Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“I thought you were dying.”

Finally, after a struggle, Harry said: “Me…too.”

“You were going bug-shit, spinning in a circle.”

“It’s okay,” Harry said.

“Did you see?” Kayla asked.

“More than I ever wanted to see.”

“And?”

“Your father was murdered. Same man that killed the redhead.”

Harry tried to sit up. Kayla and Tad helped him. Harry looked up the hill behind the garage. “The redhead, he got away. He ran out back, started up that hill, then faded out on me.”

“Toward the golf course?” Kayla asked.

Harry nodded. “Think so.”

“And toward the McGuire property, the shelter?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“You actually saw it all?” Tad asked.

“In a fashion,” Harry said. “In a horrible fashion.”

47

Harry wobbled along.

He was between Kayla and Tad, and without meaning to he leaned first on one, then the other as they walked. No wonder he had an alcohol problem. This was just the thing he tried to avoid, the horrors in the sounds of the past, but tonight he had done it to himself on purpose, and it hadn’t been pretty.

They were walking away from the garage to the top of the hill. The hill seemed like something out of a fairy tale, the dead grass at its peak glowed silver in the starlight.

When they reached the top, Harry took a deep breath. The air was cool and burned his throat. When he let his breath out it was white.

Kayla pointed with the flashlight. “He went up here?”

“Saw him run out the door. Up the hill. Then it all faded. He ran outside the realm of the sounds, I guess. When he hit the back door—Correction. When you hit it with the hose, Tad, you revived him hitting it with his palms. He was scared to death, running fast as he could go.”

“Poor Dad. Poor Vincent. But why?”

“And who?” Harry said.

“Did these men go after him?” Tad asked Harry.

“I saw the hatted man kill Vincent in the shelter. He obviously caught up with him, tied him up with a wire from the phone.”

“This is some creepy shit,” Tad said. “And I, for one, don’t want to see you do that bullshit again. Your fucking eyeballs near popped out of your head. You hit that floor in there, I was afraid you broke something.”

“My shoulder hurts, but I’m okay. I feel weak, kind of sick.”

“I was right,” Kayla said. “Dad was murdered.”

“I didn’t actually see them put the cord around his neck, dress him up, boost him on the door. But what I did see certainly made it seem that way. He still had the ties on his hands and feet. The hatted bastard was smoking a cigarette.”

“Why would they do all that, the bra and stuff?” Tad asked.

“Like Kayla was saying,” Harry said. “They wanted to discredit him. He’s found like that, they don’t question much else. And the redhead…like you thought as well, Kayla. He must have been in the office, heard what was going on up front, panicked, hid in there, then the guy with the hat saw him, and there was a fight. The redhead cut him a little with his knife, broke for the door, went up the hill.”

“Didn’t you say when you saw the redhead in the shelter, he was tied with wire?” Kayla asked.

“Think so,” Harry said.

“Wrapped in a blanket or something?” she asked.

“That’s how it looked.”

“But you saw the face of these guys? The guy with the hat this time?”

“The guy I saw before, in the shelter. I saw his face. But I can’t say I recognized him, though he seemed familiar.”

Kayla took a breath, said, “It wasn’t Joey’s father, was it?”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“The other guy? What about him?”

“Couldn’t really see him to say yes or no.”

“Could it have been Joey’s dad?”

“It could have been almost anybody. In the dark like that, it could have been fucking Batman.”

“Let’s follow the likely path,” Tad said. “Way the redhead must have had to run to end up at that shelter. You up to it, Harry?”

He wasn’t. Harry felt as if his body had been dampened with vinegar and run through a wringer, hung out to dry, and beat with a duster paddle.

And that was the good part.

Inside his head the images came back to him and moved around and shifted the furniture of his mind in new arrangements that he didn’t care for.

“Do you?” Kayla said. “Feel up to it?”

Harry thought he might be lying when he said: “I can do it.”

Dogs were barking. Lights were on in houses. They stood for a moment looking at the backyards, the clotheslines.

“Clotheslines,” Tad said. “You don’t see as many of them as you used to, but this is a poorer neighborhood, not as many dryers.”

“I beg your pardon?” Kayla said.

“The clotheslines. The blanket the redhead got wrapped in. That’s where it came from. It was hanging out to dry. The hatted guy, he grabbed it, thinking he’d wrap the redhead in it, hold him down. Blanket makes a good weapon. This guy, he might have known what he was doing, or just had a brain flash. You get someone’s arms and legs pinned in that, you can hold them pretty good. And this Vincent, you said he wasn’t a big guy?”

“No,” Harry said.

“Fits,” Tad said. “This hatted guy, the killer, he grabbed a blanket off one of these lines, went after him with it. Got him down, then used the wire he cut off the phone—was the phone, right?”

Harry nodded. “One of the old-fashioned kind.”

“Used that to bind him,” Tad said. “Fits together, don’t it?”

“Why didn’t Vincent just run to a house?” Kayla asked.

“He was so scared,” Tad said, “he just hauled some serious ass, looking for anyplace to hide.” Tad pointed to a line of trees at the bottom of the slope. “Down there would be good.”

“Fits right in,” Kayla said. “Golf course is on the other side of those trees.”

“Figure the redhead had a good lead,” Tad said. “Might have come close to getting away. “Might have thought he could hide down there in those trees. Maybe in the creek bed. I can tell there’s a creek, way the trees grow. Right?”

“There’s a creek,” Kayla said. “Me and Harry and Joey used to play there.”

“My mother’s house isn’t far from here,” Harry said. “And Joey’s dad’s house is the third one on the right.”

“And my father’s house is long bulldozed under,” Kayla said. “Sorry, Tad. A bit of nostalgia. You were saying about the redhead?”

“He hadn’t stopped to hide,” Tad said, “he might have gotten away. Or had he found a better hiding spot he might have gotten away. But it wasn’t his night. Just guesses, but it seems logical, doesn’t it?”

“What about the other guy?” Kayla said.

“He maybe did some last-minute touches on your father’s body,” Tad said. “Cut the bonds. Whatever. Finished, maybe he went in another direction, looking for Vincent. They could have split up, trying to find him. But it was the hatted guy who came across him.”

Kayla said. “You’d make a good cop.”

“Martial arts I studied also taught psychology and strategy. Some of it stuck with me.”

“I’m beginning to think all of it stuck with you,” Harry said.

“Thing that throws me is, why didn’t the original investigation turn up the missing phone wire, the lamp cord?” Kayla said. “All of that.”

“Because they already had their minds made up,” Tad said. “It looked like death by misadventure, and they accepted it as that. Case closed.”

They followed across the backyard lawns and down the slope and came to the stretch of trees that bordered the creek.

When they reached the other side of the creek they were on the edge of the golf course. They followed it until it came to a burst of woods and a trail. Alongside the trail were gullies, and the water had washed them deep and there were all manner of trees and vines alongside of them.