Give It All (20 page)

Duncan kept his gaze cool. “Fucking over was never in my job description. The law, when practiced well, leaves no room for emotion, and fucking over requires an unprofessional amount of contempt.”

“Or greed.”

Duncan spoke evenly. “I carry out my job with the precision and detachment of a surgeon. But enough about me, Mr. Church.”

“Miah.”

Duncan cocked his head. “Are you really so invested in establishing familiarity with me,
Miah
?”

The man smiled. “It’s not unlikely that you and me might get trashed some night, and exchange a few punches in the bar’s front lot. Seems silly for us not to be on a first-name basis.”

“You want to fight me for Raina’s affections?” Miah would win, no doubt about that.

“No, I don’t. Raina’s affections are hers to misplace as she sees fit.” He smiled again. “I just really want to hit you. Just once.” His gaze zeroed in on Duncan’s black eye. “Though it looks like somebody beat me to it.”

“Perhaps one day the opportunity will arise. But getting back to Casey—you’ve never known him to have a history of seizures or anything like that?”

“Never. Head injury explains the babbling . . .”

“But not the reason he fell to begin with. And he was shaking, too. I represented a contracting company against a seizure claim once—the plaintiff’s lawyer insisted it had been caused by heavy equipment vibration.”

Miah made a curious face. “He’s been riding for years, though, and I’ve never heard of him having one.”

“And all that said, I won that case—I have no clue if the claim was legitimate.”

The rumble of an engine sounded, and they turned to watch Vince cruise down the road. He looked as fitting on his bike as Duncan surely looked laughable. He turned into the lot and parked, expression grave as he strode to the porch. He nodded to each of them. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Miah said.

Vince stood before them and crossed his ink-covered arms. “How’s Case?”

“Better. He’s in the kitchen. Not shaking and shit, anyhow, and he’s talking
some
sense. My mom’s patching up some scrapes, and Ronnie should be here soon. I know it’s a pain in the ass, but maybe he ought to go to Elko. Get an MRI or whatever. If you need to get back to your mom, I could drive him myself. Provided Dad could return a few calls for me.”

Vince shook his head firmly.

Miah shot him a leveling look. “You weren’t here, Vince. He didn’t just fall—he had some kind of . . . spell. Like a bad trip. Maybe even a seizure or something, Welch thinks.”

“Casey’s no fan of hospitals,” Vince said.

“Casey’s no fan of paperwork,” Miah corrected dryly, confirming Duncan’s suspicions. “The kid’s got a pay-as-you-go phone with an area code he hasn’t lived in for, like, six years. But we’re talking about a possible brain injury.”

Vince swallowed, glancing between them. “He said stuff?”

Duncan nodded, and Miah said, “Yeah, a lot of stuff. Weird stuff. Welch said it could be from the head injury, but shit, I dunno . . . Any chance he was on something—mushrooms, or acid?”

“Or peyote,” Duncan offered. “He told me to ‘find the coyote.’”

“What else?” Vince demanded.

“That I was gonna die in a fire,” Miah said, smirking.

Vince, however, wasn’t smiling. “’Scuse me?”

“He kept talking about Miah being killed. About a fire on a starless night.” Duncan couldn’t help thinking back to the long minutes he’d spent in that smoke-stinking mine, listening as Casey had spouted a seeming forensics expert’s knowledge on the topic. “What is it with your brother and fire?”

“Case has always been a bit of a pyro,” Miah said. “But a starless night? We get maybe a handful of those a year, and the
rainy season’s just about the only time when I’m
not
worrying about fires . . . He came to and offered my mom his condolences,” Miah added, his smile fading when Vince didn’t mirror the levity. “What?”

Vince stared at his friend and his tone grew grave. “Raina ever tell you what almost happened to her, the night of the meteor shower?”

Miah’s expression darkened, and Duncan’s blood went cold, brain filling with question marks and fog.

“Yeah,” Miah said stiffly.

“What nearly happened to Raina?” Duncan interjected. Something terrible, to judge by Vince’s voice and Miah’s expression. Something bad enough to make her punchy about getting held down? And what on earth was it to do with Casey’s spill?

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Miah said, pink rising in his cheeks.

Vince seemed to concur, turning back to Miah. “I gotta talk to you, after we get the bikes sorted out.”

“To do with what happened that night?” Miah asked. “To Raina?”

Vince shook his head. “Not directly, no. Just clear your schedule for the next couple hours. Actually, see if you can’t get the night off—you might need a few drinks.”

A white minivan turned into the ranch’s lot.

