“I'll never make it in an hour.”
“Sure you will. Then we'll talk some more and maybe you can come git me and maybe you can't.”
He hung up.
Quickly Bud dialed the annex.
He got a busy signal.
Goddamn!
He felt like throwing the phone. That old goat, what the hell was he up to?
Now what? Leave and drive like hell to Anadarko, which was just barely makable in an hour? Or give goddamned C. D. Henderson another few minutes, stretching it out even further?
He raced to the truck, started the engine.
But then he turned it off.
He ran back to the phone, dialed again.
The phone rang once, and C.D. picked it up.
“Bud?”
Who else would it be?
“Yes.”
“Just got a call from a newspaper reporter. In 1983 a fifteen-year-old gal shot and killed her mama and her papa and served seven years before being released from the Kingsville Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
I called there and talked to a night nurse who knew her well. She continually wrote to people who had killed or assaulted their parents.”
“Richard!”
“Richard. She wrote to Richard, and no one never bothered to check on what letters came his way in prison, as he was the passive partner and only there a few months. But there's your connection. Bud, I checked her out against the list of car owners: She's registered in a ninety-one Toyota Tercel.”
“Holy Christ.”
“She lives on a place right off 54, in Kiowa County, way out where it's empty and barren, just the far side of the Wichitas. Her name is Ruta Beth lull.”
“I just drove by it. He ran me by it to check me out! Now he's going to bounce me around for a bit, just to get me completely tired. It's half an hour away.”
“You better get there. Bud. You got work to do.”
“Thank you, old man. You are one hell of a detective.”
“I believe I am, son. I believe I am. Now I'm going to give you ten minutes, that's all. That's what I owe you.
Then the cavalry is coming.”
“Fair enough.”
“And Bud, remember: front sight. Center mass. Put ’em in the ground.
Bud. All of ’em.”
CHAPTER 30
Holly tried to clear her head, but it buzzed with fright.
She couldn't stop staring at them. Lamar was big and oily and somehow engorged with testosterone. He couldn't stop grinning. He was like a movie star.
On the other hand, that poor pitiful Sally who was his girl Ruta something, some old-fashioned farm name was nervous as a cat. She was really the scary one; a tight, grim, scrawny little mouse, with the small-featured face she associated with the inbred.
But the prize was the one they called Richard. God, she'd laugh if she wasn't so scared. Richard had dreamy, puffy, tussled hair, and though he was big, he was soft. He had creamy hands, like a piano player's, and a little dance in his walk; when he moved, all these rhythms were unleashed.
He was of no known sex, with his prissy, parched little lips, and his strangely disaffected way of moving, as if he heard everything a second later.
What a trio! These insane fools had killed her own husband as he lay on the ground and then terrorized Oklahoma for two months? They seemed like some hill clan, white trash who hadn't ever seen a toilet that flushed. She almost laughed. They were so unbearably squalid.
And she knew they'd kill Bud. That was the terrible part.
They'd take his life without hesitation and they'd take her life.
“What you looking at, baby girl?” Lamar suddenly demanded, bringing his face close to hers.
“What scum you are,” she said.
“You are the worst scum.”
“Lady,” he said, 'you know, I could rape you. Did it for years and years to any woman I could find. Oh, the things I done. The law only knows but a third. They could punish me for a thousand years and be nowheres near even out on the deal.”
“But you won't.”
“Why's that?”
“
“Cause a tiny part of you is scared of Bud Pewtie. You only got the best of him once—then he got the best of you.
It's third time coming up and maybe you ain't quite the stud you think you are.”
Lamar laughed.
“Damn,” he said.
“You got a mouth on you! Half a mind to keep you around for comedy.
You could help Ruta Beth with the cooking. Ruta Beth, you need a helper?”
“No, Daddy,” said Ruta Beth, furiously.
“Sorry,” said Lamar.
“We ain't hiring today.” Then he laughed again, eyes glinting in the low light.
Bud put his lights out and flew by the dirt road entrance.
He saw nothing on 54 except the light of a beat-up old house a mile away against the darkness of the prairie, here and there the blotch of a grove of mesquites or scrub oaks, undulating prairies and crests and the far-off mountains.
He drove a half mile and slowed to a halt, careful not to let his brakes squeak. He tried to think. Did he want to park by the road and come in over the fields? Did he want to try to go down the entrance road, slow, lights out? He could probably get pretty close. But surely Lamar would have someone looking out. As for the walk in, it seemed so long.
He glanced at his watch. Ten to four. He wanted to make his move before they called and got no answer; going off the schedule just a little would set Lamar's hair to bristling;
he'd begin to sniff things out.
You have to move now and fast, he thought. You cannot fuck around. You have to go in and shoot Lamar in the first second. Without Lamar, they would fall apart, though he thought he'd have to shoot the girl, too; he had no illusions.
If she'd sold her soul to Lamar, she was a target and had to be hit.
And maybe Richard, too, though he had fewer worries about Richard: Richard had no guts and would quit in an instant if Lamar was gone.
Bud eased ahead another quarter mile and came to another long, straight dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere. It simply vanished in the darkness. He thought: It's only a half a mile down and roughly/ parallel I can drive down it, turn right, go into four-wheel, buck my way through the grass and scrub and any barbed wire I find. Then he'd close from the rear, shoot Lamar with the rifle from outside, kick in the door and take his chances with the girl and Richard. Maybe Holly would make it, maybe she wouldn't.
