Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Diego leans down.

‘Bill?’

Silence. His chest neither rises nor falls. There is no movement in his extremities. No sound escapes his throat. What now lies before Diego is nothing more than a wax replica of a man he once knew.

‘Dead?’

Diego nods.

Ian closes his eyes and lets his head rest on the gravel.

‘You okay, Ian?’

No response.

Diego turns in a circle, feeling helpless and overwhelmed, and falls to a sitting position in the middle of the driveway as in the distance sirens wail.

Paramedics load Ian and Chief Davis into ambulances and declare William Francis Finch Jr, age forty-two, survived by wife and two children, dead. Diego wonders if he should call Debbie. It might be better to hear it from a friendly voice than from Sheriff Sizemore. The thought of having to put those words into the air makes him sick. Your husband is dead. With four words a world destroyed. And she’s already been through so much. He reaches for his cell phone. He has to call her. She’ll need a sympathetic ear.

But before he can dial, Henry’s brother Donald is coming down the driveway in a primer-gray El Camino with an expressionless expression on his face: blank as unmarked paper. He passes the ambulances as they wail their way out to Crouch Avenue and then the Mencken Regional Medical Center. The car comes to a stop behind Diego’s and Donald steps out.

‘What the hell-’

Diego walks up to him, grabs him by the arm, and leads him to his car. He yanks open the back door. He shoves Donald toward it. ‘Get in.’

‘What for?’

‘Get in the fucking car.’

‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Do you want to be?’

Donald looks at him over his shoulder for a moment, tonguing the inside of his cheek. And he must see the scene behind Diego as well: blood and bone splattered across the driveway, several police cars, a covered dead body, a dead dog. And the absences: Henry’s truck and the man himself. He must be able to piece at least some of it together. After a moment he nods and steps into the back of the car.

Diego waits till he pulls in his left leg and slams the door shut on him.

‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Are you and your brother close?’

‘He’s twenty years older than me. Old enough to be my father.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘No, we’ve never been close.’

‘But you eat dinner at his house.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You eat a lot of dinners with people you don’t like?’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like him. I said we weren’t close. And except on weekends he ain’t there anyway.’

‘But you eat dinner at his house.’

‘Yeah, sometimes. I already said I do.’

‘Ever notice anything unusual?’

‘Unusual like what?’

‘Unusual like unusual. Use your brain.’

‘Henry and Bee have always been unusual.’

‘Like how?’

‘I don’t know.’ Donald scratches at his beard stubble. ‘Look, if you’re asking if I ever noticed anything criminal, the answer is no. I haven’t.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No.’

‘You never suspected they had a third person in their house?’

‘I don’t know. I guess not.’

‘Don’t guess.’

‘I never thought about it.’

‘Well, think about it now.’

‘No. I mean, I seen kid stuff around now and then, but I guess I thought it was from their own kid.’

‘They had a kid?’

‘Died over twelve years ago.’

Diego scratches his cheek. He remembers hearing this story before, maybe at Roberta’s, but he’s only spoken to Henry half a dozen times over the years, so it didn’t mean much to him-till now. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘Girl.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Not even one.’

‘How’d she die?’

‘Drowned in the tub.’

‘You only saw kid stuff that could belong to an infant?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’re searching the house.’

‘I know.’

‘And if we find stuff all over the house for a teenager we’ll know you’re lying.’

‘I know it. I’m not lying. I never thought about it.’

‘You don’t do much thinking, do you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t seem to know much either.’

Donald shrugs and exhales through his nostrils.

‘You never heard any noise?’

‘Not that I noticed.’

‘You really expect me to believe you lived in a trailer not twenty yards from Henry and Beatrice, that you ate dinner there sometimes, and you never had any idea that for seven years they were holding someone captive? That’s what you want me to believe?’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘And you don’t know where he might be headed?’

‘I already told you like an hour ago.’

‘And if you told the truth you should be able to remember what you said.’

‘I said I didn’t know but if I had to guess, Juarez by way of El Paso.’

‘Is your brother that fucking stupid?’

‘Well, he ain’t a Mensa member.’

‘But you think he’s dumb enough to try to cross a border with every cop in the state looking for him?’

‘I don’t know. It was just a guess.’

‘A pretty shit one. Your brother’s not that stupid and you know it.’

A knock at the door, and then it squeaks open.

Diego looks over his shoulder. Sheriff Sizemore pokes his Stetson-topped head into the room. He wipes at his mouth with his palm.

‘Officer Diego.’

‘It’s Officer Peña.’

‘Let’s talk.’

Diego nods, then gets to his feet and follows the sheriff out into the empty front room of the police station, making sure the door is locked on the younger Dean brother.

‘What is it, sheriff?’

‘You’ve been going in circles for over an hour.’

‘I know, but he’ll slip. I’m wearing him down.’

‘Look, this is our case. A county case. You don’t have the resources. I agreed to the hour outta courtesy for what happened to Officer Hunt’s daughter. For what happened to the chief. I know it means something to you guys. And, yeah, I thought maybe you’d be able to get something we could use. But one of ours got shot too, died, and the fucking hour is up, Officer Diego.’

‘Officer Peña. And I just need another thirty minutes.’

‘You can’t have it.’

‘I can’t have it?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, what the fuck?’

The sheriff shrugs, seeming suddenly bored by the conversation. ‘That’s just the way it is,’ he says. ‘I got a manhunt going on and I’m done letting you dance in circles with our only possible source of information.’

Diego watches Sheriff Sizemore lead the younger Dean to the back of his car and put him into it. Then Sizemore looks back at Diego and nods. Diego does not nod back. Sizemore gets into his vehicle and drives way, taking Donald to the sheriff’s office down the street.

Diego tries to roll a cigarette, but his hands are shaky. He cannot seem to keep the tobacco in his paper. It shakes from the paper and falls to the asphalt. Finally, after his third try, he balls the rolling paper in his fist and throws it to the ground. He turns around and heads inside.

Didn’t really want a cigarette, anyway.

Picture a calm sea of oily black. Horizon to horizon: only this sea, flat and featureless. An entire planet covered in liquid midnight. A moon overhead like a silver dollar, and a few stars, but nothing more. There are no islands or trees. No fish or whales. Just a dead calm. Nothing other than one man floating on his back in the middle of it: Ian. Ian, floating in darkness. Arms and legs spread like the Vitruvian Man. Eyes open. He looks toward the heavens expecting God, but all he gets is the voice of the darkness between the stars: a hollow call like a desert wind.