Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 29

Bud drove aimlessly through downtown Lawton in the dark, not really seeing anything except the blurred lights.

He followed no particular path and at various times found himself nearing the airport, the Great Plains Coliseum, and Gate Number Three.

Even Fort Sill Boulevard seemed desolate.

Downtown, those amber lights caught everything in a particularly harsh brown glow, so that no true color stood out.

Bud felt exactly the opposite of how he expected. He thought he'd feel liberated at last, shorn of his secret life, ready and willing to embrace with all seriousness of high purpose his old life, which had been miraculously restored to him. But no. He just felt draggy, slow, morose, grouchy.

He wanted to get in a fight. Impulses toward extreme anger flicked through him. A part of him wanted to lash out, maybe at Jen, maybe at Jeff, maybe at Russ, really at himself.

It wasn't depression so much as plain old regret; images from all the sweet times with Holly kept playing on a movie screen in his head.

So little to show. She'd given him so much and she got so little.

Well, Holly, let that be a lesson to you that will stand you in good stead sometime in the future: no married men. Not worth it. All's you get is promises and sex up front, and pain and abandonment at the back end.

At last he turned down his own street and pulled into his own driveway.

Jen's station wagon was there in the carport.

He got out, walked in. The house seemed especially small and cheesy.

Wasn't much of a house. No room in it big as a motel room. The furniture, except what Jen had been given by her mother, was cheap, bought on time, in ruins before being paid off. The linoleum in the kitchen was dingy; the walls needed repainting; his shop was a mess; the lawn needed cutting.

For some reason it seemed to stink of a thousand meals tonight, of backed-up toilets and spilled beer and TV dinners and pizza kept in the refrigerator too long. God. How had all this happened? How did he end up in a house he didn't love with-"Well,” she said.

“About time.”

“All right, Jen,” he said.

“So where is he?”

“He's with his friends. I got him out in time to play and drove him over. That coach said officially his suspension didn't start till tomorrow so the old geezer let him play. Git himself in a lot of trouble, you ask me. Anyway, Jeff did fine, a double and a single, made a nice running catch late in the game.”

“It went into extra innings?”

“No, no, it didn't.”

“He's with his friends. Bud, where were you?”

“Oh, I had some business.”

“What business? Bud, what's going on?” Her face was grave and her eyes locked onto him. He could not meet their power.

“Ah—” It hung in the air.

Finally he said, "Look, I understand I haven't been the best of husbands lately, Jen. I just had my head somewhere else. Okay. I've told you some lies, I've done some things I shouldn't have done. But, Jen, I want to tell you now, flat out, straight to your face, that's all over now. Now I am going to be father to my boys and husband to my wife. I want us to have our old life back, the one we loved for all those years. ""Bud "What?”

“Bud, I won't ask you for details.”

“I'm glad.""I've heard things and I don't want to know if they're true or not. I just want you to tell me whatever it was, it's all over now.

You have a good life. Bud, fine, strong, brave sons. No man could have better sons.”

“I know that.”

“I know I'm not so young as I once was. I can't help that. Like you I got old, and like you I got fat. I just got fatter.”

“It's not that.”

“Oh, who knows what it is, Bud. I do know that I can forgive you maybe once. But, Bud, don't you ever do anything like this again. If you want to be with her, just go and be with her. But no more of this running around.”

“I will make it up. I'll make it so you won't notice there was a bad time. It was all good times, you, me, the boys.”

“Okay, Bud. Then I don't want to hear of it again. We close the book and we lock it and I don't want to hear about it again. Is that clear?”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now I think we should go to bed. I think you should show me that you love me still. In the physical way, I mean. It's been nearly a year, are you aware?”

“I didn't know.”

“It's been a long, long time, Bud, and I have needs, too, though you don't like to face it.”

“Well, then let's go.”

They headed upstairs.

The phone pulled Bud from a blank and dreamless sleep, and he awoke in the dark of his bedroom, his wife breathing heavily beside him. All through the house it was quiet.

Groggily, he picked it up.

“Pewtie.”

“Well, howdy there. Bud” came a voice from far, far away. It swam at Bud from lost memories, out of a pool of still green water. He fought to recall it but its identity lingered beyond his consciousness.

“Who is this?”

