LITMIR.BIZ

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night, as did every Comanche bigwig Roark could beg, harass, or threaten. By the time these people brought their friends and neighbors, cars and pickups filled the parking area and the grass lot, with many more lining both sides of Austin Street. Patrons stood on the walk or sat on the new backless benches as they slapped mosquitoes, bullshitted, and waited for their tables.

      No one paid any attention to the wind that sometimes kicked up when certain townsfolk stepped onto the depot grounds. And if the patrons noticed the way the air shimmered near the storage building, none of them spoke of it.

      Chapter Six

      May 23, 2016—New Orleans, Louisiana

      Raymond sat on his front porch, watching the oak’s shadow stretch its bony fingers across the yard. He held a glass of sweet tea in his lap, the condensation dampening his trousers. These days, he drank enough tea to make him diabetic, as if water or Coca-Cola would cast him back to rock bottom as effectively as straight whiskey. Those drunken months had probably damaged his liver, and all this sugar could not be good for his kidneys. Would it always be like this—exchanging one addiction for another, one kind of harm for something just as bad?

      He had left LeBlanc in the office around three. They had just finished one of those divorce jobs that made Raymond feel like a piece of shit in a broken-down outhouse, and now he badly wanted a whiskey, a beer, anything to dull the knife edge in his brain.

      The wife had hired the agency to follow her husband, who led them to a motel on I-10. This fellow went inside one of the rooms and exited an hour later, his clothes disheveled. Raymond snapped some photos and stayed put, keeping his camera trained on the door. Ten minutes later, the man’s companion left, running her fingers through her hair and adjusting her bra straps. She could not have been more than fifteen. Raymond took more pictures as she descended the concrete-and-metal staircase and passed under the breezeway, out of Raymond’s sight, out of his life. Ever since, he had felt dirty just for having been there, for not trying to save that girl from whatever life she led. Even Travis Bickle had done more than watch. But saving her had not been the job. Besides, who was he to fix anybody else’s life? Hopefully, the wife would use the pictures to take everything that son of a bitch had, maybe put him in jail for statutory rape, where he would find out firsthand what it was like to be used.

      On such days, Raymond ached for Marie so deeply it felt like illness. In the old days, whenever he came home feeling slimy, he took off his shoes, cracked his toes, and stretched out on the couch, his head in her lap. If she asked him about the job, he told her. If she did not, he just closed his eyes as her fingers worked his temples, his sinuses. The tension and filth drained away. Sometimes he would drift off to sleep for twenty minutes or half an hour. When he awoke, he saw her face, and if that could not make him feel better, nothing would.

      But now she was gone.

      Take a real vacation, LeBlanc kept saying. Get outta the city. Go fishin. Take some long naps. You want me to come with?

      That sounded good, but if he walked away for even a week, he might never come back. He might find a shack on the beach or a cabin near a lake and let the world pass him by. He was not ready for that.

      What was Betsy McDowell up to these days? Her charms, like Marie’s, made the world seem lighter.

      LeBlanc had reintroduced them back in the summer of 2013. Expecting a flighty, annoying fraud, Raymond found her both charming and capable. She had consulted on six or eight cases since then and often stopped by the offices to shoot the shit. While her histrionics resembled every other medium’s he had ever seen—the trancelike state, the muttering of information just specific enough to hook you, head lolling, eyes that shut tight or opened wide and refused to blink—he had never felt like she played anyone false. In fact, as far as he could tell, she was genuinely uninterested in money. Her presence made people feel better, just as LeBlanc had said.

      Plus, there was the way LeBlanc looked at her when he thought she was not looking back. If Raymond had any right to give advice, he would have told LeBlanc to stop wasting time. Life was short.

      Reckon I ought to call Rennie tonight. But not until after supper. I don’t want to get yelled at on an empty stomach. Hell, maybe I’ll even cook.

      That last part was a lie. He kept very little food in the house these days. It gave him a reason to leave. Otherwise, he would stay here, alone with his pain and his guilt, and one night he would find a bottle in his hand. Better to leave and come back only when exhausted enough to fall straight into bed. Somebody else could make the gumbo or the stuffed red snapper.

      He sighed and took a drink. His crotch was freezing. Soon enough, the sun would go down, and then he would have to fill the long evening.

      Chapter Seven

      July 4, 2016, 7 p.m.—Comanche, Texas

      Red Thornapple—owner, editor in chief, publisher, and staff writer for Comanche’s local paper, the Warrior-Tribune—set in motion the events leading to the first death. In prepping his long-promised article about the Piney Woods Kid and the local descendants of the men who killed him, Thornapple had researched the outlaw, dug in to old family documents, and used an online ancestry program to create family trees. At least one direct descendant of each man who had handled the Kid’s body still lived in town. The McCorkles and Johnstones had left Comanche in the early 1900s, but one of them came back and planted seeds in the town’s soil—the McCorkles in the fifties, the Johnstones in the midseventies. For every other family on the list, some members had moved on—as close as Stephenville and Granbury, as far away as Fargo, North Dakota—but someone had stayed. A small miracle.

      Roark had asked for a picture and a fluff piece about the diner, but Thornapple smelled a real story—a historical think piece about how these families had been tied together through violent Old West justice. It took quite a bit of effort to gather the descendants together, especially when you had to get the mayor in the same room, at the same time, with a long-haul trucker and a shift worker like Benny Harveston. In fact, it had proved impossible. Thornapple found a day when everyone but Harveston could make it, and he scheduled the interview for that evening—the Fourth of July. Harveston sent his daughter, Lorena, in his place.

      Everyone arrived around 7 p.m.—Thornapple, the Harveston girl, Mayor Roark, Sue McCorkle, Adam Garner, John Wayne and his wife, Pat, and Joyce Johnstone. The town no longer provided a fireworks display, so there was nothing to see in the sky except the occasional arc of someone’s Roman candle or bottle rocket. Inside the diner, the jukebox played classic country and country pop. McCorkle flirted with the men, while Garner and Wayne, old high-school friends, spent half their time arm wrestling or laughing at each other’s jokes. Joyce Johnstone sat near Thornapple, answering questions with grace and humor. He returned to her over and over and ignored some of the others, like Sue McCorkle, too often.

      John Wayne showed genuine interest in their shared history. The mayor seemed bored.

      In the following days, though, Thornapple would mostly remember Lorena Harveston, who was not even supposed to be there.

      It started with a question he asked her just after Garner and Wayne recounted several amusing but useless stories about their days playing football for Comanche High, their nights prowling the back roads with a bootlegged case of beer, and their literal pissing contests. Thornapple laughed and pretended to take notes. Then, as Wayne turned to the mayor and began a lecture on why the town should hire fewer Mexicans, Thornapple looked to Lorena Harveston and said, So. Tell your daddy we sure do wish he could have come.

      She sipped her Coke. He’s workin twelves. He’s either at work or in bed.

      Tell me about you then. What’s kept you in town?

      She ate a French fry. The University of Miami.

      Pardon?

      I’m twenty-six and livin with my parents.

      Okay.

      I used to hate it here. There’s nothin to do. So when I got a full ride at the U, I thought I’d never see this town again, except on holidays. But I didn’t even last two years.

      Thornapple

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