Solomon Creed

16

‘He said we should stay right here?’

‘That’s what the man said.’ Mulcahy was standing by the window of the motel, cell phone in hand, staring out through the grey sheer curtains at the parking lot beyond.

Behind him, Javier paced, stamping dust and the smell of mildew from the carpet. ‘He didn’t say nuthin’ else?’

‘He said plenty, but the main thing he said was that we should stay put and wait for him to call back.’

Javier shook his head and continued to pace. He’d already visited the john several times in the twenty or so minutes they’d been in the room and Mulcahy had only heard him flush once, suggesting either that he had terrible hygiene or he was doing something in there other than pissing. The slime-shine in his eyes gave Mulcahy a pretty good idea what.

‘You think Papa knows where we’re at?’ Javier said, twitching and flicking his fingers as if they had gum on them.

‘Probably.’

‘Probably? The fuck does “probably” mean? Either he know or he don’t.’

The only illumination in the room was coming from the TV. It was tuned to a local news station with the volume turned low. Carlos sat silently on the edge of one of the beds, his eyes fixed on the flickering screen as if he’d been hypnotized by it. He’d been like that ever since they’d walked in the door and heard what Papa Tío had to say. Mulcahy had seen that look a few times before: once in a jail cell outside of Chicago when he was still in uniform and Illinois still had the death penalty, and a couple of times since when he’d been the cause of it. It was the look someone got when they’d resigned themselves to whatever was coming their way, like a rabbit when the headlights were speeding towards it and there was no time to get out of the way.

‘You got a cell phone, either of you?’ Mulcahy asked.

‘Yeah, I got a phone.’ Javier said it like he’d just asked him if he had a dick or not. He held up a BlackBerry in a gold-and-crystal encrusted case, the blank screen angled towards Mulcahy. ‘I switched it off though, motherfucker. I ain’t stupid.’

‘Good for you. Who pays the bill?’

‘The fuck’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Because if Tío pays the bill then he’ll be able to track it whether it’s switched off or not. Does he pay the bill?’

Javier didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

Mulcahy nodded. ‘Then he knows where we’re at.’ He turned back and looked outside, squinting against the brightness. Beyond the reception building he could see the traffic out on the highway.

He checked his own phone, making sure the Skype app was still running. Tío had said he was going to call some people then call him back, but that wasn’t why he was checking. His pop still hadn’t called.

‘How come your phone’s still switched on, pendejo?’

Mulcahy stared out at the day, felt the heat of the outside burning through the window and the cool air from the ancient air-con unit blowing feebly against his legs.

‘I asked you a question, motherfucker.’

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If he had to kill Javier in the next few minutes — which was entirely possible — it would definitely be the highlight of an otherwise shitty day. ‘Papa Tío doesn’t pay my bill,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t pay my bill, so he doesn’t know the number or the network, and I called him on Skype so it would take him at least a few hours to trace the call and I don’t plan on being here in two hours’ time. But the main reason I’ve still got it switched on is because he said he was going to call me back — on Skype — so if I switched my phone off he wouldn’t be able to. And if he couldn’t get hold of me he might get all suspicious and send a bunch of guys round to find out why I’d turned my phone off. And he’d know exactly where to find me because you’re too cheap to pay your own bill. That answer your question … motherfucker?’

‘Shit, man. Oh shit, shit.’ Carlos was rising to his feet and pointing at the TV.

A shaky aerial shot of a big fire in the desert filled the screen. It wobbled unsteadily behind a caption saying: BREAKING NEWS — plane crash starts large wildfire outside Redemption, Az.

‘Where’s the remote?’ Javier had stopped pacing, his eyes fixed to the screen now. ‘Where’s the fuckin’ remote at?’ Carlos held it up. ‘Turn it up, man.’ Javier jabbed his finger at the screen.

Carlos pointed the remote at the TV, nudged up the volume and the room filled with the sombre tones of someone reporting on something serious. Mulcahy stared at the twisted wreckage of the plane, fuel and desert burning all around it, catching snatches of what the reporter was saying:

… believed to have been a vintage airliner … en route to the aircraft museum outside Redemption …

This was not how it was supposed to happen. The plane crash was not in the script. It was most likely an accident, it was an old plane, old planes crashed more than new ones he imagined. Except Papa Tío didn’t believe in accidents. He didn’t believe in coincidences or apologies either. If something went wrong then there was always a reason and there was always someone who had to pay.

And Tío hadn’t called back yet.

And neither had his pop.

He turned to study the traffic out on the road, a slow-flowing river of metal and glass, and felt envious of the safe little lives each car contained. He wanted to join them and slide away from here, but that wasn’t going to happen. He knew that as soon as he saw the truck ease off the road and up the ramp towards the motel. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, just like his. Black-tinted windows, just like his. It slowed to a stop at the top of the ramp by the reception building, but the two men inside showed no interest in going in. They were checking the parked cars, looking for someone.

Looking for him.

17

Cassidy drove, Solomon sat in the passenger seat, his window wound right down so he could feel the wind on his face. It was an old car, leather seats, chrome trim, lots of space.

Lincoln Continental Mark V, Solomon’s mind informed him.

It was nicer than being in the ambulance, the leather seats and padded doors made the experience less synthetic, but he still didn’t like it.

‘Would you mind closing the window, the air-conditioning doesn’t work so well with it open.’

