Work Text:
Raylan was speeding down a road that barely deserved the name when the call came on his cell.
“Johnson’s dead,” Rachel said.
Raylan immediately took his foot off the gas. “You or someone else?”
“Not us,” she said. “It’s a mess. Are you close?”
“I’m -” Raylan bumped over a particularly vicious section of track, clocked the sun beating down and the unlikelihood of air conditioning upon arrival, and gave Rachel an extremely generous time-frame.
“Great,” she said, distinctly unenthused. “You’ll still beat everyone else. Hope the roses are nice.”
Raylan was half-hoping that he’d catch sight of the welcome lights of fellow law enforcement in his rear-view, but he knew there was no such luck by the time he pulled up to join the little gathering of marshal SUVs, outside a lopsided structure leaning drunkenly in a sloped clearing. Mostly it looked like someone just got real ambitious in middle of building an outhouse. There was only Rachel and the SUVs, all looking equally overheated.
She waved half-heartedly at him as he parked and reluctantly left the air conditioning behind. She’d loosened a couple of her vest’s side velcro straps in concession to the heat, but Rachel wasn’t the type to get shot in the back because she’d been too warm to follow regulation, so that was as far as it would go. Raylan immediately peeled out of his and dumped it in the passenger seat.
The air was like a physical thing, wet and stifling, but there was hope on the horizon; a bank of tall dark clouds that promised to crack the heat. For half a second Raylan couldn’t pick apart the competing bass thrum of a roll of thunder, and the nearby grind of what a hundred rural blackouts had taught him was probably a generator. The thunder stopped, the generator ran on, and Raylan meandered up to Rachel to find out how their fugitive had died.
“There’s a refrigerator, and Johnson’s in it,” said Rachel. “Looks like it’s been at least a few days, and he definitely didn’t die quick. We’re keeping the fridge door closed until the coroner drives up, on account of the -” she circled her hand in the air, encompassing the blazing sun, the wall of humidity, and close and airless space that was the tiny shack with the ill-advised tin roof. “Generator around back was running when we got here, but given the state of the body that’s probably more recent.
"Tim’s inside,” she finished. “He’s got photos if you want them.”
“Tim the first one in?” Raylan asked.
Rachel nodded. “Pretty sure he’s refining his description of the smell that greeted him when he popped open the fridge door, so you might want to head in before he gets it polished.”
The shanty was a small, close thing; maybe a hundred square feet if he was being generous. The refrigerator, in contrast, was a powder-blue monstrosity. It had the strange effect of making the shanty seem like a scale model into which someone had placed an incorrectly-sized miniature.
Tim stood slouched beside the fridge, face a mask of sweat under a backwards ballcap, holding himself in a careful way to avoid rubbing his shirtsleeves against the crime scene. His vest was still on, Raylan noted, straps snug and secure. He’d been jotting down bullet points in his usual chicken-scratch, but he folded up the notepad to watch Raylan take in the visual - blood and bits on the curling yellowed lino that sloped to match the hill, smears of blood on the wall - then jerked his head at the fridge.
“You want a peek I won’t stop you,” said Tim, gallant. “First whiff’s a doozy but it clears up after that.”
Raylan looked over the viscera on the floor and wrinkled his nose before flashing a smile back that was mostly a deliberate grimace. “Well, Tim, that’s mighty kind,” he said. “Think I’ll leave you to your work; you seem to have it well in hand.”
“Speaking of - you see a hand on your travels through the property, just holler,” Tim called after him.
Raylan stopped halfway out the door. “A hand?”
“Our fella’s missing his,” Tim said.
“Left or right,” said Raylan.
“How many hands you think you’ll find out there?” Tim said, but he waggled his right hand in a wave while he said it.
Raylan tipped his hat in thanks and headed back out the door. He’d been out of the air-conditioned car five minutes and his shirt was already sticky. He flexed his shoulders a little, trying to shift the wet patch off the small of his back while he followed the howl of the generator around to the back.
Rachel was crouched over it, grimacing at the noise, so Raylan ambled on. The back of the clearing sloped even more dramatically down into the trees and he spared a hope he wouldn’t have to pick his way down there in his boots. A hand, a hand. If Raylan were a dismembering murderer, where would he take a severed hand? He frowned over at the banked dark clouds, and when he glanced back toward the trees his eye caught on something soft and fleshy, half-hidden in the grass.
If Raylan were a dismembering murderer he wouldn’t take a severed hand, he thought. He walked over. Looked down.
There were two hands.
