The Devil's Bag Man (7 page)

Her bag was still slung over her shoulder. She felt around inside, closed her hand around her phone, turned it on and stared into the glow. Dialed Nichols's cell and brought it to her ear and locked eyes with her father as it rang.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Put it away, Sherry. Just give me one minute to explain. That's all I ask.”

Nichols picked up. “Sherry? Where are you?”

“Something's happened,” she heard herself say. “My father, he— my boyfriend's dead. You've got to get over here.”

Galvan held her gaze a moment longer, his face contorted in pure misery, and for a split second Sherry doubted all she'd seen.

Then her father turned and ran.

A
t the height of the empire, when Izel Notchi Icnoyotl had lived in light and splendor, men said there was a special place in hell reserved for those who offered false counsel. And while he had not intended to betray Cualli, Izel's words had wrought ruin—of the man and the world, and perhaps the universe—and he had no doubt that when this life concluded, damnation would be his reward.

If anybody was minding the store, anyway. If the thirteen heavens, the nine underworlds, had not simply ceased to be. Or perhaps they stood abandoned, forsaken like the toy blocks of a child called to dinner, and of no greater importance.

There was very little evidence to suggest that the gods had not done exactly as they'd said they would and left the world to destroy itself at its own pace. They were someplace else now—some other dimension, distant, invisible and unknowable—fucking one another and playing some new sadistic game on some new terrestrial board.

Could Izel have prevented calamity? Would Cualli have listened if Izel had found the courage to tell the priest to turn his back on the god he'd pledged to serve?

On madness?

On duty?

On power?

On divinity?

Perhaps not. But the opportunity had been his, and his alone, and he had failed to seize it.

Failed them all.

At the very least, Izel was complicit in the Great Disordering, the casting off of grace and glory and the birth of an Age of Chaos from which the world had not recovered.

That day was seared into his memory, undimmed by the centuries he'd spent reflecting on it.

The blazing sunlight. The temple's endless chiseled quartz. The plaza, brimming with the empire's elite, gathered to witness the birth of a dynasty.

The ceremony had ended, and Cualli and Chacanza had descended the steps, arm in arm, husband and wife, to accept benedictions and blessings, sincere and otherwise.

Izel followed in their wake, troubled by the dread he'd seen in his friend's eyes, the drop of blood Cualli's nails had drawn from his own palm. Something was amiss, and he resolved to stay close, to give the priest every chance to confide the problem. Nothing should trouble him on this day—and certainly, whatever it was must not be permitted to vex Chacanza. Her mind and body must be preserved in a state of perfect tranquility, absolute equilibrium, so that her womb would welcome and nurture new life later tonight.

That, too, was part of the ceremony. An immediate pregnancy would confirm the favor of the gods, the auspicious nature of the union. And it was well known that a woman who conceived on the night of her wedding brought forth a male heir.

Izel's chance came an hour later, the banquet under way, the guests lazy with opulence, sun, copious draughts of the liquor known as pulque.

Cualli's skin looked papery and gray, and he had scarcely eaten. The goblet in his hand never met his lips.

He rose from his seat, kissed his bride, and strode toward the temple's
lowest entrance—a pauper's door intended for supplicants and slaves. Izel found him just inside, crouched against the cool stone wall, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed.

Izel knelt beside the priest.

You are troubled, my brother
.
What is wrong?

Cualli looked up, and Izel blanched at the sight of him. Tears ran freely down a face that had never known them. The priest's eyes were hooded, veined with red. He spoke in a harsh whisper, as if his throat were made of sun-parched leather.

Tezcatlipoca has visited me in a dream, brother
.
But not a dream—a nightmare
.

Our god is to be banished
, Cualli went on.
His brothers and sisters fear his strength and say that he has taught his priests too much
.
He is to be imprisoned in a realm wrought solely for that purpose, and all that he has given us shall be taken away
.

He rose slowly to his feet—Cualli's great height unfolding, his regal back straightening until it was rigid as steel.

But it need not be so
.

Izel looked up at him and felt his breath quicken.

What must we do?
he asked.

He commands me to keep his power for him, until he can return
.
It must pass through the sacred vessel of the gods, and into me
.

The heart of a pure woman. The seat of her soul.

All at once, Izel understood.

He asks you to—

He choked, unable to say it.

Cualli's eyes closed, then opened again.

