I’d thought my part of this was all done. I’d been more than satisfied to hold down the fort at the stationhouse and let Amanda run for the cavalry. But I didn’t like the idea of the remaining Jordan brothers cruising the streets looking for somebody to fill full of lead, and I had the idea they might stop by the stationhouse sooner or later. Even more than my concern about the Jordan brothers was one last question that kept nagging at me.
I put the truck into gear and headed for Chief Krueger’s house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Luke Jordan’s Chevy pickup rattled north up the six, past residential streets, the space between houses getting farther and farther apart until I was back into the black of the Okie night.
North of town was not as deserted as the Six south to the Texaco station and the Interstate. Pinpoints of light glittered from ranches and farmhouses here and there. Double-wides on fifty-acre spreads. The soil was better in this direction, some scattered crops, good grass for cattle. My folks’ place was about ten miles north of town. Sometimes when I drove by, a pang of loss hit me in the chest, but I didn’t drive by that often.
Krueger’s place was a few miles out. A nice two-story stone house, garage, empty barn. He didn’t want animals. The chief was a solitary man, never married, no kids. I’d been to his house exactly one time, when he had the department and families out for a Fourth of July barbecue. Ribs and potato salad and Coors Light. Chief Krueger was friendly and welcoming off duty. On duty he was all business and hard as a railroad spike.
My first week on duty, the chief took me around on night patrol, showed me the ropes. We passed a couple of rowdies spilling out of Skeeter’s near closing time, some college guys on a road tip, Arkansas caps and sweatshirts. Maybe they thought it would be a cool experience for their blog to tie one on in some Podunk whistle-stop. Anyway, the chief give them a warning, friendly but stern, like maybe they should have a few cups of coffee before they got behind the wheel.
The drunkest one got lippy, said he didn’t need no fat Okie flatfoot telling him when he’d had enough and started making fat lawman jokes like the chief had come out of
Smokey and the Bandit
or something.
Imagine a volcano about to erupt, the ground vibrating under your feet right before the big explosion.
You wouldn’t think a man that big could move so fast. The chief had his nightstick out and slapped across the one punk’s knee in one smooth motion. His friend’s mouth fell open, not believing, and Krueger poked him a hard one in the gut. The guy bent over, sucking for air. We piled them in back of the squad car, and they spent the night in jail. The next morning, the chief escorted them to the edge of town, and he told them not to come back.
Chief Krueger solved a lot of problems without troubling a judge or the court system. It worked. Coyote Crossing was a peaceful town.
Tonight things had gone wrong.
And if the chief wasn’t around to be on top of it, then something bad must have happened. I aimed to find out what I could. I owed him that much.
I turned down the dirt drive, passed the chief’s mailbox. About two hundred yards to the house. It was dark, no cars in front, but maybe in the garage. The porch light was dark. I climbed out of Luke’s pickup, approached the house slowly. After the night I’d had, it was all too easy to imagine dark figures lurking in the shadows. I didn’t want any surprises, squinted all around before climbing the porch steps and knocking on the front door. When nobody answered, I knocked slightly louder. I thought about taking off, but I hadn’t come all this way just to knock on the front door.
I tried the knob, but it was locked. I cupped my hands against a front window and looked inside. Not a single light on in the house. I walked around the other side, past a screened side porch to the back. There was a wide patio, table and chairs with a sun umbrella, expensive propane grill set up. This is where we’d had the barbecue. The memory of the ribs made my stomach growl. Potato salad.
The back door was locked too.
I stood there thirty seconds wondering if I was doing the right thing then put my elbow through a pane of glass in the back door, the crash tinkle of shards was way too loud. I reached inside, careful not to cut myself, unlocked the door and let myself into the kitchen. I flipped on the light.
The kitchen looked like something out of the 1950s, old cabinets, ancient gas stove, copper pots and pans hanging over a well-scarred island cutting board. There was a faint smell of disinfectant. No microwave, nothing gleamed new. A coffee percolator sat on the counter near the stove. I only recognized it because my grandmother had one. Somebody needed to get the chief a Mr. Coffee for his birthday. I put my hand on the percolator and the stove. Both cold.
I went through the kitchen and dining room into the living room, flipping on lights as I went. “Chief? You here?” I’d come too far to have the chief blast me with his twelve gauge because he thought I was a burglar. I was ready to throw myself on the floor at any second.
