Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Again the nods. Quietly, someone said, “It’s okay, Earl; you tell your truth,” and others murmured their support.

“That’s what’s delicious to her: that you choose to damn yourself. She’s like a fucked-up kid who finds it hilarious when the frog chooses to jump out of the pot and into the fire.”

“You hear how nuts this is,” the woman behind him hissed desperately. “This is nuts. These people are nutbags. My name is Leighanne Halloway. I moved here at the end of October, ’cause it’s all I could afford with my Disability. These people are fucking insane, and they have a shit-ton of guns.”

“Anyway,” Earl said with a sigh, “point is, there’s no problem here, sir. We finally have this situation under control. You can move along.”

“Plus it’s getting late!” a voice added from the crowd.

Earl nodded. “Yup. And she gets damn tricky once the sun’s down. New moon tonight, too. That’s the worst.” Earl was looking up into the tree now. “’Course, you totally trashed the easy branch.” He worked his jaw ruminatively. “Nathanial,” he called over his shoulder. “You figure you can shimmy as high as that one?” Earl pointed into the canopy. “Lash the noose back up?”

A dark-haired boy, his face a spray of freckles, sprang to his feet even as the schoolteacher frowned.

“I don’t know about that, Earl,” she said. “It’s awful high.”

“I can do it, Ms. Everly,” the boy insisted.

“Jack, Ethan, you wanna get the ladder back up?” Earl went on, not acknowledging Ms. Everly’s objection. “And lash Leighanne’s hands again; she got ’em loose somehow.”

“Shit,” Leighanne hissed, grabbing hold of Lyle’s jacket and pulling herself tight to his back, face buried between his shoulders, like a toddler hiding behind Mom rather than meet a new babysitter. “No. No.” Her voice was hot and frantic and awful on his neck.

Lyle had a brief but powerful intuitive flash: This groveling woman was somehow like the badge and the gun, something very useful for today.

“No,” Lyle said, his voice clear and calm. “This woman is coming with me.” All faces turned to him, as though he’d said something unintelligibly absurd— “No, I’m a kangaroo” or “The toilet injured my lunch.” Everyone stopped. Earl looked at him quizzically.

Only the Walrus in Red Suspenders appeared to take it in. He rose to his feet with ponderous rage.

“I told you,” the Walrus announced. “I said he was here under color of law, and you jackaninnies just brushed me off—” Now that the Walrus had risen, Lyle saw the short-barreled submachine gun dangling from a tactical sling circling the man’s beefy neck and shoulder. The Walrus pawed for the pistol grip as he continued his diatribe.

Lyle drew the Public Defender from his pocket, finger already on the trigger, and pointed it at the droopy mustache. Everyone froze. Not a word or breath or rolling drop of sweat even quivered. Not a cicada sang in the field. The dead tree gave no shelter. The setting sun, red and blazing, paused in the sky.

Lyle wondered if the gun had a safety, and if the safety was on. He’d only fired it once, at a shooting range, immediately after buying it. That had been six years ago. If he hadn’t been shot by the gun that morning, he’d have wondered if it was even loaded.

Everyone else was frozen, but Lyle was sweating freely, his palm growing slick on the heavy revolver’s rubber grip.

“So,” Earl said carefully, “you’re taking possession of her, then?”

“Yes. I’m taking her into my custody.”

“Possession,” Earl repeated cagily. “You’re taking her in your possession.’’

“Yeah,” Lyle reiterated. “I’m taking her in my possession.”

As soon as the magic words left Lyle’s mouth, Earl stepped back, hands up. “All yours, then, Detective.”

The Walrus blustered, “Just wait a damned—”

“No,” Earl said, “you heard him, J-Bob-D: she is his now. In his possession. Not ours . Not a member of our community. Not our problem.” There was a moment, and then a palpable ease swept through the crowd.

Lyle was already carefully backing up across the rutted field, his free arm out wide to his side, herding the cowering woman behind him in the direction of the Prius, his gun pointed toward the crowd. But this had no apparent impact on them. They were thoroughly desensitized to guns.

“Yeah,” one man marveled, “I can feel it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah,” Earl said. “I think we can rest our case.”

The Walrus frowned, but nodded.

“C’mon,” Earl said, “everyone grab a chair,” then added, “Hope your face heals up quick, Detective Good.”

Lyle tentatively reached up and checked his ear. It screamed when his fingers brushed it but stayed firmly attached.

Lyle kept guiding the woman back, but no one appeared to care. They bustled around like families after a church picnic, folding chairs and hauling them into the barn, wrestling with the aluminum ladder. Before Lyle and Leighanne were even halfway across the untended field, cars were already pulling off, truck springs creaking as they eased along the mostly washed-out gravel driveway. Lyle was still walking backward, gun up but pointed at nothing in particular. The mob had dispersed.

“I think,” the woman offered hesitantly, “this might go faster if you just, like, put the gun away and walk regular. I don’t think they’re coming after us.”

The last of the trucks pulled off with a jovial “See ya!” double-toot on the horn. A lone figure, tall and lean—maybe Earl?—picked his way across the yard separating the barn from the white clapboard farmhouse. Hands in pockets, shoulders stooped, he looked exhausted and unmistakably relieved.

Lyle did as Leighanne suggested, then turned to look at her. She was finger-combing her hair as they walked, running out snarls, catching twigs and grass and hay, pulling these free to flutter to the ground, then smoothing it all down and repeating. The movement was precise and compulsive, like a dog in too small of a cage licking its paws raw. She did not look at Lyle, but instead at their destination.

“What’s your name?” she asked, eyes on the car.

“Lyle Morimoto,” Lyle answered without hesitation or thought.

“Not Detective Jason Good?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said. “I appreciate your help back there.”

“One good turn,” Lyle said, then trailed off. She did not ask what his one good turn might deserve.

They got in the car. Lyle started it, checked his mirrors, checked his blind spot, turned on his left blinker, and eased back into the roadway.

“Where to?” he asked. In his peripheral vision, Lyle saw her stop worrying her hair. She pulled it back, twisting it at the nape of her neck.

“I have no clue,” Leighanne Halloway said. “They set my place on fire after they arrested me yesterday.” For the first time that day, he wondered about tomorrow, and the day after that. The sun was setting now, garish and cruel. The woman didn’t appear to feel anything about her ordeal, no fear or outrage or sadness. Lyle, for that matter, had been shot in the face just before lunch, and he didn’t feel anything much about that, either. They made a good pair that way.

His face ached, and he considered taking another painkiller, but then thought, “Why bother? ”

“Maybe I could drop you off with local law enforcement?” he suggested. “So you can file charges?”

She laughed once, hard as a backhanded slap. “Sheriff’s Earl.”

“Oh,” Lyle replied.

“Where are you headed?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t sounding as rough. That was probably good, he thought. Lyle knew well the havoc smoke inhalation wreaked on the trachea—it had come up when he was prepping for that morning’s court appearance—but had no idea what strangulation with Cat-5 cable might do to one’s windpipe. He didn’t imagine it was good.