Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  “Federal what?” she asked. Her name was Doreen. She had worked dispatch for nine years. She was known for her businesslike manner, the edge of truculence and irritation she forever seemed to possess, and she was as insubordinate with the sheriff as she was with her long-suffering husband.

  “The Federal Reserve Bank of America,” Everhardt said dryly. “I want to know if they will print me enough money to pay for your funeral, Doreen.”

  “You’re a very funny man, Sheriff,” she replied sarcastically.

  “Yes, Doreen, I am. From a family of circus people, you see.”

  “And what would you want to be telling these federal people?”

  “I’ll be telling them just exactly what I want to tell them when you find me a number and a person to tell it to. I’ll be at the office in ten minutes, maybe less.” He hung up the car radio before she had a chance to respond.

  Doreen had found someone called Agent Grant Grierson at the office in Las Cruces.

  “And how does this relate to us?” was Grierson’s question once Everhardt had explained the matter at hand.

  “The memo that came from your people,” Everhardt said. “Came only a few days ago, if I remember rightly. Which I usually do. It was quite specific in its tone. Anything beyond ordinary or routine in the way of homicides or attempted homicides and suchlike was to be reported to the nearest federal office. I considered, in my professional opinion, that a young man challenging a woman in a mercantile and near as damn it getting his head blown off for his trouble is somewhat out of the ordinary for a town that’s not seen any drama since Harriet Yarnham stabbed her husband with a breadknife nearly seven years ago this Christmas.”

  “Yes, of course, Sheriff,” Grierson said, aware then that his own lack of attention had shown him up. “I’ll have to contact the agents responsible for overseeing that case.”

  “Well, you go on and do that, son, and we’ll wait here till you come back to us. The lady in question ain’t goin’ no place, and if she ain’t then we ain’t neither.”

  Koenig and Nixon were still in Las Cruces themselves, and had they delayed their departure from the office by a mere half an hour, they would have been there when Everhardt’s call came in. As it was they were taking an early lunch at a diner in the suburbs, and it was another quarter hour before Grierson managed to find them. Once briefed, they called Everhardt themselves, took what little information he could give them, and decided immediately that Van Horn was their next destination. From the description that Everhardt had passed on from this woman in the store down there, well, this sounded an awful lot like Clay Luckman. They drove the hundred and fifty miles considerably beyond the speed limit, and arrived a handful of minutes before two, no more than twenty minutes before John Cassidy pulled up in front of his own house in Tucson. Cassidy was eager to tell Alice of the news, that the picture he held in his hand was not only the potential daughter of the murder victim from Marana, but that this girl had more than likely been with Clarence Luckman in Deming only days before. And if not Clarence Luckman, then maybe she had accompanied Elliott Danziger, the boy supposedly murdered by Earl Sheridan.

  Nixon and Koenig, however, were somewhat more sober and reserved as they entered the mercantile in Van Horn.

  The woman was remarkably level-headed about the whole incident.

  “Sue-Anne McCarthy,” she told them.

  “M, small c, C-A-R-T-H-Y?” Nixon asked.

  Sue-Anne nodded in the affirmative.

  The four of them stood in a square—Everhardt, Nixon, Koenig, and Sue-Anne. She told them precisely what had happened. She told them what the young man had touched, where he had stood, and when Nixon showed her the grainy monochrome of Clarence Luckman she said, “Yes, a coupla years older than that, but the eyes are the same. I really think it was him.”

  Koenig looked at Everhardt. “No other reports? No witness statements? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

  Everhardt shook his head. “Nothing. My officer was here by ten, and the place has been closed up since.”

  “I want to commend you on maintaining the integrity of the scene,” Koenig said. “Most often people walk all over it like it’s … well, I don’t know what they’re thinking, to be honest.”

  “Sue-Anne missed getting herself killed by a whisker, right?” Everhardt asked. “Otherwise that memo wouldn’t have found its way out here, and I wouldn’t have had any business calling you.”

  “That’s right,” Nixon replied.

  “How many?”

  “That we know of … somewhere in the region of seven, maybe more.”

  “Seven?” Sue-Anne asked. “That young man has killed seven people?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nixon replied.

  “He’s been busy, then, your boy,” Everhardt said.

  “Has indeed.”

  “Seems it’d be a good idea to get me as many of them pictures as you can and I’ll put ’em out all over the place,” Everhardt said. “Times like this it seems best to unofficially deputize everyone.”

  “Perhaps,” Koenig said. “He’s close, evidently. I wish we’d been here sooner, but that’s no one’s fault. He has about four or five hours on us now, so he could be anywhere within—what?—a two-, three-hundred-mile radius.”

  “Or he could be right down the street a couple of blocks having a soda in the drugstore,” Everhardt said.

  “He could. The only downside of putting his picture everywhere is that he might see it before someone sees him. Then he’ll vanish like a ghost.”

  “I see your point,” Everhardt said. He tipped his hat back again and put his hands on his hips. “So what do we do now?”

  “We’ll have someone come and take pictures, prints, whatever physical evidence they need.”

