“Yes, yes, that’s right.”
Brackeen gripped the handset a little tighter. “The name of this missing person?”
“Jana Hennessey. Miss Jana Hennessey.”
“Is she a visitor in Cuenca Seco?”
“Yes, she’s researching a book, she writes children’s books, you see, I’m her agent, and I called this Joshua Hotel where she’s staying just now and the clerk said she went out into the desert yesterday and hasn’t come back, he didn’t think anything of it, the damned fool, but I’m worried, she promised me faithfully she’d be working, she’s just a girl ...”
“What kind of car does she own?” Brackeen asked tightly.
“Car? A little yellow sports model, she bought it a couple of weeks ago ...”
That’s it, Brackeen thought, that’s all I need. The bastards will listen to me now. He took Klein’s number and told him he would be in touch; then he switched off and dialed the State Highway Patrol office in Kehoe City. And as he waited, his eyes, sunken in deep pouches of fat, were bright and alert and alive.
Eight
Di Parma almost stepped on the rattlesnake.
They were making their way to higher ground, into towering spires of rock, for a better vantage point of the vicinity. On their left, poised on the western horizon, the setting sun was a flaming hole in the pale fabric of sky, painting the landscape in golds and magentas. Vollyer, legs like thick needles thrusting pain at his groin and hips with every step, had dropped several paces behind; his breath whistled agonizingly in his throat, and there were skittering images playing at the corners of his eyes.
Face set grimly, Di Parma climbed with his shoulders hunched forward, arms swinging loosely at his sides. He came around a thrusting projection and his left foot was upraised for another step when he sensed the movement directly beneath him. He looked down then, and the rattler was there—a huge, pale, indistinctly marked diamondback, slithering out from beneath a rock, thick body gyrating sinuously, head coming around as it sensed danger, hooded, deadly eyes seeming to stare at him and a thinly forked tongue licking agitatedly at the air.
Di Parma recoiled in horror. He staggered backward, nausea rising in his throat, and his hand clawed at the pocket of his jacket draped over his left arm. The diamondback was beginning to coil, still seeming to stare at him, evil, evil, and the belly-gun was in Di Parma’s hand now, triggered once, triggered twice; the snake’s head snapped free of its body, now you see it and now you don’t, and the body jerked, twisted, a hideous danse macabre, and then straightened and was still as the echo of the shots rolled like fading thunder through the quiet dusk. Shuddering violently, Di Parma turned away, stomach muscles convulsed, and vomited emptily.
It had happened very quickly, and Vollyer did not know what it was until he stumbled up and saw the body of the diamondback, spasming again, faintly, in the dust. Savage rage welled up inside him. He went to Di Parma and spun him upright and slapped him across the face, forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. “You son of a bitch! You stupid shithead!”
There was a glazed look in Di Parma’s eyes. “Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God, Harry.”
“You let them know where we are. You couldn’t have done a better job of it if you’d raised a signal flag!”
“Harry, the snake, did you see the snake ...”
“I don’t care about the bitching snake.”
“It was coiling up, it was going to strike.”
“The hell it was.”
“It was, I tell you!”
“And you panicked.”
“I didn’t have any choice,” Di Parma said whiningly. “God, you don’t know how I hate snakes, Harry. They’re the one thing I’m afraid of, I want to puke every time I see one.”
“You’ll puke, all right,” Vollyer said. “You’ll puke.”
“Harry, for Christ’s sake, I couldn’t help it.”
Vollyer stared at him, and it was as if Di Parma was a stranger, it was as if he had never seen him before in his life. The rage was ebbing, and there was no emotion whatsoever to replace it; he felt nothing for Livio now, no paternity, no friendship, no liking and yet no disliking. Just—nothing. Di Parma had been put to the test out here, and he had shown just what he was made of, and now, as far as Vollyer was concerned, he was a void, a stranger, a lump of clay. Nothing at all.
His hands still shaking, Di Parma put the .38 away in his jacket. He was unable to meet Vollyer’s gaze. “Maybe they didn’t hear the shots, Harry,” he said. “Maybe they’re too far away.”
“They’re not too far away,” Vollyer said tonelessly. “And sounds carry a long way out here.”
“They might not be able to tell where the shots came from.”
“You’d better hope not.”
“Harry, listen—”
“Shut up.”
Di Parma looked at the sun-blistered face, its plumpness swollen almost grotesquely, and a tremor of fear caused another stomach paroxysm; Harry’s eyes, in that moment, were those of the snake’s—cold and hooded and deadly. He shook his head, sharply, and the illusion vanished. Vollyer turned then and started upward, and after a time—circling the dead rattler, avoiding it with his gaze—Di Parma followed on legs that had suddenly been weighted with lead.
Nine
When the two closely spaced gunshots sounded, Lennox pulled Jana behind a wall of rock and they crouched there breathlessly, listening. Silence prevailed again, heavy and unbroken.
She whispered, “That was gunfire, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And not far off.”
“Too close,” he said. “Too damned close.”
“They weren’t shooting at us, were they? They’re not that close, are they?”
“No, not at us. A snake, maybe. I don’t know.”
“We don’t have much longer, do we?”
“What kind of talk is that?”
“I’m tired, Jack. I’m so tired.”
“Listen, don’t give up on me now.”
“It seems so useless, all this running.”
“Maybe, but I’m not quitting, I can’t quit.”
“Hope springs eternal,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“I won’t let you quit either, Jana.”
“All right.”
“We’ll have to find a place to spend the night,” he said grimly. “We can’t stay here, it’s too open.” His eyes moved over the surrounding terrain. “We’ll follow these rocks to that high ground over there. Should be enough cover, if we’re careful. It’ll be dark pretty soon, and they won’t be able to find us in the dark. They probably won’t even try.”
Jana nodded and he took her hand and she did not pull away; the dry, cracked surface of his palm seemed to comfort her somehow. There was a tenderness in him, a gentleness that she had not expected to exist in a man so obviously plagued by fear—fear that went deeper, went beyond that which their current predicament had generated. It was as if he had lived with fear of one kind or another for a long time, as if it had distorted the genuine qualities he possessed. She wondered again who he was and why he had not told her his real name until that afternoon, why he had hidden his true identity—and why he had finally decided to confide in her. She had