Solomon pressed the button to raise the window. He was thinking about the church and the altar cross and the words written on the wall, all of it revolving around the remembered image of his reflected self, the stranger in the mirror, the big mystery at the centre of it all. The church was peculiar. Maybe that was why he felt an affinity to it. For a start it was way too big for a town this size, like it had been built as a declaration of something grand or maybe to compensate for something. The interior was odd too, the fresco more reminiscent of a medieval European basilica than a church from the Old West. And then there was the strange collection of memorabilia cluttering up the entrance like an afterthought.

‘Why have a mining exhibition in a church?’ he wondered out loud, his toes gripping the carpet as his sense of confinement started to gnaw at him.

‘Tourists,’ Cassidy replied, like he was cursing. ‘About a year back we moved some of the exhibits from the museum into the church to try and get more people through the door, on account of people being far more interested in treasure than God these days, and ain’t that a sorry state of affairs?’

Solomon nodded and gripped the edge of his seat, trying to relax away his growing nausea.

‘A lot of folks thought it was inappropriate, said it’s not what the church is for. They cash the subsidy cheques the trusts give out, but they don’t want to think about where that money comes from. One of the joys of being mayor: all the grief and none of the credit. Like being a parent, I guess.’

‘You don’t have children?’

‘Never was blessed. Are you OK? You seem kind of uncomfortable.’

‘I’m fine,’ Solomon said. ‘Just don’t like being confined.’

Cassidy looked across at him like he was afraid he might throw up in his nice antique car. ‘Leave the window open if it makes you happy.’

‘Thanks.’ Solomon opened it all the way down again and relished the wind on his face. It carried the smell of smoke with it now and he could see it ahead of them, a curtain of darkness spreading right across the sky with tiny figures and vehicles spread out in front of it. ‘Only those who face the fire,’ he murmured, ‘can hope to escape the inferno.’

‘You know who wrote that?’ Cassidy asked.

Solomon dredged his mind and was surprised to discover that he didn’t. And in the perverse nature of his teeming brain he regarded any knowledge that didn’t come easy to him as significant. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘It was Jack Cassidy. He designed the whole church then painted the frescoes too. He was what you might call a renaissance man. Could turn his hand to anything: miner, businessman, architect, painter, author — you name it, he tried it. And most likely mastered it too. Not bad for a man who started life as a locksmith.’

‘Quite a troubled man too, I think. A man with his fair share of demons.’

‘Well, he … maybe so, but … what makes you say that?’

‘The figures in the fresco. The black words he wrote on a dark, dark sky. The fact he painted hell so vast and vivid and heaven so small and distant.’

‘He was complicated, I would say. A serious man. You should read his memoir.’

Solomon pulled his copy from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. ‘I have.’ He opened it to the dedication page, felt the familiar stab of pain in his arm when he read James Coronado’s name. ‘What about James Coronado, was he a troubled man?’

‘Jim? No, I wouldn’t say so. I would call him pretty straightforward.’

‘Was he in some sort of trouble?’

‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘He was very well liked.’

‘That’s not what I asked. What about his death — is there any question hanging over that?’

‘No,’ Cassidy snapped, a little too quickly, then took a hold of himself. ‘Listen, I don’t know what ideas you have about how you might save him, but he’s gone. Jim Coronado is dead. It was an accident, is all. A terrible, terrible accident. He was driving at night, he crashed his car. That’s all there is. There ain’t no point in raking up the mud searching for something that ain’t there. You’re only going to hurt people who been hurt bad enough already.’

He said it as though he was pushing a door closed and Solomon left it shut. The mayor clearly didn’t want to talk about it and Solomon didn’t think he’d get anything out of him anyway. The person he really wanted to talk to was James Coronado’s widow. Maybe she would be at the city limits along with everybody else, lining up to try and save the town from the fire.

They rounded a corner and started dropping down towards the edge of town. Beyond it the whole world was on fire. The smoke was so high it blotted out the sun, and the flames at the base twisted and leaped in the air as the bright line of fire slithered closer. The fire crews were positioned half a mile out of town and about the same from the fire, working in lines, their forms smudged almost to nothing by the dust they were stirring up with rake and shovel as they cleared the ground of anything that might burn in an attempt to stop the flames from advancing. To the left of the road a tractor was creeping like a clockwork toy, ploughing up the ground behind it. It was making its slow way towards a concrete storm drain that cut across the ground in a straight line all the way to the slopes of the mountains. To the right a grader was struggling over uneven terrain it wasn’t built for towards the anaemic piles of crushed stone that rose sterile and ugly around a tall skinny tower with a lifting wheel at the top. Between the mineworks and the storm drain the flanks were pretty well protected, but there was nothing in the centre but a mile or so of clear ground and dry vegetation. Two vehicles and maybe a hundred men against an army of flame.

‘You should tell everyone to clear out,’ Solomon said.

‘Be a waste of breath,’ Cassidy replied. ‘The folks here are kind of stubborn that way. Most of ’em would rather burn than abandon their town.’

‘Then they may well get their wish.’

They pulled off the road and came to a halt next to a line of parked cars and trucks. Cassidy cut the engine and Solomon was already out of the door, desperate to feel the ground beneath his feet again. The wind gusted a greeting, roaring out of the desert and bringing the smell of the fire with it.

