bag and the Jeep suddenly skidded to a stop.
Wyetta was swearing. Loudly. But the wailing siren was louder and they couldn’t turn it off because the air bags were in the way and neither one of them could see the dashboard. Wyetta was cussing a blue streak, but Rorie didn’t dare say a word. The truth was that she was almost too scared to breathe.
The air bags deflated. Waves of gravestone-colored sand blasted the Jeep. A suicidal tumbleweed raced through the storm and exploded against the windshield, little stick shards making spidery scratching sounds.
The sticks scratching, Wyetta’s cussing, the siren-every sound was muffled by the ringing in Rorie’s head. The sheriff squirmed in her seat and flicked off the siren. The deputy hung sideways in the cab, suspended by her seat belt. Rorie turned with some effort, saw steel-colored clouds boiling overhead through the passenger window.
“Can you get the door open?” Wyetta asked.
Rorie didn’t answer. But she wanted out. She didn’t care how hard the damn wind was blowing. The seat belt was cutting into her belly like a backstreet abortionist’s scalpel. The shoulder strap had wrenched her shoulder and chafed her neck. She felt like a crash-test dummy strung up by some automotive lynch mob.
The cab closed in on her. She could sense it getting smaller as the storm grew stronger.
Rorie kept her eye on the window, on the sky above. Those steel clouds were going to fall out of the sky and crush the Ranger flatter than flat. She was sure of it.
Panic knotted her chest. She had to start moving.
She managed to open the door. She couldn’t unfasten her seatbelt and ended up cutting it with her pocket knife, at which point she dropped on top of Wyetta, who unleashed a fresh torrent of expletives.
Rorie didn’t give a shit anymore. Wyetta’s words couldn’t hurt her. Not the words themselves. But she could smell the drunken breath that carried those words, and that breath burned in her lungs like hellfire as she gasped for fresh air.
The two women scrambled out of the Jeep. Both of them were okay. Nothing more than a few bumps and bruises. Wyetta jumped off the passenger side of the Jeep and started jogging up the road. She didn’t even break stride. The only thing Rorie could do was follow.
The wind lashed her, and the blowing sand slapped her with callused intensity. Rorie squinted into the storm. She could hardly see Graceland at all. And Wyetta stood next to her, but she looked like a ghost. Suddenly, Rorie worried that the storm would tear Wyetta apart and the wind would steal her away.
“You see Komoko’s car?” Wyetta yelled.
“No.” Rorie answered. “You think he saw us? You think he heard the siren?”
“I don’t think he could have seen anything in this goddamn bliz-”
Wyetta’s words died in her throat. Just ahead, twin fireballs raced through the storm-a pair of headlights coming straight for them.
Rorie hit the dirt and rolled through a tangle of stunted mesquite. Wyetta held her ground, opening fire with her.44 American.
One of the fireballs died. The other stopped moving as Wyetta squeezed off her last shot.
Rorie couldn’t believe that Wyetta had actually hit the driver, not in this concrete wind. But the surviving headlight remained motionless, and there was no arguing with that.
Rorie stood and drew her pistol. Wyetta was suddenly at her side, reloading her.44.
The wind tore at them.
They both knew what they had to do.
Together, they raced toward the light, firing their weapons but hearing nothing more than the angry scream of the concrete blizzard.
The car was empty.
Wyetta dipped her head inside.
“He took the keys,” she yelled.
“No he didn’t.” Rorie stood at the rear of the car. The keys were in the trunk. And the trunk was open.
Wyetta swore. “He’s got the money. He’s rabbiting.”
Once more, they reloaded their guns. Rorie’s fingers wouldn’t move right. She gave up with only five shells in the clip, jammed it into the butt of her automatic. The crash, the storm, the gunshots. . she was numb. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. She felt dead, and the wind was shoveling dirt over her, a boot hill of dirt blowing out of the night sky.
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just wanted to stand there in the storm, and take it, and wait for it to finish her off.
But Wyetta was moving. “This way,” she yelled. “He’s gotta be heading back to Graceland. It’s the only shelter for miles.”
Rorie sucked a deep breath and tasted that boot hill dirt on her tongue.
She swallowed hard.
If she didn’t move, she’d lose Wyetta in the concrete night.
She moved.
They stood by the grave. A warm breath of wind washed Rorie’s forehead. Tonight it was so very quiet. Almost peaceful.
“It has to be here,” Wyetta said. God, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “Wyatt spelled it out on the Ouija board. EAP. . TCB.”
She pointed at the big bronze marker. Rorie stared at it. The grave of Elvis Aron Presley.
EAP. . TCB. Rorie wondered if the Ouija board had really spelled out those letters for Wyetta. She decided that it really didn’t matter. Even if the board had spelled out the message, the fingers on the heart-shaped cedar planchette belonged to Wyetta, and Wyetta already knew about the grave marker, which was a twin to the marker at the real Graceland. The message could be nothing more than a trick of the sheriff’s subconscious mind.
“Damn!” Wyetta said. “Check this out, cowgirl!”
Wyetta was kneeling at the bottom corner of the marker. She slipped one Annie Oakley-gloved hand into a hole. Elbow deep, then further.
“Maybe it’s only some jackrabbit’s burrow.”
“Looks a little bit wide for that.” Wyetta grunted. “But it doesn’t matter if it is. Komoko could have jammed the money into it during the storm. Damn hole probably filled up with sand that night, anyway. Maybe the storm buried his loot for him.”
Rorie could see that Wyetta was probably right about that last part. Fresh sand was heaped around the edge of the hole. Maybe the storm
If that was true, someone else had already emptied it.
Or
“Be careful,” Rorie warned. “You don’t know what the hell’s down there.”
Wyetta’s eyes gleamed. “Yes I do.”
Her arm traveled deeper. Almost up to the shoulder. “Whatever made this hole did a damn good job- practically hollowed out the area under the marker. Damn. I wish my arm was longer. .”
Rorie stared at the fresh dirt heaped around the hole. She spotted a boot print pressed in the soft sand. The pattern wasn’t anything like Wyetta’s Noconas, or the Tony Lamas Rorie was wearing. The print didn’t look like one of Ellis’s motorcycle boots, either.
“The money isn’t here, Wyetta.”
“Hold your horses, cowgirl. It’s got to be here. Maybe Komoko shoved it in real good with a branch or something. Maybe what we need to do is get a truck with a winch on it. Haul this goddamn hunk of bronze out of the way and-”
Rumbling thunder slapped the sheriff’s words.
Rorie looked to the heavens.
