Wide Open (8 page)

“How did they get here?”

Brett looked at Hallie. “What?”

Hallie tucked her arm, all pins and needles, against her side. “The deputies,” she said. “How did they get here?”

Brett frowned. “In cars, I’m thinking.”

Hallie tilted her head to look at her. “Yeah, okay. What I meant was, how did they get here so fast? Usually everybody’s standing in the parking lot laughing by the time they arrive.”

“Maybe they were already out this way for something else.”

“Yeah. Three of them?”

Brett shrugged.

One of the deputies, a short stocky man in his forties, who had arrested Hallie’s father once for breaking six windows in the county courthouse after Hallie’s mother died, walked to the center of the room. “Anyone want to tell me who started this?” He waited long enough to sweep his eyes across most of the patrons, including plenty of people far enough from the dance floor that they hadn’t even known there was a fight before the lights came on. The deputy—Hallie couldn’t remember his name—put his hands on his hips and said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me.”

It went quickly after that—not like most of them hadn’t done this before. The Bobtail was all loud music, beer, quick sprawling brawls, and sex in the back of pickup trucks that smelled like motor oil and wheat straw. The owner’s license had been suspended at least twice that Hallie knew, but it didn’t matter. The Bobtail always came back. It was what it was, and everyone came here.

Two men and a woman who were actually, literally, falling down drunk were hauled off to one of the sheriff’s cars. A few people drifted back to the bar, but most folks figured it was time to go. Things never looked as easy to escape from or to with the lights on.

The Boy Deputy approached them.

“You know what happened?” he asked her, revealing that quicksilver smile again. He dropped his gaze right after, staring at the bracelet Eddie had given her, then looked up and waited for her answer.

Before Hallie could open her mouth, however, Lorie stepped up. “She doesn’t know anything. Why would she know anything?”

“Lorie—”

“We just wanted a quiet beer, just wanted to sit and talk and—”

“Lorie, I—”

“We didn’t ask for trouble. She wasn’t—”

“Lorie!”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

Lorie huffed, halfway between a snort and a mutter, which would have made Hallie laugh if she didn’t feel spun all thin, like wire. Eddie had drifted away again, but Dell was there, running an ice-cold finger up and down her arm.

She rubbed her left eye. “What do you want me to tell you?”

Boyd blinked. “What happened.”

He was so serious. It made her tired.

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“Davies!” One of the other deputies called to him from the other side of the dance floor. He left, sparing one quick look back.

She looked around. God, she was tired. “Are they still serving beer?” she asked no one in particular. “Because I need one.”

At the bar, she picked up a stool, righted it, and sat down. The bartender grinned at her. “What’ll you have?” he asked.

“Anything,” Hallie said.

She sat there for most of an hour, drinking less than half a beer. The deputies left. Pete Bolluyt and the man who’d jumped her both left, the latter sporting a black eye and limping. Pete looked at her across the wide expanse of floor and winked, like a promise.

Hallie gave him the finger. He could threaten her all he liked, but he couldn’t stop her.

At some point, she remembered the rip in her shirt, mostly because he’d actually cut her a little. She went into the bathroom, cleaned it, and left her shirt untucked so it wouldn’t rub. She didn’t care that it hurt, figured she deserved it in some way she couldn’t fathom.

Lorie and Brett were waiting for her when she came out. “We’re going to run up to the city for fries or something,” Brett said. “You want to come?”

Hallie shook her head. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’ll head out in a few minutes.” Other than Pete and Pete’s belt buckle, she hadn’t learned anything new about Dell or Martin Weber or his company. Today was over, or as good as. Tomorrow was the funeral, another day gone. They ticked over in her head, like slamming doors. She owed Dell more than bar fights and beer. Hallie and Dell’s ghost both knew it.

Brett pulled her head back and arched an eyebrow, as if that would allow her to see Hallie more clearly.
You don’t see anything, Brett,
Hallie thought,
because you can’t see ghosts following me around.

