No Such Creature (15 page)

Owen had collected five cellphones, half a dozen watches and bracelets, and the pearl necklace. He held up the sack.

“All righty, then, time for us to say cheerio. Please remain seated until the robbery has come to a complete and final stop. Do not attempt to call the police and do not attempt to follow—or you’ll be hearing from my associate.” He gestured with the gun. “Thank you for your co-operation.”

They were halfway to the front door when a man sprang from a closet and tackled Owen, bringing him down on the hardwood floor.

“Son of a bitch,” he was yelling. “You filthy son of a bitch.”

His breath smelled of Scotch. He yanked the bag out of Owen’s hand, and Owen reached for his pistol. One loud bang was usually enough to settle people down.

Before he could fire, there was a loud
crack-crack
.

Then the air was full of screams. The man staggered and fell backward into an armchair. Just above his belt, two dark stains were spreading across his shirt.

Owen stood frozen between the bleeding man and the door to escape.

“Move,” Max said. “We haven’t got all night.”

Owen grabbed the sack and blundered out the door, Max following.

They ran to the car, Max wedging himself behind the wheel and starting it. Through long training he resisted the urge to floor it, and they cruised out of the tranquil neighbourhood in a slow agony.

Owen switched off the jammer and fumbled in the sack for one of the cellphones. He dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance to be sent to the Blakes’ address.

“I need your name, sir.”

“No, you don’t.” Owen dropped the phone back into the sack. “You shot the guy, Max. I don’t believe it, you actually shot the guy.”

“I don’t know how it happened!”

“You loaded real bullets is how it happened. We never use real bullets. Or so you’ve always said. Are you going to tell me that all this time you’ve been using real bullets?”

“Of course not! I always use blanks! It was a new gun. Spider Weems was hard up for cash. Sold it to me for a hundred.”

“Fully loaded.”

“Yes, I must have forgot that bit.”

“Max, that was a stop sign!”

Max swerved to avoid a smart car, which had a surprisingly loud horn, and headed for the expressway.

“You’ve probably turned us into murderers. We’re both going to end up in the goddamn electric chair, and some poor innocent guy is going to end up dead. Jesus, Max, what if he has kids?”

“For God’s sake, it was an accident!”

“Yeah, great. Remind me to try that one on the judge.”

They left the car in the parking lot and entered the mall separately as a bald man and a goateed youth, emerging fifteen minutes later as innocent tourists. They left the stolen car in the lot and drove the Taurus back through town toward the trailer camp, Owen at the wheel.

“Bright side,” Max said, “that shot probably saved us from a lengthy semester at Oxford.”

“What about the guy’s life, Max?”

“I value yours more. This is our fifth adventure together. I don’t see why it should be a surprise that sometimes things can go wrong.”

“Max, you didn’t used to shoot people. We have to abort the rest of the trip and head home. And you have to retire for good.”

“Never, lad. Banish Max and banish all the world.”

“This is no time for Shakespeare! This is real life! Those were real bullets! We’ve caused real pain!”

“You’ve missed the turn.”

Owen made a U-turn at the next intersection. They parked in the shadow of the Rocket and went inside.

“What did you think of the accent?”
Ek-cent
. “Bruce Whittaker, strite outta Queensland, at yer service.”

Max embarked on a recitation of Portia’s speech on mercy, translated into Australian. In other circumstances it might have been funny, but now it was unbearable. Owen turned on the kitchen light and peered into the sack. He was trying mightily to behave as if this had been a normal show, no disasters.

“We should sort out the cellphones first. We can dump them in a mailbox tomorrow. Look at this necklace I found upstairs. It was right in front of the mirror. She must have been trying it on just before the guests arrived.”

“Let’s just stash it for now, laddie.”

Owen loosened a couple of screws and pulled back the dishwasher, and Max handed him the sack. He was tucking it into their hidden hutch when Max said, “Good God. What the hell are you doing here?”

Owen whipped around to see who he was talking to.

Sabrina was lying on the bottom bunk, just now raising herself on one elbow.

THIRTEEN

“Y
OU’RE BACK,” SHE SAID, HER VOICE
fogged with sleep.

“The girl’s gone deaf,” Max said, moving closer to the bunk. “I asked what you were doing here.”

“Bill turned up at the hotel. He was waiting in the lobby. Luckily, I saw him before he saw me.”

“How did he know you were in Tucson,” Owen said, “let alone which hotel?”

“Well, he does work in hotel security.”

“She called him,” Max said. “Didn’t you? You called him and told him where you were.”

“I didn’t. I swear.”

“If you didn’t call him,” Max said, “the only way he could find you would be to follow us—which he could not possibly do, because when we drove out of Las Vegas he was still in the hospital.”

“All right, I did call him. I mean, I dialed him—he wasn’t there. I just left a message saying I hoped he wasn’t hurt too bad and that I was sorry for how things worked out. But I didn’t speak to him or tell him where I was.”

“If he has connections to the cops,” Owen said, “or maybe the phone company, they can pinpoint the location of a cellphone to the nearest tower.”

