afternoon. But Brackeen, standing just beyond the front counter, listening intently to a crackling voice that originated in the state capital, was not in the least interested in what lay outside the window; he had far more important things on his mind than the capriciousness of shadows.
He had made his decision.
He was in it now, he was in it all the way.
The crackling voice stopped talking, finally, and Brackeen muttered a thanks and dropped the phone back into its cradle. He turned to look at the tall, rangy figure of Cuenca Seco’s night deputy, Cal Demeter. “I’ll take any calls that come in myself—for a while anyway. I’ll be in my office.”
Demeter nodded sourly. He did not care for Brackeen at all, and the less contact he had with him the better he liked it; but it was past six-thirty now, an hour and a half since Brackeen had officially gone off duty, and he was still hanging around, throwing out orders. It wasn’t like Brackeen, not that slob. Neither was it like him to jump all over Forester the way he’d done at five o’clock, telling him he was a snot-nosed bright-face with a lot to learn about being a cop, telling him he was sick and tired of his half-assed opinions and smart-assed remarks, telling him to get the hell home and not to go out tonight because he wanted Forester on stand-by. And all because the kid had done a little more bragging about finding this dead guy, Perrins, at Del’s Oasis the day before. That fat son of a bitch had something biting him, biting him so hard it was going to bite him right out of a job. Forester was one of Lydell’s fair-haired boys, the kind of kid who could hold a grudge, too, and he didn’t like Brackeen any more than Demeter did. Lard-belly had made a big mistake opening up to Forester like that, sure and sweet enough he had; wouldn’t be long now before he’d have to find some other source besides the county to pay for his beer and his whores in Kehoe City...
Brackeen went into his partitioned cubicle across the office. He sat down behind his desk and lit a cigarette and stared at the clock on the wall without seeing it. He had enough facts now to be fairly sure of the validity of the conclusions he had formed earlier that afternoon, conclusions which had forced his decision to involve himself. Carefully, he went over all of it in his mind.
Item: one Triumph TR-6, registered to a Daryl Setlak in New York City. But Setlak was a college kid who had sold the Triumph three weeks before, for cash, to a Manhattan used-car dealer; it had obviously been purchased since then, but the bureaucratic red tape involved in any state or federal agency had delayed the entry into the records of the new owner. A telephone call to the used-car dealership had gone unanswered; with the three-hour time difference in the East, it had been past six there when Brackeen called and the place was obviously closed for the night. An appeal had been made to the New York police, but there was no report from them as yet; the current owner of the TR-6 was still unknown. And still missing. All he knew was that the car had been ambushed, fired upon with some kind of high-powered weapon. Later it had been pushed or driven into the dry wash, so as to hide it, apparently, from view of anyone passing on the road.
Item: one Buick Electra hardtop, current model, rented in the capital two days ago by a man named Standish, who had possessed a valid Illinois driver’s license and other necessary identification. The name was being checked through Illinois channels; no report as yet. Except for a small empty case under the front seat, passenger side—and two expensive suitcases, containing quality men’s clothing in two different sizes but nothing which could be used for immediate identification purposes—the car had been clean. Fingerprints were possible, but since Lydell had refused to listen to a request to send Hollowell and his equipment to Cuenca Seco, the interior had not been dusted as yet.
Item: a dead man who had used the name A1 Perrins and whose effects had borne out that identity—but whose fingerprints were those of a man named George Lassiter, a native of St. Louis, two convictions for the sale and possession of narcotics, one in 1951 and the other in 1957. Lassiter was or had been a purported member of the Organization, but was rumored to have severed his affiliations recently by mutual consent. But he had been shot six times in the chest, all six bullets within a five-inch radius, and that was a mark of a contracted professional hit.