Yes, Izel
.
He asks me to sacrifice that which I love most, so that his power and his wisdom are not lost to us forever
.
So that all we have built is not destroyed
. He and Cualli locked eyes, and Izel understood that the priest was asking for his counsel.

His permission.

Or perhaps he hoped Izel would stop him.

Tell him this was madness.

Save his sister.

I can't do it
, Cualli said.
I won't
.
I love her
.
I'd rather die
.

Izel had never seen weakness in his friend before and found that it sickened him. By this man's grace, Izel had become a priest; by following this man's example he had been ushered into the mysteries and miseries of Tezcatlipoca, come to understand the sacred obligation of man to god.

One did not renounce such things lightly. One did not spurn the gods, nor see the work of centuries undone for the sake of sentiment.

It was the hardest decision he had ever had to make, but Izel made it. He was swift; he did not waver. A surge of grief filled him, terrible and consuming, and then his heart hardened and his jaw stiffened and he knew that he was doing the right thing.

He took Cualli by the shoulders, pressed him to the wall.

Man dies for god, Cualli
.
It is the way of things
.
It is an honor
.
You know it, and my sister knows it
.
He who is called must answer
.
We will mourn later, and honor her forever
.
But now, my brother, you must do as you are told
.

Izel stood back, so that he might measure the impact of his words. There was no doubt: they had found their mark. Perhaps Cualli had merely needed the inescapability of this doom confirmed. Regardless, there was no doubt in his eyes now.

No doubt, and no life.

The priest seemed to shrink into himself. When he spoke, his words sounded distant and hollow, as if emanating from a cave.

I do not know what I will become
,
Izel
.
What man can contain the power of a god?

Izel could not answer, had neither words nor voice. It was one thing to die for a god—but to live for one? Cualli was right; it was unfathomable. He left the priest there, wreathed in shadows, lost in darkness. Izel had to see his sister, say his silent good-bye.

The banquet was to reach a crescendo when the full moon rose; custom dictated that the couple bid their guests a raucous farewell and retire to a sacred subterranean chamber, and the pleasure that awaited them there. The celebration would continue, in a lower key, until sunrise, when the couple returned triumphant, adorned in crimson outfits, the color a symbol of their union's consummation.

By the time the moon crested the horizon, red and swollen, Izel
was so drunk he could hardly bring the serving vessel to his lips. He'd grabbed all the pulque he could carry, staggered into the bowels of the temple, and sequestered himself in the ancient catacombs where the first priests were buried. The smell of dry decay filled the air, and Izel sprawled beside the dead and venerated, the progenitors of his line, and drank as if he sought to join them.

The liquor was eye-wateringly strong, ordinarily served in a diluted form. Izel opened his throat, guzzled, and felt his muscles loosen, his stomach swell.

It is the only way
, he told himself, as his sister's smiling face floated before him in the dark cave. He shook his head clear, refused to let himself consider what was about to happen, the desecration she would endure—but no, not desecration. Honor. She would embody the god; his holy essence would impregnate her. Yes.

It was a thing to celebrate, if only one could think in euphemism. In abstraction.

If only one could refrain from imagining Cualli thrusting himself inside her, and then lunging for the knife.

And if one could not, there was pulque for that.

My family will never accept this
, he thought, as his eyes fluttered shut and oblivion closed in.
The outrage will spread like wildfire
.
The empire will be engulfed by war
.

Izel fell into a dreamless stupor, beside the skeletons.

He awakened to a nightmare.

Head throbbing. Stomach rebelling. The torments of the body synchronized with the foreboding that filled his mind.

Izel stood slowly, and moved on unsure legs, stopping more than once to let a torrent of bile spew from his mouth and splash against the timeworn stone.

At long last, sunlight began to penetrate the tunnel through which he hobbled. He squinted and moved toward the plaza, the banquet, the shattered future that was now the past—and froze, beneath the arched entranceway, totally unprepared for the sight that confronted him.

The carnage was absolute. Unfathomable.

They had been executed in their feasting seats, throats slashed from ear to ear.

Cut down as they fled, spears still protruding from their backs like gruesome flags, the territory of their bodies claimed by a new power.

Corpses had been heaped in the center of the square and set aflame—a giant bonfire carrying the scent of human flesh to the heavens even as rivers of blood leaked from the base, as if trying to escape.

The empire's entire ruling class, obliterated from the earth in one fell swoop. Slaughtered like animals. Sacrificed.