Krueger’s house looked like some kind of hunting lodge. Big stone fireplace, deer heads mounted on the wall, dark leather couches, cedar paneling. A dark painting on one wall of mountains and evergreens. It was a bachelor place all right. I walked to the fireplace, looked at the pictures on the mantle but didn’t recognize anyone. I stood there a bit scanning the photographs and realized my shins were warm.
I knelt, looked at the fresh ashes in the fireplace. Singed papers in the corner. Somebody had burned something in here recently.
Huh.
I went back into the kitchen, opened the chief’s fridge. Nearly empty, but there was a can of Pepsi and I grabbed it, popped it open and drank. The chicken legs I confiscated from Roy’s kitchen seemed like something I’d eaten a year ago, but the chief didn’t have much, so I closed the fridge and stood there sipping soda.
The chief was something of a neat freak, and if the kitchen hadn’t been so damn perfectly clean, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the dark spots on his tile floor. I knelt, looked closer without touching. A dark red blotch the size of a silver dollar. Three more dime sized drops leading away into pin-point size drips. The trail led to a door. I pictured the front of the house, the location of the kitchen. The garage. I opened the door to cool darkness.
I felt inside for a light switch but couldn’t find it. I fished the Bic lighter out of my pocket and flicked it, followed the feeble glow into the garage. No cars. Dark shapes along the far wall like a workbench and toolboxes. A musty mix of smells, fertilizer and grease.
I walked into something like a spider web and flinched, stepped back and held up the Bic. It was a pull string. I yanked it, and the light came on.
I saw the body first thing, and before my eyes could focus I thought it was Krueger. Somebody had sneaked into the chief’s house and killed him. But I saw better a split-second later.
Luke Jordan sat half in and half out of a body bag, slumped in an old brown Lay-Z-Boy patched several places with duct tape. An arm hung down to the floor, the droplet trail caused by blood leaking down one finger. I stepped closer, examined him. The same plastic expression hung on his face. His clothes looked mussed, the pockets of his jeans had been turned out.
Looking into his dead, blank eyes, I didn’t have anything much against Luke Jordan at that moment. I could-n’t hold a grudge against a stiff. Forget he’d been a total dick in high school. Forget he’d been a rowdy and bully. Forget too many girls thought he was a cool, dangerous stud. Forget all of it. Right then he was just another of the untimely dead.
Something caught my eye on the tool bench. The chief’s hat. I picked it up. A red smear of blood along one side. Hell. What had happened to him? I felt something cold crawl up my spine, standing there looking at the chief’s blood on his hat like that.
I backed out of the garage, left Jordan and the bloody hat.
I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to find the chief. I went upstairs just to cover my bases. In the master bedroom, the drawers were half-open, clothes pulled out. I checked the two other bedrooms. One had been converted into an office, and the chief ’s desk drawers were open. I took a look. Empty.
I scratched my chin, figuring what it all meant, forming a picture in my head.
And then the lights went out.
I twirled in a panicked circle for two seconds, bumped into a chair.
Okay. Chill.
I felt and fumbled my way into the hall in case it was just the office light that had burnt out. I found the switch, flipped it on and off a half-dozen times. It stayed dark.
I felt my way back to the master bedroom. A bouncing orange light flickered on the windows. I rushed to the window, looked down.
Flames licked up the side of the house.
I ran back to the office, my shin smacking something in the darkness. I grunted, hopped the rest of the way. In the office I saw the orange glow even before I looked out the window. Flames there too.
I ran downstairs as fast as I dared in the pitch black. The living room filled with the hellish, flickering glow from the front windows. I flung open the front door, and the blast of flames knocked me back, singed my eyebrows. The chief’s wooden benches and chairs from the front porch had been stacked against the door, the whole pile a raging inferno. I shielded my face with my hands, felt like I was being cooked, eyeballs instantly dry, throat parched.
So much smoke.
I backed up the stairs, closing my eyes against the hot sting. The angry orange glow filled every window.
I rushed into the upstairs bathroom. The window faced the front of the house. I opened it wide, punched out the screen. I looked down, saw the fire hadn’t brought down the porch roof yet. If the flames had eaten underneath, I’d fall through and fry. I hoped it was still solid.