  “You gonna tell me his name?”

  “Luckman. Clarence Luckman.”

  “Luckman. There’s an irony there if ever I heard one. Seems to me it’s about time his luck ended.”

  “I’d say you were right on the nail there, Sheriff Everhardt, and as soon as we get sight of him he’s going to be looking back at the world through a hole in his head.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  The entirety of John Cassidy’s journey home had been spent considering the import of what he’d learned. The picture of the girl burned a hole in his pocket; the image of her face burned a hole in his mind.

  “As I said,” Alice commented matter-of-factly, “two people. Seems to me that your bank robber told the police in Wellton whatever he wanted them to hear. He said the other boy was dead and I think that perhaps he wasn’t.”

  “Answers my question about how someone could change so dramatically overnight. A kid that’s never been in trouble suddenly becomes a homicidal maniac. Well, I see now that he didn’t. I think this other one—this Elliott Danziger, the one that Sheridan said they’d killed—I think he’s our boy. He had a history of violence at this Hesperia place. I think he’s the one that’s doing these killings. Explains why his body has never been found.”

  “And his half brother, this Clarence Luckman, is on the run?”

  “I believe he is. He must have been there at Marana, and he wound up with the gun. He then put the gun under that car. For what reason, I do not know …”

  “And he’s got the girl with him.”

  “I would say so.”

  Alice nodded. She sat down and held the picture of Bailey in her hands. “And you’re guessing that this girl is the daughter of the man who was killed along with the convenience store owner?”

  “I am. She sure as hell looks like him, and if she is it would make more sense than anything else.”

  “His name?”

  Cassidy hesitated. He was never supposed to name names. “Frank Jacobs,” he said.

  “So this is Bailey Jacobs.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “She must have been there and seen her father killed.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Kind of thing
is that going to do to a youngster like that?”

  “Whatever it does, it isn’t going to be good.”

  “So the question now is why are they running, and where are they running to? And why on earth did they put that gun beneath that crashed car outside of Deming?”

  Cassidy shrugged. “Same question I’ve been asking myself all the way home.”

  Alice was quiet for a time. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Bailey Jacobs’s face. “And the federal people think that Clarence Luckman is their killer, and they’re circulating his name and his picture, and if they see him they’re going to shoot him down like a dog in the street.”

  “Yes, they most definitely are. They are not going to wait around to talk things over. They want this thing to end, and they’re not going to want the cost of a trans-state investigation and a lengthy trial.”

  “So you have to make sure they don’t, John. You got to go find those two fellers that came here and tell them what you know. You have to tell them about the girl, and that this other one—this Danziger boy—is more than likely still alive and he’s the one they should be looking for …”

  “I know, Alice, I know.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “Was hoping we’d have some lunch or something.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t have time for lunch. Wherever it is you’re heading you can get a sandwich on the way.”

  “You could always make one for me while I call up the federal office in El Paso and see if they’re still there.”

  Alice got up. “That I can do,” she said. She hesitated at the door and turned back toward her husband. “You have to fix this, John,” she said.

  He opened his mouth to reply, and she raised her hand to silence him.

  “This is one of those things that you don’t even think about. You don’t even question it. From the way it looks, there’s a couple of teenagers out there on their own, and right now the world takes one of them for a killer when he isn’t. The other one saw her dad murdered in cold blood, and maybe she can identify who did it. The federal people are going to want it out of the papers and off the radio. I’m not saying they’re going to rush in blind, but right now they don’t know what you know, and they need to know it fast.” She looked at the picture of the girl on the table. “You find that girl and you bring her here if she’s got no place else to go. No one deserves a start like that in life … no one.”

  Alice left the room. Cassidy watched her go and then he made his way across the room to the hallway. He picked up the receiver and dialed the operator.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation in El Paso,” he said quietly, and then, “Yes, I’ll hold.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Clay and Bailey had eaten, and then they’d walked for a good two hours, and by two o’clock they’d covered another six or seven miles, and they were maybe ten miles from the outskirts of Van Horn and no one had stopped to give them a ride. Three cars had passed them, one of them a station wagon jammed with kids, all of them peering through the windows—wide eyed and vacant of expression, as if a sense of disbelief accompanied seeing anyone in such a place. The I-10 was flat and featureless and gave onto a distance that the eye couldn’t determine and the mind couldn’t fathom. It seemed like this was a road that would go on forever, and then some. Walking it was like being in a rocking chair. You’re moving plenty, but you ain’t going nowhere. It was perhaps the loneliest road in the whole wide world.

  She said that at one point. Bailey. They hadn’t spoken for a good while and she just said, “I think this must be one of the loneliest places ever, ever.”

  “Lonely is a state of mind, not a place,” Clay replied.

  “That’s very deep.”

  “What do you mean? That’s very deep? Or that’s very deep for me?”

  She smiled. “I don’t mean nothin’ but what I said.”

