“Something going on at Sip’N’Tan.”
“What?” Bean asked.
“No idea, but I got the scanner up online and…Hang on.” In the background, the sound of scratchy police radio calls was clear. Someone asking for an ETA for crime scene techs. “Yeah, it’s damned busy there. Cops, investigators, the justice of peace. All kinds’a people.”
“Damn.”
“Problem is I can’t really tell what’s going on. I mean, obviously someone is dead, but no clue who or how or anything.”
Bean thought for a minute, then said, “Give me the number.”
“You gonna call?” Digger snorted a laugh. “Ballsy.”
“Or fucking stupid.”
“Well, you’re just about both just about all the time.”
This time Bean chuckled. “True enough.”
After hanging up with Digger, Bean immediately called Tommy-Blue’s place.
“Sip’N’Tan, who’s this?”
Bean hesitated. He knew that tone and its deadly serious texture.
“Hello? Who is this?”
Bean had heard that tone when he was on the bench, when cops brought in their bad guys, laid out their probable cause for the arrest. Later, Bean heard it from the cops who had investigated and then wanted to arrest him. Later still, he’d heard that tone, loaded with disgust and contempt, from his fellow judges.
Those fucking judges, awash in their own sins and the moist stink of their mistresses, of their gambling addictions, of whores and altar boys, who sneered at him and shoved him out the back door of his profession. Hypocritical bastards who’d demanded an audience, late at night, in darkened cars parked two miles outside of town in the moonshadow of abandoned drilling rigs.
Bean cleared his throat and said, “This is Gene Smith. Are you the owner, sir? I represent a brand new company, one with all your tanning needs covered in a line of products so cutting edge that you customers will never again...darken...the door step of another tanning parlor.”
Faith stared at him.
Behind the silence on the other end, Bean heard a pile of voices, all with the same serious tone. “Tell him,” one of them said. “Find out who the hell he is.”
“This is Sergeant Johnson, Upton County Sheriff’s Office, and I don’t think the owner’s going to need any of your products.” A hesitation. “He’s dead.”
“That’s terrible,” Bean said. “I presume natural causes, as he had a few years on him.”
“Well,” the cop said. “As natural as a bullet between the eyes can be, I guess.”
Bean hung up and threw the phone into the desert.
23
“Who...who are...?”
Didn’t say it easy. Or smooth. Guy was pale, weak, his right arm covered in a tattoo sleeve of blood that dripped from his fingertips to the hard-packed dirt. Near him was another man, this one dead. A broken nose and a big goddamned hole in the middle of his neck.
Not to mention the dead guy by the overturned truck, surrounded by dead goats, wounded goats, and bored goats munching away at the scrub.
“The fuck happened here?”
The man took a deep, shuddering breath. “Bad day all the way around.”
“You think? What’s the story with the goats?”
“None of your business.”
“Probably true but because I am of God’s loins, everything is my business.”
The man, maybe going into shock from the hunk of meat shot out of his arm, frowned.
“Funny...a goat stuck in the grill of a Ram.”
“Probably not to the goat,” the man said.
The remaining goats wandered through the scene casually, as though death meant nothing to them.
“To me, either,” the shooter said.
“Wha...?”
“Who did this?”
The man sat in the dirt, leaning against a bloody rock, his head lolling side to side. His breath was short, shallow. Without help, he would be dead soon. “I’ve got a...man coming.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
The shooter licked the gun barrel. “What I mean is...your man is dead. Near the highway. At this very moment, no one else but us exists in the entire World.”
The man sighed. “Couldn’t end any other way, could it?”
The shooter touched a hand to his cheek. “I can save you, Andy.”
“The fuck you know who I am?”
“I know many things. I have the wisdom of the ages within my grasp.”
“Yeah? Well...eat my shorts, I don’t need saving.”
“I can be your savior. Ask me.”
“Again, I invite you to...” a ragged cough...“dine on my underpants.”
A gun—such a simple machine of lead, metal, some plastic—became a gentle lover’s touch and caressed Andy’s neck. “I ask only one thing. I want the Ranger.”
