Skin Medicine

Goode went on to tell him what that had been like. And as he told it, his eyes got wide and staring, his face rubbery and discolored. A tic jumped at the corner of his lips as he told his story, gazing fearfully into the distance as if he saw the Devil riding in on horseback. When he finished…he was shaking and breathing hard.

“ Sounds like what?” he finally said. “About thirty pounds of prime manure? Maybe. But I swear it’s true. That body in that box…it weren’t dead. Least not in the way we understand dead, you and me. It was crawling and scratching and nails were popping free…and Jesus, Charlie, I coulda pissed myself. Whatever was in that box, well, it weren’t right at all. Like its spirit had just gone sour like bad milk.”

Graybrow listened and kept his sarcasm to himself, because he knew Goode. And Goode was about as superstitious as most atheists. He wasn’t above telling a few tall ones, but Graybrow knew this was not one of them.

Goode pulled hard off the bottle. “I never told a living soul about this, Charlie. And I’m telling you only because I trust you and we killed a few bottles together and you’re an injun. You people know about shit like this. White folk? Hell, we’re black and white from toe to skull. Something don’t fit in our worldview, we pave it over with bullshit so’s we can sleep at night. But Indians…yeah, you people ain’t afraid to look the dark things in the face, ain’t afraid of admitting that there’s black, evil things that can drive a man mad to look upon.”

Graybrow appreciated that, even though he didn’t say so. “You think that Cobb wasn’t human as such any longer?”

“ I don’t know what to think,” he said, “but what was in that box…well, I’m not above admitting that if it had gotten out, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“ And you think that Cobb brought hell to this place?”

Goode licked his lips, thought it over real carefully. “Well, I keep my ear to the ground and I hear things. We brought the body to Callister’s Mortuary. And that night, they say, Callister was found dead. And it weren’t suicide. Rumor has it Cobb’s body was nowhere to be found, but the other Callister-Caleb-he shushed it up. Now, I don’t think I have to tell you what’s happened over in Deliverance since then. Even the Mormons themselves won’t go within a mile of that place.”

“ And you think Cobb went there? That he’s the…focus of this?”

But Goode would only shrug. “Those are the facts way I know ‘em. First chance I get, Charlie, I’m gonna fill my poke and ride out of this graveyard Hell-for-Leather. The idea that old James Lee Cobb might come knocking at my door one night keeps me awake until the wee hours.”

Graybrow thought it over for a long time as they finished the bottle. Either Goode was crazy or maybe he had something. But even if he was right, there wasn’t a man in Whisper Lake that would ride out to Deliverance to check it out.

“ Well, dammit, enough confessing, Charlie. I ever tell you about the time I sold my wife for a dollar? Truth. She was a mean outfit from back east used to gargle with scrap iron and piss tacks. One time we was in this saloon at a mining camp up in the Big Horn range, Wyome Territory. This big dirt-mean sumbitch named Johnny Houle says to me, ‘How much fer ye wife, son?’ And, hoo! Me and Thedora, we had been going at it for hours. So I say, a dollar. He pays me, drags her off. She shows later, dress torn and face bruised, just a-ready to skin and scalp me. Next day, old Johnny finds me. He’s walking funny like there’s a boot and spur up his ass sideways. You know what? He wanted his dollar back…”

But Graybrow was not listening.

He was thinking of Deliverance and James Lee Cobb. Wondering just what it was he could do about it. And right then, he thought of Orville DuChien. His second sight. Orv would probably know if Cobb was up there. And if he did?

Graybrow started thinking about Tyler Cabe then.

5

Tyler Cabe thought about it real hard and decided there was only one way to hunt the Sin City Strangler: He had to make friends with the whores in town. These women would be the Strangler’s targets and if he haunted their establishments, well, just maybe, he might catch sight of the bastard. If nothing else, Cabe could put the word out about who he was and what he was doing and that might make the Strangler nervous. And that would either make him bolt…or do something careless.

And if it was the latter, Cabe planned on being there to capitalize on his mistake.

Although Whisper Lake was like any other wild mining town and had its fair share of sin and vice, its red light district was restricted to a seedy run down near the refineries ubiquitously known as Horizontal Hill. Caught between mill and lake, but hidden from the rest of Whisper Lake by a high, juniper-covered bluff? Piney Hill? this run of brothels, sporting houses, tents, and cribs was no less busy than the rest of the town.

And at night, a sight busier.