Blue Lonesome (27 page)

“Not tall—foot high or so. Spiky branches with a lot of little flowers in clusters. Now for God’s sake will you tell me what’s in your head?”

“The truth,” he said grimly. “I’m pretty sure I know who committed the murders. And I think I know why.”

THE TROUBLE CAME
while they were stopped at an intersection near the top of the hill, waiting for the red signal light to change.

He had just begun an explanation. As inwardly focused as he was, he wasn’t aware of the vehicle roaring uphill behind them until Dacy said, “Shit!” and smacked the steering wheel with her fist. High-beam lights slashed through the rapidly settling dusk, filled the Jeep for a few seconds, then cut away as the oncoming car changed lanes. When it skidded up next to them in the inside lane he saw that it was the red Blazer with Joe Hanratty at the wheel and Tom Spears beside him.

Hanratty’s belligerence had escalated into a rage, with or without the prod of more whiskey. He leaned across Spears and hurled spittle along with half-slurred words: “Not gonna get away so goddamn easy. Pull over, Dacy.”

“No,” she said. “We got nothing to say to each other.”

“Pull over, I mean it.”

“Don’t make trouble, Joe. I mean that.”

“Listen, you and that city bastard—”

The light flashed green. The highway ahead was empty; Dacy made the mistake of popping the clutch and accelerating, an action that served only to provoke Hanratty. Messenger, half turned in his seat, saw the Blazer’s tires spin black smoke, heard and smelled rubber burning as they caught traction. The four-by-four rushed up on them, yawing so wildly that its front end scraped the Jeep’s side before Hanratty was able to bring it under control. It shot ahead by twenty yards. Then its brake lights brightened and it swung toward them again, deliberately this time.

Dacy cut the wheel hard to the right to avoid a collision. The Jeep bounced up over a high curb, rattled down with a jolt that nearly caused her to lose control. Something bulked up large in front of them; he yelled a warning, but Dacy was already jamming on the brakes. If he hadn’t had his seat belt fastened and his body braced, he would have gone through the windshield or right up over it when the Jeep shuddered to a dead-engine stop. Closed Chevron station, he realized then. They were on the apron, nose up to one of the pumps on an outer island.

Hanratty had gone on past but now he was reversing, fast off the highway and in onto the apron at a sliding angle twenty yards away. Dacy was out and running by then. She yanked the Blazer’s door open, caught hold of Hanratty’s shirt, and all but dragged him out.

“You crazy drunken fool!” she yelled with her face inches from his. “You could’ve killed us!”

He swatted her hand loose. Then, as Spears came around from the passenger side and Messenger ran up, Hanratty swatted her—a backhanded blow that knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling.

Messenger hit him in retaliation. Didn’t plan it, didn’t have time to think about it, just swung in sudden fury as soon as he saw Dacy go down. His fist caught Hanratty on the side of the head; pain erupted in his knuckles as the big man stumbled back against the Blazer. But Hanratty wasn’t hurt. He caromed off, bellowing, and bull-charged Messenger, wrapped powerful arms around him.

Their feet got tangled together and they collapsed in a clawing embrace, Hanratty on top when they landed; his weight and impact with the asphalt drove most of the air from Messenger’s lungs. Gasping, he flailed with arms and legs, managed to free himself and pull away. He got his feet under him and lurched upright.

A flat banging noise penetrated the blood-pound in his ears.

Another.

His vision was clouded; he blinked his eyes clear, looking for Dacy. She was over behind the four-by-four, unhurt and wearing an expression of cold rage, the short-barreled revolver in her hand. Spears stood motionless a few feet from her, staring at the back end of the Blazer. Hanratty had gained his feet, too and was shaking his head in angry disbelief. It seemed to Messenger that enough noise had been made to bring the law and half the town; he was surprised to see that the highway was still empty, the four of them alone in what was left of the desert twilight.

A loud hissing reached his ears. And he saw then that the four-by-four’s rear end was settling at a backward slant. Dacy had shot out both rear tires.

“What the hell’d you do that for?” Hanratty said to her. He took a step toward her.

“Stay put unless you want some of the same. I’m not kidding, Joe.”

Hanratty stopped, glowering.

“How about you, Tom?”

“Not me,” Spears said. “Wasn’t my idea to chase after you.”

“Goddamn it, Dacy, you’re gonna pay for them tires.”

