How They Kill You At Thousand Palms
by
Ray Nayler

David felt the place before he saw it. He knew it was close, and his fingers were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel in anticipation for minutes before it came out of the haze. The palm trees rose off to the side of the highway in leaning rows, shaking their mangy heads in the breeze. Some were dead and drying in the heat, frondless. They stuck up out of the ground like the fingers of a buried giant. A sun-faded gray billboard sign showed a woman in a red-and-white striped bathing suit waving in front of a pool and said, in almost illegible white letters, "Welcome to THOUSAND PALMS!!!" 
He guided the car through an open, wrought iron gate and down a wide neglected boulevard scattered with sharp fallen fronds blown down in the windstorm of the night before. He remembered the motel room—smoking cigarettes and looking out the window into darkness as the wind battered the top of the lone Joshua tree in the middle of the parking lot. He had been a hundred miles away from Thousand Palms, and he had felt Ben—could picture him, sitting in his trailer and looking out into the darkness, waiting. Both of them waiting, together. And somehow he knew that Ben would not run away, this time. Could Ben feel him the same way?—look at an empty plate in a diner and know that he had eaten from it?—see the snuffed out cigarette in an ashtray and know the hand that had extinguished it? Could Ben feel him now, closing in? He thought so. How many close calls had he had? How many still-warm motel beds in thirty years? How many times had he smelled that cheap cologne lingering in a bathroom? But each of those times, when he was close, he had known he wouldn’t catch him. He had hoped—but he had known. This time was different.
Ben had made a mistake in Barstow, leaving that girl behind. For David, it was a simple matter of showing Ben’s picture around and the red-eyed little girl—not more than seventeen—had raised her head from the corner booth in the diner—where she had drunk innumerable cups of coffee. Ben had left her sleeping in a motel room, alone. But—smart little thing that she was—she’d relieved him of his wallet. So after David had agreed to a price—which was twenty dollars and a bottle of SoCo—she gave him a slip of paper. It was a receipt for one hundred and twenty dollars—the price of two months trailer space at Thousand Palms, dated three days before. Two months! Ben was digging his heels in. The girl offered to come with him. Instead, he’d dropped her off at the Greyhound stop in Victorville—with four hundred dollars and two more bottles of SoCo in the pockets of her baggy pea coat. She’d kissed him goodbye and put her tongue in his mouth. He’d tasted Ben, and gagged.
He drove slowly along the boulevard as the numbers on the signs—most of them fronting empty lots—increased and he got closer. The few trailers left in the place looked like weathered rock outcroppings. They had become part of the landscape. Lot #39 came up on the right hand side, and he glanced down the cul-de sac, seeing the small aluminum airflow trailer sitting under two badly leaning palms whose heads were inches away from colliding. Ben’s car was not there. He kept driving, pulling his car into an empty lot a few hundred yards past Ben’s space, parking it behind a dumpster full of dry grass cuttings and plant litter, out of sight of the main boulevard. David sat in the car for a moment, letting the beating of his heart slow. He opened the glove box and took out the scratched black .45 automatic. He shoved a clip in and sat with a moment with it in his lap, petting it absently with one hand and staring at the cinderblock wall next to his car. A lizard made its way up the wall, stopping every few seconds and jerking its head around, looking for predators. It made the top of the wall safely and started doing push-ups in the hot sun. David pushed the automatic into its shoulder holster and slipped on a light linen jacket specially cut to conceal the gun’s bulge as much as possible.
When he stepped out of the car, the heat hit him like a fist and almost doubled him over. The tops of the palm trees roared in the hot breeze, as if they were on fire. Immediately, he began to sweat. He made his way back down the wide boulevard, sticking close to the rows of palms, ready to duck behind one of them at the sound of a car. But no cars came. Thousand Palms was as silent and empty as the desert that surrounded it.
