Chapter Text
[Lafayette, Louisiana July 2001]
“Now, I'm not saying you did or you didn't, but fact of the matter is... we got a dead store clerk at a 711 with a backpack full of percocets, and you as his best buddy with a little pill problem.” Rust says, spreading both of his hands out upon the cool surface of the interrogation room table on either side of the case notes, familiar tones ringing in his head. Fittingly, it'd always tasted like wet cardboard inside the box, and the high pitched, piano wire grating smell of old piss that lingered there always lived inside his nostrils for a good forty minutes after exit.
Zachary Dubois was shaking. He was sweaty. His greasy hair was tied back into a messy, varnishy brown ponytail, eyes cast down to dart over his greasy fingers that perched upon the table, haloed in a line of condensation. Rust knew he was guilty the moment he walked into the room, knew he was guilty from the paperwork alone that he'd skimmed out in the hallway not twenty minutes gone, could smell the sweet-rot stench of his guilt like blood in the water, but Geraci needed a confession, and that fat fuck couldn't inspire a salmon to spawn or the sun to set, let alone pull information out of a teenager. So here Rust was, feeling a bead of sweat stroke down the side of his neck like an icy finger. He wouldn't shudder, and he wouldn't wipe it away, not with Rummy's beady little eyes watching him from the other side of the two way mirror. He'd sooner die.
Rust swallows, but nothing moistens the dry patch that burns inside the terrarium of his throat like a miniature desert. He thinks about the three hours of sleep he managed to get last night, his coffee going cold on his desk, Marty picking through his lunch like a bird sorting through nesting material, but only for a moment. He wanted this shit over and done with so that he could go back to work and lapses in concentration only dragged it out.
“Percocets. You know what those are? Hm?” he asks, folding his hands back up over his arms and pacing in a slow arc to the corner of the room and back, observing the buzzing fluorescent ceiling light as though he's never seen it before, when by this point, he could draw it perfect from memory. The slight insect-like vibrating sound that smelled like burning tinfoil, every cracked facet of the plastic covering the bulb seared permanently into his mind like an iron brand. The light drives through his eyes and into the back of his skull like a needle and he let the feeling wash over him, almost marveling at the pain reverberating to the front of his face.
“P-pain meds. Pain killers,” Zachary says. A bead of clear snot gathers at the very tip of his nose, glittering like morning dew.
“Mmmhm. Oxycodone. You in a lot of pain Zachary?”
Zachary's eyes wavered on Rust's, then darted around the room like the swimming flight of a Gulf shiner. “Y-Y-”
Rust inclined his head, feigning an expression of innocent confusion. “Yes? You, a spry youth still in the cresting sunrise of his life, is in so much pain that he needs four full bottles of percs stolen from the purses of a couple a' old biddies? People who actually have chronic pain?”
“What would you say about somebody like that? Somebody like you?” Rust continues, “Think you might say that... maybe they have a problem?”
“Y-yeah, th-they might have a-a problem...” Zachary echoes, voice weak, and tears already forming in the corners of his eyes.
Rust nods to himself, breathing out slow through his mouth. The pain kick-starting in the back of his head has migrated and pulses strong into his left ear. The sounds that come in that side are slightly muffled like he's lying half in water. It has been like this for four days, but by this point Rust's become good at ignoring it. He keeps his eyes hooded, trying not to look directly at the light and folds his stiff body into the cheap metal chair set on his side of the table, collapsing down into it like a dollar store action figure, his limbs held to his torso with metal loops and rubber bands. The chair legs scrape briefly over the cement floor like that nails on a chalkboard scent of iodine.
A pack of cigarettes is produced, one tapped out. The click of a lighter and the subtle waver of hypnotic orange flame. That first inhale and Rust feels the relief of the nicotine rich smoke crawling into his lungs like the breath of God, and he doesn't give six fucks from Sunday that they're not allowed to smoke inside the building anymore. The relaxation spreads out through rigor mortised muscles like sinking into the warmth of a drawn bath, and he wants that, because it's far too fucking cold in here. For a moment the ache in his head dissipates, but then the pressure begins to build again.
“I'd offer, but you ain't of age yet.” Rust says through an exhale of smoke, pushing the pack and lighter back into the pocket of his shirt. One hand pinches the cigarette at the base between pointer finger and thumb, the other lays limp across the table, elbow hanging over the edge.
“Seventeen years old huh? Lucky break. That'll get you into the youth court. That is, unless you get tried as an adult.”