To
a god, or
by
a god?

There would be no outrage. There could be no war. All those who might have raised a voice, or a spear, lay dead.

Their remains disposed of without thought or honor.

Such savagery.

And yet, such efficiency.

Such genius.

A dozen soldiers strode through the wreckage, swords in hand. They were tidying up, tying loose ends. Killing the almost dead. Feeding the fire. Their faces betrayed nothing; they might as well have been digging ditches, or splitting logs. They had followed orders; that was what they had been trained to do from birth. An enemy was an enemy. It did not matter if he had once been a guest, a benefactor, a brother.

Izel flattened himself against the tunnel wall, his body melting into the shadows. There was no reason to believe he was safe.

There was no reason to believe anything.

The smoke burning my eyes
.
That is my family
.

I've got to get out of here
.

But he couldn't bring himself to move. Some force held him—it was physical, magnetic; it compelled him to look upon the face of the man who had wrought this.

If anything of that man remained.

Izel inched forward, sought an angle, a sight line on the temple steps. Cualli was there; Izel could feel him. He summoned all his courage, leaned forward the final inch.

And there he was, inches from where he had wed mere hours before, presiding over the mangled bodies of everyone he'd ever known, ever cared about.

Almost everyone.

Izel watched, transfixed, as the entity that had once been his fellow priest raised its arms, inch by inch, until their span seemed to encompass all the world.

His body glowed from within, as if lit by some internal sun, and the blackness of his eyes was absolute. It was impossible to say what he saw, whether his vision took in what was before him or transcended material reality entirely, bored through matter and peered into some other realm.

The power that radiated from him was like a gust of wind, a sonic boom. Like some perversion of a sunbeam.

He raised his head to the sky and opened his mouth. The sound that emanated from it seemed to exist in every register at once—to fill the air, silence the birds, blot out the sun. It was not Cualli's voice, but Cualli's voice was contained within its multitudes.

He spoke the tongue of the gods. The language Tezcatlipoca had taught the Line of Priests, the language in which they had transcribed his dictates with their own blood.

To speak it was forbidden to man; its sound was entirely unknown.

And yet, Izel understood perfectly.

I will never give this back
.

With all the strength that remained in him, Izel turned away and backed into the tunnel.

The darkness.

It was time to disappear.

N
ichols kept Sherry on the phone until his battery ticked down to its last 10 percent; he didn't want her sitting out there alone with the shock and grief, the goddamn boomeranging PTSD—and besides, he was hoping that if she calmed down enough, she might remember something about where the hell she was. Sherry hadn't been paying attention to the drive, just the driver. Didn't know which highway they'd been on, whether it led north or east or west.

Nichols ran through a mental list of scenic overviews and make-out spots he remembered from high school, matched them against the size of the town Sherry said she was staring down at, the amount of time she guessed it had taken to get there. And for once in his life, Nichols was smart enough to get lucky, or lucky enough to look smart: he found Sherry in the first place he looked, pulled on to the scene a mere thirty-three minutes after his phone rang.

Larry Bird's jersey number. Or Jesus's life span, if you preferred. Nichols did not.

This was gonna be a shit show, he thought as the cruiser powered up
the final incline. He shouldn't even be here—this was a textbook recuse-yourself situation if there ever was one, but who the fuck was Nichols going to send in his stead?

And besides, it was a little late to play anything by the book where Jess Galvan was concerned.

Nichols wasn't proud of it, but he felt calm and strong right now, like he owned the moment. A crime scene always did that: you spun yellow tape around it, cordoned it, gave it parameters. And then you went to work. You brought logic to bear, you comforted survivors, questioned witnesses and imposed order on chaos, stabilized the world right before the eyes of the traumatized. You made them feel that whatever horrible thing had just happened, it was only an aberration. A blip. A tiny blemish on the smooth skin of civilization.

Sometimes you made yourself believe it, too.

Nichols was pretty goddamn sure this wasn't one of those times.

The car crested the hilltop, and there was Sherry, caught in the high beams, turning toward him, her face tear streaked, hugging herself for comfort or warmth. She ran toward him without uncrossing her arms, and Nichols cut the engine, stepped out just in time to enfold her against his chest.

Sherry's sobs were huge, convulsive.

“It's okay,” he murmured, splaying a hand across her back and rubbing. “It's all right.”

