Minutes later she was cautiously peering in through the Volvo’s dusty windows, half afraid that previous examinations might have overlooked her husband’s body lying on the back seat or the floor. Then she opened the door beside the driver’s seat, and a wave of trapped warm air flooded out, smelling of baked plastic and metal. David’s suitcase was lying on the back seat. Hoskins had told her, a bit defensively, that he’d left it, not wanting to be encumbered on the return trip. She was glad it was still there.
As she opened the back door to look at it, she became aware of Felipe, hunkered down a few yards away, watching her. She turned to him and said, “You don’t have to hang around anymore, Felipe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can find my way back.”
He blinked at her, astonished. “You kidding?”
She held out an arm and pointed unwaveringly to the southeast. “The Jeep is there. Right?”
“Right,” he said, visibly impressed.
She smiled at him. “Other people have perfect pitch. I have a sense of direction that’s just about infallible.”
“Even so,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t mind sticking around.”
“I know, but I mind. I just need a little time by myself. Do you understand, Felipe?”
“Yes, but … I could go away and come back.”
“Just go home. I’ll be all right.”
He shook his head, perplexed by the decision Ellen was thrusting on him. If he’d been a few years older, a little more experienced, or a little more guileful by nature, he would simply have smiled and taken his leave—and then waited for her on the other side of the hill. But deviousness of this sort was beyond him as yet, and he saw no middle ground between flatly refusing to move (obviously impossible) and going home (obviously wrong). What decided him was wondering what he would do if it were his mother telling him to go home instead of this woman. There was no doubt about that; he would go, instantly and without argument. He had the feeling there were other aspects of the matter to be weighed and considered, but he knew that if he started looking at them, he’d never be finished. On the whole, Felipe preferred dealing with rattlesnakes and tarantulas, who follow a simple rule: You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.
He stood up, accepted Ellen’s ten dollar bill, and headed back, hoping his decision was the right one. In case it wasn’t, he would keep his mouth shut when he got home.
He was guileful enough for that.
Ellen was immensely relieved to be rid of him. It was puzzling, but she’d definitely felt a huge, protective calm envelop her when she first approached the car. It was as if a powerful ghost of David’s presence had stayed behind to welcome her and help her reassemble her shattered life. Eyes closed and head back against the cushion, she absorbed the dry heat the sun had stored there for her and let it bake out her anxieties and fretfulness.
Incredibly—and perhaps just for this moment—it seemed to her that the whole bewildering disaster hadn’t been a disaster at all. She could see very clearly now that the life she and David had been living in Runnell was an emptiness—perhaps even more an emptiness for her than for him. What, in that life, had she been becoming but a cipher? A lovely, smooth oval, perfectly symmetrical on every axis, and hollow. Oh, it wasn’t that she longed for achievement; she didn’t envy David (or anyone) on that score. She was happy to leave glory to others. She hadn’t been playing a role—perfect mother-and-wife—back there in Runnell. Someone playing a role has, by definition, another life hidden under the role. She’d been becoming a role. She’d been becoming a middle-aged Jane married to a middle-aged Dick—a person whose face is so bland and standardized that no caricaturist could find a feature to fasten on. Mouth, yes, pleasant. Eyes, two, twinkling. Nose, yes, noted vaguely between eyes and mouth.
That was what David had shattered: her future as a role, all spoiled now. That’s why she’d been so furious with him—not because she loved him, not because she needed him, not even because of what he was doing to Tim. But because, by refusing to be Dick, he’d made it impossible for her to go on being Jane. He’d left her with no choice but to become a person. The hollow inside the oval now had to be filled in; the face couldn’t go on being the automatic quick sketch the advertising artist gives the woman buying the refrigerator (the same one he gives the woman pushing the shopping cart) resolutely cheerful and vacuous.
Even this incredible business with Tim had been for the best. Until they’d been separated, Ellen had been clinging to the past, to her life as Jane. How would Jane have reacted if the unthinkable happened, and Dick abandoned her? Why, she would have Gone On—resolutely cheerful—and Made a Good Life for her children and Spot. Mustn’t forget Spot.