“Oh, you know who it is. Bud. It's your old goddamned buddy Lamar Pye.”

Bud's head cleared, fast.

“Pye. What the hell are you—”

“Missing anything?”

“What?”

“Missing anything?”

Bud thought: My boys.

“Lamar, so help me Christ—”

“Sure must be lonely in that bed tonight.”

Bud looked: He could see Jen stirring under her blankets.

“I don't—”

“I hope you didn't call nobody yet, there. Bud.”

“I—”

“She's damned pretty, your old lady. A bit young for a old goat like you. Bet she gits you to working hard.”

“Lamar, what the—”

“Here, say something to your baby. Bring her over, sweetie.”

A faraway voice said, "Git over here, you bitch,” and in the next second, another voice came on the line.

“Oh, Bud, oh God, they came in and got me, oh. Bud, I am so scared, Bud they've all got guns and he hit me, he hit me—” and then Holly was taken away.

“Who is it, Bud?” said Jen groggily.

“You hear that, trooper? We got your wife. Yes sir, got your goddamned wife. You take my baby cousin, and shoot him full of holes, I'm going to take your lady, for my pleasures.

Let me tell you how it's going to be, okay? You call anyone, you tell anyone, you mention this to anyone, by God, I will kill her and you know I will. First though I'll fuck her in every hole she got. Every one.”

“I swear—”

“Now, Bud, if you want this pretty gal back, you'd best come and do what I tell you. I want you to go to a pay phone. You got about a hour. It's at 124 and Shoulder Junction, outside of Geronimo.

Exxon station. I'm going to bounce you from pay phone to pay phone before I bring you in, just to make goddamned sure you don't have no SWAT boys with you. Got that?”

“Lamar—”

“You miss that goddamned call and I'll cut her throat and cut her nose off. Bud, and then come git you and the rest of your family at my leisure.”

“Don't hurt her, goddamn it,” Bud barked.

“Oh, and Bud?” Lamar asked in a voice rich in charm.

“You want her back? Tell you what. Bring some guns.”

He hung up.

Bud jumped out of bed, fought to clear his head. But, really, there was no decision to make, not one he could face anyway. If he called headquarters, he could play the game and sooner or later close with Lamar with a SWAT team, choppers, snipers, the works; the professionals would handle it as well as they could, but it wouldn't matter. One look at other boys at his private party with Bud and Lamar would cut her up without so much as a by-your-leave and take his goddamned chances with the lawmen. He didn't give a damn; he didn't fear his own death, he only wanted Bud's.

Bud pulled on jeans, boots, and a black shirt. He grabbed a sports coat, only to cover the guns he'd be wearing.

“Bud, what is going on?”

“I have to go.”

“Bud, you—” He faced his wife.

“I'm sorry. I have to go one last time. If you love me, you let me go. You trust me, you let me go.”

Then he raced downstairs, opened the gun safe. There they were. He pulled on his shoulder rig and the high hip holster and then busily threaded rounds into the magazines, all of them, jamming them up with hollow tips If his thumbs hurt, he didn't notice; it just seemed to take so goddamned long. He holstered the Beretta and the .45; the380 went behind his belt on his belly. Then he looked for a rifle, knowing only a fool fights with a pistol if he has the choice, but came up short until he remembered that .3030 lever gun outside, still under the seat in his truck. He closed the safe.

A shape loomed in the dark.

“Dad?”

It was Jeff.

“Jeff, I've got to go, fast.”

“Dad, what's—”

“Never you mind.”

“Dad—”

“Jeff, I love you. No matter what you hear or what they tell you or what happens, I love you. I love your mother and your brother more than anything. Now I have something to handle and I have to handle it. You stay here and take care of your mother. It'll be fine, I swear to you.”

“Dad—”

“Jeff, I have to go!”

“Dad… I love you.”

Bud grabbed his youngest son and gave him a bone squeezing hug. He felt the boy's ribs and beating heart under that sheathing of muscle.

“Go on, now,” he said, and dashed out.

Bud got to the truck, worried now, absurdly, that he was low on gas.

But he had gas. He gunned it, whirled out of the quiet neighborhood for Geronimo forty-five miles away. He had about fifty minutes.

But suddenly a thought came to him. Goddamnedest thing. From where he didn't know, but an idea just flashed into his head. He saw a gas station phone booth and stopped and ran to dial 411.

