Good Day In Hell (8 page)

Sanchez nodded, his face still glum. He sat down at the computer.

“Lot more future here in working with your brain, Oscar,” Keller said.

Oscar looked up and smiled sadly. “Oh, si” he said. “Oscar Sanchez, Private Eye. I can see it now.” He turned back to the computer. “You forget, I am illegal. I can only rise so high.”

“I’m going to get the mail,” Angela said abruptly. She walked out the front door, banging it slightly.

Oscar looked at the door and sighed. Keller took a seat at the desk. “Things aren’t going too well, I see. With Angela.”

Sanchez was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I do not know. Things were well for us at first, but after… after I was shot…” He trailed off and rubbed his face wearily. “I cannot sleep. I keep seeing what happened in my mind. I feel angry all the time, even when there is no need.” He bowed his head. “I am not the same man I was, Jack,” he said softly. “I do not know how to be that man again.”

Keller crouched down beside Sanchez’s chair. “Oscar,” he said. “Look at me.” Sanchez looked up.

“When I was in the army,” Keller said, “I and the men with me got lost in the desert. A helicopter…I never saw it, but it had to be one of the ones on our
side…mistook us for an enemy. They fired a missile at us. Every one of my men was killed.”

Sanchez looked at him soberly. “How did you survive?”

Keller grimaced. “Dumb luck,” he said. “I had walked off to take a piss. If I hadn’t, I’d have died, just like them. I saw them bum, Oscar. I heard them screaming.” He stood up and put his hand on Sanchez’s shoulder. “For years after that,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep. I was angry all the time. Then I went through anger, to the point where there was nothing left. I was a dead man, Oscar, except I was still walking around.”

“So what changed?”

Keller looked out the window. “I found someone who cared about me.”

“Angela.” Sanchez’s face was expressionless. “Yeah,” Keller said. “She gave me a job, and I found out I liked it. And she liked me. For someone who’d spent a lot of time not being able to stand himself, that was pretty amazing.”

“I have wondered…well, I know you have been together for a long time. I have wondered why…you and Angela…”

Keller shook his head. “It’s complicated. I guess we just decided we were good as friends. As lovers we’d be a disaster for each other. Too much baggage.”

Sanchez looked confused at the idiom. “Too much bad stuff in our lives,” Keller explained. “Anyway, don’t worry on that account.”

Sanchez smiled. “I wasn’t worried. Exactly.”

“Okay,” Keller said. “Look, Oscar, a friend of mine has been helping me out with this stuff. A doctor. You want me to…”

Sanchez’s face had clouded over. “I have no money for a doctor.”

“Well, now you’ve got a job. I mean maybe—”

“No, Jack,” Oscar said, then he smiled again. “I’ll be fine. Knowing I have friends…that helps.”

“Okay,” Keller said. “You’ve got my cell. If you find out anything, let me know.”

“You need it today?”

“Soon as you can get it,” Keller said. “But I’m going to Fayetteville to see Marie tonight. Let me know if there’s some reason to believe they’re going to make a run for it. Otherwise,” He smiled. “I’m taking the night off.”

Sanchez arched an eyebrow at him. “Es verdad?” He said. “This is a change for you, no?”

Keller smiled. “Maybe so.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Stan awoke dry-mouthed and shivering, even though it was warm in the tiny bedroom. Laurel and Roy were gone. He pulled the thin blanket over himself and curled into a fetal position. The night before was coming back to him. Without the distance imparted by the drugs, he felt filthy, soiled.

The door opened. Laurel came in, holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a fat joint in the other. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

Stan sat up. He didn’t speak. Laurel slid onto the bed next to him and handed him the glass. He wanted to move away from her but there was no room on the bed. Besides, he was so thirsty. He drained half the juice in one swallow. Laurel snuggled closer to him. “You were great last night,” she whispered.

Stan shuddered. He drained the rest of the juice, then slid away from her to sit on the opposite edge of the bed. He dropped the glass to the floor and put his head in his hands. He heard the sound of a cigarette lighter flicking, then the sharp tang of pot smoke filled his nostrils. He looked back at Laurel. She was sitting up in the bed, looking at him calmly. She took a drag on the joint, held the smoke in, and passed it to him. He looked at it for a moment. He didn’t want it, but he suddenly desperately wanted that distance, that fuzziness around everything, especially his recent memories. He took the joint and inhaled.

