The Reckless Oath We Made(98)

Even though my foot fell asleep about twenty miles down the road, I didn’t make him move his head, and we drove the rest of the way to Wichita like that.



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I DIDN’T KNOW who else to call, so I called Julia from the restaurant, since they were closed on Mondays. Once I offered to pay her, she agreed to meet me at the Franks’ house, so I could drop off Gentry’s truck.

I parked it in the street, hoping not to be noticed. I’d wanted to do it under cover of darkness, but I knew that would look suspicious. I moved my stuff first: my purse and backpack. Then I put the leash on Leon. He looked at me, but didn’t move.

“Come on.” I pulled on the leash, and he walked across the seat and jumped down. When I opened the back door of Julia’s car for him, though, he just looked at me.

“Oh, you weren’t kidding about the dog,” she said. “He doesn’t have fleas, does he?”

“No.” I had no idea.

“Get in,” I said to Leon. I was starting to feel like I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d brought him all the way from Missouri, and maybe he’d only come with me because I was driving Gentry’s truck. I tried to nudge him into the car, but he wouldn’t go.

“Hold on,” I said to Julia. I closed the door and walked across the street to the Franks’ house, with Leon following me on the leash. I rang the doorbell, feeling sick with something right in between fear and shame.

Charlene’s sister, Bernice, answered the door, so I could guess what had happened after I called Carlees. He would have called the sheriff in Little River, and then he would have called his parents. They would have asked Bernice to babysit, while they drove to Arkansas to take care of Gentry. To clean up the mess I made.

“Zee?” she said, and kind of squinted at me.

“I brought Gentry’s truck back.” I held out the keys, but she was looking at Leon.

“Is Gentry with you?” She looked at me, then out at Gentry’s truck, then at Leon again.

“No. I just brought his truck back,” I said.

As soon as I passed the keys to her, I turned around and walked to Julia’s car. I opened the back door and got in. That worked, because Leon jumped in after me. As Julia pulled away, Bernice was standing on the front porch with her cellphone pressed to her ear.

At Mom’s house, I had Julia pull in behind my car. She stared at the disaster in Mom’s front yard, but I pretended like it wasn’t even there. I took out the half ounce of weed and the hundred dollars I’d promised her and passed them over the front seat to her.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem. You know, after all this dies down, I’m sure Lance will be okay with you coming back to the restaurant.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think I’m coming back.”

I walked Leon over to my car and, while I was unlocking the door, I thought about how Gentry and I had stood next to it, and how I’d been a coward or a weakling. If I’d been braver or stronger, when he asked if I wanted to go alone, I would have said “Yes” instead of dragging him with me.

I opened the front passenger door for Leon, and he got in without any fuss. When I drove away, Julia was still parked there, staring at the mess in Mom’s front yard.

I went down Broadway until I came to one of those run-down motels with a sign that said PET FRIENDLY. Leon had been happy enough riding around in the car, but to get him into the motel room, I had to drag him by the collar. He acted like he’d never been inside before. I ordered a pizza, and while I waited for it to be delivered, I put Leon in the tub and washed him with motel soap. He didn’t fight me, but he stood under the running water with his head down, not even looking at me. Once he was toweled off, he ran out to the room and hid between the bed and the wall, like he was worried I had something worse planned for him. After the pizza came, though, he jumped up on the bed without even waiting for me to invite him. I split the pizza with him, right down the middle.

Then I knew why I’d brought Leon with me. Because he needed to be taken care of, and I needed someone to take care of.





CHAPTER 47





Deputy Evangelista



Three to the morgue, two to the hospital, and two to jail. A pretty typical headcount for a meth deal gone bad, except there was no meth lab. The only thing in the barn was a stolen SUV with half of a new paint job. We found a little weed in the house, but not enough for three men to end up dead over. We weren’t going to be able to question the two injured until they came out of surgery, and the woman wouldn’t say anything except, “I want a lawyer.”

The kid with the sword was an interesting possibility, though. We were thinking PCP at first, because he was wacked out, sitting in the interrogation room, covered in blood, talking to himself a mile a minute.

“I hear thee! I hear thee! What boon is it to me? Thou art as good to me as a bucket of water to a drowning man. Yea, I defied thee. ’Tis on my head. I hear! Yea, I pray thou art right, for if I am to go to hell, I shall not spend eternity in thy company.”

It went on like that for two hours. Zelker and I watched him, thinking eventually he’d wind down. Off and on the whole time, the kid kept clenching his shoulders up around his ears and cracking his neck. He’d do that for ten minutes, and then bang his head on the table. After the fifth or sixth time, I started to worry he was going to give himself a concussion.