I climbed through, caught my foot on the window ledge and tumbled out and down. I hit the porch roof and bounced. I clawed for a grip, tore a nail loose and rolled. The world blurred fiery orange and I was in mid-air, a tsunami of heat washing over me. I hit the ground hard, and the wind
whuffed
out of me. I rolled away from the heat, dust in my face and eyes. I got to my hands and knees, tried to gulp air between fits of coughing. My eyes streamed, nose snotty. The inside of my mouth tasted like hell on Earth.
The house went up fast. I stood on wobbly legs and watched. If I’d hesitated, waited just a little longer to escape …
I stumbled to the barn, found a water spigot. I gulped tepid water a handful at a time, washed my face and the back of my neck. Even this far away from the house, the heat from the fire was almost too uncomfortable to bear. Luke Jordan’s Truck was parked too close to the house. Already the hood was turning black from the fire. I wouldn’t be able to get near it.
I was stranded again, the walk back to town too long to contemplate.
But maybe I didn’t have to go back to town. I wasn’t out of it yet. I hobbled back up the chief’s driveway toward the Six, trying to massage the bruises out of my ribs. At some point, when this hellish night had ended, I’d need to check with a doctor, make sure nothing important had been knocked beyond repair. Only willpower and stubborn-headed stupidity kept me together.
When I hit the Six, I turned north and started jogging toward the Jordan place.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ten minutes jogging and I had to stop, the stitch in my side like a hot fork in my flesh. I walked, holding my ribs, panting, sweat sticking my shirt to me.
I paused, looked back at the chief’s house, the flames visible for miles and miles. I remembered the phones were out. Nobody would be able to call it in. Lucky there were no other houses close. The fire wouldn’t spread.
By the time I reached the gate to the Jordans’ ranch, I was down to a slow hobble. My body was screaming for me to lie down anywhere, even in the middle of the road, and go to sleep. I pushed the gate, and it creaked open on rusted hinges. I walked the dirt road to the Jordan home. It was a sprawling brick ranch house with a pebble circular driveway in front, untended, scruffy shrubs under the front window, a barn and a few out buildings a hundred yards beyond.
Somewhere a herd of lazy, skinny cows munched dry grass, keeping up the appearance that the Jordans were in the cattle business, and not a bunch of redneck hoods with a finger or two into every disreputable scheme within reach.
It’s true that in high school I had disliked Luke Jordan from a distance, but it was the stories of his older brothers, surfacing here and there in excited whispers, that I remembered most as a teenager. The town toughs, bullies and bad eggs. See them coming down the sidewalk, and you crossed the street. And everyone knew they were generally up to no good, yet somehow they always managed to slide, get off on a technicality or maybe a witness would reconsider what he’d actually seen, sitting up there on the witness stand. Only the oldest, Brett, had gone away to the big house. Can’t win them all. So Brett was known as the heavy criminal, but it was Jason more than any other brother that made me stay clear of the Jordans.
One thing I’ll always remember about Jason:
I was sixteen years old, sitting in my Mom’s Aries K car outside the Tastee-Freeze. Tiffany Davies sat in the passenger seat licking a chocolate ice cream cone like she was in love with it, and the only thing I could thing of was how to get her pants down around her ankles. I’d been working her hard, Saturday night dates three weeks in a row, heavy petting and dry humping, and I’d figured that night was going to be go-time. I had a condom in my pocket, pressing a permanent ring in the leather of my wallet.
Jason roared up on a black Harley Davidson, denim jacket, biker’s boots, wraparound sunglasses, no helmet, his dishwater hair tied back with a blue bandana. He leapt off the bike and jumped onto the car next to mine, a white El Camino. He stomped across the hood, jumped down on the driver’s side, opened the door and pulled Mark Foster out from behind the wheel. Mark was a year ahead of me, skinny in t-shirt, jeans and scuffed Doc Martin’s.
Mark didn’t get a chance to say anything. Jason had popped him in the nose, a smear of bright blood down Mark’s face. It all went downhill from there.
The El Camino’s passenger door flew open and Missy Shaw emerged, some Tracy Chapman song spilling out of the car with her. She was in my biology class. I thought she was hot but strange, so I really never talked to her that much.