Max’s brow furrowed into Shar-Pei-like folds. “I begin to suspect, young lady, that you haven’t told us everything there is to know about Preacher Bill.”

“I guess I should have mentioned …” Sabrina winced, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just—I didn’t want to scare you away, that’s all.”

“What are you talking about?” Owen said. He was surreptitiously nudging the dishwasher back into place.

Max wheeled to face him. “Our damsel in distress here—our sweet, innocent, saintly young lady—failed to mention that her mentor, her
man
, also happens to be an officer of the law.” Then, turning back to Sabrina: “Isn’t that right?”

“You gotta be kidding,” Owen said. “He’s a cop?”

Sabrina nodded miserably. “Not
is
a cop.
Was
a cop. He quit years ago. I guess I should have told you.”

“Why didn’t you?” Owen said.

“Because the devil child knew that if we’d had the slightest idea she was consorting with a copper, we’d have nothing to do with her.”

Owen sat down at the kitchen table. He looked at Max. “Still, I don’t see how it’s that big a deal. What difference does it make?”

Max went into lecture mode, hands on hips. “The difference, my son, is that he’s connected to an organization that is very good at tracking people down. He has access to networks, faxes, radios. By now he’s probably got her picture on every bloody cop computer in the country.”

“You’re right,” Sabrina said. She grabbed her coat from the top bunk. “I’ll go.”

“How did you get in here, anyway?” Max said.

“Oh, come on, Max. My dad taught me a
few
things.”

She brushed by Owen. He grabbed her arm. “Wait,” he said. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Yes, I do. Max just said I do.”

“No, I didn’t,” Max said. “Though at this moment it is an extremely attractive thought.”

“Max, even if somebody should recognize her, we’re not going to get into any trouble. We’re just on holiday and Sabrina’s along for the ride.”

“I don’t like surprises,” Max said. “This was not the way the Pontiff brought you up, I’m sure.”

“Oh, please. My father is no bloody hero.”

“John-Paul would never teach you to mislead friends who try to help you.”

“Okay, Max. I’m sorry. I should have told you right away.”

“Right,” Owen said. “And what—we would have left her there in the parking lot with that Bible-thumping nutcase? Let him beat her half to death?”

“Never. I have a few faults, but cruelty to the fair sex is not among them. I would have done everything the same.”

“So, fine. In other words we’d be exactly where we are at this moment.”

“Not so. For one, I would have confiscated Her Highness’s cellphone and mailed it to Ouagadougou before she could alert the entire bloody country as to her whereabouts. Hand it over, hell spawn.”

She pulled out her cellphone, but instead of handing it over she began to dial.

“I’m calling a cab.”

“You don’t need a cab,” Owen said. “You can stay with us. Max, you promised your friend you’d look out for her.”

“I know. But that was before I realized she was being followed by an insane policeman.”

“He’s not insane,” Sabrina said.

“Yes, he is,” Max and Owen said together.

Bill Bullard entered the hotel room and switched on the light. Getting access had been no problem: Baxter Secure Solutions provided the security for half the hotels in the Southwest, and this one happened to be among them. If he wanted to park himself in their lobby keeping an eye on traffic for a few hours, hotel management had no problem with it.

Tracking down Sabrina’s cellphone hadn’t been too hard either. He had help from a friend at Nevada Nextel—well, not a friend, exactly. Bullard had once caught the guy with an underage hooker, and had held it over him ever since.

The hardest part was getting time off work. Lance Baxter was not a congenial person, and about as far from a Christian as it was possible to be without being an outright Satanist. Bill could have just phoned in sick—he still had bandage on his head, even if it was now reduced to a small square of gauze—but sometimes he was too honest for his own good. He told Lance he needed time off for compassionate reasons, he had to help a friend who was in an emotional crisis. Really, he should have known better.

“Oh, God,” Baxter had said.

Right off, this was a response guaranteed to upset Bill. “Lance, how many times have I begged you not to take the Lord’s name in vain?”

Baxter couldn’t have cared less about Bill’s religious sensibilities. “This is about that girl,” he said. “I knew it, the minute I saw you with her. She’s too young for you, Bill. What the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking of her welfare, Lance. I’ll allow that sometimes I can be selfish, but this is different. My motives are entirely altruistic. Sabrina is a confused person in need of help.”

“Helping a nubile young waitress?” Baxter said. “We all know what that means.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You’ve got a daughter her age, for God’s sake.”

“There you go again.”

“She’s the same age as your daughter, Bill. Admit it.”

“Peggy-Ann is eighteen. Sabrina is a young woman of twenty. Anyway, I don’t see why you got to pitch a conniption about it. All you gotta do is switch a couple of shifts around.”

Baxter spoke in a tone he had almost certainly picked up at a management training seminar. “Believe it or not, Bill, the rest of us at Baxter Secure Solutions get tired of covering for your spiritual retreats and your prayer breakfasts and your emotional crises.” Baxter swept an arm at the bank of monitors on his office wall, as if all the cameras in his arsenal were sick of Bill’s problems too. “Why should we always be making accommodations? I thought God was supposed to be looking after you.”

