Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  “She was home killing Tess that day.”

  “Were you here? Did you see her pass by at any time?”

  “I wasn’t here, I was in school. Ma was away, too. All right? She killed them and nobody was here to stop her. I wish to God I had been!”

  The sudden angry outburst set Buster off again, barking and lunging at his chain.

  “Lonnie, I’m sorry if I—”

  “I’ve got work to finish,” Lonnie said. He turned toward the shed. All the way there he swung the wrench in short, chopping air blows, as if it were a weapon being wielded at an enemy’s head.

  He knows something, Messenger thought.

  The feeling was as clear and sharp as the insight he’d had here yesterday about Anna’s move to San Francisco. It wasn’t actual knowledge of the crimes; Lonnie’s belief that his aunt had committed them seemed genuine. Something else. But what? What could he know?

  12

  THE OLD MINE road was little more than a half-formed series of ruts that hadn’t been graded or repaired since it was built. A metal arrow sign, rusted and bent and bullet-pocked, said BOOTSTRAP MINE, with a mileage figure that had been worn away. Bullet holes in the center of the two O’s in Bootstrap made them look like a pair of dead, staring eyes.

  Messenger saw the Jeep and then Dacy Burgess less than a minute after he turned onto the ruts. The terrain here was rumpled, just beginning to rise into the stark, sunburnt hills. A narrow arroyo, steep-sided and strewn with fractured rock, angled down from the higher elevations, and where it paralleled the road for fifty yards or so the Jeep was drawn up in the meager shade of an overhang. On the far side of the wash, barbed-wire fencing stretched upward in an irregular line—obviously put there to keep cattle from straying into the wash. That was where Dacy was, standing now with her back to the fence, watching as he drove up behind the Jeep.

  He walked to the edge of the wash. “Morning.”

  She said, “I figured it was you soon as I saw the dust. Lonnie tell you where to find me?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a good kid but he talks too much.”

  “All right if I come over where you are?”

  “Better not—you’re liable to bust a leg. I’ll come over there. I’m done here anyway.”

  At her feet was an open tool kit. She closed and hoisted it, then made her way quickly and agilely down into the arroyo and up the loose-shale bank to where he stood. The look she gave him was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Tolerant, he thought. A little speculative, too, as if she were seeing something in him that she hadn’t noticed yesterday.

  “What happened to the fence?” he asked.

  “Wind blew a section down. Happens all the time. Damn soil is too loose to keep a post down tight.”

  “Hard work, repairing it?”

  “Not so hard, if you don’t have to string new wire. I didn’t, this time.” She put the tool kit into the Jeep, shed the heavy work gloves she’d been wearing. “Why’d you come back?”

  “For one thing, to apologize. I didn’t handle our talk very well yesterday.”

  Dacy shrugged and adjusted her sweat-stained Stetson. “No need. I didn’t handle it very well, either. What else?”

  “To give you this,” and he handed her the paper he’d written out before leaving the motel earlier.

  “Who’s George Del Carlo?” she asked after she’d glanced at it.

  “Police inspector in San Francisco. He’s the one to contact to identify Anna. He’ll explain the procedures to you.”

  “What procedures? I told you yesterday, I don’t want Anna’s blood money.”

  “You don’t have to keep it, but you might think about claiming it. This seems to be a fairly poor county; give it to charity here. Otherwise, it’ll go to the state of California, and that’s not right.”

  She seemed about to argue, changed her mind and said, “Maybe it isn’t. All right, I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll have to make arrangements for burial or cremation, too. Del Carlo will put you in touch with whoever handles that in the coroner’s office.”

  “Christ, they still have her in the morgue?”

  “Yes. Frozen storage.”

  One corner of Dacy’s mouth twitched. “Well, I can’t afford to have the body shipped back here for burial. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Put her in the damn ground out there.”

  “That’s up to you. But at least give her a marker with her real name on it. She deserves that much.”

  “Does she? If you think so, why don’t you pay for a headstone?”

  “Maybe I will, if you don’t.”

  She shook her head, tight-lipped, and tucked the paper into her shirt pocket. “Now if that’s all, how about if you head out to Vegas or wherever you’re going and let me get on with my work.”

  “I’m not going anywhere just yet,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No. You know it, too. You saw John T. after I did last night and he told you I’m staying.”

  “How do you know I saw John T.?”

  “Sheriff Espinosa. He looked me up this morning.”

  “That baked apple. John T. sic him on you?”

  “Seemed that way to me,” he said. “Baked apple?”

  “Brown on the outside, white on the inside.”

  “Is that the kind of man Espinosa is?”

  “A lot of people think so, most of them brown.”

  “Does John T. run him too, along with everything else around here?”

  “John T. doesn’t run me or mine.” She paused and then said, “Ben does what he pleases about half the time. And John T. doesn’t like you worth a damn. What’d you say to rile him up last night?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No. He says you’re a fucking troublemaker—his words.”

  “Do you agree with him?”

  “No. I think you’re probably a damn fool.”

  “Why? Because I refuse to accept your sister’s guilt?”

