The Falling Away Read online

  This wasn’t the reaction she’d expected from Paul the Stalker. She’d expected him to cry, maybe even hoped he’d cry. She’d expected him to retreat, beg her not to turn him in.

  She hadn’t expected him to crawl inside her head.

  Quinn started to slide out of the booth, but Paul’s hand closed around her arm as she did so.

  Immediately she felt her anger, her pain, her hate, draining from her body. It was replaced by a sense of . . . buoyancy. Like the deep-sea divers in that movie she’d sneaked into last year. What did they call it? Equalization depth. Where she was neither sinking nor rising. Only remaining quietly, blissfully still. Until now, only cutting had produced that feeling.

  “What are you doing?” she said in a whisper as she gave up the effort to leave. Suddenly, she wanted to find out more about this man calling himself Paul.

  His eyes had been closed, but now he opened them to look at her again. Living eyes, not dead ones. Yes, she still had to admit that.

  “I’m praying for you,” he answered.

  10

  As Dylan approached Harlem, hitting the speed-limit signs that slowed him from sixty-five to twenty-five in a matter of a few hundred yards, he started planning his next moves. He was going to owe Andrew for this, which probably wasn’t a Good Thing. But certainly a Better Thing than having Webb die in his front seat; he’d be happy to be in Andrew’s debt if it meant Webb survived.

  It’s not like he and Webb were BFFs, but Webb was the closest thing he had to a friend. That was his whole reason for agreeing to this now ill-fated trip: to keep an eye on Webb, who approached everything with a certain mix of childlike glee and naïveté. Webb was the guy constantly dancing on the edge of a cliff, so immersed in the moment that he was unaware of the mile-deep drop right next to him.

  Biiluke, Joni said.

  Dylan grunted. Yeah, Biiluke. The original name of the Apsáalooke, the Crow people, so-named after their ancestor chose to jump off a harrowing cliff to certain death. “I won’t make many of him,” Original Creator said, referring to his recklessness. So maybe the bond he shared with Webb was that feeling of a kindred Biiluke. A kindred chosen, as Claussen might have said.

  It’s all of that, Joni said. Biiluke, chosen, Claussen, Webb.

  Right.

  You couldn’t save Claussen. Webb’s a second chance to do that.

  What about you? I could have saved you, Joni. Would that have kept me out of the army, out of EOD, out of—

  Okay, I wasn’t going to go there, but yeah: this is like your third chance. You couldn’t save me, couldn’t save Claussen, heck, couldn’t save yourself, so you entered the army and EOD with this crude sort of death wish, didn’t you? And when that didn’t work out, when you didn’t actually die, but only ended up crippled, you weren’t any worse off. Because you were already crippled.

  Yeah, you’re quite the psychoanalyst. I’ll be sure to pass along your theories next time I talk to my therapist.

  And when will that be? Haven’t you skipped out on your last few sessions?

  Why would I need them, with you in my head? Can you shut up for now and let me concentrate on getting some help for Webb? You can lecture me about what it means later.

  Shutting up. For now.

  Two blocks away he saw the Kwik Trip looming and flipped on his turn signal. No sense getting picked up by local tribal police. Especially, as Andrew might say, with a white man bleeding all over the front seat of his pickup. He glanced at Webb again, who had awakened from his stupor a bit and now had his head resting on the dash once more.

  Webb didn’t dabble in the painkillers, said they took the edge off his thinking. He thought alcohol was more social, and that’s what Webb was all about. Not used to Percocets percolating in his system, Webb was quiet and compliant. And this, most definitely, was a Good Thing. Dylan could think, plan his next moves, without Webb’s constant chatter in his ear.

  The wind leaked through the windows, creating a shrill whistle as they idled through the parking lot. On the adjacent side street, someone flashed the lights on a new Dodge Ram, conspicuously clean in the middle of the grimy Montana winter.

  Dylan peered through his windshield, saw the driver of the pickup.

  Andrew gave him a quick wave, started his Ram with a rumble, and pulled away from his parking spot.

  Dylan followed as Andrew left town and turned onto a gravel road. Exactly 3.2 miles outside of town, Andrew’s Ram turned onto a different gravel road for another .7 miles, and finally into a driveway beside a battered old trailer house.