“I know you’re a little freaked out right now,” she said. “You done things you never thought you’d do. But Stan, that’s kind of the point. That’s freedom, Stan. That’s learning that there ain’t no rules anymore.”

The familiar buzz was coming back, the surge of energy, the feeling of power. The joint, Stan realized, was laced with the meth. He didn’t care anymore. He took another pull. “He hurt me,” he said sullenly. “You hurt me.”

She slid over and put her hands on his shoulders. “I know, baby,” she said softly. “But that’s part of it, too. It’s like you’re being born again. Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. And that hurts some. But you got to learn to live with the pain, Stan. You got to rise above it. You got to not mind it.”

Stan shook his head. He couldn’t seem to track what Laurel was saying. It sounded like gibberish to him. Maybe it was gibberish. He was too fucked up to tell.

Laurel slid off the bed on the other side and stood up. “Come on, baby,” she said. “He wants to see you.”

I don’t want to see him, Stan thought, but he stood up anyway. He pulled his pants and shirt on and followed Laurel out of the trailer.

Roy heard the trailer door open and lowered the Army .45 that he had been aiming at a beer can on a post, some thirty feet away. He watched as Laurel came out, followed by Stan. The boy kept his head down as they approached, as if he didn’t want to look at Roy. That was fine. Last night, they had broken the kid down. Now they would build him back again, in their own way.

“Mornin’, Stan,” he said casually. Stan mumbled something back.

“You ready to be famous?” Roy said.

Stan looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “What?” he said.

Roy looked at him for a moment. Then he took the gun and held it by the barrel. He handed it to Stan, butt-first. “This is your ticket, kid,” he said. “Your ticket to ride. But you got to know how to use it. You ready to learn?”

Stan looked at the gun. Roy held his breath. Stan reached out and took the gun from Roy’s hand. He let the hand fall limply to his side, the barrel pointed down. His eyes were empty of emotion.

Roy smiled in triumph. He had been right. The kid was weak. Had anyone done to Roy what Roy had done to the kid, that person would be dying on the ground right now. But Roy sensed that Stan had no strength of his own. Maybe it was because of the beatings he had suffered, or maybe he was just a pussy. But he had no power inside him. Any power that came to him now would be given to him by Roy. And what Roy gave him, Roy could take away. To make the point, Roy held out his hand for the gun. Stan looked confused, but handed it back to him. Roy ejected the magazine and slammed a fresh one home before handing it back to Stan. The kid looked confused, but took the now-loaded pistol back. He looked at it.

“It was empty?” he said.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “But you didn’t know that.”

“What would you have done if I …,” Stan began, then shut up.

Taken the gun away and beat you to death with it, Roy thought, but didn’t say. There was no need. Roy gestured toward the can on the post. “Try your luck,” he said.

Stan raised his arm, holding the gun out clumsily in front of him. His arm trembled with the weight of it. The flat bang of the gunshot rang out, startling a wading heron into panicky flight before the sound was swallowed by the vast silence of the river. The can didn’t move.

“Put just the pad of your finger on the trigger,” Roy said. “If you curl your whole finger around it, the shot pulls to the right.”

Stan raised the gun again and took aim. “Keep both eyes open,” Roy reminded him. “Put the dot of the front sight between the two dots on the back sight. Focus on the front sight and lay it on the target. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.”

This time, the can seemed to explode as the heavy caliber bullet tore through it.

“Can I try it again?” Stan asked.

“Sure,” Roy said. They worked with the gun for another half hour, firing round after round against a succession of bottles and cans. Roy finally held out his hand for the gun.

“We got stuff to do before we leave,” he said. “And then we got a ways to go.”

“Where are we going?” Stan said.

“You’ll find out,” Roy said, “when the time’s right.”

Stan turned as he heard Laurel come out of the trailer. He was startled to see that her short blonde hair was now shoulder length and jet black. As she came closer, Stan saw she was wearing a cheap wig. She grinned at him. “Like it?” she said.

