But then he thought: Why is she so young?
“Lamar, why is she so young?”
“What you mean?”
“Look at her. She isn’t thirty. She isn’t twenty-five. How could she have that son who plays baseball. Did she marry him when she was ten?”
“She was in his house. She got a wedding ring. They was fighting. Who else could she be?”
But then Lamar squinted and looked closely at Holly.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-six,” she said. “I am his wife.”
“But that ain’t your kid?”
“No, Jeff is not my son. Bud and I haven’t had our children yet. He had his two boys with his first wife. But she died and he married me two years ago. It’s the happiest two years of my life. He’s a wonderful, kind, decent man. He’s brave, he’s strong. You ought to be ashamed of what you’re doing.”
“Well, ain’t you a goddamned Miss Mouthful. That son-of a bitch shot my cousin over twenty-five times. Just blew the life out of that boy.”
“You are such scum,” she said. “You may get me and you may get Bud, but they will get you in the end.”
Lamar leaned close.
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “I don’t give a shit. I ain’t got much of a string to play out anyways. I just want to settle up. You think I’m afraid to die? Boy, then you ain’t never been in no hard places, I tell you, and you don’t know what hard places do to a man. In this room we’re all going to be dead tonight or by noon at least. But by God, I will settle my dues and leave this world without no uncashed IOUs in my jeans.”
Bud blew through speed limits like a man in flames, and toward the end gave up on red lights. It was near two forty-five, the streets deserted. He charged up and down hills, cut across dirt roads, traversing Tillman and Comanche Counties on sheer instinct, then hit 62 just beyond Cache for a straight-line run to Snyder. He hit the 7-Eleven just beyond the town and found it still open, and someone on the phone.
He pulled his badge.
“Police business. We need this phone free.”
An Indian boy looked at his badge and spat on the ground and went back to his call.
Bud pulled the .45 and rammed it into the boy’s throat.
“You sonofabitch, you git or you and I will have serious business and you won’t like that a goddamned bit!”
In the face of the weapon and Bud’s fury, the boy melted, hung up the phone, and ran off into the dark. Now Bud felt a moment of shame, having given in to the cop’s worst temptation, the display of brute power to require obedience. You can’t just pull guns on civilians. On another night, it was grounds for suspension. Not tonight. Fuck it, tonight.
He looked at his watch. It was five after three. Shit. Maybe Lamar had called while the Indian was on the phone. He sat, breathing hard, his mind empty. The seconds clicked by. Suddenly it was ten after.
Christ, he thought, I blew it.
But the phone rang.
“Pye?”
“Oh, Bud, sorry I’s late. Just gittin’ to know your lady here.”
“Don’t you hurt her.”
“Damn, she’s a pretty one.”
“Let her go. You’ll have me. Let her go.”
“We’ll see. If you’re a good boy, who knows, maybe I’ll cut you some slack. If you got attitude, Bud, I may have to let her have a taste of some discipline, you know? Shit, maybe she’ll even like it.”
“Goddamn you, Pye.”
“Best hurry on, Bud. You got to get all the way to Toleens, by four. Oh, you going to be a busy boy.”
Lamar hung up.
Bud stared at the phone in sick fury. Toleens? Toleens? Where the hell was that? He hoped he had a map in the truck.
But instead he dropped a quarter and dialed the police annex, Henderson’s number.
“Hello?”
“Lt. Henderson?”
“Bud.”
Bud could tell from the tragic tone in the old man’s voice. Nothing.
“I’m trying,” the old man said. “I just ain’t had no luck.”
“Christ,” said Bud. “They have a hostage. They’ll kill her. You’ve got to figure this thing out!”
“Bud, you give me the okay, I’ll put the call in. You go ’bout your business. We can track by air. A chopper. I’ll have two busloads of the best SWAT operators in the business ten minutes behind you. We’ll take that place down and the hostage can walk free.”
“He’d hear the goddamn chopper, you know he would, Lieutenant. You can’t play straight and outsmart Lamar. He’s too goddamned good. He may even be watching me now and knows I’m pulling something. You have to come through. You have to.”
Only the sound of the lieutenant’s raspy breathing came.
“You haven’t been drinking?”
“Son, I drink every damn day of my life. I won four of my seven gunfights drunk.”
“All right, all right. Oh—Toleens. You ever heard of it? A town?”
“It’s on 54, between Gotebo and Cooperton. Had a murder there in fifty-nine.”
“Yeah, got it. There’s a pay phone in the town?”
“Hell, boy, the pay phone is the town. Git on your way.”
The lieutenant stared at the phone, listening to the dial tone in the seconds after Bud hung up. Then he placed it down on the cradle and put his fingers on the bridge of his nose between his eyes and squeezed.
The flare of light as his optic nerves fired somehow pleased him; then the room returned, deserted, green, junky, a police station room like all the ones he’d spent a long life in.
He felt used up, lacking will. A woman at least would die tonight, maybe Bud, too. A woman, a policeman, dying too young. Why should tonight be any different than any other night? It happened the world over. Why was it his responsibility to intercede?
He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, not cosmically. But it did. It mattered so goddamn much he wanted to cry.
