Frowning, he holds the plates between thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as if they are the first two cards in a poker hand played with a giant deck.
From his safe-for-the-shoes position, Carter Jergen feels his oppressive sense of impending doom relieved somewhat by the mixed emotions that Dubose stirs in him: contempt for the man’s boobish pretension, grudging admiration for the way he often resolves a mystery in spite of being born with a hillbilly brain that has been further stupefied by the faculty of Princeton, and an embarrassing but undeniable adolescent veneration of the big man’s total coolness and—admit it—his genuine charisma.
Suddenly Dubose casts aside the license plates and withdraws his smartphone from a pocket. “No time to relay this through the Desert Flora Study Group. Got to call him direct.”
“Call who?” Jergen asks.
“Whom. The helo pilot. Live and learn, Cubby.” When the pilot answers, Dubose says, “Hawk somehow brought a white Suburban through roadblocks. Washed off the special-formula paint with a solvent. Put on federal tags. It’s that black FBI Suburban you scoped out where the truck took down a house. Find it, and we’ll have the bitch.”
Jergen stands awestruck, his hope renewed.
13
THEY WERE TWO MINUTES FROM BERNIE. Jane wasn’t superstitious, but her many experiences of desperate situations had taught her that sometimes the closer your destination, the more you might slip-slide away. Which only made sense. When your adversaries were formidable—whether they were two sociopathic serial killers on an isolated farm or multiple law-enforcement agencies of the United States government—the longer you took to wrap up a piece of business, the greater the chances that you would lose momentum and the other side would gain it. In such circumstances, time was seldom a friend.
She called out to Travis where he curled in the duffel bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “How’re you doing, Travis?” When he didn’t answer, she raised her voice. “Travis, are you okay?”
This time he said something, but too softly for her to hear.
Cornell relayed the boy’s reply. “Umm. Umm. He says bandages don’t talk.”
Luther laughed, and after a hesitation, Jane laughed as well, though at the moment laughter made her nervous. Even though she didn’t believe in fate, she wanted to avoid taunting it.
Luther turned off the highway onto the approach road to the RV campground. Bernie had moved the motor home to the overflow parking lot outside the main gate. He stood beside it in the sun. In white sneakers and white chinos and a pink-and-blue Hawaiian shirt, slight and white-haired, with a face that would have gotten him role after role as a kindly grandfather if the movies still told stories in which kindly grandfathers were relevant, just the sight of him would have given her hope. Except the uncharacteristic angularity and tension of his posture signaled that something was wrong.
14
JERGEN HEARS A CAR STOP in front of the house, and a door slams. Already additional investigators are swarming to the property.
Looking around wonderingly at the garden hose and the license plates and the pea gravel and the chalky, pasty white stuff, he is able to put some of the pieces together, but the puzzle is far from complete.
“How can you be sure it was Hawk?”
“Helo pilot reported one agent was a woman.”
“We have several in the valley right now.”
“The other was a black guy.”
“We got black guys.”
“That Minnesota sheriff she teamed up with before was black.”
“You think the boy was hiding in the house?” Jergen asks.
“Maybe in the house.” Dubose’s attention shifts to the distant ramshackle barn. “The house or somewhere on the property.”
“But why did Hosteen drive his truck into this place?”
“I don’t know everything, Cubby.” He picks up the license plates he previously discarded. “Gotta call Desert Flora, have them run a search of plates scanned on incoming traffic, see where the Suburban came from when it was white.”
Just then an outlandish yet somehow familiar figure appears from around the ruins of the house and says, “Hey now, boys, that there’s some ass-kickin’ truck you got. I’d get myself one if I had more than a pot to pee in, which is about all I got after four lazy squanderin’ husbands and what with the pathetic check I get from the thievin’ embezzlers at Social Security.”
She looks as old as the desert, centuries of hot sun baked into her wrinkled face, long tangles of brittle white hair frizzling from under her wide-brimmed straw hat. Dressed in a red neckerchief, a tan-linen shirt almost as wrinkled as she is, cargo-pocket khakis, and red athletic shoes, she carries a big shoulder-slung purse from which peers a small dog, a Pomeranian that regards Jergen and Dubose with keen interest.
“I figured a fancy-ass truck like yours couldn’t stay hid for long in the Anza-Borrego. A dandy like that’n, must take years of profitable sinnin’ to pay for it. What’s the sticker price on that there sucker?”
Dubose smiles, though not warmly, and says, “We’re FBI and this is a crime scene, ma’am. You need to leave the property.”
She cocks her head and squints at them, and the Pomeranian does the same, as if it mimics her gestures as a parrot might mimic her colorful language.
“You boys ’member me broke down by the side of the road in killer heat, you went blowin’ by like a wind out of Hell?”
“Ah,” Jergen says, “yes, that rust-bucket Dodge pickup.”
The old woman says, “I come here to tell you a thing or damn two about manners and courtesy, seein’ as how your worthless parents never done their job.”
“Granny,” Dubose says, “you could get yourself in a world of trouble if you don’t vamoose.”
Ignoring the implication that she risks arrest for interfering with an investigation, the old woman says, “Maybe some didn’t stop ’cause they were on their way to comfort a dyin’ child. But you’re not that kind. What blisters my butt is you not only go flyin’ past, but you just got to mock me with a toot-toot. Wasn’t me alone might wither and blow away in that killer heat, was Larry, too.” At the mention of his name, Larry the Pomeranian looks adoringly at his guardian. “This here precious pup is the light of my life, the only one who’s loved me in ninety years. You toot-toot me, you toot-toot him.”
Dubose has had enough. When the big man has had enough, he is a wonder to watch. “Listen, you stupid dried-up old twat, you get your skinny ass out of here, or I’ll break more bones than you can count, make you watch me crush Larry’s head, and then bury you alive in the rubble of this house.”
She sighs. “Idiot.” She draws a Sig Sauer P245 from her monster purse and shoots Dubose twice point-blank. She shoots Jergen as he goes for his pistol, shoots him again as the weapon falls from his hand.
He collapses to the pea gravel.
Suffering pain far greater than anything he’s ever known or imagined, Jergen looks up at the old woman as she stares down with disdain. “Rattlesnakes,” she declares. “Shit, I musta killed a thousand of ’em.”
From Jergen’s perspective, when the shooter turns and walks away, she is not a diminutive old woman any longer, but a towering figure with a mystical aura. His entire life now seems to have been a wandering without purpose, incoherent until she walked in to say, Hey now, boys, that’s some ass-kickin’ truck you got, whereafter she has defined his life as he’s never been able to do, has drawn a red circle around his thirty-seven years and penciled in the margin one word: meaningless.
15