It appears to be a huntin accident.
Hunting accident?
Yessir.
How could it be a hunting accident? You're pulling my leg.
Let me ask you somethin.
All right.
Last year nineteen felony charges were filed in the Terrell County Court. How many of those would you say were not drug related?
I dont know.
Two. In the meantime I got a county the size of Delaware that is full of people who need my help. What do you think about that?
I dont know.
I dont either. Now I just need to eat my breakfast here. I got kindly a full day ahead.
He and Torbert drove out in Torbert's four wheel drive truck. All was as they'd left it. They parked a ways from Moss's truck and waited. It's ten, Torbert said.
What?
It's ten. Deceased. We forgot about old Wyrick. It's ten.
Bell nodded. That we know about, he said.
Yessir. That we know about.
The helicopter arrived and circled and set down in a whirl of dust out on the bajada. Nobody got out. They were waiting for the dust to blow away. Bell and Torbert watched the rotor winding down.
The DEA agent's name was McIntyre. Bell knew him slightly and liked him about well enough to nod to. He got out with a clipboard in his hand and walked toward them. He was dressed in boots and hat and a Carhartt canvas jacket and he looked all right until he opened his mouth.
Sheriff Bell, he said.
Agent McIntyre.
What vehicle is this?
It's a '72 Ford pickup.
McIntyre stood looking out down the bajada. He tapped the clipboard against his leg. He looked at Bell. I'm happy to know that, he said. White in color.
I'd say white. Yes.
Could use a set of tires.
He went over and walked around the truck. He wrote on his clipboard. He looked inside. He folded the seat forward and looked in the back.
Who cut the tires?
Bell was standing with his hands in his back pockets. He leaned and spat. Deputy Hays here believes it was done by a rival party.
Rival party.
Yessir.
I thought these vehicles were all shot up.
They are.
But not this one.
Not this one.
McIntyre looked toward the chopper and he looked down the bajada toward the other vehicles. Can I get a ride down there with you?
Sure you can.
They walked toward Torbert's truck. The agent looked at Bell and he tapped the clipboard against his leg. You dont intend to make this easy, do you?
Hell, McIntyre. I'm just messin with you.
They walked around in the bajada looking at the shot-up trucks. McIntyre held a kerchief to his nose. The bodies were bloated in their clothes. This is about the damnedest thing I ever saw, he said.
He stood making notes on his clipboard. He paced distances and made a rough sketch of the scene and he copied out the numbers off the license plates.
Were there no guns here? he said.
Not as many as there should of been. We got two pieces in evidence.
How long you think they've been dead?
Four or five days.
Somebody must have got away.
Bell nodded. There's another body about a mile north of here.
There's heroin spilled in the back of that Bronco.
Yep.
Mexican black tar.
Bell looked at Torbert. Torbert leaned and spat.
If the heroin is missing and the money is missing then my guess is that somebody is missing.
I'd say that's a reasonable guess.
McIntyre continued writing. Dont worry, he said. I know you didnt get it.
I aint worried.
McIntyre adjusted his hat and stood looking at the trucks. Are the rangers coming out here?
Rangers are comin. Or one is. DPS drug unit.
I've got .380's, .45's, nine millimeter parabellum, twelve gauge, and .38 special. Did you all find anything else?
I think that was it.
McIntyre nodded. I guess the people waiting for their dope have probably figured out by now that it's not coming. What about the Border Patrol?
Everbody's comin as far as I know. We expect it to get right lively. Might could be a bigger draw than the flood back in '65.
Yeah.
What we need is to get these bodies out of here.
McIntyre tapped the clipboard against his leg. Aint that the truth, he said.
Nine millimeter parabellum, said Torbert.
Bell nodded. You need to put that in your files.
Chigurh picked up the signal from the transponder coming across the high span of the Devil's River Bridge just west of Del Rio. It was near midnight and no cars on the highway. He reached over into the passenger seat and turned the dial slowly forward and then back, listening.
The headlights picked up some kind of a large bird sitting on the aluminum bridgerail up ahead and Chigurh pushed the button to let the window down. Cool air coming in off the lake. He took the pistol from beside the box and cocked and leveled it out the window, resting the barrel on the rearview mirror. The pistol had been fitted with a silencer sweated onto the end of the barrel. The silencer was made out of brass mapp-gas burners fitted into a hairspray can and the whole thing stuffed with fiberglass roofing insulation and painted flat black. He fired just as the bird crouched and spread its wings.
It flared wildly in the lights, very white, turning and lifting away into the darkness. The shot had hit the rail and caromed off into the night and the rail hummed dully in the slipstream and ceased. Chigurh laid the pistol in the seat and put the window back up again.
Moss paid the driver and stepped out into the lights in front of the motel office and slung the bag over his shoulder and shut the cab door and turned and went in. The woman was already behind the counter. He set the bag in the floor and leaned on the counter. She looked a little flustered. Hi, she said. You fixin to stay a while?
I need another room.
You want to change rooms or you want another one besides the one you've got?