  “Because you’ll end up getting people mad as hell at you if you try to prove different. Mad enough, maybe, to do you a meanness.”

  “Hurt me?”

  “That’s what the expression means.”

  “What if I’m right, Dacy? You don’t mind if I call you Dacy?”

  “Why should I mind. It’s my name.”

  “What if I’m right? What if Anna didn’t do it?”

  “You’re not right. But if by some miracle you were … I guess it’d depend on just how right.”

  “I’m not sure I understand that.”

  “On who did it. Nobody liked Anna much; they can all live with her being a murderer. But if it turned out to be one of Beulah’s select citizens instead … well, you wouldn’t be doing the town any favors.”

  “Why didn’t people like Anna?”

  “Same reason they don’t like me,” Dacy said. “The Childresses have always kept to themselves and we do things our own way. Plus there’s the fact that our old man was a pretty shrewd horse trader. He once screwed John T.’s old man out of some land, or so old Bud Roebuck always claimed. If the Roebucks don’t like you, nobody likes you.”

  “Dave Roebuck must’ve liked Anna.”

  “Sure. And that made John T. dislike her all the more.”

  “Did he get along with his brother?”

  “No. Never did. It got worse after—”

  “After what?”

  She hesitated. And shrugged and said, “Dave hit on John T.’s wife once. John T. threatened to horsewhip him if he did it again. But don’t try to make anything out of that. It happened four … no, five years ago.”

  “Maybe it happened again, more recently.”

  “Uh-uh. Too many women said yes to Dave for him to keep after the ones that said no. He hit on me once too; I told him I’d rather screw a snake and he never bothered me again.”

  “Isn’t it possible Lizbeth changed her mind and went after him?”

  “Not hardly. Y
ou don’t know Lizbeth. She’s got her faults—booze, for one—but she knows who’s buying and buttering her bread and she doesn’t play around. Besides, she’s a cold fish. In bed, I mean. Wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?”

  “How do you know she’s cold?”

  “John T. let something slip once.”

  “Well, what about him? Does he play around?”

  “If he does he’s damn discreet about it.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you.”

  “I don’t like him at all. He’s a user and a first-class son of a bitch. All the Roebucks were and are. They either get their way or they make you pay for fighting them. Sometimes they make you pay even if you don’t fight them. But not in blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. Ruining people is John T.’s way, not killing them. And family means a lot to him. He didn’t get along with Dave, maybe even hated him, but he fought like hell more than once to protect him.”

  Messenger asked, “You have much trouble with John T.?”

  “Some. Now and then.”

  “Then why do you keep living here, this close to him?”

  “Now that’s a stupid question, Jim. Why do you suppose? It’s my home. Where else would I go?”

  “You could always make a new home.”

  “Like Anna did?”

  “That’s a different thing and you know it. She didn’t want to leave; she was forced to.”

  “Well, I don’t want to leave either. And nobody’s forcing me out. I wouldn’t give John T. the satisfaction of leaving after what happened with Anna, and I’m sure as hell not going to do it now.”

  “Did he try to force you out then?”

  “He took a couple of shots at it.”

  “What kind of shots?”

  “Ones that didn’t hit anything. That’s all I’m going to say about it. My business and his, nobody else’s.”

  He nodded, glanced up along the road to where it vanished into the heat-hazed hills. “How far is the mine from here?”

  “The Bootstrap? Why?”

  “I thought I’d take a look at it.”

  “Why?”

  “No particular reason. I just want to look at it.”

  “You won’t find anything to prove Anna was there the day of the killings.”

  “I don’t expect to. How far?”

  “About a mile and a half.” Dacy lifted her chin in the direction of his Subaru. “But you won’t get there in that.”

  “Bad road?”

  “Bad enough. Four-wheel-drive country up there. You’d have to quit a mile below the mine or risk busting an axle.”

  “Could I walk the last mile?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind an uphill climb most of the way. And these hills are full of rattlers, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Messenger said, “Your Jeep has four-wheel drive.”

  “So?”

  “Would you let me borrow it for an hour or so?”

  “You’re something, you are. No, you can’t borrow it. Nobody drives that Jeep but Lonnie and me.”

  “Will you take me up to the mine?”

  “Take you? You think I got nothing better to do? I don’t play at ranching, I work at it.”

  “Drive up, quick look around, drive back. It wouldn’t take very long.”

  “Long enough.”

  “I’ll pay you for your time. …”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Anger kindled in Dacy’s eyes. “Ranching, that’s all I work at. I’m not a guide or a goddamn chauffeur.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you. Will you do it as a favor?”

  “I don’t owe you any favors.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Her gaze moved over his face, as if seeking an understanding of how the wheels and cogs worked inside. “I swear,” she said, “you’ve got more balls than a three-peckered bull,” but she was no longer angry. It was almost a compliment.

  “Will you take me?”

  “I don’t know why I should, but all right. Ten minutes maximum at the mine, then I’m coming back down whether you’re ready to leave or not.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He went around to the passenger side of the Jeep. The wind kicked up again, so violently that his hat was nearly snatched away. Grit stung his eyes again, got into his mouth and nostrils, and made him cough. When his vision cleared he saw that Dacy had tucked her head down and lowered the brim of her Stetson; she sat waiting patiently until the wind subsided. Then she started the Jeep and bounced them upward along the track.

