Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  He was still breathing hard. “Self-defense…?” he croaked, expression pleading.

  Patrick threw his arms around his father, and cried, and they held each other in the darkened parking lot.

  37

  DIABLO, ARIZONA, SUNDAY, JUNE 3

  The morning sky was crested with dense, white clouds, shielding the town from a piercing sun. Its citizens had no illusions: by noon the cloud cover would bake off, and southern Arizona would face the sun’s full fury. For now, it was a welcome relief.

  At the Diablo Grocery, the ice machine was working overtime. Its ancient compressor labored, unable to keep up with the demand as Kelly Kerrigan and her husband Bob loaded groceries into their truck.

  “I was thinking blueberry,” Kelly said. “Remember the tarts you made last President’s Day?”

  “Surely do. Watch your thumb, there.” He slid in a twenty-pound sack of flour.

  “Heck, Bob, we had three requests for the recipe, and in my book, that makes it … kind of…” She shoved against the bag, making room for a flat of strawberries. “Oof … obligatory…”

  He mopped his forehead. “Ooh. Kinda early in the morning for them big words, ain’t it…?” Bob poked his head up as a police cruiser crunched across the gravel into the parking lot. Kelly watched it with a guarded smile on her face. There were two people in the car, one of whom Kelly didn’t recognize. Sheriff D’Angelo got out from the passenger side. His clothes were theatrical, more nineteenth than twenty-first century, a cross between Wyatt Earp and Marshall Dillon, with ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots and tin star. The Colt .45 at his belt, however, was completely functional.

  “Hey there, Angie,” Kelly said with a broad, guarded smile.

  “Kelly.” D’Angelo grinned back at her. “How you doing today, Bob?”

  “Every day above ground is a good day.”

  “Amen to that,” D’Angelo said. “Saw the truck, thought I’d come over, find out if you folks needed a hand.”

  “No,” Bob said carefully. “I think we can manage.”

  A cloud overhead had shifted, and a shaft of sunlight fell directly on the parking lot, seeming to increase the temperature by fifty degrees.

  “Oh, I know you can, Bob. Just being neighborly.”

  Kelly wiped her hand across her forehead. “Sure appreciate that. Good shooting the other day, Angie.”

  “Just lucky. Better be, when the competition is as good as you. Sorry you weren’t out there too, Bob—takes a little of the starch out of it, you know?”

  He ignored the remark. “Who’s the new kid?” Bob thumbed toward the man behind the cruiser’s wheel.

  “Oh—driving? This here’s Riley Woodcock. You remember Riley?”

  Kelly nodded her head. Another Praetorian. She hadn’t seen him since … Utah. “It’s turning into an old boy’s club around here. How goes it, Riley?”

  Woodcock tipped his hat. He was a raw-boned Okie, in his fifties but, like D’Angelo, lean and fit. He carried himself with the erect posture of the combat soldier he had once been.

  “Charlie still on leave?”

  D’Angelo nodded. “Leaves me short a deputy—Riley’s filling in for a bit. Be talking to Charlie later, though. Should I say howdy?”

  “You do that,” Kelly said.

  “Well, all right then. You two take it easy, and you get inside, Bob. Gonna be a scorcher.”

  “You bet,” Bob said.

  D’Angelo got back in the cruiser, and tooled off. Bob shoved the last bags and boxes into the back of the truck violently, bruising corners and probably cracking eggs. His breath caught, and he was suddenly pulling for air, face gone slightly red, but he held his hand up to silence Kelly when she tried to speak.

  They got in the truck and began to drive. Bob was silent as they drove through the narrow streets of residential Diablo, just two blocks off the tourist strip.

  They parked behind a carefully maintained nineteenth-century two-story clapboard house. The yard sported a rock garden and fountain, and was shaded with a cedar tree.

  Kelly carried a bag of groceries in each arm, but Bob could only manage to carry one up the steps through the screened back porch and into the kitchen. She set the bags down on a sturdy table in the center of her kitchen, and snuck glances back at him as she stored eggs in the oversized refrigerator and bread in the pantry.