“Well, shit,” said Raylan.
“The question,” said Rachel, after Raylan had called her over and Tim decided that gawking over a couple of severed limbs was worth abandoning his post, “is why are the hands severed.”
“You don’t think the question is why are there two of them?” said Raylan.
“Pretty sure it’s both,” said Tim. “You know. Organized, disorganized, modus blah blah.”
They stared at the hands for a bit. They’d definitely been out in the elements and humidity for a while, but the mere fact that an animal hadn’t dragged them off for dinner said uncomfortable things about how long the murderer had been gone.
“Right hand and left hand,” said Rachel, finally. “Two different people, only one body. The left hand looks like it’s a little older, wouldn’t you say?”
“I feel like one hand’s an accident and two hands are a souvenir,” said Tim. “Like when I’m murdering, maybe the first time I’m just real bad at it and there’s limbs everywhere, and the second time I’m like, you know what, I love being bad at it.”
“Uh huh,” said Raylan, unimpressed. "Are you an expert now?"
“Yes,” said Tim. “On account of all the murdering I’ve done.”
Raylan waited a moment to see which uncomfortable direction Tim was going to take this, and was relieved when the follow-up was only, “S’why I got the house. Basements are great for dismembering assholes and hiding the evidence.”
Tim cut him a look so carefully neutral that it was difficult to tell whether it was all a big joke or there might actually be a body buried under the floorboards.
“Is that so,” said Raylan.
“I would have seen a body by now,” said Rachel.
“You would’ve sensed a body by now,” Tim corrected. “With your superior investigatory skills.”
“You been to Tim’s place?” Raylan said.
“Your mom woulda sensed it,” Tim said.
“Your mom’s been to Tim’s place?” Raylan said.
“I only invite people over who ain’t gonna invite half of Harlan in after them,” said Tim, which only stung a little.
“Go tend to your refrigerator,” said Raylan.
“Uh huh,” said Tim, but he went. Rachel shrugged at Raylan like, well, it’s true, and went off for a cautious peek into the woods. She came right back out, quick enough that she’d definitely spotted something, but not so quick that she was being followed by murderers.
“Hey,” she said, hurrying up to Raylan. “There’s a creek, about a hundred yards that way, and it winds down the slope.” She pointed through the trees, back up the way they’d driven in, and nodded at Raylan’s immediate grimace. “I know.”
Raylan picked up one foot from the shaded grass and put it back down again, just to hear the squelch. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that the coroner and the sheriff’s department are going to magically show up in the next five minutes and release us from our babysitting duties.”
“If I find you an oar, how well do you think you can pilot a refrigerator?” said Rachel. She paced over to the shanty and killed the generator, and shook her head at Tim when he immediately poked his out the shanty door.
“It’s going to rain,” she told him.
Tim squelched the grass outside the door just like Raylan had, and made the same face. He glanced around to take in what Rachel and Raylan had already catalogued - a shitty shanty, in a valley. An area that had already soaked up all the summer rain it could stand, and no more. “It’s gonna flood,” he said.
“I’ll get on the horn,” said Rachel, and jogged for her car, phone in hand.
A quick flash of lightning broke up the progressively gloomy daylight. Raylan thought about counting and didn’t; it was close, and getting closer. It would hit them, or it wouldn’t. It didn’t change what they had to do.
“Four miles,” Tim said, probably not just to be irritating.
When Tim and the thunder agreed that it was closer to two miles, Rachel climbed back out of her SUV with her jacket and tucked her phone back in her pocket.
“I couldn’t get the sheriff, but did get the office,” said Rachel. “Art said to photo and bag everything we can move and get out.”
“And you told him ‘No shit’?” Raylan said, feeling antsy.
Rachel and Tim both had a flat, empty way of looking at a person that seemed to turn them nine feet tall and their target into something closer to rodent-sized, and Rachel deployed hers now. “I told him thanks for stepping into the bureaucratic nightmare this is about to become, but I’ll let him know you can take care of your own paperwork.”
Tim - who like Raylan knew that Rachel did not make empty threats and unlike Raylan had not foolishly stepped into her line of fire - immediately relinquished his refrigerator sentry duty and bustled back out to the SUVs, returning with phone in one hand and a batch of evidence bags and gloves clutched in the other. Raylan decided retreat was the better part of valour and trailed after Tim with a vague idea of helping.
Raylan commandeered Tim’s phone for the photos, and then put the phone inside an evidence bag and sealed it before shoving the whole thing in his back pocket while Tim bagged up the hands. He stood and attempted to hand both sealed bags to Raylan.