“You have a number for a C. D. Henderson, out on Thirty-eighth?”

It took a few seconds.

“That number isn't listed, sir.”

“Goddammit, this is a police emergency, I'm Oklahoma highway patrol sergeant Russell B. Pewtie, ID number R-twenty-four, and I want that number. Give it to me or give me your supervisor.”

Soon enough Bud had the number and called.

The phone seemed to ring and ring.

Then a groggy woman's voice answered, the old woman, and Bud asked for the lieutenant.

“Carl,” he heard her say, "it's some old boy for you.”

Henderson's raspy voice came on.

“

“Lo?” he said.

“Lieutenant, it's Bud Pewtie.”

“Bud, my God!”

“You still have your keys, don't you? You can still get into that goddamned office?”

“I could break in if I had to. Now what—”

“Listen to me, you drunken old goat. You get your ass over there. You say you're a detective?

Well, this here's the night you're going to prove it.”

“What are you talking about? What's going on?”

“You never mind what's going on. I got something for you. The mystery person in Lamar's gang. Wore the mask all the time. Here's why. It's a goddamned girl. A young girl. Heard him call herweetie.” Heard her say, "Get over here, bitch.” That's all. But… a young girl.

Young, in her twenties, maybe. Now that's another dot for you to connect. That's your goddamned third point. You find me a category that ain't a category that's got a Toyota that's also got a young girl.

You got to find me that girl and that god damed location. Now get cracking, you old buzzard, and don't you let me down.”

“Bud.” Something like a sob ran through the old man's voice.

“Bud… I'll try. I ain't the man I once was.”

“Well, goddamn, which of us is, except for goddamned Lamar?”

Bud hung up, checked his watch, saw that he was down to forty-five minutes. He jumped in his truck and gunned it.

“So,” said Lamar.

“Your old man. What's he like, you know, in the sack?”

“You pig,” she said.

Tell him, she thought. He's made a mistake. He came to the wrong house. He got the wrong woman.

And then what?

Then he just kills me, that's all. And he still gets Bud.

“How big is he? Is he real big? Or is he just normal? I'll bet he's just normal.”

She shook her head with disgust.

“Yeah. He's just normal. Here. You want to see something?

You want to see something like you never seen before?

Look at this. Hold her, Ruta Beth.”

They had Holly's hands tied behind her tightly, and her feet tied. She felt so helpless and sick. He was the man who’d killed her husband. It was this grotesque white-trash tough boy with stumps for fingers, some malnourished little weasel of a farm girl, and the other one, a soft and delicate man-boy with tussled hair and the look of no guts at all on his prissy, plump-lipped little face.

Now Ruta Beth went behind her and held her head.

Lamar stood and undid his trousers.

“Oh, God,” moaned Holly, and fought to look away, but Ruta Beth had surprising strength and governed her head until it was locked in the proper direction.

Lamar pulled his shorts down and unfolded what looked like an electric cable. It was a penis the size of a reptile, slack and coiled, its foreskin capping it.

“Hah? You see anything like that?”

“You look at Daddy,” said the girl.

“Go on, you look at the king. You ain't never seen nothing like that.

That's the king.”

She thought she'd gag.

“You just dream about it, honey. You just go on and dream until your husband shows up.”

Bud reached the Exxon station with a minute to spare.

But Lamar's call was late by five minutes.

When it came, he ripped the phone off the hook.

“Yeah?”

“Well, howdy. Bud. How you doing? You have a rough old time?”

“Cut the shit, Pye.”

“Bud, biggest mistake I done made is not walking over to you when you was belly-down and capping you with that45. Think of the trouble it'd saved us both.”

“Where are you?”

“Oh, I ain't a-telling. You got a long night ahead of you.

Maybe I'll bring you to me and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll run you into an ambush. Maybe I'm on a goddamned cellular phone right now, looking at your ass through the scope of a rifle. Just twitch my finger and it's all over.”

He laughed. He was extracting immense pleasure from it.

“You haven't hurt her?”

“Honey, you tell your husband what you just saw.”

There was the muffled struggle of someone being pushed to the phone.

“Bud!”

“Holly!”

“Oh, Bud, he made me look. They forced me to look.”

“Holly, I—”

“At his dick. They made me look at it.”

