40
It had been two nights since Freddy had dug up Billy Randall’s empty coffin in Wickenburg. As soon as he’d pried the lid open with a crowbar and shined the flashlight inside, Freddy had hopped in the rental car and done his best impression of a NASCAR driver, hauling ass back to Barstow. A brief pause at a truck stop to dump his dirty sweats, tennis shoes, and shovel into a dumpster had been the only delay in getting back to the Desert Inn. Since he’d never checked out of the Barstow motel, Freddy had stuck the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outside door handle, stumbled into bed, and slept the day away.
Now Freddy found himself looking over the top of his hamburger, watching the setting sun shimmer in the heat that radiated up from the diner’s asphalt parking lot. The waitress had stopped by to ask if he wanted coffee, and he’d laughed at her. What he wanted was water with enough ice to frost up the outside of the glass. Every time the diner door opened, it felt like he was sitting beside a blast furnace.
Freddy wanted to talk to Dr. Bertrand Callow, the Barstow medical examiner who had signed off on the Randall report, but at home and after dark. Only a couple of things could make a man like that falsify an official report. Either he was one of the key conspirators in this whole mess or someone had scared the crap out of him. Freddy was pretty sure that it was the second, but if he was wrong about that, getting fired was going to be the least of his worries. Actually, now that he thought about it, he probably wouldn’t live long enough to have many worries.
Dr. Callow’s house wasn’t difficult to find. You just got off Old California 58 and headed north on Camarillo Avenue until it stovepiped into Palermo Street. It was one of a handful of nice homes on the far north side of the street, backed up against desert open space. By the time Freddy walked up to the front of the house and rang the bell, the sky had taken on a dark shade of purple with a few wisps of burgundy still licking the horizon. At least the Western skies gave these poor desert rats something worth looking at. You damn sure couldn’t watch the grass grow.
Freddy pushed the doorbell a second time. He could hear it buzzing inside. The light from the television flickered through the front windows although the plantation shutters prevented him from getting a good look inside. So the doctor was home, just not responding. Probably on the crapper.
After another minute, Freddy reached out and rapped the door hard with his knuckles, feeling the door move inward slightly under his hand. The thing wasn’t locked. Hell it hadn’t even been closed hard enough to latch. A sudden uneasiness raised the hair along the backs of his arms, despite the heat of the evening. On impulse, Freddy pulled out his shirttail and wiped down the doorbell and doorknob, before nudging the door open with his toe.
The television blared loudly from a room just out of sight from the foyer, the sounds of battle amplified through a sub-woofer blared so loudly that he could feel the concussion of cinematic artillery. Freddy stepped across the threshold, pushing the door closed with his foot.
Jesus H. Christ. If the bastard was taking a dump, he should at least light a match. The place reeked.
“Dr. Callow?”
Nothing.
Freddy felt himself move slowly forward, drawn toward the flickering light from the next room like some goddamn moth.
The living room opened up before him, the large flat-panel television occupying the wall on the left, its screen filled with combat as the war movie reached a crescendo of violence. Across the room a man sat in a recliner, his hand dangling over the padded leather arm, fingers open as if reaching for the gun that lay on the floor beside it. The television flared bright as another explosion shook the speakers, its light leaving little doubt about what Freddy was seeing. There sitting in the splatter of blood and clumps of brain matter was Dr. Callow.