The trailer sat in the middle of a circle of dead grass littered with palm debris and a broken lawn chair. The lock on the front door was an easy one, and David had it open in under a minute. When he opened the door, the smell from the trailer hit him in the face—the reek of cheap cologne and cigarettes riding atop a ground swell of other musty odors. The dim interior of the trailer was hotter than the outside—furiously, violently hot. It was a single room with a small partition separating a tiny kitchen area. The main living and sleeping area was filled by a fold-down wall bunk, an old leather armchair, and a minuscule black-and-white television set. The walls were wallpapered with western scenes—cowboys lassoing calves, Indians on horseback—like the walls of a ten-year-old boy’s room. Magazines were strewn across a small coffee table—not Penthouse, as David had expected, but Teen Beat and Bop fanzines. David closed the door softly behind him, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light that filtered through the dusty blinds. On the bunk was a teddy bear, and, stacked neatly at the end, a small pink and white dress. The dress was too small for a grown woman. David’s stomach turned. He drew the .45 from its holster and crossed to the bathroom door.
The cramped bathroom was littered with shaving instruments, combs, and a bottle of the cologne that had haunted him for thirty years. A pair of white child’s tights hung over the shower. On the edge of the sink sat two toothbrushes. One of them had Kermit the Frog grinning on the handle. David’s stomach cramped and his heart quickened. He tasted bile. He could feel Ben’s throat under his fingers, his hands crushing the life from him. He caught his reflection in the mirror and jumped, startled at the ugliness of the face there. The brown eyes had turned inky black, like two holes drilled in the lined face. A grimacing square of teeth showed from peeled-back lips. It was a skull—the face of the boatman waiting at the edge of the river. He touched the glass with the barrel of the .45.
"Tonight."
The mouth in the mirror moved silently and in sync.
* * *
Dusk came hours later without breaking the heat in the trailer. David had taken his jacket off and sweated through his shirt until it was wet against his body. He sat in the leather armchair with the .45 in his hand pointing at the closed door. He sat and waited, and while he waited he leafed through the picture book that was his memory. His snapshots. Thirty years ago, a pretty blonde girl in a bar, looking over her shoulder. Her face a little pale. Now, slightly turned away from him, stirring her drink and gazing into the red fluid, the ringlets of her blonde hair flowing down across a cheekbone in a sweeping curl that hid everything but her eye and the delicate, slightly rounded tip of her nose. How long had he sat and watched her, not wanting to go back to her husband and tell her he had found her? She had looked nothing like the picture shoved across his desk—she had around her a feeling of calm, of quiet.
Later, in the hotel room, her in her bra and panties, one leg off of the bed as she reached for her cigarettes, laughing and looking over her shoulder at him. She was about to say something--she was about to say
"And to think that you’re still getting paid for this."
He reached over to light her cigarette. "I’ve been paid for worse—that’s for sure. And you weren’t hard to find. It just took a little legwork—showing your picture around. You have a face people remember."
She shook a cigarette from the pack and stuck it between her lips. He reached over and lit it with a match he snapped into flame with his thumb. It was a nice touch, and she raised an eyebrow in response to it.
"Are you sure you want to go back to him?" Now, suddenly, his controlled hand shook. "We could . . ."
She blew smoke in his face. "I’ve worried him enough. He’s paid for what he did. I just want to go back—now that he’s sorry—maybe we can start over. You have to forgive, a little."
David made a helpless gesture at the bed, the room, their nearly naked bodies. "Then what is this?"
She smiled. "A last little bit of revenge. Isn’t it sweet, though?"
And she’d kissed him.
Two days later she was dead in a bathtub, naked, with a man’s tie wrapped around her throat and the frying pan that had smashed her face in laying in a dry puddle of blood. Her blonde hair had been stained pink and red with her own blood. That was another snapshot. He’d been there, looking over the police detective’s square shoulders. The cops had looked at him like his fault—he’d brought her back into the arms of the man who beat her—and now, she was dead. And Ben was gone. Ben had planned it—he’d emptied his bank accounts, packed his suitcases, and disappeared.
But nobody stayed away forever—and as long as they were somewhere on the earth, David Madden could find them. It was what he did. Between cases, for thirty years, in every free moment, he had hunted. And hunted. From Tucumcari, New Mexico to Cairo, Illinois to Spokane, Washington.
The breeze had stilled outside, and the crickets took over. The heat subsided a little, but it still lay thick in the trailer. David sat and watched the door, unmoving. Finally, lights played across the blinds, and he heard the sound of a car’s engine shutting off with a shudder. Boots clunked across the pavement. He cocked the pistol and listened.
