The End of the Cadiz Crew:
Notorious Criminals Dead in Botched Heist
Philip Coulter (31), Devon Strand (32), Caesar Silva (31), Tyrel Woodside (30), and Lucas Wakowski (26), the group of criminals commonly known as the Cadiz Crew have finally been brought down, releasing their stranglehold over Los Cadiz, CA. Police interrupted a robbery in progress at the 6th Street branch of Acotane Bank. A bloody shootout ensued, leaving Wakowski, Strand, and Silva dead on site. Though Woodside has been apprehended, Coulter is still in the wind […]
Correction:
Woodside has since died in police custody of apparent suicide.
The newspaper clipping hung in a frame on the bedroom wall, and Chad sat across from it in his favorite leather armchair, rereading the words he’d already committed to memory.
“So I don’t forget them,” he’d explained the first time Echo asked. “It’s my job to remember them. They deserve that much.”
“You’re a good person,” had been Echo’s response, and Chad shook his head.
“No I’m not, doll,” he’d said. “But I’m honored you think so.”
Echo was never sure what to do when his husband was like this, wistful for his days as a career criminal. It was October, the day was winding down, and Chad was doing exactly that now, staring off at the clipping.
All Echo could think to say was “You don’t look like a Philip.”
Chad grinned. “Oh, I know. That was the idea,” he said. “When I filed all the paperwork so I could finally be legally recognized as a man I had to change my name, and while anything was better than Emily, I thought I’d pick something stupid. So legally Philip was the criminal, and nobody was looking for Chad.”
“Why didn’t anyone else do something like that?” Echo asked.
“Y’know, I’d say they were too dense to think of it, but Tyrel was smarter than the rest of us put together, so that’s a valid question,” Chad said. “The point is, I told the boys if they ever called me Phil I’d punch ‘em in the nuts.”
“Did anyone ever try?” Echo asked.
“Caesar did, once. He was drunk. Sobered up pretty quickly afterwards, though.” He was smiling at the fond memory, but Echo could see the sadness in his eyes, creeping up behind the laughter. Chad was always like that when he talked about his brothers, and Echo was all too aware.
“Tell me a story,” Echo said. “Not one of the robbery ones. Don’t tell me a story about the crew, tell me one about the family.”
Chad was looking at him now the way he’d looked at their wedding. It was the same expression he’d had on the first time Echo showed up at his doorstep after finding out about the criminality, when Chad had thought he’d never see him again. It was an expression filled with so much love.
“Of course, doll,” he said, flopping down beside Echo onto the plethora of pillows that lined the headboard of their bed. He’d gotten distracted getting ready for bed and was shirtless. Echo found himself staring at the four names of Chad’s brothers tattooed over his heart, just above the scars on his chest. “So I’ve told you how Lucas was the baby, right?”
“Many times,” said Echo.
“I mean, we’d known him since, like, ten, so we babied the fuck outta him. Anyway so we were casing this bar—okay, who am I kidding, the place was a club, a swanky club at that—because we were supposed to rob the place that upcoming weekend. Some guy apparently had a beef with the owner—”
“Honey,” Echo whined. “I didn’t want a robbery story.”
“It’s not a robbery story, doll,” said Chad. “So we’d given the place a solid once over and, having already paid the entrance fee, we decided fuck it! Let’s get smashed! Except Lucas No matter what it said on his fake ID, he was still eighteen. I mean, we’d let him get drunk at home, we just wanted to hassle him, so Tyrel bought him a Sprite and we dubbed him designated driver.” He ran a hand through Echo’s hair as he spoke, staring out the window to the deck like just beyond it lay the past perfectly intact. “Now imagine all our surprise when little Lucas hits it off with this chick at the bar, one who’s also obviously there with a fake ID. I mean, Lucas was cute but in a ‘I wanna pinch your cheeks and buy you a cupcake’ kinda way--” He pinched Echo’s face for emphasis and echo squeaked in surprise. “--Not a ‘you’re cute let’s make out’ way, but maybe I’m biased because he was our baby. So we discover that shit, the kid’s got game. Now we’re legally obligated to embarrass him.
