A few minutes later the brown van, the one from California, eased around the side of the building. It circled through the lot and slowed by Hawley’s car, then stopped right before it came to Amy’s. A man got out on the driver’s side, holding a handgun. It was the man with the freckles. He was wearing the red bowling shirt the Navajo had had on earlier. Hawley could see his tattoos, the nine heads of the serpent winding up past his elbows. The man checked the license on Hawley’s truck and peered in the windows of Amy’s hatchback. Then he looked up at the line of rooms.
They’d both seen him—Hawley and the girl. If the man had only stolen some money, he might get in his van and leave. If he’d killed the Navajos, he’d probably come after them. The man with the freckles went back to his van and reached behind the driver’s seat. He took out a box of ammo, opened the cylinder on his revolver and reloaded. Then he wiped his hands on the red bowling shirt and started up the stairs.
Hawley knew how to read the weather, to compensate for drag while taking his shot. If leaves changed direction, the wind was close to seven miles per hour. If branches began to bend, it was closer to nine. But there were no trees here to tell how fast the storm was blowing, not even a plastic bag caught in a fence. Only the sand that was circling the asphalt below, crossing the desert and pelting the windows with dust.
The man with the freckles climbed onto the landing, then turned and made his way along the row of doors. He took out a set of master keys and fit one into the lock of Amy’s room. He slipped inside. As soon as he did, Hawley stepped out onto the landing. He leveled the rifle but the wind swept up and started pushing against him.
Start with your feet, his mother told him. Your heels are already on the ground. Build from there when you lose your way. Hawley eased his weight back. He shook the tension from his calves and loosened his knees. He turned at the waist. He pressed one elbow to his hip and the other high against his ribs. And then he laid his cheek gently to the stock of the barrel and dragged it down behind the rear sight.
Hawley took in a full breath. He let half of it out.
The man with the freckles stepped from Amy’s room, not even careful, the red shirt like a target. Hawley could have shot him in the head but he went for the shoulder. The man cried out and staggered and then lurched for the stairs, but before he made it down he turned and fired off all the rounds he’d been holding. Hawley stepped back too slowly and felt a burn through his right side, and suddenly his arm couldn’t support the rifle anymore. It was falling and it fell and he watched it fall and then he was scrambling for the Beretta. He staggered over to the edge of the balustrade with the handgun. There was blood; it was streaming out over the walkway and his head was spinning. He looked from the pool of red to the man struggling into the van below, the bowling shirt catching air and fluttering sideways, clocking the speed of the wind. Thirty miles per hour, Hawley decided. Then he raised the gun and took the shot.
When Hawley tried to stand, his lungs weren’t working—it was like there was a sponge at the back of his throat. He crawled across the landing on his knees. The concrete was cold and unforgiving. He called Amy’s name and pushed open the door. When she came out of the bathroom she was fully dressed, like when he first met her, her hair pulled back tight in a bun once more and the baby in the sling and zipped up in her jacket. The only thing different was her face, pale and white and thin.
“We got to leave,” he managed. But he couldn’t get up from the floor.
Amy grabbed towels from the bathroom and wet them and pressed them to his side. Then she pulled out some diapers from her purse and opened them and put them underneath, taping the plastic tabs to his skin. Hawley told her to get the bag with the guns and to fetch the rifle he’d dropped and then he told her to open the toilet and get the jar of licorice out of the tank and put it in the bag, too. She did all he asked and when she came back and kneeled beside him her face held that same strange look from earlier when he’d told her that her name was pretty.
He barely remembered coming down the stairs. Amy maneuvered him into the back of her car and then she put the bag in the trunk and then she opened the other door and took the baby out of the sling and strapped him into the plastic seat next to Hawley. The van was still running, the man with the freckles half in, half out of the driver’s seat. Clots of hair and shattered bone littered the pavement, and the windshield was sprayed with blood.
Amy got into the front of the hatchback and slammed the door. She gripped the steering wheel and kept her eyes on the rearview mirror. “Do you think the manager’s dead?”
“We should check,” said Hawley.
They drove around the front of the building. Amy got out, and this time the motel doors were unlocked. Hawley and the baby stayed in the car, the kid watching the spot his mother had disappeared into, kicking his tiny feet and drooling. Hawley pressed the diapers against his ribs and drifted in and out. When Amy came back she froze for a moment, holding on to the handle of the car, looking like she was going to be sick, and Hawley knew he’d been right and the other men were dead and he wished he’d listened to his guts when he checked in and saw those freckles. He could have been miles away by now or even drinking beers with Jove and not dying in the backseat of some girl’s car.
Amy fumbled with her seatbelt. Then she put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking lot. “There’s a doctor on the reservation,” she said, “about ten miles down.”
The seat cushion beneath Hawley was wet with blood. There was blood on the seatbelts, blood on the floor. “He’ll report it.”
“Not if you pay him,” Amy said.
And that’s when Hawley knew she’d gone into the jar.
He tried to say something about this but it came out slurred. He focused on the little boy strapped in the carrier next to him and did his best to stay awake. The elephant pajamas had blood on them and the baby was staring at the back of Amy’s head and his arms were grabbing for his mother like she was the only thing that mattered in the world.
The sun seemed to be coming up—the sky a multitude of pinks and oranges—and Hawley wondered again what time it was. The bullet was turning now, spinning into a dark place and taking him with it. He touched the diapers taped along the side of his stomach. They smelled of talcum powder and were heavy and warm and felt alive in his hands, just like the baby’s diaper had when he’d carried it into the bathroom and put it in the trash.
“We’re nearly there,” Amy said. Then she said, “I’ll go back and get your car for you.”
Hawley hoped she would. He hoped that when he woke up and stumbled out of the doctor’s house into the blazing desert heat she’d be there with the baby and the money and it wouldn’t just be his car dusted on the side of the road with the keys in the ignition and a pile of bloody towels. That he wouldn’t have to check the trunk to see if she’d left the guns, and that there’d be at least a grand left for him in the licorice jar. She owed him that, at least, he thought. She owed him something.