The little boy waves as if he thinks he knows me.
The deputies are there waiting in one of their Big Bend County trucks. Deputy Reynosa seems glad to see me, the other one, Chief Deputy Harper, surprised. We stand around by the hood of their truck and Deputy Reynosa tells me that Bravo’s girlfriend is fine and somewhere safe, and then Deputy Harper explains all about someone named Azahel Avalos and a broken-down car full of money, but the only thing I hear is Earl’s name. That was his damn Christmas in July. Since Avalos was arrested he’s been doing nothing but planning on how to steal that car back out of the impound lot. That’s what we were going to do tonight, or what he was going to convince me to do for him. He’s been lying all along, lying to the FBI and to me and to Sunny and to Jesse and to everyone.
I tell them that Earl somehow met with Sheriff Cherry earlier in the morning, and they exchange a look I easily understand.
They care about him, they’re trying to protect him. From the Earls, and me.
They ask me how Earl plans to get the car out of the lot and where he’s going after that, and I tell them I don’t know; I’m not sure and he’s never shared that with me. They wonder out loud if he’ll still make a try for it if I don’t return, and that I can answer, that I am sure of. He absolutely will. He won’t turn back now because there’s nothing to turn back for.
When I left I think he knew who I was, and still he let me go.
Deputy Reynosa tells me there’s no reason for me to go back then; that there’s nothing there for me anymore, if there ever was. When Nichols finds out about Avalos, the FBI will descend on Killing and it will all be over.
It’s just a matter of time.
* * *
• • •
THERE IS A MEMORY I have of my dad.
I’m maybe eight and he’s standing tall above me, blocking out the sun, and I think we’re fishing. I know it’s hot and I can smell water and dirt; that heavy, oily stink of fish. He’s trying to show me how to hook a worm, and I won’t do it. I won’t put my hands out and grab it and he’s frustrated. Finally, he bends down to get on his knees next to me and he’s been drinking beer so I can smell that, too, and he’s breathing right in my face.
He takes my little hands in his, hands that are covered in dirt from the worm can, but mine aren’t. Mine are clean and white because I’ve had them stuck in my pockets. But my hands disappear into his and I feel the coiling and turning of the fat worm and the prick of metal as he makes the movements for me, guiding me through the process of baiting the hook. He’s talking the whole time and I want to cry because I don’t want to kill the worm or ever hurt anything at all, and when we’re done and he releases my hands they are now just as dirty as his, slicked with mud and water and blood.
I remember him later washing my hands. He has a bar of soap and he makes a long green hose appear as if by magic and he gets down on his knees next to me for the second time and he takes up my hands again and he hoses them off with the cold, clear water and scrubs them with the soap until they’re pure again, until both of our hands are white and spotless, and then he uses the tail of his own shirt to dry them.
When he’s done he stands up and runs his clean hand through my blond hair and tells me it was a damn good day . . .
Then I’m in the backseat of the car and he’s driving with both of our windows down and singing to a song on the radio, and as many times as I’ve turned this memory over I don’t know what the song is and I always wish I did . . .
Finally, I am home in my room in my bed and I can hear my dad and my mom talking and laughing down the hall in the kitchen and I can smell fish frying. There are a couple of posters on my walls, Spider-Man or Superman, and the sun through my window is lying flat on them and shadowing them, making them disappear beneath the last light of our damn good day. And as I lay there all I can do is look at my hands, turn them this way and that, smelling of soap and not of the blood or fish that had been there before, and it’s not the struggling worm or the hook that I can still feel against my skin, but the calluses of my dad’s hands holding mine tight.
* * *
• • •
IT’S OVER.
* * *
• • •
WHILE WE’RE TALKING, Deputy Reynosa stands there with her arms folded in front of her, like she’s protecting herself from a chill that doesn’t exist. There’s a slight breeze, barely anything to it, and it messes with her hair, gets in her eyes. She’s a beautiful woman, the kind to take your breath away, and when she asks me where I drifted off to, what I was just thinking about, I tell her fishing with my dad, and she smiles as if she understands exactly what I mean, and Deputy Harper looks back and forth between us and says that he loves fishing almost as much as a good whiskey and in the weeks to come we’ll all have to go together up to Falcon Lake.
For a moment, we’re laughing, and it’s all good.
Deputy Reynosa watches me but is watching the road close as well, so she sees the two cars approach in the sunset even before Deputy Harper and me. She makes a small gesture for his benefit, not mine, and he glances around my shoulder and I turn to look along with him. I don’t recognize the first car coming up the road, turning off into the gravel, but this is a tourist attraction so it’s not unusual for cars to stop here all the time, mostly at night, with people searching for the ghost lights out on the flats. Just like the Arizona family I saw earlier. It’s a public place on the main route to El Paso and Fort Bliss and Van Horn, where my phantom friends are never going to meet me, so it’s a good spot, and if Deputy Reynosa grew up around here it was a natural choice for our meeting.
I want to ask her if she’s ever seen the lights out here, if they really exist and what they look like.
