Wide Open (18 page)

“Yeah,” she said to Boyd. “Okay. Where are we going? Should I take my truck or leave it?”

Boyd said. “Garrity? To the Blue Bird. That all right with you?”

“You coming back this way after?” she asked. He nodded. “Then I’ll leave it.” To Jake, she said, “All right if I leave the truck here another hour or so?”

“Yeah,” he said, already sticking his head back underneath the hood of the car he’d been working on. “No problem.”

*   *   *

Five minutes later, they were back on the road. Boyd looked straight down the highway as he said, “You don’t need to worry about the fire. I’m taking care of it.”

Hallie stared at him. “You’re taking care of it? What the hell does that mean?”

Boyd rubbed a hand along his chin. “What I’m saying”—he spoke carefully, as if each word had been specially selected—“is that I’m a sworn officer of the law and—”

“My god,” Hallie interrupted him. “Are you telling me to be a good little girl? Because
that’s
going to work. And, buddy, if you think this is just about fires—”

“How hungry are you?” Boyd interrupted her.

Hallie blinked. “What?”

“Because I am. I’m really hungry. Haven’t eaten since noon yesterday. So”—he lifted his hand off the wheel for a second—“if we could hold this conversation until after breakfast—?”

“I didn’t actually start this conversation,” Hallie pointed out, though she’d been thinking of talking to him about the demo plot and what she’d seen out there. Now? Maybe she’d just figure it out on her own.

Boyd slowed for his turn. He was taking the short route around West Prairie City—two gravel roads and a stretch of hardtop to get to the little hamlet of Garrity and the Blue Bird diner—Best Scrambled Eggs from Here to Montana.

“When we do have this conversation, are you actually going to tell me what you know?” Hallie asked after a moment.

“I’ll tell you what I can,” Boyd said. He turned left. Dell was in the car, right between Hallie and Boyd. Warmth leached from Hallie’s arm and chest. She was wondering how weird it would be to ask Boyd to turn on the heat, when Dell and Sarah Hale and maybe another ghost, she couldn’t tell, rushed her, like frightened birds. Like back in the field near Jasper, like they were screaming except with no sound, a flurry of arms and cold and so close and—

Red pain fire fear

Images assaulted her, battering her, like a winter storm against the side of an old barn.

Red red fire black stars Icanseethestars so bright painpain don’t hit me please please why

Hallie jammed the heel of her palm against the ridge of her nose as if that would stop the pain. She didn’t realize Boyd had stopped the Jeep until she felt the door next to her open. He grabbed her by the elbow and the shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Just … hold still. Okay?” There was an edge to his voice—panic reined in tight. Or controlled nerves. She couldn’t tell. She was busy breathing.

“Shit.” After a long minute, she straightened and shoved Boyd back with a sweep of her hand. She stepped out of the Jeep. Either the ghosts were getting better at communicating or she was getting better at understanding, but she knew what they were telling her now, and she knew what they’d been telling her out where Dell had died.

“Okay,” she said.

“Are you—?” Boyd began.

“Do you have a shovel?” Hallie interrupted him because if he asked her if she was okay one more time? She would punch him. Since he was driving, they were in the middle of nowhere, and he was a deputy sheriff, hitting him seemed like a bad idea all around.

“What?”

“A shovel. In your car. Do you have one?”

“I have a spade.” He opened the back door of the Cherokee. Hallie heard the sharp ripping sound of Velcro being unfastened. He reappeared with a long-handled, flat-bladed steel garden spade. It was clean, the dark blade winking in the morning sunlight.

Hallie looked at it. “That’s a shovel.”

“It’s a spade.”

“Whatever.” She reached for it.

He pulled back. “You’re not going to hit me with it, are you?”

“Not yet.”

He grimaced—or it might have been a half-hearted attempt at a smile. Hallie took a quick step forward, grabbed the shovel, and started across the prairie toward a narrow grove of cottonwood trees down by a dried-up creek.

Boyd watched her, but didn’t move to follow right away, and for a moment, she thought he might leave her there. She had both thoughts at the same time—
good
and
don’t go
. She shifted the shovel to her left hand; the fingers on her right ached with cold. The new ghost—was it the one she’d seen back at Big Dog’s, she couldn’t tell—was beside her, going to be here until this was over, Hallie bet.