He looked at the list. Eight-three names of young women who owned a car possibly linked to the robbery. A category that wasn’t a categoy. Was it all an illusion? Was he a vain fool trying to tease meaning out of random events? Was there no pattern at all?
Break it down. Two elements. Young and woman.
What did woman tell him? A daughter of a criminal possibly. A criminal herself? Not in the records. No correspondence to the records.
He had a laugh. How much of it depended on the records. So much of police work was simply accountancy, human accountancy, the recording of accessible fact that may on faith in some distant time tell us something when we most need it.
Woman. Nothing.
What about young? What could there be about young, about youth, about immaturity, that fit into this or that touched on any issue of the central conceit, “a category that isn’t a category.”
How would a young girl get to know Lamar, who had been in jail for years and years? How could she meet him? Only way: She could write him.
Hmmmm.
Why would she write him? How would she hear about him?
Maybe she was one of those strange, desperate creatures who wrote to convicts, sent them money, proposed to them. It was a sickness, but it was there; and if that was it, there’d be no category for her. Or: wouldn’t prison officials have noted it? That was where they started their investigations when a prisoner escaped.
Once again: nothing.
He returned again to the component: Young? What could that have to do with it? A young woman would probably not be attracted to convicts, it was more of a twisted spinster thing. Why a young woman? She had to be a daughter.
But presume, he told himself, since the daughter route appeared to lead nowhere, presume she is not a daughter or a sister or a relationship. She is a young woman. She is involved with convicts. What would involve her with convicts, other than her relations?
What?
He paused.
Something floated in the dark, just beyond him, tran
slucent, ghostly in the still air.
There seemed to be a sudden stillness, as if the night itself had ceased to function, time had stopped.
What would involve her, draw her to them?
What?
She was a victim?
That would drive her away.
What?
She committed a crime herself.
It was so simple, and in the next second, wholly, it detonated in all its beauty into his mind; he saw into it now, clearly and absolutely.
A category that isn’t a category.
A minor who commits a capital crime … but the court records are sealed, because she’s a minor. There’s no category for that. One cannot access it through normal channels.
C.D. blinked, opened the bottle, and swallowed a well-earned blast of Harper’s.
If the court records are sealed, I can’t get into them. Maybe tomorrow, but not now.
It angered him. So close and yet so far. Who else would have records?
And then the next step, easy as pie.
The newspaper.
C.D. opened a little black book he carried with him always, and located the number of the managing editor of the Lawton Constitution. He didn’t give a damn what time it was as he called.
“Hello,” came the groggy voice.
“Parker? Parker, it’s goddamned C. D. Henderson.”
“C.D.? What in hell—”
“Never you mind. You got anybody down at the paper tonight?”
“Ah—sure, skeleton crew, night telegraph editor, night photo editor, late makeup, sports desk. Probably a few odd bodies lying around.”
“Ain’t you all on some sort of computer system?”
“Nexus, it’s called.”
“I thought. Listen here, I’ll give you a scoop and a half, you do me a favor. You call whoever’s in charge down here, you tell him I want the name of all convicted female teen-aged murderers in the last ten years. Out of your records. Not the court records, your records. I want it fast. Okay, Parker?”
“I—What is—”
“Never you mind, Parker. You just git me that information and I’ll take care of you. Have them call me here—555-3321—soonest. I mean soonest. Lives at stake. We’re going to try and save an innocent woman and put a guilty man into the ground, where he deserves to go.”
The joy of it was that he could watch Bud without risking himself, or even leaving.
Lamar lay in the gully with a pair of binoculars, just down the road from the red dirt turnoff that led to Ruta Beth’s house. He looked at his watch. If Bud had left the Exxon station twenty, twenty-five minutes ago on the way to Toleens, the only road he could take was this one and he’d be heaving into sight in a few minutes. And then what? A chopper overhead, a SWAT bus and convoy ten minutes behind? Would his truck have an aerial, suggesting he was in radio contact?
It was all very interesting to Lamar.
But of course the hard part was not shooting.
Bud would roll by; it would be so easy to nail him with four or five 12-gauge blasts, take him down and do him here, on the spot. Lamar saw it: the crashed truck, the holes in the door, the smell of gasoline, broken glass everywhere. The lawman in pain, begging for mercy. Lamar putting the shotgun muzzle up close to him, feeling him squirm a bit, and then the blast, the blood spatters, pieces everywhere. Oh so nice it seemed, I-mag-i-nation. Big word: Pictures in your head.
But Lamar knew they could have done him at the ball game or at any of the pay phones. Lamar forced himself into the hunter’s patience. Check it out, he told himself. Use the edge you got yourself. Don’t rush things. Do it right. Make him pay. Make him pay real bad. I-mag-i-nation.
Far off, he saw headlights. Their swift approach indicated reckless speed. Lamar was able to tell quickly enough it was a Ford F250, blue and white, and as it approached, he dialed Bud’s tense face into focus.
