Authors: Bill Pronzini
HEADS TURNED WHEN
he walked into the crowded Goldtown Café. Eyes stared; voices murmured. There was one vacant booth in the section presided over by Lynette Carey. He sat down there and pretended to read the menu, pretended to ignore the staring eyes even though he could feel them crawling like insects on his skin.
Lynette Carey wasted no time in waiting on him. She was plump-breasted and heavy-hipped in her beige waitress uniform, the strawberry-blond hair teased and sprayed into a style two decades out of fashion. Thirty or so, and pretty enough in a puffy, cynical way. Cornflower-blue eyes were her best feature; he looked for hostility in them and didn’t find any. Just a natural wariness, and a curiosity that was close to being avid.
“What’ll it be?”
“Pancakes and coffee.”
“Juice? Side of ham or bacon?”
“Just pancakes and coffee, Lynette. Lynette Carey, right?”
“How’d you know my last name?”
“Jaime Orozco mentioned it.”
“He did, huh? What’d he say about me?”
“Nothing bad. I guess you know who I am.”
She glanced around at the staring eyes, but not as if they bothered her; she didn’t seem to mind being the center of attention. She leaned a little closer. “Everybody in here except the tourists knows who you are. How come you’re still hanging around town?”
“Some unfinished business.”
“You want my opinion, you’re wasting your time. Anna Roebuck was guilty as hell. Nobody’d have blamed her much if it was just that no-good bastard of a husband she blew away. But little Tess … ah, who could forgive a thing like that?”
“I’d like to talk to you, Lynette. Would you mind?”
“Talk? Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“I mean in private. Later today.”
“What for?” She was wary again. “Nothing I can tell you.”
“I’d still like to have a talk. I won’t take up much of your time.”
“Well, I don’t know. …”
“I could come to your home, or—”
“No. I don’t know you, mister, and I got a kid of my own.”
“A public place, then. Anywhere you say.”
The tip of her tongue made a slow wet circuit of her lips. “Let me think about it.”
She hadn’t made up her mind yet when she returned with his coffee. When she brought the pancakes she said, “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to be seen in public with you.” Still on the fence but leaning his way a little.
“You don’t strike me as a person who’s worried by what people think.”
“Well, that’s right, I’m not. They think what they want to anyway.”
“Ten minutes of your time, that’s all.”
She smiled suddenly. She had a nice smile, broad and sunny; it smoothed away most of the cynicism. “Tell you what. I get off work at four and I like a cold beer afterward. Over at the Saddle Bar in the next block, usually.”
“What kind of beer do you drink?”
“Heineken draft, unless I’m buying my own.”
“I’ll have one waiting for you.”
HE HAD HIS
first look at Buster as he drove into the Burgess ranch yard. Seventy-five pounds of snarling black and brown, tied to a long chain that allowed the animal to roam from the barn around in the front of the house. He didn’t know much about dog breeds but he thought that this one might be a rottweiler or a rottweiler mix.
Buster hurled himself at the end of the chain, barking furiously, as Messenger parked twenty yards out of range. Fangs and flying slobber glistened in the harsh sunlight. There was no other sign of life, and no sign of the canvas-topped Jeep. He stepped out into a sudden gust of wind that spun grit into his eyes. He had to duck his head and rub hard to clear them. The wind seemed to be behaving oddly out here today: It gusted so sharply for short periods that he’d seen half a dozen dust devils swirling across the desert plain, then stopping with the same suddenness, as if someone had turned off a wind machine, and a dead calm prevailed until the next flurry. It was a phenomenon that would take some getting used to.
Squinting, he saw that Lonnie Burgess had emerged from a shed attached to the barn. A long, metallic object hung from one hand. As Lonnie closed the distance between them, yelling at Buster to shut up and settle down, Messenger recognized the object as a wrench spotted with grease. Grease also streaked the boy’s hands, arms, and the coveralls he wore.
The dog subsided into a series of whines and yelps, sat back on its haunches, and grew silent when Lonnie reached down to rough its ears and scruff. But Messenger could see the animal quivering as it watched Lonnie move away. He had no doubt that at any threat to its people, the rottweiler had the strength to break loose from the chain and the nature to tear out an enemy’s throat.