“He is. He’s looking after you and me and the whole wide world right now. Obviously that don’t mean we up and quit our moral responsibilities.”

Baxter shook his head. His cellphone rang and he picked it up, squinting at the tiny screen. He switched it off and put it back down. He no sooner did that than his land line, a bright red phone designed to imply security at a national level, also began to ring. He punched a button and it went silent.

“You’ve got a real jones for this girl and you can’t even admit it. You’re obsessed, Bill, I can see it a mile away.”

“Think what you want,” Bill said. “I know what’s in my heart.”

“Uh-huh.”

Baxter took out his Mont Blanc and scribbled a note to himself. That was just like him, to make a note on a Post-it with a fountain pen.

“All right, Bill, but you owe me one. And I want you back Monday at the latest. You’ll be doing graveyard.”

“Lance, I’m fifty-five years old. Let the younger guys do graveyard.”

“Are you so tight with the Lord you can’t see when a mere human being is doing you a favour? Get the hell outta here.”

Fifty-five and still taking orders; it was enough to make a grown man cry. Bill always tried to be humble, the way Jesus was, but Jesus was half divine and clearly had an advantage or two.

Now, Bill’s first glance at the hotel room confirmed that Sabrina had not somehow snuck past him. Her jeans were strewn across the end of the bed, which was otherwise unrumpled. Her backpack was on the floor. Her suitcase was open on a fold-out stand, and it squeezed his heart to see how full it was. Bye-bye, Bill, it said, I’ve lit out for good. She had taken almost all her clothes, not that she had a vast wardrobe. You’d think that someone so beautiful would have closets full of the latest fashions, but Sabrina owned almost nothing.

He knelt beside the bed and sniffed the jeans, burying his face in them and breathing deeply. “Don’t go,” he said. “I swear, I will buy you everything you need. I will be your provider and you will be my helpmeet.”

The suitcase contained mostly T-shirts, though she hadn’t packed the yellow one that said
Cancún
.

He found the dark skirt that he yelled at her for wearing because it showed too much of her legs. Those beautiful legs that sent waves of lust riding through his body. He didn’t want other men lusting after her that way.

“I was yelling more in pain than in anger,” he said to the hotel room now.

But he remembered how the expression on her face had changed. How the muscles in her cheeks had gone slack, her eyes dimming to a darkness that he recognized was fear. Fear, and something worse: contempt.

“Oh, Lord, why did you send me this beautiful creature, if not for me to take under my protection?”

She had used the shower. The bath mat was askew, and a towel was slung over the shower curtain rail. The air smelled of coconut shampoo. Girl things were set out neatly on the glass shelf above the sink: eyeliner, some kind of flesh-coloured stuff in a tube, lip balm. He opened the lip balm and touched it to his bottom lip, then the tip of his tongue. He picked up her hairbrush, put it back.

He went back to the other room and knelt again beside the bed, clasping his hands together until the knuckles whitened.

“Oh, Lord, help me bring Sabrina back, for she done truly lost her way. And woe betide those who led her astray, who made straight the way unto eternal fire.”

He clutched a T-shirt in both hands and brought it to his face. A sob escaped his throat, but he checked the urge to weep. Mostly because he had a pretty good idea where Sabrina was headed next.

Max woke up. Cold metal was pressing against the base of his skull, as if he had fallen asleep with his head resting on a pipe.

He could see the lights from the trailer park, white orbs in the window, which was open. He could smell the faint smells of oil and gas from someone’s badly tuned motor. A dog barked in the distance and, farther off, yobbos guffawed.

He reached behind his head and felt the pipe, palpated the little ridge at the end pressing up against his skull. The sight. He sat up, back pressed against the head of the bed.

Wyatt Earp was sitting on the bed beside him, knee-high boots resting on top of the covers. Doc Holliday was perched sideways at the foot, drinking from a silver flask. They were the animatronic creatures Max had seen the day before.

“New wigs,” Max said. “Is that what you’ve come for?”

“We don’t need no steenking wigs,” Wyatt Earp said. His mouth moved in the most unsettling, jerky motion, out of sync with his words.

“You scared yet, fatso?” Doc Holliday sneered at him from the foot of the bed. “You should be.”

“The wigs,” Max said. “I’ll just get up and fetch them for you.”

Wyatt Earp put an arm around his shoulder. It felt just like you’d expect a robot’s arm to feel, squeezing him so that he could not even squirm. The barrel of the gun pressed against his temple.

“You first,” Doc Holliday said, making a pistol of his fingers. “Then the boy.”

“Oh, no. Not the boy,” Max pleaded. “Not the boy.”

The bang went off in his ears like a cathedral bell. He felt the bullet crash into the bone behind his ear. He would only have a second or two to save Owen. It took all his strength to raise his right hand, bending at the elbow. He grabbed the barrel of the revolver. It was scorching hot, the metal searing his hand. He couldn’t hold on. He pressed his pillow to the back of his skull to staunch the wound and passed out.

Sometime later, he peeled the pillow from his head and opened one eye. The pink fringe of morning glowed in the Rocket’s window, and the room was gunslinger-free.