Andy looked away. “Ranger?”
The shooter laughed. “Were you this bad a liar when you were badging? I know the Ranger was here...I can smell him. I’ve been following for a while, many a long while over many a long mile.”
Andy stared at the shooter. “You sent the finger.”
“So he has been here.”
“A Texas Ranger? No.”
“Who did all this, then?” The shooter pointed at the dead man, the truck, the goats. “The Ranger was here and he was emotionally stirred up. Look at the carnage...it’s an illustration of his madness. Mr. Ranger has been on the edge since Barefield.”
“Goddamnit, are you fucking deaf? There was no Ranger here.”
The hammer cocked. “Would you blaspheme so easily?”
Andy spat. “Blasphemy is all I got left. Neither of them were Rangers. Wanna tell me why you after the Judge?”
Judge...Texas Ranger...the man obviously felt comfortable moving between lives; playing with lives, ending lives, throwing lives in the garbage.
At least mine.
“Them?”
Andy grinned. “Guess you don’t know everything, do you? Maybe you should talk to God and have Him impart some wisdom to you.”
The shooter fired and obliterated Andy’s kneecap. Andy screamed and fell sideways, groping at the bloody mess. The shooter sniffed the smoke leaking from the gun.
“What the fuck?” Andy rolled back and forth, his knee up to his chest. “Fucking lunatic. Ooooh, Christ, that hurts.” He glanced at the vultures and his eyes rolled up into his head.
The shooter gave him a few light slaps. “No, no. Can’t pass out just yet. Secrets to spill and miles to go.” A moment of silence while his eyes refocused. “They? He was traveling with someone?”
Andy spat again.
The shooter jammed the barrel of the gun against Tommy’s shattered knee and ground it until Tommy’s ragged scream faded.
“Traveling with someone?”
“Yeah, goddamnit, a girl. A little girl.”
Bean had found a companion? Or had she been with him since the beginning? The black man in Barefield, at the garage, hadn’t mentioned a young girl. Nor the tan man selling coffee to no one.
So the girl was...a runaway? Or had Bean snatched her?
Or...more delicious and maddening...was she a daughter perhaps?
“His?” the shooter asked. “Or mine?”
“What?” Andy asked.
“What’s her name?”
“You mutilate me, then ask me for information? Fuck you.”
In a heartbeat, his other knee was gone. Bone and cartilage exploded into the air, carried on a red mist. His howl spiraled up toward the vultures. They continued watching and circling.
“Are you insane? Oh, my God, it huuuuurts.”
“It’ll hurt more, my friend, much much more. Where is Judge Royy Bean and his new daughter?”
Andy rolled away, his hands covered in blood and dirt, his legs from the knees down at crazy angles. Tears burned his cheeks even as he moaned. “Oh, God. Fuck you...Faith ain’t his daught
er.”
“No?”
“No. Damnit, his daughter’s dead. He rescued Faith. He’s getting her back to her parents.”
The shooter rolled Andy back until they were face to face. “Faith is a goodly name...a Godly name. Pure of spirit, innocent of mankind’s crimes.”
“Help,” Andy yelled. “Heeelp meeee. Please! Pleeeeaseee!”
“Gonna hurt your throat. Ain’t nobody out here. That’s why you moved out here, right?”
“Help!”
“Getting away from everyone who...knew?”
Andy clamped his mouth shut.
“Coward,” whispered in Andy’s ear. “Are they headed to Langtry, coward?”
On his back, Andy closed his eyes. “Shit on you.”
The gun came up, but didn’t quite caress this bloody man the way it had so many others—men and women—recently.
“Ask me.”
“Suck my dick, you piece of shit.”
The silence stretched between them.
Eventually, the shooter said, with a trace of sadness, “A coward until the very end. Not even brave enough to ask for it. That’s fine, Gracie. We’ll make it last awhile.”