The fury rose in Bud like steam. He wanted to slam the phone against the booth until it broke.

Don't lose it, he warned himself. That's what he wants.

He'll toy with her. He'll torture her in infantile ways to show his power—the size of his pecker, petty pains, maybe drawing on her skin.

He'll do it so that she can tell you, so that you go crazier and crazier, and at the end you are hopelessly jangled and unable to operate.

It doesn't mean a thing. The only thing that counts is getting there and getting her out.

But he knew, too, that Lamar expected him crazy. He lost something if he didn't let Pye know how nuts this was making him.

“Pye,” he screamed.

“Pye, you sonofabitch, I'll kill you. Don't you fucking touch her.

Don't you touch her!”

Lamar laughed again.

“Bud, you still there? You got to git all the way to Snyder. To the 7-eleven on 183 north of Snyder. You best git you going, old bubba.

Yes you best git a move on, or I'll do more than show her the lizard, I'll make her pet it. Maybe even give it a li'l kiss.”

Lamar hung up.

Quickly Bud dialed C. D. Henderson's old office in the City Hall Annex.

But there was no answer.

The old detective heard the phone ring. He'd been there five minutes.

What was the point of answering it?

He opened his coat and removed the bottle of I. W. Harper. Only about a third left. He opened it, took a taste.

Liquid flame, bright and deep. Immediately a tremor passed through him, knocked him into a blurred state, and then pulled him out again.

He reached under his coat and his fingers touched something hard and cold: It was the curvature of the grip of a revolver. He pulled it out, feeling its oily heft: a Colt Frontier model, with an ivory grip, in .44 special, as manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut, in the year 1903. The rainbow of the case-hardened colors had long since worn off, turning the piece almost brown. His grandaddy had carried that gun before Oklahoma was a state; and his daddy had carried it, too, both as lawmen.

C.D. opened the loading gate, pulled the hammer to half cock and rotated the cylinder to see the primers of five tarnished .44 rounds, sited in the cylinder so that the firing pin rested on an empty chamber, the way any sensible man carried a Colt. Only fools carried a six-shooter with six shots; sooner or later, they'd thump the hammer accidently and blow a foot off.

C.D. was no fool.

But he didn't think for a moment he could help Bud, and he had some idea that a terrible, terrible weight rode on all this. He'd fail, a drunken, wasted old man. People would die. Bud, whoever else was involved. And Lamar would go on.

And when that happened C.D. thought he might thumb back the hammer of the old Colt, put the muzzle in his mouth, and pull the trigger. He felt so used up, he was hardly there. His life was a waste, things were changing so fast that he couldn't keep up. He was sixty-eight years old and should have retired five years back and enjoyed his time.

But no. Vanity, anger, whatever, had driven him.

Okay, you old goat, he told himself.

Do some detecting.

Think. Think.

You got a new dot to connect. A third point, a third piece of evidence. A girl. A young girl. How does that help?

A category that is not a category. A young girl.

How do they connect?

How could they connect?

Original theory: Lamar would go for help or find help in the criminal community in one of its forms. They would always go to their own kind.

So: He would go to the cycle gangs or the Indian boys running scams against their own tribes on the reservations or the organized crime interests in Tulsa or OK City or the drug networks supplied by South American gangs but run by niggers in the inner city, Hispanics or Italian groups otherwise; or that small shifting, mobile culture of armed robbers, professional contract killers, enforcers, and tough guys who serviced the bigger gangs on a strictly freelance basis.

But he'd gone to none of those, or at least none of those that could be demonstrated to have corresponded with the one known empirical clue, the tire tread that could only be worn by a small Japanese car, a Hyundai or a Nissan or a Toyota, in three model years.

Nothing. Nada.

Maybe it was just wrong, the assumption. Maybe he'd found somebody not in the life at all.

But no: Lamar, however extravagant, was a type, and types run to pattern. And Lamar's pattern was simple: He was a professional criminal, a long-term convict, he would only feel comfortable with his peers. Whoever he was bunking with would in some way be in the culture, would have stepped beyond the parameters of the law. And would be on the computer network.

But there was nothing.

The old man snapped on his computer terminal. It had access to Oklahoma Department of Motor Vehicles and criminal records at the state felony level. He could define a field and see what he got.