Brett gave a small laugh as if she knew exactly what Hallie was thinking, which was decidedly unlikely. Lorie hugged her, and then they were gone. Hallie got coffee from the bartender and sat in one of the badly lit corners at the end of the bar for another hour. While she sat, she made lists in her head of things she knew or wanted to know, lists of lightning bolts and Uku-Weber and what Pete Bolluyt had been doing since he’d come home to Taylor County.

9

When Hallie finally left the Bobtail, the parking lot was mostly empty. The night air was cool, but not cold, a light breeze blowing out of the west, fresh air that didn’t smell of stale beer and electric lights. A couple of boys in tight jeans and battered boots sat on a pickup tailgate in the south corner of the lot, underneath a flickering light with a twelve-pack between them. One of them raised his can of beer at her, an invitation. And maybe if it had been another time, maybe if Dell hadn’t died, she’d have done it.

Because sometimes beer and boys and stupid conversations were enough to get you by.

She waved at them and continued across the lot to her truck, when she heard the slow crunch of tires on gravel behind her.

Shit
.

“Everything all right?” It was the Boy Deputy. Again.

His left arm rested on the car door, his index finger tapping against the frame. He was looking at the bracelet on her wrist again. She shoved her hand into her pocket.

“You all right?” he asked. “Need a ride?”

Because that would be the topper to a perfect evening, she thought, showing up at home in the sheriff’s car again. “No.” She looked at him sideways. “You want to test my breath?”

“You’re not drunk,” he said. She couldn’t stop looking at him, which was annoying, though not actually his fault. Only his short precision haircut saved him from being too pretty. It was why he looked so young—because he was so pretty. “I just thought,” he continued. “That you might be, you know … shaken up.”

“I’ve been in fights before.”

The light was good enough right there that, though it shaded everything in blues and grays, she could see him raise an eyebrow. “Really?” he said. “And you look so innocent.”

Yeah, fuck you,
she thought.

“You don’t always come to the fight,” she said. “Sometimes the fight comes to you.” And, shit, if that wasn’t the dorkiest thing she’d said out loud in a long time. Because she could have said,
I don’t go looking for trouble,
which would have been a lie, but concise. She cleared her throat and looked up, but she couldn’t see the stars past the parking lot lighting.

A car, or a pickup truck, Hallie couldn’t tell, pulled into the parking lot. It idled near the entrance for several seconds like it was waiting for someone, then backed around and drove away.

Boyd got out of his car, left the motor running, and leaned against the side. There was a ghost right behind him. Hallie blinked. She didn’t recognize her—a woman with short blond hair, dressed in a long dark skirt and jacket. Was she going to start collecting them? Like charms on a bracelet? First Eddie and Dell, then random ghosts of perfect strangers?

“Where did you get that bracelet?” he asked.

“What?”

His shoulders hunched, suddenly awkward, like that wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. “Sorry,” he said. Then, after a minute, “This isn’t official, you understand.”

“Okay…,” Hallie said with a frown because she didn’t understand. What the hell was he talking about?

He took a step toward her but kept one hand on his car, like it grounded him. “Are you sure you didn’t talk to Dell before she died?”

“Pretty sure,” Hallie said, like
Are you kidding me with this?

“We have her phone records.” He looked up. A crow, its black feathers gleaming blue in the parking lot light, dropped onto a battered green pickup truck twenty feet from where they were standing. It tipped its beak, cocked its head, and looked at them. “She’d called a lot of places.” He continued. “Turkey. Germany. New York. Missouri. Like she was looking for someone.”

“She knew I was in Afghanistan,” she said. Had Dell hoped she was coming home? Had she asked her to? Sent her a message that Hallie never received? Wasn’t like Hallie could have picked up and gone. Maybe Dell had wanted help so badly, she’d made herself believe that Hallie could.

“If you talked to her or she left a message somewhere, it might help me figure out what happened.”

“Us.”

“What?”

“Us. The sheriff’s department. That’s what you meant, right? It might help the
sheriff’s department
figure out what happened.”

“Us.”

“I didn’t talk to her,” Hallie said.

They looked at each other.

“You need to be careful,” he finally said.

Hallie drew herself up, her bones vibrating. “I need to be
careful
? Dell killed herself, right? Or it was an accident? Right? Right? That’s what you told me. That’s what everyone tells me. So don’t tell me now that I need to be careful unless you’re also planning to tell me what’s going on.”

