“Oh, but they will, my friend,” I assured him, the words streaming out of my mouth in a cloud of milky white smoke that curled upward through the stark light of the lantern like Aladdin’s genie trying to take shape. “I guarantee you, they will.”
6
Murphy’s farm was crawling with crime scene techs dusting for fingerprints, taking plaster tire impressions, probing the shallow grave from which they’d exhumed two decaying heads, and searching the grass at the bottom of the hill for ejected cartridges left by the warning shots Pender had fired to scare away the vultures yesterday.
Skip and Pender followed Laurel Baldinger, the sheriff’s crime scene analyst, out of the glaring daylight into the barn, where the dim light was pierced by glowing shafts of morning sunlight angling in through pinholes in the roof. Having been blindfolded during his entire stay, Skip had never actually seen the inside of the barn, but it felt eerily familiar to him all the same, as if he’d seen it in a dream.
“Do you have any idea how long Sweet might have been holed up in here?” Pender asked the CSA.
“We found a receipt from a Seven-Eleven near Marshall City dated April seventeenth.”
“That was the day the hospital blew up. He must have come directly here.”
“You mean they, plural,” she corrected him. “Almost everywhere we’re dusting, we’re finding two distinct sets of latents.”
“Couldn’t the second set have been the other victim’s, the one Skip here was tied to?”
Baldinger shook her head. “Both sets of prints are all over the barn and the van, inside and out. So whoever it was obviously had free run of the entire place. To me, that says accomplice, not victim.”
Pender turned to Skip. “Looks like we need to have another chat with Dr. Gallagher,” he said, then turned back to the analyst. “I was told you’d found something you wanted me to take a look at.”
“Yes, sir.” She handed Pender a small black pocket diary. “The reason I called you is, we found your name in it.”
Pender read the cover aloud. “1995 Pocket Pal, courtesy of your Pfizer Sales Representative, Robert F. Peterson, 2500 Mission Street, Santa Cruz, California.” He opened the book, squinted exaggeratedly, brought it up to within an inch of his nose, then held it out at arm’s length before giving up. “If you can read this, your eyes are better than mine.”
“Oh, sorry. Here.” Baldinger handed him her own round, thick-lensed magnifying glass, which had a raised rectangular inset of even higher magnifying power. It took a little experimenting, but after a few tries, he was able to make out the first sentence. “On the morning my father telephoned from Marshall City to announce that the FBI was closing in, I was in the trailer watching Teddy, my stepmother, getting dressed.…”
7
Apr 22
It took me half the night, but when Asmador woke up this morning, he found my old Pocket Pal next to his sleeping bag, along with the little magnifying glass Rudy used to bring out in order to show his customers the THC crystals sparkling atop the sinsemilla buds.
The effort damn near killed me, but Asmador, whose condition has continued to improve almost hourly, was like a kid on Christmas morning. Obviously not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he tore into the new reading material with the same intensity with which he’d devoured the BMW owner’s manual, sitting up cross-legged with the book in one hand and the magnifying glass and a joint in the other, not stopping to eat or piss, his head wreathed in a cloud of pot smoke.
When he got to the final entry, where I’d added a crucial postscript last night, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open, like he was a ham silent movie actor miming astonishment.
“What’s up?” I called over to him. “You look all excited.”
He looked up from the book and asked me if I could keep a secret.
“To the grave and beyond,” I told him.
“My mission from the Council,” he said, his brown eyes sparkling like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “I know what it is.”
“That’s terrific,” I told him. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, just say the word.”
“Okay, I will,” he said solemnly. Then he lowered his head to the book in his lap, turned back to the first page, and started all over again.
Apr 23
Asmador spent all day yesterday reading and rereading my Pocket Pal from cover to cover with the aid of the magnifying glass, then was up half the night flipping through the pages at random, the way born-again Christians page through their Bibles, looking for inspiration and guidance. I can tell he has it memorized already: when I awoke this morning, he raised his forefinger in the air like Abe Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address, and proclaimed, “He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he!”
For a while there, I was worried that at some point he might get suspicious of my role in this whole affair. I certainly would have if I were him. But it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him to question who I am or what I’m doing here. He’s never called me by my name. I don’t think he even knows I have a name, much less that it’s Luke. As for the possibility that I’m the guy featured in the Pocket Pal, I’m pretty sure that’s never crossed his mind.
Of course, it helps that he doesn’t seem to remember anything that happened in the real world while he was under the influence of chemical restraint. As far as Asmador is concerned, he was sent here by the Infernal Council to carry out his mission, and nothing else matters. And when you look at the situation from his point of view, it only makes sense that there’d be a guy here whose entire function in life (other than rolling doobies for him) was to help him with that mission. He probably thinks the Infernal Council sent me to him for precisely that reason, and I sure don’t plan to disabuse him on that score.
At least not intentionally. I did come close to screwing it up this afternoon, however, while I was explaining how to get to Fred and Evelyn’s house, and accidentally referred to them as “my” grandparents instead of the grandparents. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.
Apr 24
Asmador was like a new man this morning. He emptied my piss jug, made instant coffee, and even twisted up a sloppy but serviceable breakfast doobie for us to share. Then he hunkered down next to me, glanced to his left, then to his right, and whispered, “Tonight’s the night.”
