It was on the floor, covered in glass splinters, more or less shoved aside amid other papers by the evidence techs as they pawed through the rubble looking for clues. It was so odd how it had just hooked on the tiniest corner of his vision as he scoped the room, wondering what the hell to do.
He went onto one knee and very gently pushed two crumpled place mats aside, as well as a dozen assorted pieces of glass, to reveal more of a third and what upon it had caught his eye.
Yes, another lion, drawn absently, presumably by Richard as he waited for the raid. Richard must have been used as recon and then tail gunner, though all agreed it was the new gang member who’d done the shooting.
“Hey, techie,” he called.
The technician came back.
“You got something there, Sarge?”
“You got prints already?”
“Yep, we got ’em and fed ’em into the FBI fingerprint lab. Amazing how fast that goddamn computer works.”
“You get a make?”
“We already made both Pyes and the Peed guy, no sweat.
As for the fourth member, we grilled witnesses but nobody can remember him touching anything. We got the shell he ejected—maybe a latent will turn up on that.”
“Okay, I got a feeling this belongs to Richard Peed. He's the artist.”
The man looked at it closely.
“I don't see no oil spots. Pal, I doubt seriously think we could get a print off that. Getting prints off paper is tough. You need some kind of hard, glossy surface, glass, linoleum, Formica.”
“That's what I thought. You want to bag this sucker?”
“Yeah, I ought to.”
“But, could I get an impression of it, a Xerox or something?”
“There's a Xerox machine in the manager's office.”
“So you won't scream if I go Xerox it and then bring it back?”
“Don't mean a thing to me, Oklahoma. What you want it for?”
“I got a thing about lions.”
Bud picked up the place mat which was emblazoned with the Denny's crest and some connect-the-dots games and riddles '('What's black and white and red all over?—A newspaper') for kids, and walked into the manager's office.
A flung spray of dried brown blood against the wall, savage and shapeless, almost a map of the explosion of the charge through flesh, signified the spot where Lamar had killed the young manager, and the tape outline on the floor marked his fall. In the other corner, undisturbed, was a copying machine, and routinely. Bud pumped out a facsimile of the place mat which he folded and put in his pocket.
Then he walked back to the tech, who trapped the thing in an evidence bag and zip locked it shut, pausing only to fill out a slip.
“Say, Bud?”
It was C. D. Henderson.
“Yeah, Lieutenant?”
“Bud, you want a drink? I got a pint, be happy to give you a shot.
Helps clarify the mind, they say.”
“No thank you, Lieutenant. It'd put me out cold.”
“Anyway, they tell me you're a pretty smart boy. Always top of your class, outstanding arrest records, a rep for writing good reports.”
“I'm just a highway jockey. Lieutenant. You boys are the detectives.”
“You don't have something going?”
“Sorry, I don't—”
“You're not working some angle on Lamar no one else has cottoned to?”
The odor of the bourbon was overwhelming.
“As I said, I'm not an investigator. You boys are the investigators.”
“Yes sir, that's what it says, and I know you Smokies don't like it a bit. But a smart boy like you… experienced hand, good operator. I don't know. Bud. Seen you digging through evidence, and then running off to make a photocopy. Looks mite peculiar,” he finished up, squinting at Bud through shrewd old country eyes.
“Ain't doing nothing. Come to see what this goddamn Lamar done. That's all there is to it, Lieutenant.”
''Cause I know how it would please a stud boy like you to get another crack at Lamar.”
“I ain't going up against Lamar, no way. He got the best of me once and I don't doubt but that he would again. He's too much hombre for me. If I should get a lead on Lamar, I'd call the marines, the FBI, and state cops from here to Maryland and back.”
“Yeah, but would you call the OSBI?”
“Hey, this ain't a turf thing.”
“Yeah, I hear that ever damn time one of you Smokies tries to bump me off my own investigation. Now we might get some good leads out of all this physical evidence. I want to be there when it goes down, you hear me?”
“Yes I do, Lieutenant. Loud and clear.”
“Good man. Bud. You and me, we're old salts, we can get along. You git something, you call old C.D. I want in on it. Ten-four, Trooper?”
“Copy that,” said Bud.
CHAPTER 17
The water was cold. He couldn't make it another second.
He would die. He could feel his lips chattering and his body growing numb. It was so cold.
“I can't make it, Ruta Beth,” Richard said.
“Shut your mouth, you damned fool,” she spat back.
“You lie there like a goddamned man or I'll have O’Dell hold your head underwater for a few minutes.”
“But it's hopeless. He isn't coming.”
“Daddy will come,” Ruta Beth said.
“Goddammit, Daddy can take care of himself and he will come. Isn't that right, O’Dell?”
“Will cwuh,” said O’Dell, also chattering.
The three of them crouched in a patch of reeds, the cold water of the Red River running up to their necks. They were in a desolate spot, about ten miles outside Burkbumett, between the Burkbumett and the Vernon bridges over the river. A hundred yards of strong black current lay between them and the promised land of Oklahoma, but the rush of the water was so strong, Richard knew he'd never swim it; it would suck him down and drown him. There was no mercy at all in the night. The wind whistled and rattled through the reeds; in the dark he could just see riverbank and mud flat. And enemies were everywhere.
A few hours back, a Department of Texas Safety four-by four with two squint-eyed Rangers had come lurching down the riverbank, punching its way over fallen logs, skimming into the low tide where necessary, its spotlight playing in the brush for signs of the robbers. But it had passed by, at one point only fifteen feet from them, and gone on down the line. It would be back.
Then, about an hour later, there were lights on the Oklahoma side, as presumably a duplicate of the same mission unfolded over there. But the trucks weren't the problem.
The problem was the helicopters.
They came in fast. They came low, and their noise seemed to explode from nowhere as they roared along the river about a hundred feet up, two, three times an hour.
These hunters really wanted to kill something. Once, Richard had caught a glimpse of the observer hanging out of the cabin door, a squat man with huge binoculars, a cowboy hat, some kind of mouth microphone and the