Of course she still had to find Tim. But that would work out. After that, things would be different. No more Dick and Jane. They’d sell the house and move to an apartment in Chicago: right downtown, Michigan Avenue. She’d divorce David—to hell with him. Or, if he came to his senses, she’d have him back. If he could accept the fact that she wasn’t the person he’d left.
It was all going to come right.
She opened her eyes and stretched blissfully. The sun was westering and, checking her watch, she saw it was time to get back. She too left the suitcase where it was. Before Felipe left, she’d intended to go through it—a sort of sentimental journey.
But it didn’t matter now.
CHAPTER 39
At the same time that Ellen was talking to Officer Dale Hoskins at the sheriff’s substation in Wolcott, Howard and Tim were talking to Officer Richard Valdez in a motel coffee shop in Gallup. Unlike Hoskins, Valdez was young, sleek, and willing to help. He was sleek in spite of being padded with thirty pounds he didn’t need; he carried them with assurance, as he did a fine black mustache.
“See, this is what happened,” he told them. “After I pulled him over and checked his driver’s license, I called in the plate number. Just routine. Then they called back to say the number was flagged and I said, stolen? No, just please inquire. So they were inquiring. And finally the word comes back that the car belongs to a known drug dealer—a big one.”
Valdez paused to enjoy their look of astonishment.
“Right. So here I am. You wouldn’t know, but I-40 is a major artery of drug traffic in this country—probably millions crossing daily, and not much we can do about it, since we can’t stop and search without probable cause. Well, a speeding violation is probable cause, so I get the guy out and put him up against the car and go over him, and he’s saying ‘What, what, what?’
“Then I put him in the back of the cruiser and go over the Corvette. No drugs—lucky for him—but right there in the glove compartment under some maps is this big hunk of iron, an S & W .357 magnum. Not so lucky. I go back and ask if he’s got a license for this firearm, and he says, ‘No, officer, I don’t, because it isn’t mine. I didn’t even know it was there.’ And he explains that he just borrowed the car from a friend. I ask him, Charles Petronis?—that’s the drug dealer—and he says, yes, that’s right.
“So I say, ‘Well, friend, you are busted. Well and truly busted for illegal possession of a firearm, not to mention speeding,’ and he says, ‘But officer, I swear to God I didn’t know the gun was there,’ which is beside the point, of course. Okay, so I’m taking the man in, and while I’m doing that I’m trying to remember where I know the name David Kennesey from. It seems to me I heard it just recently, so I ask the man where he’s from, and he says Indiana. Then I ask where he’s coming from, and he says Vegas, and then I’ve got it.”
He leaned across the table, smiling confidentially. “See, I grew up in Vegas. Still spend time there, vacations and things, and the day before I pick up your man a friend calls and tells me about this guy Kennesey, who tore up this downtown club with nine straight spins, betting the max on everything. So I say, are you this guy? And he says yes, I’m that guy. Now I start thinking. I ask him how close he is to this Petronis, and he says,
‘I only met him once, I needed a car and he lent me this Corvette.’ And I tell him this is a known drug dealer, not a man to get close to, and he says, ‘You’re kidding. He seemed like a nice guy.’ And I tell him drug dealers hug their kids too, just like everybody else.
“Anyhow, I pull over and bring him up into the front seat to talk. Look, I told him, I’ve got to take you in, because I already called in to tell them about the gun rap and to get a tow on the Corvette, you understand? But if we play it cool, you can be back on the road in an hour or two. And he says, okay, that’s great. Then he sits there swallowing for a while, and I can see he’s wondering if he’s supposed to slip me a bribe. I laugh and tell him I just want to be able to say that the guy who broke the bank at the Four Queens or whatever it was is a friend of mine, and we shake hands. Well, to make a long story short, I hustled up a judge and told David to plead guilty to both charges, and he said, ‘But I’m innocent,’ the jerk. And I explained that he was definitely in possession illegally, no two ways about it, and not knowing the gun was there was just an extenuating circumstance, so cool it. I said, don’t get in a sweat, the judge and I are drinking buddies, and if I vouch for you all will be well.”