“No,” said Raylan.
“You found ‘em,” said Tim. “That makes you responsible.”
“Go bag your fridge friend and I’ll think about it,” said Raylan. The thunder grumbled closer, but it had nothing on Tim, who stood with three hands out, unmoving. “Christ,” said Raylan, and took them.
“Where’s my phone?” said Tim.
“I’d pass it to you but I’ve got my ... hands full,” said Raylan. He shook the bags gently in Tim’s face.
“Wow,” Tim said. “I -” he stopped. Tapped three fingers on Raylan’s arm, then pointed. “There’s someone in the woods,” said Tim.
“A neighbour?” said Raylan. He drew his gun and stuffed the bagged hands in the holster, sparing a moment to regret leaving the vest in the car. A neighbour sometimes just meant someone with a convenient location from which to murder you.
Rachel came over to see what was keeping them; took in Raylan’s gun, Tim’s gun, and their undivided attention on the woods. “We’re going to miss our window,” she sighed, and the rain began to fall, pattering big drops on Raylan’s hat. He waited, still and tense, until he caught the flash of red through the trees that Tim must have spotted, and Rachel jabbed two fingers in that direction. At least two ... neighbours.
They moved into the trees together as the rain continued to fall, harder and harder, taking shelter behind nice bullet-stopping trunks with unfortunate lightning-attracting side effects.
“US Marshals,” Rachel called. “Put your hands up and walk towards me.”
The first bullet cracked against Rachel’s tree; the second whizzed past, and the third. Raylan winced when the fourth glanced off his beech, sending bark splinters flying.
Raylan could see the creek now, winding through the woods parallel to the shanty. He watched three or four little waterfalls dropping down the incline turn into six or seven. Now eight. Now nine.
He returned his attention to the trees. “US Marshals,” he called, in case their probable dismembering murderers had become more receptive to friendship in the last few minutes. “Water’s rising awful fast,” he added, in case they hadn’t noticed that either. Their trees were considerably deeper down the slope than Raylan’s.
There was a pause, followed by a muffled, “Aw shit, Keith.”
“Put your hands up,” Rachel said again, “and walk towards me.”
The little waterfalls had merged into one big waterfall. The sound was now less like his shower running in the next room, and more like his shower when he was a step away from getting very, very wet. He watched the water rise higher and wider. The unified waterfall grew shorter and shorter, and then vanished altogether. Cold seeped up through the soles of Raylan’s boots.
Tim was situated behind the tree directly across from Raylan, maybe 5 feet further down the valley incline. He was up to his ankles, which he and Raylan both studied a moment before looking up at one another.
“Oh, we should leave,” said Raylan. “Fellas,” he called, louder, over the rising roar of the creek. “Come on, now.”
“This is your last chance,” said Rachel.
Another bullet whizzed between them, but it wasn’t followed by any others.
“For Chrissakes, Keith!” someone wailed. “I’m not drownin’ on account of you!”
“Just hold on a minute, now, Alden.” This was presumably Keith, although Raylan could barely hear him over the rush of the water. Tim was now up to his calves. Raylan didn’t have a clear view of Rachel, somewhere to his right, but her boots must be flooded by now, too.
“Aaaaaalden,” Rachel called. “Alden, you can’t wait this out down there.”
“Shut up!” said Keith.
“You really wanna die like this, Alden?” said Raylan.
“Shut up!” roared Keith. Alden’s response was swallowed by an alarming thunderous rushing noise from the direction of the shanty, and Raylan experienced a vivid mental image of some dam or blockage far upstream letting loose all at once. A great flood of water roared down through the trees while paying no mind to the creek. The whole slope was the creek.
Raylan clutched at his beech and narrowly missed being knocked off his feet, and down below, past Tim, he caught sight of at least one flailing red-clad arm gliding smoothly away at speed through the trees. Raylan tried to holster his glock without letting go of the beech, remembered the hands occupying the holster only when the glock wouldn’t fit, and wasted a minute emptying the clip so he could safely shove the gun down his pants, on the theory that this was preferable to shoving the evidence bags down there instead.
“Sound off!” Rachel called, unseen. Tim was already wading up toward Raylan, lunging from one tree to another. This seemed like the best idea of a bad bunch, so Raylan also turned to struggle up the hill.
“Comin’ up,” Raylan said.
“Comin’ up,” Tim said.
“Fridge!” Rachel said.