  Bobby Ray slammed his groceries down on the kitchen table, then stalked out to the shed behind the house, unlocked it, and disappeared inside. Kelly held her temper, putting away the rest of the groceries herself. She brewed up a pot of tea, waited for it to whistle at her, and then chose two flowered mugs from the cupboard and filled them brim-full.

  The shed was Bob’s workshop, and by unspoken rule she never entered without knocking. Carrying two steaming mugs, the best she could manage was a foot-knock, but Bob answered promptly, and she eased in.

  The room was dark except where the gooseneck lamps curled over vises and drill-presses and reloading equipment. Here in this room, Bob was still the man he used to be. The outside of the shed was weathered wood, but inside the walls were steel-reinforced. He probably had a half-million dollars’ worth of rifles and handguns in that room: muzzle and breechloader, antique harquebus to competition Feinwerkbau model 300S 4.5mm 10-meter rifle.

  After Kelly, his only love in the world was his guns. He could spend days in his shop, modifying the rifles other shooters sent him from across the state, experimenting with cartridges, filling dozens of notebooks with sketches and designs for specialized weapons he would never have the time to create.

  His great loves were the Western lever-actions: Spanish Tigre 44/40, Winchester 1892 eleven-shot with the 955mm barrel, the 336 CS Marlin with a tubular seven-shot magazine. They were toys, tools, pets, and he pampered them endlessly.

  If one was his special love, it was the Sharps 1853 sporting rifle, the deadly “Buffalo” with a gray steel frame. He had two, one taking .45 paper cartridges, and the other modified for .44 long-barrel. He was deadly accurate with either, and could send a slug down its twenty-six-inch barrel into the bull’s-eye at 250 yards.

  Over the last three days Bob had partially disassembled the rifle, working on the double Stecher trigger, tightening the pull.

  She set the teacup beside him, but he ignored it for a minute, working at a metal spur with a black piece of emory cloth. Then he picked the cup up without looking at it, and sipped.

  She watched without speaking at first, but finally said, “Bob? Honey? What is it?”

  He put the cup down, and hung his head without looking at her. He had doffed his cap, revealing a completely bald scalp, marred with dark red discoloration. “That man. He just … treats me like I’m already dead.”

  “Just being friendly. Friendly as he knows how. Don’t you fret none, hon.”

  “I guess. Sometimes he is friendly. Hell, he helped us buy this place.” Of course that was just business: Angel owned a piece of the local bank. “But, I don’t know…” He took another sip. “Maybe its just me. Most of the time, I’m all right. All right. But now and then, I just think about all the work I’m leaving you with.”

  She understood. There was painting and planting to be done, the cactus garden was edging toward raggedy, and the family room branching off from the kitchen was unfinished. Its floor was half-stripped, the walls only partially painted. Once, they had dreamed of turning it into a den or hobby room, but Bob was just plain running out of energy, and she needed all of her focus to keep the B&B running.

  “Bob, you just shut up. You’re not leaving me just yet. Not for a long while. And we bought this together. This was our dream. My dream.” A Texas Ranger, a Secret Service woman. A chance meeting in Fort Worth, and instant attraction. A long-distance courtship, followed by a marriage that had given both of them the combination of intimacy and space that two career-driven, high-octane achievers demanded. Then retirement together in a town whose roots rested in a simpler, less political time. Dreams of warm
, quiet nights, laugh-filled days. “You helped make it happen.”

  He turned away from her and made a funny sound, something halfway between a laugh and a sob.

  “Bob,” Kelly said. “Bob, you listen to me. Just stop it now. We got a lot more living to do. Together. Just stop it.” She wrapped her arms around him.

  He pressed his face against her. “Just … hold me?” His voice was muffled.

  She stroked his hair, gentling him as she scanned the walls of rifles. Bobby was selling off the least precious, those that hadn’t too deep a place in his heart. The Dreyse 1857 Prussian cavalry carbine, but not the 9.5 Wm. Read Plains rifle with the beautiful woodwork. The Corsican light-infantry 17.5 mm, but not the 1819 Hall breech-loader flintlock. Tidying up. Saying good-bye to the world.

  He sighed. “Let’s get the rest of the groceries.”

  “Already got ’em, Bobby Ray.”

