Only the Hunted Run (14 page)

“YOU WANT ME
to go dig up Terry and the old man?” Sully, flat on his back in the hotel, tossing his pillow up in the air and catching it, the lights off but not the television, a bourbon on ice next to him on the nightstand. His second. Could be the third. “I mean, you think she made it up on the spot? That's a hell of a story to dream up when you see a white man pull up in front of your country-ass house.”

R.J. was taking the call at home, flat-footed. Elwood, his partner, was talking in the background. Sully couldn't tell if it was on another line or if there was someone else there. A little after eleven on his clock, a little after midnight in D.C.

“But why,” R.J. harrumphed, “why would some psycho pretend to be a paranoid schizophrenic Indian from the plains?”

The pillow came down and he caught it.

“I don't have to know that. Because he's crazy, too? He's Bruce Wayne, he's Batman, he's concealing his true identity. We don't have to know
why.
We just have to
know
.”

“So she, this trailer-park broad, this Oracle of the Plains, she didn't have any idea who Waters's friend was, that kid was from way back when?”

“Not other than maybe some white folks who used to live down the road, maybe with a last name starting with H.”

“Jesus. So how did Waters, I mean that Waters out there, how did
his
mother die?”

“Unknown, but she was unknown, too. Well. Marissa. Her name. Our total bio at this point is that she was some hustler the old man knocked up while working at an oil rig down in, I think, Odessa. We poke around, I'm giving eight-to-five we're going to find they were never married. She came up to play house with Daddy Waters once or twice, cut out for good when it appeared little Terry wasn't going to be breaking any of Jim Thorpe's old records.”

“This is incredibly fucked up, I want to tell you.”

“I had put that together all by myself.”

Sitting up now, a sip of the bourbon, rattling in a plastic cup from the bathroom. Baseball highlights on the screen, the sound off. He was in boxers and a wifebeater. He ran a finger along one of the long, hairless scars on his right knee, not so much purple anymore as just discolored. It itched. Scars itched. Nobody told you scars itched.

“We can't even correct our story,” R.J. was saying. “What would we write, ‘According to one unnamed source who didn't offer a shred of evidence, other than two metal stars nailed into two oak trees, in the middle of Bumfuck, Oklahoma, we now retract everything we've written about Terry Running Waters being a psychopathic, eye-stabbing Capitol Hill killer. Mr. Waters is, in fact, dead, and has been the entire Clinton administration. The paper regrets the error. The multiple errors. Pardon as we pick up our dick.'”

“Like I say, we can go dig 'em up, you want. Apparently we can buy the place out of probate on the cheap.”

“But now, you see this? We have major,
major
problems going forward using the name Terry Waters as the perp. I mean, we have serious reason to believe that's false, but it doesn't rise to a level of fact we can print.”

“Knowledge is a burden. I think that's what God was trying to tell Adam.”

“You're drinking, aren't you?”

“No.”

“You're rattling the ice in your cup. You always do. I just heard it.”

“It's Coke.”

“Mixed with what, Jim Beam?”

“None but a savage pours Coke into bourbon. I won't say what type of individual drinks Beam.”

“That's a nondenial denial.”

“Are you worried about me or the shooter?”

“Okay, so okay. I got to call Eddie. I can only imagine his joy.”

Sully stood, batting the pillow to the side of the bed. “Am I the bearer of bad news? I'm turning the nation's number one news story on its head in a mind-numbing exclusive. A thank you, a little bonus, that'd be nice to hear about.”

“Get all the tater tots at Sonic you want.”

“Holy cow.”

“Look,” R.J. said, “this may pan out, but right now it's just a giant pain in the ass. So what's the plan? What do I tell Eddie you're doing?”

Sully flopped back on the bed, looking back at the ceiling and its water stains. The best news in his life: the NFL preseason was underway. Maybe he could get Alexis to the Dome for a Saints game this year. Stay in Uptown for a few days. October was always a good time to go. He was, he realized, starving. He never ate enough. The spaghetti, he should have done more than pick at it.

“When the doors open in the morning, I'll be at the county land records office, maybe the tax assessor's,” he said, then yawned loudly in R.J.'s ear, just for that tater-tots bit. “Wherever they keep the real estate records around here. Those, we get those, that'll show land ownership, past and present. People tend to have acreage out this way. So likely not that big of a list. I mean, this lady, Elaine, she pointed down the road. Can't be that
many farms in that direction, the next several miles, whatever the last name. I look for something with an H and we see what we get.”

“Then what? Let me blue-sky this. Let's say you find a guy with an H. How do we know
that
paleface is the shooter locked up in St. E's?”