“Stop it, Jason,” she screamed, almost hysterical.
“You shut up,” Jason told her.
And she did, shrinking back into the El Camino, eyes so wide with terror.
Jason had Mark back over the hood of the car and just kept beating him in the face.
“Oh, my god, oh, my god!” Tiffany kept bleating next to me.
Jason’s girl. Now Mark’s girl. Maybe nobody’s girl in a second.
Mark had gone all floppy and loose on the hood, Jason still beating down on him. I thought a minute Mark might’ve been dead. It seemed to take forever for people to erupt from the Tastee-Freeze, five of them grabbing Jason, a couple truckers and farmers and Mr. Iverson in his stained apron.
My mom and dad took me to a safari park one time when I was nine years old. You drove through, stayed in your car, lions and zebras and everything all over the place, and a sign about every two inches reminding patrons to STAY IN YOUR CAR. That’s what it felt like sitting there in the Aries K, watching the whole thing through the windshield.
I’ll never forget the look on Jason’s face, his eyes so calm, yet at the same time blazing some cold fire, a man or an animal about the devil’s business.
And that’s how I thought of the Jordans now, a whole family of them going about the devil’s business. The chief always told me if you start thinking of people bigger than they really are, then you’ll never maintain law and order. It’s the man with the star on his chest that’s big. I tried to remember that as I approached the Jordan household.
A light on in one front window. The rest of the house looked dark. I eased around the back keeping to the shadows. The front porch light didn’t cast its glow very far.
The side of the house was cluttered with old engine parts, the rusted hulk of a Pinto, an ancient refrigerator. I maneuvered through the debris, not really sure what I was doing here, hoping answers would present themselves without me having to ask the right questions. I didn’t know the questions anymore than I knew the answers. All I knew was everything was wrong and it all started with a dead Luke Jordan, so maybe the Jordans knew the right secrets to make sense of this mess.
So many secrets and so much history for such a small town. Miles and miles and miles of wide open space, yet it seemed like we were in each other’s pockets every damn day. Hell, I knew the other side of the coin too. Going from gig to gig, town to town, and every single face was a stranger’s. When I was on the road with the band, I felt free, but I often felt lonely too.
I couldn’t say which way was worse. I couldn’t make my brain think about it.
More junk rose up in my way. I scooted around a defunct dishwasher and an empty, pitted beer keg. A fence with a gate half open leading into the back yard. I slipped through, quiet as I could step.
Just inside the gate, the Doberman leapt for me.
Like some sleek rocket made of solid meat, he flew, trailing slobber, his bark sending a panicked chill straight up my spine. His jaws snapped shut two inches from my face, and he landed in front of me, barking his head off. I backed up where the fence and the side of the house made a corner, petrified. The dog didn’t come any closer, and I realized he was on a rope tied to a small tree thirty feet away. There was no way to get around him without coming within range of those teeth. He liked showing me the teeth, his lips curled back in a constant growl.
My hand fell to the revolver, but it never cleared the holster.
“Lucifer, sit!” A new voice from the house.
The dog backed up three steps sat, a low growl still trickling out of it.
An old woman came out of the screen door, little more than a silhouette against the light from inside the house. But I could see the revolver in her hand well enough, an enormous lumpy thing from some old war. She pointed it at me. Compared to the dog, I didn’t mind.
“Who’s that?”
“Toby Sawyer, ma’am.”
She squinted at me, leaned in trying to get a look at me. I could tell she had trouble seeing, but the revolver was so close, I’m sure she’d have no trouble putting one right in my gut.
“You one of Luke’s friends? Or Jason’s?”
“Not quite, ma’am,” I said. “But I was hoping to check with your boys if they were home.”
“My grandsons.”
Holy shit, Grandma Jordan. When I was eleven, my dad told me she’d shot an Indian. I wondered if it were true. I wondered if that was the same gun. I hoped in twenty years people wouldn’t be telling the story about the time Grandma Jordan shot a part-time deputy.
“Are they here, ma’am?”
“No. Come inside.”
“Well, if they’re not here, I don’t want to disturb—”
“I said come inside.”
“Okay.”
I went through the screen door and found myself in a hot stuffy room, stacks of books, magazines and newspapers surrounding an old overstuffed armchair. The place smelled like fried bologna and Ben Gay.