24
Tossing his phone forced Bean to stop at a roadside gas station just off Route 349. He jumped from the car, snatched some quarters for bills from the kid behind the counter, and plugged them into what might well have been the last pay phone in Texas.
“Tommy-Blue’s dead,” Bean said when Digger answered.
Night hadn’t yet gathered, but the day was slipping away. It would be in a grave by the time they hit Langtry West. The Judge stared at Faith, sitting in the car, her head bowed. As he watched, she mouthed something and crossed herself.
“You can’t be serious...”
“Judge?” Digger said.
Don’t you dare judge her, Jeremiah. She’s rough, maybe rougher than you’d like, but she’s a girl of faith. You judge her, you make one comment, I will beat your ass.
Bean chuckled. “Realizing that you’ll have to wait until you see me again, right?”
Jeremiah, I’ve got nothing but time.
“Yeah? Then explain to me what happened that night.” He kept his voice level. “Tell me why you lied. To me.”
Silence. In his head if not the World around him.
“Mariana?”
She was gone, as he’d known she would be.
“Judge,” Digger said. “I’d never interrupt a conversation with Mariana, you know that, but I need you to focus.”
Mariana had always been a woman of faith who’d managed to tolerate his bored apathy. When she’d asked that Angela be raised as a woman of faith, Bean hadn’t fought it at all. That he didn’t care one way or the other was what had bothered Mariana the most. Even today, Bean thought his wife would have felt better even if Bean had demanded an atheist point of view, just as long as it was something he cared about. Her faith meant much to her and it bothered her that he just didn’t care.
“You sure about Tommy-Blue?” Digger asked.
“Yeah. Shot.”
“By?”
“They didn’t lay out their entire fucking investigation, Digger. I hung up and tossed the damned phone out the window.”
“And so you’re calling from?”
“Some fucking stop-and-rob in the middle of nowhere. What’s it matter?”
The tension rose, a river flowing between them and filling the desert with poisonous water. They’d known each other since before the troubles, since before Mariana’s death, and other than Mariana, Bean had never had a friend who meant as much as Digger. Digger was all things to Bean: confidant, best friend, business associate, muscle, all things needed.
When Bean had been quietly removed from the bench, Digger had come with him. Digger’s hands had been fairly bloody during that entire affair and there had been a moment, the better part of a day, when Digger had an offer on the table.
“Full immunity?” Bean had asked. They’d been at Johnny’s, indoors because of a cold rain.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a good deal, buddy. You got a son who needs you. You should take it.”
“Timmy’s fine,” Digger said. “He’s a good boy. I’ve done all she’s going to let me do with him.” Digger had stared at him. “Do you remember?”
Crunching ice, Bean had nodded. “The first time we met? Sure as hell do. In my courtroom three years ago.”
“I should’a gone to prison.”
“It was a probational offense. Prison wasn’t required.”
Digger wiped his lips. “With my record? You should’a sent me packing.”
“And prison would have been good for who? You? Timmy?”
“Still...you had no reason to give me a break.”
Bean remembering smiling at Digger and telling him the secret. “I wasn’t giving you a break at all...I was giving one to Timmy.”
No child should grow up without their parents. Bean had believed it then, believed it now, and still felt miles of guilt over his own daughter, given away when she was five and dead in a fire by the time she was fourteen. He suspected that even if he found both wife and daughter in the afterlife and all had been forgotten and forgiven, his guilt would still eat him from the inside.
Digger’s full immunity had had only one stipulation: cough up Bean.
What blew Bean away, even today, was that Digger had never considered it, and when Bean had slipped away from Barefield during a sandstorm, Digger had slipped with him.
Through the phone, the buzz of a broken-down land line, Bean heard Digger take a deep breath.
“Tommy-Blue’s not the only one,” Digger said.
Bean rubbed his temple. “Jesus God. Now what?”
“Andy’s place. There’s a dead guy by the highway and a guy by a truck.”
“Yeah, yeah, I figured that. Sombrero Man and Andy’s hired gun. And a shitload of goats.”