Square-headed man, eyes hooded under the Stetson, dark clothes, driving fast but well, steady as a rock. There was a set to his face that Lamar remembered from the Stepford farm, as poor Bud walked up toward the house and he and Odell prepared to take them down. He looked so body-proud, so full of his own self, and he still had that bull-necked swagger to him, though now cut through with so much tension that he hardly seemed human. He flashed by Lamar toward his destination still a good twenty miles down the road, not knowing how close he was to being reeled in.
Next Lamar looked at how the truck rode, which appeared to be normal; it didn’t ride low on its tires, which meant he wasn’t carrying a big load, which meant a Trooper SWAT team or gaggle of Texas Ranger snipers wasn’t hunkered down in the truckbed. It had no extra aerial.
Lamar watched the taillights grow tiny, then fade, and listened till the whine of tires on asphalt died away. He put the glasses down and listened hard. No sound. He waited and watched. Only the low night wind pushing across the wide plains, now and then the squawk of some night creature. No choppers followed Bud a thousand feet up, and the road itself remained empty for the longest time, a flat blank ribbon glowing ever so slightly in starlight. No convoy appeared, nothing.
Satisfied, Lamar rose and headed back toward the farmhouse, enjoying the power he felt under the wide night sky. It was like being invisible, like being a god. He felt a stirring in his crotch at the promise of action.
He hardly ever thought about such things, for they were so much a part of the way he was. But now he felt it, pure and blood deep: He was the Lion, he was the king. And he was about to feed.
Bud hit Toleens, which was exactly one decrepit old general store, windblown and nearly barren of paint, with two gas pumps out front and a pay phone next to the front door. He pulled over and waited, checking his watch. Nearly four. He’d just made it.
He waited until ten after. Now what was wrong? Goddammit! He began to grow nervous. This was the perfect setup. At any moment gunshots might explode out of the dark, taking him down. Lamar might be just across the road, watching him twit nervously on the porch before blowing him away at leisure.
But the phone rang finally.
“Yes.”
“Well, old Bud, how are you?”
“Cut the shit, Lamar. You haven’t hurt her?”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“Prove it.”
“Now don’t you go using that attitude on me, Lawman. I don’t have to prove nothing. You want your woman, you better do what I say or the hell with her. And then I will hurt her.”
“Where are you?”
“Oh, not yet, Pewtie. We ain’t done playing tag. You got a bit more running around to do. I want to be real sure.”
“Tell me.”
“No sir. I want you headed east now, toward Chickasha. Town called Anadarko. That’s your next stop. Another gas station. On 62, a Phillips. You got a hour.”
“I’ll never make it in an hour.”
“Sure you will. Then we’ll talk some more and maybe you can come git me and maybe you can’t.”
He hung up.
Quickly Bud dialed the annex.
He got a busy signal.
Goddamn!
He felt like throwing the phone. That old goat, what the hell was he up to?
Now what? Leave and drive like hell to Anadarko, which was just barely makable in an hour? Or give goddamned C. D. Henderson another few minutes, stretching it out even further?
He raced to the truck, started the engine.
But then he turned it off.
He ran back to the phone, dialed again.
The phone rang once, and C.D. picked it up.
“Bud?”
Who else would it be?
“Yes.”
“Just got a call from a newspaper reporter. In 1983 a fifteen-year-old gal shot and killed her mama and her papa and served seven years before being released from the Kingsville Hospital for the Criminally Insane. I called there and talked to a night nurse who knew her well. She continually wrote to people who had killed or assaulted their parents.?
??
“Richard!”
“Richard. She wrote to Richard, and no one never bothered to check on what letters came his way in prison, as he was the passive partner and only there a few months. But there’s your connection. Bud, I checked her out against the list of car owners: She’s registered in a ninety-one Toyota Tercel.”
“Holy Christ.”
“She lives on a place right off 54, in Kiowa County, way out where it’s empty and barren, just the far side of the Wichitas. Her name is Ruta Beth Tull.”
“I just drove by it. He ran me by it to check me out! Now he’s going to bounce me around for a bit, just to get me completely tired. It’s half an hour away.”
“You better get there, Bud. You got work to do.”
“Thank you, old man. You are one hell of a detective.”
“I believe I am, son. I believe I am. Now I’m going to give you ten minutes, that’s all. That’s what I owe you. Then the cavalry is coming.”
“Fair enough.”
“And Bud, remember: front sight. Center mass. Put ’em in the ground, Bud. All of ’em.”
CHAPTER
31
Holly tried to clear her head, but it buzzed with fright. She couldn’t stop staring at them. Lamar was big and oily and somehow engorged with testosterone. He couldn’t stop grinning. He was like a movie star.
On the other hand, that poor pitiful Sally who was his girl—Ruta something, some old-fashioned farm name—was nervous as a cat. She was really the scary one; a tight, grim, scrawny little mouse, with the small-featured face she associated with the inbred.
But the prize was the one they called Richard. God, she’d laugh if she wasn’t so scared. Richard had dreamy, puffy, tussled hair, and though he was big, he was soft. He had creamy hands, like a piano player’s, and a little dance in his walk; when he moved, all these rhythms were unleashed. He was of no known sex, with his prissy, parched little lips, and his strangely disaffected way of moving, as if he heard everything a second later.