An old Buick and a dusty Suburban went by up on the road, each of them slowing briefly, then accelerating past Boyd’s Jeep Cherokee. Hallie shoved sideways through a thick cluster of faded wildflowers and a short-thorned bramble. A dozen yards to her left was a mound clustered over with drying grass—an old barn maybe, or a grain bin.

Boyd caught up to her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Hallie didn’t answer. She couldn’t stop and talk about this. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about the dark, red-tinged images the ghost had shown her. It wouldn’t change anything. If she stopped and talked to him, there would still be ghosts.

She found what she was looking for easily enough—for one thing, the ghost was floating over it, bouncing like she was excited, like she remembered being human. The spot, though, looked pretty much like everyplace else, shorter grass than the big expanse they’d just crossed, evidence of deer and rabbits coming down at night to drink from the creek and bed among the trees.

“Hallie—?” Boyd said, half a question and half something else.

Hallie leaned on the shovel. “What do you know about those fires?” she asked, because if she was going to show him this, was going to be in the middle of
How could you know that?
and
What the hell?
then she wanted some of his cards on the table, too.

“We came out here to talk about fires?” He tried to look confused or … he
was
confused, but that wasn’t all. He knew something, she could see it clearly by the look in his eyes, something he didn’t want her to know.

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

There was a snap in the way his gaze turned to hers, as if he’d been a thousand miles away. “What?”

“Dell’s death
wasn’t
an accident, was it?” And she could see immediately in the way his eyes looked down and away, that she’d guessed right. “You knew and you didn’t tell me? You
couldn’t say
?”

“I’m a county sheriff’s deputy,” Boyd finally said, his voice quiet, not as if he was trying to calm her down, more like he was trying to be serious enough, grave enough for the situation at hand—whatever the situation was. “It’s my job.”

He had one hand in the pocket of his jeans and his shoulder hunched forward, and he looked so … young, that it made Hallie blink. She let out her breath, like a sigh. “Look,” she said, “just tell me what you know. Tell me why you know it wasn’t an accident. Tell me about the fires. About the fire at the ranch— Tell me—” Because she wasn’t quite ready herself to tell him about Uku-Weber or the demo plot and what she’d found there. “Jesus Christ, Boyd!”

He didn’t speak right away, and she was beginning to recognize that it wasn’t because he was the strong, silent type but because he was thinking furiously, trying to figure out what he was going to say. “Look, I’ve read the police reports on Dell’s death and on—” He hesitated. “—a couple of disappearances.”

“Shit,” Hallie said.

“And the fires. There’s … Some of it doesn’t make sense, okay?” He pulled his hand out of his pocket, took a couple of steps away from her, then turned back, hand in his pocket again. He rubbed his other hand across the back of his neck. “I can tell you what I know,” he said. “But—”

“But?” Hallie said. “Oh, no, there’s no
but
. You don’t set conditions.”

“But,” he continued, like she hadn’t spoken, “I want to know what we’re doing here. What’s that spade—shovel—for?”

Hallie chewed on her top lip. “Shit,” she finally said. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you.”

20

She’d expected resistance. But he just shoved both hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, leaned against one of the cottonwood trees, and frowned, a deep intense frown, like he wished she’d stop, like he anticipated trouble like you wouldn’t believe. But he didn’t stop her. Didn’t offer to help either. And that was fine by Hallie.

On the highest branch of the leafless cottonwood sat a red-tailed hawk, its head jutted forward. Looking for prey, Hallie figured, but it looked remarkably like Boyd—same posture, same stiff motionless watching. She almost pointed it out to him, but decided it wasn’t the time.

It took an hour of steady digging before her shovel struck something solid, something that might have been a rock, but wasn’t. Hallie dropped the shovel and started brushing away dirt with her hands, surprised that they were shaking. She’d known what was here before she started. She brushed more dirt away, and there it was: the curve of a skull, nearly as brown as the dirt.

“Hell.”