Vince stood up straight. “That’ll be Ronnie.”

“Case’ll be in good hands,” Miah said. “I’ll drop Welch back off with his bike, and if one of you can help me, we can get Casey’s bike in my bed and drop it back at the spot.”

Vince nodded. “No problem.” He looked to Duncan. “You get enough of a foundation to know how to ride yourself back to Raina’s?”

“I have.” But Duncan wasn’t going back to Raina’s yet. He was rattled, and needed time to turn everything around in his head.

Vince greeted the older man from the clinic and they disappeared inside for a minute. When he returned, Vince said, “Okay, let’s figure out the logistics and worry about a hospital run later. I’ll meet you by the bikes.”

Duncan followed Miah to the pickup.

“Fucking strange,” Miah muttered, starting the truck as Duncan buckled up.

“Indeed.”

Behind them came the ripping noise of Vince’s throttle, then relative silence descended as Miah drove. After an eternal, awkward minute, he finally huffed, “So.”

“So?”

Another pause, and Miah asked, “Have you?”

Seeing no reason to be coy, Duncan simply said, “Yes.” He nearly added, “We have,” but for whatever reason, the
we
didn’t feel right. He and Raina weren’t a
thing
, hot sex and needy spooning notwithstanding.

Miah said nothing, and his face was unreadable. The face Raina had no doubt watched who knew how many times, just as she’d watched Duncan with wonder the previous morning.

I still love Miah.

Yet she’d slept with Duncan. They were different as lovers, surely. Was Miah more tender or rough? Duncan had to wonder. Louder, slower, more or less . . .
sensual
? More or less of whatever Raina wanted? And which was better—to be the man who got to enjoy her, or to be the man who actually meant something to her? Surely the latter was a far more rare honor.

Miah interrupted Duncan’s increasingly frantic—and increasingly pathetic—stream of consciousness. “Treat her good,” he said gruffly. “That’s all I’ll say about it.”

“She’d demand nothing less.”

Miah nodded. “That’s fucking right.”

They reached the abandoned bikes without another word, and once Casey’s was secured in the bed of the truck, Duncan bade Vince and Miah good night. As soon as he recovered his rhythm with the BMW, his mind began wandering in earnest. He turned Casey’s spacey words over, feeling like a hound who’d caught some curious, unshakable scent on the wind.

You find that coyote yet?
Utter nonsense, yet it nagged at him. He was seeking something as grisly as carrion, after all. He wished he possessed the primitive scavenger’s instincts necessary to catch the scent.

Off-road was tricky, to be sure, and Duncan tipped over a good half dozen times as he edged deeper into the badlands, too slow at dodging rocks, misjudging the softness of the earth. The dust was brutal at low speed, but he found that the closer he edged toward the creek, the harder the packed clay became under his tires, making for a more stable ride. The sun began its descent in earnest, the wind biting more sharply and the blue above him deepening to indigo in the east.

The scrub grass grew denser, and then stubby trees began to appear, announcing his arrival at Dead Creek. The stream was currently shirking its moniker, a thin but steady trickle snaking along the pebbled creek bed.

Everywhere Duncan looked, he saw bones. He imagined the hands capable of sifting through dirt and burying those charred remains. Or pulverizing them. Just touching those dry black sticks, maybe knowing what they’d looked like when they were still clad in flesh.

Duncan normally shied from morbid thoughts, from reminders of the frailty of the human condition—his own
frailty—but they came to him unbidden now, notions and images like tugging hands. Like swarming, buzzing insects, impossible to disperse. He . . .
felt
them somehow. Nearly as if they were calling to him, the way a couple of stray notes taunt as you try to recall a forgotten song.

That was all insanity, of course. Duncan possessed no sixth sense—he operated on facts alone. And lust, it would seem, though that impulse was new. He’d followed his instincts with Raina, against his brain’s better judgment, and he couldn’t say he had any regrets. And it was in that spirit—or with that breed of surrender—that he let the landscape call to him, taking its direction, angling the bike without thought or expectation.

As the creek made a sharp curve, a pumpkin-colored box appeared beyond the scrubby trees—an ancient camper van. Duncan slowed.

The thing belonged in the dictionary beside the passage for
sketchy.
Straight out of the seventies, the vehicle promised to be housing a cook operation, or a load of illegal immigrants, or perhaps a pregnant runaway.

Still, if one was looking for evidence, one might be well advised to make the acquaintance of criminals. Duncan killed his engine and knocked down the kickstand. He’d hoped the motor would’ve made his arrival known, but the van showed no signs of life, despite the rear door hanging wide open.

