the killings justifiable homicide in retaliation for what young Claude Lightfoot had suffered. It felt like a fitting end to yet another Cold Room file.
Zachary Roundpoint, a local Native American mob boss and a sometimes acquaintance of Lucas's, wished to make up for all the white injustices over the decades. It would have to be a life's work, so much had been perpetrated against the red man. While Lucas didn't condone Round- point's actions, he did understand them.
Lucas took a six-pack of Bud with him to his room upstairs. He did so via the back stairs. Once ensconced in his room, he lit up a peyote-stuffed, hand-rolled cigarette. He wanted two things: a good black-and-white western so he could watch “his people” through the pathetic eyes of Hollywood, and to get totally wasted in order to put everything and everyone out of his mind. Even so, he wished that Meredyth would knock at his door this moment. But she did not.
“ Be damned if I'd chase her out a door,” he told the empty room.
On his fourth beer since leaving the bar, Lucas again thought of his antithesis, Zachary Roundpoint. Lucas had good reason to feel angry at Zachary, a man never to be trusted, a man he could never call a friend, but a man to whom he owed much. Zachary had come through for him when he had needed a friend the most, when Lucas's dying grandfather had need of Roundpoint's power and influence.
Zachary had been a Texas Cherokee gun for hire before he had his boss assassinated. The boss had acted as a father to Roundpoint out of a deep-seated guilt for having murdered Roundpoint's mother. When Lucas first began to investigate the case, he had no idea that Roundpoint would take measures into his own hands and then grant Lucas a lucrative reward along with a job offer for his trouble. That had been then, and now this.
In the case involving Roundpoint's murdered mother, Zachary had taken over his boss's throne after summarily executing the man. Now Roundpoint controlled a small army of men, running the largest Native American cartel in the country right here in Houston. His organization had long tentacles, perhaps long enough to reach Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Lucas guessed that the FBI knew of his past connection to Roundpoint. Because of his connection to Zachary Roundpoint, he had become an FBI suspect. Zachary certainly had the manpower and the Cherokee chutzpah to carry out a series of hits anywhere in America. Lucas had no proof, but he could well imagine Zach Round- point being involved and possibly ordering the executions.
Lucas's gut reaction was that Zachary had once again taken the law into his own hands to avenge a perceived wrong to all Native Americans, and in doing so, he had again placed Lucas Stonecoat in a perilous and vulnerable position.
The phone rang, and Lucas grabbed it up, thinking it was Meredyth, hoping so.
“ It's Jessica Coran,” said the whiskey voice that had become so familiar to Lucas since the DeCampe case. “Hold a moment for me, will you?”
“ Sure… sure.”
She came back on. “I couldn't talk to you on the other line. It wasn't a secure line.”
“ And this one is?”
“ Yes, detective, it is.”
“ How do I know that?”
She hesitated. “I guess you'll just have to take my word as good.”
He remained silent. She heard his breathing come over like thought.
“ Listen, detective, what you and your friend Zachary Roundpoint arranged for in Sioux Falls…”
“ I don't know what you're talking about.” His thoughts conflicted with his words. Does everybody in creation know about my connection to Roundpoint? And if so, does anyone in creation know the nature of that relationship? Fuck!
“ I just wanted you to know that any chance of creating a case died with McArthur. He was going to testify. Next thing we hear is that the other three were murdered.”
“ I still have no connection with what you're talking about.”
“ Sure… I understand. If I Were you, I'd wonder who my friends were, too. Fact is, you have no idea how similar our situations are with respect to people looking over our shoulders.”
“ I've gotten a double dose since all this crap in Sioux Falls has come down on my head. I've got nothing whatever to do with it.”
“ I believe you, but I'd distance myself from Zachary Roundpoint. If they ever get anything to stick to him… well…”
“ I know we did great police work on the DeCampe case together, and for that I think I can trust you, Dr. Coran.”
“ You can… you can.”
“ I am not associated with Roundpoint in any way, shape, or form.”
“ Your close relative, a man named Hawk, Billy Hawk, works for Roundpoint.”
“ So I've been told.”
“ Billy Hawk is suspected of being the trigger man in at least one if not all of the Sioux Falls executions, Lucas.”
“ Christ… the…” Billy Hawk was Lucas's mawkish cousin who would do anything for money and anything to please Zachary Roundpoint.
Jessica Coran hung up, and Lucas listened to the dial tone. It felt like the voice of a nightmare gnome screwing with his brain. The drink and peyote designed to erase his physical pain-pain like a badge he wore from a near-death experience while on the job-were now conspiring to create hallucination. He pictured his cousin in the room, gun in hand, executing an enemy felt to be a threat to Zachary Roundpoint. Lucas focused on the victim of Roundpoint's and Billy Hawk's combined wrath, the man on his knees with hands tied and ankles tied, bent into the deacon's position of prayer. Someone who deserved a bullet to the brain for having literally ripped a young boy apart, using pickup trucks and rope. But the man in the pathetic position now looked up, and his face revealed itself, and it was Lucas's own face staring back at him.
Jessica Coran hung up and leaned back into her chair in her office at Quantico, Virginia, giving some thought to Lucas's predicament, and what a now-healthy Dr. Kim Desinor had told her about the Texas Cherokee detective. Kim had had a full recovery only after DeCampe had been found alive and saved from Isaiah Purdy and Jimmy Lee's death grasp. While her “psychic disease” had halted on Jessica's lie, it had not improved until the reality of DeCampe's nightmare had come to an end.
Kim had taken a long, deserved leave, but before leaving for St. Sebastian Island, she had confided in Jessica that she had given some dream time over to the Claude Lightfoot case. Even while suffering with the psychic wounds that had threatened to kill her, even as she was in a coma, she said, “I saw someone like Lucas do the killings, but in my heart I knew it was not Lucas Stonecoat. He is not responsible for the vengeance murders being wreaked on Lightfoot's killers.”
Jessica now wanted Stonecoat to know that he could count on her, or call on her at any time for any reason in the future. He had proven a valuable ally now in two cases he had been associated with. She feared, however, that he now thought she had him on tape, and with the current level of paranoia normal in a person in his position, he most likely only heard what he wanted to hear.
“ You may go down for this, Stonecoat, but not by my hand,” she said to the empty room.