His right index finger tapped against his thumb. Hallie was pretty sure he’d stop if he knew he was doing it.

“I don’t know,” he said.

It sounded like the army:
I don’t know
meaning
You don’t need to know.

“Fuck you,” she said, digging in her pocket for her keys. “I don’t need—”

Dell’s ghost hit her from behind like an insubstantial freight train, straight through her—
blood, scream, fire, ohmygod, pain pain painpainpain, ohmygod, makeitmakeitstop!

She dropped her keys, one hand on the gravel of the parking lot; the sharp point of a rock jabbing her knee. It hurt, like ice crystals in her lungs. It was … just to breathe. She felt as if she’d been standing outside at the South Pole in a blizzard. Cold like fire, like the Arctic Ocean, like death.

“Hey.”

Boyd touched her elbow, and it startled her so badly that she almost hit him, scrambling to her feet because she wouldn’t be vulnerable. Not in front of him. Not again.

“Whoa.” He took a step back, his hip touching the passenger door of his car. “Are you okay?”

Before she could answer, Boyd’s radio crackled to life, the sound a hundred times too loud. As he bent his head to answer it, Dell drifted back. She reached out her hand and laid it on Hallie’s face. Hallie flinched from the sudden, sharp cold and drew her breath in sharply.

Boyd looked at her. “Hold on,” he said into the mike. He put his hand on her arm again and even through her shirtsleeve it felt warm, like the only warm thing ever. “Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Stop asking me that,” Hallie said. “Jesus!” Anger as an antidote to pain.

Boyd’s frown deepened. “I—”

“Do you want to fuck me or something? Is that it? Because it’s not going to happen. And you don’t— Maybe I should file a complaint.”

Bitch
.

She wanted him to call her a bitch or sputter about how he wouldn’t, couldn’t, never meant— She wanted him to be stupid about it, to be uptight and embarrassed and to go away. Just for fuck almighty’s sake, leave her alone.

“If you need anything,” he finally said. “If you need help. You can call me.”

Hallie stared at him.
Take a hint,
she thought.
Go away.

And, finally, he did.

Hallie rubbed a hand across her face, standing there like an idiot for several minutes, watching where he’d gone.

She walked back to her truck. It was going on one thirty in the morning, and she was tired. She didn’t realize her hands were shaking until she tried to open the pickup truck door.

She leaned her head against the steering wheel for a minute. As she was putting the key into the ignition, Eddie drifted in and settled, waiting for a ride home.

“What are you doing here, Eddie?” she asked as she started the truck and finally pulled out of the parking lot. She seriously wished she knew, wished she didn’t dream about him dying every night, all messy and crying and begging her to tell his girl back home— Yeah, even in her dreams.

Hallie and Eddie had been together her whole tour in Afghanistan. He’d been a math geek, had joined the army to get money for college, wanted to teach math to kids who hated it.

“Do you know what math is?” he’d asked her the first day they met, like a quiz.

“Math defines the world,” she’d said. She’d been stacking boxes all day. She was hot and tired, and they were shipping out at the end of the week. She was not interested in discussing mathematics with some geeky kid she’d never met before.

He’d looked put out at her answer, as if he’d been expecting her to talk about two plus two and four. She’d grinned at him and showed her teeth.
Go away and leave me alone, asshole,
she’d thought.

But he came back the next day with a game board and a battered set of plastic chess pieces. “You probably don’t know how to play,” he’d said.

“Oh for god’s sake, set them up,” because she’d never liked being underestimated. She hadn’t realized until their third or fourth game that
he’d
probably set
her
up.

Eddie had been incredibly tough in his own way and utterly unsuited for the army and for Afghanistan. He’d talked about theorems and proofs and traffic patterns in downtown San Diego. People would look at him as if he’d lost his mind. He and Hallie played chess all the time, every chance they got, like it was the only thing standing between paradise and hell. Eddie had been precise and detailed, always thinking six moves ahead. Hallie’d been all big picture messy, knowing what was coming, but unable to say how or even exactly what she knew. He won more than she did, but her victories always blindsided him.