Traffic passed on Route 349, cars and trucks, sometimes a motorcycle. The sound was a constant thrum that picked at Bean’s ears. People appeared out of the featureless highway, road-worn and haggard, took their pisses, bought more soda and chocolate, maybe a slice of warmed-over pizza, and disappeared again into the anonymity of the highway.
“I killed Sombrero, Faith killed a guy called Murphy. The goats...well, they just...ended up dead.”
“And Andy,” Digger said.
Bean sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”
Andy had been bleeding worse than what he’d wanted to admit. Didn’t surprise the Judge at all that he’d died. Bean wasn’t sure how he felt about it, or about Tommy-Blue being dead, either. At one time, when Mariana was partnered with those guys, he’d thought them generally decent. They’d done all right by Bean when Mariana had died, but when Bean started having problems, they’d disappeared quickly.
“You don’t sound any too worried about Andy being dead.”
“He was bleeding when we were there. His guy shot him...Murph. Said it wasn’t a big deal but...Obviously it was.”
“Hang on,” Digger said. “You’re saying he bled to death?”
Hesitation worked through Bean. “Aren’t you?”
“Well, sure, if two shots to the front of the head constitute bleeding to death.”
“What?” Bean bellowed into the phone. The clerk looked up, suspicious, then went back to his magazines. “He was shot in the arm.”
“Judge, he was shot in the head.”
Bean opened his mouth but snapped it shut again. That sounded like total crap, but Digger’s sources were almost always exactly correct, and when they were wrong, they were wrong in the same ballpark as correct. “Swear to shit, Digger, Andy was shot in the arm.”
Could he hear Digger grinding his teeth? “Judge, you’re missing the point.”
“Don’t lecture me, boy.”
“Then pull your head outta your fucking ass.” Digger’s voice boomed through the phone. “Echo is dead. Tommy-Blue is dead. Andy is dead.”
Bean saw it instantly. Everyone he talked to, everywhere he traveled. “Someone’s following me.”
“Yeah.” Digger sighed. “Is there something I should know? Something you’ve got going on that you didn’t want to tell me?”
Like what? That I talk to a dead woman who dances with me in my dreams? Who wore a mustache and told me to get a girl back to her mother? That this same dead woman told me someone was coming for me and I thought her ‘someone’ was a metaphor for the madness I’ve been waiting for my entire life? Except it turns out it’s flesh and blood, coming down the pike barely minutes behind me and killing everyone I deal with and I’m coming straight to you so what do you think our chances are?
“Judge?”
“None of us were by the highway.”
“What?”
“We were a good two miles deep off 349.”
“Don’t know what to say about that, Judge. Guy by the highway, guy by the truck, and Andy.”
“We’re coming home.” Bean said it simply. No discussion, no argument. “Get me some gun thugs. I don’t know who this guy is or what he wants but he’s leaving a fuckload of blood behind him.”
Or maybe I’ll just wait here for him. Maybe I don’t care about what happened that night or who shot Mariana. Maybe I don’t care if I never find her badge.
I just want to be with my wife.
And I want you with me, Jeremiah, but you have things to do first. Baby, you need to get the girl home to her mother. That’s the most important thing. Do you hear me, Jeremiah? You have to get her home.
“Can’t do it if I’m dead.”
Then don’t die.
“Are you giving me permission to kill, Mariana?”
Sweat ticked down his face, dripped from his chin to the thirsty dirt. Vehicles came and went. The sun dipped a few degrees lower.
“Judge?”
“Wait, Digger. Mariana, are you giving me permission? I can wait forever if I have to.”
Get the girl home. If you have to kill to do that...then do that.
“And then come home to you?”
Then come home to me.
“Digger, this asshole isn’t that far behind. Maybe even already passed us since we stopped. Get some boys together; boys who owe us serious favors and who aren’t afraid of getting wet.” Bean glanced again at the clerk. A youngish man, obviously bored. Thumbing through skin mags. Every few seconds, his eyes would pop up at Bean, then back down to the tits and asses.
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 14