So he tried the most basic thing: He requested that the computer churn out a listing of all females between the ages of sixteen and thirty who registered or had registered a car in the known range.

searching searching searching the computer blinked at him for a few minutes, and then a list of names rose against its blue background.

He was not adroit at the mechanics of the computer; he could not physically manipulate the cursor without thinking, so he simply ordered the goddamned thing to print out.

It clicked and chattered across the room, and he went to the printer, ripped the page out, and then examined what he had.

It was a list of eighty-three names, all of them meaningless, all of them unknown. Maybe one of them? Maybe not.

He went next to the known felons listing—that is, the felons who also had registered the right cars—and hoped there might be some correspondence, a co registration that possibly suggested a daughter-father thing.

There was none.

No young woman with a car in the range could be linked to a known felon with the same car, at least according to the records.

Then, very slowly, he typed each of the eighty-three names into the computer and commanded felony record check.

It took the better part of an hour.

Results—zero.

“Richard,” said Lamar, "come over here.”

Shyly almost, Richard advanced.

“Richard, how long since you had a woman?”

“Ah? Lamar, that's private.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Holly.

“Now, lady, lo okie here at Richard. Now what's he got this Bud Pewtie you married ain't got? He's a fine, upstanding man. He's got a true talent, a God-given thang. He's loyal and hardworking. He's educated.

Richard, you went to a college, didn't you?”

Richard said yes.

“See. He's a smart man. He could do you proud. You know, if you play your cards right, when this is all over I might be able to git you a… date with Richard.”

Lamar exploded once again into laughter.

Then he said, "You know, Richard, you could touch her a little. Really.

She wouldn't mind, would you, hon?”

“Please,” said Holly.

“Oh, God, don't hurt me or touch me.”

“Oh, it wouldn't hurt a bit. Richard, would you like to touch this young woman some place. Or maybe just look at her. You could look at her all you wanted, at least for a little while. Have you ever seen a girl this pretty without no clothes on, Richard? I mean, a real one, not in no book?”

The terrible thing was, Richard did want to touch her and look at her.

She was a really beautiful young thing. He'd never had any woman, of course. It just hadn't worked out.

Not that he was a homosexual. He was sort of a zero sexual But now he looked at her and the deep stirrings of lust tingled in him.

It was her helplessness that excited him. The way the rope cut into her white, freckly skin, the way her flesh blossomed around the raw pressure of the rope, the way her neck was faintly reddish as she squirmed, the look of complete horror on her face, and her goddamned prettiness.

She wore Bermuda shorts, Nikes without socks, and a polo shirt; she looked like some kind of coed or something.

But then he thought: Why is she so young?

“Lamar, why is she so young?”

“What you mean?”

“Look at her. She isn't thirty. She isn't twenty-five. How could she have that son who plays baseball. Did she marry him when she was ten?”

“She was in his house. She got a wedding ring. They was fighting. Who else could she be?”

But then Lamar squinted and looked closely at Holly.

“How old are you?”

“I'm twenty-six,” she said.

“I am his wife.”

“But that ain't your kid?”

“No, Jeff is not my son. Bud and I haven't had our children yet. He had his two boys with his first wife. But she died and he married me two years ago. It's the happiest two years of my life. He's a wonderful, kind, decent man.

He's brave, he's strong. You ought to be ashamed of what you're doing.”

“Well, ain't you a goddamned Miss. Mouthful. That sonofabitch shot my cousin over twenty-five times. Just blew the life out of that boy.”

“You are such scum,” she said.

“You may get me and you may get Bud, but they will get you in the end.”

Lamar leaned close.

“Don't you get it?” he said.

“I don't give a shit. I ain't got much of a string to play out anyways. I just want to settle up. You think I'm afraid to die? Boy, then you ain't never been in no hard places, I tell you, and you don't know what hard places do to a man. In this room we're all going to be dead tonight or by noon at least. But by God, I will settle my dues and leave this world without no uncashed lous in my jeans.”

Bud blew through speed limits like a man in flames, and toward the end gave up on red lights. It was near two forty-five, the streets deserted. He charged up and down hills, cut across dirt roads, traversing Tillman and Comanche Counties on sheer instinct, then hit 62 just beyond Cache for a straight-line run to Snyder. He hit the 7-Eleven just beyond the town and found it still open, and someone on the phone.