“You again,” Lonnie said, but there was no animosity in his tone or expression. Matter-of-fact and reserved, nothing more.
“Me again.”
“Bought yourself some clothes.”
“How do I look?”
“Like a city man in Western duds.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Is your mother here?”
“Out mending fence.”
“Some job in this wind and heat.”
“Well, I would’ve done it but the damn pickup quit running again. I’m better with motors than she is.” He shrugged and then spat into the dirt. “Trucks and fences,” he said. “Always something.”
“Don’t you go to school?”
“Not this term. Maybe next, if Ma has her way.”
“What grade are you in?”
“Junior. She wants me to graduate, go on down to UNLV.”
“But you don’t care?”
“I care, sure. I always wanted to study veterinary medicine.”
“Why don’t you?”
Lonnie shrugged again. “No money for it. And no time. There’s too much to do here.”
“Does seem like you could use some help.”
“Can’t afford that either, right now. Not with the tight new BLM quotas.”
“Bureau of Land Management. Right?”
“Right. They own most of our grazing land; we lease it from them. They tell us how many cows we can run, how long they can stay on public land, how many new calves we can add each year.”
“Ecological reasons?”
“Too many wildlife species headed for extinction on account of livestock grazing on public land—that’s what they say. So they regulate the number of cows on a parcel by how much grazing
they
figure the land will support, no input from us. Shit, this is sagebrush desert. Cattle couldn’t do any real ecological damage in country like this if every rancher out here ran five times as many head.”
“The BLM must know what it’s doing.”
“That’s what you think.” Sore subject; Lonnie changed it with a question: “So what do you want this time?”
“Want?”
“With my ma.”
“A little more talk, that’s all. I guess she told you about our conversation yesterday.”
“She told me,” Lonnie said. “You got her all lathered again before you left.”
“I didn’t mean to. That’s another reason I’m here: I want to apologize to her.”
“Yeah, well, the best way you can do that is to go away and leave us alone. We got enough grief to deal with.”
“Adding to your grief is the last thing I want, Lonnie.”
“Maybe so, but it’s what you’re doing.
She
killed them. Why do you want to make out she didn’t?”
“What makes you so sure your aunt was guilty?”
“She’s the only one who had enough cause to do it. My uncle deserved killing, he sure as hell did, but she didn’t have to hurt Tess, too. It wasn’t Tess’s fault.”
“What wasn’t Tess’s fault?”
“That she had a son of a bitch for a father.”
“You hated him,” Messenger said. “Why? All the women he cheated with?”
“That’s one reason.”
“What’s another?”
“I don’t want to talk about him. He’s dead. They’re all dead now and Ma and me just want to forget about it. Why don’t you let us do that, huh?”
Messenger let the question pass. How do you explain a need and a conviction like his to a fifteen-year-old? He couldn’t explain it even to himself.
He said, “Where’s she mending fence, Lonnie?”
“Old mine road.”
“Where’s that?”
“West. First left up toward the hills.”
“The road to the Bootstrap Mine? Where your aunt hunted for gold?”
“Not enough gold left in that mine to fill two of your teeth.”
“But she did go prospecting there. She could’ve been there the day of the murders, just as she said.”
“She was home killing Tess that day.”
“Were you here? Did you see her pass by at any time?”
“I wasn’t here, I was in school. Ma was away, too. All right?
She
killed them and nobody was here to stop her. I wish to God I had been!”
The sudden angry outburst set Buster off again, barking and lunging at his chain.
“Lonnie, I’m sorry if I—”
“I’ve got work to finish,” Lonnie said. He turned toward the shed. All the way there he swung the wrench in short, chopping air blows, as if it were a weapon being wielded at an enemy’s head.
He knows something, Messenger thought.
The feeling was as clear and sharp as the insight he’d had here yesterday about Anna’s move to San Francisco. It wasn’t actual knowledge of the crimes; Lonnie’s belief that his aunt had committed them seemed genuine. Something else. But what? What
could
he know?
