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Temeke turned the wheel as hard as he could, veering sideways to avoid hitting the man. He pulled over and lowered the window, pushing his head out into the cool night air.
“Where did you find him?” he shouted.
“Under that tree,” the man said, jingling the identity disk with one finger. “Caught a bird and ate it.”
“Cheeky sod. The cat, I mean.”
Temeke tried to make out pale features in the shadows, thought he saw the flicker of a smile and then a pair of anxious, melancholy eyes. Young, early twenties at a guess, hair partly covered by a woolen hat.
“You live around here?” Temeke asked.
“Just passing through. Here.”
A ball of gray fur was suddenly posted through the window, claws clacking on the dashboard as the cat settled into the passenger seat with a disgruntled meow. Temeke noticed his rearview mirror was filling with the headlights of a passing truck and he motioned to the young man to step further back onto the grass curb to let it pass.
A loud honk from the driver indicated Temeke was too far out in the road, so he put the car in gear and rolled forward a few feet into his driveway. Holding his breath, he counted to three as the truck sped away leaving behind a thick spray of leaves.
His eyes swung back to the grass curb. There was no sign of the man, not until Temeke caught a slither of movement in his wing mirror. A figure jogged down the middle of the road through a cloud of exhaust, turning sharply to the left and stooping beneath the branch of a tree.
Temeke closed the car window, fumbled with the key fob and locked the car with a bleep. He wasn’t about to lose sight of someone whose comment of passing through gave the bell in his brain a small tinkle.
The identity disk was engraved with his last name and address, and since Temeke was pulling into the driveway the young man would have naturally assumed he was the owner. But how long had he been waiting?
It looked as if he had bolted in the direction of the small adobe ruin. Temeke called it the ruin because the owner had done nothing in the past ten years to make the rental look habitable. Cracked stucco walls and weeds reaching almost as high as the nearest utility pole. It was the dope hut of the neighborhood.
He started walking away from the car, blinked a few times and wiped a stream of moisture from his eyes. It was bloody freezing and he thought he felt the first brush of snow on his bald head. Two street lamps spread a circle of light on the pavement below, not enough to give him an inkling of what lay beyond the trees.
Jogging down a small slope into an overgrown front yard, his boots crunched on brown balls of sycamore fruit and tapped against loose gravel. He studied every bush and shadow, hoping to see something moving near the perimeter. It was darker than a coal shed and he tensed and took a few steps forward.
To the right was a barrier of saplings and a rotting trellis. To his left a culvert of slurry and ice that swung sharply around one side of the old house. He’d seen the homeowner, what... twice? Spoke to him about the renovations, told him about the squatters. The City had recently dug a trench for the cabling, anything that might bring the place forward into the twenty-first century.
Temeke shouldered his way through a narrow gap in the trellis, cupped his hands around his face to peer in through a small side window. Couldn’t see a whole lot through wooden boards and tattered curtains, and the back door was locked. He was glad. Didn’t want to find two people in there having a shag like last time.
Locked?
So someone was looking after the place.
He had a sense the man had run along the gravel track behind the house. Couldn’t hear shoes pumping against rock and there was no sign of movement. Picking up speed, he jogged for several minutes beneath a full moon that had risen above the trees, blue and brooding against a wintry sky. The path was well worn and level, leading through clumps of sage to a cornfield and a stand of cottonwoods beyond.
Right where the field ended and where the trees began was a dark colored van parked on a narrow road that tapered round to Guadalupe Trail. He couldn’t recall the name of the road, but he reckoned it was a minor artery that fed into Fourth Street. One the farmers used. He had a moment of distraction, couldn’t decide if the towering stalks were maize or corn, and judging by the musty smell, the farmer had left the field to dry out too long.
The sound of whispering made him stop, made him peer between brittle husks, eyes swinging up and down the rows watching for movement. He couldn’t make out the words, only a slight swell in pitch before it was accompanied by a female voice.
He cast a glance behind him so he could get his bearings. Taking two careful steps at a time, he paused and listened to a rise in the wind. The voices grew louder, leaves rattling as if they had taken off toward the far corner of the field.
“It’s not working,” the female voice said.
“You’re just scared.” The second voice was deeper, certainly male.
“Well, maybe I am. I’ll get caught. The bad guys always do.”
“Down like flies. One by one. Dead and buried. You can do it.”
“I can’t do it,” the woman whined. “They always come back from the dead.”
“Then we’ll just kill them again.”
Temeke could see a cloud of breath above the corn as if the woman had thrown her head back in frustration.
There was nothing unusual about two lovers debating the course of their relationship. It was the reference to killing someone that made the hairs on the back of his neck itch, made him wonder if they were dealing in more than just morbid repartee.
Gang activity had become massive over the last ten years, bringing a whole new meaning to the slogan united states. Heroin and cocaine trafficking were only the top layer of the onion; the internet being the most powerful medium for key players rather than meeting in basements like they used to do.
He felt like a sodding stalker and without a good visual he had no idea if he was following the cat-man or two drugged-up lodgers from the old ruin.
He heard a sneeze and then an angry word. The man was playing her.
“Don’t even think about it. I know how your squalid little mind works. But then again, what makes me think you even have a mind?”
“Why me?” she said. “Wait, let me guess ‒ it’s because you’re too chicken.”
There was silence for a moment before stalks began bending and swaying as the couple broke into a walk.
“You’ll be free of them. Just think.” The man drew out the last word, said it like it would make a difference. “You have to do it. And you’re already half way through. Can’t stop now.”
The wind tugged at the stalks and the whole field seemed to rattle from the sudden gust. Temeke never heard her response, only the sound of the man’s voice when the wind died down.
“How I love this time of night. Porcelain and pristine. So very pretty.”
Temeke had to force himself not to run, feet moving carefully through the crunching detritus in time with their footfalls. He stood still for a few seconds, thought he saw movement through a thicket of corn about ten feet ahead. Snapping sheaves and swaying tassels told him the couple had circled back around, heading this time toward the very place he was standing.
Backing up in a narrow aisle, Temeke held his breath and listened. He parted two branches with both hands and watched a figure step out onto the moonlit track. The same man he had seen on Guadalupe Trail, the man who likely had a molt of cat hairs on that jacket of his.
“I’ll get the pizza.” He paced from side to side and seemed to be staring at someone in the shadows. He couldn’t have been more than ten feet away. A rustling sound and he stepped off the path and back into the darkness. “We’ll leave it outside the door with a note. She likes pizza and she likes cheese. Don’t you remember?”
“I can’t‒”
“Oh, but you can. You can go to Keller’s and get a bone. And don’t forget to cancel that dinner order.”
“There must be another way.”
Temeke noted the change in the woman’s voice, frightened now and trembling. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t identify her, and that made him nervous.
“There’s always another way.” The man paused for a moment. “Wait... I heard something.”
Temeke’s breath came hard and fast, adrenalin racing through his veins, and he covered his mouth to hide the vapor. The other hand hovered over the Glock in his belt.
A brief silence before leaves snapped and the two of them thundered in a southeasterly direction. It wasn’t as if the man assumed Temeke’s footfalls were those of a grouse. He knew he was being followed.
Temeke ran as close as he could, breaking out at the edge of the cornfield behind the van. He heard a door slam, engine revs, and then the thing swerved from side to side along the narrow road without any headlights.
Lurching onto the main road toward Corrales, it disappeared into the cold gray night.