Zachary's face drains of all color in a span of seconds and Rust watches it go, the blood receding into his face to sink down and pool in his gut like a bellyful of hot soup. Rust wasn't entirely sure if the intercom was on, spitting their words out echoed and tinny to the detectives on the other side of the mirror, but he could assume that if Geraci was involved, he'd have the fucking speaker pressed to his bulbous, sweaty head like a goddamn ear trumpet.
Rust takes another drag, then exhales easy, angling the smoke out the corner of his mouth. “There was a boy in Texas, seventeen. Just like you. Famous as far as juvenile cases go. Strangled a fifteen year old girl with a belt while his buddy beat her with a toilet seat and an ashtray. When she bit him they gouged her eyes out with a screwdriver and a curtain rod.”
Zachary Dubois continued to stare at him like he was a rabbit snared within the hungry gaze of a waiting owl. “Jesus...” he breathes, face going that sick institutional green color that tasted like aloe vera gel and kleenex tissue.
“They carved an upside down cross into her belly after. Had sex with her body. Thought the Devil would grant them boons if they offered him their souls.” Rust says, fixating on a stain that marred the collar of Zachary's shirt, eyes blinking in half measures. “They were tried as adults and got life in prison. But you didn't do anything fucked up like that did you?”
“No! Fuck no, Jesus I didn't-”
“But you did something else maybe,” Rust says, and lets his summer blue eyes flick up to bore into woodpanel brown, “maybe you'd like to talk to me about some things?”
“Yeah, yeah, I just want to-to clear my name here sir.”
“Mmm, clear your name. Yeah.” Rust plods his head up and down and points his finger, shaking it lightly as though Zachary had revealed some great truth that had just been resting upon the tip of his tongue like a perching insect.
“Dubois. That's an interesting name. Means “from the forest.” You knew that?” Rust asks. Zachary nods. Rust nods back, rolling the cigarette between his fingers, smoke ribboning upwards to curl over his ear.
“Some say that addiction is like a forest. A black forest. Moonless. You wander through that forest, stumbling around in the dark, your hands grasping the trees like guideposts, but they only take you deeper. In this place, the sun never rises.” Rust muses, half to himself, half to a piss-pants terrified Zachary Dubois.
“You been living in those woods a long time huh? With this little pill problem of yours?”
Zachary swallows. “Yeah, y-yeah, I mean, I used pills but I didn't-”
“Didn't what?”
“I didn't... didn't kill nobody-”
“Not Geoffrey Williams? Your best friend? Just wanted to find the way out of those dark woods didn't you?” Rust says, shuffling through the pages of the file one at a time with a bland, half-interest, “the ones you been lost in ever since you been born. The woods your mom and dad abandoned you in, your school teachers, you couldn't find a way out so you numbed the pain. Made your home there, built from the wood of the trees.”
The answer was but a whisper, “No.”
Rust nods and stares down at the case files, running his fingers over the surface of the paper that felt course against his fingertips, over Rummy's childlike chicken scratch scrawl that not even a skilled linguistic could decipher. Sweat soaked his lower back, he could feel it growing cold on his skin from the light breeze of the air conditioner vent. “Geoffrey wouldn't give you what you needed, you asked and asked, but he wouldn't cave, you threatened him, the gun in your hand, a steel grey Glock 25, license under your Daddy's name. But maybe your hand slipped on the trigger, put a perfect hole right through the center of his forehead. Spread his grey matter all over the fucking cig and condom wall like a punk-rock Jackson pollock painting.”
“No! Oh god, oh Christ, I didn't-”
“You keep telling me 'no' Zach, but see, the thing is, we got you son. Got you on the security video they had hanging above the counter. The way every convenience store, on every corner, of every city from here to Alaska, has a camera hanging above their counter.” Rust says. It's a lie of course. Half the reason they were doing this was because Geraci and Demma had done some actual bonafide goddamn police work and discovered that the security camera at this particular 711 was broken, had been broken for three months. They'd only had a hunch as to who it was, but Rust knew upon entering the box, that for once, those two cocksuckers were right on the money.
“You just want the sun to shine again. You want forgiveness. But for what though?” Rust asks, pushing the cigarette back into his mouth and steepling his fingers. Zachary was crying now, his sobs muffled coming in through Rust's left ear, but clear and babylike in his right. His face was a wet smear of tears, sweat, and snot that tasted like guilt, regret, and fear.
“For- Geoff- oh god-”
“For what now?”
“For shooting Geoff, I didn't mean to shoot him. I didn't want him to die. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Oh god-”
There. Done.