“What?” said Raylan, and then he saw it. The powder-blue monstrosity, broken free of the flimsy shanty, barrelling horizontal down the slope with no regard for trees or god or marshals. It careened past Raylan at speed, missing him by an arms-length.
Tim shrieked an expletive behind him, the least cool and collected Raylan had ever heard him, and Raylan turned back just in time to watch the fridge slam hard into Tim’s tree, tilt at an alarming angle, and simultaneously pop open its doors. The body sprang out as though launched from the most macabre jack-in-the-box in history and sailed directly over Tim’s head, trailing bits and pieces behind it.
Tim hit the water so fast Raylan thought he must have just ducked, but he came up without his baseball cap, spluttering and clawing at the tree as the fridge spun away again, and Raylan half-collided with Rachel slip-sliding down-slope to get to him. They clutched at each other, and then they clutched at Tim, and then Tim’s flailing arms knocked Raylan’s hat off his head.
“My hat,” said Raylan. He watched it float away, spinning violently downstream.
“Your hands,” said Tim, pointing.
Raylan wiped rain off his face and watched the evidence float away with something like regret for all the paperwork that would generate.
“Well,” said Rachel, one fist clenched in Tim’s shirt and one in Raylan’s. She jerked her chin back up the way they came. “Shall we?”
“Is this a good time,” said Tim, “to mention that my ankle has been sprained by a rogue refrigerator.”
The flood that freed the fridge was violent but thankfully brief; by the time they struggled back up onto the relative high-ground of the crime scene clearing Raylan no longer felt as though he were in constant danger of being washed away, the water reduced to a steady trickle as long as they stayed clear of the still alarmingly over-swollen creek. They sat for a while, panting, at the edge of the clearing, and Raylan found that he had to work to convince himself to let go of Tim’s elbow and Rachel’s shoulder.
“Ugh,” said Rachel, at last, which seemed to be the cue to get moving. In silent, exhausted agreement they splashed towards the SUVs, Rachel and Raylan bracing Tim between them. The remains of the shanty looked as though it had been given a love-tap from one of the SUVs and simply exploded on contact. The generator was nowhere to be seen.
“I think the road’s gone too,” said Raylan. He waited while Rachel popped open a passenger seat door and helped Tim haul himself up into the seat.
Rachel and Tim stripped out of their sodden vests while Raylan fished his phone out of his shirt pocket. It was hard to tell if it was dripping independently or if it was just the rain, now slowed to a drizzle, but either way it was a solid dead brick.
Tim made a disgruntled noise, and squirmed around until he could work a sopping wet paperback out of his back pocket. The cover was the sort of colourful parade of people with crowns or swords and over-large animals that Raylan associated with Tim’s regular reading material, but even from here he could tell that the water had glued the pages together. “How’s the princess,” said Raylan, who did not give a shit.
“This one’s a knight,” said Tim, bending his head to try to unpick a couple pages; the back of his neck a mess of mud, hair dark with water and grit. “I’ve been worried she’s gonna pick the wrong guy.”
“What’s the wrong guy?” said Raylan, more for something to say than out of actual interest. Rachel worked her own phone out of a pocket, banged it against her palm a few times, and shook her head.
“Oh,” said Tim. “Kinda guy that’s more concerned about proving a point by being with you than actually being with you. You know the type.”
“Sure,” said Raylan, who once again found he could not tell if this was just Tim being Tim or Tim sharing and caring.
“Men,” Tim sighed.
“Men,” said Rachel. She gave up on her phone. “Speaking of, can either of you confirm our suspects got swept away?”
“They were not so fortunate as we,” said Raylan.
“That’s what comes of not making friends with trees,” Tim said. “Raylan, give me my phone.”
“Your-” Belatedly, Raylan remembered the evidence bag, and his back pocket, and miraculously when he reached back for it his fingers met cool wet plastic. He pulled it up and held it up so everyone could admire the sealed, dry phone.
“I’m psychic,” said Raylan.
“You’re insufferable?” said Tim. “Sorry, I think I’ve got water in my ears, it’s hard to hear. Say again?”
“I saved you from a refrigerator,” Raylan said.
Tim put his face in hands and his shoulders shook, which was more alarming than anything else Raylan had seen that day, but when he lifted his head up again he was laughing. “Did you see,” he gasped, “when it opened -” and then Raylan lost it, and then Rachel, and then Raylan pulled his glock out of his pants and Rachel had lean against the SUV because she was laughing too hard to stand.
Raylan sat down in the wet, hiccuping a little, and pulled out Tim’s phone. Dialled. “Hey Art,” he said.