The things we say for no damn reason at all
.

He shut his trap and let the sadness run its course. Everybody stopped crying eventually, and if you tried to rush them through, the tears just welled back up, interrupted the conversation you'd been so impatient to have.

It took Sherry a couple of minutes to compose herself. That wasn't much bounce-back time; the bar on tragedy had been set pretty fucking high for the poor girl. She stepped away, wiped her face with her palms, and blinked up at him, expectant.

“You cold?” Nichols asked. “You wanna warm up in the car, while I have a look around?”

She shook her head, crossed her arms again, gave an involuntary shudder. “I'm okay.”

He reached into the backseat and handed her his jacket. She slipped into it, the size of the thing transforming her instantly into a little girl.

“Look,” he said, leaning back against the driver's door. “I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to help. This is Nichols the sheriff, not Nichols the guy sitting around watching baseball in his bathrobe, okay?”

That got the grudging tick of a smile he'd been hoping for.

“Okay. So. Who was he, and how long had you been seeing him?”

And why didn't you tell us?

Sherry sniffled, swallowed, gazed off into the darkness.

“Not long. His name was Alex.”

“And he was from here? He went to your school?”

She shook her head. “He was from all over.” She looked him in the eye. “He was nineteen. Just passing through. And now—”

Her voice caught in her throat, and Sherry shook her head. Covered her mouth with both hands to trap the sob.

“Walk me through it again,” Nichols said after a moment. “When you're ready. Everything that happened. You were in the car . . .”

But Sherry was staring off now, in the direction of the cliff, the wreckage down below. Nichols had glimpsed it on a switchback—not close, but close enough to know it was gruesome.

“He's still
in
there,” she said, the tears leaking with the words. “Shouldn't you— I mean, what if—”

“We'll get to that,” Nichols assured her. “My backup is on the way. Right now, I need to understand what happened. Why your father . . . did what you say he did.”

“I don't know.” She shook her head, slowly at first, then faster and faster. “We were just sitting in the car, watching the sun set. And then out of nowhere, the window shattered, and there's my— there's Galvan. He must've followed me from work.”

“And how did he seem?”

“How did he
seem
? He seemed crazy. He's out of his fucking mind.” She let out a shuddery sigh. “He grabbed Alex and started asking all this crazy stuff—who sent him, how he knew his name—”

“How Alex knew your father's name?”

“Yeah. He called him Mr. Galvan.”

“And
did
you tell him your father's last name?”

Sherry scowled and shrugged further into the jacket. “I guess I must have.”

Nichols felt his cop brain whirring to life, like a computer booting.

“Are you absolutely sure, Sherry? How would it come up—and if it had, wouldn't you remember? And why would
he
remember, when he's sitting there scared to death?”

Nichols dropped his hands to his hips. “Look, Sherry. I'm gonna level with you. I owe you that, after everything we've been through. And because I love you. Okay?”

She looked scared, but she nodded.

“Okay. Your father is real fucked up right now, just like the rest of us and probably more so. But I don't think he's crazy. And I don't think he'd have done this without a solid reason. Or what he considered one.”

She threw him a look so cold Nichols actually shivered, and when Sherry spoke, her voice was just as frosty.

“A reason. To kill my boyfriend. Who he's never even met.”

Nichols held her gaze. “Like keeping you safe.”

“Bullshit. Fuck him, and fuck you too.”

“I know it's hard to hear. But come on, Sherry. You barely knew this—”

“I barely knew this guy, so
what
? He deserves to be
murdered
, because my father has a bad
dream
?” She spun on her heel, stalked a few paces, and turned back. “I can't believe this. Aren't you supposed to be, like,
the law
?”

“He had a gun,” Nichols reminded her, filing that bit about the dream away for later. “Right? You said on the phone that he grabbed a gun from the glove compartment, or from somewhere, and fired a shot. Any idea why he had that gun, Sherry?”

She threw up her hands. “Because this is fucking Texas, Nichols.”

A car was approaching, and they both fell silent, squinting as the high beams found them.

It was Boggs. Nichols raised a hand in greeting, waited as the kid cut his engine and trotted over.

“Deputy Boggs, Sherry Richards. I want you to take her home, and keep watch on the house until I get there. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are
you
going?” Sherry demanded.

“To investigate.”

“Investigate
what
? Why don't you go arrest my father?”

