Free The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson

her while she slept. I could feel words creeping into my mouth, words that weren’t my own. “. . . But then begins a journey in my head, to work my mind when body’s work’s expired.” I thought I’d said it to myself, but when I looked up they were both looking at me like I was the crazy person in question.
    Ruby was the first to say something. “Walter—”
    “Twenty-seventh sonnet.”
    “Christ.” Vic had redirected her look from Ruby back to me. “Look, Shakespeare, I know you’re looking for something to do since Cady left, but this isn’t it. I hate to be the one to break the news to you after twenty-four years in law enforcement, but some people are in jail because they did it.”
    They had continued talking to me but their voices had diminished as if I were falling away from them even as their siren song continued.

October 27, 11:36 P.M.
    Dog stood on the wooden walkway with me and stared into the empty motel room. I held the hollow-core door back with my right hand and looked around. There was a sagging single bed to the left and a dresser to the right, but what was of more interest was the bathroom door at the far end of the room, which was partially shut with the light on.
    There were noises coming from the bathroom.
    I stepped into the room and set my bag on the only chair beside a wobbly round table. Dog started toward the half-closed door, but I made a noise through my teeth that stopped him. There was the sound of metal on metal, a clanking of something into something, a shuffling noise, and then the door opened.
    Juana, the young woman from the bar, stood there silhouetted in the backlight of the bare, sixty-watt bulb. I smiled as I flipped the light switch, illuminating dead flies in the childish cowboy-and-Indian sconce above the bed. Dog wagged. She blinked and didn’t smile back at me or Dog. She held a toolbox in one hand and a pipe wrench like a weapon in the other. “Does he bite?”
    “Nope.”
    She continued to look at the beast as he did his best to convey an even disposition by continuing to wag. She still held the wrench, which looked massive in her small but steady hand. “I don’t like dogs.”
    I picked my bag up by the handles and tossed it onto the bed. It landed against the peeling painted headboard. “That’s too bad; he likes pretty girls.”
    She didn’t move. “I fixed your toilet.”
    I sat in the empty chair and listened to its recitative of creaks; I took off my hat and rested it on my knee. My head still hurt, and I massaged my eyes in an attempt to drive the headache down my neck. “Glad to be in compliance with the you-gotta-have-a-crapper-in-any-room-you-rent law.”
    “I felt guilty about charging you full price—figured you should have a bathroom that works.”
    I took a deep breath and looked up at her. She was placing the wrench into the toolbox. Dog sat on the worn, somewhat green carpet between her and the door. “I heard you didn’t work here anymore.”
    She smiled and stiff-armed a lean on the dresser; it shifted. “Pat fires me about once a week, but nobody else’ll work for him, especially for the nothing he pays.”
    I worked my jaw, lay the back of my head against the cool plaster surface of the wall, and rolled the dice of nationalism. “So, what’s a nice Guatemalan girl like you doing in a place like this?”
    “I’m not legal, and this place is under the radar.”
    I nodded and looked around. “It’s that.”
    She continued to study me. “Are you okay?”
    I took another breath. “I’ve got a headache.”
    She opened the toolbox and pulled out a small plastic bottle of aspirin, uncapped the container and tapped six small orange tablets into my outstretched hand. “Children’s, so you’ll need three times as many.”
    “You keep aspirin in your toolbox?”
    “Plumbing gives me headaches.” She started to turn. “They’re chewable, but I’ll get you some water.”
    “No need.” I popped the pills into my mouth and