Crossroad Read online

  CROSSROAD

  A Novel

  W. H. Cameron

  To Jill

  I couldn’t have done it without you.

  PART ONE

  Wreckage

  Remember me as you pass by

  As you are now so once was I

  As I am now so you must be

  Prepare for death and follow me

  —Traditional epitaph

  ONE

  Over the Crest

  For the second time in as many weeks, I cross the spine of Shatter Hill at midnight and spot fire at the crossroad below.

  The Stiff shudders to a stop. From the ridge, the Oregon high desert stretches out before me. The moon hangs low over my right shoulder—the broad splash of the Milky Way and the sulfurous glow of the town of Samuelton on the horizon are both brighter. I’d like to believe I’m the only girl for miles.

  “Kill the headlights, Mellie.”

  A knot forms in my gut.

  Kill the lights … shift into neutral … let gravity drop me into the heart of outrage.

  Cold air pours through the window and raises gooseflesh on my neck. I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I’ve got an empty cot in the back of the Stiff, the fusty brown Transit van that serves as first call vehicle for Bouton Funerary Service. Waiting at Crestview Assisted Living is Edna Crandall, who passed away two hours ago after a long fight with cancer. According to her funeral planning worksheet, Edna is survived by four children, eleven grandchildren, and a Pomeranian named Mickey.

  “You got this, Melisende,” I mutter to myself.

  The fire is an orange point of light a half mile away. Bonfire—high school kids at the crossroad. Supposedly to summon the Shatter Hill Spirit, Barlow County’s answer to the ghost of Bloody Mary. But a séance can turn into a party in the time between everyone spilling out of their cars and someone lighting the fire.

  My last midnight at the crossroad, two weeks back, it was a mud-caked SUV and an electric-yellow pickup. I’d have kept driving if one of the partiers hadn’t thrown a beer bottle as I rolled up to the intersection. It banged off my front bumper, then shattered on the road. Through my open window, the stench of beer-vomit and burning sage watered my eyes.

  I’d heard the shrill squeak of the pickup’s springs. But it was the boys laughing themselves stupid, as one of their number screwed a girl in the bed of the pickup, that planted my foot on the brake. I didn’t know their names, but I recognized faces from Barlow Consolidated High School. Before any of them realized I’d jumped out of the Stiff, I was grabbing the boy in the pickup by the tail of his shirt.

  I’ve moved a lot of bodies in the fifteen months I’d worked for Bouton Funerary, but this was the first to fight back. I wasn’t having it. I yanked him off the tailgate and let him drop, dick down, in the dirt. The others jumped back as he rolled and tried to untangle his jeans from around his ankles. He looked like an animal.

  The girl sat up and blinked as if she was coming out of a trance. In the stark firelight, her fawn-colored skin looked blotchy and bruised, her expression desolate.

  “Landry?” Her voice was a squeak. “What were—?”

  He answered with a harsh laugh. “You know you wanted it.”

  For a long, anguished moment, the only sound was the crackle of the fire. Then, in the distance, a coyote barked.

  The girl screamed.

  The other boys scattered like cockroaches, tripping and dropping beer bottles as I pulled the girl out of the truck bed. The SUV’s tires threw gravel and then tore off down Route 55.

  Which left the animal on the ground. I put myself between him and the girl, one hand out to steady her. He managed to get his pants up over his ass and scrambled to his feet, his fists balling and his knuckles popping.

  “What you lookin’ at, bitch?”

  That’s when I recognized him. Landry MacElroy, All-State linebacker, which made the girl Paulette Soucie. I remembered their picture on the Samuelton Ledger homepage last fall, juniors in the Homecoming court—him sandy-haired and whey-faced, with a big-toothed grin; her with dark, intelligent eyes almost hidden by bangs. Eight or nine years ago, she could have been me.

  Landry was a head taller and at least fifty pounds heavier, but he seemed to be weighing his options. Maybe he wasn’t used to someone standing up to him. Or maybe he recognized my unruly, mouse-brown hair and the “Got Formaldehyde?” shirt peeking out of my jacket. Wouldn’t be the first guy who didn’t like the idea of being touched by a woman who handles the dead.