  He said, “Is it like that often around here?”

  “Like what?”

  “The wind. Blow hard and stop, blow hard and stop.”

  “Oh, that. Sometimes. You get used to it.”

  “Makes me a little edgy.”

  “You should be here when it goes on that way for days on end. Your nerves feel like they’re baking inside your skin, like a potato inside its jacket.”

  “I hope I’m not here when that happens.”

  “Chances are,” she said dryly, “you won’t be.”

  The road twisted and turned into the naked hills, rising for the most part, dipping now and then. A hawk wheeling lazily in thermal updrafts was the only sign of life. Nothing grew up here but sparse clumps of sage; the rest of the landscape was gray broken rock, whitish dust, brown crumbling earth. For the last half mile to the mine, all that remained of the road was a pair of rock-studded ruts so deeply eroded in places that even the Jeep had to strain through them. Dacy was a good driver; she managed to miss most of the deeper pits and larger juts of rock. But it was a bone-jarring ride nonetheless.

  The track hooked along the shoulder of one of the taller hills, with a steep fall-away on one side. From there Messenger could see a long way out across the desert plain. The southern reaches of Beulah were visible; and a cluster of ranch buildings that he thought must be John T.’s place. Dacy confirmed it.

  When they dropped down on the far side of the hill he had his first look at the abandoned mine. There was not much left of it. Once there had been three good-sized buildings; two were now nothing more than jumbles of collapsed boards and sections of rust-eaten sheet metal. The one still standing, about the size of a two-car garage, listed a few degrees off-center and looked as though it would soon suffer the fate of its neighbors. Above the buildings, on another ash-colored hillside, was a long, flat-topped pile of ore tailings and the mouth of the mine tunnel.

  Dacy parked near the one upright structure. Nearby a metal sign, bullet-riddled like every other sign in this country, hung from a pair of tall wooden posts: BOOTSTRAP MINE. Below it a newer and equally abused sign, probably put up by the BLM, read: BUILDINGS AND MINE UNSAFE. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  “Well, there it is,” Dacy said; “Not much, is it.”

  “No, not much.”

  Desolate, he thought. A hermit’s aerie in the middle of nowhere. The wind, much more constant up here, was the only sound. No—sounds, plural. Flutters and whistles, little moans and long, rattling sighs. Whimpers, too, clear and mournful. Wind music, almost jazzlike: a kind of natural blues melody, dirty-sweet and atonal, full of all sorts of keening improvisation and so emotionally charged it was as if he were hearing an outrush of suffering that verged on the human.

  “Did Anna come here often?” he asked.

  “Often enough.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s a kind of place I associate with her.”

  “Cradle of loneliness,” Dacy said.

  He looked at her; she was staring straight ahead, thinking about something that didn’t include him. He swung free of the Jeep, picked his way uphill through fractured rock to the mine entrance. Before he reached it he heard Dacy following. The opening was covered with a narrow shedlike structure, to protect it against slides from above; the shed and the mouth’s sagging support timbers were silvery with age. What he could see of the floor inside was clear except for wind sweepings of dust and dead matter. The sm
ell that came out of the earth’s bowels was one of warm must.

  “Better not go in there,” Dacy said as she came up beside him.

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “Main tunnel was blasted out of solid rock and most of it’s safe, but the stopes are bad. A couple have caved in already. You know what stopes are?”

  “Step layers where the ore was mined.”

  “Right. Mining one of your interests?”

  “I read a lot. Lonnie said Anna didn’t find much gold in there. She didn’t really come up here to prospect, did she.”

  “No. She came here to hide.”

  “From what? Her husband?”

  “Whenever they had a fight, which was pretty damn often in the last year, she’d head straight here. But he was only part of what she was trying to hide from.”

  “Herself, you mean,” Messenger said.

  “Only she couldn’t. Hell, nobody can. That’s why she ran off to San Francisco. That’s why she killed herself.”

  “Did she always come here alone?”

  “Brought Tess along once in a while. Not very often.”

  “What made her come the day of the murders?”

  “If she was here at all.”

  “Why did she say she came?”

  “Another screamer with Dave.”

  “Screaming fight? Over what?”

  “Same old crap. His women, his good-for-nothingness.”

  “Something must have started it.”

  “He’d been out all night,” Dacy said, “didn’t come home until around eleven o’clock. He’d been drinking—was still about half drunk she said.”

  “Where did he spend the night?”

  “He wouldn’t tell her. One of his women, though, where else?”

  “You used the word ‘screamer.’ Was that all it was? Just a lot of yelling back and forth—verbal abuse? Or did their fights get physical?”

  “He wasn’t above slapping her around.”

  “Nothing more serious than that?”

  “No busted bones, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did he hit her that day?”

  “Well, she didn’t have any marks on her that you could see.”

  “If he was half drunk, maybe violent, why did she leave Tess there alone with him?”