that load.”

“Wow. You sound just like him. If he would have stuck around, I bet you would have rubber-stamped his plan for the rest of the night.”

“What plan?”

J. J. sipped his beer and listened while Lisa laid it out for him.

When she was done, he took a deeper swallow.

Then he drained the bottle.

“That goddamn coyote,” he said, and he stepped outside.

J. J. flipped open his cell phone and called dispatch. It was dark now, and a light breeze was blowing from the west. Lisa watched as J. J. moved over to the barbeque. He took off the lid and scraped down the grill while he talked. She couldn’t hear his words, just clipped short sentences. But his tone told the story, and that tone was all business.

Across the table, an empty chair waited. Lisa saw Glen sitting there an hour before. She saw J. J.’s empty beer bottle on the table, right now. She heard the words of both men, sizing up things in ways that really weren’t that different.

The breeze carried the smell of sage, rosemary, and thyme through the open door. Glen had always trimmed back the rosemary way too tight. He said it made the plant grow stronger. J. J. was the kind of guy who thought anything you put in your mouth should come from the grocery store. She wondered if he ever noticed the herb garden at all.

Lisa had been with J. J. two months. The relationship had started slow and easy, then come on fast. Bryce was a
what you see is what you get
kind of guy. You wanted to know how he felt about something, all you had to do was ask. He’d tell you. And things worked best if they operated that way from his side of the equation, too. He wanted to know something, he’d ask you straight out. It was never that way with Glen. Glen could be as silent as a shadow. Sure, the two men weren’t exactly yin and yang or night and day, but Lisa definitely didn’t have a problem figuring out which one was left brain and which was right—

Mr. Left Brain stepped through the door.

“Change of plans,” J. J. said. “Dinner’s on the backburner.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jeff Keats is out sick tonight, and Einar Cerda’s transporting a couple of prisoners over to county lockup. That Garcia kid from California’s pretty much running the show, and he’s out on a domestic dispute call. Since all I’ve got is a suspicion your boy Barlow is going to jump a restraining order, there’s no way Glen gets priority. Besides, I wouldn’t want to put the kid up against Barlow and Kale Howard, even if he was available. Not by his lonesome, anyway. You ask me, both those guys belong in strait-jackets.”

“Can’t they call in someone from the day shift?”

“Sure. They could start with Randall, like they did last Christmas Eve. He’d love that.”

“Who then?”

“Well, if someone’s stupid enough to be proactive when nothing’s happened yet, he might head out there. Someone with a solid knowledge of the parties involved. Of course, an idiot like that would have to put his off-duty self in the middle of things and worry about lawsuits later—”

“If you’re saying that you’re doing this off the clock, I’m going with you.”

“Don’t be crazy, Lisa. Let’s leave that job to your buddy the road dog. I think he’s made for it.”

Bryce grabbed his gunbelt from the chair and buckled it on.

“Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll go catch some bad guys and get our phone back.”

Lisa laughed, then kissed him.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No need, darlin’. But let’s not let this get too complicated. You just remember who’s going to walk through the door when this is over.”

“I’ll remember,” she said.

“Okay.” Bryce stepped outside. “Be back soon. Don’t worry.”

“I won’t.”

“Liar.”

Lisa laughed again. Another kiss that was too quick, and then J. J.’s truck was raising a cloud of dust as he headed for the highway. Lisa watched him go, and she kept on watching after the dust settled and the truck had disappeared from view.

The night air was cool.

The crickets had gone quiet.

Lisa sat on the back step and tried to think of nothing at all.

Behind the house he’d shared with Kim Barlow—the same house he’d once exited through a window thanks to her brother Glen—Kale Howard eyed Tres Manos.

The place the
Anglo
locals called The Hands was a sight to see, even from this distance. It was something different every time you looked at it. Red as a thickening puddle of blood in the hard light of afternoon. Black as the devil’s silhouette in the hours past midnight . . . and right now, with silver moonlight creeping up its backside, it was as smoky and ethereal as a dream any fool could climb.

Kale smiled. Though he stood in darkness, that same moonlight crept up his spine like a dozen furious scorpions in a hurry to plant stings at the base of his brain. In his world, that wasn’t unfamiliar feeling, and it dug down to his core like a grave robber’s shovel, churning up secrets buried in the deepest, darkest corners of the shriveled black hunk he called his soul.

There were visions in that place that would have made a sane man slash his wrists. Visions of women like Kim Barlow as they screamed their last screams, and visions of Kim Barlow herself, on the final night of her life, out there in the desert beneath a towering hunk of rock that might as well have been a gigantic tombstone.

They weren’t exactly Kale’s visions. Not completely. They were owned in part by the thing that lived inside him, the disease that sent those scorpions scurrying across his spine. But the visions were nothing to be feared, any more than he feared the silhouette of Tres Manos in the distance. And, hell, if he raised a hand right now, he could cover up that mother-of-all tombstones where Kim had died, and he could do the job with one little finger. This he did. And just that fast, every memory of Kim Barlow vanished from his mind except that very last one . . . and, for Kale, that was the one worth keeping.

The moonlight brought it home. As its clean halo broke over the rim of The Hands, the memory shimmered in the clear white light surrounding Kale’s raised finger. Quite suddenly, his raised finger itched as if those ghostly scorpions had launched their own dark visionquest, scrambling across the enormous sandstone tombstone that rose from the desert of Kale’s hand, jabbing barbed tales into that tower, reducing it to fine grains, burrowing through Kale’s flesh and blood and bone until they unearthed that bedrock of hidden memory.

Kim’s final fright . . . and just as final understanding.

For Kale, that single moment defined his entire relationship with Kim Barlow. He understood that . . . just as he understood that it paid to take his time when those moments rose from the shadows. They were the ones that truly counted.

He’d taken his time with Kim, all right. Together, they’d gone to Tres Manos, sharing a picnic dinner as dusk turned to night. Kale had made sure Kim understood the lies he’d told, stripping them away from the truth with the same relish he stripped meat away from a bone. And when he was finished doing that little job he did another, taking what he wanted from Kim in the shadow of a great tombstone he could eclipse with a single finger.