Wide Open (3 page)

3

Big Dog’s Auto sat on the western edge of Prairie City, a cornfield directly behind and prairie stretching to the west. The near bay held a red pickup on a lift; the far bay, two motorcycles, a car engine on blocks, multicolored fenders, and the hood from a vintage Thunderbird stacked against the wall. Cars were parked three deep along the side of the shop, two with the hoods raised and one jacked up and the right rear tire removed.

Brett came out of the office to the left of the garage bays while Hallie was rummaging in her duffel, digging out a jacket. The temperature had dropped another five degrees during the twenty-minute drive into Prairie City. The deputy—what had Lorie called him—Davies, was sitting in his car out on the road, like he didn’t have anything else to do, which he probably didn’t, because nothing ever happened in Taylor County. Other than Dell hitting a tree—and where was he then?

“It’s going to be at least two hours,” Brett said. “He’s got to run over to Templeton for a tire.”

“Jesus.” Hallie rubbed her hand across her eye.

“Sorry,” Brett said. She tilted her hat up and stepped back on the heel of her boot. Hallie remembered that Brett liked things to work and to keep on working. Sometimes she convinced herself to ignore things that didn’t fit with what she wanted, like that her car was old and parts wore out. “Lorie’s getting a ride with Jake when he gets off work,” Brett continued, “but that’ll be, like, an hour. Maybe your dad can—”

“I can give you a ride.”

Hallie turned and looked at the deputy, who had approached as she and Brett were talking. Eddie Serrano was beside him, staring at the left side of his face like it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.

“Who
are
you?” she said.

He looked startled, like he thought she should know. And, yeah, there weren’t that many people in Prairie City—or the whole county, for that matter—but had he ever seen her before? She didn’t think so.

“My name is Davies,” he said. “Deputy Davies.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Hallie said. Was he stupid? Or was she making no sense?

“He’s all right.” Tom Hauser came out of the little office to the left of the garage bays, wiping his hands on an oily rag, looking so unchanged in a denim shirt, faded khaki pants with grease down the side, and hair cut so short it almost hid the gray that Hallie blinked. “He’s not going to leave you in a ditch or anything.” Tom stuck out his hand. “I’d say it’s good to see you back,” he told her, his expression grim, “but, yeah, it’s really not. Awful sorry to see you under these circumstances,” he said.

She took Tom’s hand and he gripped it tight, like the handshake itself meant something more. “How long?” he asked.

“Ten days,” Hallie said. “Well, nine now. Then I’m … back.” Which seemed impossible. When she’d been there, South Dakota had seemed impossible, and now that she was home, it was Afghanistan, her fellow soldiers, dust, and roadside bombs and rifle fire that seemed like an old dream.

She attempted to pull her hand back, but Tom held it fast. He looked at her steadily. “It can be tough,” he said. “A trip like this— Hell, the jet lag alone … You come on in here if you want to talk. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Hallie said, reclaiming her hand. “Okay.” Like she would actually ever do that.

He gripped her arm at the shoulder, shook her slightly. “I was sorry to hear about Dell,” he told her. “She was a good kid.”

Somehow that, the matter-of-fact way he said it, brought Hallie closer to crying than anything else all day. She shrugged his hand away, said, “Okay, I’ll see you later,” to Brett, pulled her duffel from the trunk, and walked to the sheriff’s car, where she had to wait for Deputy Davies to join her because he had, inexplicably, locked his car.

“Seriously?” she said when he unlocked the passenger door. “You could see your car from where you were standing.”

He took her duffel and slid it into the backseat. “I have guns,” he said.

“You and everybody else.”

Inside the car, the dashboard gleamed. The center console, the radio, the steering wheel, even the knobs on the defroster were completely spotless. Deputy Davies adjusted his side mirrors, which clearly didn’t need adjusting. Hallie said, “I need to go to Stephens’s, the funeral home over in West PC.”

He hesitated. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Yeah.” She’d forgotten that everyone knew everyone else’s business. Like the army, only with fewer tanks and mortars.

Neither of them spoke as they headed northeast out of Prairie City. Eddie was in the back, staring at Hallie’s duffel. Dell ran a ghostly finger along the back of Hallie’s neck.