“Mmm. You just keep on thinking about those woods Zachary, you're on your way out of them now. They're about to get a lot smaller.” Rust blinks once at the sad display before him, then grinds the nub of his cigarette out onto the table, the plastic melting into a perfect black hole. He rises, leaving the file behind, they can come in and get their own fucking confession written down. He has better shit to do. The chair scrapes again, and this time he winces at the sound.
The door handle is an ice cube under his clammy fingers and Rust's greeted with a “Jesus Christ, Cohle-” From Demma, as his shoulder bumps Steve Geraci, who doesn't give so much as a 'thank you' for doing his fucking job for him. As he walks in the direction of his desk, he can hear Steve humming out the tune to that Beatles song. Taxman. Some bullshit attempt to piss him off. Rust knows he's feeling a little irritable, but doesn't let himself rise to the bait. Even still, he wonders how well Rummy'd be able to hum with his mouth around a curb. Teeth splitting on the cement like styrofoam.
~=+=+=+=~
“Jesus, you look like sun-warmed dogshit. You been playing musical chairs in there? Why are you so fucking sweaty?” Marty asks the moment Rust eases back down into his squeaky office chair.
“Fucking hot in there man.” Rust answers quiet and taps out another cigarette from the crumpled pack in his shirt. The other detectives in the room skirted on the edges of his vision and his skin crawled, like he could feel their eyes sliding over him. The sudden urge to escape was brief but powerful.
Marty watches him over the top of his computer monitor, mouth full and working away on chicken ceasar salad. He tilts his head gently to the side and squints at him like Rust is a particularly confusing abstract art piece. “Can't smoke that shit in here anymore, Queseda's gonna light your ass up he sees you.”
The lighter stops midway to the cigarette perched in his mouth, his eyes dripped almost shut and pulsing in their sockets. He lets a hard breath slide out through his nose, remembering the dry ache living there. The freed cigarette is tucked back into his pocket for the moment, he plans to step outside, fuck whatever the weather is. His head feels too tight and the cold coffee he pours down his gullet sits in his stomach like a slow melting glacier. The bright white tube lights lining the ceiling shine like cold sunbeams bouncing off fresh snow. Snowblindness threatening if he lingers too long. He pushes his arms into the sleeves of his suit jacket draped over the chair with all the speed of basking alligator, sweat sticking his shirt fabric to his skin. He wishes the jacket was the blue one, but he'd worn the brown one today, and it tasted just like the cold coffee. Marty's look is easy to ignore. The small amount of warmth helps some, but not much.
Rust stares at his computer monitor, at the fabricated light burning a hole in his pupils. The grating noise of clumsily clacking keys replaces the soothing scritch sound of pens and pencils. He thinks fondly of his ledger, tucked safely into his desk drawer and lying in wait for the crime scene and DB later today. The fluorescent bright screen and scrolling wall of text blurs before his eyes, and the headache opens up in his skull like the bloom of a black dahlia.
“Rust, you want a refill baby?” Cathleen's bright smile, spread across the apple of her cheeks, appears in his peripheral vision and he thinks he should have jumped, startled somehow, his whole body tensing from toes to scalp, because that woman loved to pop right up out of fucking nowhere, but the whole room seems to be drifting by in slow motion and sounds still come in half measures. He doubted a bomb going off and blowing the break room to shrapnel would've made him bat an eye.
“Miss Cathleen,” he says in a slow drawl, “I could stand for another, thank you,” but her smile falters a little while looking at him.
“Boy, you look like death,” she says in that no-nonsense way of hers, but she pours the coffee out anyway in a small waterfall of mahogany that he fixates on, the color matching the warm brown of her skin right up to her carefully painted nails, popping out in the pleasing hose water flavored blue of robin's eggs. He drifts a little then, imagines her sitting at home on the couch, laughter bubbling out of her while she watches something funny on the TV screen, or laughs at her husband passing a joke. The nail polish brush that glides over her nails moves in precise strokes more perfect than her cursive handwriting.
“Just a little tired is all.” Rust says when the cup is full, because he feels like he should give her something back. He can feel Marty's eyes practically burning into the side of his head.
“Where's my refill?” Marty asks, a petulant tone to his voice.
“You've had two already Marty, gotta go easy on the caffeine doll.” Cathleen says a little smartly, then dumps a scoop of sugar and a generous amount of cream into the plain white mug Rust usually favors, even though he always takes it black.
“A little sweetness should fix you right up sugar.” she says, then pats him on the shoulder. Her hands feel like fired brands, so warm in the brief moment they make contact. And then she's gone, off and laughing with the girl that brings in the cart of office supplies. Rust knows she'll grab three red sharpies for him along with Marty's usual three blue ink pens, the ones with the clear octagonal plastic casings that he'll lose all the caps for in the first week. That has always been the way of things. It seems that outside the haze filming over his eyes, the world keeps on spinning.