Item: a man named Jack Lennox, the drifter, whose fingerprints—taken from the oasis and the overnight bag found in the storeroom there—revealed him to be a fugitive from justice in the Pacific Northwest. He was wanted for assault and battery, and for assault with intent to commit murder, both charges having been filed by his ex-wife; he was also wanted for nonpayment of alimony to the same ex-wife. At present he, too, was still missing; law enforcement agencies had been alerted in a dozen western states, asking his detainment for questioning in connection with the Perrins/Lassiter murder, but there had been no reports to date on his possible whereabouts.
Item: the owner of the Triumph, gender unknown, presence in this area unknown but thought to be innocent—a tourist, or perhaps an artist or writer on assignment if the notebook and sketch pad discovered in the Triumph were indicative of profession. Current whereabouts also unknown.
Item: a man named Standish, hirer of the Buick. Presence in this area unknown. Current whereabouts unknown.
Add it all up and what did you get? A connection. A corroboration of the idea Brackeen had had all along that Perrins/Lassiter had been murdered by a pair-figuring two now, from the suitcases in the Buick’s trunk—of professional sluggers. Extrapolating: Lennox had witnessed the killing of Lassiter, and had run, and had given himself away in the process. He had gone straight across the desert, maybe with close pursuit. Somewhere along the abandoned road he had met the Triumph’s owner and talked him into a ride out. The sluggers had discovered this in some way and ambushed the TR-6, but the bullets and the subsequent crash had failed to do the job for them; Lennox and the car’s owner had managed to escape, again with close pursuit. And now? Well, now they were somewhere out on the desert, all of them, the hunters and the hunted; that was why the Buick had still been there, hidden behind the rocks.
All of it made sense, all of it dovetailed—too perfectly to be a pipe dream. The only other possible answers involved heavy coincidence, and Brackeen did not trust coincidence on that level of occurrence. Every known fact substantiated his theory; there were no discrepancies.
The thing was, could he convince the State Highway Patrol boys—screw Lydell and the goddamn county—that he was right? Could he convince them to send out helicopters, search parties, before it was too late? He did not have the authority to do anything on his own; the most he could do, and he had already done that, was to post a special deputy at the junction of the county road and the abandoned road. If the sluggers came back for their Buick, they would find it gone and they would have no choice but to hike out. But Brackeen did not want that to happen. Because if it did, and if his previous knowledge of the operating code of the professional assassin still held true today, it would mean that Lennox and the Triumph’s owner were certainly dead. As it stood now, one or both of them might still be alive, might still be saved—
That might not be easy, he knew. When he had finally come in off the desert, after two hours of abortive reconnaissance of the area where he had discovered the two cars, and the reaching of his decision to intervene, he had called Lydell for information —and the sheriff had told him to tend to his duties and to stay out of the murder investigation; it wasn’t his problem, Lydell said, in spite of the fact that the killing had happened in his district. Brackeen had tried to argue, but Lydell had simply hung up on him. He had had to go around the old bastard, to a deputy he knew from the poker games at Indian Charley’s, in order to obtain the information on Perrins/Lassiter and on Lennox. He had had no better luck when he’d called the Highway Patrol office. Neither Gottlieb nor Sanchez was there, and the sergeant on duty had referred him to the main investigative office in the capital. They had come through with the information on the rented Buick—that was what the call a few minutes previous had been about —but only because to them it had no bearing on the murder. When he had tried to press for facts on the case, they had told him the same thing as Lydell: stay out of it.
But now that he had committed himself, he couldn’t stay out of it. There was anger in him again, and a sense of duty, and a sense of purpose. The emptiness was gone, and he felt whole again for the first time in fifteen years, he felt like a resurrection of the old Andy Brackeen, the proud one, the one with guts. And yet, it was not the kind of feeling that he could rejoice in, not with the source of his immediate rebirth unresolved.
He reached out for the telephone. And it rang just as his fingers touched the receiver.
He caught it up, said, “Sheriff’s substation, Cuenca Seco. Brackeen.”
“My name is Harold Klein, I’m calling from New York’,” a man’s excited voice said. “I want to report a missing person.”
“New York, did you say?”