He pulled his badge.

“Police business. We need this phone free.”

An Indian boy looked at his badge and spat on the ground and went back to his call.

Bud pulled the .45 and rammed it into the boy's throat.

“You sonofabitch, you git or you and I will have serious business and you won't like that a goddamned bit!”

In the face of the weapon and Bud's fury, the boy melted, hung up the phone, and ran off into the dark. Now Bud felt a moment of shame, having given in to the cop's worst temptation, the display of brute power to require obedience.

You can't just pull guns on civilians. On another night, it was grounds for suspension. Not tonight. Fuck it, tonight.

He looked at his watch. It was five after three. Shit.

Maybe Lamar had called while the Indian was on the phone. He sat, breathing hard, his mind empty. The seconds clicked by. Suddenly it was ten after.

Christ, he thought, / blew it.

~ But the phone rang.

“Pye?”

“Oh, Bud, sorry I's late. Just gittin' to know your lady here.”

“Don't you hurt her.”

“Damn, she's a pretty one.”

“Let her go. You'll have me. Let her go.”

“We'll see. If you're a good boy, who knows, maybe I'll cut you some slack. If you got attitude. Bud, I may have to let her have a taste of some discipline, you know? Shit, maybe she'll even like it.”

“Goddamn you, Pye.”

“Best hurry on, Bud. You got to get all the way to Toleens, by four.

Oh, you going to be a busy boy.”

Lamar hung up.

Bud stared at the phone in sick fury. Toleens? Toleens?

Where the hell was that? He hoped he had a map in the truck.

But instead he dropped a quarter and dialed the police annex, Henderson's number.

“Hello?”

“Lt. Henderson?”

“Bud.”

Bud could tell from the tragic tone in the old man's voice. Nothing.

“I'm trying,” the old man said.

“I just ain't had no luck.”

“Christ,” said Bud.

“They have a hostage. They'll kill her. You've got to figure this thing out!”

“Bud, you give me the okay, I'll put the call in. You go 'bout your business. We can track by air. A chopper. I'll have two busloads of the best SWAT operators in the business ten minutes behind you. We'll take that place down and the hostage can walk free.”

“He'd hear the goddamn chopper, you know he would, Lieutenant. You can't play straight and outsmart Lamar.

He's too goddamned good. He may even be watching me now and knows I'm pulling something. You have to come through. You have to.”

Only the sound of the lieutenant's raspy breathing came.

“You haven't been drinking?”

“Son, I drink every damn day of my life. I won four of my seven gunfights drunk.”

“All right, all right. Oh—Toleens. You ever heard of it?

A town?”

“It's on 54, between Gotebo and Cooperton. Had a murder there in fifty-nine.”

“Yeah, got it. There's a pay phone in the town?”

“Hell, boy, the pay phone is the town. Git on your way.”

The lieutenant stared at the phone, listening to the dial tone in the seconds after Bud hung up. Then he placed it down on the cradle and put his fingers on the bridge of his nose between his eyes and squeezed.

The flare of light as his optic nerves fired somehow pleased him; then the room returned, deserted, green, junky, a police station room like all the ones he'd spent a long life in.

He felt used up, lacking will. A woman at least would die tonight, maybe Bud, too. A woman, a policeman, dying too young. Why should tonight be any different than any other night? It happened the world over. Why was it his responsibility to intercede?

He tried to tell himself it didn't matter, not cosmically.

But it did. It mattered so goddamn much he wanted to cry.

He looked at the list. Eight-three names of young women who owned a car possibly linked to the robbery. A category that wasn't a category Was it all an illusion? Was he a vain fool trying to tease meaning out of random events? Was there no pattern at all? Break it down. Two elements. Young and woman.

What did woman tell him? A daughter of a criminal possibly.

A criminal herself? Not in the records. No correspondence to the records.

He had a laugh. How much of it depended on the records. So much of police work was simply accountancy, human accountancy, the recording of accessible fact that may on faith in some distant time tell us something when we most need it.

Woman. Nothing.

What about young? What could there be about young, about youth, about immaturity, that fit into this or that touched on any issue of the central conceit, "a category that isn't a category.”

How would a young girl get to know Lamar, who had been in jail for years and years? How could she meet him?

