The Cypress House (8 page)

    Arlen
turned and looked back at the bar and saw Rebecca Cady watching from the
doorway.

    "You
got a phone?" he said.

    "No."

    
"
No
?"

    She
shook her head. She was staring past him at the car, and her hand was tight on
the door frame.

    "Who
does?"

    She
made a distracted gesture up the road and didn't answer.

    "Well,
let's go call the police," he said. His voice was so steady it seemed to
come from another place, and he knew that it did. It came from over an ocean
and within a field of wheat dotted with poppies red as roses, red as blood.

    "Shouldn't
we get some water or —"

    "It's
past the time for water."

    She
wet her lips and glanced backward, where Paul stood in the middle of the
barroom, peering out, and said, "You two go on down the road and call for
help, and I'll —"

    "No,"
Arlen said. "We're all going together."

    Rebecca
Cady had a truck with a small cab and a bed surrounded by homemade fence rails.
Arlen told Paul to climb in the bed and then he got into the passenger seat as
the woman started up the truck without saying a word. She had her lips pressed
in a grim line and never glanced at the still-smoldering Auburn as she drove
past. At the top of the hill, Arlen saw a place where the beach grass was
matted down and tire tracks showed in the sand.

    "Who
around here drives a black Plymouth?" he asked.

    "I
don't know." Rebecca Cady's tone was as flat now as it had been during
their introductions in the bar. If the idea of a man being incinerated just
outside her place of business was a concern, it was hard to tell.

    "Well,
you might want to be thinking on it," he said. "I suspect the sheriff
is going to have plenty of questions, and that's only going to be one of them.
He'll also want to know what Sorenson was doing at your place to begin
with."

    She
was silent. The breeze blew in and fanned her hair back, showing a slender,
exquisite neck.

    "You
own the place ?" Arlen asked.

    "That's
right."

    "People
die out there very often?"

    "No."

    "Well,
you sure don't look rattled. And again, if I'm the sheriff, I'm going to be
—"

    "You're
not the sheriff," she said, "and if I could offer any advice, it
would be that you let me talk to him alone and you two go on your way."

    "Go
on our way? That man is dead and —"

    "Dead
he will stay," she said. "Whether you talk with the sheriff or
not."

    "Hell,
no. There's not a chance, lady. I'll be talking to the law before I head out of
this place."

    He
watched her for a long time, but she never looked over at him. They'd left the
dirt road for the paved now, but there wasn't another vehicle in sight. It was
isolated country, forested once you got away from the coast. They'd gone at
least two miles down the paved stretch of road before a gap showed in the trees
and a single gas pump appeared in a square of dusty earth. Rebecca Cady slowed
the truck, and then they were past the trees and Arlen could see a service
station set well back from the gas pump. There was a two-bay garage and a
general store, with crates of oranges stacked beside the front door. Rebecca
Cady pulled the truck in next to a delivery van and shut the engine off. Only
then did she turn and look at Arlen.

    "I'll
go in now and call the sheriff, since that's what you want me to do."

    "You're
damned right it's what I
want
you to do. A man was killed!"

    "Yes,"
she said. "Welcome to Corridor County, Mr. Wagner."

    The
sheriff told her to return to the Cypress House, and he was waiting on them
when they arrived, standing beside the ruins of the Auburn while a young deputy
with red hair poured pails of water onto the wreck. The flames were gone, but
the metal steamed when the water touched it.

    The
sheriff had the look and charm of a cinder block —a shade over six feet but
250
at least, with gray hair and small, close-set brown eyes. His hands
dangled at his sides beneath thick wrists and sunburned forearms. When they got
out of the truck, he didn't say a word, just watched the three of them approach
as the deputy emptied another pail of water onto the car in a hiss of steam.
The sheriff didn't break the silence until they were standing at his side.

    "Becky,"
he said then, "what in the world happened to your guest?"

    "His
car blew up," Rebecca Cady said. She was standing at Paul's side, facing
the sheriff with her arms squeezed tightly across her chest, as if she'd found
a cold breeze hiding in the ninety- degree day.

    "So
it did," the sheriff said. "So it did."

    Arlen
was struck by the man's voice. He'd expected the heavy southern drawl that
seemed common in these parts, but the sheriff's accent had a touch of the Upper
Midwest in it, Chicago or Minnesota or Wisconsin.

    "Who
are you boys?" the sheriff said, acknowledging their existence for the
first time.

    Arlen
told it. Said they were CCC, had missed a train heading down to the Keys and
caught a ride with the dead man.

    "You'd
never seen him before? Strangers, you say?"

    "That's
right. We'd just met him last evening, Mr.....what was your name?"

    "Tolliver,"
he said after a pause and a darkening of the eyes that suggested he didn't like
Arlen treating the conversation as a two-way street, "but all you need to
call me is Sheriff. Do you know Becky?"

    "Just
met her. Again, we'd come this way only because we hitched the ride. I've never
set foot in this county before, and neither has Paul."

