Welcome back to the conclusion of Four Corners. If you missed Part I, make sure to check it out. I’m excited to see how everyone feels about this.
As I mentioned last week, this was an early experiment in quasi-mystery. It’s still more thriller than mystery and there’s a lot I would change if I were writing this today. But I hope you still enjoy it.
Four Corners Part II
I woke before dawn. Someone was banging on my trailer door. I grabbed the .38 from my nightstand, pulled my robe closed around me, and went to the door. I peered through the peephole and saw Harry standing there, flowers in hand.
I slid the .38 in the pocket of my robe and opened the door. He stepped in, no words, no warning. He kissed me, then he stepped back and extended the flowers.
“Harry, it’s what?” I looked at the clock on the microwave in the kitchen. “Jesus, it’s three in the morning. What are you doing?”
He smiled now. “I’ve been feeling down. Like I haven’t paid enough attention to you lately.”
Harry was the only one who paid any attention to me. Everyone knew why I washed out from Dewpoint P.D., but he was the only one who didn’t care. He was the only one who gave me a job, gave me money, helped me get a place here on the reservation rent-free.
“You’ve been fine.”
He kissed me again and pushed me back toward the bedroom. I wanted to, but I was tired and I had started thinking about the case the minute I woke up.
“Wait,” I said, and he did. We stopped in the hall and I looked at him. “Harry, I’ve got to get to work on this case soon. Got to get down to Hopi P.D. before they release some evidence to the feds.”
“Is that right? So, you’re making progress already?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he said, stepping back into the living room. “Didn’t seem like the feds or locals were getting anywhere, but you’re my girl. It’s not surprising.”
Harry ran a hand through his hair, smiled at me again. I motioned toward the couch, but he shook his head.
“I’m sorry about this. I was up drinking tonight. I shouldn’t—”
I laughed. “Harry, I’d have you in my bed right now if I didn’t have to get moving in a couple hours. Don’t apologize to me.”
“All right, all right.” He still had the flowers and he nodded to them. “Will you at least take these?”
“Of course.” I went to the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cupboard. I filled it with water and came back into the living room.
Harry handed me the flowers and I put them in the cup. He said, “What’s the evidence you’re after?”
“Trash,” I said.
He laughed. “Trash?”
“That’s all I know. Little Saveka girl, the sister, she said Hopi P.D. collected trash from out in front of the house. Bagged it up and took it with them.”
“Interesting,” Harry said. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep. Keep me post though, huh?”
I winked at him. “You got it, boss.”
I wasn’t able to sleep after Harry left. For me, that meant thinking about things I didn’t want to think about. It meant thinking about that boy I shot.
He was high on meth and he had been reported by a neighbor. She’d called in saying he was waving a gun around. I was first on scene, and the fucking kid went into his pocket. Wouldn’t stop when I told him. When his hand came out, he was pointing something at me, and I fired. Six shots in all.
And all he had was a flashlight.
The board called it a clean shoot. The department might have let me stay on, but there were two problems. You couldn’t shoot a boy in Dewpoint and stay on the good side of its residents. And I couldn’t stop seeing that boy every time I climbed into my cruiser.
Brandon would be at the station by five, and it was a bit of a drive. Fuck it, I thought. I threw on a pair of jeans, pulled on my boots, grabbed a leather jacket from the bedroom closet, and tossed the old John Deere cap on my head. I clipped a holster to my belt and tucked the .38 inside.
I drove in the early morning darkness, shivering under my leather jacket and wishing the heater on my El Camino worked better. I thought about the case while I drove. Jonathan Saveka was a nobody. He wasn’t the type to be involved with anything that would lead to this. It didn’t make sense. When a body was dismembered like that, there was always a reason. A message. I’d seen it in some of the case files I reviewed when I was still a cop. But this felt off.
I didn’t know who Harry’s buyers were for any of the products he held. But I did know how he laundered the money. The buyers spent their money in the casino. Legal gambling on the reservation as far as the outside world could tell. But in reality, they were washing the money. In exchange, Harry released the product to these buyers. I didn’t know where the product came from, and I didn’t care. Not part of the job.
But I did care that the operation was put on hold because of this body. Because of Saveka. It meant that my paydays might not come as frequently. It meant that Harry’s mood might turn sour. It meant that I might have to go back to a world where I was forced to confront what I’d done to that boy, to that boy’s family.
Fuck, there had to be something I was missing.
I heard the metal crunch before I felt the tail end of the El Camino slide. I caught a brief glimpse of a headlight in my side mirror before I spun.
I remembered the academy as the El Camino spun on the slick, wintery road. I let go of the steering wheel and lifted my foot away from the pedals. All I could do is let momentum and the engine do its thing. And hope the impact wasn’t that bad.
The front end of the car hit the guardrail and jolted me forward and to the left. The car ratcheted around and the driver’s side hit the guardrail next. But the El Camino had come to a stop. I was facing the wrong way in the road and with a fucked up car, but I was alive.
My driver’s side headlight was out, but the passenger side light illuminated an old Ford pickup barreling down on me. I grabbed the shifter, threw the El Camino into reverse, and jammed on the gas.