“At least for his sake we did this all at once, we didn’t come up to him four separate times throughout the night. Basically, we decided to give the poor guy the worst sex talk ever. I’m talking ‘high-school-health-class-that-does-not-give-a-shit’ bad. We’re reading off Wikipedia pages, we’re pulling up diagrams, Tyrel being the group dad that he is apparently brought fruit to a nightclub in his man purse, so he’s demonstrating how to put a condom on a banana, and of course Lucas is dying. He was hiding under the table yelling that he was gonna leave and make us walk home. Now, the girl thought it was hysterical, and he still got her number, so I guess we didn’t hurt his chances too badly.”
“You guys had a lot of fun together, didn’t you?” asked Echo. “I can tell how much you loved them.”
“They were my family from age fifteen on,” Chad said. “They’ll always be my brothers, I’m just trying to do right by their memory.”
“From what you’ve told me about them, they’d be happy with where you are today,” said Echo. “You’re a good man now.”
“All because of you, doll. I think you’re the only one who could get me to believe that.” He kissed Echo’s forehead and turned off the light. “Get some sleep, alright?”
“Can do,” said Echo. “Night.”
Echo did sleep until some ugly, remote hour of the morning just south of three a.m. when he woke up needing a glass of water. Having grown up in small town Kentucky, Chad’s massive house had seemed like a TV millionaire’s mansion to Echo when they’d first met almost three years earlier. Even living there hadn’t really accustomed him to the sheer amount of space. He’d always felt like something might be lurking down a dark hall at night, and he remembered that now as he slipped down to the kitchen.
“It’s Echo, right?”
He just never expected to see one of those somethings face-to-face.
“Please don’t scream.”
That was easier said than done when what was standing behind him didn’t have much of a head.
His left eye was still there, along with most of his too-big nose and his mouth, but the entire right side of his face was gone. What was left of his auburn hair clung to his skull, matted with blood. Perhaps scarier than the gaping hole in his skull was the fact that Echo knew his face. He looked so young, he always looked so damn young in Chad’s photo album, cute like I wanna pinch your cheeks and buy you a cupcake. He was supposed to wait in the car that day, Chad had said, but he panicked when he saw all the police cars. He was barely through the bank’s front door when a SWAT sniper’s bullet went through his right eye.
“Hi,” the thing that used to be Chad’s brother said. “I’m Lucas.”
“What the actual fuck.” Echo wasn’t proud of that reaction, he didn’t like to swear, but it was two-fifty in the morning and he was talking to a dead man with half a face. A logical, fully awake person probably would’ve screamed, he probably should’ve screamed, and he couldn’t say why he wasn’t freaking out more. Just that his first reaction was an honest one.
“Sorry,” said Lucas. “I know I look pretty bad.”
“That’s an understatement,” Echo said, steadying himself against the kitchen sink. He was vaguely aware of his Kentucky accent coming back in full; he always got especially southern when he was nervous. “What do you want? Are you tryin’ to possess me or—”
“Oh, shit, no, nothing like that. I don’t know how to do that. I can’t even touch you.” He tried to clap Echo on the back, only for his phantom hand to fall through his arm.Echo shuddered. “Please don’t do that again,” he mumbled.
“Really Lucas?” A deadpan voice from the direction of the kitchen table interrupted. “We told you not to go say hi. You’re missing half your face, if anyone should introduce themselves it’s Caesar. He got out the best.” Echo couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he realized there was a tall, lanky black man with a crooked, broken neck sitting on the kitchen table, but there he was, looking more perturbed than anything else.
“Oh come on, Tyrel, I just wanted to be neighborly is all!”
“Well you’re not his neighbor, and you’re scaring him.”
“So, can I ask, what kinda name is Echo anyways?” said the hispanic man with the slicked back hair half leaning through the kitchen wall. Out of all of them so far, he looked the most alive, save for the bullet wound right through the heart. “Been wondering that for a while. Isn’t that a chick’s name?”
“My parents are kind of hippies?” Echo said, though it came out more like a question. “I have a twin sister named Narcissa who’s a few minutes older, they thought it’d be funny. How long is a while?”
“What Caesar means,” said the one sitting on the table, Tyrel, “is we’ve been looking after Chad for several years now. When you came along, that included you. So yes, we’ve been wondering a while.”
“Well there you go?”
