Southern Oklahoma law enforcement units, including air-ground search teams with infrared capacity, canine units, and horseback Rangers moving across the range and farmland south of Wichita Falls. The Rangers set up roadblocks on all the major roads and at the three bridges over the Red River fifteen miles north of the city, and established patrols up and down the riverbanks.
Bud parked down Maurine Street a bit and made his way back to the scene. Gawkers, of course, were out in the hundreds; the roadway was jammed with pickups, lots of teenagers and young roughnecks. It had a camylike feel to it, which Bud had noticed before at big accidents on 1-44, and which always made him a little angry.
Someone was hooting 'Goddamn, of' Lamar Pye got clean away” to the beeps of horns. Bud spat in disgust, but it didn't surprise him that, to some, Lamar might be a hero for his wild ways and unwillingness to take any crap from anybody. That's what was poisoning America, he thought.
He approached the barrier of yellow crime-scene tape that had been run from pylon to pylon around the perimeter of the Denny's. A batch of TV camera crews were off to one side, sending their feeds back to the big cities. At least half the official vehicles in Texas filled the parking lot, and inside the shattered restaurant, evidence technicians probed and collected and representatives from the region's police agencies stood around talking, issuing bulletins, putting out information on the radio net and what-have-you.
“Hold on there, sir,” said a Texas highway patrolman as Bud ducked under the tape.
“You can't cross that line.”
Bud flashed his ID folio.
“Oh, sorry, Sarge. You Oklahoma boys are all over this one.”
“These are our boys,” said Bud.
“Killed one of our troopers a few weeks back. We want ’em bad.”
“I know that. I was at that young man's funeral and it was a sad one.
Well, if we catch ’em in Texas, we'll be glad to send y'all the bodies.
They dropped four officers and two citizens. That Lamar, he's a goddamned piece of work.”
“That he is. Trooper. Who’s in charge?”
“Our Colonel Benteen running the show, like he usually does. Some Rangers trying to horn in, as usual.”
“We got the same problem with our damned OSBI boys.”
“Well, I think you got your OSBI down here some place and your own colonel, the Polish one?”
“Supenski. Yep. And that It. C. D. Henderson, of the OSBI?”
“That's the one. That boy's a drinker, you can smell it on him.
Anyway, you'll find ’em inside. Good luck.”
“Thank you. Trooper.”
Bud walked on, passing between vehicles and knots of men sipping coffee and talking in low, intense voices, and at last entered the restaurant.
It looked like the last building left standing in a battleground.
Its windows all shattered, its walls pocked with bullet holes, shards of glass and window frame everywhere, tables tossed this way and that.
And, of course, the chalk outlines of bodies long removed. Bud saw two, one against a far wall, between the men's and the women's rooms, and another deeper in the restaurant itself. Great pools of gummy blood marked each spot. Each death spot had the quality of magic to it, somehow: no officer or technician would come within ten feet.
“There's a third in the manager's office. That Lamar, he blew away a twenty-three-year-old trainee manager after breaking one of his fingers to get him to open the safe. Bud, what the hell are you doing here?”
It was Colonel Supenski.
“Well, I couldn't stay away.”
“No, I suppose you couldn't. Goddamn this Lamar, he's a full-toot son of a bitch. He must be crazy.”
“He ain't crazy,” lt. C. D. Henderson said.
“He just likes the buzz it gives him when he pops a feller. It's like sniffin' human glue.
“Lo, Sergeant Pewtie.” He fixed Bud with a squinty look from behind his specs. How could he be so old and still be a lieutenant. Bud wondered. Then he sniffed the familiar vapor of bourbon cut by the breath mints that didn't quite hide it, and he knew.
“Lieutenant,” he nodded.
“Goddamn,” said It. Henderson, 'he's a smart one.
The Texas boys found the car Lamar's gang made its getaway in five miles down the road. He didn't just steal one car, he stole two, damn his soul, so eyewitness IDs and tag numbers of the getaway car ain't worth piss. And there won't be any prints on it, you watch.”
“Who was the woman he shot?”
“Well, the witnesses say this other feller shot her. We don't know who this guy is. Whoever, he blew away this citizen, a Mrs. Rhonda Mccoy, of Wichita Falls. Mrs. Mccoy was a probation officer for the State of Texas and had a concealed-carry permit. She tried to do her duty. She was so overmatched it wasn't even funny. Died in front of her parents, and her husband and her two kids. Jesus.”
Bud looked at the carnage.
“He got out through a goddamned garbage chute. Scum in, scum out.
Don't that just fit the bill? Go on. Bud, take a look. Around back.”
Bud walked through the restaurant and cut into the kitchen. A number of men stood around the chute. There, on the counter, tagged and bagged in a big cellophane evidence bag but unmoved, was Ted's AR-15.
He went over and looked at it. It was a black and glistening thing, plastic and parkerized metal. Had a modern look to it, like some sort of a gun from space.
“He got it from a goddamned state trooper in Oklahoma,” one of the Texas cops said.
“Killed him for it.”
“I know. I was there,” said Bud.
“You're Pewtie.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You must be made out of steel to come out of something like that.
They say you're the toughest cop in Oklahoma.”
“Right now I don't feel so tough,” Bud said.
If I'da been minding my business, he thought, maybe this didn't have to happen.
He walked on back through the kitchen to an open door.
In the rear he saw two bodies on the parking lot, evidently the last to be removed, and another fleet of cops standing around, some taking notes. Beyond, the Cyclone fence was mashed down, and a path of sheer destruction indicated Lamar's escape route.
“Hey, Pewtie, we had twenty cops here and we was overmatched.
You shouldn't feel so bad.”
“Catch that boy in my sights the next time, and I'll pull down and lie to the shooting board about it,” Bud said.
“We all feel that way,” said the Texas cop, 'except we don't got shooting boards in Texas.”
Bud walked back through the rubble of the restaurant, trying not to step on anything.
“You don't have to go so dainty there, Sarge,” an evidence technician in white plastic gloves said, 'we're pretty much done bagging.”
“I feel like I'm in a goddamned war zone,” Bud said.
“Were you in 'Nam?”
“No, no, I wasn't.”
“Well, it reminds me of a place called Hue after Tet. Bad shit, I'll tell you,” said the tech.
“They got coffee over there, you want some.”
“Thanks,” said Bud, and turned, wondering. What the hell am I doing here? Why did I come? What's it prove?
He shook his head, isolated amid the clutter, sure he was stupidly in the way, and then he saw the lion.
Bud stood stock still, looking about to make sure nobody had noticed it, and wondered whether or not to call out. To call out what? Hey, come look at this?