“Hello?” He wandered closer. There was a warning painted neatly along the vehicle’s faded orange flank,
PRIVATE PROPERTY. BE
WARE OF—

A sharp click at Duncan’s back froze him where he stood. His heart went very still, very quiet, and he turned slowly to find himself staring into the business end of a hunting rifle.

At the other end stood a man roughly Duncan’s age; long and lean, wearing a tight T-shirt and old jeans, sockless feet in sequined flip-flops. Like the van, he looked as though he’d stumbled out of the seventies—from a long stay in an opium den, all rock star snake hips, black goatee, and wild hair, the lead-lidded eyes of a hobbyist sex offender.

Oddest accessory of all, there was a large white parrot perched on his shoulder.

“Hello,” Duncan said, feeling eerily calm.

The man smiled. “Greetings. What the fuck d’you want?”

Though he’d not arrived wanting anything in particular,
Duncan’s mouth offered, “A quick word. Would you lower the rifle, please?”

“That’s some bike.” The man’s gaze flicked to the BMW. “Looks like Vince Grossier’s taste. But you don’t look like no friend of Vince Grossier.”

“Strangely, I am.”

The bird bobbed its head with a little
whoop
. Its owner moved the barrel up and down, as though making an inventory of Duncan with the sight. Or perhaps choosing an organ to target.

“Am I trespassing?” Duncan asked.

“Haven’t decided yet. What’re you looking for?”

Unbidden, the truth fell from his mouth. “Human remains.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. So did the rifle, the barrel seeming to settle over Duncan’s heart. Still, the fear didn’t arrive.

“You don’t say. And why’s that led you to me?”

“It hasn’t,” Duncan said, then got caught on an odd thought. He stared hard at this man, this scavenger who made his home at the edges of civilization. Perplexed, upended, he muttered, “The coyote . . .”

“’Scuse me?”

“Are you . . . are you the coyote?” Duncan asked him.

“Why? Are you the Keymaster?”

He shook his head, shocked he’d even asked. “Nothing, never mind.” Of course he wasn’t the bloody coyote. Casey had been speaking with a head injury, not from some cryptic well of clairvoyance. “And no, I’ve not been led anywhere—I’m utterly lost. But I’m looking for bones. Burned ones.”

The eyebrows and barrel dropped. “You part of the investigation? All that drama with the foreman and our dearly departed sheriff? Man likes to know, before he takes aim at a detective.”

Duncan shook his head. “I’m no one.” No one at all, not anymore. He was as displaced as those bones, stripped of their flesh, location likely known only to a dead man. He let the honesty flow. “I lost everything because of those bones. I just want to find them. I need to. To keep from going completely insane.”

The man lowered the weapon, looking intrigued. He strode back to the open van and leaned his long body inside. When he turned back the rifle was gone, and he tossed something to Duncan. A fifth of rum.

“Sobriety never did sanity any favors,” the stranger said.

Duncan felt inclined to agree. He unscrewed the cap and took a sip.

“Who are you?” the man asked. “And where’s Kansas to you, Dorothy?”

“Duncan Welch. I was a lawyer for the company that’s planning the casino. I live in San Diego, but I grew up in London. Who are you?”

“Dancer.”

“Is that your surname or your profession?”

The guy smiled. “Save your singles. John Dancer. How do you know Vince Grossier?” The way he said it, Duncan had to imagine the two might not be mutual fans.

“We met when he was looking into Alex Dunn’s death. I was appointed by my employers to keep an eye on him. I wouldn’t quite say we’re friends, but we’d both agree that he owes me.”

“Join the club.”

Duncan felt the rum already, reminded he’d not thought to eat lunch. “Tell me, John Dancer . . . if you were looking to get rid of a pile of burned human bones, where would you hide them?”

“Me? I’d crush ’em. Toss ’em in the creek, or let ’em blow off across the badlands on a windy day. Nice and organic. Sure as shit wouldn’t bury ’em, though.”

Duncan nodded and winced through another sip. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Then again, I didn’t get rid of any bones,” Dancer said, crossing his arms. “Tremblay did, I bet. Now, if I was the sheriff, I’d have hid that shit in plain sight. Sealed those things up in a cardboard box and tossed it on some dusty corner of an evidence shelf. Only place in town where a load of burned-up human remains wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.”

Duncan took another drink. “You’re rather good at this.”

“I’m way smarter than our late sheriff, though. I’d put decent money on him reburying that shit.”

“So don’t give up hope, you’re saying?”