Only way: She could write him.

Hmmmm.

Why would she write him? How would she hear about him?

Maybe she was one of those strange, desperate creatures who wrote to convicts, sent them money, proposed to them.

It was a sickness, but it was there; and if that was it, there'd be no category for her. Or: wouldn't prison officials have noted it? That was where they started their investigations when a prisoner escaped.

Once again: nothing.

He returned again to the component: Young? What could that have to do with it? A young woman would probably not be attracted to convicts, it was more of a twisted spinster thing. Why a young woman? She had to be a daughter.

But presume, he told himself, since the daughter route appeared to lead nowhere, presume she is not a daughter or a sister or a relationship.

She is a young woman. She is involved with convicts. What would involve her with convicts, other than her relations?

What?

He paused.

Something floated in the dark, just beyond him, translucent, ghostly in the still air.

There seemed to be a sudden stillness, as if the night itself had ceased to function, time had stopped.

What would involve her, draw her to them?

What?

She was a victim?

That would drive her away.

What?

She committed a crime herself.

It was so simple, and in the next second, wholly, it detonated in all its beauty into his mind; he saw into it now, clearly and absolutely.

A category that isn't a category.

A minor who commits a capital crime… but the court records are sealed, because she's a minor. There's no category for that. One cannot access it through normal channels.

C.D. blinked, opened the bottle, and swallowed a well earned blast of Harper's.

If the court records are sealed, I can't get into them.

Maybe tomorrow, but not now.

It angered him. So close and yet so far. Who else would have records?

And then the next step, easy as pie.

The newspaper.

C.D. opened a little black book he carried with him always, and located the number of the managing editor of the Lawton Constitution.

He didn't give a damn what time it was as he called.

“Hello,” came the groggy voice.

“Parker? Parker, it's goddamned C. D. Henderson.”

“CD.? What in hell—”

“Never you mind. You got anybody down at the paper tonight?”

“Ah—sure, skeleton crew, night telegraph editor, night photo editor, late makeup, sports desk. Probably a few odd bodies lying around.”

“Ain't you all on some sort of computer system?”

“Nexus, it's called.”

“I thought. Listen here, I'll give you a scoop and a half, you do me a favor. You call whoever's in charge down here, you tell him I want the name of all convicted female teenaged murderers in the last ten years.

Out of your records.

Not the court records, your records. I want it fast. Okay, Parker?”

“I—What is—”

“Never you mind, Parker. You just git me that information and I'll take care of you. Have them call me here-555-3321—soonest. I mean soonest. Lives at stake. We're going to try and save an innocent woman and put a guilty man into the ground, where he deserves to go.”

The joy of it was that he could watch Bud without risking himself, or even leaving.

Lamar lay in the gully with a pair of binoculars, just down the road from the red dirt turnoff that led to Ruta Beth's house. He looked at his watch. If Bud had left the Exxon station twenty, twenty-five minutes ago on the way to Toleens, the only road he could take was this one and he'd be heaving into sight in a few minutes. And then what? A chopper overhead, a SWAT bus and convoy ten minutes behind? Would his truck have an aerial, suggesting he was in radio contact?

It was all very interesting to Lamar.

But of course the hard part was not shooting.

Bud would roll by; it would be so easy to nail him with four or five 12-gauge blasts, take him down and do him here, on the spot. Lamar saw it: the crashed truck, the holes in the door, the smell of gasoline, broken glass everywhere.

The lawman in pain, begging for mercy. Lamar putting the shotgun muzzle up close to him, feeling him squirm a bit, and then the blast, the blood spatters, pieces everywhere.

Oh so nice it seemed. I-magi-nation. Big word: Pictures in your head.

But Lamar knew they could have done him at the ball game or at any of the pay phones. Lamar forced himself into the hunter's patience. Check it out, he told himself.

Use the edge you got yourself. Don't rush things. Do it right. Make him pay. Make him pay real bad. Imagination.

Far off, he saw headlights. Their swift approach indicated reckless speed. Lamar was able to tell quickly enough it was a Ford F250, blue and white, and as it approached, he dialed Bud's tense face into focus.

