Bad Signs

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The federal people came and they did whatever they had to do in Sue-Anne McCarthy’s store. They were in the place for a good two hours, and Everhardt had Summers stand on guard outside the mercantile to keep away the sensation-seekers and the press. Word was out already. Reporters were likes flies on shit. However many you shooed away there were always more who got the whiff of it. They were small-time, and it didn’t take much more than a few stern words from Officer Freeman Summers, and they slunk away with their noses out of joint. But newspapers being what they were, the platens were being inked up regardless of the lack of substantiated facts. There was a killer on the loose in Texas. He was a homicidal maniac. He’d killed a family outside of El Paso, and now there was rumor of some other attempted atrocity in some wide part in the road called Van Horn. There had been a confirmed eyewitness identification of this boy, and he was close. By the time they got wind of Margot Eckhart, still breathing through a tube in Saint Savior’s Hospital, there was a flurry of activity going on that would soon wind up in a hurricane.

  Everhardt knew this, and he knew that he’d get some of the fallout, some of the aftershock. A town like Van Horn was not equipped to deal with a case such as this, and he was more than happy when the federal people left. He’d been given a stack of photographs of this Clarence Luckman, some of which he was going to give to his officers, others he would deliver in person to the storeowners, the manager of the bank, the people at the train station, the Greyhound ticket office. People who needed to keep a weather eye open for this character. Had Everhardt realized the nature of the thunderstorm that was on its way … well, had he known, there wouldn’t have been a great deal he could have done about it. Forewarned was not necessarily forearmed, certainly when it came to the likes of Elliott Danziger.

  As Clay Luckman and Bailey Redman prayed for a ride to take them into Van Horn, as John Cassidy urged his car forward to Las Cruces, where he hoped he would find Ronald Koenig and Garth Nixon, Elliott Danziger rose from his nap, stretched, yawned, felt the tension of muscles in his neck and back, and wondered what time it was. It was actually a handful of minutes after five. The evening was coming in. The air had cooled. He was hungry, he was thirsty, and his mouth tasted like buzzard had crapped there while he slept. He also had a raging erection.

  In the kitchen he moped around for a while. He was irritated by the lack of proper food in the place. He called Morton Randall a “cheap no-good son of a bitch skinflint.” He wanted ham and eggs and scrapple and ketchup and some slabs of homemade bread. He wanted coffee with cream and five sugars and maybe some soda as well. He figured he would clean up some, and then go on into town. There would be someplace he could eat. He could also see if there were any more police hanging around the mercantile, or if they’d all gotten confused and overwhelmed and given up already. Evidently no one had seen Morton Randall’s pickup, and the woman in the store had no more known his name than he hers, so it looked like he was in the clear. Still, he would have to find some way to get back there and kill her just for being a bitch. I mean, this wasn’t some big city. Wasn’t even a big town. Some podunk, East Jesus nothing of a place where people stayed because they didn’t have the good sense to leave. Wouldn’t catch him dead in a place like this, Digger thought as he made his way back up to the bathroom. He figured on a bath. There was a bad smell around the place. Could have been the memory of Morton and Candace moldering some in the kitchen, but just in case it was his own stink he reckoned he should wash up some. Didn’t want to be drawing attention to himself, after all. Hadn’t Earl said that very same thing on the drive from Marana to Wellton. People like us ain’t given shit, so we gotta take it. You have to keep your own self-respect. That’s the important thing. You can’t let yourself slide. You gotta stay sharp, on the money, right? Only time you’re in trouble is when you can no longer smell your own stink. Sure he did, and even as Digger remembered it he could hear Earl’s voice, the pride and self-respect in it, the sense of self-worth and value that the man possessed. He really was a star. But he was dead. Fucking tragedy. Fucking shame. A man like that, a man of that caliber, shot down dead in the street like a dog. And all the while that faggot son of a bitch Clarence Luckman was walking around the streets someplace with a shit-eating grin on his face. Oh me, oh my, Digger thought, what I wouldn’t give to cross paths with that motherfucker just one more time.