  Dylan parked behind Andrew’s pickup and shut off his own, watching as Andrew slid out of the Ram and approached. Dylan rolled down the window with a few painful creaks, sitting quietly as Andrew’s dark gaze took in the scene.

  “Dylan Runs Ahead, the Mighty Hunter,” Andrew said, smiling.

  Dylan stared at the door of the trailer house, which looked abandoned. But then, many trailer houses on any rez looked abandoned. “This place a—”

  “Heap Big Medicine,” Andrew said.

  “Shut up. I mean—”

  “Yeah, his name’s Couture. One a them French Indians.”

  “Doctor?”

  Andrew smiled. “Close enough; he’s a vet. Does great with horses, a regular Robert Redford.”

  Dylan frowned, and Andrew must have caught his thoughts. “Relax. He does this kinda work on the side. Antibiotics, the whole deal—usually they’re for cows and pigs. But all white men are just pigs, ain’t that what we say on the rez?”

  Dylan pushed open his door, forcing Andrew to take a few steps back. “Just help me get him inside.”

  “Couture knows the drill. No worries.”

  Dylan moved around the other side of the pickup, opened the door, slid Webb out of the seat, draping Webb’s good arm over his shoulder. Webb mumbled something, but Dylan couldn’t understand what he said.

  Andrew watched, shuffling back and forth on his feet to stay warm.

  “You gonna help?” Dylan asked, struggling to get Webb’s feet under him as they moved toward the trailer house.

  “You’re doing fine. I’ll get the door for you.”

  Andrew ran up the rotting wooden stairs to the trailer house’s door and knocked. A few seconds later it opened, and Andrew exchanged words with whoever was inside before disappearing into the trailer.

  So much for his offer to hold the door. Not that Dylan had really expected it; Andrew was one of those guys who told you all about everything he could do or would do, but rarely actually did.

  Dylan worked his way up the rotting wooden steps, last painted a muddy brown sometime in the nineteenth century, grabbed the door handle, and negotiated the narrow doorway as he half carried Webb’s slumping form into the trailer.

  Inside, Andrew stood with a fair-skinned Indian sporting long, braided hair and a C-shaped scar on his cheek. Both held cups of coffee, and the guy with a scar took a sip.

  “Over on the couch,” the scarred man said with a phlegmy voice, and coughed.

  Dylan struggled to the couch, noticing it was covered with a couple of black garbage bags to protect whatever thready upholstery might lie beneath. The carpet inside the trailer may have once been actual carpet, but now it was just something to collect mud. Everything smelled of stale tobacco.

  Dylan put Webb down on the couch cushions slowly, letting him slump to a half-prone position before standing and turning again. His own shoulder felt a bit numb from carrying most of Webb’s weight.

  The scarred guy had produced a pack of Marlboros, and he offered one to Dylan. He seemed to be studying Dylan’s forehead; did he have a spot of blood there without realizing it? Dylan resisted the urge to rub at it.

  Andrew already had a cigarette in his mouth, unlit. Dylan paused, then decided to take one himself. He wasn’t much of a smoker, but this wasn’t any time to be turning down offered pleasantries.

  Scarred Guy took out a Zippo, set flame to Andrew’s and Dylan’s cigar
ettes before lighting one of his own and breathing deeply. He coughed a bit of blue smoke as he cast his dark eyes at Dylan.

  “Stephen Couture,” he said, extending his right hand.

  “Dylan Runs Ahead.”

  Andrew grinned. “Now we smoke the sacred tobacco, have Big Council.”

  Couture ignored Andrew, speaking to Dylan. “You’re not Assiniboine. Not Gros Ventres, either.”

  “Apsáalooke,” Dylan said.

  “Crow.”

  Dylan nodded. Crow was a mistranslation of the Apsáalooke name that literally meant “People of the Big-Beaked Bird.” Couture undoubtedly knew this, as did Andrew. For that matter, the Assiniboine and Gros Ventres people had never called themselves that; those names were misnomers as well. Only difference was, their tribes had been labeled by the French instead of the English.