‘Now I appreciate you volunteering to help here, Mr Creed, I really do,’ Cassidy said, climbing out the driver’s side and fixing his Stetson on his head. ‘But if you want to help us fight this fire, then you’re going to need something on your feet.’ He pointed to a pick-up parked over by an ambulance that had lots of activity buzzing round it. ‘See that man in the green shirt? His name’s Billy Walker. Tell him I sent you over and ask if he’s got a pair of work boots he can loan you, then report to one of the fire crews. Sorry to cut and leave, but I’ve got a town to try to save and people look to me to lead.’ He walked away, heading over to where Chief Morgan was standing by a tow truck, his own stricken truck perched drunkenly on the back.

Shouts drifted out of the desert. Out on the control line someone was pointing up at the sky where the yellow tanker was levelling out and getting ready for another run. It settled into position and the sky behind it turned red, as though the wings had sliced through the flesh of it and made it bleed. A bright scarlet cloud spread and fell on to a section of desert, then the vapour trail sputtered out. The red line had covered a little less than a quarter of the leading edge of the fire on one side of the road and the air around Solomon was already starting to thicken with ash and embers falling softly around him like black snow. He held out his hand and caught one, rubbing it to nothing with his fingers. It was warm, most of the heat blown out of it by the wind, but the ashes falling closer to the control line would be fresh from the fire, maybe even still glowing as they settled on the dry grass. Soon there would be spot fires breaking out all over the control zone. It would only need one to take hold and the fire would have breached the thin line they were drawing in the sand. They were in the wrong position, wasting time and energy with what they were doing. At this rate the whole town was going to burn, along with everything in it. Then where would he be? What answers might he sift from the embers?

The wind roared again, twisting the distant flames into columns of orange and red, and Solomon felt as if the fire was sniffing him out, searching for him. He headed over to the ambulance and into the welcome shade of the billboard.

The man in the green shirt was helping set up a makeshift field hospital around the ambulance. Men and women in green scrubs and white rubber clogs were weaving in and out of each other, checking lists, carrying boxes of supplies, filling movable stands stacked with suture packs and dressings. Solomon recognized Gloria. She was unpacking boxes of gel dressings and FAST-1 infusion kits.

‘Billy Walker,’ Solomon said, and the man in the green shirt turned round. ‘Mayor Cassidy sent me over to see you.’

The man looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on Solomon’s bare feet. ‘Lemme guess — pair of boots, right?’

‘Actually no, I was hoping you might have a hat.’ Walker shook his head then loped off towards his truck.

The wind surged again, so hard it rocked the billboard and drove the smell of smoke into Solomon’s face like a threat. There was something else there too, something ominous and familiar.

Gloria appeared at his side. ‘You feeling OK now, Mr Creed?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, sniffing the air again. ‘How ready are you here?’

She looked around at all the activity. ‘About as ready as we’ll ever be, I guess.’

‘Good. You’re about to get busy, I think.’ The sound of a distant siren whooped out in the desert and the radio in the ambulance crackled to life.

‘Incoming,’ a voice said with an urgency that made everyone else go silent. ‘The grader got caught in a fire surge. The driver’s hurt bad. We’re bringing him to you now.’

18

Mulcahy’s eyes never left the Jeep.

The angle of the sun and the tinted windows turned the two men inside into dark shapes. It was impossible to see if anyone was in back. There could be two or three more guys in there, but he doubted it. One maybe: two to do the job, one to stay in the car, ready to roll when it was done. He had a pretty good idea what the job was too. He guessed they were on the phone right now, talking to whoever had sent them. He had a pretty good idea about that too.

They were staring over in his direction, towards the parked Jeep. He wondered if they could see the movement of the curtain and thought about shutting the air-con off. If he did Javier would pick up on it and he didn’t want him to know what was unfolding outside. He’d freak out most likely, start shooting and they’d end up in a siege situation which no one would walk away from.

The passenger door of the Jeep opened and a short, solid Mexican man slid out. He had a Mike Tyson style tattoo curling round his left eye and rolled his neck like a boxer preparing to spar as he sauntered over to the reception building, no doubt to ask the clerk about the Jeep parked over by G-block. Mulcahy imagined him walking up to the desk now and flashing some fake ID — FBI or Border Patrol. The clerk was probably illegal anyway and likely to freeze in the face of anything official. He would do whatever the guy asked, tell him whatever he wanted, even give him a master key. Except that wasn’t what happened.

Tyson reappeared, walking fast, tucking something into his jacket and Mulcahy knew he had been wrong. All wrong. There had been no fake ID because there had been no need for one. He hadn’t heard a gunshot but over this distance and with the TV noise he might have missed it. More likely they were carrying suppressed weapons. Assassination pieces.

Tyson climbed back into the Jeep and leaned over to talk to the driver. Then the Jeep started to move.

‘Anyone want ice?’ he said, moving towards the door, forcing himself not to hurry. ‘I’m going to get a bucket and stick it on this shitty unit. Might cool us all down a little. Who knows how long we’re going to be stuck here, right?’ He placed the car keys down on the counter by the door and made sure Javier saw him do it.

Javier stared at them. ‘Yeah, ice,’ he said, like it was his idea. He sounded guarded, all the strut ground out of him by the flow of bad news from the TV, his face rippling with drug-tweaked tics and suspicion. He knew that being third cousin — or whatever the hell he was — was going to cut him zero slack in their current situation. Tío’s relatives might get a leg up in the organization, but if they messed up they paid the same price as anyone. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said, like he was in charge.

‘Be right back,’ Mulcahy said, looking out through the window in the door. He watched the Jeep make a right past the reception building and disappear from sight, then he opened the door in a burst of heat and sunlight, stepped outside and closed it quickly behind him.