  Half an hour later Digger lay in the bath thinking about the girl from the bank, and then the other one, the one who’d tried to call the cops. Then he thought about Candace. And then he thought about tonight. Tonight was Friday night. Friday night was party night. Tonight he wanted something real special to take his mind off the fact that he missed Earl Sheridan and that he was really beginning to hate his no-good, piece-of-shit brother, Clarence Luckman.

  He remembered back a while—Hesperia, maybe before that. They’d been working someplace and had come across a hornet’s nest. The others wanted to steer clear, to get far away from the thing. Not Digger. He took a half pint of gasoline and soaked the nest but good. Then he set the son of a bitch afire. Those motherfuckers came out mad and hot, most of them losing their wings as they escaped. As he watched it he laughed like a drunk hyena. He remembered that feeling. The feeling that there was nothing they could do but die. He knew that Clay could never understand a feeling like that. He was just too dog-dumb. Digger smiled. He got out of the bath and dried himself down. Maybe somewhere Morton Randall had some cologne or something. Maybe a clean shirt and a pair of pants that would fit him. He wanted to go out looking the part. Make an effort. You had to make an effort, otherwise where was your self-respect?

  He needed to go out and find someone. He needed to go out and find some girl and he needed to fuck her until her heart burst.

  That’s what he needed to do. And then when he had done that he needed to chop her into little pieces and throw her all over the house, and then burn everything down to the fucking ground and leave it all behind in a smoking pile of blood-soaked ashes.

  That would make him feel better.

  That would help him get over the idea that he needed to have friends.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  A couple of minutes after seven a dark gray pickup slowed at the edge of the I-10 and waited while the two kids ran to catch it up.

  Leaning for the handle to open the door on the passenger side, the driver—a man by the name of Dennis Hagen—smiled when he saw Bailey Redman. A cute kid, and what the hell she and her friend were doing out here at such a time was beyond him.

  “Where y’all headed?” he asked.

  “Van Horn, or farther … wherever you’re going,” Bailey said.

  “Van Horn is where I’m going. It’s only a handful of miles, but I can take you there if that’s your fancy.”

  “That’d be great,” Bailey said, and she tugged open the door and came on up to sit beside him. Clay followed her, saying, “Thanks, mister. Really grateful that you stopped.”

  “No problem to me,” Hagen said, and yet before he pulled away he hesitated, looked at the pair of them for a second longer and said, “Well, I guess it ain’t a problem … but that depends on what problem you kids are carrying with you that puts you out here on your own.”

  Bailey smiled her sweetest smile. “No problem,” she said. “My mom is up in Odessa waiting for us.”

  Hagen nodded. “She is, is she?”

  “Yes, sir, she is.”

  “And what would any halfway decent mother be doing letting her kids out on the highway at nighttime more than a hundred and fifty miles from home?”

  “It’s a long story,” Bailey replied.

  “And I bet it’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end that are all as fanciful as one another. Anyways, whatever your business, I can’t see you out here on the highway at night. I’ll take you into Van Horn and you can do your explaining to Sheriff Everhardt.”

  As if to make the point Dennis Hagen leaned across both o
f them and locked the passenger door, and then he kicked the pickup into life and sped off.

  Clay looked at Bailey, his eyes wide. Bailey gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Don’t say a word, that gesture said. I got it all under control. Somehow Clay doubted that, but he didn’t know what else to do in that moment.

  They headed into Van Horn, no more than ten miles, and were there in a quarter of an hour. Dennis Hagen pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office, the lights ablaze, the appearance of greater activity than was usual, it seemed. Hagen got out on the driver’s side, and it was then—as he was walking around to unlock the passenger side and deliver his passengers to the police—that Bailey scooted along the seat, dragging Clay with her, and out they went through the driver’s side door.