I want to keep the one I got and get another one.
All right.
Have you got a map of the motel?
She looked under the counter. There used to be a sort of a one. Wait a minute. I think this is it.
She laid an old brochure on the counter. It showed a car from the fifties parked in front. He unfolded it and flattened it out and studied it.
What about one forty-two?
You can have one next to yours if you want it. One-twenty aint took.
That's all right. What about one forty-two?
She reached and got the key off the board behind her. You'll owe for two nights, she said.
He paid and picked up the bag and walked out and turned down the walkway at the rear of the motel. She leaned over the counter watching him go.
In the room he sat on the bed with the map spread out. He got up and went into the bathroom and stood in the tub with his ear to the wall. A TV was playing somewhere. He went back and sat and unzipped the bag and took out the shotgun and laid it to one side and then emptied the bag out onto the bed.
He took the screwdriver and got the chair from the desk and stood on it and unscrewed the airduct grille and stepped down and laid it dustside up on the cheap chenille bedspread. Then he climbed up and put his ear to the duct. He listened. He stood down and got the flashlight and climbed back up again.
There was a junction in the ductwork about ten feet down the shaft and he could see the end of the bag sticking out. He turned off the light and stood listening. He tried listening with his eyes shut.
He climbed down and got the shotgun and went to the door and turned off the light at the switch there and stood in the dark looking out through the curtain at the courtyard. Then he went back and laid the shotgun on the bed and turned on the flashlight.
/> He untied the little nylon bag and slid the poles out. They were lightweight aluminum tubes three feet long and he assembled three of them and taped the joints with duct tape so that they wouldnt pull apart. He went to the closet and came back with three wire hangers and sat on the bed and cut the hooks off with the sidecutters and wrapped them into one hook with the tape. Then he taped them to the end of the pole and stood up and slid the pole down the ductwork.
He turned the flashlight off and pitched it onto the bed and went back to the window and looked out. Drone of a truck passing out on the highway. He waited till it was gone. A cat that was crossing the courtyard stopped. Then it went on again.
He stood on the chair with the flashlight in his hand. He turned on the light and laid the lens up close against the galvanized metal wall of the duct so as to mute the beam and ran the hook down past the bag and turned it and brought it back. The hook caught and turned the bag slightly and then slipped free again. After a few tries he managed to get it caught in one of the straps and he towed it silently up the duct hand over hand through the dust until he could let go the pole and reach the bag.
He climbed down and sat on the bed and wiped the dust from the case and unfastened the latch and the straps and opened it and looked at the packets of bills. He took one of them from the case and riffled it. Then he fitted it back and undid the length of cord he'd tied to the strap and turned off the flashlight and sat listening. He stood and reached up and shoved the poles down the duct and then he put back the grid and gathered up his tools. He laid the key on the desk and put the shotgun and the tools in the bag and took it and the case and walked out the door leaving everything just as it was.
Chigurh drove slowly along the row of motel rooms with the window down and the receiver in his lap. He turned at the end of the lot and came back. He slowed to a stop and put the Ramcharger in reverse and backed slightly down the blacktop and stopped again. Finally he drove around to the office and parked and went in.
The clock on the motel office wall said twelve forty-two. The television set was on and the woman looked like she'd been asleep. Yessir, she said. Can I help you?
He left the office with the key in his shirtpocket and got into the Ramcharger and drove around to the side of the building and parked and got out and walked down to the room carrying the bag with the receiver and the guns in it. In the room he dropped the bag onto the bed and pulled off his boots and came back out with the receiver and the battery pack and the shotgun from the truck. The shotgun was a twelve gauge Remington automatic with a plastic military stock and a parkerized finish. It was fitted with a shopmade silencer fully a foot long and big around as a beercan. He walked down the ramada in his sockfeet past the rooms listening to the signal.
He came back to the room and stood in the open door under the dead white light from the parking lot lamp. He walked into the bathroom and turned the light on there. He took the measure of the room and looked to see where everything was. He measured where the lightswitches were. Then he stood in the room taking it all in once again. He sat and pulled on his boots and got the airtank and slung it across his shoulder and caught up the cattlegun where it swung from the rubber airhose and walked out and down to the room.
He stood listening at the door. Then he punched out the lock cylinder with the airgun and kicked open the door.
A Mexican in a green guayabera had sat up on the bed and was reaching for a small machinegun beside him. Chigurh shot him three times so fast it sounded like one long gunshot and left most of the upper part of him spread across the head-board and the wall behind it. The shotgun made a strange deep chugging sound. Like someone coughing into a barrel. He snapped on the light and stepped out of the doorway and stood with his back to the outside wall. He looked in again quickly. The bathroom door had been shut. Now it was open. He stepped into the room and fired two loads through the standing door and another through the wall and stepped out again. Down toward the end of the building a light had come on. Chigurh waited. Then he looked into the room once more. The door was blown into shredded plywood hanging off the hinges and a thin stream of blood had started across the pink bathroom tiles.