“Sweet.” The last of them was a broad-shouldered Black man with a floral tattoo on his neck. Bullet holes had reduced him to swiss cheese, but he stood by the kitchen doorway looking remarkably at ease. “Caesar thought it was because you must’ve parroted shit back at your parents as a kid, and I said that was bullshit. Nobody waits until their kid starts talking to name them.”
“Devon, I’m gonna come over there and kick your ass!” said Caesar.
“Then get out of that wall and come do it!”
“Am I dreaming?” Echo interrupted them.
“Would you like to be?” asked Tyrel. He shrugged, making the horrible angle his head hung at look worse.
“Can I ask what all this is about?” Echo asked. “Because I just wanted to get a glass of water and go back to bed.”
“Well, you see, it’s coming up on the anniversary of…yeah.” Lucas awkwardly scratched at what was left of the back of his head. “And Chad always gets so sad. We wanted to check in.”
“So you’re talking to me and not him because…?”
“We can’t show ourselves to him,” Caesar said like it was obvious. “As much as he misses us, it would kill him if he found out we’d been hanging--” He winced and looked at Tyrel, who shrugged. “--Staying around this whole time. We don’t need him wallowing, trying to talk to us. He has a life with you to live.”
“Despite all the suspicion around a Black guy dying in jail, I did kill myself,” Tyrel said. “I did it because we were bad people, I knew I was never getting out and wouldn’t have a chance to be happy again. But Chad, Chad’s gotten that with you. We’re not letting him waste it. No matter how much Lucas wants to talk to him.”
“He was just so mopey in the beginning,” Lucas said. “But you make him so happy.”
“We don’t wanna be seeing him again for a very long time,” said Devon. “That’s actually why we’re here, we wanna to talk to you.”
“Me?” said Echo.
“Yes, you, white boy,” said Devon. “You’re married to our brother.”
“Devon means well,” said Tyrel. “That’s just how he shows affection.”
“And what he’s trying to say is thanks for taking care of Chad,” said Caesar. “You remember what he was like when you met right?”
Echo nodded. “He was so…cold,” he said softly, remembering that day. Chad’s brothers had barely been dead a year, though Echo wouldn’t find out about his dark past for months. He’d just seen an attractive, well-dressed man in a too-crowded coffee shop. Blushing like a giddy teen girl, Echo had worked up the nerve to ask that attractive man for his name. Chad had brushed him off and Echo had wilted under his cold expression. That had been that until he ran into him again by chance.
Brushing him off had made Chad realize how lonely he was, as he’d finally told Echo after a few dates, and apparently Echo had a very cute face. Echo had gone redder than his hair at a compliment from someone so handsome. Even now, he still blushed when Chad called him cute.
“Yeah, he was a sad sack of shit,” said Devon, interrupting the trip down memory lane.
“And then you and your pretty face came along,” Caesar said. Echo wasn’t sure how to take a compliment like that from a dead man, and just looked down at his glass of water. “And he actually started smiling again.”
“So thank you,” said Lucas. “For taking care of him. He wouldn’t have believed it before, but he’s a good guy these days. He deserves to be happy if we can’t.”
“Plus, I don’t think anyone ever thought he’d settle down,” added Devon, leaning back so he appeared propped against the wall. “Back in the day the dude could get it in any gender—”
“He doesn’t want to hear that about his husband, you idiot,” said Tyrel, rubbing his temples like he had a headache. “But yes, thank you for looking after him. Keep him safe for us, keep making him happy.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Echo said. “Even if that’s just letting him tell his stories, it seems to help.”
“It has,” said Caesar. “Back when you first met, he still thought of himself as a terrible person. The survivor’s guilt was something awful and he never would’ve let himself be happy. But now?”
“You’re a good man now.”
“All because of you, doll. I think you’re the only one who could get me to believe that.”
“Now he actually believes it,” Echo said.
“He does,” said Lucas. “Because of you. I’d like to hug you as a thank you, but…” He gestured to his gaping head wound.
“Yeah,” said Echo. “I’d prefer y’all didn’t do that.”
“Fair enough,” said Lucas.
“We swore to look after him,” said Tyrel. “To protect him from losing himself in his grief, and now we don’t have to.”
“So that’s why we wanted to talk to you now,” said Devon. “To thank you. Now we’re relieved of duty. So have a nice life, you two.”