The coffee mug feels warm in Rust's hands and he relishes the heat licking up his arms, making him shiver when it crawls over his shoulder blades. He doesn't want to actually drink any, but supposes the warmth can't hurt. Marty gives him a professional side-eye and swallows his mouthful of food with minor difficulty. “Got you some of that cabbage salad you like, with the chicken and the ramen pieces,” he says, indicating a styrofoam box in the center of his desk space that Rust had somehow missed.
Laurie's been gone three weeks now, and Marty's been overly nice to him everyday since, bringing him lunch, dancing around his feelings, even holding the goddamn door for him. Rust appreciates it, if only for the “visible” feeling it gives him, but hates the sympathy, even if it's well intended. He finds that the only thing he really misses is being warm at night. That animal need. Warmth. God he wants it. He hunches into his jacket a little more, wishing the AC wasn't always cranked up to the fucking hilt. Louisiana summers be damned. He came down here to get away from the fucking cold. He thinks about hibernation, animals sinking down into dank, claw-dug burrows lined with fur and earth. Months of soft, warm, darkness. Drifting away into that cozy black has a certain appeal that he's afraid to linger on for too long.
“Thanks.” He says, but when he swallows it feels like his throat is full of broken glass. He doesn't think he'll eat anytime soon.
“You get it?” Marty asks, almost as an afterthought. He means the confession.
“Yeah.”
“Nice one man.” Marty congratulates with one of his easy, gap-toothed grins, as though Rust hadn't already done this a thousand times before. It still felt good to hear, for reasons he could not imagine or understand.
“Mm. Open and shut.”
A beat. Rust takes a sip from his cup, feeling it warming his core, then sets it down as lightly as he can manage with his suddenly clumsy fingers. “Gonna step outside a minute,” he says and climbs to his feet, shouldering his messenger bag.
“Yeah, I'll be here.” Marty answers distractedly, hen-pecking at the keyboard with all the furrowed brow determination of a man dismantling a bomb. “Hey, we gotta head out pretty soon, that fuckin' scene up in Bunkie, I don't want to wait for the I-49 to get backed up at the end of the lunch hour.” Marty calls, and Rust throws up a hand in acknowledgment as he drifts toward the break room.
~=+=+=+=~
Rust idles beside the quietly chugging refrigerator and pulls an unopened cough syrup container out of his bag. He peels open the white wrapped box of the Robitussin. Dextromethorphan in ten milligrams per five milliliter dose. Four days of head pressure and he could think of little else to ease it. The sound of tearing paper makes his teeth want to recede into his jawbone, but the smooth lacquered surface of the bottle feels good in his fingers. He wastes no time. The cap twists off with easy practiced motions. That familiar push and turn. He tips the bottle back letting almost the entire thing sink into his mouth, that awful green filling every empty crevice and slipping over his tongue like a writhing pile of eels. It takes one more swallow to finish it off then he dumps the empty bottle in the takeout bag loaded garbage can.
Rust closes his eyes and stands very still for a long moment, the back of his hand coming up to briefly touch his mouth. The irony of his actions after the conversation he just had, does not escape him.
Wet slimy green oozes into his stomach like leaking trashwater. The instant nausea calls him back to a time in on a different hot and humid Louisiana day in a car when he'd had the same coffee/cough syrup cocktail for lunch and what the end result of that decision had been. How he couldn't quite handle doing this anymore. How for some reason he always thought it would help, but it never did. How fucking stupid he feels. He spins on his heel and swallows and swallows and swallows, messenger bag bumping his hip, walking deliberately and mechanically toward the lockers.
The communal men's locker room stinks like damp cement and old shoes, that taste of stagnant water and cesspools making his mouth sweat and his stomach churn. Rust makes it to the bathroom stall and his knees strike the cement hard but without pain, he's only aware of how good it is to be heaving everything up and out, cleansing out that fucking green, and how grateful he is that nobody else is in here to witness him. When it ends, eyes and nose streaming, Rust rests his head on the plastic lid above cool white porcelain and pants, waiting for the pain in his head and throat to ease. He thinks of every sweaty ass in the CID slipping around on the seat cover and gags again. When he gets up, he moves slow, but the stall swims a little in his vision. Lights twinkle like they could be spots on his eyes but he knows better. He blinks them away before they can evolve into something brighter and less real.