He stepped into the doorway and fired two more rounds through the bathroom wall and then walked in with the shotgun leveled at his waist. The man was lying slumped against the tub holding an AK-47. He was shot in the chest and the neck and he was bleeding heavily. No me mate, he wheezed. No me mate. Chigurh stepped back to avoid the spray of ceramic chips off the tub and shot him in the face.
He walked out and stood on the sidewalk. No one there. He went back in and searched the room. He looked in the closet and he looked under the bed and he pulled all the drawers out into the floor. He looked in the bathroom. Moss's H&K machinepistol was lying on the sink. He left it there. He wiped his feet back and forth on the carpet to get the blood off the soles of his boots and he stood looking at the room. Then his eye fell on the airduct.
He took the lamp from beside the bed and jerked the cord free and climbed up onto the dresser and stove in the grate with the metal lampbase and pulled it loose and looked in. He could see the dragmarks in the dust. He climbed down and stood there. He'd got blood and matter on his shirt from off the wall and he took the shirt off and went back into the bathroom and washed himself and dried with one of the bath-towels. Then he wet the towel and wiped off his boots and folded the towel again and wiped down the legs of his jeans. He picked up the shotgun and came back into the room naked to the waist, the shirt balled in one hand. He wiped his bootsoles on the carpet again and looked around the room a last time and left.
When Bell walked into the office Torbert looked up from his desk and then rose and came over and laid a paper down in front of him.
Is this it? Bell said.
Yessir.
Bell leaned back in his chair to read, tapping his lower lip slowly with his forefinger. After a while he put the report down. He didnt look at Torbert. I know what's happened here, he said.
All right.
Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?
Yessir. I believe so.
You'd know it if you had.
I think I went once when I was a kid.
Funny place to take a kid.
I think I went my own self. Snuck in.
How did they kill the beef?
They had a knocker straddled the chute and they'd let the beeves through one at a time and he'd knock em in the head with a maul. He done that all day.
That sounds about right. They dont do it thataway no more. They use a airpowered gun that shoots a steel bolt out of it. Just shoots it out about so far. They put that thing between the beef's eyes and pull the trigger and down she goes. It's that quick.
Torbert was standing at the corner of Bell's desk. He waited a minute for the sheriff to continue but the sheriff didnt continue. Torbert stood there. Then he looked away. I wish you hadnt of even told me, he said.
I know, said Bell. I knowed what you'd say fore you said it.
Moss pulled into Eagle Pass at a quarter till two in the morning. He'd slept a good part of the way in the back of the cab and he only woke when they slowed coming off the highway and down Main Street. He watched the pale white globes of the streetlamps pass along the upper rim of the window. Then he sat up.
You goin across the river? the driver said.
No. Just take me downtown.
You are downtown.
Moss leaned forward with his elbows on the back of the seat.
What's that right there.
That's the Maverick County Courthouse.
No. Right there where the sign is.
That's the Hotel Eagle.
Drop me there.
He paid the driver the fifty dollars they'd agreed on and picked up his bags off the curb and walked up the steps to the porch and went in. The clerk was standing at the desk as if he'd been expecting him.
He paid and put the key in his pocket and climbed the stairs and walked down the old ho
tel corridor. Dead quiet. No lights in the transoms. He found the room and put the key in the door and opened it and went in and shut the door behind him. Light from the streetlamps coming through the lace curtains at the window. He set the bags on the bed and went back to the door and switched on the overhead light. Old fashioned pushbutton switchplate. Oak furniture from the turn of the century. Brown walls. Same chenille bedspread.
He sat on the bed thinking things over. He got up and looked out the window at the parking lot and he went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and came back and sat on the bed again. He took a sip and set the water on the glass top of the wooden bedside table. There is no goddamn way, he said.
He undid the brass latch and the buckles on the case and began to take the packets of money out and to stack them on the bed. When the case was empty he checked it for a false bottom and he checked the back and sides and then he set it aside and began to go through the stacks of bills, riffling each of the packets and stacking them back in the case. He'd packed it about a third full before he found the sending unit.
The middle of the packet had been filled in with dollar bills with the centers cut out and the transponder unit nested there was about the size of a Zippo lighter. He slid back the tape and took it out and weighed it in his hand. Then he put it in the drawer and got up and took the cut-out dollar bills and the banktape to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet and came back. He folded the loose hundreds and put them in his pocket and then packed the rest of the banknotes into the case again and set the case in the chair and sat there looking at it. He thought about a lot of things but the thing that stayed with him was that at some point he was going to have to quit running on luck.
He got the shotgun out of the bag and laid it on the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. He went to the door and turned off the overhead light and came back and stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew what was coming. He just didnt know when. He got up and went into the bathroom and pulled the chain on the light over the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a washcloth from the glass towelbar and turned on the hot water and wet the cloth and wrung it out and wiped his face and the back of his neck. He took a leak and then switched off the light and went back and sat on the bed. It had already occurred to him that he would probably never be safe again in his life and he wondered if that was something that you got used to. And if you did?