  “What brings you up here?” Couture asked.

  “Picking up a delivery.”

  “From Canada?”

  Dylan shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

  Couture took another puff, considered. “Lot of folks on the Fort Belknap rez might not like that much, taking the delivery business away from them. Feel like Crows should stay south for the winter.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lucky for you, I don’t much care what folks on the Fort Belknap rez think.”

  “Yeah.”

  Webb moaned from his position on the couch, and Couture’s gaze shifted, breaking the conversation. “Guess I’d better take a look at him.”

  Couture kneeled beside the couch, unknotted Webb’s bloodstained coat from his shoulder. “Bleeding’s pretty much stopped. That’s a good sign. Means you didn’t knick a major vessel.”

  “Yeah.” Dylan wanted to point out that he wasn’t the one who had missed a major blood vessel, but it seemed like too much effort. Instead, he took another draw of his own cigarette and glanced at Andrew, who was surveying the whole scene bemusedly.

  Couture examined the shoulder, poking gently at the small hole, now turning black and bruising around the edges. Dylan noticed, for the first time, that Couture was wearing surgical gloves. Sanitary and sterile; that was obviously the rule of this trailer house. A ghost of a memory, blue nitrile gloves in the Iraq desert, flashed in his mind.

  Couture stood. “Went through—won’t have to fish out a bullet.” Couture’s cigarette was clenched in his teeth.

  “Yeah.”

  “That your favorite word? Yeah?”

  Dylan smiled. “Yeah.”

  Couture nodded, disappeared into the bowels of the trailer’s hallway for a few seconds. He returned with few sealed packages, tore one open as he approached Webb again. He removed some gauze and dressed the wound, then stood and admired his work. He set the nub of his cigarette in a glass ashtray on an end table beside the couch, picked up the other sealed packages, and offered them to Dylan.

  “You’ll need to change those dressings for the next few days.”

  Dylan accepted the packages, nodding, and Couture brought out a sandwich bag containing some white powder.

  “Duramycin. Antibiotic for pigs—essentially tetracycline. Usually comes in five-pound bags, but I figured you wanted to pack a little lighter. Pigs and humans are actually pretty close in how they react to anti—”

  “So I’ve been told.” Dylan cast a glance at Andrew’s grin.

  “A teaspoon in a drink the next ten days should take care of infection—parts of his shirt and jacket got pushed into the wound, so he’d probably get infected without it.”

  “Can’t you pull out the fabric?”

  Couture picked up his cigarette from the ashtray, clenched it in his teeth. “His muscle’s not torn up too much—likely a pretty low-caliber gun, like a .22. If I dug around in there with what I have, I’d probably do more harm than good. Small entrance and exit wounds, so they should heal over just fine. His body will take care of the rest, with a little help from the antibiotics.” He held up another prescription bottle. “To help with the pain, these—”

  “We’ve got a few Percocets and Vicodins. And Oxies.”

  Couture nodded. “Those should do. Keep him down to four a day, though.” He scratched at his nose. “Those things are pretty addictive.”

  “I’ve been told that too.” He waited for a crack from Andrew or Joni, and was surprised when none came. “So what do we do now?”

  “Don’t know about ‘we,’ ” Couture said, and cleared his throat. “Me, I’m gonna have another cuppa joe and another smoke. It’s my break time. You’re gonna give me five hundred bucks and get your buddy off my couch so he doesn’t bleed all over the place.”

  “Yeah,” Andrew chimed in. “Evil white man ruined everything else for Indians. Can’t have him staining the furniture too.”

  Dylan could have pointed out that Webb had stopped bleeding—the wound was barely seeping now, and bandaged—as well as the black garbage bags on the couch. But he didn’t; this wasn’t about what was really happening. It was about showing power. And he needed to show deference to that power.

  “Thanks,” he said. Then: “Can I use your latrine?”

  Couture narrowed his eyes. “You military?”

  “Was.”

  “Most people call it a bathroom.” Couture pointed at him. “Purple heart?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Your limp.”

  Dylan shrugged, nodded.