At the sink, Rust rinses his mouth with a brand new bottle of scope and spits a gentler green over blonde cornsilk hairs lining the porcelain. Marty's probably. His hair's been thinning out over the last year. Rust gets a rare good look at himself in the dingy spotted mirror: his eyes are two black coins staring glassy and red rimmed out from his face like the black-holed sunken sockets of a half rotted skull. His cheeks and forehead feel swollen but he looks hollowed out, carved clean from steel. His skin is the color of that moldy film that grows on the surface of old milk and tastes like paint of the same color. His hair is kept cropped short these days, and it sticks out a little uneven in places, sweat making it curl damp and sticking it to his temples. The Curly Girl closed eight months back, and he never could quite bring himself to go somewhere else.
Rust splashes water on his face again and drinks from water he cups in his hands. He doesn't let his eyes linger on himself for long.
Absently, he wriggles a finger in his left ear, hoping to alleviate some of the block but stops when it starts to hurt. Sounds remained muffled and crackled on that side. The words acute otitis media come to mind. Sinusitis. Fucking summer cold. He's never had to do anything special for them before, just let things run their course. It would be uncomfortable for a while and then it would stop, he was certain of it.
Outside under the roof to avoid the rain, he sucks down a cigarette in four long pulls, watching the lightning flicker like synaptic misfires of the very Earth. The butt is dropped into a mostly full, moisture rusted Folger's can at his feet.
~=+=+=+=~
The rain falls in gossamer curtains of silver and blue, a tropical storm heralding in the wet heat of high summer. The droplets feel icy and slimy like frozen bog water striking his skin, soaking into his hair to sluice off of his skull. In moments of hyperfocus, he can see the water striking the Earth in nature documentary time-lapse, mud bursting free from the layer of topsoil like miniature landmines, the explosions scourging his skin with icefire and shrapnel. Rust curls into the passenger seat of the car, hands folded up into his armpits, his police issue windbreaker damp and sticky like a shroud of wet tissue paper.
Marty purses his lips and fucks with the radio, brow furrowing when static emerges in roving orange clicks from his usual station. With a scowl and a low mumble of defeat he switches it to NPR. The softly speaking voices crawl over Rust in a soothing wave, and he sinks down into the passenger's seat a little more.
They slink down the highway among an entourage of police vehicles crawling north to Bunkie. Behind them, Bobby Lutz flashes his police lights and Marty gives him the finger in the rear-view mirror, chuckling, like there is a private joke being shared between them.
Rust drifts away again into unformed lands without meaning to. The landscape blurs into a wash of moving colors as sounds fade into the background. Lightning spreads in orange and white creamsicle fingers through the cumulonimbus. Rain hemorrhages from the sucking chest wound in the nimbostratus. Thunder rolls in tones, deep and resonating, he couldn't smell very well at the moment but remembers that it was supposed to be something like purple and blue. He only notices he's shaking when Marty turns down the AC and asks if it's too cold with the skeptical, exasperated tone of someone who is practically coming unglued at the seams from the oppressive heat and humidity. Rust knows he should be hot, the thermostat's pushing ninety six with high humidity, but he can't quite shake the chill that has set its icy hands through his flesh and reaches down into his very bones.
'Remember where you come from,' it says in a voice that sounds almost like his father's, 'No loyalty in you boy.'
'I'm from Texas,' he thinks. 'Alaska is just where you took me.'
After a time, Rust realizes that the voice he hears is the radio narrator talking about the results of an overhaul on welfare reform, before Marty switches again to try and find a classic rock station with a good signal. Sweat beads up heavy on his brow at the thought of new, auditory hallucinations developing to accompany the visual misfires. Optimistically, he wants to believe it's a fever, the hypothalamus breaking down and dragging his senses along with it, but he's not sure if he even has one.
The pain in his head is worse now, breathing through his nose impossible, and he can't smell a fucking thing. Entire fields of sensory experience have drifted away, leaving empty, unknowable space behind. His stomach gnaws at him in displeasure, the untouched salad resting in the backseat where Marty left it for him. His throat feels like raw meat and he's almost glad of the dryness, can't think of a worse torture than swallowing the secretions of his own fucking mouth. When he glances out the passenger window again it looks like it could be snowing, rain catching the light and glowing in balls of white crystalline. Years slipped by in an endless cosmic funeral procession, but some things never did get any better. Scenes crawl by in funhouse paintings of smeared faces and places and trying to focus on anything specific only makes his head hurt worse. He wants to bury himself in the comfort of work but there's little he can do until they get there, and Marty doesn't seem like he's in the mood to talk. Hell, Rust isn't either. He closes his eyes and inclines his head toward Marty, away from the window, and thinks about that warm darkness again.