  “Well, I’m sure there’s some folks up in New York City or someplace where there’s millions of people every which way you look, and they feel that they’re in the loneliest place ever. That would be worse, I reckon. Have a hundred thousand neighbors and not know one of them.”

  “That would be sad.”

  “Reckon you’d have to work hard at being that lonely. Seems to me everyone can find someone to love them, no matter who they are. Hell, even that Hitler guy in the war got a girlfriend.”

  She laughed. “You’re crazy.”

  “And you’re real smart yourself,” Clay replied sarcastically.

  “You’re saying I’m dumb?”

  “I’m sayin’ you wouldn’t recognize a smart thing if it ran you down in the street.”

  She swung her hand sideways and thumped his arm.

  He pushed her back.

  Bailey made a serious face and came at him with fists.

  Clay ran, pulling faces as he went.

  No matter how many names she called after him, none were his.

  She caught up with him eventually, the pair of them still laughing.

  “I reckon you now have to be the one person in the world I know best,” he told her.

  “You don’t know me at all,” she replied.

  “I knows you is dumb,” he said in a fool voice.

  “Enough already,” she said, and then her expression was serious. “There is something we need to talk about, Clay.” She paused. She came to a stop. He was no more than six feet from her and the expression she wore was grave.

  “It’s something I’ve been meaning to say for a while. It’s just that … well, it hasn’t felt the right time or whatever, and I can’t put up with it anymore.”

  Clay frowned.

  “It’s just … er, well, you know how we’re … well, how we’ve kinda gotten close an’ everything?”

  Clay nodded. He felt the color rising in his cheeks.

  “Well, the thing is this. I think that maybe … I mean, I don’t know an’ all, but maybe, maybe … if we … if we stay friends an’ everything, and I mean like proper friends and whatever. Well, you know what I’m saying, right?”

  Clay wanted to tell her what she was thinking, but he didn’t dare.

  “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you, Clay?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, if we were like together, you know? If we became like a couple and everything … if we were in love and we decided to get married or something—”

  Clay’s heart was running overtime. He felt short of breath. He wanted to grab her and kiss her, but he couldn’t move an inch.

  “Well, I have to tell you now, Clay, and I want you to know that I really mean this … I really do. It’s taken a lot of time to work this out and to come to this decision, but if we were in love and we got married and everything …”

  Bailey took a minute step backward. She inhaled deeply, as if finding the courage to say what she needed to say.

  “You see the thing is, Clay … well, it just wouldn’t be possible for me to have children with someone as pig-ugly as you …”

  She held her deadpan expression for no more than a heartbeat, and then her face broke with a smile as wide as the Mississippi, and then she was laughing as whatever was going on in Clay’s heart reconciled itself with his ears and eyes, and he realized he’d been had.

  “Useless … goddammit … oh my God, I don’t believe you said that …” he was saying, but none of it came to anything because she was off down the highway and out of earshot before he realized how far he’d fallen into her trap. Hook, line, and sinker. For a minute or two he just sat down on the road and took some deep breaths. He’d never felt anything like it in the world, and it was at that moment—that moment more than any other before, more than any that would come in the future—that he knew, he knew beyond all question, that he loved Bailey Redman with everything he possessed.

  She slowed and stopped at some point and waited for him to catch up.

  “You’re a son of … a daughter of a bitch, that’s wh
at you are, Bailey Redman, a goddamned daughter of a bitch. I don’t believe you said that to me.”

  “Too late, I said it,” she replied. “You should have seen your face.”

  “You wanna see your face when I stomp all over it? Damn you … that was a mean trick to play on me …”

  She stepped close. She reached up and touched the side of his face. She looked him right in the eye and she smiled like a California sunset, and then she leaned forward and brushed her lips against his.

  His arms hung limply at his sides. He wished he could hold her close just for a second, just so she’d know how much she meant to him. But there was something, something right there inside him that rendered him unable to respond.

  “You’re always going to be the one for me,” she said, and for a second she held his gaze, and then she turned and started walking, and Clay hesitated before following on behind her, and then next thing she said—something about how she was getting hungry again—was said in such a way as the moment that had happened might never have happened at all. But it had, and he knew it, and he knew that she knew it, and it was perhaps the most important thing that had ever happened to him in his life. No, he thought then, it was the most important thing that had ever happened. No question about it.

  They needed a ride. They needed some Samaritan driver to come barreling along the highway and give them a ride to the next town. Van Horn, that’s what it was called. They needed a ride to Van Horn so they could get something to eat and something to drink and just take a moment to figure out if they were now going to just keep on walking to Eldorado. All of two hundred and fifty miles. Clay thought about it. Two hundred and fifty miles. Seemed like a hell of way, but it wasn’t. They could do it in—what?—two or three weeks. Ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day. How fast were they walking? Hell, yes, they could do it, and with Bailey Redman beside him he reckoned it would be a breeze. The way he felt in that moment, damn it if just about everything didn’t seem like the easiest thing in the whole wide world. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe one dark star had the power to cancel out another. Maybe it really was going to be good from this point. Maybe this really was the point at which everything just got better and better.