It had been a gradual change, so much so that it snuck up on Echo. But as Devon stepped back and they all stood together, Echo realized he wasn’t staring at mangled corpses anymore. There were no gunshot wounds, Tyrel’s neck was no longer broken, Lucas had both eyes and an expression of absolute wonder; Chad was right, he was cute. They no longer wore the clothes they died in, but were dressed the way they’d been when they were alive, the way they looked grinning up from the pages of Chad’s photo album.
And then they were gone and Echo was alone in the kitchen.
“If I’m dreaming, I have one hell of an imagination,” he said to himself, drying off the glass and returning it to the shelf.
“Oh! And one more thing!”
Echo jumped at the sudden noise from behind him, grateful he hadn’t screamed as he whirled around. All of them were gone save Caesar, looking disconcertingly alive as he sat cross-legged on the kitchen island. Echo knew that of the four members of the crew, he was the one Chad had been the closest to. They’d grown up together, the crew had started with the two of them and they’d built it from the ground up. Their birthdays had been a week apart so the other three called them the twins, and he was the one Chad had the most stories about. Echo couldn’t imagine what Caesar had to say to him one-on-one and suddenly he was convinced Caesar disapproved of him, that he was about to skip out on whatever afterlife the four were long overdue for and threaten to haunt him for the rest of his days for not being good enough, that—
“You already think you’re dreaming, you’ll chalk this up to that so you can tell Chad this. Lucas is sorry is stole a toilet brush back in the day, he knows he was being stupid,” Caesar said. “I’m sure Chad’s told you that story, it’s hysterical—”
“Caesar, don’t bring that up!” Lucas’ disembodied voice whined from somewhere Echo couldn’t quite place. “He doesn’t need to know what a stupid teenager I was!”
“Yes he does!” said Caesar, turning back to Echo. “Alright, it’s late, I’ll be on my way. You should go back to bed.”
* * *
Echo woke up to the morning autumn sun slipping through the blinds and Chad’s weekend’s-worth of stubble tickling his face.
“Morning, doll,” Chad said when he realized Echo was awake. “You sleep okay?”
“I did,” Echo said as he sat up, attempting to corral the tangled mess of gingery curls that his hair was in the morning. “I had the weirdest dream, though.”
“Was it about me?” Chad asked with a grin.
“Yes -- no it wasn’t that kind of dream!” Echo pouted.
“You’ve always had a very active imagination,” Chad said, ruffling Echo’s hair and only making it fluff up worse. “It’s what makes you such a good writer. What was this one about?”
“Your brothers,” Echo said. Chad paused and cocked his head like a dog listening to a far-off sound. “Your brothers were ghosts and they were in our kitchen. They wanted to hug me and thank me for making you so happy.”
“Maybe I should stop telling you stories about the dumb shit we did right before you go to sleep,” Chad offered. Echo shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “And…Caesar, it was Caesar, he was wearing that awful jacket he has in all your pictures. He said Lucas was sorry for stealing a toilet brush, whatever that means.”
“You’re so cute,” Chad said before planting a kiss on his cheek “You want coffee?”
“Sure, you make good coffee.”
“I’ll bring it up then,” Chad said, not even bothering to put on a shirt before heading downstairs to the kitchen. Echo had always had a very active imagination and normally he would’ve written it off as just another instance of that, except for one little detail. It was such a trivial story and not nearly as funny as Caesar made it out to be, that was how he was so certain he’d never told Echo about the time Lucas stole a toilet brush.
“You guys,” he said to the empty kitchen, “are idiots. If you’re listening, you picked a dumb story to tell him.”
And though he waited for something, anything, all he heard—in every sense of the word—was his echo.
Alice Scott (she/her) is an author who may or may not be a ferret turned into a person by a kiss from a prince. She has a degree in creative writing from George Mason University and is currently working as a bookseller with a specialty in recommending queer and underappreciated YA. When not at work she is usually chipping away at her novel, writing collaboratively with her boyfriend, AJ, or procrastinating working on her novel by writing short stories. "His Husband’s Ghosts" was one of said procrastination projects. She is the author of short stories “A Professional Relationship,” “Playing Possum,” and “His Husband’s Ghosts” and is also the cohost of the #LGBTWIP hashtag event on her Twitter, which you can follow at @AllyScottAuthor