No Such Creature

THIRTEEN

“You’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 Cancun.

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.