  “Run!” she said, even as Hagen realized what was happening and started around the front of the vehicle again.

  “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, and watched as the pair of them hightailed it away and down the street faster than he could ever have hoped to catch them.

  He stood there for a moment feeling dumber than a donkey, and then he shook his head. “Hell in a handbasket,” he muttered, and then wondered what business it was of his anyway. He’d gotten them off the highway, brought them into town. At least they’d be safer here than out there. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to go report it. Didn’t want to tell Kelt Everhardt he’d been outsmarted by a couple of wiseass kids.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “It’s that question,” Cassidy repeated. “It all comes down to that question, Agent Koenig. How could Clarence Luckman put the gun beneath the car outside of Deming, and yet be in a diner with the Eckharts … both at the same time? That’s what bothered me more than anything, so I went on up to Scottsdale, and that’s where I found her.” Cassidy indicated the photograph of Bailey Jacobs that Koenig held in his hand. “The likeness between her and the homicide victim from Marana is undeniable, and when I took it out to Clark Regan, the owner of the gas station, he had no doubt that this was the girl who reported the overturned car to him.”

  Koenig was nodding. He glanced up at Nixon. The three of them were seated in a small office in back of the Las Cruces Sheriff’s Department building. This was where Cassidy had found them—the first place he’d looked.

  “I said to Agent Nixon here back in El Paso yesterday that you were a smart man, Detective Cassidy, and I have to say I am impressed by your progress in twenty-four hours. Your sheriff know you’re out here with us again?”

  Cassidy shook his head. “I’m off sick.”

  “You don’t look so sick to me.”

  Cassidy didn’t reply.

  “So what do you want to do?” Koenig asked.

  “I think we should put Elliott Danziger’s face everywhere we can. I think he’s still alive. I think he’s the one that’s doing these killings, not Clarence Luckman. I think Clarence Luckman was with Sheridan and Danziger at Marana, as was Frank Jacobs with his daughter. I think Luckman and the girl got away, and they’ve been running ever since. I think Danziger is on his own one-man killing spree, and we’ve been looking for the wrong boy ever since this started.”

  “And if you’re wrong? If Sheridan and Luckman did kill Danziger, just like Sheridan said? If it is Clarence Luckman out there doing these things, and whoever the hell turned up at the gas station to report that car is unrelated to this in every way? Then what?”

  “Well, we keep looking for Luckman as well. The only thing now is that we’re looking for three people, not one. We’re looking for Elliott Danziger—”

  “Who is dead,” Nixon interjected.

  “Who may be dead, we don’t know for sure,” Cassidy said. “The only word we have on that is from Earl Sheridan. He’s been shot, he knows he’s not going to make it, he thinks that the last thing anyone’s going to expect is that he’ll lie about something like this. But it means he can go on causing trouble after he’s gone. I believe he was that crazy. I believe that throwing the police off the scent completely was a wonderful idea for him. I think it made him as happy as he could be even as he died. Like he’s still able to screw everyone up even when he’s no longer around.”

  Koenig looked down at the picture of the girl once more. He stared at it like it could have been the winning hand with a thousand-dollar pot. He looked at Cassidy, he looked at Nixon, he looked back at the girl.

  “I think you’re wrong, for what it’s worth,” he said quietly. “The fact of the matter is that the entirety of the FBI, most of the county sheriffs’ departments in southern California and Arizona, even a few in Texas, have a clear description of Clarence Luckman, and a clear understanding of what needs to happen when he is sighted.”

  “They will kill him,” Cassidy said.

  “They sure will.”

  “That cannot be allowed to happen—”

  Koenig raised his hand. “It may already have happened, Detective Cassidy, and we have yet to receive the report. There are hundreds of men looking for this boy, and we are not in a position to suddenly switch tack and alert them all at once of some potential identification error.”

  There was silence between them for a moment.