Valdez paused to chuckle over the memory.
“You should’ve seen his face when the judge sentenced him to ninety days. I thought he was going to have a coronary on the spot. But of course he suspended it right away, and David paid that fine so fast the money was smoking as it came out of his hands.” Valdez shook his head and chuckled again. “Anyway, when it’s all over David says, can I buy you a drink? And I say, sure, if I can buy you one. I want to be able to say I bought a drink for the man who broke the bank at the Four Queens.” He shrugged, his smile fading as the golden moment slid into memory to await its next recall.
“That’s all there was. We had a couple drinks and I sent him on his way.”
“And he didn’t say where he was going?” Howard asked.
Valdez shook his head. “We were talking about Vegas. He was heading east when I pulled him over, so I assume he went on heading east.”
Howard glanced down at Tim. “This Charles Petronis. Where does he live?”
“In Colorado someplace. They told me. Let me think.” He smoothed his carefully-tended mustache for a moment. “Some resort town.”
“Aspen?” Howard suggested.
“Not Aspen.”
Tim said: “Vail?”
“That’s it. Vail. You think Petronis might know where he was heading?”
“Maybe. But mainly it’s the Corvette. If he lent David a valuable automobile, he must expect to see him again sooner or later.”
“Yeah, you got something there. I should’ve thought of that myself.”
As they stood up to leave, Howard asked Valdez if he knew how the Las Vegas paper had happened to get the story of David’s arrest in the first place.
“Sure do,” Valdez said with a grin. “I phoned it in myself.”
“You’re a man who’s going far,” Howard said, smiling as he shook the hand that had shaken the hand of the man who’d broken the bank at the Four Queens. Back in the Ford, Tim asked Howard if he was going to call Petronis.
He shook his head. “If he’s what they say he is, Petronis wouldn’t give you his middle initial over the phone,” he told him. “We’ll drive up there.”
He took out their map of the southwest, spent a while computing, and then sighed, having reckoned it a ten-hour drive.
CHAPTER 40
Felipe’s ingenuous plan to say nothing of leaving the Anglo woman behind in the mountains failed for the simple reason that his mother (who missed little of what went on in the neighborhood of her home) saw him returning on foot while he was still a mile away. Since he seemed to be in no hurry, she wasn’t alarmed. The woman had probably stranded the Jeep on a boulder or broken an axle, and as she went out to meet her son she began to formulate the steps that would have to be taken to rescue her and the vehicle.
When she confronted him, however, he immediately blurted out the truth, and she went insane with fury, dancing in the dusty road and shrilly lamenting the day she’d borne a child without the brain of a cockroach, who meant to bring ruin and disgrace on them all, who would land them all in prison for murder if any harm came to that woman, who was absolutely certain to lose her way and be devoured by coyotes.
Felipe listened to it all, his narrow shoulders trembling, and said he would go back and find her.
“If you don’t find her, don’t bother to come home!” she screamed at him. “Just find a rattlesnake hole and crawl inside!”
His head bowed in defeat and humiliation, the boy turned and headed back.
“Run, empty-head!”
He ran. Until he was sure he was out of sight.
Never again, he told himself. This settled it. He was going to become a hermit. One day he would simply disappear into the mountains. His hair would grow until it reached his ankles; his clothes would rot and fall off, and he’d dress in the skins of animals killed with his bare hands. He would find a cave and throw rocks at anyone who came near; he would shriek at them in a strange language he’d invent for himself, and they’d say he was crazy. That would be fine with him; he’d be the crazy man of the mountains, and no one would bother him. And one day, many years hence, someone would say, “Whatever became of the crazy man of the mountains?” And they’d go to the cave where he’d died all alone, scorned and feared by all, and find his bones, chewed on and scattered by the coyotes.