But all of our attention now is on the approaching cars. The first rolls up beneath the pavilion and the other peels off a little to our right, their noses pointed at us like the hard tip of an arrow aimed at our hearts, their engines idling high and loud.
I think crazily for a moment that it is the Arizona family come back to take some more pictures, the blond boy still waving goodbye to me as if he’d never left, but even in the faded light I know these cars are far older, dirtier, as if they’ve been sitting outside a long time.
As if the dust has grown so thick that even blasting down the highway couldn’t shake it loose.
They remind me of our cars and the RV parked in Killing; how their time in the sun ages them, and I’m just about to say something like that, when I recognize the second car.
T-Bob’s old Marquis.
And then the door of the first car opens . . .
. . . and Deputy Reynosa’s hand moves to her holstered gun.
38
Fuckin’ Danny wasn’t that hard to follow; out of Killing and away from Alamito Creek, and then up to U.S. 67 that became U.S. 90, before angling west toward Valentine and, eventually, Van Horn. They stayed way back, losing him for stretches, only to catch sight of his Harley throwing sunlight as it leaned into the curves. The bike was a blur—eyeblink movement—as Danny cranked her up along the straightaways.
Most of the time, it was the only thing in motion against the stale desert and the mountains beyond.
But Jesse knew the area well enough; after all, he and Danny had driven around it together on their trips to Murfee.
And after they cleared the town, Jesse thought maybe Danny really was going all the way to Van Horn, so he settled in for the long ride. He was a good distance ahead of them and they were playing catch-up, and Jesse drank a warm beer and tried hard to ignore Clutts, who’d been shitty company since they’d left Killing. Clutts had a story for each and every goddamn thing, each one a taller tale, and if he’d done half the shit he’d claimed, he was the most dangerous outlaw in four states, and Jesse knew for a goddamn fact that wasn’t true. Joker and Lee Malady were a couple of car lengths back, and Jesse would
have given anything to have been trapped with one of those two instead of this idiot, and that was saying a lot.
He was about to turn to Clutts to finally tell him just to shut the fuck up, when he spied the Big Bend County Sheriff’s truck pulled off to the side of the road in some sort of rest area or touristy spot. There was a wooden shed there and some chain fencing and benches. He recognized the truck from having seen it, or one just like it, outside the house in Killing, and, of course, during his two friendly visits to the department in Murfee. He finished off the beer and crushed the can quick and then slid it under his seat, making sure he was doing the speed limit, which still was seventy-five on this stretch, so he had room to spare. He was almost on top of the truck, passing it and wondering how Danny had blasted through and not gotten caught up in the speed trap, when he saw a last bit of sunlight flicker again off that chrome . . . Danny’s Harley. It was pulled up next to the truck, and Jesse could just make out three people standing there: Danny, that older prick of a deputy who’d pulled a gun on him in that Murfee bar, and that little wetback girl with him. He hit the brakes hard enough to make Clutts go What the fuck? as he slid over the center line and the wheels crunched when the asphalt gave way to gravel.
Goddamn motherfucker.
He ordered Clutts to get on the phone and call back to Lee and tell him to get ready, and he pulled the car into the mess of shadows thrown by the wooden pavilion. He’d heard people talk about being so mad they couldn’t see straight, and he’d experienced that before, plenty of times—the sort of pulsing anger that had caused him more trouble than it had ever gotten him out of—but this was something wholly different. He was so mad all he could see was Danny, everything else around him lost to a blazing white heat. The pavilion was suddenly gone and Marvin Clutts was no longer sitting next to him and the car had disappeared and even the mountains and sky no longer existed. All of it vacant, erased, burned away—revealing there had been nothing there to begin with. There was only Danny . . . that lying piece of traitorous shit, turning now to watch the two cars pull in, not yet understanding who was behind the wheel.
Jesse couldn’t even see the gun that had somehow gotten into his own hand, just inches from his face; could barely even feel the weight of the heavy pistol his daddy had taken off Danny and handed to him just before he headed out after him.
But by God he knew it was there.
39
Jesse Earl was out of the car, yelling, taking a step clear of his open door, but not by much.
One hand was still hidden by it, and Harp didn’t need three guesses to know what he was hiding there. Amé knew it, too, but she was pivoting to keep the second car in front of her, so if she had to bring her gun up, it was already well in her sights. She ordered Danny to get back behind them, and Harp grabbed the kid’s arm so he wouldn’t walk toward Jesse, who was still yelling his head off.
“You piece of shit motherfucker! All me and Daddy done for you, and here you are? Goddamn you.”
Danny raised his hands. “Jesse, listen, hear me out. These folks have something you need to hear. It’s all about your daddy. JW’s been playing all of us. He doesn’t care about you, me, or Thurman Flowers. He’s using us and has been from the get-go. We’re fucking cover . . . He’s going—”
Even at a distance, Harp could see Jesse Earl trembling.
“You shut your lyin’, fuckin’ mouth. Don’t talk about my daddy, don’t tell me what he is or isn’t going to do. You don’t know him. You don’t know jack shit, Hero. You hear me? You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
Jesse spit on the ground. “We ain’t blood and he ain’t your fuckin’ daddy . . .”