“I’m saying, gimme back my rum.”

Duncan capped the bottle and tossed it to Dancer. “Cheers.”

“You know much about our dear dead sheriff, Sherlock?” Dancer asked.

“A bit. What I gleaned from the news, and from a few brief
conversations I had with him myself, over legal matters pertaining to the casino construction.”

“You think old Tremblay owned himself a bike like yours?” Dancer nodded at the BMW.

“I couldn’t say for sure . . . Though it seems unlikely.”

“He didn’t.” Dancer took a drink. “So that narrows your search down to the radius a panicking, middle-aged man is willing to hike himself and a bag of bones off the beaten track.”

True, maybe. “That shrinks the most probable area to perhaps a mile on either side of the roads fit for civilized vehicles . . . and likely routes with no streetlights, no nearby homes, little traffic.”

Dancer tapped his temple with the bottle’s neck. “Now you’re thinking like a murderer.”

“That still leaves an awfully large area.”

“Sure. But tell me this—you’re the sheriff, out on your little mission to ditch some evidence. You gonna take your cruiser or your civilian wheels?”

“The latter, I suppose . . . Though actually, the cruiser might be less conspicuous, potentially. On duty, he’d look less out of place patrolling quiet roads, if someone saw him.”

Dancer tossed back the bottle, making Duncan feel like a trained dolphin, thrown a fish for encouragement. He drank.

“What else?” Dancer prompted.

Duncan tried to paint the scene in his mind. “He’d take his cruiser, which would look less suspicious on the back roads . . . provided he stayed in his own jurisdiction. In Brush County.”

Dancer smiled. “Go on.”

“It’s still a needle in a haystack—it’s an evidence burier’s paradise out here.”

“You strike me as the kind of prick who’s got loads stashed away in the stock market,” Dancer said. “Am I right?”

“You are.”

“Right. So think of that evidence like an investment. Think of those bones, tucked away in their grisly little dirt safe-deposit box. Tremblay’s investment in covering his own ass, right?”

“And?”

“And what do people do with their investments?”

Duncan considered it, thinking of his own stocks, feeling the knee-jerk urge to whip out his phone and open his trading app. “We monitor them.”

Dancer snapped his fingers approvingly, then made a grabby gesture. Duncan capped and tossed back the rum.

“The greedy and the paranoid,” Dancer said, then toasted them with a drink. “How they love to keep an eye on their stashes.”

Gears turning in earnest now, Duncan nodded. “The badlands are nothing if not redundant.” You could drive for fifty miles in either direction and the landscape stayed identically,
relentlessly
the same. Same brush, same earth, same rocks and hills. “It’d take a landmark to find what you’ve buried out there. A landmark, or GPS coordinates.”

“Guess you better hope he went with the former, huh?”

“A landmark,” Duncan muttered, trying to imagine what such a thing might look like. “It’d have to be distinctive, but not interesting enough to invite much notice.” So, nowhere as well trafficked as Big Rock or the hot springs, nor any of Fortuity’s other modest wonders.

“You got the reasoning part down,” Dancer said. “Your brain’s taken you as far as it can. Now you turn this shit over to your gut.”

“My gut?”

“You want my advice—which nobody ever does, ’cause you’re all dumb-asses—you go at this like that coyote you were babbling about. All hunger.”

Duncan frowned. “I’m afraid I trust logic far more than I do intuition.”

“Fuck intuition. I’m talking
hunger
, man. Like you haven’t eaten in a week and those bones are fucking Thanksgiving dinner. Animal hunger. That growling in your gut that leads a man to what he wants most—easy money, free pussy, or in your case, some poor bastard in a smoke-stinking sack.”

Stymied, Duncan asked after a moment, “And where does your hunger lead you?”

Dancer smiled. “Opportunities.” His bird shrieked, crest flaring. “Hush, Cookie.”

“Well, I’ll see if I can’t manifest some of that hunger, then.”

“Yeah, you do that. Now stay the fuck off my property.”

“I rather doubt this is your property,” Duncan said dryly. “You’re also wearing women’s sandals, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Don’t you make my hunger get in a mood for fighting now, son. Fuck off and good luck.”

Duncan offered a nod of thanks and walked back to the bike.

My hunger . . .

Felt like such rubbish, when all he’d ever hungered for before was order, stability, control, security. And where had that gotten him, really? Fucked over and unemployed, that was where.

“Fine,” he muttered, and stomped on the starter. He was a starving stray now. And if any pathetic, scrounging creature was fit to find itself some bones, Duncan supposed he was it.