T
HE OLD MINE
road was little more than a half-formed series of ruts that hadn’t been graded or repaired since it was built. A metal arrow sign, rusted and bent and bullet-pocked, said BOOTSTRAP MINE, with a mileage figure that had been worn away. Bullet holes in the center of the two O’s in
Bootstrap
made them look like a pair of dead, staring eyes.
Messenger saw the Jeep and then Dacy Burgess less than a minute after he turned onto the ruts. The terrain here was rumpled, just beginning to rise into the stark, sunburnt hills. A narrow arroyo, steep-sided and strewn with fractured rock, angled down from the higher elevations, and where it paralleled the road for fifty yards or so the Jeep was drawn up in the meager shade of an overhang. On the far side of the wash, barbed-wire fencing stretched upward in an irregular line—obviously put there to keep cattle from straying into the wash. That was where Dacy was, standing now with her back to the fence, watching as he drove up behind the Jeep.
He walked to the edge of the wash. “Morning.”
She said, “I figured it was you soon as I saw the dust. Lonnie tell you where to find me?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a good kid but he talks too much.”
“All right if I come over where you are?”
“Better not—you’re liable to bust a leg. I’ll come over there. I’m done here anyway.”
At her feet was an open tool kit. She closed and hoisted it, then made her way quickly and agilely down into the arroyo and up the loose-shale bank to where he stood. The look she gave him was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Tolerant, he thought. A little speculative, too, as if she were seeing something in him that she hadn’t noticed yesterday.
“What happened to the fence?” he asked.
“Wind blew a section down. Happens all the time. Damn soil is too loose to keep a post down tight.”
“Hard work, repairing it?”
“Not so hard, if you don’t have to string new wire. I didn’t, this time.” She put the tool kit into the Jeep, shed the heavy work gloves she’d been wearing. “Why’d you come back?”
“For one thing, to apologize. I didn’t handle our talk very well yesterday.”
Dacy shrugged and adjusted her sweat-stained Stetson. “No need. I didn’t handle it very well, either. What else?”
“To give you this,” and he handed her the paper he’d written out before leaving the motel earlier.
“Who’s George Del Carlo?” she asked after she’d glanced at it.
“Police inspector in San Francisco. He’s the one to contact to identify Anna. He’ll explain the procedures to you.”
“What procedures? I told you yesterday, I don’t want Anna’s blood money.”
“You don’t have to keep it, but you might think about claiming it. This seems to be a fairly poor county; give it to charity here. Otherwise, it’ll go to the state of California, and that’s not right.”
She seemed about to argue, changed her mind and said, “Maybe it isn’t. All right, I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll have to make arrangements for burial or cremation, too. Del Carlo will put you in touch with whoever handles that in the coroner’s office.”
“Christ, they still have her in the morgue?”
“Yes. Frozen storage.”
One corner of Dacy’s mouth twitched. “Well, I can’t afford to have the body shipped back here for burial. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Put her in the damn ground out there.”
“That’s up to you. But at least give her a marker with her real name on it. She deserves that much.”
“Does she? If you think so, why don’t
you
pay for a headstone?”
“Maybe I will, if you don’t.”
She shook her head, tight-lipped, and tucked the paper into her shirt pocket. “Now if that’s all, how about if you head out to Vegas or wherever you’re going and let me get on with my work.”
“I’m not going anywhere just yet,” he said.
“No?”
“No. You know it, too. You saw John T. after I did last night and he told you I’m staying.”
“How do you know I saw John T.?”
“Sheriff Espinosa. He looked me up this morning.”
“That baked apple. John T. sic him on you?”
“Seemed that way to me,” he said. “Baked apple?”
“Brown on the outside, white on the inside.”
“Is that the kind of man Espinosa is?”
“A lot of people think so, most of them brown.”
“Does John T. run him too, along with everything else around here?”
“John T. doesn’t run me or mine.” She paused and then said, “Ben does what he pleases about half the time. And John T. doesn’t like you worth a damn. What’d you say to rile him up last night?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“No. He says you’re a fucking troublemaker—his words.”
“Do you agree with him?”
“No. I think you’re probably a damn fool.”
“Why? Because I refuse to accept your sister’s guilt?”
“Because you’ll end up getting people mad as hell at you if you try to prove different. Mad enough, maybe, to do you a meanness.”