He forced himself to saunter past the window because he knew Javier would be watching, his amphetamine-sharpened paranoia ready to catch the slightest whiff of haste. It would take ten seconds for the Jeep to clear the east side of the complex and swing back into view; he knew because he’d spent a whole afternoon on a previous stay timing cars, watching the sedans peel off the highway and work their tired way round the one-way system. But if the guys in the Jeep had left a body back at reception they’d be in more of a hurry to get this done and get out.

Call it five seconds.

The moment he cleared the window he took off, running smoothly and keeping low, past the ice-machine in the shadow of the stairwell, feeling in his pocket for a second set of keys.

Four seconds.

The lights flashed on a two-year-old white Chevy Cruze sedan parked near the end of the block, the backup vehicle he had intended to drive away in — the one he still intended to drive away in. It was America’s third most popular car, painted in its favourite colour — utterly unremarkable, totally unmemorable, perfect. He glanced back toward C-block, at the spot where the Jeep would reappear. Still no sign.

Three seconds.

He reached the Chevy and moved along the passenger side, squeezing alongside a Pontiac that had parked too tight against it.

Two.

He grabbed the handle, opened the door and squeezed through the narrow gap and into the car.

One.

He fell into the seat and pulled the door shut, reached down to the side, found the adjustment lever and tugged hard.

Zero.

He leaned back, throwing the seat almost flat and dropping from view just as the black shadow of the Cherokee appeared round the edge of the far building.

He lay there, taking deep breaths. Calming himself. Sweating. The Chevy had been parked out front for most of the day, soaking up the heat until the inside felt like a pizza oven.

The throaty rumble of the Cherokee’s V8 engine drew closer. He could hear it through the thump of his heartbeat and the low whisper of the cars out on the highway. He tried to think himself into the minds of the two men, assuming it was only two. Tyson had already killed the desk clerk, so they were not about stealth and finesse, they were about speed and surprise, which meant they would most likely storm the room. Javier and Carlos would be dead before they even knew what was going down, but the crew would know they were looking for three men so would think he was in the bathroom. One of them would move fast through the smoke-filled room towards it, past the still figures of Carlos and Javier, leading with his gun, maybe firing to keep him pinned down while the other guy — or guys — covered. And that was when he would move. That was his best chance of getting out of this alive.

The Cherokee’s wide wheels swept into a space seven or eight spots short of where he was lying. The engine cut out and there was the muffled clunk of doors opening then the double thud of them closing again at almost the same time.

Two doors. Two men. Maybe one still in the Jeep.

Mulcahy glanced down at the glove box. His Beretta was stashed inside, along with loaded magazines and a sound suppressor. He dearly wanted to feel the comforting weight of it in his hand but he didn’t dare reach for it in case the car moved and someone saw it.

He pictured them outside, walking toward the grey door of room 22. They would be reaching into their jackets, pulling their hands out high to clear the long barrels of their silenced weapons. The lead man would take the key, stolen from the front desk, and fit it in the lock. The other would stay high, checking behind before taking a step away from the wall to get a better angle. He would level his gun at the door, give a nod — then …

There was a loud bang as the room door flew open, then a shout cut short by the staccato taps of rounds hitting thin walls and furniture and everything else in the room.

Mulcahy reached forward, keeping his head below the window. He yanked open the glove box, grabbed the sunglasses case and the duster the gun was wrapped in, then popped his door open and rolled back out onto the narrow strip of hot tarmac between the Chevy and the Pontiac.

The popping of suppressed gunfire stopped and he heard the sound of the TV drift out through the open door. He tipped the gun and a spare magazine from the duster into his hand, stuffed the clip in his back pocket then took the suppressor out of the sunglasses case and fixed it to the barrel of the gun.

The men would be checking the room now, making sure the two men were down. Then they would start searching for the third.

He checked the suppressor was secure, flipped the safety off with his thumb and started making his way round the back of the Chevy, keeping low, heading towards the Jeep the Mexicans had arrived in. The blackened glass made it hard to see inside but there was no one in the driver’s seat and the engine wasn’t running. Two then. You always left the driver behind in a three-man team. He reached the dusty Buick, peered round the edge of it.

The driver was standing inside the open door to the room. He had his back to him, the material of his jacket stretched tight across his shoulders suggesting he was holding a pistol in a double grip. Mulcahy moved forward, keeping low, aiming centre mass, the best percentage shot given the distance and added inaccuracy of a silenced weapon. He couldn’t see into the room but he imagined Tyson would be at the bathroom door now, ready to kick it in and spray rounds into the room. He kept on moving, increasing his odds of a clean shot with every step. Then he heard a voice from inside, a voice he recognized.

‘He went that way.’ Carlos pushed past the driver and pointed along the block where Mulcahy had headed. ‘Said he was gettin’ ice.’

He had a gun in his hand, an un-silenced Glock. It was a three-man team after all.

Mulcahy re-sighted on Carlos’s chest just as his eyes swung round and spotted him. The Glock rose fast but not fast enough. Mulcahy squeezed off two rounds and Carlos twitched twice and spiralled to the ground.

The driver spun round, swinging the long barrel of his pistol to where the shots had come from. Mulcahy hit him with two shots in the chest that knocked him backwards into the room, leaving him half in and half out of the door.