“Dell’s—my sister’s death,” Hallie said abruptly, resisting the urge to swipe at the cold along her spine. She kept expecting these ghosts, these—things—to feel like old spiderwebs or the accumulated dust of a lifetime, something thin and heavy at the same time, but they were just … cold. “My sister,” she said again, like that couldn’t be emphasized enough. “What do you know? Were you there? After?”

He looked at her without turning his head. “That’s an ongoing investigation,” he said.

“Is it?” Hallie leaned toward him, like getting closer would make what she said more forceful. “I hear they’re calling it suicide. I hear it’s all been decided.”

He ran his thumb along the side of his nose, as if that might help him think. His bright white shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and stiff with knife-sharp creases, like he’d ironed it with a ruler. “She was your sister,” he said.

“Yeah,” Hallie said, “she was.”

“I still can’t talk about it,” he said.

“I’m going to find out what happened,” Hallie told him. “If not from you, then someone. If no one will tell me, I’ll figure it out myself.”

He looked at her then, something in his eyes she didn’t recognize, but he didn’t say anything else. Hallie rubbed her eyes. She didn’t even know what questions to ask. Didn’t even know enough to know where to begin—too many planes, too much bad coffee, and not enough sleep. But it had to be done and done now, because now was all the time she had.

It took a little over fifteen minutes to reach West Prairie City and the Stephens’s Funeral Home, the last building on the short main street. It had once been the biggest house in town, built by a railroad man, back in the day. It was a full two stories with a big dormered attic. A rectangular single-story extension had been added twenty or so years ago, with a wheelchair ramp and heavy planter boxes built of brick.

Deputy Davies pulled into the parking lot to the east of the main entrance. Hallie stared at the building, but she made no move to get out of the car.

“Do you want me to come in?” Deputy Davies asked.

His voice was kind, which had the perverse effect of galvanizing Hallie to both action and rudeness. “No! Jesus, no! It’s fine.” She fumbled with her seat belt, flung open the door, then stuck her head back in. “I won’t be long,” she said.

“It’s not a problem.” He reached toward the rearview mirror, then stopped and dropped his hand, as if he’d suddenly realized he was doing it.

Hallie shut the door harder than necessary, went up the wheelchair ramp, and entered through the double glass doors. The entry floor was thickly carpeted, muffling her footsteps. The last time Hallie’d been here, the carpeting was dark green shot through with blues and golds; now it was a red so deep, it looked black, lightened with thin geometric lines of gold and brown. It smelled the same, though: a mix of disinfectant and flowers. A narrow wallpaper border with colors that matched the carpet ran along the upper wall, somehow managing to look both modern and out of date at the same time.

“Can I help you?”

Hallie looked to her left, where a man stood in an open doorway as if he’d been waiting for her. He was maybe thirty, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. His hair was dark, too, but already turning gray. Hallie remembered his father. She’d been eleven when she met him, and she thought he was ancient because his hair had been completely white. He probably hadn’t been more than forty-five.

“You’re Art Stephens,” she said.

“Arthur, yes.” He gave her a thin-lipped smile that was both restrained and sensitive. “You must be Alice Michaels.”

“Hallie.”

He put a hand near her elbow without actually touching her and steered her down the hall. “Your father’s taken care of the initial paperwork, the deposit, everything. But he wouldn’t—”

He was extraordinarily calm, sympathetic without being unctuous. Hallie wanted to hit him. Or hit something, punch a hole through the wall. “He doesn’t like caskets,” she said, the words clipped and quick. “It’s a thing.”

Which wasn’t the truth, but—what the hell. Art Stephens, local mortician, didn’t need to know why her father did the things he did. Her father wasn’t here. Hallie was.

Art opened the door to the casket display room and waited for her to precede him.

She rubbed her eye fiercely.

Shit.

But this was easy. Right?

Easy as pie.

Eddie floated past her, followed a moment later by Dell. Hallie pressed the heel of her palm hard against the hollow underneath her cheekbone.