“We don't. But, Christ, whoever the Capitol Killer is, he knows Terry Waters.
That
we know. And he knows something else nobody around here does, and that's that Terry Waters has been worm food for a long time. How big is that universe of people? I'm thinking five or six, tops.”

“The lady you just talked to said both she and her brother knew.”

“They're not homicidal maniacs, so I don't know they count.”

“Apparently her brother might be.”

“If it was her brother doing the killing,” Sully said, “I'd be in the dirt next to Terry right about now. These people don't fuck around.”

R.J. thought about it. “That's actually true, Sullivan. You irritate almost everyone.”

“The county records, then school records, yearbooks, maybe the Census, that's what I hit. The Census, if the family answered it, would be spectacular. But we're looking for a white guy, possibly last name H, who would now be roughly forty years old. That would put him in middle or high school, what, twenty-five years ago. That's a graduation date in the late nineteen seventies, a DOB 'round about nineteen sixtyish.”

There was a long quiet.

“Sullivan.”

“Yes, boss?”

“I'm going to prolong all of our lives and tell Eddie that this won't take you more than a day or two. Because the longer we keep printing ‘Terry Waters,' the more moronic we look with each usage if you're actually right about this.”

“Not as much as the other guys, when we break this.”

“
If
,” R.J. said.
“If
, not ‘when.' Your enthusiasm is as touching as it isn't contagious.”

Sully signed off, standing there in his boxers, turning the television
off. There was stubble on his cheeks—he had forgotten to shave. Hadn't taken a shower before heading out this morning. This might be a good time for that. He started the water, decided to make it a bath so he could soak and sip, then sat on the edge of the tub. He called his house, popping his neck, then leaned over, stretching out his back, looking down at his bare toes while the phone rang.

“Hello, stranger,” Alexis said, her voice warm, a little sleepy. “How's life on the investigative trail?”

He sat back upright, rattling the ice in the cup. “You ain't gonna believe this shit.”

“You're drinking,” she said. “Don't even try to bullshit me.”

THE HANGOVER WAS
a thing of beauty. The headache banged on the front edge of his skull. Rolling to his right in the bed—it took him a moment to place the anonymous curtains, the pale white walls, the lone painting of a prairie sunset . . . where was—and then he lay back in the sheets.

Reassuring, that's what it almost felt like, rubbing a palm over his forehead, his closed eyes, yawing. Familiar. Something he knew.

A rat's-ass cup of coffee from the lobby downstairs and a complimentary doughnut, plus twenty minutes of driving around in the early light (behind sunglasses) brought him the realization that the county seat was in Chandler, a dozen or so miles west.

He banged on the steering wheel the entire way. Didn't Stroud at least have the pride to be the county seat? This drive necessitated a stop at a way-too-brightly-lit gas station for two bottles of water, and he was walking along the narrow aisle, gum, chocolate, cough drops, little frosted white doughnuts, motor oil, cold medicine . . . where was the Goody's? Didn't they have a Goody's for a man's headache? He asked and the clerk said “What?” and he said never mind, grabbing a tiny plastic bottle of ibuprofen. Fucking apostates.

He popped three in his mouth while he was paying and then chugged them back with one of the water bottles, nearly draining it, standing bolt
upright at the counter, nobody behind him. Had to beat back the dry mouth, the dehydration that was shrinking his skull.

The Lincoln County Courthouse turned out to be a one-story thing, set in the middle of a way-too-wide-open square, far back from the street. Half hidden by a gaggle of trees, it looked like the low bid on a contract nobody wanted.

The main drag of town, Manvel, was part of old Route 66. The charm, if there was any left, was lost on Sully, him scuffing across both lanes, looking left and then right, still blinking in the early light, looking along the storefronts for an honest-to-God coffee shop. . . . Bail bondsman, flooring center, bank, hardware store, an old movie theater . . . no diner. Maybe on the far side of the blockwide square, but he couldn't see over there for the courthouse, and it was too far to walk just to see. Every town square had to have a café, a diner, some half-assed place to eat, didn't it?

He decided Oklahoma wasn't shit.

The sidewalk took him up to the courthouse. Inside, down a lusterless hallway, set against a wall, there was a framed rectangular guide to offices, the kind where you could move the individual lettering and kids were immediately drawn or dared to rearrange the letters to form “dick” or “ass” or whatever.

County assessor's office, county tax office, commissioners . . . following the directions, Sully walked on and made a left and found himself at the county records office.

It was bathed in a dim, windowless, fluorescent glow, rows of files extending into the back, where the light was dimmer. The tiniest wave of claustrophobia swept over his spine. This wasn't going to help the hangover. Besides, what if these deeds went all the way back to the land rush days? His enthusiasm, so bright and so bold and confident last night, had burned down to a dim little bulb in a dark room.