Mulcahy was already moving forward, firing as he went, spreading his shots left, right, level and low, hoping to clip Tyson with at least one of them, or keep him pinned down until he was in the room. He passed through the doorway, stepping over the driver and opened his eyes wide to adjust for the dark interior.

Javier was lying dead in the far corner, a smear of blood on the wall behind him. No sign of Tyson. Mulcahy dropped down to the side, behind the bed, making use of its limited cover. He kept his gun and eyes on the bathroom door.

The TV cast a flickering light into the dark of the room and the modulated tones of the news report filled the silence. Mulcahy listened through it for breathing, or the snick of a gun being reloaded. He thought about shooting out the TV so he could hear better but he had already used ten rounds and his Beretta only held eleven. He needed to reload but Tyson might know that and be waiting in the bathroom, listening out for the snick of a magazine release, ready to capitalize on the few seconds Mulcahy would be unarmed.

He glanced at the two men sprawled in the doorway: Carlos on his back, his eyes open and staring up at the water-stained ceiling; the driver lying across him, legs sticking out the door where anyone could see them. He needed to get him inside and out of sight but couldn’t risk it until Tyson was dealt with. He reached for the spare magazine and switched his attention back to the far end of the room.

There was no blood around the bathroom door or on the white tiles of the kitchenette, and if he’d clipped him there should be. He would expect to hear something too, the laboured breathing of someone fighting pain and going into shock. There was always the chance he had killed him outright and the impact had spun him into the bathroom, but he didn’t believe in luck and he knew better than to rely on it. He’d seen too many people lying dead with looks of surprise on their faces.

He held the spare magazine up in front of him and sighted on a spot by the bathroom door, four feet up and a foot away from the wall. He took a deep breath to steady his breathing, blew it out slowly then moved his thumb across to the magazine release button and pressed it.

The magazine slid cleanly out with a distinctive snicking sound, a blur of movement appeared in his sights and Mulcahy fired his last bullet. He dropped down, rolled on to his side, jammed the fresh magazine into the empty slot then flicked the safety off and peered through the gap between the base of the bed and the floor. Through the twisted condom wrappers and dust bunnies he could make out a dark shape over by the bathroom door, dragging itself across the floor towards a gun lying on the tiles a few feet away.

Mulcahy sprang up, swinging the Beretta round as he cleared the top of the mattress. He fired two rounds. The first caught Tyson between his shoulders in a puff of white padding and pink mist. The second hit him in the back of the head and sent a small section of his skull spinning across the tile to the far wall. Mulcahy waited until it stopped spinning then moved to the centre of the room. He grabbed the remote from the bed and muted the sound on the TV so he could hear sirens or anything else heading his way. He tossed his gun on the bed and hauled Carlos inside first, dumping him next to Javier before grabbing the arms of the driver. He was heavier than Carlos and he had to tug hard to get him moving. Something cracked in the man’s chest and a yelp of pain squeaked out of him.

Mulcahy dropped the man’s arms like they were snakes, grabbed his Beretta from the bed and pointed it down at the driver. Blood was leaking out of a chest wound that was gently rising and falling. He was breathing.

The driver was still alive.

19

The ambulance screamed to a halt in the shade of the billboard and medics and doctors swarmed around it. Everyone else stood back, grimly fascinated by what would emerge from inside and frightened at the same time.

Solomon knew what was coming. The strangely familiar smell of charred flesh had already told him. It warned him exactly how bad it was going to be too. The siren cut out and was replaced by a howl that came from inside the ambulance.

‘Here —’ Billy Walker appeared at his side and handed Solomon a starter cap, his attention fixed on the ambulance. ‘Best I could do. Got you some boots too.’

‘Thank you.’ Solomon took them and inspected the cap. It had a red flower logo and the name of a weedkiller on it. He pulled it over his head, folding the peak round with his hands until he was looking at the ambulance through an arc of shadow.

‘You should use this too —’ Walker handed him a tube of heavy-duty sunscreen squeezed almost empty.

The howl doubled in volume with the opening doors and there was a clatter of tubular steel as a man, or what remained of one, was pulled from the ambulance. He lay twisted and charred on starched white sheets, his whole body shaking, his hands baked to talons by furnace heat and clawing at the smoke-filled air above him while the inhuman noise howled from the seared ruin of his throat.

‘Jesus,’ Walker said, his voice flat with horror. ‘I think that’s Bobby Gallagher. He was driving the grader.’ The medics wheeled the gurney to a covered area and doctors clustered round him. ‘You reckon they can save him?’

Solomon squeezed sunblock from the tube and rubbed some on to his neck and the back of his hands, disliking the greasy feel of it but disliking the growing itch of sunburn even more. ‘Not a chance,’ he said.

Bobby Gallagher stared up at the ring of faces crowding over him. Worried eyes stared down.

A doctor leaned in, his face filling his vision. His mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear what he was saying. Too much noise. Someone screaming close by. Someone in pain. At least he didn’t feel nuthin’. That was good, wasn’t it? Surely that was a good thing.

A penlight snapped on, shining in his eye and making the world turn bright and milky, like everyone was wrapped in white smoke … smoke …

The fire …

He had seen the flames curling towards him, the desert writhing in heat like the surface of the sun. The fire running alongside him, chased by the wind, leaping from shrub to shrub like a living thing. Never seen fire race so fast, faster than that old grader, that was for sure, but not as fast as that Dodge he’d had his eye on, the silver-grey one with the smoked windows and the V8 under the hood. That would have evened the race out some. Would have bought it too, taken the hit on the finance and all, if he hadn’t been saving for something else. He wanted to see old man Tucker’s face at summer’s end when he cashed in all the extra shift hours he was pulling and slipped that big ole ring on to Ellie’s finger. Eighteen-carat yellow-gold band with a one-carat, heart-cut diamond right in the centre: three and a half grand cold, every cent he had in the world and all of it for Ellie — fuck old man Tucker, the way he treated him, like he wasn’t good enough to even speak his daughter’s name.

