“A friend.”
“I thought you’d never been to Coronado County before, Mr. O’Connor.”
“I make friends easily.”
“Know your wife’s blood type?”
“I don’t.”
“Can you find out?”
“I can.”
He nodded. “We’ve already got a sample from what’s splashed all over the grass. We’ll get it typed ASAP. We’ll be keeping your wife’s cell phone.”
I knew they’d do this. So while Jocko was making the 911 call from the ranch house, I’d taken a moment to delete the frantic, garbled message Peter had left his mother in which it sounded as if he might be confessing to killing someone named Rodriguez.
Deputy Crockett came from the search area. His features and colorful hatband continued to make me suspect some Native blood ran in his veins.
“What do you think, Crockett?” the sheriff asked.
“From the blood spatter, looks like the shot came from somewhere over there.” Crockett pointed toward the main road. “Probably used a high-powered rifle and scope.”
“The body?”
“It wasn’t dragged away. From the signs we could find in the grass, looks like somebody carried it off.”
“Why take the body?” Carlson said.
“I can’t answer that yet.” Deputy Crockett looked at me as if he believed I might be able to field that one.
“Who knew you were here?” Carlson asked.
“Frank and Jayne Harris,” I said. “Nobody else.”
“I’ve got someone talking to the Harrises right now.”
Stars salted the inky blue above us. Beyond the Coronados, the sky was still hazy with a faint lemon glow. Under the cottonwoods, the long fingers of the flashlight beams continued their probing. And I worked very hard at not letting myself believe that Rainy was gone.
When they’d done all they could do for the moment, the sheriff’s people climbed into their vehicles and headed back to Cadiz.
Before he left, Carlson said, “Where are you staying, Mr. O’Connor?”
“The old parsonage of the Methodist church in town.”
“Grace Church?”
“That’s right.”
He glanced at the pickup I’d been driving. “Michelle Abbott wouldn’t happen to be the friend you mentioned?”
Considering all that had happened, I was reluctant to bring the minister into this any more than I had to. But the evidence was there, all half ton of it.
“Christian charity,” I said.
His face changed. It didn’t soften, but something different seemed to shape his features, something that ran deeper than a concern just for law enforcement. I understood that he was a man who cared about those he was trying to protect and serve. “These people, Mr. O’Connor, they kill anything that smells remotely unpleasant to them.”
“These people? They have names?”
“I’d say they all go under the same name. Narco scum.” He eyed Jocko. “If I was you, old-timer, I’d make a shotgun my bedmate for a while. I’ll be in touch, Mr. O’Connor.” He put a finger to his Stetson in a parting salute, started to walk away, but stopped and turned back. “It’s pretty clear to me, O’Connor, and it should be to you, that in the bombing this morning your wife was the target and her son was the reason. You? You would just have been collateral damage. If it was me and I really didn’t know the whole story here, I’d be asking myself why.” He eyed me, but if he expected a reply, he didn’t get one. “I’m sure we’ll want to talk to you some more. Not planning on leaving Coronado County, are you?”
“Not without my wife.”
“Of course,” he said. Then more gently and with a note of real sympathy, “Of course.”
*
When we were finally alone, I said to Jocko, “Maybe it’s best you find someplace not so isolated to sleep tonight.”
“I’m already in spitting distance of my heavenly reward, Cork. I’ll be fine here. What about you?”
“I’m going to talk to Frank and Jayne, then head back to the parsonage.”
“Who knows what might be waiting for you there? Hang on a second.” Jocko went into the ranch house and came back with a rifle and a box of cartridges. “I’ve had this Winchester since I was sixteen. I call her Lena. Named after my dog, truest-hearted animal ever lived. She might help you get through the night with a little less worry.”
Although I’d been a hunter all my life, it had been a long time since I’d carried a firearm as a weapon of defense. That was a part of my life I’d been trying to put behind me. But I was in a war now, in an alien land, and the feel of the Winchester in my hands was satisfying.
“Cork, I got no words to make any of this easier, except that after more than four score years on this earth, the one thing I’ve found worth believing in is hope.”
“Thanks, Jocko. You take care of yourself.”
“You find out anything, you’ll let me know?”
“That’s a promise.”
I drove away, leaving Jocko alone. By the time I hit the main road, the lights of his ranch house were little more than fireflies in the night.
*
Halfway to the Sonora Hills Cellars, I pulled the truck to the side of the road and got out. The moon wasn’t up yet, and even if it had been, the only thing visible would have been a sliver offering no illumination at all. The stars, there were billions of those, more than I’d ever seen in the sky above Minnesota. The dryness of the air, I figured. The dark outline of the Coronado Mountains stood black against the faintest blue along the western horizon, which was mostly the memory of light. All around me was silence, absolute and oppressive.
You hold it off as long as you can, and then it hits you. The crushing weight of history.
I slammed my fist on the hood of the pickup.
“Goddamn it!” I howled. “This will not happen again. I will not lose Rainy.”
I wanted to hold to the hope that Jocko had advised, which was exactly the advice I knew Henry Meloux would have given me, but strength failed me. Even my body failed me. My knees buckled and I slid to the ground and sat in the dust and gravel on the shoulder at the edge of the road and gave in to despair. How could hope stand against the evidence, all that blood and Rainy’s abandoned cell phone? I knew Sheriff Carlson was right. If I’d been killed that morning, it would have been because of my proximity to Rainy. Whatever the truth she’d been hiding from me, it was a lethal one. Maybe she’d been trying to protect me. Or maybe she simply didn’t love me enough to trust me. Didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered.
When you begin to wallow in self-pity, you have two choices. You slide into it like you would quicksand and drown. Or you pull yourself out.