Tom Piccirilli: The Fever Kill

In his dreams she was always bleeding and lying in his arms and the playground was covered with crows. Sometimes he was yelling and sometimes he was attempting to soothe her while she sobbed. When he dreamed he'd tussle and kick and lash out. He'd wake up with his own voice in his ears and Joan would be holding her arm, her breast, asking him if he was all right. That's what kind of woman she was. Joan would stare at him and he'd know he'd had another of the dreams, but she would never tell him what he'd said, if he'd said anything at all. It wasn't until Morena that he found out that he'd cry out, You're my sister, Mary. Morena took it literally, thinking his old man had screwed around on the side and Mary was Crease's half-sister.

Crease figured it meant that in his heart he knew his father had tied him to the little girl, making her a part of his life forever. The same way that Crease had made Morena a part of his life. Morena, the baby, even Tucco and his gunman Cruez. You couldn't make it through the world without a family. If you didn't have a family, you made one out of whoever was around, plucking them from out of the air.

Mary Burke dying over fifteen grand. His father destroyed. Crease's mother gone, his adolescence dragged into hell, all for such an insignificant sum. Tucco used to carry twice that in his money clip, in hundreds, so he could tip the strippers a C-note at a time.

He awoke in the deep night and found Reb in bed with him, nude, laying back against the headboard, staring at him with the moonlight skipping playfully across her face. The wind had risen even more and the maples out front were swinging their branches in a savage dance.

"You want the money, don't you? That's why you're back."

"What money?"

"The money your father stole and hid."

"If he'd taken the money, he wouldn't have died a drunk in the gutter."

"There must've been a reason. Everyone knows he shot that girl and took the ransom money."

"They do, eh?"

"Yes, and so do you."

"He said he hid it and it was stolen from him."

"So you do want it."

"I want to know who wound up with it. I want to know why fifteen grand was enough to cost a girl her life."

"Hell, that's more than enough reason to lead to murder anywhere, much less in Hangtree."

She was right. He'd seen some of the Colombians take out a guy's eye for skimming a grand or two off the top. Crease had to remind himself that nobody really needed a reason to start a massacre. People were always reaching for some kind of answer.

"You're going to kill him, aren't you?" she asked. "Who?"

"Sheriff Edwards."

Crease thought about it for a minute. "Maybe."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you don't really care one way or another."

"I don't know."

"You could've killed Jimmy pretty easily. He's considered tough around here."

"He's not."

"You kept his knife. I like that. Taking it away from him like a kid who's been bad and doesn't deserve his toy."

"I'm going to need a knife soon," Crease said.

"Why?"

It would come down to him and Tucco playing around with blades. As much as he tried, he just couldn't see himself shooting Tucco. There'd be a lot of talk and a lot of buildup, even some laughter along the way, but in the end Tucco would lash forward like lightning and Crease would have to be ready for it.

He went to visit his father's grave.

The 'Stang wanted to cut loose beneath him, and he found it difficult to keep it under control. Driving through Manhattan was hellish with a light on every corner. Back here, you had hundreds of miles of back road without even a stop sign. The 'Stang was tuned fine, he'd burn past any of the local cruisers. It might be fun, running Edwards and the others around the county for a few hours, just for the hell of it. Do some of the idiot things he hadn't been able to do as a kid.

He took it slow across town and passed by the police station, keeping an eye out. He didn't see anyone he recognized, and at the next light he pulled a hard left and tromped the gas pedal.

The area grew lush with wild maple and the seething, fiery colors of the dying leaves. The tourist traffic would be heavy for another couple of weeks. Families on road trips through New England, kids hunting through the pumpkin patches. The last of the maple syrup for the season would be going out in buckets before it got too cold.

The high arching gate-work narrowed his attention as Crease slowed, turned off the road, and drove past the spear-point fencing and brick pillars into the cemetery.

He parked and threaded his way to his father's grave, each step somehow calming him instead of bringing the fever forward. He felt like he was doing something wrong, that he might not care enough to actually accomplish what he'd set out to do. His resolve seemed to be waning. Strange that should happen here, where he'd buried his own father and been run out of town.

The old man's grave had sunken in about a foot. Crease hadn't packed enough of the frozen earth back into the hole that night. The yellow grass on it grew in scruffy patches. There was no tombstone, but Dirtwater, or someone, had put a few large rounded rocks where the headstone should be. The spring rains had dragged mud up against them to form a kind of knobby crest.

Dirtwater was busy fifty yards off trimming some brush, his back to Crease. A boy of about eight years old held onto a rake with a wooden handle taller than he was, smoothly drawing leaves and sticks into a pile.

Crease leaned up against a tree, lit a cigarette, and wondered what it was that had driven him all this way, nonstop, from New York. Some kind of mild need for revenge that, at the moment, he didn't quite feel anymore. His father's apathy was still affecting him through all the years, even from his own death. Crease had fallen into the same rut he'd been in when carrying the man on his back through the streets, when nothing could anger or harm him.

"Hey!"

Crease turned and saw the boy was rushing toward him. He had a nice fluid way of moving, trained not to step on the graves. He nimbly maneuvered through the aisles and skimmed past the clutches of angels and virgin mothers with outstretched arms.

"Who are you?" the kid asked. "If you don't mind me asking."

"I don't. I'm Crease. How about yourself?"

"I'm Hale. You're not supposed to smoke here."

"Why?" Crease said, genuinely curious.

"We had a dry summer and the fall's no better. There's been some bad brush fires. There's a ban on smoking in wooded areas."

Crease wouldn't exactly call the graveyard a wooded area, but he decided not to argue with the boy. He put his cigarette out on the heel of his shoe and, not wanting to throw the butt on the ground, replaced it in his pack.

"Are you Dirtwater's son?"

"Yep."

"You look just like him."

The boy smiled. "He tells me I look like Mom. He says that's a good thing, since he's ugly. But I know he's not. He's not really handsome, even Mom knows that, but he's not ugly, not too ugly anyway, so I'll take what you said to me as a compliment."

The kid liked to talk and showed a real maturity, just like Stevie. "Good, because that's how I meant it, Hale."

"So thank you."

"You're welcome."

Dirtwater didn't know how to do sign language, but through expression and gestures, he could hold a pretty damn good conversation. It was a nice balance that he should have a boy who enjoyed talking so much, and was so good at it.

"I'd like to talk to him," Crease said.

"Do you know my Dad?"

"I did a long time ago."

He was worried that Dirtwater wouldn't remember him. Crease couldn't even show him any identification, since all of it was in his cover name. All he could do was flash his father's badge at him, which wouldn't mean anything. Maybe point at the old man's grave.