‘Do it,’ she said.
But now that Billy was here, with Parker’s car before him and payback in his hands, his will to act began to leach. Events had gone too far. If Billy did this, Parker would come looking for him, because he would know that only one person could be responsible. And the more Billy thought about it, the more he believed he had contributed in part to his own misfortune. It had been Heb Caldicott’s idea to add the flags to the truck in order to piss off the Negroes and the snowflakes, all the bleeding hearts dragging this country down into the dirt, making it a laughingstock. Heb said nothing would happen. Heb said the liberals would just roll over and take it, because that was what these people did. If you told them to go fuck themselves, they would. They’d be too frightened to do otherwise, Heb assured him, because they were always frightened. But Heb hadn’t reckoned on Parker and his kind, who didn’t seem frightened at all.
‘It’s a real nice car,’ said Billy, and it was. Setting fire to it wasn’t going to make his world any better, or bring his truck back, or stop him from being everybody’s punching bag. It was just going to make him another fool adding to the ugliness of the world.
‘Do you want to try and find your way through those woods alone?’ said Mors. ‘Do you believe you’ll get back to the car without triggering an alarm, and do you imagine I’ll still be waiting for you when you do? Burn it, Billy.’
Billy didn’t want to face the woods by himself. He didn’t want to set off some hidden alarm and have the cops come for him, leaving his father to bail him out, to tell Billy that he’d made an idiot of himself once more, and idiots of his family along with it. Worse: What if Parker returned, him and the Negro?
‘Fuck it,’ said Billy.
He told himself that it was the gasoline making his eyes water as he poured the contents of the can over the car, as he doused a rag and set a match to it, as he tossed the material on the hood, as the flames caught, as the tarp turned to ash, as the fire swept across the body, as the glass cracked and the paintwork bubbled and the tires melted and the tank ignited, as black smoke and sparks rose into the night.
As the car burned, and his future along with it.
102
‘British?’ said Parker.
Leila Patton was recalling the customers that had passed through Dobey’s on the night its owner died. They were mostly locals, but a couple of strangers too. That was sometimes the way of it. Cadillac might have been off the beaten track, but a lot of folk preferred the ditch to the highway. It was like Neil Young said: you meet more interesting people there.
‘Yes, British,’ said Leila. ‘English, actually. He was very specific on that. It was almost funny. We do get tourists through here. I mean, they’re often lost, but we do get them.’
‘Describe him to me.’
‘I told Chief Hillick all this, but he didn’t pay it much mind.’
‘Try telling me.’
‘Jeez, well, he was about six feet tall. Nicely dressed: velvet and tweed, and a scarf – not wool, more like a silk cravat. He reminded me of that actor, the guy who played the twins in that weird old gynecologist movie.’
Parker knew the one.
‘He had, uh, brown eyes,’ Leila continued, ‘and he wore red, round-framed spectacles. I remember because he was reading a book of poetry while he ate. We don’t get many people reading poetry in Cadillac, whether they’re eating or not.’
‘Brown eyes? You’re sure?’
‘Yes. I don’t usually notice things like that, but the spectacles were pretty unusual. They drew the eye.’
It was the Englishman, Smith Two: it had to be, even allowing for the difference in eye color. The man at the Bear had blue eyes, but the change could easily have been achieved with colored contacts, just as the red spectacles had probably been chosen deliberately. Take away the lenses, throw away the glasses, comb the hair in a different way, and even sharp-eyed Leila Patton might have struggled to identify him as the individual who had wandered into Dobey’s on a quiet, early spring evening, there to read poetry while— That was the question. Why show himself? Why take that chance?
‘Was there a woman with him?’ Parker asked.
‘No, he was alone.’
‘What about at another table? Very pale. Platinum hair. Eyes like bleach in water.’
‘Yuk. No, I don’t recall anyone like that.’
Could the woman have been searching Dobey’s trailers for the book while the Englishman monitored the diner, just in case Dobey decided to call it a night and leave the staff to close up? Or did this visitor with his fine clothes and poetry simply wish to take a good look at he who had helped to thwart him; he who had offered aid and shelter to Karis Lamb, with no expectation of return; he who would, in the end, pay for this kindness with his life? Parker was leaning toward the latter. It was the same impulse that had drawn the Englishman to the Great Lost Bear. He was curious, but arrogant with it. Whatever his profession, he had been following it for too long. It had made him incautious, complacent.
‘He’s the one,’ said Parker.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He killed Dobey, and probably Esther. The woman who tried to abduct you travels with him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve met them. They’re in Maine now, looking for this book, killing their way toward it.’
‘So they tried to abduct me because I’d seen this man at the diner?’
‘Did you serve him?’
‘No, Corbie did.’
‘And who else was working that night?’
‘Carlos, the chef.’
‘But no one has tried to hurt them?’
‘No, I’d have heard.’
‘Who was Dobey’s favorite? Who among the staff did he like the most?’
‘I don’t know. He was Dobey. He was the same with everyone.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He was kind to us all. It was his way.’
‘Leila …’
She relented.
‘Okay, so it was me. I got on best with him. I could play music. I read books. I watched old movies. I looked after my mom. Dobey liked me. He trusted me. Sometimes, after we closed up, I’d have a beer with him, and Dobey would smoke a joint, and we’d just sit and talk. What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Would all this have been clear to a stranger?’
‘I don’t know.’
But Parker knew the answer was yes, or certainly clear to a stranger like the Englishman.
‘They probably threatened to hurt Esther if Dobey didn’t help them,’ Parker said. ‘My guess is they threatened to hurt you, too.’
‘So?’
‘So: they’re people of their word. You could say they have principles, even if they’re the kind that give principles a bad name.’
Leila stared at her hands. What she said next increased Parker’s respect for her, and left him more determined than ever that the Englishman, and the woman with him, would never set eyes on Leila Patton again.
‘That means Esther really is dead.’
Because the danger to herself didn’t concern her, or not as much as the fate of Esther Bachmeier.
‘Yes, I think she is. Dobey didn’t convince them. They wanted to be sure.’
Tears from Leila, although they were the kind that didn’t alter one’s expression, as though the emotions of which they were the outward manifestation ran so deep that the tears themselves were an irrelevance.
‘Everyone loved Esther,’ she said, ‘or everyone worth knowing. The people who didn’t care for her were just dicks.’ She looked through the window toward the foothills, now lost to the dark. ‘I wonder where they left her. She deserves a proper burial. She deserves to be remembered.’
‘I’ll try to find her,’ said Parker.
‘How will you do that?’
‘I’ll make them tell me.’
Leila gave this some thought.
‘I’ve never really wished for someone to suffer before,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen too much of what my mom has gone through to want anyone else to experience that kind of pain.’
‘But?’