  He nodded ruefully. “Art of living, ain’t it? Volunteer to help just after the job’s done.” He rubbed her nose with his. “How about this. Maybe I can do a mite more painting on the side room after dinner.”

  “Maybe later,” she said softly. “When it gets cooler. You just work on your Sharps. She’s a good old girl.”

  “The best,” he said. “Just like you.” He rested a hand on her still-slim waist, and another on the roundness below it, and nestled his chin on her shoulder. It had been two years since Bobby Ray’s body had functioned fully, not long after the sad-eyed doctor had begun talking about anti-nausea drugs and chemotherapy. Two years of chronic fatigue and muscle wasting; but there were many ways an ingenious and giving man could share physical love, and thank God they had never allowed shyness or prudery stop them.

  She felt the blood heating in her face, and knew that this would be one of those nights, the ones she would remember after he was gone.

  She was careful to blink the tears out of her eyes before she let him see her face. “You just save your strength, you hear? And we’ll see what’s cooking for dessert.”

  38

  D’Angelo pulled up in the tan sheriff’s Jeep. It was air-conditioned, but he rarely turned it up high. He liked the heat, enjoyed the fact that if he relaxed just right, the temperature barely seemed to bother him. Other men would sweat and groan, and D’Angelo’s thighs barely dampened beneath the leather pants.

  He was in his fifties, and never worked out in a gym, but his body was still lean and aggressive, had yet to soften at jowl or gut. He moved like the lifelong predator he was: every step, every gesture compact, economical, and somehow wary.

  The offices of the Sheriff’s department weren’t large, but adequate. The front receptionist was an older woman, Grace Marchini.

  “Good morning, Gracie,” he said casually. And isn’t it a shame I can’t tell you exactly why it’s so good.

  “Morning, Sheriff,” she answered. “Good trip?”

  “They were biting.” Oh, yes, indeed they were. “Calls?”

  “On your desk.”

  “Thanks,” he said. I like you, Gracie. I like you so much I wish I could show you the souvenir in the Jeep’s trunk. A stack of envelopes sat in the in-basket, and he browsed them. “Bring me back a cup of that good coffee, would you?”

  “Sure thing.” She dimpled at him.

  D’Angelo went back into his office, and sorted through his mail. As he did, Gracie brought him a steaming mug of coffee. The sheriff sipped with satisfaction.

  “Your husband’s damned lucky I like the old bastard. Half a mind to just shoot him and keep you to myself.” And peel you with a can opener. Right in front of him, while he’s watching his guts spill out. But that would be too close to home. Too close for comfort.

  She giggled, as he knew she would, and her cheeks colored. “You’d never keep up with me, Angel.”

  “Probably right.” He grinned. “I’m going to walk the boards.” She nodded and disappeared. Anything that came up while he was gone could wait a spell.

  He turned right out of the front door and headed down to Silver Street, Diablo’s main drag. A stagecoach rumbled past, crammed with tourists craning with Kodaks and Sonys to capture a bit of the Olde West. Diablo was a mining town, established in the 1860s. It had been just a supply store and a saloon, with a few hardscrabble farms around.

  Over the decades, it grew. By the 1890s it was the second-largest town for a hundred miles, just behind Tombstone. Like Tombstone, Diablo had almost died in the first decades of the new century. Not until the tourist explosion of the 1960s resurrected Tombstone did anyone even pay attention to the single convenience store and gift shop that composed Diablo.

  But somehow, Diablo grew. Old houses were declared state monuments, the opening of a new cave to the north brought spelunkers and tourists down from Phoenix, and a big Clint Eastwood western in 1980 rebuilt half the town. Investment money began pouring in. Somehow, it became a popular retirement spot for state and federal lawmen and ex-military living on pensions and enjoying new identities as Pat Garrett and Jesse James, putting on three shows a day for the tourists, and parading the authentic wooden sidewalks as mythic men of old.

  Diablo came back to life; greater life, in fact, than it had enjoyed in its youth.

  Tristan D’Angelo had retired from Marcus Communications a wealthy man still in his prime, and found Diablo to his liking. He bought property, worked for local law enforcement and then ran for sheriff, putting enough money and charm into the campaign to smoke the competition.

