Most of that time was spent in locating Fred Gottlieb, the man in charge of the murder investigation; Gottlieb had all the facts, he was told by both Kehoe City and the main Patrol office in the capital, and there could be no authorizations based on speculative evidence—no matter how well it all dovetailed—without his approval. Once Brackeen found him, at the home of a married sister in a nearby community, and outlined the facts and the conclusions he had drawn from those facts, Gottlieb did not require much convincing. He listened attentively, asked several questions, confided that he and his partner, Dick Sanchez, had been looking into the possibility of Perrins/Lassiter’s death being a contracted Organization hit, and agreed without reluctance that the theory had considerable merit. Brackeen’s opinion of the State Highway Patrol went up considerably; he was dealing with a good, competent officer here, not fools like Lydell and the bright-face, Forester.
It was past dark by this time, and both men decided that there was not much that could be done until the daylight hours. Brackeen suggested an airplane or helicopter reconnaissance of the desert area to the east, south, and west of Cuenca Seco, and Gottlieb told him that he would have machines in the air at dawn. He said also that he would contact the county office in Kehoe City and have Lydell arrange for a team of experienced men on standby in Cuenca Seco, in the event the air reconnaissance uncovered anything; even if it didn’t, Gottlieb concurred that a careful foot search should be made of the area surrounding the location of the wrecked Triumph and the rental Buick.
Brackeen said, “Will you be coming down yourself?”
“As soon as I can get back to Kehoe City and round up Sanchez,” Gottlieb answered. “Where will you be?”
“Here in the substation.”
“I might be pretty late.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Okay,” Gottlieb said. “Listen, Brackeen, you did a hell of a job putting all this together. We’d have got it eventually, but probably not in time; there may still be a chance, now, for Lennox and the Hennessey girl.”
Brackeen said, “There are some things you can’t forget.”
“How’s that?”
“Never mind. You going to want to take charge of things when you get here?”
“Officially, yes,” Gottlieb said. “Unofficially, it’s your district and you’ve got a free wheel.”
“Thanks, Gottlieb.”
“Sure. Later, huh?”
“Later.”
Brackeen put down the phone and stared at it. He should have felt relieved now, or pleased, or satisfied, but he was more keyed up than he had been before the long-distance call from the girl’s New York agent, Klein. He had proven something to the world, which did not matter—and something to himself, which did matter—but that was somehow not enough; this thing wasn’t done with yet, none of it was done with yet, and he knew that the tenseness would not leave him until it was, if it was.
He picked up the phone and called Marge for the second time in the past several hours and told her he would not be home, that he was spending the night in the substation. She didn’t protest; that was one thing about Marge, she never complained, never sat heavy on his back. Talking to her, he felt a trace of guilt—an emotion new to him —for all the times he had cheated on her with the plump young whores in Kehoe City. She was a good woman, she was too goddamn good a woman to have to put up with that kind of thing. Well, she wouldn’t have to put up with it any more, he told himself. Not any more.
There was a lot of time between now and the arrival of Gottlieb and Sanchez—between now and dawn—and Brackeen felt nervous and edgy with inactivity. He left the cubicle, told Demeter that he was going out for a while, and picked up his cruiser. He drove east through the bright moonlight and stopped at the junction of the county road and the abandoned dead end; the special deputy he had stationed there several hours earlier was alert and eager, but he had seen nothing. Brackeen sat with him for a time, debating the idea of patrolling the abandoned road, and then decided against it; wherever they were on the desert, they would not be moving in the darkness—even with the drenching light from the moon. If Lennox and Jana Hennessey were still alive, they would be hiding now, waiting for dawn. Half dead from hunger and thirst, from the burning sun, from fear and from running.
If they were still alive.
Brackeen drove back to the substation to await the arrival of Gottlieb and Sanchez.
Eleven
Jana saw shock and disbelief register on Lennox’s face, and she thought: No, no, I didn’t want to say it, why did you make me say it? She pulled away from him again, rolling her body into a tight cocoon, withdrawing from the sick pain that the almost involuntary revelation had unleashed inside her. But the shell she had so carefully constructed these past ten days was cracked and broken now, irreparably, and she had no defenses. It was in the open now, the word—the fear—had been spoken, he knew, somebody knew. God, oh God, why had she pried into his soul and he into hers, they were like leeches sucking at one another, and for what reason? Strength? Succor? Or was it just that each of them sought to lessen his own misery by exposing that of the other?
She felt his hands touching her again and shrank from them, making a sound that was almost a whimper in her throat; but she was boneless, she was plastic, and he lifted her and held her upright. She would not look at him, she could not. I want to die now, she thought. I can’t face it, I just can’t face it, I was trying to run away from myself, just like Jack, and you can’t escape from yourself—
“Jana,” he said, “Jana, it’s not true, I don’t believe it.”
“Oh yes,” she said woodenly. “Oh yes. Don’t you hate me now? Don’t I disgust you?”
“Why? Because of some mistake you might have made? Jana, I don’t hate you, I could never hate you.”
“I’m a lesbian, don’t you understand?”
“You’re a normal woman, you couldn’t be anything else.”
“A lesbian! I am, I know I am.”
“You know you are? Why do you say it like that?”
Don’t tell him any more, don’t talk about it, don’t, Jana, don’t—but what difference does it make now? He knows, you told him and he knows and what difference does the rest of it make?
“Jana?”
“I liked it, you see,” she said, and her eyes were glazed, shining like bright wet stones. “I liked being with Kelly, I liked it the first time and I liked it the last time, I liked being in her arms, I liked her touching me, I liked —”
“Stop it!” Lennox shook her and it was like shaking Raggedy Ann. She did not hear him; she was listening to bitter memories now, and putting voice to them without conscious realization of it, lost and wandering in her own private hell.
“The first time I was drunk and I didn’t know what Kelly was, she was just a casual friend who lived down the hall and I thought she was being sympathetic because I had just broken up with Don and I was angry and soured at the rejection and we were sitting there, in my apartment, sitting there and talking and drinking and I started to cry and she held my head and whispered to me and I put my arms around her, it was all so natural, and then I went to sleep or passed out and when I woke up we were in bed together, my bed, and she was holding me and kissing me and telling me that she loved me and I ... I couldn’t stop her, it seemed so good to be loved after what Don had done to me ...”
Lennox touched her hair, gently, almost delicately, the way you touch a sleeping child. Jana did not take notice. She no longer knew he was there; the words she was speaking were for herself, a volume-open replaying of a memory tape that had already been played a hundred, a thousand times before.
“The morning after that first night with Kelly, I was sick at what I had done and I thought for a while about taking sleeping pills or cutting my wrists, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I thought about a psychiatrist but I couldn’t call one, I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d done, and then Kelly came and I didn’t want to let her in but something made me let her in and she was contrite, she said she was sorry, she said she had been a lesbian for a long time and she hadn’t been able to control herself and then she told me that she loved me, she said it just like that, ‘I love you, Jana,’ she said, and suddenly I couldn’t hate her any more, I didn’t want her to go away, I wanted her to stay with me, and we made love that night and a lot of nights afterward and I woke up one morning and
