“We’ll be right with you, Deputy,” says Rigo. Then, to Cooper: “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You understand.”
“Dietrich’s the one you need to focus on,” says Cooper, sounding increasingly desperate, even to himself.
“Sure. I’ll get right on that. In the meantime, don’t wander off too far.”
Cooper shoots another glance at Dawes, hoping for—something. Some indication. But she stares straight ahead and ignores him. So he heads for the door and, before Cooper exits, he says to Rigo, “Where exactly am I going to go?”
Once Cooper’s left the trailer, Dawes settles into her chair, her knees bumping up against the underside of the little school desk. She waits and watches as the agents unpack boxes and tack photos of Errol Colfax, Hubert Gable, and Gerald Dean to the whiteboard. She thinks back to the day just six weeks ago when she first arrived here—her own unofficial intake day—and all that had preceded that moment: how she fled Atlanta and that starter home and that abusive dead-end husband and how she thought, as she drove in her dented hatchback over those long stretches of look-alike highway, pointed southwest toward a friend in Austin and an uncertain future, that the best parts of her life were likely behind her and that they hadn’t even really been that good. She sat there in her car, on the highway, that idea filling her with dread. To be barely thirty and already feel like your life is irreparably off the rails. The evidence was piled up against her: from her decision to skip college, mostly to annoy her academic parents; to her failed and dispirited attempt to become an EMT; to her quick marriage and even quicker divorce; to her hasty exodus to Austin—all those choices had led her to apply for this job, in this place, and they could not reasonably be regarded as steering her toward some greater destiny. Yet here she is. And, every day, she irons her uniform. Every day, she updates her notebook. Every day, she asks questions, and waits patiently for improbable opportunity, even though she has no clue what opportunity might look like, especially one that might find her all the way out here.
Well, maybe, she thinks, settling into the chair, tapping the notebook in her breast pocket, maybe this is what opportunity looks like. A trailer full of outsiders in suits with questions that she just might have the answers to. After a life spent too long on the wrong side of other people’s lies, it feels good to be on the side of the truth. And she’s pretty sure she knows the truth. She knows plenty, that’s for sure.
I wait. I watch. I guard.
John Barker, for example. She knows something about him. It’s certainly not part of the story he told her to tell these people. But that’s okay—she’s not telling anyone else’s stories today.
The tall agent with the spiked white hair and the sunglasses, Rigo, is conferring with the female agent, Santayana. “I have to go and deal with this guy Dietrich,” he says to her. “Can you handle this?”
Santayana glances at Dawes and nods.
When Rigo exits, Santayana strides crisply over to Dawes, her heels tapping the linoleum floor. Imagine wearing heels out here, Dawes thinks, in all this dust and heat. She can’t tell if it makes you confident or obstinate. Agent Santayana pulls up a plastic chair. “My apologies. We’re just getting everything up and running.”
“No problem,” says Dawes.
Santayana sits. She offers Dawes a warm smile, like the smile you might get from the person at a crowded party who finally makes you feel welcome, like it wasn’t a huge mistake for you to come. Up close, the agent’s age is impossible to ascertain—she could be twenty-five or forty-five or anywhere in between. She’s quite well groomed, even in this Texas heat, and she smells pleasantly of summer orchards, Dawes notices, the scent drifting lazily toward her in the stale air of the windowless intake trailer.
“Sidney—that’s an unusual name,” she says.
“I prefer Sid.”
“Okay, Sid. I prefer Iris. Nice to meet you.” She gestures back toward the commotion in the room, then turns to Dawes and mouths the word “men,” then laughs. “Am I right? They’re useless without us. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.” Then she picks up her deep black tablet and starts stroking the screen. A few moments pass. Dawes, anxious, decides to speak: “About the shootings—”
“Yes, we’ll get to that.” Santayana keeps her eyes trained on the tablet.
Dawes waits. Then says, “Do you know about John Barker?”
“Hold that thought, Sid.” Santayana taps the tablet again, then holds it up and turns it toward Dawes. “Tell me, do you know this woman?”
Dawes looks at the tablet. It’s a photo of Fran Adams, but not the version of Fran Adams that Dawes is familiar with. This version of Fran Adams is dolled up, laughing, her hair swept high for some fancy function. She’s smiling with an intensity and fervor that Dawes has never seen from her in here—or, really, from anyone in here. She wears glittering earrings that dangle. She looks like she knows the person taking the photo. She looks, honestly, like she’s in love.
Dawes stares at the photo, confused, her throat constricting slightly for reasons she can’t quite pin down, then says finally, “Yes. I know her.”
“Very good. You’re being very helpful. Second question, Sid.” Santayana’s smile is gone, she’s suddenly brusque now, all business. “Do you know where we can find her right now?”
26.
THE AIR IS IMMOBILE. Dust motes hover, indecisive, in the pale shafts of what little light penetrates the curtains. The bungalow smells of old man, moth balls, and wet wool, which is to be expected, Bette thinks.
William Wayne offers her a seat.
He’s unshaven. A white spray of whiskers spreads across his neck, chin, and cheeks, speaking to habitual neglect. The scruff seems coarser over the kidney-shaped port-wine stain that covers one side of his face. The splotch spreads, large and puffy and crimson, over his cheek and under his eye and crawls up the bridge of his nose. His eyes above the stain are small and hooded, like the eyes of a cave dweller, long ago adjusted to inadequate light.
“What made you open the door for me?” Bette says.
“It’s a door. That’s what it’s made for,” he says. “I’d offer you something to eat or drink, but I don’t have anything to offer.”
“That’s okay,” Bette says.
He has a wild crown of impressive ghost-white hair, swept up and back in a careless pompadour. He wears a black cowboy shirt with tarnished pearl snaps, and stained black corduroy trousers, and weathered leather boots. The knuckles of his gnarled hands are ballooned with age, like knots in an ancient tree trunk. Bette watches him. She’d imagined someone different. Someone gallant and strapping. Someone fearsome. Someone dangerous. Not this man. This cannot be him.
The famous killer known as William Wayne.