fast that he couldn't keep up. He was sixty-eight years old and should have retired five years back and enjoyed his time.
But no. Vanity, anger, whatever, had driven him.
Okay, you old goat, he told himself.
Do some detecting.
Think. Think.
You got a new dot to connect. A third point, a third piece of evidence. A girl. A young girl. How does that help?
A category that is not a category. A young girl.
How do they connect?
How could they connect?
Original theory: Lamar would go for help or find help in the criminal community in one of its forms. They would always go to their own kind.
So: He would go to the cycle gangs or the Indian boys running scams against their own tribes on the reservations or the organized crime interests in Tulsa or OK City or the drug networks supplied by South American gangs but run by niggers in the inner city, Hispanics or Italian groups otherwise; or that small shifting, mobile culture of armed robbers, professional contract killers, enforcers, and tough guys who serviced the bigger gangs on a strictly freelance basis.
But he'd gone to none of those, or at least none of those that could be demonstrated to have corresponded with the one known empirical clue, the tire tread that could only be worn by a small Japanese car, a Hyundai or a Nissan or a Toyota, in three model years.
Nothing. Nada.
Maybe it was just wrong, the assumption. Maybe he'd found somebody not in the life at all.
But no: Lamar, however extravagant, was a type, and types run to pattern. And Lamar's pattern was simple: He was a professional criminal, a long-term convict, he would only feel comfortable with his peers. Whoever he was bunking with would in some way be in the culture, would have stepped beyond the parameters of the law. And would be on the computer network.
But there was nothing.
The old man snapped on his computer terminal. It had access to Oklahoma Department of Motor Vehicles and criminal records at the state felony level. He could define a field and see what he got.
So he tried the most basic thing: He requested that the computer churn out a listing of all females between the ages of sixteen and thirty who registered or had registered a car in the known range.
searching searching searching the computer blinked at him for a few minutes, and then a list of names rose against its blue background.
He was not adroit at the mechanics of the computer; he could not physically manipulate the cursor without thinking, so he simply ordered the goddamned thing to print out.
It clicked and chattered across the room, and he went to the printer, ripped the page out, and then examined what he had.
It was a list of eighty-three names, all of them meaningless, all of them unknown. Maybe one of them? Maybe not.
He went next to the known felons listing—that is, the felons who also had registered the right cars—and hoped there might be some correspondence, a co registration that possibly suggested a daughter-father thing.
There was none.
No young woman with a car in the range could be linked to a known felon with the same car, at least according to the records.
Then, very slowly, he typed each of the eighty-three names into the computer and commanded felony record check.
It took the better part of an hour.
Results—zero.
“Richard,” said Lamar, 'come over here.”
Shyly almost, Richard advanced.
“Richard, how long since you had a woman?”
“Ah? Lamar, that's private.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Holly.
“Now, lady, lo okie here at Richard. Now what's he got this Bud Pewtie you married ain't got? He's a fine, upstanding man. He's got a true talent, a God-given thang. He's loyal and hardworking. He's educated.
Richard, you went to a college, didn't you?”
Richard said yes.
“See. He's a smart man. He could do you proud. You know, if you play your cards right, when this is all over I might be able to git you a… date with Richard.”
Lamar exploded once again into laughter.
Then he said, 'You know, Richard, you could touch her a little. Really.
She wouldn't mind, would you, hon?”
“Please,” said Holly.
“Oh, God, don't hurt me or touch me.”
“Oh, it wouldn't hurt a bit. Richard, would you like to touch this young woman some place. Or maybe just look at her. You could look at her all you wanted, at least for a little while. Have you ever seen a girl this pretty without no clothes on, Richard? I mean, a real one, not in no book?”
The terrible thing was, Richard did want to touch her and look at her.
She was a really beautiful young thing. He'd never had any woman, of course. It just hadn't worked out.
Not that he was a homosexual. He was sort of a zero sexual But now he looked at her and the deep stirrings of lust tingled in him.
It was her helplessness that excited him. The way the rope cut into her white, freckly skin, the way her flesh blossomed around the raw pressure of the rope, the way her neck was faintly reddish as she squirmed, the look of complete horror on her face, and her goddamned prettiness.
She wore Bermuda shorts, Nikes without socks, and a polo shirt; she looked like some kind of coed or something.
But then he thought: Why is she so young?
“Lamar, why is she so young?”
“What you mean?”
“Look at her. She isn't thirty. She isn't twenty-five. How could she have that son who plays baseball. Did she marry him when she was ten?”
“She was in his house. She got a wedding ring. They was fighting. Who else could she be?”
But then Lamar squinted and looked closely at Holly.
“How old are you?”
“I'm twenty-six,” she said.
“I am his wife.”
“But that ain't your kid?”
“No, Jeff is not my son. Bud and I haven't had our children yet. He had his two boys with his first wife. But she died and he married me two years ago. It's the happiest two years of my life. He's a wonderful, kind, decent man.
He's brave, he's strong. You ought to be ashamed of what you're doing.”
“Well, ain't you a goddamned Miss. Mouthful. That sonofabitch shot my cousin over twenty-five times. Just blew the life out of that boy.”
“You are such scum,” she said.
“You may get me and you may get Bud, but they will get you in the end.”
Lamar leaned close.
“Don't you get it?” he said.
“I don't give a shit. I ain't got much of a string to play out anyways. I just want to settle up. You think I'm