Until then—until he was ready to disappear—he would live as a mute. Not one word would anyone have from him, ever again. Let them think he was an idiot. When they said, “Do this,” he’d just look at them blankly, as if he hadn’t heard. He’d make them carry him from place to place; he’d make them spoon food into his mouth.
And then one morning he just wouldn’t be there. They would look at his bed and say, “Where is the idiot Felipe? But what’s this on his pillow? It’s a note! And it’s signed Felipe!”
Oh yes, he’d leave them a note all right. It would be short and wickedly cruel, and they’d writhe on the floor with grief and remorse. And they’d cry out, “Come back, Felipe! We understand now! We’ll be good to you now!”
But it would be too late for them then.
The boy was still composing the note in his mind when he passed the Jeep, headed down into the chasm below, and began climbing the hill opposite. He was halfway to the top when he heard a clatter of rocks to his right, and he realized that the Anglo woman was descending one gully as he was ascending another beside it. He scrabbled up the rocky spine that separated them and saw that he was right. She was about a hundred yards away, slightly downhill from him.
Then a movement at the crest behind her caught his eye, and he began to run toward her, shouting.
CHAPTER 41
Had he been human, the dog would have been classified a traumatic schizophrenic. His world had been blasted to pieces six days before, and, having no equipment for reassembling it, he had been living an endless, compulsory nightmare ever since.
The nightmare was compulsory because he had failed.
Incomprehensibly and unforgivably.
God, in the person of Robbie Carmichael, was dead because of his failure.
In the ordinary course of things, a dog will long remember a person, a place, a scent, a route, any trained behavior. But canine memories of the events that make one day different from another dissipate almost as quickly as smoke. Not so, with these. The events of that night had worn a deep groove in his memory, and he was retracing them perpetually, like a needle caught in a flawed phonograph record.
This was what had driven him mad. Other dogs forget traumatic events and remain sane. The Beast couldn’t forget.
It had all begun with the arrival of the stranger with the odd scent. The Beast had never encountered anyone with a scent like that, and it had worried him a little. He’d wanted to tell Robbie about it, but Robbie never tol
erated whining. Then, later, Robbie had told him to guard the window of the stranger’s room. That was easy. That was all right.
But then the others had come.
Whenever he came to this part of the groove, his fury was so overwhelming that he lost control of his body. Writhing and twisting in a paroxysm of rage, he fell to the ground, snarling, whining, barking, snapping his jaws on the empty air.
Because they had cowed him. Made him whimper. Made him slink along the ground belly down.
Just by talking to him.
Just by talking to him, they’d driven him away from his post. And, groveling in the dirt under a bush, the Beast had broken faith with God; he’d heard Robbie’s voice, had heard the terror in Robbie’s voice, and had stayed where he was, trembling and whining until it was over.
At dawn, too late, he’d tried to return to the mobile home, but that area had been interdicted to him. It didn’t matter. He knew by the stench and the silence that God was dead. He circled the area for a while, feeling lost and useless; then, already a little insane, he found an insane reason to exist: He began to backtrack, to seek the origin of this catastrophe.
He followed the tracks of Robbie’s Jeep back to the point where they intersected the track of the stranger with the odd smell; even after a day, David’s tracks were easy to follow, and he followed them northward all the way to the Volvo. He retraced the whole of David’s journey there, bringing him back once again to the Volvo. Then, still intent on his insane purpose, he followed the tracks south and then east—back to the mobile home.
And the needle jumped in its groove for the first time.
Soon he was padding westward again to backtrack to the Volvo. A few hours later he returned.
And the needle jumped in its groove for a second time.
The pattern of his derangement had been fixed.
Day after day he made the journey, stopping to gobble down a rabbit or lizard or snake only when hunger became unbearable. On the second day he came across a new set of tracks at the Volvo; they didn’t interest him. He recognized the scent as belonging to a boy who frequented the hills. On the third day he came across still another new set of tracks, but these didn’t interest him either. The scent belonged to a man Robbie met with regularly, a uniformed man Robbie treated with contempt.