It was so long since Boyd had spoken that his voice, uttering that single word, actually set Hallie back on her haunches. She slid her right foot forward to regain her balance. When she looked up, he was gone, striding across the field, not hurrying, but purposeful.

She thought he was leaving only for a second or so before she realized he was calling it in.

*   *   *

“So, one more time, you knew about this because—?”

Three hours later, and Deputy Teedt had asked her that question at least six times. “What did Boyd say?” she asked him.

“Deputy Davies,” he said quellingly, “said that you tripped over it.”

“Well?” she said.

Probably if he hadn’t been wearing his uniform, Teedt would have rolled his eyes. He’d been a friend of her father’s until the whole courthouse window incident. For some reason, he’d decided to pick sides—the law or the Michaelses’—and he hadn’t come down on the Michaelses’ side. “Okay,” he finally said. “But don’t let me find out—”

“Who is it?” she asked. “How did they die? When?”

Teedt held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” And she could hear the
little lady
in his voice, even though he didn’t actually say the words. She wished Boyd were here, then thought—wait a minute, she didn’t need him. She didn’t. “This is police business now,” Teedt said. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

Hallie pinched the bridge of her nose, mostly to keep herself from punching him. “I am worried about it,” she said. “I’m worried you’re going to—”

“Are we done?”

Hallie wanted to hate Boyd for that way he had of coming up behind her, of talking quietly, of interrupting fights. But she didn’t. It bothered her—kind of a lot, actually—but she didn’t hate him.

Teedt sucked air through his teeth. “Yeah,” he said, drawing the word out. “Ole’s going to want to talk to you, though.”

“I’m in tomorrow,” Boyd said, like it was nothing, finding bodies in the middle of nowhere. To Hallie, he said, “I’ll drive you home.”

“Back to my truck.”

“Back to your truck,” he agreed.

Three people stopped them on the way back to Boyd’s Jeep. The first, Dr. Ludoc, general practitioner and county coroner, thumping slowly across the field in his old gray Toyota, stopped and asked Boyd what to expect. When he heard it was an old body, mostly bones, he drove on, muttering about dumb-ass deputies who didn’t know better than to call him out for something he didn’t know anything about and couldn’t help with.

The second was Sally Mazzolo, a deputy older than Boyd but newer to the job, who’d been left to direct traffic and was annoyed because there was no traffic and no one had yet come back to relieve her. “They promised I could see this. How am I going to learn? I swear I’m applying to Rapid City tomorrow. First thing, I mean it—”

The last one was some guy from the weekly paper whom Hallie didn’t recognize. “Big? Is it big?” he asked Boyd. “I heard a body. I heard—” But Boyd just walked right by him without saying a word and opened the door to the Jeep.

Hallie got back in on the passenger side, fastened her seat belt, and sat there, silent as Boyd turned around and headed back toward Prairie City. She’d been trying to figure out for the last three hours how she was going to tell Boyd about the other body, back where Dell had died. Because she was really very sure there was another body there. Not 100 percent—she’d have to go there, dig it up before she knew for sure. But close enough. She’d considered not telling him—because what did she really know about him—thought about making an anonymous call. But what call was ever really anonymous around here?

“I know where there’s another body,” she said.

Okay, she’d actually meant to build up to it, ask him what he knew about the toolshed fire, about Dell’s death, about the Uku-Weber demo site, get him to talk first.

Huh.

Boyd pulled off the highway abruptly, into a turnout for rig pickups. He stopped the Jeep and shifted in his seat so he could look straight at her. He looked … scared, which surprised her.

“What?” he said. He didn’t sound scared, though. He sounded pissed off and tired, and just like that, she was pissed off, too, because it wasn’t her fault she saw ghosts. She sure as shit hadn’t asked for this.

“I thought it was pretty clear,” she said, biting the words off short. “I know where there’s another body.”

He stared at her and she couldn’t read him. At all. It felt close and hot in the pickup. Too close. Hallie shoved the door open and got out.

Boyd was right there when she got to the front of the vehicle. “You can’t—,” he started, then shifted gears. “What do you mean, you know where there’s another body? What does that mean?” Like he was desperate for her to tell him it had been a guess, that she didn’t know anything more than anyone else. That she was just that lucky, and today it had been dead bodies.