Donald Pollock - The Devil All the Time

Just as he walked outside, three cruisers sped past going east with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. His heart seemed to stop for a moment in his chest, and then began to race. He leaned against the side of the brick building and tried to light a cigarette, but his hands were shaking too much to strike a match, just like the woman yesterday evening. The sirens faded into the distance, and he calmed down enough to get it lit. A bus pulled into the alley beside the station just then. He watched a dozen or so people get out. A couple of them wore military uniforms. The bus driver, a heavy-jowled, sour-faced man in a gray shirt and black tie, leaned back in his seat and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

Arvin walked back over to the motel and spent the rest of the day pacing the green, threadbare carpet. It was only a matter of time before the law figured out he was the one who killed Preston Teagardin. Taking off from Coal Creek so suddenly, he realized, was the dumbest damn thing he could have done. How much more obvious could he have been? The longer he walked the floor, the clearer it became that when he shot that preacher he had set something in motion that was going to follow him for the rest of his life. He knew in his gut that he should attempt to get out of Ohio immediately, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without seeing the old house and the prayer log one more time. No matter what else happened, he told himself, he had to try to set right those things about his father that still ate at his heart. Until then, he’d never be free anyway.

He wondered if he would ever feel clean again. There was no TV in the room, just a radio. The only station he could find without static was country and western. He let it play softly while he tried to go to sleep. Every once in a while, someone in the next room coughed, and the sound made him think of the woman choking on her blood. He was still thinking of her when morning came.

“I’M SORRY, LEE,” HOWSER SAID as Bodecker approached. “This is all fucked up.” He was standing next to Carl and Sandy’s station wagon. It was Tuesday around noon. Bodecker had just arrived. A farmer had found the bodies approximately an hour ago, flagged down a Wonder Bread truck out along the highway. There were four cruisers lined up behind one another on the road, and men in gray uniforms standing around fanning themselves with their hats, waiting for orders. Howser was Bodecker’s chief deputy, the only man he could depend on with anything beyond petty theft and writing speeding tickets. As far as the sheriff was concerned, the rest of them weren’t fit to be crossing guards in front of a one-room schoolhouse.

He glanced down at Carl’s body, and then looked in at his sister. The deputy had already told him on the radio that she was dead. “Jesus,” he said, his voice nearly breaking. “Jesus Christ.”

“I know,” Howser said.

Bodecker took several deep gulps of air to steady himself and stuck his sunglasses in his pocket. “Give me a couple minutes here alone with her.”

“Sure,” the deputy said. He walked over to where the other men were standing, said something to them in a low voice.

Squatting down beside the open passenger door, Bodecker studied Sandy closely, the lines in her face, the bad teeth, the faded bruises on her legs. She’d always been a little fucked-up, but she was still his sister. He pulled his handkerchief out and wiped at his eyes. She was wearing a pair of skimpy shorts and a tight blouse. Still dressing like a whore, he thought. He climbed in the front seat, pulled her close, and looked over her shoulder. The bullet had gone through her neck and come out at the top of her back, just to the left of her spine, a couple of inches below the entry wound. It was buried in the padding of the driver’s-side door. He used his penknife to dig out the slug. It looked like a 9 millimeter. He saw a.22 pistol lying near the brake pedal. “Was that back door open like that when you got here?” he called out to Howser.

The deputy left the men in the road and jogged back to the station wagon. “We ain’t touched a thing, Lee.”

“Where’s the farmer that found ’em?”

“Said he had a sick heifer to tend to. But I questioned him pretty good before he left. He don’t know nothing.”

“You already take pictures?”

“Yeah, just got done when you pulled in.”

He handed Howser the bullet, then leaned across the front seat again, picked up the.22 with his handkerchief. He sniffed the barrel, then released the cylinder, saw that it had been fired once. Pushing the extractor back, five shells fell out into his hand. The ends were crimped. “Hell, these are blanks.”

“Blanks? Why the hell would a person do that, Lee?”

“I don’t know, but it was a bad mistake, that’s for certain.” He set the gun on the seat next to the purse and the camera. Then he got out of the car and stepped over to where Carl lay. The dead man still had hold of the.38 in his right hand, some grass and dirt in the other. It looked like he had been clawing at the ground. Several flies crawled around his wounds and another rested on his lower lip. Bodecker checked the gun. “And this fucker, he didn’t fire a shot.”

“Either one of them holes he’s got in him would account for that,” Howser said.

“Wouldn’t take much to put Carl down anyway,” Bodecker said. He turned his head and spat. “He was about as worthless as they come.” He picked up the wallet lying on top of the body and counted fifty-four dollars. He scratched his head. “Well, I guess it wasn’t robbery, was it?”

“Any chance Tater Brown could have something to do with this?”

Bodecker’s face reddened. “What the hell makes you think that?”

The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just throwing stuff out. I mean, who else does this kind of shit around here?”

Standing up, Bodecker shook his head. “No, this kind of thing’s too out in the open for that slimy cocksucker. If he was the one done it, we wouldn’t have come across them this easy. He’d have made sure the maggots got a few days alone with them.”

“Yeah, I guess,” the deputy said.

“What about the coroner?” Bodecker said.

“He’s supposed to be on his way.”

Bodecker nodded over at the other deputies. “Have them look around in that cornfield, see if they can find something, then you keep watch for that coroner.” He wiped the sweat off his neck with his handkerchief. He waited until Howser walked away, then sat down in the passenger’s seat of the station wagon. A camera was lying beside Sandy’s purse. The dash was open. Underneath some wadded-up maps were several rolls of film, a box of.38 shells. Glancing around to make sure Howser was still talking to the deputies, Bodecker stuffed the film in his pants pocket, looked through the purse. He found a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Johnson City, Tennessee, dated two nights ago. He thought back to the day he’d seen them at the gas station. Sixteen days ago now, he figured. They had almost made it home.

Eventually he noticed what appeared to be dried vomit in the grass, ants crawling over it. He sat down on the backseat and placed his feet out on the ground, on both sides of the mess. He looked over where his brother-in-law lay in the grass. Whoever got sick was sitting right here in this seat when they did it, Bodecker said to himself. So Carl’s standing outside with a gun and Sandy’s in the front, and somebody else is in the back. He stared down at the puke for a few more seconds. Carl didn’t even get a chance to fire before somebody got three shots off. And sometime in there, probably after the shooting was over, whoever it was got awful shook up. He thought back to the first time he’d killed a man for Tater. He’d nearly gotten sick himself that night. Chances are, then, he thought, whoever done this wasn’t used to killing, but the fucker definitely knew how to handle a gun.