  “I got me one a those too. Operation Desert Storm. Shrapnel from an explosion. Friendly fire, of course—Iraqi troops couldn’t blow up anything if their lives depended on it.” He puffed his cigarette. “Come to think of it, I guess their lives did depend on it.”

  Dylan looked at him a moment. “Well, they can blow up stuff now.” His leg flared.

  Couture nodded slowly, pointed down the dark hallway. “Second door on the left.”

  “Wash your hands,” Andrew called after him. “White Man cooties and all.”

  Dylan resisted a response, closing the bathroom door behind him.

  Okay. Webb was gonna be fine. Probably. As for himself, he was still 50/50. Maybe even 40/60.

  He fished the fresh bottle of Percocet from his pocket and popped two of them. Yeah, they made Webb fuzzy and semicatatonic, because he never used them. They’d once done the same for him. But at some point—and he didn’t know that precise point—the process reversed. He needed the Perks or the Vikes or the Oxies to stay clear. Without them, his mind was muddy. And a muddy mind wasn’t going to get them out of this mess. Funny how that blurred line worked in his mind. Sometimes he convinced himself he needed to avoid the drugs to think clearly; other times he convinced himself the drugs were exactly what made him think clearly. He’d played both sides of that equation just this morning.

  Yes, you’re a walking contradiction.

  Who isn’t, Joni? Who isn’t?

  He dug into his jeans pocket and fished out five bills—half of what he’d retrieved from Webb’s rucksack before hitting the city limits of Harlem. No sense alerting Andrew or anyone else to a large pile of cash sitting in his truck.

  He set the money on the counter, finally looked at his reflection in the mirror. No blood on his forehead, as he’d expected.

  He splashed some cold water from the faucet on his face, ran his wet hands through his close-cropped hair. The drain gurgled with a hollow echo after he turned off the faucet.

  Okay. His next step was to contact Krunk. Better Krunk should hear the whole story from him than from someone else. Not that Krunk would believe him. But Dylan might as well give himself whatever sliver of an advantage he might have. It was a good tactical move—defuse the bomb before it had a chance to explode.

  That strategy had worked for him before. Many times.

  Until the last time, of course, but he was playing the odds here.

  Dylan grabbed the bills from the counter and opened the bathroom door again, went back into the living area. Webb was still on the couch, unconscious. Andrew and Couture sa
t at a small Formica table in the kitchen with their coffee cups in front of them.

  Dylan put the money on the table in front of Couture, nodded.

  “Thanks again,” he said.

  Couture drank from his cup, set it back down, made no move to take the money. “De nada.”

  Andrew giggled. “You hear that? Veterinarian Assiniboine who speaks Spanish. That’s bilingual. You don’t see that on the Discovery Channel.”

  “What do you see on the Discovery Channel?”

  “Don’t know. Never watch it.”

  “Looks like you need a new coat,” Couture said.

  “What?”

  “New coat.” He nodded at the front of Dylan’s ski jacket. “You put a hole in that one.”

  Dylan looked down. A neat puncture, the size of a dime, laced his right pocket; some of the coat’s insulation leaked out. He’d forgotten that he’d taken the first shot with the .357 through his coat pocket.

  “You can take the jacket on the chair over there.”

  Dylan turned, saw a black nylon jacket thrown haphazardly on a flowered recliner across the living room from the couch.

  “Thanks,” he said, retrieving it.

  “Where you headed?” Couture asked.

  “Still working on that.”

  “You’re marked,” Couture said, staring.

  Andrew smiled, turned to look at Couture. “Yeah,” he said. “Dead Man Walking. You get a white boy shot on the rez, you’re definitely a marked man.”

  “No, not like that,” Couture said. “My grandmother, she called it the mark. But that’s not really your word for it, is it?” He stared at Dylan. “You call it chosen.” He took another drag on his cigarette.

  Dylan felt his bad leg buckle, and his good one along with it. He stumbled, almost going down before regaining his balance. “What did you say?” he whispered, hoping he’d heard Couture wrong.

  “My grandmother, she had this sense that let her . . . see inside other people,” Couture said, sounding almost disinterested. “See their souls, I guess you could say. But she told me about this woman she met once, a woman she said was marked.”