Cooper ambles forward in the silence, his empty hands raised in surrender. It’s so quiet you can hear his boots squeak in the road. The early-evening simmer rises off the road in throbbing waves. He spots the figure in the distance, Dietrich, waiting for him, patiently. At this distance, at rest, with his rifle hoisted up and pointed skyward, Dietrich looks like a creature with an extra appendage. His silhouette dances in the heat.
The town has the smell of blood now. Cooper catches the scent on the feeble breeze. He waves a hand meekly. Summons his voice.
“Dietrich!”
Dietrich faces him, square in the center of the street, with no pretense of caution or concern.
“Sheriff Cooper,” he says. “You come to arrest me?”
Cooper inches closer, hands still high. “No. I’ve come to cut a deal.”
“Too late. I already got the tattoos.”
“Look, Dietrich. I just need time. To get out. Me, and the boy, and his mother. Just the three of us. I have a truck. Just let us go. Us three.”
“No.” Dietrich savors the finality of his reply.
“Come on. You don’t care about that boy.”
“I don’t. But someone does.”
“I’ve got information you can use, Dietrich. This town is full of bounties. I don’t mean petty criminals, either. I mean targets whose lives are worth tens of thousands of dollars, even hundreds of thousands, if you take their scalps home to the right people.”
“As you may have noticed, I haven’t really concerned myself so far with collecting scalps.”
“Have you ever heard of William Wayne?”
Dietrich shakes his head. But he’s curious.
“How about Esau Unruh?” says Cooper. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
Dietrich listens. The money doesn’t matter much to him. This job was sold to him as a flat-fee undertaking, and while the payment offered was impressive, even flattering, it was meaningless, just more numbers to pile up in a bank account. No, it was the anarchy of the endeavor that appealed to him. Not the planning beforehand, or the payment afterward, but this—these few roiling hours of absolute freedom. This new information intrigues him, however, a little bit. “Yes, I’ve heard that name,” he says. “In prison once. He’s supposed to be, like, some super killer. The person in question, who told me about him, spoke of him like a ghost.”
“He’s here. In this town. He’s in hiding right now. I can tell you exactly where he lives. And there’s, I don’t know, there’s got to be a dozen men in the outside world who would pay a million dollars each to see him dead. Hell, they’d pay you a bounty just to hear the story of how you did it. You’d be the man who killed Esau Unruh.”
Dietrich listens to this, too. Unruh’s got to be a hundred years old by now, from the way that guy spoke about him in prison, like he’s been alive the whole century, haunting the countryside. Probably he’s now just some old man sitting in his own shit in a bungalow, babbling about nothing to no one. Not much sport to that. But, yes, a good story. A good trophy. A great tattoo.
“And why are you telling me this, Sheriff?”
“Because I want to live, and I don’t have anything else to bargain with.”
“And what are you asking me for again?”
“Just time. Ten minutes. To get to my truck. Me, the woman, and the boy.”
“You have to leave that boy. That’s non-negotiable.”
“The woman will never leave without her son.”
“Then leave them both.”
Dietrich shrugs. Final offer. Cooper, a man with no leverage, considers the options. His hands still held high. Then he acquiesces, visibly. Dietrich sees it happen. A slumping, an internal collapse, a moral crumbling.
For Cooper, it’s a well-practiced look.
“All right. That’s fair. Just me,” says Cooper softly. “I’ll go. Ten minutes. That’s all I need.” It’s so hot out right now, he thinks. Their two shadows stretch in the street grotesquely. Cooper and Dietrich, out here chatting, like old buddies. Cooper’s sweating. His hands tremble. Weary from being raised in surrender for so long.
“Which way? To Unruh?” says Dietrich.
Cooper nods toward a cul-de-sac. “Last house on the next street over. He’s alone. No one ever bothers him. He’s home right now.”
“I just came from that block,” says Dietrich.
“Trust me, he’s there. Look, you can take care of him, then get back to your business. I just need ten minutes to get to my truck. You see me again, you kill me. Deal?”
Dietrich’s not even sure where the sheriff intends to go. The fences are locked. The agents aren’t letting anyone leave. If he does try to go, they’ll shoot him down as quick as Dietrich would.
“Yes, all right, it’s a deal,” says Dietrich. “You go.”
Cooper bows, like a supplicant being dismissed. “Ten minutes,” he says, then turns to walk away, then breaks into a jog and runs. Dietrich watches him go. He fires a few shots from the rifle straight up in the air, as though celebrating, pop pop pop, just to remind whoever’s out there that he’s still here, he’s still in their town, and he’s still coming. In fact, he’s on his way right now.
36.
FRAN HAS ALWAYS HAD an awareness of vague evil in the world, as well as the knowledge that her one job in life is to protect her son from it. There is a freedom to this clarity. Like joining a religious order—the freedom of complete and unquestioning discipline. Whether you previously had a purpose, or wanted a purpose, in life, like it or not, you now have a purpose.
Keep him safe.
Eight years can go by in an instant. She remembers Isaac when he seemed no heavier to hoist than a loaf of bread. She remembers his first words, his first steps, Isaac as a toddler playing in the yard that rings their bungalow. She remembers tugging on, then discarding, pair after pair of inadequate trousers, all of which seemingly just moments ago had fit him perfectly. These images are the pages on her internal calendar. Not days, not months, not years—these milestones mark her time here. Isaac breaking his arm, and Nurse Breckinridge setting it, and assuring her no X-rays were needed, and Fran’s almost overwhelming relief at not having to leave the gated town with her son. Or Isaac, planted in the corner of his bedroom with his books, reading and re-reading the pages, making the most of everything because months would pass between the arrival of anything new. When some new toy did arrive, ordered on the sly by Spiro, they’d unbox it together and invent some new mythology around it. Neither of them had any idea who the Ultrabots were, or the Cosmos Squad, or the Jungletrex Ultimate Warriors, or whatever off-brand knockoff Spiro managed to purloin, so they just made up their own stories together. They sat and determined who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. You can always tell the bad guys, she told him, because they’re the ones who look bad.