Salt River by James Sallis

alongside the gurney when I got there, each doing his level best to defer to the other. Finally, with a shrug, Doc went to work, Wilford assisting. The small ER reeked of fresh blood, alcohol, and disinfectant. One of the exam lights overhead flickered, as though the bulb were going bad. I remembered how field hospitals would be filled with the stench of feet shut up in boots for weeks, a smell so strong that it overpowered those of blood, sweat, chemicals, piss, and cooked flesh.
    It was Milly. And it would be some time, Doc told me as he worked, before he'd know much of anything. Looked like a crushed chest, fractured hip, multiple compound fractures—for starts. Spine seemed intact, though. Lungs and heart good. Pressure down, but they were pumping fluids in as fast as they could. I might as well go about my business.
    Outside, the day was bright, the air clear, giving no hint of devastations recently wrought, or of those to come.
    I was able to get the Jeep within sight of the crash site. Burl sat beside me looking grim the whole time. He didn't care for motorized vehicles much more than he did for towns. Had too many of them shot out from under him back in the desert, he said.
    The road was dirt, naturally, one of hundreds that crisscross these hills, and barely the width of the vehicle, with layer upon layer of deep-cut ruts and damn near as many recent washouts. Now, it was primarily mud. Their being up here, on a road like this, made no sense at all. And how they'd got as far as they did in that lame tank of theirs was anyone's guess.
    The van was a glitz-and-glory Dodge, with enough chrome on it to look as though it might have escaped from some celebrity chef's TV kitchen. The sapling Burl used to free Milly was still there, half under the vehicle. Ants and other shoppers had found the blood. There were banners of duct tape on the front passenger seat. Doc had said much the same of Milly's clothing.
    Most of the windshield was gone, the remains scattered about. I kicked at them, bent over, and picked up a floppy piece with a puncture surrounded by starring. So the shot had come from behind. Blood-and-meat splatter on the windshield fragments and on the dash where the insects were chowing down. I found the handgun eight or nine yards off, plunged into the ground muzzle-first as if planted there and just starting to grow.
    The driver had been shot as the three of them slithered and slid along. With Milly taped into the passenger seat, apparently. Why? Why did they have her in the first place, why were they on this road that led essentially nowhere? And who made the shot? The half-buried handgun was a .38, same as the one that came out of Milly's bedside table. But Milly was in the passenger seat, and the shot had come from behind. What possible reason would the second man have had to shoot his driver partner? And if he did, why then would he sling the man across his back and try to carry him out?
    Way, way too many questions.
    Not to mention who the hell were these guys in the first place.
    I looked around some more—as J. T. had discovered, it wasn't like city work, with crime-scene officers, an ME, half the police force, and maybe a coffee runner or two at your beck and call—and figured I'd best give State a call, have them come down and get a fix on this. With some reluctance Burl got back in the Jeep and directed me to the dead man. There were snails all over his face. Something, a dog most likely, had eaten four fingers.
    Burl helped me roll the man in a tarp and load him in the back of the Jeep, then said he'd be heading out if I didn't need him for anything else. I thanked him for being a good citizen, and at that he laughed. Stood peering closely at me in that way he had, not blinking.
    "Don't know what went down here," he said. "Don't much care. But a man dies, it needs to be marked."
    Simple sentiments divested of qualification or abstraction, plainly spoken—just as the speaker was out here attempting to