  I dropped my chin like I was about to charge.

  “Don’t need this shit.” With a roll of his head, he backed away, then threw himself into the pickup and tore off. Drunk as he had to be, I could only hope he killed himself before he killed anyone else.

  I drove Paulette to St. Mark’s Hospital and waited until her mom and the cops showed up. Nobody wanted to hear “Landry MacElroy” and “rape” in the same sentence, but I didn’t give a damn. At least the Sheriff’s Department sent Ariana Roldán, the county’s lone female deputy.

  I didn’t perform that night’s removal till nearly four o’clock, not that the dead care. The next morning, while I stood bleary-eyed in line at Cuppa Jo, Sheriff Turnbull himself informed me no charges would be filed. “Paulette insists it was just a misunderstanding,” he said as he cut ahead of me. Then, grinning as if being a goddamn line jumper was the worst thing you could say about him, he added, “Busy day. You don’t mind, do you, Mellie?”

  Only my brother Fitz is allowed to call me Mellie.

  So now—two weeks later—it’s another late-night call to Crestview, another fire at the crossroad. I check my phone. At the edge of the tableland, the signal is good. Down below, it’s spotty until you get nearer town or the ski area. I’d call 911 from here if I thought it would do any good.

  “What’s it gonna be, little sister?” Fitz died when I was eight, and his voice has rattled around in my head ever since. For seventeen years he’s been the angel—or the devil—on my shoulder.

  Short of options, I roll down Shatter Hill, headlights off and riding the brake. I try to imagine Mrs. Crandall’s Pomeranian, instead picture Paulette’s bleak gaze. Ahead, something leaps across the road, a deer maybe. As the shadow passes, the fire splits into two orange smudges. Both look like they’re in the road.

  Not a party after all.

  I hit the headlights and see two hulking shapes in the intersection, a third beyond. At the gleam of chrome, I paw for my phone in the center console.

  The signal is down to one bar. I tap digits and jam the phone against my ear.

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice sounds like it’s being transmitted on a string between two tomato cans.

  “Accident at the crossroad. Route 55 and Wayette Highway. Foot of Shatter Hill.” The flames seem to leap toward me.

  “Can you … kind of … —dent? How … —hicles are invol—”

  “I don’t know yet. Two cars at least—” I almost drop the phone as I swerve to avoid a small boulder or a chunk of wreckage. “Send everything. Fire, ambulance—”

  The call drops. I can’t tell if she heard me, but before I have a chance to worry about it, a horse clatters onto the road and rears.

  “Jesus!”

  As I slam on the brakes, the afterimage of the object I swerved to avoid resolves in my mind’s eye.

  Not a boulder at all.

  “If we’re lucky”—Fitz laughs—“that’ll turn out to be Landry’s head.”

  TWO

  The Rancher

  Out on the desert, the horse lopes around in circles, each hobbled step punctuated by an explosive snort. Hurt, but I don’t know how badly—or how to help. Ever since I arrived from Massachusetts, Uncle Rémy
has given me a crash course in life in central Oregon, but his advice hasn’t included equine care.

  The horse isn’t the only one beyond my help. From the looks of things, we’ll have a busy next few days at the mortuary. Plenty of learning opportunities for an apprentice mortician.

  I pull the Stiff off on the right side of the road and get out. I spot a gold Cadillac Eldorado first, across the intersection in the oncoming lane. The disembodied head apparently belongs to the man behind the wheel. I check off closed casket on the funeral planning worksheet in my mind. A second figure lies in a pool of blood on the road, a piece of twisted steel protruding from his chest. One arm seems to be straining for a shattered cell phone just out of reach.

  Nearer but off to the right, a red Subaru Outback tilts out of the ditch. The driver’s side has been sheared off from front fender to rear wheel, exposing the engine and passenger compartment. Under the bumper is a slight-framed, pallid teen, who looks almost as if he’s sleeping. Except no one sleeps with his neck bent that way.

  “How fast were they going, you think?”

  “Pretty damn fast.”

  “NASCAR fast.”