The knob of the door turned and the door slowly opened. David watched the black shape in silhouette as it paused in the doorway, suddenly becoming aware of his presence in the dark, the head raised as if to sniff at the air.
"Who’s there?" Ben’s voice said into the darkness.
David clicked the lamp on next to his chair.
Ben’s face was gray, and his green eyes were so wide that the irises looked like olives floating in glasses of milk. His arms were filled by two bags of groceries. He stared down the barrel of David’s automatic. As David watched, the expression on Ben’s face slowly changed from one of ashy shock to one of recognition—and acceptance.
"So you finally found me."
David nodded. "Could you feel me last night, during the storm?"
Ben shook his head.
David felt an odd sort of disappointment. He felt cheated, somehow.
"Couldn’t you tell how close I was?"
"No."
"Did you stand at your window and look out into the darkness?"
Ben shook his head. "No."
David gestured angrily with the barrel of the automatic. "Put the fucking groceries down on the table. You look like an idiot standing there with all that food."
Ben walked over and set the groceries down. He did it with an incredible slowness, moving in jerks, staring the entire time at the gun in David’s hand.
"Now sit down on the bunk."
Ben obeyed. His hands clutched the side of the bunk. He cleared his throat and his eyes moved from the gun and locked for the first time with David’s. "You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?"
"Yes. But first you’re going to tell me about how you killed her, and why. You had planned to kill her before you hired me, hadn’t you?"
Ben nodded. He closed his eyes and brought one hand up to his face, rubbing with thumb and middle finger at his temples. "Yes," he said to the floor. "I knew that she was—that she was cheating on me. She didn’t even have the decency to have an affair—it was just whoever she could find. She didn’t even try to hide it. She would just laugh at me." He looked up into David’s eyes again. "She would just laugh at me. Have you ever had a woman that you loved laugh at you?"
"Don’t drag me into this. I didn’t beat her face in with a frying pan and then strangle her with one of my ties."
Ben winced. "It was so long ago. I never . . . I could never . . . I can’t believe."
"It’s funny," David said. "Sitting here tonight it seems like just yesterday."
With a sudden brave burst of hatred Ben yelled: "You slept with her. You slept with my wife. I hired you to bring her back to me, and you slept with her!"
"What?" David’s hand tightened on the grip of the automatic.
Ben clenched his teeth. "You fucked my wife in that motel room, the night you found her."
David stood up and took a step forward, leveling the .45 at Ben’s face. "Say that again. Say that again so that I can blow your brains out."
Ben closed his eyes, turning his head away from the gun. "You’re killing me for her, avenging her death, and she never even gave a damn about you. Did you think that you were special? She was cold. You were just meat"
"Shut up! Did you think that you could get away with it?" David said, nearly screaming. "That you could kill someone and get away with it? Did you think I wouldn’t find you?"
Ben didn’t say anything. His eyes were completely closed, his lips drawn back from his teeth in anticipation of his own death. David pushed the barrel of the pistol against his temple.
"You should have known. You should have been able to feel it last night. I would never stop hunting you. There was nowhere for you to go. Could you feel me biting at your ankles?"
"Yes. Sometimes. I knew you were after me. But I had to try to live anyway. I had to. Fourteen years ago I . . ."
Ben was interrupted by his own screams as David lowered the pistol and shot him in the foot. He jerked off of the bed and fell on the floor, curling up into a fetal position and trying to crawl away at the same time, so that he moved across the floor like an inchworm, blindly. His destroyed foot left a trail of blood on the carpet behind him. He stopped when he ran up against the door to the bathroom. David stuck a foot under his chest and turned him over.
"You know, I thought that I wanted to hear all of the details. All these years, what I wanted most of all was to make you tell me why and how. I wanted you to tell me everything that you’d been doing these past thirty years. I wanted you to tell me every thought that you’d had. But it’s been three decades, and I’m tired. I’m not interested anymore. Isn’t that funny?"
Ben stared up at him through tears. "Please. You can’t kill me. It isn’t just me. There’s someone else. A little girl."
