Free No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) by Digital Fiction Page B

their hands in. Rather than
lawyers, the three were like little emperors. Nothing moved without their
knowing about it. Legal or illegal, it was all the same to them. No one ever
proved it, was all. “They’ll know why I’m there,” I muttered.
    “Yeah,
can’t be helped at this point. You’ll be alone as far as they know.” I didn’t
like that, but let her explain.
    “Local
sheriff knows, man by the name of Carr. A surveillance team will shadow you.
The less visible our profile is, the more at ease they’ll be.”
    I still
didn’t like it, but I couldn’t fault her — not really. If they thought it was a
full-blown investigation, then they would shut down whatever business they were
doing. In terms of waiting games, they could outlast us and they knew it.
    One agent
with local support would make them wary, but not overly so — at least in
theory. It would suggest the bureau wasn’t looking too closely at them, but
more at the events surrounding the house itself.
    “What
happens if it goes to the wall?”
    Wade
looked at me and offered the only answer people in her position can at times
like this. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
     
    I arrived
in town near sun up, when the light from the dawn was turning the sand and
hills a deep shade of terracotta. I’d been to places like this all along the
border. In my experience, each is the same, but different in subtle ways.
    Each has
its own kind of bleakness, standing at an edge I find most places in when they
can’t seem to decide where they should begin or end. For the people who live in
them, the rest of the world may as well not exist. There’s only the borderland,
and it’s a place where the normal rules don’t always apply.
    My phone
buzzed in my pocket, and fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot
of a diner near a patch of wasteland. Carr’s SMS told me I couldn’t miss the
sign, and he was right.
    He was
waiting for me, leaning against the side of his cruiser and sipping from a
plastic cup. A second cup was resting on the hood; for me, I assumed. Carr
wasn’t what I expected. Tall, but wiry where a lot of local law I met along the
border were beefy older men, almost all sporting some kind of handle-tache.
    Wade never
gave me his file, only a contact number. To be honest, he looked too young to
be the sheriff of a border town. A soul patch dotted his chin, of all things.
Couldn’t help but wonder how that went over with some of the locals, but then,
he was an elected official. I figured he was doing something right.
    “Agent
Schrader,” he greeted me.
    I took his
hand, but wasn’t surprised by the grip. Something had to offset his offbeat
look — offbeat at least in terms of small-town lawmen.
    “Pleased
to meet you.”
    “Call me
Jack,” I told him. “Most people do.” “Will do, most people just call me Carr.”
    He handed
me the untouched cup. It was still warm despite the chill in the morning air. I
knew by midday the temp would be pushing higher, enough to make people slow and
maybe a little irritable.
    “Your
chief was a little vague on the details of how you’re to go about your business
down here.”
    It was
better for him if it stayed that way. He seemed like an easy guy to like, and
Wade wouldn’t have brought him into the loop unless she knew something about
him. Time to see why, I thought.
    “How do
you know her?” I asked.
    Carr
pushed his hat back on his head and smiled laconically. It was a gesture meant
for an older man, but it seemed to fit his features.
    “Worked
DEA taskforce for a while,” he said, tapping his tin star. “Didn’t always wear
this, but most of my files are probably still redacted.”
    A phone
call to Wade could confirm it, but she probably wouldn’t offer much else beyond
what he said. I dropped it and got back to the case. “What do you have on King
and his associates?”
    “Not
enough juice to spit,” he replied, tipping his coffee back. “They’re good at
staying