  Fires smolder in the cab of an F-350 on the far side of Subaru, as well as in the bunchgrass near the roadside. The rest of the big truck is burned out, as if the gas tank ignited. A horse trailer lies on its side, thirty feet off the road. Somehow, the trailer hitch is sticking up from the roof of the Eldorado. I have no idea which way any of them were going when they collided. Wreckage is scattered all over the crossroad.

  The air reeks of burning oil and hot metal. This catastrophe couldn’t have happened more than ten or fifteen minutes ago. If Mrs. Crandall had died just a little bit earlier, I might have been a witness.

  “Or part of it.”

  “No such luck.”

  My phone informs me it’s “Searching for Signal.” I look toward Samuelton for flashing lights, listen for sirens. All I can hear is the horse in the dark and the crackle of flames. If they’re lucky, whoever drove the truck died before the gas tank blew.

  We’re about as isolated as you can get in Barlow County without leaving pavement. Samuelton is twelve miles away, with the village of Crestview, on the slope of Lost Brother Butte, only a little nearer. But aside from Crestview Assisted Living, there’s not much there—a couple of bars, a general store surprising for the quality of its wine selection, a small private school, and three motels, two of which won’t be open till hunting season. Behind me, Shatter Hill rises to a broad plateau, and the open tableland is interrupted only by the Pioneer Cemetery and Old Mortuary until the Trout Rot overlook. There’s more pronghorns than people that way.

  I’m on my own.

  I’m going to be late for another removal, but no point in freezing my ass off until help arrives. As I head back to the Stiff, I kick a chunk of wreckage and send it skittering across the road. It smacks into a rolled tarp, or maybe a duffel bag. I stare at it in the uncertain light.

  Not wreckage. A gun.

  And not a duffel bag. It’s another body. A man.

  Ice water pools in my bowels when he lets out a rattling cough. The decapitation is less unsettling.

  Another wracking cough draws me across the pavement. In a way, the gun—a steel-gray automatic—is the least surprising thing about this whole mess. Half the county is armed at any given moment. If anything, the gun serves as something solid and comprehensible. I know what to do about the gun. Uncle Rémy taught me the basics after a removal where we found a handgun under the decedent’s body. Always assume a firearm is loaded. Keep your fingers away from the trigger, and so forth. I kneel beside the man and retrieve the gun. I engage the safety and slip the weighty piece into my jacket pocket. Gravel digs into my knees.

  “Sir? Can you hear me?”

  Eyes half open, he lets out another wet cough. A local rancher maybe, dressed in worn work boots and Carhartt coat. A jagged, bloody gash on his forehead switchbacks into his hairline, but I can’t tell if he has any other injuries. For all I know, his insides are jelly.

  I learned CPR and first aid in high school health class, ten years ago. A previous life. The gash on the man’s head looks like a problem, but at least he’s breathing.

  “Now what, Mellie?”

  Stop the bleeding. Treat for shock. I remember that much. When I rise to go get supplies, the man reaches out, clutches at my pant leg.

  “I just need to get some things, okay?” I hope he can’t hear my panic. “I’ll be right back.”

  He groans, and I sprint to the Stiff. Unlike the hearse we use for funerals, the van is nothing fancy. The cargo area has room for one body transport cot, with four gear bins mounted to the wall next to the rear doors. The top bin holds miscellaneous straps, tags, and bungee cords. Body bags and sheets in the next. I keep an emergency change of clothes in the third, and the bottom has nitrile gloves, deodorizing spray, paper towels and trash bags, and a drugstore first aid kit barely adequate to treat a paper cut. “A little late for emergency medical gear in a mortuary transport,” Uncle Rémy likes to joke. I tuck the handgun in with my clothes, grab the first aid kit and the sheets—skipping the body bag for now—and run back.

  I tear a strip off one of the sheets and bind the rancher’s head. Then I double up the remaining sheets and cover him up. His breath mists, pale in the glow of the Stiff’s headlights. Still alive. Over the last year, I’ve grown more comfortable with the dead than the living. I put two fingers on his clammy neck. His pulse is weak, but I don’t know if it’s dangerously so. My own pounds at my temples.