David grinned down at him. "I know. Your taste has changed, over the years. You just keep getting sicker and sicker, don’t you? You know, that was how I found you. That seventeen year old girl you left in Barstow had a lot to say about you." He gestured toward the window, turning his head for a moment, seeing her in his minds eye—another snapshot—the girl looking over at him in the car, her pretty round face pale and full of hate, her mouth slack from too much drink . It was when she told him she hoped he would kill Ben. David blinked the picture away. He turned back to Ben. "She . . ."
He stopped with a small intake of breath. Ben had a .snub-nosed .38 revolver in his hand. He pulled the trigger three times. The gun barked, and David stumbled back, looking in shock at the three blooming red roses on his shirt. He caught his ankles and fell backwards over the coffee table, pitching onto the carpet with a thud that shook the trailer. Teen magazines scattered onto the floor.
Ben let the revolver fall to the carpet. He put his hands to his face and shuddered with his whole body, collapsing onto his side and sobbing. He stayed that way for almost a half an hour before he took his hands away from his face, now red and puffy, and struggled to his good foot. He limped over to the bunk and sat down heavily, staring at the still body of David, laying on the floor. He had twisted as he’d fallen over the coffee table, and he lay on his side, the automatic still clutched in one hand. His shirt was crimson and blood had begun to pool on the carpet below him.
"You bastard. It wasn’t like that. You won’t let me change. I’m different now. Can’t you see?" Ben pleaded.
The voice came to David from far away. Everything was black where he was, and he floated in the blackness as if on the surface of a pool, sometimes slipping underneath it and sometimes riding on top of it. The voice came again. "You bastard."
David found his arm where it bobbed in the darkness and felt the automatic in its hand. He raised the arm and fired at the voice, pulling the trigger until it stopped trying to jump out of his hand and just clicked. He let himself slide under the surface of the pool, sinking down toward the bottom. It never came.
Instead, his eyes opened. He couldn’t feel anything. His eyes panned across the pool of blood that ran from his own chest and up to the bunk, where what was left of Ben sat slumped against the wall like a discarded marionette. He’d caught a bullet in the head that had removed half of his skull and emptied him out all over the wall of the trailer, as well as several in the chest. One green eye stared wide-eyed back at David, accusing. His mouth hung open and silent.
David rolled over on his back. He got inched himself over to the wall and managed to sit up. It seemed to take a year. His chest screamed at him. He coughed, and blood splashed into his hand. By sliding himself up the wall, he managed to get to his feet. Leaning one heavy shoulder against the wall, he made his slow way to the door of the trailer. The door weighed a thousand pounds, and pulling it open ripped things loose in his chest and sent little explosions of pain down his spine. He stepped through the doorway and down the steps on legs that were made of wood and moved without joints.
The gunshots in the trailer had brought nobody. The park was deserted, the heads of the thousand palms hissing in the desert night-wind, black shapes against an indigo sky that overflowed with icy, glittering stars. Ben’s car sat on its balding tires a few yards away, a beat-up white Ford sedan coated thickly with dust. He made it to the car and fell heavily against the hood, panting. He could feel himself sliding away, his vision dimming at the edges. If the keys were in the car . . . if he could get to a hospital. Inching around to the driver’s side door, he pulled at the handle with all his strength. The door came open, unexpectedly, and he fell back into the dust. He lay still, staring up into the sky and the stars as the ground beneath him turned liquid.
A small voice came from inside the car.
"Daddy?"
He moaned and felt tears start—the first in three decades.
A final snapshot—blurred a bit by tears in the lens—the sleep-rumpled little girl, her wide eyes staring down at him not in fear but in wonder. The eyes were Ben’s—as if they had been plucked from his head and set in her face. They watched him die.


Ray Nayler was born in Desbiens, Quebec. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Crimewave, Blue Murder, Heist, The Edge, and several other magazines. His first novel, AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS, will be released by Crimewave in June. His earlier story, "Hang On St. Christopher" appeared in the January edition of Plots With Guns. "How They Kill You At Thousand Palms" was the basis of the novel AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS. Mr. Nayler would like to dedicate this story to his father, Patrice Desmeules. Mieux vaut tard que jamais.