The penlight snapped off and the doctor leaned in, his mouth moving again, everything slow like he was underwater. Still couldn’t hear a damn thing, what with that howling. He’d heard something like it before and the memory of it needled into making him shake with more than cold.

When he was eight his daddy had taken him hunting. They’d tracked a big old mule deer out into the desert for almost three hours and when they caught up with it his daddy had handed him the rifle. It was that old Remington, the one that hung above the fire with the walnut stock worn smooth at the neck by the bristled cheeks of his daddy and his daddy before that: beautiful rifle, but heavy, and tight on the trigger.

Maybe it had been the weight of it or the excitement of being handed something he’d only ever seen in a man’s hand before, but when he beaded up on that big old bull his heart had pounded so hard he felt sure the deer must be able to hear it even with him two hundred yards away. It had lifted its head and sniffed the air, its haunches tightening as it readied to run. He snatched the shot just as it moved, missed the heart and punched a hole right through its belly. Gut shot or not, that thing took off, blood pumping out all over the desert, innards flyin’ out behind it like streamers. His daddy said nothing, just grabbed that rifle back and took off after it, carrying it as easy in his hand as it had sat so heavy in his.

The blood trail was wet and bright against the dry orange earth. And the deer howled as it ran, a great bellowing noise, like fury and pain mixed together. Ever after, when he sat on the hard wooden pews in the cool dark of the church and heard the reverend deliver his ‘hell and damnation’ sermons he would remember that noise. It was like he imagined hell must sound, the echoing tormented howl of a soul trapped deep underground — the same thing he was hearing now.

The doctor leaned in again, swimming down through the milky air. He still couldn’t catch what he was saying. He tried to tell him he couldn’t hear above the howling, managed to snatch a ragged breath and the noise stopped. He made to speak and it started up again even louder than before, so loud he could feel it deep within his chest. Then he realized where the sound was coming from, and began to cry.

They had caught up with the deer not so far up the track from where he’d shot it, down on its front knees like it was praying. He wanted to shoot it and put it out of its pain, but his daddy had the gun and he daren’t ask him for it. They stood a ways back, watching it trying to get up and run, eyes rolling in its skull, and that awful sound coming out of it. He had turned to look away but his daddy put his hand on the top of his head and twisted it back round again.

You need to watch this, he’d said. You need to watch this and remember. This is what happens when you don’t do a thing right. This is what happens when you fuck somethin’ up.

The jolt of him cussing like that, his best-suit-on-a-Sunday daddy who he’d never even heard say ‘damn’ before that day had been more shocking than the sight of the dying deer or the noise it made while it was about it.

I’m sorry, Daddy, he whispered now, and the faces moved closer as the howl took the rough form of his words.

I think he’s calling for his daddy, the doctor said.

Bobby, we’re doing everything we can for you, OK? Just hang in there.

He had been trying to steer away from the fire but the damn grader could only run over the flat land and the contours had kept him too close. He’d seen a place to turn ahead of him and he’d kept his eyes focused on it, too focused to notice the wall of flame sweeping in from his left. He could have jumped and run but he didn’t. He knew they needed the grader to draw the fire line and help save the town. Might be old man Tucker would show him some respect if he came out of this a hero.

The heat had closed round him like a fist, the skin on his knuckles bubbling where they curled around the wheel. He’d kept his eyes ahead of him and his foot on the gas, holding his breath like he was deep underwater and kicking for the surface. He’d known that if he breathed in, the flames would get inside him and he would drown in that fire, so he had held on, thoughts of Ellie and diamond rings running through his head until he reached the turn and steered the grader away and out of the fire. He didn’t remember much else.

He looked up into the doctor’s face now and realized that the fact he could feel no pain was actually a very bad thing. He didn’t care for himself. It was Ellie he felt bad for. Maybe old man Tucker was right, maybe she was better off without him. He had spent his life running away from that sound, the sound of failure and pain, and now it was coming out of him.

I’m sorry, he said, I messed up. I messed it all up.

Then the pale man stepped into view.

20

Mulcahy moved to the door, keeping as far from the wounded driver as he could. He checked outside, scanning the parking lot and all the curtained windows to see if any were twitching.

Nothing.

He closed the door. Pulled the heavy drapes across the window then turned his attention back to the man on the floor.

The driver was lying on his back, lit by the glow from the TV, the flickering-fire images making it appear he was smouldering. He moaned softly, a slow creaking sound that came from somewhere deep inside him. His hands clutched at his chest wound, working at the sodden material of his shirt and squeezing foamy blood between his fingers. A second wound oozed in his gut, soaking his shirt further, the blood looking black in the darkness of the room.

Mulcahy crouched down, keeping his gun pointed at the man’s head. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘can you hear me?’ The man’s eyes opened a little. ‘What’s your name?’

The driver’s lips pulled back in a grimace. ‘Luis,’ he said through bloodied teeth.

