Ask the Parrot

“Jesus,” Fred said, and put his shaking left hand up to cover his eyes.

“I can’t even think that way,” Lindahl said.

“I’m thinking for you,” Parker told him. “This is a bind we’re in, and the only way out of it is that it didn’t happen.”

Lindahl looked helplessly at the dead man, at the huddled shape of Thiemann, at Parker. “Should we at least . . . bury him?”

Parker scuffed his toe on the stony ground. “In this? How? Even if we had three shovels, and we don’t, it would take hours to make a hole in this ground. And what for? Fred, what animals you got up around here, besides deer?”

Thiemann seemed surprised to be spoken to. Slowly he took his hand away from his eyes and squinted upward, toward Parker, but not quite meeting his eye. “Animals?”

“Predators. Scavengers.”

Thiemann sighed, long and shuddering, but when he spoke, his voice was calm. “Well,” he said, “we got coyote, not a whole lot, but some.”

“Bobcat,” Lindahl said.

“That’s right,” Thiemann agreed, and gestured skyward. “And a whole lot of turkey buzzards.”

“They’ll get here,” Lindahl said, “right after we leave.”

Thiemann shook his head. “Well, no,” he said, “not that fast. A few hours later, it’s gotta get—” He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “God damn!”

“You thought it was the right guy,” Parker told him. Now that Thiemann wouldn’t be any more trouble, it was best that he not get excited. “It could have happened to any of us.”

“That’s right, Fred,” Lindahl said.

Thiemann spread his hands. “I was just so— I thought, Wow, I’ve got him! Me! I’ve got him!” He shook his head again, disgusted with himself. “When I said we were acting like kids, I didn’t really mean it, I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke.” Looking now toward Lindahl, he said, asking forgiveness, “I never killed a man before. A human being. I never killed anybody. Deer, you’ve got venison, you’ve got . . .”

“A reason,” Lindahl suggested.

“I’m not sure I can even do that any more.” Thiemann looked around, but not toward the body. “Would you guys help me up?”

They did, and he said, “I can’t do this any more, I gotta go home, I gotta, I don’t know, get by myself somewhere. I can’t do this today.”

Parker said, “You got a wife at home, Fred?”

“Sure,” Thiemann said, “And one daughter still in college.”

“Can you tell your wife things? Can you trust her?”

That drew Thiemann’s startled attention. “Sure I can trust her. But tell her about”—with a hand gesture behind himself, toward the corpse—“about that?”

“You’ve got to tell somebody,” Parker said. “You can’t put it where you can’t ever talk about it, because it’ll eat you up. You won’t last. And you can’t talk about it with anybody else, not even Tom here. Tell your wife, talk it out with her.”

“He’s right, Fred,” Lindahl said. “Jane will help you.”

Thiemann made an awkward shrug, uncomfortable with himself. “Get me back to my car, will you?”

They started back through the thick shrubbery toward the ruined railroad station. Thiemann hadn’t asked for his rifle back, seemed not to want to know it was his, so Lindahl carried them both under his right arm, leaving his left arm free to push through the branches along the way.

Parker lagged behind the other two a pace, watched their backs, and decided what to do about them. The continued roadblocks in this part of the world, his lack of usable ID, even his lack of usable cash, meant he had to stick with Lindahl if possible, at least for now.

But how reliable was Thiemann? If he did talk with his wife, and if she was sensible, if she understood what was best to keep him out of trouble, it should be all right. But if Thiemann started to talk to anybody else, anybody at all, it would unravel in a minute. And Parker wouldn’t know there was a problem until Lindahl’s house was surrounded.

The other choice was to shoot them both, take Lindahl’s Ford, get away from here. Until he left this county, Lindahl’s membership card in Hickory Rod and Gun Club, displayed on the dashboard, would get him through the police blocks, particularly if he left the rifle prominently on the backseat. Not the Marlin, Lindahl’s Ruger, the only weapon here that would not have been fired.

But the trouble wasn’t just this county. The trouble extended for a hundred miles in every direction. To have a place to hole up was the most valuable asset he could hope for right now. If either Lindahl or Thiemann looked enough like him to make it possible to use their identification, it would be a different thing.

Lindahl suddenly turned his head, frowning at Parker with a question in his eyes, but Parker was simply pushing through the brush like the other two, the Marlin held loose in the crook of his right arm, hand nowhere near the lever or the trigger. Parker nodded at him, expressionless, and Lindahl faced the station, just ahead of them now, and pushed on.

7

They sat in the Ford the same as before, Lindahl driving, Parker beside him, Thiemann in the back with the three guns. The first few minutes, driving down the washboard road, no one spoke,