Turns out he’d visited the Council last night and received his marching orders. Me, I wasn’t all that convinced he was ready yet, but when we went through the plan for about the zillionth time, I had to admit he had it down cold.
Of course, that’s no guarantee he’ll be able to perform under pressure, or improvise successfully if things go wrong. But I can’t let myself worry about stuff like that. I’ll just have to be contented with knowing that I’ve done everything I can, and hope I live long enough to find out how it all comes out.
Apr 25
It’s not so bad, this dying. I thought it’d be scarier. Instead it’s kind of peaceful. My leg doesn’t even hurt anymore. Not because it’s better, but because it’s numb. I can’t feel anything below midcalf. Which is lucky, because my foot sure looks painful, all black and swollen and getting ready to split open like an overripe tomato. Plus there’s this sweetish-sour rotting smell hovering around my corner of the barn. Can you say gangrene, boys and girls?
Of course, I could probably still save my life (though probably not my foot) by hopping into the old Beemer when Asmador gets back and driving straight to the nearest emergency room. But then what? I get to spend the rest of my life either in prison (I imagine some people are still pretty pissed off about that whole blowing up Meadows Road deal) or in some state-run maximum-security nut farm. And I’ve already done enough time in Meadows Road to know that that’s not really living, it’s only slower dying.
No, better to let it end here. But not quite yet, not until I get to see my grandparents again.
Asmador should be back with their heads any time now.
8
Tap
ocketa tapocketa ka-chunk.
Open lid, turn page of book, place book facedown on glass, push down lid to flatten book, press big green button.
Tapocketa tapocketa ka-chunk.
Open lid, turn page…place book…flatten book…green button.
Tapocketa tapocketa ka-chunk…
Pender and Epstein were in a rhythm now, slaving over a hot photocopier in the windowless room in the back of the Marshall County sheriff’s station, where they kept the office equipment. Laura Baldinger had agreed to let Pender enlarge Luke Sweet’s Pocket Pal diary for the purposes of the investigation, on the condition that he return it to her at the crime scene as soon as they’d finished.
“Here’s you,” Pender exclaimed, reading from a floppy, still-warm sheet of copier paper. “A skinny guy with fading reddish brown hair.…Skip Epstein. …Bounty hunter.” Pender glanced up at him. “Bounty hunter?”
Skip reddened—with his fair complexion, he’d always blushed easily—then flipped back through his copy of the sheets. “And here’s you. A huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim.”
Pender took off his trusty hat and turned it around a few times. “Looks fine to me,” he said, just as his cell phone began playing “Moon River” in his pants pocket.
A practiced hand by now, Pender flipped the phone open with a flourish while Skip continued to work the copier. “Pender here. …Uh-huh. …Uh-huh. …That didn’t take long. …Yeah, I understand. Okay, shoot. …Really?…That explains the smell. …Thanks, Doc, I—No, nothing from Cal-ID yet. I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything. …You bet. Thanks again. …Bye.”
He keyed the End Call button, snapped the phone closed, turned to Skip. “That was Dr. Flemm, the M.E. He’s reasonably convinced he’s got the cause of death for our deceased friend—provisional of course, pending blood work and toxicology, but he says so far, everything points to gangrene from a crushed ankle.”
The phone, still in his hand, went off again. Pender, who was heartily sick of “Moon River” by this time, gave Skip the upraised, sorry-gotta-take-this forefinger. “Pender here. …Oh, hi. …Tell me you have good news for— No kidding? Out-standing! Fast work! Hold on just a second. …Okay, shoot,” he said, notebook at the ready, pencil stub poised, cell phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear. But a puzzled look crossed his face at what must have been the caller’s first words, and the pencil didn’t move.
“Wait a minute, there must be some kind of mistake. Are we talking about a match from the card I sent you, or are we talking about the latent prints from the barn?…Oh, you haven’t? How good is the match?…That good…? Thanks, I guess.” He snapped the phone shut, then dropped it back into the side pocket of his jacket.
“What is it?” said Skip. “What’s going on?”
Dazedly: “That was Cal-ID. They got a ten-by-ten match on the dead guy.”
“And?”
“It was him, it was Sweet.”
Stunned didn’t quite cover Skip’s response; flabbergasted was closer. “Luke Sweet?” he said, his mind flashing back to last night’s dream.
“Little Luke himself, dead and in person. Ten-point match on all ten fingers—that makes the probability somewhere around ninety-nine point nine percent.”
“What’s the point one percent?” was all Skip’s muddled brain could come up with.
“Clerical error,” said Pender, as his phone began chirping yet again. “Pender here. …Oh, hi, Laurel. We’re just about finished with— You did? Can we— Okay, yeah, sure.” He checked his watch: it was straight-up noon. “See you in about half an hour.”
“What now?” Skip asked.
“One of the CS techs found a second journal buried in the dirt in the back of the barn. Luke again, but the new one’s only ten pages or so, in regular-size handwriting. Laurel says we can look it over as soon as they’re done dusting it.”