‘Hi, Luis, I’m Mike. Listen, I’m not going to dick you around and tell you everything’s going to be fine, because it’s not. You’ve been hit in the chest and the stomach and you’re bleeding out fast. The good news is the blood loss won’t kill you, but that’s only because the stomach acids leaking into your body cavity or the blood filling your lungs will get you first. But if you get medical help in the next ten minutes or so I reckon you have a pretty good chance of surviving.’ He took his phone from his pocket and held it where Luis could see it. ‘You want me to call an ambulance, Luis?’

Luis shivered like he was cold, though the room was hot from the door standing open so long. He managed another nod.

‘Good.’ Mulcahy leaned down. ‘Then tell me who sent you.’

Luis closed his eyes tight and a groan wheezed from his throat. He took a breath and the wound made a slurping sound as it sucked air. ‘Fuck you,’ he said, then pain clamped his mouth shut again.

Mulcahy nodded slowly. ‘Look at you. Big strong guy, sucking up the pain, keeping it together in the face of death. It’s impressive, really. Impressive but pointless. Because if you don’t talk to me you’ll die right here in this room and I’ll put the word out that you talked anyway. So you can either talk and live a little longer, maybe a lot longer, or you can hang tough, stay silent and die right here for nothing.’

Luis stared out through the wet slits of his eyelids, weighing up what Mulcahy had said. Mulcahy knew from the many situations he’d been in before that they had reached a tipping point, the moment when a subject would decide to talk or clam up for good. Sometimes the best thing to do was shut up and let the subject slide into talking; other people needed a little help, one last nudge to push them over on to the side of cooperation. The trick was knowing what sort of person you were dealing with. Luis was clearly the strong silent type, a man of few words, probably the sort who was happy to stay silent while others did the talking. So that’s exactly what Mulcahy did.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, speaking low and intimate. ‘I’ll say a name and you nod if it’s the right one, OK? That way if you get out of this alive and anyone asks, you can tell them you never talked and you won’t be lying.’ Luis’s eyes were starting to glaze. In a minute or two he wouldn’t be able to say anything at all. ‘Was it Tío? Did Papa Tío send you?’

Luis didn’t move. He just kept staring through the slits of his eyes.

‘You hear what I said: did Papa Tío send you?’

Luis took a sucking breath, closed his eyes against the pain, then shook his head, a slow movement that made him screw his eyes tight with the effort.

Mulcahy sat back on his heels and glanced over at Carlos lying nearby, a surprised expression on his dead face. Ever since Carlos had appeared in the doorway with a gun in his hand he had suspected Papa Tío was not behind this. Tío would never trust a stranger over a blood relative for something like this.

He turned back to Luis to try a new name on him but saw it was already too late. The man’s eyes had rolled back into his head, his mouth opening and closing but the wound in his chest no longer sucking. He was drowning or suffocating, trying to breathe but getting nothing. He breathed out one last rattling breath and his mouth went slack. Mulcahy pressed two fingers into his neck and felt nothing.

He lifted Luis’s left arm and pulled the sleeve of his jacket back as far as it would go. His left forearm was almost entirely covered by a large, colourful tattoo of Santa Muerte — the saint of death — her grinning skeletal face framed by the hood of a long robe, her bony hands holding a globe and a scythe. This told him nothing; plenty of Mexican gang members had tattoos of Santa Muerte — but his right arm told a different story.

The wrist was encircled by a barbed-wire design, showing Luis had served jail time, and above it was a carefully inked column of Roman numerals — one to four — next to the outline of a gun with the barrel pointing down towards the hand. It showed that Luis was a shooter, a dedicated hit man for the cartels, and the numerals showed how many high-level hits he had carried out. There were notches on the barrel too: fifteen marks scratched into the skin with a needle and ink showing lesser kills, soldiers and civilians taken out in the usual course of business and recorded in a casual way that reflected their lesser importance. They reminded Mulcahy of the mission decals he’d seen on the planes earlier — same principle, different war. Only one gang used Roman numerals to record their high-level kills, a nod to the Catholic faith they professed to defend and honour: the Latin Saints — Papa Tío’s main rivals.

Mulcahy took his phone from his pocket to take a photo and saw he had one message — Pop: Missed Call. He breathed a little easier when he read it. Once he was clear of this mess he’d call him back, but first he had to clean up.

He took a picture of Luis’s forearm then checked to make sure it was in focus. The first three numerals were solid black but the fourth was only an outline, ready to be inked once the hit had been carried out. There was only one person who would warrant the high status of a numeral and it wasn’t him or Javier.

It all made sense now — Carlos being the insider instead of Javier. Carlos wasn’t the hit man, he was a plant, a human homing beacon with his phone transmitting their location to the real kill crew. That’s why he had been so edgy. He had known what was coming. He was probably only doing it to pay off some debt, betraying one set of killers to appease another and trading one shitty situation for a slightly less shitty one. Mulcahy knew all about that kind of deal. He slid his phone back into his pocket and rose to his feet.

He worked quickly by the flickering glow of the TV, pulled the duster from his back pocket and wiped down all the places he’d touched since entering the room. He took a few more pictures then grabbed Javier’s gold- and jewel-encrusted phone and a plastic laundry sack from the closet and started collecting the guns.

Luis and Tyson had both been carrying FN Five-sevens, known as Mata policiers or cop killers because of their ability to penetrate body-armour. They had two spare magazines each in their jacket pockets and almost a thousand dollars in cash. He found the keys to the other Jeep in Luis’s pocket and took those too. Javier had a knife tucked inside his boot. Mulcahy dropped it into the sack with the rest of the weapons, twisted it closed then pulled his phone from his pocket, found the missed call message and selected ‘recall’.