  “Sir?”

  His lips move, but all I hear is a faint wheeze.

  My phone shows no bars, but at least it’s stopped searching for a signal. I try 911 again.

  Nothing.

  The old rancher brushes my hand with his own. “Did you …?” I see the reflection of firelight in his eyes. His gasping breath is dense with tobacco.

  “Help is on the way,” I tell him, hoping it’s true.

  Barlow County Fire and Rescue has only two paid staff, plus maybe fifteen volunteers. This time of night, the on-call team could be coming from anywhere in the county. I wonder if my ex, Deputy Jeremy Chapman, will be with them. I grimace. Of course he will. Bottom rung in the tiny Sheriff’s Department, an outsider like me. He’s always pulling lousy shifts.

  Jeremy is the last person I want to see in the middle of all this.

  “Did you see her?” The rancher coughs again. Red foam collects at the corners of his mouth. “She was … there …” His head rolls toward Lost Brother. The dark tree line starts several hundred yards away, juniper and sagebrush bleeding into ponderosa pine as the land rises. I can’t tell if he’s talking about an actual person or if he believes in the ghost of the crossroad.

  “They’re coming.” I hope. “Just hang in there.”

  “She was right—” His eyes close and he seems to stop breathing. I fumble again for his pulse. Still there. Barely. He lets loose a strained gasp.

  “She was … I saw …”

  I scan the desert again. For all I know, someone else is out there—injured … or dead. Or maybe he’s delirious. I take his hand in mine, feeling helpless. The horse clomps around in the dark. Dying flames crackle in the grass. The wind shifts, and I catch a whiff of evergreen.

  Head flopping side to side, the rancher squeezes my fingers. “There, near the trees …” A low moan comes out of one of us as I spot a pale figure out on the desert.

  Who—?

  I blink, and the figure vanishes in a flash of red and blue on the road from Samuelton.

  THREE

  No Bars

  I’m trapped inside a bubble of light. The Barlow County Sheriff’s Department can barely field a softball team, but with all hands on deck, first responders plug the crossroad in every direction. I’d like to head to Crestview, but the Stiff is blocked by a fire and rescue truck. No one will move it out of my way. The EMTs are busy with the rancher. Deputies put up
work lights on telescoping stands. Voices chatter, live and via radio, but I can’t make out the words.

  Jeremy Chapman appears from behind the F-350, fire extinguisher in his hand. I wonder what the fire and rescue guys are doing if he’s putting out fires. He stows the extinguisher in the trunk of his car, then catches me looking at him. My stomach knots as he crosses the road.

  “How you holding up, Mel?”

  He’s my height, which makes it hard for me to ignore his dark eyes and brown, dimpled chin. There was a time when I liked gazing at his fine, smooth features, when I appreciated the strength in his arms and the warmth of his resonant voice. Now, frowning, I look past him. From inside the bubble, the sky is black velvet. Somewhere out beyond the lights, the horse puffs and stamps. “Why are you standing here? Someone needs to take care of that horse.”

  He laughs, nervous, and runs a hand over his short hair. “What do you think I can do, except get my ass trampled?”

  We were together six weeks, long enough for Jeremy to reach the “story of my life” phase of our relationship. I got to hear all about how he grew up in Portland, how he’d always dreamed of being a cop there, but an associate degree in criminal justice wasn’t enough. His job with the Barlow County Sheriff’s Department is just a placeholder while he finishes an online bachelor’s degree. After that, it’s back to PDX.

  My friend Barb had to explain to me PDX is how Portlanders refer to the town. Far from home is about all Jeremy and I actually have in common.

  I listen to the horse, to the EMTs and the other deputies. Someone complains about the lack of cell reception. Jeremy clears his throat. Nearly two weeks ago, when we last spoke, he tried to make excuses for why Landry wouldn’t be charged. Tonight, he picks up where he left off.

  “It was out of our hands, Mel.”

  “Was it?”

  “She recanted. She and her mom refused the rape exam. What can I tell you?”

  “You can tell me who pressured them so I can cut his dick off.”