The Ford bounced off the guardrail and kept on coming. Another flashback to the academy. J-Turns. I hit the brakes just enough to pull the shifter into drive. At the same time, I spun the steering wheel. It happened in a second, but I was facing the right way in the road now.
The Ford was still behind me. I gunned the engine and flew down the highway. I couldn’t outrun the Ford. I needed to do something.
I reached for the .38, considered firing it out the window. But that wouldn’t do anything. The Ford was right behind me now. I swerved into the oncoming lane and hit the brakes. The Ford flew up next to me, and I was able to swing the El Camino back into the rear corner of the truck.
The Ford spun in front of me, and then it was behind me. I lost sight of it in my rearview just after I saw it slam into the guardrail. I kept my foot pressed down on the accelerator and drove as fast as I could toward the station.
“What the fuck?” I said to myself.
Someone was following me. They would have seen me go to Saveka’s place. They would have seen me talking to the girl, going to the station, calling Brandon.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Brandon. He picked up, but I didn’t let him speak. “Get the evidence, get a gun, and be ready for me.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it, Brandon. Trust me.”
“All right,” he said. “When will you be here?”
“Five minutes,” I said before hanging up.
I was there in three. I slid into the parking lot, across the ice and snow and gravel. I swung open my door and ran into the station. Brandon was sitting behind the desk with a shotgun resting on his lap. He lifted it when I came through the door.
“Fuck, Reagan.”
“Where is it?”
“Right here.” He pointed at a bag on the desk.
I walked to the desk and told him what had happened. Told him about the case, the Ford trying to run me off the road. I didn’t tell him why the case was important to Harry.
Brandon came around to the front of the desk, held the shotgun on the front door. I looked at the baggie on the counter. At the piece of trash collected from the Saveka place. Just trash. But it was also more than that. It was an empty package of nicotine gum.
Buckle.
I was turning to tell Brandon when the front door’s glass blew out. Brandon managed to squeeze the trigger on the shotgun, but all he hit was the wall to the right of the door. He stumbled backwards and I tried to catch him. But he was on the ground. He was bleeding, and someone was coming through the destroyed opening that used to be the station’s entrance.
I reached for my .38, but Buckle yelled and fired a shot over my shoulder.
“Don’t move,” he said.
He was a shed, a house. Buckle was a wide man but not fat. And he moved with ease. That’s why Harry employed him. Buckle was the intimidator. And apparently, Buckle was able to chop up the body of an innocent man.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Maybe he didn’t know why I was there, what I was doing.
“What’s in that bag there, Reagan?”
I shrugged. “Junk, it looks like.”
He laughed and took a step closer, his .45 pointed at my chest. “Show me, slowly.”
I lifted the bag off the counter and held it up for him to see. “Looks like nothing to me.”
Buckle shook his head. “You’re better than that, Reagan. We both know you know what that is. I know where it was found because I fucked up and left it there. So, you know what comes next, right? You know how this has to end.”
I did. But I was curious. Before he put a bullet in my chest and made this all look like my doing, I had to know why he’d done it. “I get that you enjoy violence, Buckle. But I can’t figure out why you chopped that poor man up. What was the point?”
Buckle laughed. “It wasn’t about him. Not at all about that fucking Indian. Harry’s next few shipments were going to be a bit low.”
I cocked my head, and Buckle winked. I let him go on.
“Harry ain’t the only one who can make deals. I cut a few of my own, supplied some friends with some guns for a fair price.”
“Which meant Harry’s contacts, who had already paid for their product, would be shorted.”
Buckle tapped the barrel of his gun to his forehead. “Now you’re getting it. I figured we’d get more product, and I’d come up with a story for the stuff I sold. But I needed time for that. I needed to shut down distribution.”
“So, you killed someone, spread his body parts across four states, and let the shit show handle the disruption for you.”
“Bingo.”
“But why Saveka?”
“Because he was there. He was easy.”
I shook my head, and Buckle took one more step forward.
“No more questions,” he said.
I watched Buckle’s finger on the trigger, saw it tightening. I thought about trying for the .38. Didn’t have much to lose. But it was too late. Buckle was going to pull the trigger. He would kill me and set the whole scene to look like I’d gone insane. Done something terrible.
Buckle smiled as he squeezed the trigger, but his gun didn’t fire. Instead, there was an explosion by the door, and Buckle’s head snapped forward. He fell to the ground and I saw the bullet hole in the back of his head.
Then I saw Harry.
He stepped through the mess, lowered his gun, and hugged me. “You’ve got to go. You can’t be here.”
“But,” I said, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I felt bad about barging in, and I was coming back to your place to apologize. I saw the lights on here, saw Buckle’s truck and your car.”
I nodded and said the only thing that made sense. “Thank you.”
Harry stepped back. “I’ll clean this up, but you have to go.”
I looked down at Brandon. I’d hoped he was still breathing, but his body was still. Then I looked at Buckle. His blood was pooling with Brandon’s. I stepped over Buckle, walked to the door. I looked back at Harry one more time and he waved me off.
Outside, in the cold morning air, I looked around. This place was all I knew, but maybe it was time to move on. I got into my car and thought about my father. Then I thought about the boy I shot. Maybe if I was gone—really gone—his family could forgive me. Or forget me.