“Come on,” Roy said. He headed for the trailer. Stan fell in beside him. Inside, Roy hunted through a cabinet for a few moments before coming out with a box.

“Wait a minute,” Stan said. “You’re going to dye my hair?”

“No,” Roy said. “Laurel is.”

She came inside and smiled at Stan. “And cut it, too,” Roy told her. “First thing people look at is the hair,” Roy said. “Most times, that’s all they remember. Hair and height. So we change what we can.”

“But why?” Stan said. He felt his voice rising with frustration. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Explain it to him,” Roy said. “I’ll be getting the van ready.” He walked out.

“Sit down here, Stan,” Laurel said. He sat. She got a pair of scissors out of the kitchen drawer. She took a tablecloth from a nearby cabinet. His shoulders tensed as she draped it over his shoulders. “Relax, baby,” she said. She began to cut. Stan saw tufts of his dark hair falling onto the whiteness of the tablecloth.

“Have y’ever noticed, Stan,” Laurel said as she cut, “that every time you turn on the TV, there’s something about a killer?”

“What?” he said. “Like those sniper guys. Or that fella out in California that killed his wife and baby. They’re famous, Stan. Ever’body knows them. People write ‘em letters in jail.”

“I guess,” Stan said.

She bent down and whispered in his ear. “Killers are like movie stars in this country, baby. And we’re gonna get us some of that.”

Her hot breath on his ear was making him hard. “But I…I mean, I never…” He was having trouble thinking.

“I know, baby,” she breathed. “But you’ve wanted to. You wanted to kill your stepdaddy, didn’t you?”

“I…I…”

“C’mon, you can tell me,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like, Stan. I do. So tell me. You wanted to kill him yourself.”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “I did.”

“And I wanted him dead, too, Stan. I never met him, but I wanted him dead. And now he is,” she said. “I made that happen, Stan. I wanted someone dead and now he’s rotting on a slab somewhere. Do you have any idea how good that feels?” Her hand stroked his neck sensuously. Then she kissed him lightly on the ear and stood up. “So what about it, Stan?” she said in a normal voice. “I guess you can still
back out if you want. I can’t guarantee that ol’ Roy out there will understand. But say it now. Or never.”

Stan’s whole body was trembling. He felt like his head was going to explode. But then he remembered the feel of the gun in his hand, the look on his stepfather’s face as Laurel shot him. Something seemed to give way inside him like a guitar string snapping. He suddenly felt very calm.

“I’m in,” he said.

It was growing dark when they left the trailer. Stan drove, with Roy in the passenger seat and Laurel hanging over his shoulder from the back. Stan’s black hair was now buzz-cut and dyed an improbable shade of blonde. He periodically ran his fingers over it, feeling the unaccustomed spikiness. Roy had done something with his own salt-and-pepper hair to turn it pure white. He had also placed lifts in his shoes that added at least three inches to his height.

“What I don’t understand is why so far?” Stan said. “I mean, this place is, like, two hours away.”

“I’ve done a lot of readin’,” Roy said. “Cops have a lot of theories about… well, about people like us. They call it profilin’.”

“Like in the movies,” Laurel said.

Roy went on. “At first they’ll look around at the people close by, hopin’ we’ll be workin’ in what they call our comfort zone.” His grin flashed in the semidarkness of the van. “But we ain’t goin’ to be like no one they ever seen before. We’re gonna keep ‘em guessing. Instead of them knowin’ how we think …”

“We’re gonna know how they think we think.” Laurel giggled like a little girl laughing at an uncle’s often-old joke.

They drove past a series of industrial parks, giant slab-sided metal buildings with cryptic names. Those gave way to roadside businesses, mostly auto-repair places and the occasional small grocery. Then they were in the country. Roy had his notebook on his lap, but he put it on the floor and began giving directions from memory. “Turn here…left here…straight…” They had left the main road by now and were wandering apparently aimlessly past bare harvested fields alternating with stands of trees. It was all the way dark by now, and the only lights this far out were
their headlights and an occasional lone streetlight set on a post in a farmhouse driveway. Roy’s directions were as sure and terse as if he were a harbor pilot navigating them into port. “Here it is,” he said finally.