“Sure I am. Just like you’ll pay for the damage to my Jeep.”

Blood dribbled down from a cut on Hanratty’s temple; he swiped at it distractedly, as if it were a bothersome fly. “Second time in two nights you throwed a gun on me,” he said. “I oughta take that one away from you.”

“Go ahead and try. I’ll send flowers.”

“Huh?”

“To your hospital room. Takes a while to get over a gunshot wound, Joe. I hear they’re real painful.”

“Kind of talk don’t scare me,” Hanratty said, but at some level it must have. Like Billy Draper earlier, he held his ground.

“Jim,” she said. “You all right?”

His knuckles throbbed, and his chest ached with the hiss and rattle of his breathing. But he said, “Not hurt.”

“Go get in the Jeep.”

He went immediately. Headlights had appeared on the highway: two cars, one passing in each direction at retarded speeds. But their gawking occupants wanted nothing to do with what was happening in the station. Both sets of lights had vanished when Dacy settled in beside him.

“Damn rednecks!” she said when they were back on the highway. She was still furious. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. You?”

“I’ve been hit harder. You handled yourself pretty well back there.”

“Did I? I haven’t been in a fight since grade school. Tell me something, Dacy. Would you have shot Hanratty if he’d come at you? Or Spears? Or Billy Draper earlier?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’d like to know, one way or the other.”

“My daddy taught me to always finish what I start. That answer your question?”

“Yes.”

“Bother you?”

“No.”

“Good. Now suppose you finish what you started to tell me back there at the stoplight.”

I
T WAS FULL
dark when they drove up onto the bluff top. This was supposed to be a place of sanctuary, but to Messenger the buildings and the blobs and spatters of light and color had a strangely uninviting aspect. Imagination, perhaps, tainted by the knowledge that had brought them here. Just the same it all seemed remote and empty, secretive, like an island floating in the evening sky above Beulah.

On the grounds there were amber night lights; in the parsonage, a white globe burned behind an unshaded kitchen window and a pale gold rectangle marked a bedroom or study; in the Church of the Holy Name low-wattage bulbs and possibly candlelight turned the stained-glass windows into religious scenes like those in old illuminated manuscripts. But all of the light was stationary, frozen in the windless, purple dark. Cold light, where it should have been warm: as cold as the metallic silver dusting of stars overhead. The splashes of white radiance from the Jeep’s headlamps was all that moved as they jounced across the parking area; and when Dacy halted near the church entrance, the beams too became solid and cold.

She switched off lights and engine. Silence folded around them, a thick hush; but almost immediately sounds came out of the shadows that stretched away behind the church. Messenger stiffened with one leg out of the Jeep; Dacy reached over to grip his arm. The sounds continued almost rhythmically: chunking thuds and hollow scrapings. Metal on earth.

Somebody was digging in the cemetery.

He finished his exit and stood waiting, rubbing his still-sore knuckles. When Dacy joined him he saw by the starshine that she’d drawn her revolver. He said, “You won’t need that.”

“Probably not, but I’ll feel better with it handy.”

“Don’t show it unless you have to. Keep it out of sight.”

“Okay.” She tucked the weapon back under her shirttails, but she kept her hand on the butt.

He led the way along the church’s south wall. At the rear, near where the sand-pitted marble angel bulked grotesquely above the Roebuck plot, they paused to probe the shadows. Fifty yards distant, under one of the cottonwoods, a lone figure stood just below ground level, wielding what in drawn-back silhouette he recognized as a pick. Chunking thud as the tool smacked down, hollow scraping as its pronged head dragged through loose earth. Back up again, poised. And back down.

They approached slowly, not making noise to announce their presence but not being stealthy either. The digging went on unabated. They stopped once more, a few feet away. The hole under the tree was more than a foot deep and roughly rectangular in shape—obviously a grave. No surprise in that, and none in the identity of the person swinging the pick. From the moment he’d heard the digging sounds he’d known who was making them.

“Maria,” he said.

No response, then or when he spoke her name a second time. It was as if she were working in a vacuum. Or a trance.

Dacy touched his arm again. “Let me try.” She went closer, to within two paces of the grave’s edge. Softly she said, “Hello, Maria.”