  This was his town now, and he’d had more than enough juice to get the loan for Kelly Kerrigan when she retired. Yes, that had been a good thing. He walked the streets, past the barber shop and the soda stand; the little restaurants that had two menus, one for tourists, one for locals; the nickelodeon where silent westerns and a slide show of Diablo’s history played from nine in the morning until ten at night. He passed saloons with the double doors, four curio shops with carved topaz and hardwood in the shapes of noble Indians, an ice cream parlor advertising Italian ices.

  The tourists gawked at him in his finery, and he tipped his hat politely to them, imagining that he was in another era, another time, with other responsibilities.…

  And other pleasures. Yes, the pleasures.

  “Afternoon, Sheriff,” a little boy said to him, and he tipped his hat, making the boy’s day.

  Yes, the pleasures. He still remembered the girl’s screams, muffled though they had been by a wad of her own clothing. And when someone finally found her body, in a year or ten, would that last scream still be in her throat?

  The shopkeepers greeted him, the other cowboys (no real ammunition in their belts) stepped out of his way, and in every way, this was a fine, fine day.

  Alexander would have liked this day, he thought. D’Angelo owned half the town. Bought it with Marcus’s money. He was the sheriff, thanks in part to Marcus’s media clout. There was damned good hunting within three hours’ drive. And an hour’s easy flight landed him in Los Angeles, home of the best hunting in the world.

  Alexander would have appreciated all of it, especially the irony.

  Too bad you couldn’t be here, he said to himself.

  Too bad you got sloppy, Alexander.

  Too bad I had to kill you.

  39

  CLAREMONT, FRIDAY, JUNE 8

  The Claremont Lumber yard stretched over three hundred acres of land, nestled between the I-5 freeway and the Cowlitz River. Day and night, trucks, trains and boats carried an endless stream of logs in, and hewn planks or raw lumber products out.

  Driving his little forklift, Otis Emory negotiated a vast interconnected warren of mills, offices, shops, storage sheds, ship docks and truck parking, meeting halls and cafeterias. Claremont Lumber directly or indirectly employed almost a third of the town’s entire population, down from almost ninety percent at the turn of the century.

  The payroll offices were next to the Claremont Lumber Credit Union building, the town’s largest financial institution. On the first an
d third Thursday of every month, the employees lined up for their checks at noon, or waited until five for the checks to be brought around to their various posts.

  Otis parked his tractor in a COMPANY VEHICLES ONLY space and entered the payroll office, waiting and chatting in line with the men before and behind him, pretty much enjoying the day, and looking forward to having his money in his hands instead of behind a sheet of one-inch bullet-proof plastic.

  The woman behind the counter was too old to flirt as she did, but she never seemed to let that stop her. “Another fat one, Otis,” she said.

  “Could spend it all right here,” he said, and leered at her.

  She blushed prettily, the reddening visible through the thick make-up, and handed him his envelope. “You get along to that pretty wife, now, you hear?”

  “’Nother time, maybe,” he said.

  He went out to his car in the parking lot. Otis paused for a moment, alert, scanning the lot. Cappy had been avoiding him. Otis had caught only two brief glimpses of the man since their altercation. Was that good? Would it be better if Cappy threatened him? Promised revenge? Offered apology? He knew only that his gut felt as if it were full of frogs.

  There was nothing threatening, no sign of anything to concern him even in these nervous days. Just some knots of people scattered here and about talking. He shrugged, got in his car, and drove out of the lot.

  * * *

  Brogan’s was one of the oldest bars in town, a mill bar run by a family that had once cut board for old man Claremont. One fine day in ’37 someone swept up two of Billy Brogan’s fingers from the sawdust-speckled floor, and packed them in ice. The nearest hospital, down in Vancouver, had reattached them, but in a couple of weeks they turned black and greasy and had to be taken back off again, and Billy Brogan won permanent disability. He had used the settlement cash to open the bar.

  One of Brogan’s sons worked the mill, the other worked the bar. And a generation after that, the bar was the family business, and the only sawdust any of them breathed was sprinkled on the floor to soak up the beer.