Square-headed man, eyes hooded under the Stetson, dark clothes, driving fast but well, steady as a rock. There was a set to his face that Lamar remembered from the Stepford farm, as poor Bud walked up toward the house and he and O’Dell prepared to take them down. He looked so body proud so full of his own self, and he still had that bullnecked swagger to him, though now cut through with so much tension that he hardly seemed human. He flashed by Lamar toward his destination still a good twenty miles down the road, not knowing how close he was to being reeled in.

Next Lamar looked at how the truck rode, which appeared to be normal; it didn't ride low on its tires, which meant he wasn't carrying a big load, which meant a Trooper SWAT team or gaggle of Texas Ranger snipers wasn't hunkered down in the truck-bed. It had no extra aerial.

Lamar watched the taillights grow tiny, then fade, and listened till the whine of tires on asphalt died away. He put the glasses down and listened hard. No sound. He waited and watched. Only the low night wind pushing across the wide plains, now and then the squawk of some night creature.

No choppers followed Bud a thousand feet up, and the road itself remained empty for the longest time, a flat blank ribbon glowing ever so slightly in starlight. No convoy appeared, nothing.

Satisfied, Lamar rose and headed back toward the farmhouse, enjoying the power he felt under the wide night sky.

It was like being invisible, like being a god. He felt a stirring in his crotch at the promise of action.

He hardly ever thought about such things, for they were so much a part of the way he was. But now he felt it, pure and blood deep: He was the Lion, he was the king. And he was about to feed.

Bud hit Toleens, which was exactly one decrepit old general store, windblown and nearly barren of paint, with two gas pumps out front and a pay phone next to the front door.

He pulled over and waited, checking his watch. Nearly four.

He'd just made it.

He waited until ten after. Now what was wrong? Goddammit!

He began to grow nervous. This was the perfect setup. At any moment gunshots might explode out of the dark, taking him down. Lamar might be just across the road, watching him twit nervously on the porch before blowing him away at leisure.

But the phone rang finally.

“Yes.”

“Well, old Bud, how are you?”

“Cut the shit, Lamar. You haven't hurt her?”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“Prove it.”

“Now don't you go using that attitude on me, Lawman. I don't have to prove nothing. You want your woman, you better do what I say or the hell with her. And then I will hurt her.”

“Where are you?”

“Oh, not yet, Pewtie. We ain't done playing tag. You got a bit more running around to do. I want to be real sure.”

“Tell me.”

“No sir. I want you headed east now, toward Chickasha.

Town called Anadarko. That's your next stop. Another gas station. On 62, a Phillips. You got a hour.”

“I'll never make it in an hour.”

“Sure you will. Then we'll talk some more and maybe you can come git me and maybe you can't.”

He hung up.

Quickly Bud dialed the annex.

He got a busy signal.

Goddamn!

He felt like throwing the phone. That old goat, what the hell was he up to?

Now what? Leave and drive like hell to Anadarko, which was just barely makable in an hour? Or give goddamned C. D. Henderson another few minutes, stretching it out even further?

He raced to the truck, started the engine.

But then he turned it off.

He ran back to the phone, dialed again.

The phone rang once, and C.D. picked it up.

“Bud?”

Who else would it be?

“Yes.”

“Just got a call from a newspaper reporter. In 1983 a fifteen-year-old gal shot and killed her mama and her papa and served seven years before being released from the Kingsville Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

I called there and talked to a night nurse who knew her well. She continually wrote to people who had killed or assaulted their parents.”

“Richard!”

“Richard. She wrote to Richard, and no one never bothered to check on what letters came his way in prison, as he was the passive partner and only there a few months. But there's your connection. Bud, I checked her out against the list of car owners: She's registered in a ninety-one Toyota Tercel.”

“Holy Christ.”

“She lives on a place right off 54, in Kiowa County, way out where it's empty and barren, just the far side of the Wichitas. Her name is Ruta Beth lull.”

“I just drove by it. He ran me by it to check me out! Now he's going to bounce me around for a bit, just to get me completely tired. It's half an hour away.”

“You better get there. Bud. You got work to do.”

“Thank you, old man. You are one hell of a detective.”

“I believe I am, son. I believe I am. Now I'm going to give you ten minutes, that's all. That's what I owe you.

Then the cavalry is coming.”

“Fair enough.”

“And Bud, remember: front sight. Center mass. Put ’em in the ground.

Bud. All of ’em.”