The pitch of another woman’s voice penetrated where his hadn’t. It didn’t startle Maria Hoxie or make her react with defensive fright; skittishness was not a part of her tonight. She merely paused with the pick’s point at shoulder level and peered around, her head cocked to one side like a bird’s.

“Who’s that?” she said.

“Dacy Burgess.”

“Oh.” Then, “Somebody’s with you.”

“Jim Messenger.”

His name didn’t seem to bother her, either. She stood silently as he joined Dacy. Tree-shadow mottled her bent body and upturned face, but there was still enough light to show him the sweat-plastered black hair, the widened eyes with a little too much white visible. Working here a long time, he thought, since before nightfall. Calm enough outwardly, but on the inside? How close was she to the edge?

“I didn’t want you to come,” she said to him. She meant to Beulah in the first place, not here tonight. “I tried to make you go away, even though I knew down deep that I couldn’t. The Lord sent you, didn’t He? You’re the Lord’s Messenger.”

When he didn’t answer she said, “Yes, He sent you,” and lifted the pick high again, swung it down again.

Dacy asked, “What’re you digging there?”

“A grave. What else would I be digging?”

“For John T.?”

“No.”

“For who, then?”

“For me,” Maria said. “This is my grave.”

The flesh between Messenger’s shoulder blades bunched and rippled. Dacy edged closer to him; both hands were at her sides now. She said, “You’re not going to die, Maria.”

“Everyone dies. The Lord wants my soul too—I understand that now. That’s why He sent His Messenger to bring out the truth.”

“Suicide is a mortal sin. You know that.”

“I know. Oh yes, I know. But there are worse sins.”

“The taking of someone else’s life.”

“Even worse than that.” A shudder passed through her, visible even in the half-light, and made her pause again in her digging. She tipped her head back to peer up at the velvety sky. “It’s dark,” she said, as if she had just realized the fact. “I’d better go get a lantern.”

“Wait, Maria. Talk to us first.”

“I am talking to you.”

“About John T. About what happened last night.”

Another tremor. She dropped the pick and hugged herself. “I don’t like the dark,” she said. “I have to sleep with a light on, did you know that?”

He said gently, “What happened with John T., Maria?”

“Oh, it was his fault. Really. He made me do it.”

“He made you shoot him?”

“I thought he wanted to love me, like the other times we met up there. But he never loved me. He only wanted to hurt me.”

“Hurt you how?”

“He yelled at me and called me names. Slut, whore—terrible names. Why did I let men like Billy and Pete have my body? Why did I tell them to turn serpents loose on the Messenger? Why couldn’t I let him make the Messenger go away? Why, why, why, over and over. So I told him why. I told him everything.”

“That you were the one who killed his brother.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “He hit me. In the stomach, hard. I’ll kill you for what you did, Maria, he said, and he hit me again. But I knew about the gun, I saw it once when I was looking for tissues. I took it and I … it made a terrible noise inside the car and he …” She hugged herself more tightly. “We punished him,” she said, “God and I.”

Dacy, in a voice with a rusty edge: “Why did you set fire to the ranch?”

“God told me to. It was an evil place. Satan made evil things happen there, he made me keep coming back and doing evil things with men like John T. The only way to save my soul was to drive Satan back to the Pit. Fire to fight fire.”

“Did God tell you to shoot Dave Roebuck, too?”

“Yes.”

“Because he was evil?”

“Yes. ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’”

Messenger said, “He hurt his daughter, he made Tess pass through the fire.”

“Yes.”

“And you were a witness.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go to his ranch that day? To see him?”

“No. To talk to his wife. To beg her forgiveness for my sin of lying with him. The night before … he was drunk and he laughed at me, he said all he ever cared about was fucking me. There was no love in him either. Only evil.”

“But Anna wasn’t there.”

“Just him. And Tess. He was drunk again. Staggering out of the barn, chasing her—that poor little naked child.”

“Tess had no clothes on?”

“Naked. Screaming ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’ll tell Mommy what you did!’ She kicked him when he caught her and he yelled and picked up the rock and he … I heard the sound it made, I saw the blood when she fell. From the top of the hill by the gate. But he didn’t see me. He carried her back to the barn and I went down and the shotgun was there on the porch. God put it there for me to see, in plain sight. I took it to the barn and he was bending over the little girl, crying, saying he was sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt her. But he wasn’t sorry. He was drunk and evil and God told me to pull the trigger and I did. He was an abomination unto the Lord.”