  “However,” Koenig went on. “I also think that one of the worst human characteristics is lack of humility. Your theory … well, you may be right, and I have to commend you for your forthright attitude and your determination. I really am very impressed. What we can do now, at this time in the evening, I do not know. I also know that an officially sanctioned collaboration between the Tucson Sheriff’s Department and the Bureau is not on the cards, and more than likely won’t ever be. However, I do understand what we’re dealing here … potentially. We will obtain photographs of Elliott Danziger and circulate them to all offices in this and surrounding states. We will get a wire out, we will get people informed. We will get reproductions of this picture of the girl made up and get them circulated too. That’s what we will do. And as for you? Well, tonight you can either stay here in Las Cruces, or—if you can face it—I would turn around and go home. I would go into work tomorrow morning and get on with your other cases.”

  Suddenly Koenig’s demeanor seemed to cool, almost as if Cassidy’s interference and insistence had exhausted his patience. “I will keep you informed,” he added, “and I will ensure that any and all credit that may be due to you at the point this case resolves is afforded in writing to your department, and to the relevant officials at the Bureau.” He paused, and then he nodded his head as if resolving something for himself. “And if this turns out to be the case … that Elliott Danziger was alive all along, and that he has been responsible for this killing spree, then I’m sure a commendation of the very highest order will find its way into your personnel file. However, we still have a very definite view that this is the work of Clarence Luckman, and if he is seen … I have to tell you that if he is seen and he attempts to escape, well, he will be shot.”

  Cassidy didn’t speak for a good while. He didn’t know what to say. The idea of driving back to Tucson … well, he just didn’t want to leave until it was finished. He remembered Alice’s words, once again her voice playing inside his head like a recording.

  You have to fix this, John. This is one of those things that you don’t even think about. You don’t even question it.

  “Have there been any more?” Cassidy eventually asked.

  Koenig was slow to respond, but in his eyes he betrayed the answer before he even opened his mouth.

  “We believe so,” he said. “In a town called Van Horn about a hundred and fifty miles southwest of here.”

  “Still on the I-10?”

  “Yes,” Koenig replied. “Still on the I-10.”

  “What happened?”

  “Woman in a mercantile was challenged by a young man. From what little information we have obtained, it could well be Luckman. It was only a physical assault, but the direction he was headed, the description …”

  Cassidy leaned forward. He reste
d his elbows on his knees and looked down at the floor between his feet. “Okay,” he said. “I’m staying here tonight. I’ll deal with my own sheriff and my own job. You don’t need to concern yourself with that.” He looked up at Koenig. “I need to be here to see it through.”

  Koenig opened his mouth to speak.

  Cassidy raised his hand. “You have to give me that much rope,” he said, “and if I end up hanging myself with it, then so be it.”

  Koenig didn’t reply.

  Cassidy got up. “I’ll find a hotel nearby.”

  “There’s one across the street and down a block,” Nixon interjected. “Stay there. That’s where we are. Then if we need you we can find you.”

  “Okay … and I’ll come see you in the morning.” Cassidy paused halfway to the door, and then he turned back and looked at the picture of Bailey Jacobs in Koenig’s hand. “For her sake, if no one else’s … I have to see this through to the end.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  They hid in the shadows between streetlights, and then they were running, crouched low to the ground, laughing as quietly as they could as they skirted the back of the sheriff’s building and came out on some other street. Clay caught a glimpse of someone emerging from a doorway, and they hunkered down behind a wall until the person had passed. Like the drive-in movie theater, Clay felt excited, a little scared, very much alive.

  They found a diner on Crown Street near the center of Van Horn. The guy in there was just closing up, but he said he’d make them some grilled cheese sandwiches and they could have a root beer or a Coke or something.

  Bailey did her flashing eyes and coy smile thing, and she got the guy talking, and he made them two grilled cheese sandwiches each and he was as friendly as could be. Clay ate one and a half, Bailey finished her own and then finished his, and she drank two glasses of root beer and then she had some ice cream, which the guy brought from out back.