bumped down a low dip, then settled into a rut.
'You know what's depressing?' he said. 'I think I'm the only person from my graduating class who's still here, Everyone else has moved out of town, moved onward and upwaro. 'Yeah, and they're working
'Windowless offices I breathing smoggy air, driving in horrendous traffic, and living in crowded apartment complexes. You're lucky.' knock off the back-to-nature crop.'
'You are. I mean, you're well respected, important, in a position of authority. You live in a beautiful area--'
'It's a desert.'
'It's a beautiful desert. Look at that sky. Look at those buttes.
This is the kind of scenery that photographer., make calendars out of. Raw beauty.'
I 'You're so full of shit.'
Rich grinned. 'You'd better be nice to me. You want me to start trying to talk some sense into Pee Wee again;
You want us to get into abortion? Busing? Affirmative Ac. fion? The ERA?'
I 'Don't bait him. He's an old man.'
'Answer me, then. Where else would you get to pi off truckers just for the hell of it? And ticket people yo don't like?'
Robert nodded. 'This is true. i 'See? You're not so bad off.'
The road curved around a low cactus-covered hill, the headed straight for a narrow opening between two lightl' striated cliffs, the western entrance of Caballo Canyon Nothing was said between them, no words were spoken but the mood in the car grew palpably more somber as the car fell under the blue shadow of the buttes.
Robert glanced over at his brother. 'You still don't think it's a vampire, do you?'
'Not this again.'
'Tell me how a human being could suck every last drop of blood and piss and spit and everything else from four people, six horses, and God knows how many other animals through holes in their necks.' He shook his head. 'You know how you always said you hated horror movies because the people in them were so stupid? They'd hear screams at night and say their house was just settling, or they'd find a friend's body torn apart by a monster and then split up to see if they could find the creature? You always said you hated those movies because the people in them didn't act the way real people would act. Well, you're acting just like one of those people in a monster movie.'
He'd expected an argument, had half hoped for an argument, wanting desperately to be wrong and to be proved wrong. But Rich nodded wearily. 'You're right 'I am?'
'I suppose your vampire theory's as good as any other. Probably better than most.' The car bumped over a particularly big pothole, bottoming out, and he put a hand on the shaking dashboard to steady himself.
'Tell me this. Do you think Pee Wee's going to buy the vampire idea?'
'I have no idea. But I thought, at the very least, that he might be able to tell us something we don't know. Maybe this has happened before, and it was all covered up. Maybe the town was built on burial grounds or something.'
Rich shook his head. 'What don't we know about this town? We've lived here all our lives. I'm the editor of the paper; you're the police chief. You think there's some deep dark secret that's been hidden from us all these years?'
'I don't know. I'm just throwing out ideas.' 'Well, throw that one out for sure. It's stupid.' 'We'll see.'
The bloom of summer was still visible on the low upward sloping floor of the canyon, the pink cactus flowers land tiny yellow blossoms of brittle bush not yet having gotten word that winter had arrived. The road hugged the southern butte as the canyon opened out, widening into a plain that flattened into desert a few miles eastward. From here they could already see the pointed triangular contours of Pee Wee's home and, next to it, his old metal windmill, silhouetted against the morning sun, tail pointed east, vanes, turning slowly in the nearly nonexistent desert wind.
Robert honked three times and gave a short whoop of the siren to let the old chief know they were coming, although he had no doubt seen the growing dust cloud kicked up by the car. The sound echoed off the rock walls, loud even with the windows up.
'What if he's not home?' Rich said.
'I called. Besides, he's always home.'
There was a corral close by the house, a square patch of dry tramped dirt fenced in by four irregular posts and a single strip of barbed wire, and within the corral, a bony horse stood on the hard ground, staring southward.
Robert parked the car next to the west side of the corral, and the two of them got out simultaneously. Pee Wee was already walking toward them from the house, grinning hugely. 'Glad to see you boys. It's been a while.'
'glad to see you, too,' Robert said, extending his hand.
Pee Wee shook the proffered palm. 'Not a bad grip,' he commented. 'The job hasn't let you go too far to seed.' He nodded to Rich. 'Good thing your brother called first instead of just dropping by like he usually does. I was all set to go rabbit hunting this morning.'
Robert spat in the dirt. 'Out by Dry Beaver Creek?' 'Yeah.' Pee Wee chuckled, shook his head. 'Dry Bea ver Creek. Whoever thought of that name? It had to be a joke.'
'Maybe they were thinking of your sister.'
'Or mama.' your
Rich smiled politely, not joining in. He never had gone in for this sort of macho camaraderie, and he didn't know how to do it. Even witnessing it made him slightly uncomfortable.
'It's chilly out here this morning.' Pee Wee nodded toward the house.
'Let's go inside, have some coffee, talk.'
Robert grinned. 'I hear you.'
The two of them started walking, Rich following only a few steps behind.
Pee Wee spat. 'So the feds're tryin' to horn in on your territory, huh?'
'Not only trying,' Robert said. 'Succeeding.'
'Can't say that ever happened to me. Nothin' big enough ever occurred here in my day to interest the feds.' 'But if it had?'
'I woulda fought 'em tooth and nail.'
'My approach exactly.'
'I hate to bring reality into this,' Rich said, catching up and drawing even. 'But the important thing is that the murderer get caught, not who catches him. The way you're talking, I can just see you and Rossiter hoarding information, not sharing things with each other, trying to be the first to crack the case.'
'Yeah, right,' Robert said.
'He has a point,' the ex-chief nodded gravely. 'Your first duty is to your office, not your ego.'
'I know that. But the two aren't mutually exclusive.'
They walked into the house. The small narrow entryway opened onto a huge living room with a vaulted ceiling nearly two stories high. One whole wall of the room was an eastward-facing window that offered a truly spectacular view of the open desert past the canyon.
Pee Wee excused himself, went into the kitchen to get the coffee, and Rich and Robert walked silently around the big room, examining the new mirrors hanging on the wall opposite the window. The reflection of the desert in the angular hexagons and parallelograms gave the already oversize room an aura of true vastness, making the house seem as though it were suspended in air high above the sand.
A collection of hunting trophies adorned the stone fire place to the left of the mirrors, and when the old man returned, carrying mugs of black Yuban, Robert pointed up at the mounted head of a javelina. 'Is that new?'
Pee Wee shook his head. 'I ain't got nothing new for weeks now. The game source has pretty well dried up around here. I know there's been a drought for the past few years, but this is getting ridiculous. I haven't seen shit but lizards, vultures, and an occasional rabbit for the past month. Even the damn coyotes are playing possum.'
Robert and Rich looked at each other.