Harp slid his eyes off Jesse, looking for more movement in the car, but in the setting sun and the gathering shadows, he couldn’t make out a goddamn thing. He’d been slowly moving his hand toward his gun, Amé doing the same, but Jesse had the drop on them, as did whoever he’d brought with him in the other car. It was just like down at the house in Killing, guns could be pointed at them right now and they might never see the shot coming.
Amé was breathing, nervous but steady, almost as if she were counting to herself.
Danny held his hands up higher, desperate to show he wasn’t armed. “The problem is I know too damn much, and I have from the beginning. I’m a cop and I have been from that first moment we met in Lubbock.”
Jesse stopped yelling, trembling, and went still. There was nothing but sun and wind and the sound of the engines idling. Then, at last, he nodded his head and laughed to himself, as if he’d just heard a funny joke.
“Well then, motherfucker, I guess that’s the first true thing you’ve said since I’ve known you.”
Then his hand appeared from behind the door, aiming a gun at Danny’s heart, and he started shooting.
40
Everything slowed down, even though it was all as fast as a heartbeat.
America heard the shots from Jesse Earl’s gun but didn’t see him shooting, still focused on the other car. She felt, but didn’t see, Ben grab Danny and pull him out of the way. There was the metallic hum of at least one round spinning off the truck, another shattering the glass of a window, a third punching through the dirt right at her feet, and then, finally, one striking Ben. He made a noise, kind of a sighing, and nearly fell against her, while still firing his own gun from one knee. Something hot and fast brushed by her face and made her blink, but she refused to take her eyes off the other car . . . that old Marquis she knew from Killing. So when a back window rolled down and a face rose up, with the barrel of what appeared to be a rifle floating in the darkness next to it, she was ready to put her Tritium sights right on it and she pulled the trigger again and again and again, just like out on the desert range. Sparks flew high as her third shot caromed off the edge of the window, but she knew her first two had been true.
The face fell apart and disappeared and blood sprayed thick over the car door.
Backing up and dropping down to one knee against the truck, trying to make herself a smaller target, she swung quickly toward Jesse, who’d been hit by Ben at least once, maybe more, and was crouched down behind his own car door. He was using it as a shield as he tried to crawl back into the vehicle that was rolling backward on its own.
“Driver,” Ben barked at her, having flattened himself out on the ground. At first she thought it was because he could no longer stand; there was so much blood on him—so much more than she’d ever seen—but then realized he was just trying to find an angle to shoot out Jesse’s legs, the only part of him not protected by the car door. He was sighting, taking his time . . . too much time . . . bleeding out all over the ground. But like he’d directed, she centered on the windshield of Jesse’s car where someone working the steering wheel should be, and put two rounds tight in that spot, before emptying the rest of her magazine evenly across the front of the car, leaving flares burning in the air until it finally stopped moving. She dropped her dead mag, slipped in another and racked it into place off the edge of her boot, just in time to see the Marquis picking up speed, trying to ram them.
Danny was behind her, up in the cab of the truck struggling to get at Harp’s AR-15, but he didn’t have the time.
None of them had enough time now.
Ben was trying to stand again, calling her name, when the Marquis closed on them.
She rose up and put herself between the coming car and Ben and Danny, and started shooting at the tires and windshield.
Two each, over and over again, until her magazine went dry . . .
41
It had taken Chris a lot longer to get out of El Paso than he’d planned, not helped by the two-car accident on I-10 by Socorro that had slowed him getting out of the city proper. But he was finally clear of all that, driving back east toward Murfee and past the setting sun, into a distance that had already turned into twilight.
Stars were just showing in a long band
of purple, so few he could still count each one. And below that was a thin squall of clouds, stretched horizon to horizon, so maybe, finally, they were going to get that rain out in the Big Bend after all.
He tried calling Harp and got no response, and then had the same luck with Amé. Harp had told him they might spend the end of the day out at the range, so he wasn’t completely surprised. He imagined them grimly punching hole after hole in their targets beneath the shadows of Chapel Mesa, trying to outduel each other, not saying much beyond the occasional Good shot, while the sounds of their guns still carried out far and wide across the desert. They were probably going to have a lot of brass to pick up.
Instead, he dialed up Buck Emmett, who answered on the third ring. He was at the Hamilton grabbing a burger, and Chris could hear the background noise, the low, steady murmur of other conversations punctuated by the rattle of glasses and forks, and Buck told Chris not much was going on; everything was quiet. Just like Harp had said. Buck had been by the bank several times, and had seen Harp and Amé earlier in the day messing around with that Mexican kid’s car in impound, but they’d been MIA since then. For some reason that bothered Chris, tugged at him, because Harp hadn’t mentioned it when he’d spoken to him from the cemetery, but at least he’d finally gotten around to doing something with that car.
Chris told Buck to finish his burger and call it a day. He still had a couple of hours to go, and was going to head straight on to the house. If Buck saw Harp, he should tell him to give Chris a call, just so he could hear for himself what they’d found out about Avalos’s car.
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