He stood by the door a moment, scanning the room and checking it over for anything he might have overlooked. His eyes settled on the TV screen where the desert still burned. A reporter was talking about the plane crash that had caused it. The strap beneath him said they were getting reports of a possible survivor. Mulcahy took an involuntary step forward, not quite believing what he was reading, then the phone clicked and someone picked up.

‘Hello,’ a voice said. It was not his father.

21

Solomon looked down at the burned man on the stretcher.

The medics were still trauma focused: elevating the blackened horror of his legs, taking his temperature with a non-contact digital thermometer, covering him with sterile sheets to prevent heat-loss and hypothermia, talking to him the whole time, telling him he was doing OK, telling him to hang in there, that they were going to airlift him to some specialist unit in Maricopa. They were too preoccupied to notice Solomon standing there, a stranger in their midst. But the burned man saw him. He stared directly up through milky eyes that might once have been pale blue.

The vitreous liquid in the human eye is protein, Solomon’s mind told him. When you heat it up it goes white like a boiled egg.

He surveyed the wreckage of the man, his blackened body curling into a foetal position, the result of muscle contraction caused by intense heat. The medics were cutting away what was left of his clothes before the cooked flesh beneath swelled too much and turned them into tourniquets.

Solomon held the man’s eyes and smiled. The smell of him was overpowering, an almost sweet, burnt barbecue smell of human flesh, so reminiscent of pork that in some cannibalistic tribes, humans were referred to as long pigs. He reached out and gently took one of the blackened stumps of the man’s hands, his own perfect white skin making the ruined claw seem all the more tragic in contrast.

‘Hey!’ the voice came sharp and angry. ‘Step away right now! Do not touch the patient.’

Solomon gripped the man’s hand more firmly, knowing it would cause him no pain. He could feel the splits in the baked skin and see distal phalanx bones poking out through the charred, dead flesh of his finger ends. Such acute damage would have destroyed all the nerve endings so he would never feel pain or indeed anything in this hand ever again. But he held it anyway in such a way that the burned man could see it, even if he couldn’t feel it.

‘You need to step aside, sir.’

‘What you’re doing is a waste of time,’ Solomon said, his eyes never leaving the burned man’s face.

‘I’ll be the judge of whether I’m wasting my time or not.’

‘I wasn’t talking about your time,’ Solomon said, ‘I was talking about his.’

Morgan stepped up behind him and laid a heavy hand on Solomon’s arm. ‘You need to let go and step away from here, let the doctors get on with their jobs.’

‘You know the rule of nines, I assume?’ Solomon asked the doctor.

‘Excuse me?’

‘The rule of nines — you assign a factor of nine to different areas of the body to quickly assess the severity of burn trauma.’

‘I know what the rule of nines is.’

‘And have you applied it to this patient?’

‘Mr Creed,’ Chief Morgan said. ‘I ain’t gonna ask you again.’

‘Wait,’ the doctor said, regarding the man on the stretcher afresh. His arrival had been so fast that he had clicked into autopilot, falling back on his core training, checking the patient’s airway, his breathing, making sure his legs were elevated and he was getting fluids. There wasn’t much else he could do; they weren’t set up for serious burns trauma. He was only doing what he could to stabilize him before sending him on to the specialist unit. He turned to Chief Morgan. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘We’re OK here.’

Morgan looked like he had just been slapped, but removed his hand from Solomon’s shoulder and stepped away.

‘How do you know the rule of nines?’ the doctor asked, turning to Solomon.

‘I don’t know,’ Solomon said, all his concentration fixed on the eyes of the man whose ruined hand he held.

The man looked down at him, his eyes dove grey, his skin and hair white as clouds. He looked so extraordinary that Bobby wondered if he was imagining him. But the doctor spoke and the man answered with a soft voice that sounded like it was coming from a long way off then smiled down at him and took his hand, and leaned down until his face was all Bobby could see.

You are close, he said with that soft, calm voice. You know what I mean by that?

Bobby tried to nod but his neck was too stiff. Stiff as wood.

The man tilted his head to the side, like he’d spotted something curious in him.

Are you afraid?

Bobby turned the question over in his mind like he was checking the blade of his knife. He did feel a little afraid, but not out-and-out scared like he had been at different times in his life, like when his mom told him she had cancer and was going to die and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it. The thing he felt most was regret. He regretted he would never see Ellie again, or be there to help guide her through life. He regretted he would not be there to hold her and tell her it was OK when she heard the news of what had happened to him, stupid as that sounded.

It was too fast.

The pale man leaned in closer, turning his head to catch the whisper of his words.

What was too fast?

Something in the fire. Something alive. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her it’s all right. Tell her she’ll be all right. Tell her …

Tell me her name, the man said. I’ll tell her she was in your thoughts and that hers was the last name you spoke.

The voice was like warm water being poured over his head.

Ellie Tucker, he said, and a shiver ran through him that made the gurney shake. He wanted to close his eyes but he didn’t want to stop staring at the man either. There was something compelling about him, like staring into deep water. He didn’t feel afraid any more and he didn’t feel sad either. He felt like he was weightless and this man was the only thing stopping him from floating up into the sky.

I’m sorry, Ellie, he said again. Then he closed his eyes — and let go.