Hallie knew something about being dead. She did. She’d died herself three weeks ago, outside Kabul. It had been— Hell, it had been kind of shitty, actually. Not so much don’t-walk-into-the-light as big-black-hole and nothing the same after. The medic had told her it took seven minutes to revive her. She’d been sure he was wrong. Until she saw her first ghost.

Yeah, just three weeks, but it was harder and harder to remember normal, to remember a life without death and ghosts and loss.

And now this.

Hallie stepped into the room, pointed to the third casket in the slanted row to her left, and said, “That one.”

“Are you—?” For the first time there was a trace of … Doubt? Emotion? Something un-mortician-like in Art’s voice. “You can take all the time you need,” he said.

“That one,” Hallie repeated. The casket in question was polished maple with beading along the edge and metal fittings. Not fancy, but not plain either. Dell’s ghost stared at the brass on the drop handle like she’d never seen brass or drop handles or possibly even a casket before. Eddie’s ghost seemed equally taken with the soft shirred lining.

“Yeah,” Hallie said, “that one.”

“Let me get my book.” Art departed, leaving Hallie alone with her ghosts.

She walked over to the casket she—or the ghosts—had chosen. She gripped the side. Dell’s ghost floated beside her, looking at— Okay, Hallie had no idea what she was looking at, which was part of the problem, wasn’t it?
Look at me,
she thought desperately.
See me.

“Do you want to see her?”

Hallie snatched her hand away from the casket and turned to find Deputy Davies behind her. Goddamn. Thick carpet was a bitch.

“What?”

His gaze was steady, professional, but there was something else, too, as if he was waiting for her to do or say something. “I thought maybe you’d want to see her.”

“No! Well, yes, but—” Which was pretty accurate, all told. She had seen people die, had seen people she knew after they were dead. They looked cold and empty and … gone. She didn’t want to see Dell like that, didn’t want to look. And yet … she needed to, had to see her. Because that’s what death was—knowing.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

He gave a sharp nod, though he didn’t move. Eddie’s ghost abandoned the casket to drift over and stare at the side of his face again.

Art returned, copied off the coffin number as if he didn’t already have all of them memorized, and Hallie realized that maybe the deputy had been waiting for that.

“I’m going to want you to show us the body,” he said to Art.

“But—” Art looked at Hallie. “It’s not— She’s not ready.”

Thank god,
Hallie thought.

“That’s fine,” said the deputy.

Art looked from one to the other again. He gave Hallie another thin-lipped smile. “This way,” he said.

He led them out of the casket display room and down a short hallway. When they walked through the doorway at the end of the hall, the floor covering changed abruptly from carpet to linoleum, the lighting was harsher—overhead fluorescents—the walls painted a practical institutional off-white.

Hallie liked it.

She could deal with stark, with professional, with suck-it-up and get-it-done. She knew how that worked.

“Please wait,” Art said when they’d entered a largish room at the back of the building. He departed through another door to the left and was gone just under five minutes.

He returned with a wheeled steel table containing a body—Dell’s, presumably—covered with a sheet. Hallie backed up against the wall and braced herself. It wasn’t that she thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

It was that she knew she could.

4

Art put his hand on the sheet, looked at Hallie, and said, “You understand that she was in an accident. We’ve cleaned her up. But, there’s damage.” He looked pained, as if he wanted kinder, gentler words, but couldn’t think of any.

“Yes.” Like the word had been bitten off, chewed up, and spit back out. “I understand.”

He drew the sheet back slowly. Respectfully, Hallie thought, and she appreciated that.

Hallie could hear herself breathing, and she couldn’t figure out if the room was that quiet or if her breathing was that loud.
I’ve seen dead bodies before,
she told herself over and over and over, like a protection spell, like it would protect her.

Dell looked … Well, she looked dead. There was that. Her skin was gray, her features slack. Hallie laid a light hand on her cheek. It was so painful to look at her, to know that they’d never talk or laugh or argue again, that Hallie found herself focusing on the tiniest things, on the three holes in her left earlobe, one of which Hallie had made herself with a sterilized needle when she was eleven and Dell was fifteen, on the long thin scar along her collarbone, where one of the barn cats had jumped on her from the hayloft.