The Cypress House by Michael Koryta

bucket of water died
swiftly in his mind. He let the door swing shut and walked out onto the sandy
soil and approached the Auburn with an arm held high to shield his face.
        He
was still fifteen feet from the car when he saw the body in the driver's seat.
Black flesh peeling from white bone, hair curling with smoke above a suit
jacket that lay across the body in smoldering strips. On the passenger seat
beside the corpse, a black case with silver latches melted and dripped onto the
floorboards.
        Arlen
turned and looked back at the bar and saw Rebecca Cady watching from the
doorway.
        "You
got a phone?" he said.
        "No."
         " No ?"
        She
shook her head. She was staring past him at the car, and her hand was tight on
the door frame.
        "Who
does?"
        She
made a distracted gesture up the road and didn't answer.
        "Well,
let's go call the police," he said. His voice was so steady it seemed to
come from another place, and he knew that it did. It came from over an ocean
and within a field of wheat dotted with poppies red as roses, red as blood.
        "Shouldn't
we get some water or —"
        "It's
past the time for water."
        She
wet her lips and glanced backward, where Paul stood in the middle of the
barroom, peering out, and said, "You two go on down the road and call for
help, and I'll —"
        "No,"
Arlen said. "We're all going together."
    ----
        

Chapter 7
        
        Rebecca
Cady had a truck with a small cab and a bed surrounded by homemade fence rails.
Arlen told Paul to climb in the bed and then he got into the passenger seat as
the woman started up the truck without saying a word. She had her lips pressed
in a grim line and never glanced at the still-smoldering Auburn as she drove
past. At the top of the hill, Arlen saw a place where the beach grass was
matted down and tire tracks showed in the sand.
        "Who
around here drives a black Plymouth?" he asked.
        "I
don't know." Rebecca Cady's tone was as flat now as it had been during
their introductions in the bar. If the idea of a man being incinerated just
outside her place of business was a concern, it was hard to tell.
        "Well,
you might want to be thinking on it," he said. "I suspect the sheriff
is going to have plenty of questions, and that's only going to be one of them.
He'll also want to know what Sorenson was doing at your place to begin
with."
        She
was silent. The breeze blew in and fanned her hair back, showing a slender,
exquisite neck.
        "You
own the place ?" Arlen asked.
        "That's
right."
        "People
die out there very often?"
        "No."
        "Well,
you sure don't look rattled. And again, if I'm the sheriff, I'm going to be
—"
        "You're
not the sheriff," she said, "and if I could offer any advice, it
would be that you let me talk to him alone and you two go on your way."
        "Go
on our way? That man is dead and —"
        "Dead
he will stay," she said. "Whether you talk with the sheriff or
not."
        "Hell,
no. There's not a chance, lady. I'll be talking to the law before I head out of
this place."
        He
watched her for a long time, but she never looked over at him. They'd left the
dirt road for the paved now, but there wasn't another vehicle in sight. It was
isolated country, forested once you got away from the coast. They'd gone at
least two miles down the paved stretch of road before a gap showed in the trees
and a single gas pump appeared in a square of dusty earth. Rebecca Cady slowed
the truck, and then they were past the trees and Arlen could see a service
station set well back from the gas pump. There was a two-bay garage and a
general store, with crates of oranges stacked beside the front door. Rebecca
Cady pulled the truck in next to a delivery van and shut the engine off. Only
then did she turn and look at Arlen.
        "I'll
go in now and call the sheriff, since that's what you