She motioned with the revolver. “Keep going.”
I went through the cluttered room and into a small kitchen. She added a second cup and saucer to a tarnished silver tray, kept the gun on me with the other hand. She added a ceramic pot to the tray. The pot had thin little cracks running up the side, a faded pattern of purple flowers. The cups and saucers matched the pot.
She nodded at the tray. “Bring that please.”
I picked it up and followed her back into the stuffy room with all the magazines. She sat in the armchair, motioned at a footstool nearly buried in newspapers. I cleared off the stool and sat, placed the tray on a clear patch of floor between us. I handed her a cup and took the other one.
I sipped. Tepid. A vague hint of mint, slightly bitter aftertaste. She sipped too, her other hand seemingly casual on the gun in her lap. I appraised the old woman, tried to gauge her ability to plug me before I could jump up and run out the door.
Old lady Jordan looked frailer than she sounded, the skin on her face a collection of wrinkled, gray folds. Her gray hair hung long and loose about her shoulders. One eye was completely white with cataracts, but the other eye was bright and vivid blue, seeing everything. Her dress was old and black. Support hose. Ugly shoes. When she smiled, her teeth were so white and perfect they had to be false and gave her a demented Cheshire cat expression.
“I saw Meredith James at Church last Sunday.” She said it like I knew who she was talking about, like we were already in the middle of a conversation. “She’s recovering from a stroke. She’s seventy. You know how old I am?”
“No ma’am.”
“Guess.”
Why did old people like this game so much? “I would-n’t know, ma’am.”
“I said guess.”
“Sixty?”
“Don’t mess with me, young man. Guess right.”
“Seventy-five.”
“I’m ninety-six.”
“That’s amazing.” I said.
That must’ve been the right response because she smiled. “I still cook all my own meals. The boys take good care of me, of course.” She sipped tea.
“Where are the boys now, Mrs. Jordan?”
She tilted her head, gave me another long look with her good eye. “You’re one of Krueger’s?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She
hmphed
like she didn’t think too much of that or of the chief. “Looks like you got dragged along ten miles of bad road. You don’t smell so fresh either.”
“It’s been a long night.”
“I never sleep at night, haven’t for years.” She sipped tea, just a little at a time like she enjoyed going through the motions. “When you get my age you either sleep all the time or you never do. I never do. So I’m up all night and hardly ever get any visitors.”
“I’m more than happy to sit with you a bit, Mrs. Jordan.” I sipped tea to show I meant it. “Can you tell me where Jason and the others got to?”
“You and Krueger need to leave them boys alone. We’re good God-fearing white people out here. Every whiskey drinking Indian gets more respect than us, government money, tribal money. Every son of a bitch in the state who can prove a redskin in the woodpile gets a card and all the benefits. Now they’re even changing all the names of the high schools so the mascots don’t give offense. And my own boys can’t do a few extra things to make ends meet without you lot harassing us.”
“I know what it’s like to be poor, ma’am.”
“That’s right,” she said. “But you and me can’t go open no casino, can we?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m just worried about people getting hurt. It’s my job to help look after everybody.”
“We look after our own. You want a graham cracker?”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
“Wait a minute.” With a little effort she stood, waddled to a shelf and brought back a photo album. It was black leather, looked worn and very old. She turned to the first page and set it in my lap before flopping back into the armchair with a little grunt.
I looked at the first photo, black and white, five by seven, thick paper. On the album page below the photo someone had written
Antonia
in thick pencil. A young girl in a
Little House on the Prairie
dress, maybe ten years old, fled across a field of high grass, a slanted log cabin in the background, a slightly blurry windmill beyond that. The sky a flat gray.
The girl looked back over her shoulder as she ran, raw glee on her face, eyes wide as if being chased by a parent or sibling. It was easy to imagine a squeal of laughter, a breezy sunny day.
“That’s me,” she said.
“Where?”
“Here,” she said. “The cabin burnt down in 1937.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me and my folks and six brothers and sisters lived in there. Coyotes stole all the chickens the third year. We fought drought and ice storms. My brothers and sisters grew up and scattered, but I stayed. I stuck, by God, and that should be worth something. It should mean something when you endure and stay and the whole world changes around you, changes and forgets you. It should mean something.”