Comanche. Brett Riley

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      She’s still callin you.

      Don’t get mad. She’s worried.

      That’s an understatement. She’s been scared half to death. I reckon C.W.’s gonna punch me in the nose the next time I see him.

      Raymond and his brother-in-law used to call each other twice a week. They fished the Louisiana waters and Texas rivers and ponds, hunted squirrel and duck and deer, made idiotic wagers every time the Saints played the Cowboys—loser must dye his hair the winner’s team colors for a week—that sort of nonsense. But once Raymond’s drinking spiraled out of control and Rennie cried herself to sleep enough times, Roark’s phone calls ceased. The few times he answered the phone, his responses were curt, bordering on hostile, and when Rennie came to the phone, she sounded tense.

      I need to check my email one more time, LeBlanc said.

      Do it on your phone, Raymond said. I got a hankerin for a catfish po’ boy. I’m buyin.

      LeBlanc grinned. He shut down the computer and stood up. Now you’re talkin my language. I could eat a horse.

      Chapter Five

      May 8, 2015—Comanche, Texas

      Morlon Redheart finally seemed happy. He’s sick of landscapin, C.W. Roark thought, and Silky’s gettin too old to drag pallets around Brookshire’s. They need this. The contractors had installed the new front walk and lights and windows and an alarm system but left the depot’s more picturesque scrapes and dings alone. They laid a small concrete parking lot but didn’t bother with a light pole. The ambient light from Austin Street would suffice.

      As the renovations progressed, Roark sometimes stopped on Austin and watched, leaning against his truck with his arms and ankles crossed. Gotta make sure Red gets a good picture when it’s finally time to run his article. The newspaperman had decided to make it part of a group. Other photos would show Old Cora—the authentic frontier cabin that had served as the original county courthouse and now squatted on the town square as if a bored god had scooped it out of the past and dropped it in the twenty-first century—and the Fleming Oak, the old gnarled tree in which a white boy had once hidden from a Comanche attack. Tourists eat that kind of shit for breakfast, especially the ones who think every town west of the Mississippi used to be like Dodge City or Tombstone.

      As for the outbuilding, they installed no extra lights and protected it with only a padlock. Why bother with much else, when the best any thieves could hope for might be a big can of corn or a broken stool? Morlon had ordered the workers to toss all the old shit into the courtyard, where he stuffed smaller items into trash bags, larger ones into the bed of his pickup. He planned to haul it all to the dump.

      One day, Roark stopped by as Morlon was dropping half a dozen pewter plates into a Hefty.

      Hang on, the Mayor said. He pulled out the plates and then dug through the bag. He found a few more dishes, a set of tarnished forks and knives, a pair of busted cowboy boots, and a gun belt that looked older than Moses. Both the boots and the belt were stained with what might have been mud a century old. Roark spread these items on the ground. You find any other stuff like this?

      Nope, Redheart said. Just trash.

      Get somebody to clean these up, the mayor said, indicating the dishes and cutlery. Maybe we can hang ’em around the diner. Give the place more authenticity.

      What about that cowboy shit?

      When Roark picked up the boots and gun belt, he shivered. His arms broke into gooseflesh despite the heat. He dropped the junk and wiped his hands on his pants. Felt like stickin my hand into ice water. Maybe I’m comin down with somethin.

      Redheart raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

      Just put ’em back on a shelf, Roark said. I’ll figure out a place for ’em.

      Redheart shrugged and resumed loading trash.

      Roark left. Tomorrow, I’ll call around and see if anybody works on leather that old.

      The next day, however, meetings took up most of his time. When he got home that night, he was exhausted, and he had forgotten all about the boots and belt.

      After the building passed inspection, Roark announced the grand opening of the Depot Diner. It seated about as many people as your average Waffle House and served authentic Texas and Mexican cuisine, from family-recipe posole to Americanized dishes like chili cheeseburgers. The mayor and his family attended opening night, as did every Comanche bigwig Roark could beg, harass, or threaten. By the time these people brought their friends and neighbors, cars and pickups filled the parking area and the grass lot, with many more lining both sides of Austin Street. Patrons stood on the walk or sat on the new backless benches as they slapped mosquitoes, bullshitted, and waited for their tables.

      No one paid any attention to the wind that sometimes kicked up when certain townsfolk stepped onto the depot grounds. And if the patrons noticed the way the air shimmered near the storage building, none of them spoke of it.

      Chapter Six

      May 23, 2016—New Orleans, Louisiana

      Raymond sat on his front porch, watching the oak’s shadow stretch its bony fingers across the yard. He held a glass of sweet tea in his lap, the condensation dampening his trousers. These days, he drank enough tea to make him diabetic, as if water or Coca-Cola would cast him back to rock bottom as effectively as straight whiskey. Those drunken months had probably damaged his liver, and all this sugar could not be good for his kidneys. Would it always be like this—exchanging one addiction for another, one kind of harm for something just as bad?

      He had left LeBlanc in the office around three. They had just finished one of those divorce jobs that made Raymond feel like a piece of shit in a broken-down outhouse, and now he badly wanted a whiskey, a beer, anything to dull the knife edge in his brain.

      The wife had hired the agency to follow her husband, who led them to a motel on I-10. This fellow went inside one of the rooms and exited an hour later, his clothes disheveled. Raymond snapped some photos and stayed put, keeping his camera trained on the door. Ten minutes later, the man’s companion left, running her fingers through her hair and adjusting her bra straps. She could not have been more than fifteen. Raymond took more pictures as she descended the concrete-and-metal staircase and passed under the breezeway, out of Raymond’s sight, out of his life. Ever since, he had felt dirty just for having been there, for not trying to save that girl from whatever life she led. Even Travis Bickle had done more than watch. But saving her had not been the job. Besides, who was he to fix anybody else’s life? Hopefully, the wife would use the pictures to take everything that son of a bitch had, maybe put him in jail for statutory rape, where he would find out firsthand what it was like to be used.

      On such days, Raymond ached for Marie so deeply it felt like illness. In the old days, whenever he came home feeling slimy, he took off his shoes, cracked his toes, and stretched out on the couch, his head in her lap. If she asked him about the job, he told her. If she did not, he just closed his eyes as her fingers worked his temples, his sinuses. The tension and filth drained away. Sometimes he would drift off to sleep for twenty minutes or half an hour. When he awoke, he saw her face, and if that could not make him feel better, nothing would.

      But now she was gone.

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