One door fluttered and squealed on its hinges, then sucked loudly against the jamb. I started to push the other door into place, then I looked down the length of stalls, out in the railed lot on the far side, and saw my Morgan trotting in a circle, wall-eyed with fear, spooking at bits of paper blowing in the moonlight.
'What's wrong, Beau? Weather usually doesn't bother you,' I said.
I got him into the barn and stroked his face, closed the door behind him, and unscrewed the cap on a jar of oats-and-molasses balls and poured a dozen into the trough at the head of his stall.
Then I saw the red, diagonal slash on his withers, as though he had been struck a downward blow by a metal-edged instrument.
His skin wrinkled and quivered under my hand when I placed it close to the wound.
'Who did this to you, Beau?' I said.
The electric lights in the barn were haloed with humidity, glowing with motes of dust in the silence.
At eight the next morning I drove to the edge of town, where Jack Vanzandt ran his business in a five-story building sheathed in black glass. His office was huge, the beige carpet as soft as a bear's fur, the furniture white and onyx black, the glass wall hung with air plants.
I sat in a stuffed leather chair, my legs crossed, the purpose of my visit like a piece of sharp tin in my throat.
'You want to buy some computer stock?' Jack asked, and grinned.
A door opened off to the side and Jack's wife walked out of a rest room. I rose from my chair.
'Hello, Emma, I didn't know you were here,' I said.
'Good morning, sir. Where's your camera?' she said.
'Maybe I should come back later. I didn't mean to intrude upon y'all,' I said.
'No, no, I'm delighted you came by. What's up?' Jack said.
'It's Darl.'
'Unhuh?' Jack said.
'I can't represent him.'
They looked at me quizzically.
'Can you tell me why?' Jack asked.
'I have a conflict of interest. I was retained earlier by Lucas Smothers. I think your son was at Shorty's the night Roseanne Hazlitt was attacked.'
'Probably half the kids in Deaf Smith were,' Jack said.
'Darl could end up as a witness at Lucas's trial,' I said.
I could see the connections coming together in Jack's eyes, his good looks clouding.
'No, this goes beyond that, doesn't it?' He pointed one finger, bouncing it in the air. 'You're making Darl a suspect to get Lucas off the hook.'
'Nope.'
'Well, I personally think you should be ashamed of yourself, Billy Bob,' Emma said.
'I'm sorry,' I said, rising from my chair. The room felt warm, the air astringent with the smell of chemical pellets in the hanging baskets.
Jack rose from his chair behind his desk. The balls of his fingers rested on the glass top. His lavender shirt with a white collar and rolled French cuffs and loose tie looked like a cosmetic joke on his powerful body.
'Do you want me to write a check right now, or does the bill come later for photographing my son so you can implicate him in a murder?' he asked.
'I didn't invent your son's history or his problems…' I shook my head. 'I apologize for my remark. I'd better go now,' I said.
'Jack, don't let this happen. We need to sit down and talk this out,' Emma said.
'I might have some difficulty doing that. Get out of my office, Billy Bob,' he said.
Outside, I could feel the blood stinging in my neck, my hands useless and thick at my sides.
chapter ten
The next morning, when Lucas Smothers came to work with his father, he told me of the late-night visit he had received from people with whom he had gone to high school.
The cars cut their lights before they got to Lucas's house, but through his open window he could hear music on a radio and the voices of girls. The cars, five of them, were stopped in the center of the road, their engines throbbing softly against the pavement, their hand-rubbed body surfaces glowing dully under the moon like freshly ported plastic.
Then the lead car turned into Lucas's drive, followed by the others, and fishtailed across the damp lawn, scouring grass and sod into the air, crunching the sprinkler, ripping troughs out of the flower beds.
One girl jumped from a car, a metallic object in her hand, and bent down below the level of the bedroom window. He heard a hissing sound, then saw her raise up and look at him. No, that wasn't accurate. She never saw him, as though his possible presence was as insignificant as the worth of his home. Her face was beautiful and empty, her mouth like a pursed button.
'What are y'all doing?' he said, his voice phlegmy in his throat.
If she heard him, she didn't show it. Her skin seemed to flush with pleasure just before she turned and pranced like a deer into the waiting arms of her friends, who giggled and pulled her back inside the car.
By the time Lucas and his father got outside, the caravan was far down the road, the headlights dipping over a hill.
Lucas could see the girl's footprints by the water faucet under his window. The ground was soft and muddy here, and the footprints were small and sharp edged and narrow at the toe, and it was obvious the girl had tried to stand on a piece of cardboard to keep the mud off her shoes. Written in red, tilted, spray-painted letters below Lucas's screen was the solitary word loser.
That same day I drove out to the Green Parrot Motel, a pink cinder-block monstrosity painted with tropical birds and palm trees and advertising water beds and triple-X movies. The desk clerk told me Garland T. Moon was next door at the welding shop.
The tin shed had only one window, which was painted over and nailed shut, and the walls pinged with the sun's heat. Garland T. Moon was stripped to the waist, black goggles on his eyes, arc-welding the iron bucket off a ditching machine. The sparks dripped to his feet like liquid fire. He pushed his goggles up on his forehead with a dirty thumb and wiped his eyes on his forearm. His smile made me think of a clay sculpture that had been pushed violently out of shape.
'Were you out at my house two nights ago?' I asked.
'I got me a parttime job. I don't run around at night.'
'I think either you or Jimmy Cole hurt my horse.'
'I was out a couple of nights. The other side of them hills. There's all kind of lights in the clouds. You ever hear of the Lubbock Lights, them UFOs that was photographed? There's something weird going on hereabouts.'
'I've rigged two shotguns on my property. I hope you don't find one of them.'
'You don't have no guns. I made a whole study of you, Mr Holland. I can touch that boy and I touch you. It's a sweet thought, but I ain't got the inclination right now.'
'Jimmy Cole's dead, isn't he?' I said.
He pulled a soot-blackened glove from his hand one finger at a time.
'Why would a person think that?' he asked.
'You don't leave loose ends.'
'If I was to come out to your place or that pup's with a serious mind, y'all wouldn't have no doubt about who visited you… You cain't do nothing about me, Mr Holland. Don't nobody care what happens to crazy people. I know. I majored in crazy. I know it inside and out.'
'Crazy people?'
'I heard the screw say it in the jail. You're queer for a dead man. You're one seriously sick motherfucker and