“I can hardly wait,” murmured Skip, glancing over the last page of the Pocket Pal. “Maybe it’ll help us make some sense out of this,” he added, then read the final entry, which was hand-printed in capital letters, aloud to Pender:
“To Asmador: Your mission, by order of the Infernal Council, is to exact revenge for all slights and injustices visited upon Luke Sweet, Jr., by the traitors named herein. You will know neither peace nor rest until vultures have feasted on their remains.”
“What the fuck?” said Pender.
“My sentiments exactly,” said Skip.
9
April…something. Who knows, who cares. This is probably my last entry. I can’t feel my leg below the knee anymore, and every time I drop off to sleep, I sink a little deeper, stay a little longer, and come back a little weaker than the time before.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I have some good memories. Eating Marianne’s ice cream with my mother. Riding the Giant Dipper 67 times in a row. Making love with Shawnee, waist-deep in the sparkling river.
And at least I’m at peace, which is more than you can say for Fred and Evelyn. Asmador brought their heads back yesterday in plastic grocery bags and set them up on a plank so I can see them from where I’m lying. Judging by the expression on their faces, their mouths wide open and screaming and their eyes practically popping out of their heads, those two were anything but peaceful at the end.
Serves ’em right: they should have treated me better when they had the chance. They all should have treated me better. And now, thanks to Asmador, who just left for the Marshall City library to research the current whereabouts of Judge Brobauer, they’re all going to pay.
How’s that for a happy ending?
Yours truly, Luke Sweet, Jr., Murphy’s Farm, Marshall County, California, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, the Galaxy, the Universe, and whatever lies beyond.
CHAPTER TWO
1
A little more than an hour after losing their prime suspect, whose death had provided him with the most unimpeachable alibi of all, the ad hoc investigative duo of Pender and Epstein left Marshall County in Pender’s dust-covered, dirt-spattered rental car, with Skip behind the wheel and Pender working the cell phone.
“Dr. Gallagher, it’s Ed Pender from the FBI, I spoke to you Wednesday? Sorry to bother you at home, but it’s urgent.…Oh, please, don’t give it another thought. We all made assumptions. You assumed Luke Sweet was dead, I assumed he was our killer. Turns out we were both wrong.…No, according to this new journal he didn’t even kill his grandparents.…I was hoping you’d be able tell us. You said there were four people unaccounted for, two orderlies, two inmates.…Right, the other inmate.…Sure, I’ll wait.”
“She’s looking it up in her computer,” he had time to whisper to Skip before Dr. Gallagher came back on the line. “That was quick,” he told her, notebook at the ready. “Okay, shoot.…Is that M for Mike or N for November? Right, got it. Do you have any other information about him? Relatives, home address.…Okay, I’ll be here.”
Pender closed the phone, glanced over at Skip. “We’ve got a name. Charles Mesker. With an M. She’s going to get back to me with the address where they shipped the so-called remains.”
He leaned over and turned the radio back up. Driving with Pender, Skip had already learned, involved a heavy dose of sing-along oldies. Pender rocked around the clock, got his thrill on Blueberry Hill, and was wakin’ up little Susie just outside Vacaville when his cell phone began chirping yet again. He reached over and turned down the radio, then out came the notebook and half-chewed pencil stub. “Okay, shoot.…Right, right.” Scribbling busily. “Got it. Thank you, Dr. Gallagher. I imagine we’ll be in touch.”
He closed the phone and turned to Skip. “Mesker’s next of kin were his parents. They still live in Santa Cruz. We should probably go check them out.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight. You know, just in case.”
“Just in case what?” asked Skip, as he pulled out of the slow lane t
o overtake a little old lady from Pasadena on a long straightaway.
“Just in case son Charles is holed up there. He wouldn’t be the first fugitive in history to run home to Mommy and Daddy.”
Even with the accelerator pedal floored, it took the Toyota half a mile to put Granny in the rearview mirror. “Okay, you’re on,” Skip told Pender. “But first I want to stop by my apartment to change my clothes and pick up the Buick. I’m also thinking maybe we ought to call your friend Klug and arrange for backup.”
Pender laughed and clapped Skip encouragingly on his uninjured shoulder. “What do we need backup for?” he said. “We’ve already got him outnumbered two to one.”
2
There’d been no time to pack Friday afternoon, no time to plan, barely time for Asmador to toss the money and what was left of the weed into the trunk of the BMW and haul ass before the cops showed up at Murphy’s farm. Luckily the dirt road leading from the barn to the county road curved behind the hills to the north, blocking the view of the retreating Beemer from the deputies, so Asmador had gotten away clean, and was well into the next county by the time the cops finished setting up their roadblocks behind him.
“That was a close one,” he’d muttered, talking aloud to keep himself company.
“You think?” A voice from the backseat.
Startled, Asmador had glanced up at the rearview mirror, where he saw the reflection of a handsome, redheaded youth grinning at him mischievously. “Eyes front,” Sammael had remarked as a car horn blared. Asmador had turned back again, discovered he’d drifted into the lane of oncoming traffic, and jerked the wheel to the right just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a black Jetta. He’d caught a glimpse of the chalk white face of the other driver as the Jetta shot by.
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