A clerk set him up at a desk, bringing out several of the plats books. Each was the size of a Chevrolet. Air-conditioning thrummed through the vents. It was as quiet as church. By a quarter of eleven, he had
nothing to show. He flipped the last fat book shut and lugged it back to the counter dividing the public space from the clerks' work area. He set it down with a plop and a sigh.

“Didn't find what you were looking for?” beamed the clerk, coming forward to the counter, way too goddamn cheerful. She looked up at him eagerly. Hangovers and cheerful people. This was an ugly mix, worse than ginger ale in bourbon.

“No, ma'am, I didn't,” he said, working up one edge of his mouth in an effort he hoped would come across as wry good humor. “But you were lovely to let me look around so long. Is the tax assessor's room down the hall there? You think they might have land records?”

She looked back at him through her goggle-eyed glasses and considered the matter at hand, like her day turned on it.

“You lookin' for the same thing, what you told me earlier? People in the south end of the county, twenty, thirty years back?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“They relatives of yours? This a court case?”

“Neither, ma'am. Actually.”

She looked at Sully. He looked at her. The clock ticked.

“I'm a reporter at a newspaper back east,” he finally whispered, so no one else could hear. He hoped this might inspire a sense of confidentiality, adding a conspiratorial glance around the room. “I'm looking for a family that might have known the Waters family. You know,
that
Waters? Socially, sort of. Last name, I think it started with an H.”

She sighed, taking her weight from one foot to the other. “Those are country people out there, you don't mind me saying.”

“I'm from Tula, Louisiana, ma'am. You don't got to tell me.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“How many people live in Tula?”

“No more than have to.”

A peal of laughter, bouncing through the recycled air. Two of her coworkers turned to look, then went back to their computers.

“Sounds like here,” she whispered. “Being a reporter, is that a good job?”

“Beats shoveling cow shit,” he whispered back, “which I have also done for cash money.”

“Hunh. This right here? Sitting in the same office all day, same people, same music on the radio. Did you notice we don't even got windows?”

“It's not so bad,” Sully said, looking around the dropped-down ceilings, the cubicles somewhere between lifeless and soul killing. “But I bet Tulsa, Oklahoma City? Those would be okay, too. You know, maybe move up there.”

She shrugged. Her pale shoulders were bare. Sully was surprised they weren't blue. The AC had to be turning her into an ice cube. “You know the FBI was in here, the courthouse, for days, looking at the Waters' family everything,” she said. “But it just weren't nothing.”

“I guess not.”

She started to pick the book up and stopped and said, “But you, you ain't interested in the Waters.”

“Not really,” Sully said. “I'm trying to find out a family who owned land to the south of them. White folks, maybe.”

“Hunh.”

“Like I said, maybe with an H.”

“You know Quapaw Creek Reservoir? Site 6?”

“No, ma'am.”

“You know where sixty-two is, coming out of Prague?” She pronounced in the local manner, “Pray-gue.”

“Sure,” he lied, but knowing enough about little towns to fake it. “You just take that right.”

She nodded, her bangs bouncing. “They call it Main Street, but it's just sixty-two coming through town. Now, from here? You get yourself back over to Stroud. Get on ninety-nine, go down—this is south—past the res. Go way on. Now you get in Prague, such as it is—and I mean, don't blink—you go past that Jim Thorpe mural over on your left. You'll
see a gas station, an old gas station, it's painted sort of pink, it doesn't work anymore, it's on your left. But you, you wanna turn right on sixty-two. You with me?”

“Riding shotgun.” With a nod, to keep her going.

She flushed, smiled. “Now. You take that right, you go past the bank, the Sonic, you just keep on going. You get out of town—that don't take but a minute—and you're gonna pass a church. Now you want to slow on down. On your right, you're gonna come up on a gravel road. You'll know it because it makes a quick little S turn right off. You take that one, you hear? You go a mile, maybe two, the reservoir'll be on your right. It's real fat for a bit, you know, you can see it, and then it turns into a finger.”

“Now. North of that, just a little bit, you'll see a gravel drive to your right. You take that, you go back maybe a quarter mile. You can't see it from a road. There's an old house. Nobody's lived there since God was a baby. But they did back then.”

She stopped, looking at him, nodding. It took a second before he realized she was finished.

“And who's that?” he asked.

“Who's what?”

“The people who lived in the old house.”

“The Harpers, of course. Isn't that what we were talking about?”

Sully felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“Harpers?”

“I do. They been gone for years and years. William, that was the husband? He had money in oil or cattle or something in Texas? He wasn't here that much. They just used that place out there on the reservoir as a weekend sort of place. They'd be out there a lot in the summer. They're all dead now. Far as I know.”