Nichols sighed. “I'd have to find him first, wouldn't I? And since all you can tell me is that he ran off into the woods, that might take a little time. The important thing is to keep you safe while we figure this out, Sherry.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Safe from who? Because the most dangerous person
I
can think of is the one
you
don't seem to have any interest in finding.”

“Just safe,” he said, and started to turn away.

Sherry reached out and grabbed his hand.

“He was the only good thing in my life, Nichols,” she said in a fierce whisper. “I've got nothing now.”

He studied her for a second, not sure whether she'd accept an embrace or kick him in the balls for trying.

“I'm sorry,” Nichols said at last, softly. And then, “Do you know if he had any family? Anyone we should notify?”

She shook her head, and her gaze dropped to the ground. “He didn't. There's no one. We just had each other.”

The anger had burned itself out, at least for now, and Nichols decided to glean what he could before it flared back up.

“Where was he staying?”

“Some motel.”

“You been there?”

She shook her head. “He said it was gross.”

Nichols clasped her hand between both of his, and the two of them stood that way for a moment before she let Boggs guide her to his cruiser.

Nichols watched him get her settled in the backseat, then ushered the deputy back.

“I'll call the coroner's office when I'm done here,” he said. “For the time being, this goes on the record as a car accident, you understand?”

“Whatever you say, Sheriff.”

Nichols pointed a finger at him. “Don't let her or Ruth out of your sight for so much as a minute until I get back. I don't care if aliens invade.”

Boggs yessed his head and took off. Nichols made his way down the hill, toward the smoldering remains of the car.

He'd seen his share of automotive disasters in his time on the force, scraped plenty of drunk teenagers and text-happy businessmen off the pavement, but this one took first place by a country mile. The car was top-down, smashed into the hillside like the forefinger of God had reached down and pressed.

The fire had burned out, the metal charred black, the air acrid, the tall brush littered with tiny glinting bits of windshield glass. No sign of the kid's body; it was trapped beneath the mangled carcass of the car, and the extrication wasn't going to be easy or pretty; he'd probably been squashed flat on impact and then burned to a crisp.

Nichols paced a wide perimeter around the crash site and finally found what he'd been hoping for: the license plate, wedged in among a stand of low-growing cacti. He slipped it under his arm, circled again in case the gun or any of the kid's personal artifacts had managed to wing their way free, and then climbed his ass back to the overview, grabbing on to strong weeds to ease the way.

He threw himself behind the steering wheel, fired up the radio, and asked Gloria, the desk jockey who'd been working the night shift slathered in bright red lipstick since time immemorial, to run the plate.

She clicked and clacked as Nichols waited.

“It's registered to a rental company. Guillermo's Classic Cars, in Dallas,” Gloria reported, through the buzz of static. “You want a phone number?”

“Yeah.” He was down to 6 percent on his phone battery, and he hadn't called Ruth yet, which meant she was going to be blindsided when Sherry showed up bleary eyed and inconsolable in Boggs's car.

“Wait—no. Give me, uh . . . dammit, what's that cop's name in Dallas? The guy we worked with on that trafficking thing a couple years ago?”

Gloria didn't even pretend to think, just waited to see if Nichols could dredge it up.

He snapped his fingers. “Sullinger. Edward Sullinger. It's on my office Rolodex.”

Five percent left, by the time Sullinger picked up his cell, sounding halfway in the bag. Four by the time Nichols sweet-talked him into
calling Guillermo's Classic Cars, local heat always the warmest, telling them they had a piece of inventory smithereened five hundred miles south, and finding out whose name was on the rental.

Nichols was halfway home when Sullinger buzzed him with the info, straight from Guillermo himself. Nichols pulled over, flipped open his notepad, and scribbled down the name and billing address.

Lalo Albarra, twenty-five, of Fort Worth. Or so said his license.

If nothing else, the kid was a liar.

Nichols radioed Gloria, had her run the name.

It came back dirty as a motherfucker.

Lalo Albarra had spent half his short adult life in prison. Transporting minors across state lines. Coercion to prostitution. Possession of a type-A controlled substance. Domestic abuse.

It was the résumé of a pimp, a jackal, a pretty-boy hustler. Preying on young girls, filling their heads and hearts with dreams and promises and then turning them out.

Somebody had put him in motion, sent him after Sherry. That someone was still out there.

And so was Galvan.

Nichols floored the gas pedal. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he knew he had to get there fast.