Chapter Nineteen #3
But it’s too late. I’ve already dropped off the side.
In fairness to Chief Dishman, I have rappelled once before, but it was about ten years ago, on vacation.
I’m definitely out of practice and my descent is a little joltier than I’d like, but I do at least make it to the bottom on my feet instead of my ass. Dishman is right behind me.
“You weren’t kidding about this place being a dump,” I say, my voice distorted through the respirator. I kick at the door of an old refrigerator toward the edge of the heap.
Dishman pokes at some newer-looking trash bags and a busted flat-screen TV.
“He would be on the top of the pile, right?” I ask.
“You’d think,” he says.
We both edge our way around the junk and mounds of detritus and I’m doubly glad—as I disturb some of the more liquefied areas of the heap—that I’ve got the respirator on.
“Oh…” I say, as I circle the pile and find a rolled-up blue tarp. “Give me a hand with this.”
Dishman comes to my side and we heave and ho and pull at the heavy tarp, finally getting it away from the pile enough to peel away one side.
“Oh hell—” Dishman says as we both jump backward. “Not a body.”
“Well, not a human body,” I say.
Someone’s shot a black bear—which is not currently in season—and dumped it. The corpse is fresh enough that its cause of death is clear: a shotgun slug to the head.
“I’ll call Fish and Wildlife,” he says. “They can deal with it, if they’re inclined.”
We spend another ten minutes poking around, but eventually the reality of the situation becomes clear.
“He’s not down here,” Dishman says.
“Nope.”
“Let’s head back up. You know how to use the ascenders?”
“The what?” I ask.
I may not be able to see his face, but, somehow, I can feel Dishman’s withering look.
“Come on,” he says. It’s sweaty, stinky work, but we climb out of the hole and strip off the masks and tanks.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Dishman says.
“Nah,” I say. “At least we know one place Ezra King isn’t.” I help him gather up the equipment and load it into the back of the cruiser. “Is it just me or is the sulfur smell stronger than it was before?”
“Well, it’s sort of both,” he says. “You’re gonna want to take a shower, otherwise you’ll be taking that rotten-egg smell everywhere you go.”
I pull at my T-shirt and give it a sniff. “God, you’re right.”
He runs a hand through his sweaty hair and looks back toward the hole.
“I was really hoping it’d be that easy,” he says, shutting the cruiser’s trunk.
“Me too,” I say. “But thanks for letting me go with you.”
“Letting you?” he says with a laugh. “Give me a break. If I hadn’t offered, you’d have driven straight to one of those adventure tourism places, rented the equipment yourself, and probably been down there before me.”
“True,” I say.
He shakes his head and goes around to the driver’s side of the cruiser and opens the door. He ducks his head in and pulls out a roll of black trash bags, peels two off, and hands them to me.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“You’d better put those down on that Bronco’s seat or Hollis Patton will come for both our heads. Now, go take a shower. You smell like you’ve been rolling around in garbage.”
I spread the bags over the Bronco’s driver’s seat, roll the windows all the way down, and drive back to town.
On the way to the motel, I stop off at a dollar store and buy a big bottle of dish liquid, a huge bottle of water, and a couple candy bars.
Hollis must be keeping an eye out, because as I’m on my way to the room, he runs out of the lobby and strides up to me—at the last second taking a step back and pinching his nose shut.
“Jesus,” he says. “You stink.”
“I’ve been down in the Hell Hole.”
“Shit,” he says. “Looking for Ezra King’s body?” He jogs along beside me as I speedwalk to my room.
“You already heard?” I ask.
“Hell, it’s all over town,” he says with a loud laugh.
When we get to my room, he says, “You wanna know what I heard down at the pool hall?”
I give him what I hope is a look as wilting as the ones Dishman’s been giving me, but apparently I need more practice because Hollis just keeps going. “Folks are saying he was buried alive and escaped.”
“I saw the photos of Ezra’s body,” I say. “That man was definitely not buried alive.”
“Well, hell,” Hollis says. “I agree with you there. But, if he wasn’t buried alive and he didn’t float out of his coffin on a one-way trip to heaven, then where the hell is he?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s my job to find out.”
I open the door to the room and head inside. Hollis stands in the doorway behind me, the light and heat filtering around him, while I crank up the AC and toss my bag onto the bed.
“Ezra King had everybody in this town thinking he was an upstanding man of God. Even if they didn’t like the snakes or the faith healing or the tent revivals, couldn’t nobody say he wasn’t right with the Lord.”
“Okay…” I say, unsure where he’s going with this.
“But I suspect, Miss Gore, that you’re about to disabuse them of that notion.”
I find myself smiling softly at his dark silhouette, limned in bright morning light, as I say, “You believe I’ll find his body? Find whatever he was into? Find whatever happened to him?”
He maneuvers his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket as he says, “I believe you won’t stop trying till you do.”