“So, okay, so what's the name of that road they're on, my turn off sixty-two?”

“If it's got a name, I never heard it. On the maps, its county road
thirty-four eighty, but nobody ever calls it that. It's just the road that goes by the reservoir. Hardly nobody lives out that way.”

“Hunh. I didn't see any Harpers listed in there, the land records.”

“I would imagine William had it under the company name he ran. Tex, Texa-something.”

“Tex-Oil?”

“That sounds right. Way yonder.” She fluttered a hand out toward the parking lot and beyond, south.

“Yes, ma'am. That was listed . . . wait.” He flipped the big plat book back open, going through the pages. “Jesus, I just had it.”

“Language,” she said, frowning.

“Sorry. I got home trainin', I just forgot it. Here now. Tex-Oil. That sounds like an impressive company. This property right here, though, it's small. Couple dozen acres.”

“It was just a weekend place. It wasn't his oil operation or nothing.”

“Hunh. You remember the family?”

“I wasn't but a tadpole. All I remember was the story that went around.”

“The story.”

“Yep.”

He waited. “Which one was that?”

The clerk leaned forward, dropped her whisper even more. “Mrs. Harper, she committed suicide. Slit her throat with a butcher knife one morning, right there in the bathroom just off the kitchen.”

“Good God.”

“Everybody talked about it for
years
.”

Sully blinked. “Slit her own throat?”

She nodded, chin bobbing. “I think she really didn't want to be with us no more.”

“You don't say.”

“I don't know if the house is still out there or not. The family, they left right after the suicide, you know. The scandal and all?”

He nodded. The lady was gold. “Sure, sure.”

“I don't remember ever seeing them again.”

Sully was looking at the pages open before him, the map, spelling out the plat as clear as day. The Harpers had frontage on the lake. He flipped the book shut.

“Ma'am, we got started to talking, I didn't even get your name.”

“Jo-Ellen.” She looked at his scars, her eyes flicked just that quick, then back at him. She was trying to decide if she should bat her eyelashes, he could tell, wondering if his question had been personal or professional. But no, the issue was decided: too many scars. She eased back from him ever so slightly. Half an inch.

“Jo-Ellen,” he said, “thank you for the help. I might miss the driveway the first time, but I'll find it. If I pull into the wrong one, somebody'll just run me off with a round of buckshot.”

“Hon,” she said, “there ain't no more than three driveways out there to pull up into, and I don't think any of 'em got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, much less a shotgun.”

“Okay.”

“But there's a crooked tree just before you get there. The lake, the tree, the driveway. When my daddy used to drive by there, he'd tell us that's where the ghost of the crazy lady lived, that she'd come get us in the dark if we weren't good.”

*  *  *

The house, by the time he found it, was an abandoned shell baking in the heat.

Open fields, pasture, the lake to the south. A narrow grove of oaks set along the long, unpaved drive. The prairie grass rustled against the front bumper as he eased ahead. The driveway was more of a memory than an actual thing.

The house lay in front of him like a ruination from Faulkner. It was a crumbling two-story brick farmhouse, two columns out front, the
whole thing falling in on itself. Shutters had long since faded beside the windows and were now just dried out slats of brown wood. Half a dozen windows were broken out.

As he pulled up to the front, a squirrel squatted on a window ledge upstairs. It ducked back inside when he killed the engine. He got out. Nothing but the wind moved. It was nicer than the Russell Waters place, he guessed, but its sense of decay was heightened by the pretensions to grandeur. It didn't even look back at him. It just sat there, hulking, stupid, dead.

“Too bad for you,” he said, to the house, as he was getting out of the car, “I don't believe in haints.”

Sweat was already starting to roll down his forehead when he pushed open the front door. The architects had been going for the classic Southern mansion. A center hallway. What would have been the library to the left, the main dining room to the right. Kitchen to the rear right, through a narrow door from the dining room. He stood, listening. Nothing. He pulled his shirt out, untucking it to try to keep the sweat from soaking it, unbuttoning the top button. Trash and leaves in a corner, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. A broken ceramic cup.

Taking the circular stairway upstairs, he kept to the outside of the steps, avoiding the rotten spots in the middle. The steps, like the flooring, had saddled in, buckling from water damage. The walls, all bare, were ruined with water and seepage and mildew, the paint long since cracked and peeling. Rat pellets were everywhere, mixed with dust and dirt. Bird nestings. He didn't spot the squirrel, but there was scratching in the attic. Looking out the back window of the master bedroom, he saw the cracked and faded pool in the backyard. It was now a stagnant pond of brown water.