    Tolliver
pursed his lips and looked at his deputy, a freckle- faced kid with a sour
scowl. He stared at him for a long time, like he was musing on something, and
then he said, "Burt, put them in handcuffs and get them in the car."

    Arlen
said, "Whoa. Hold on, there. I just told you —"

    Tolliver
dipped one of his big hands to his belt and came out with a
.45,
held it
loose, along his thigh.

    "I
know what you told me. I also know that Walt Sorenson, poor dead son of a bitch
that he may be, was not the kind of man who took on riders he'd never met. So
I'll give you two a chance to work on adjusting your story until you come out
with the truth. Take another try right now if you'd like. Why were you riding
with Sorenson ?"

    For a
moment there was only silence, a light salty breeze blowing in, and then Arlen
said, "A fortune- teller told him to be aware of travelers in need."

    The
sheriff nodded as if this were what he'd expected to hear. "It'll go that
way, will it?" he said, and then snapped his chin at the deputy.
"Burt."

    The
redheaded kid shook out a pair of handcuffs and advanced on Arlen. Paul Brickhill
said, "Arlen, what . . . we didn't . . . Arlen," as the deputy
grabbed on to Arlen's wrist and twisted it, and the big sheriff stood with the
gun in his hand and a dare in his eyes. Rebecca Cady squeezed her arms tighter
and stared past them all, over the top of the demolished car and off to the
horizon, where clouds hung low over the water. She stood that way until both
Arlen and Paul were in handcuffs and in the back of the sheriff's car.

    Paul
tried to talk to Arlen when they were under way, but Tolliver said there'd be
no conversation in the back unless someone wanted a skull-cracking. Arlen
didn't say anything. It wasn't the first time he'd felt cuffs close around his
wrists, and he knew the drill by now — you'd eat some shit, wait till they
tired of feeding it to you, and then they'd kick you loose.

    They
drove past the service station where they'd called for Tolliver originally and
on down the road. A few miles south they arrived in a small town laid out on a
square, buildings lining a total of four roads and lasting for two blocks in
each direction. A few of the signs indicated the place was called High Town,
which was intriguing considering it was as flat a place as Arlen had seen.
There were cars parked on the street but also two horse carts in view. The
modern world had touched this place, yes, but it had made limited headway so
far.

    The
deputy parked in front of a single-story building with clapboard added on to an
older stone section in the rear. They went up the steps and into the station,
and Tolliver said, "Keep the boy out here," and then led Arlen
through a narrow hallway and out into a room where three small cells lined the
back wall. He took a key from his belt and unfastened one of the doors and
swung it open. Arlen went in without comment or objection.

    "You
walk around here like you been in a jail before," Tolliver said, facing
him with his legs spread wide, a hint of a grin on his face.

    "I've
seen em."

    "Prison,
too?"

    "Not
a one. And I've never been charged with anything in my life except having a
drink in my hand when it wasn't legal to do so."

    "You
say."

    "It's
the sort of thing can be checked on."

    Tolliver
cracked his knuckles, slowly and deliberately, and then said, "You call
yourself Wagner."

    "It's
my name. Check on that, too."

    "I
believe it's pronounced Vagner," Tolliver said. "I believe I shot
some men who may well have had the same name. I shot a lot of Germans in my
day."

    "So
did I," Arlen said. "Probably more than you. And where I'm from, the
name is Wagner."

    Actually,
it hadn't been. Arlen had pronounced it Vagner until his second day on the
transport ship, when he determined it would be wise to alter that German sound,
distancing him not only from the enemy but from his father. The latter felt
like a more valuable gain than the former.

    "Where
might that be?" Tolliver said.

    "All
around," Arlen answered. "I've done some drifting."

    Let
the sheriff make his calls to Alabama, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or any
of the other places Arlen had spent time over the years. Let him make calls to
everywhere except Fayette County, West Virginia. The only secrets Arlen had worth
hiding had been left there many years ago. The first blood on Arlen Wagner's
hands hadn't come in the war.

    "You
want to keep drifting," Tolliver said, "you'll need to be on the
other side of these bars. And for that to happen, I'm going to need to know the
truth."

    "Sheriff,
you've already heard it."

    Tolliver
shook his head, the smile showing clearer now, as if this were what he'd
expected, and it pleased him. He opened the door of the cell and stepped out,
then swung it shut and locked it.

    "I'll
talk to the boy first. You think you're a hard case. He doesn't."

    "He'll
tell you what I will," Arlen said, "because it's all we can say. Let
me tell you something else, Tolliver — you lay into the boy, I'll see it dealt
with. You're the law here. You ain't the law all over."

    "Nothing
I enjoy more," Tolliver said, "then a handcuffed man who offers
threats. I'll see you shortly."

    Arlen
leaned back on the cot until his head rested against the stone wall, wishing
for his flask. This journey had been a mistake from the first. You didn't leave
a good place to go to an unknown one. He'd let the kid talk him into it, and
more than a year of comfort and steady work had lulled him, allowed him to
think it was a fine time to move on, and the Keys a fine place to go. What he
knew now was that from almost the moment they'd crossed the state line, trouble
had swirled around them like an angry wind.