Bremer said punched into him.
Still he insisted, 'I want it over. She's gotta want it over too.'
'Not like this. You're gonna lead him right to her.'
'It's not gonna be that way.'
'Bullshit. It is.'
'All right, look,' said Weiss. His gut was really roiling. He was finished with this. He'd taken enough. 'Look, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you think or I think. I'm here now and he's on me. Watching. Listening. Right now. And what do you figure he'll do if you don't tell me what you know?'
'Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ,' said Bremer with a hard laugh. 'You're using him on me?'
'I'm just telling you.'
'Jesus.' Weiss saw Bremer's reflection, the twisted expression of disgust. He saw Bremer shake his head. 'You dumb shit,' Bremer said. 'You think he won't do it anyway. You think he won't come after me, my family. Look what you did now. You probably got us all killed already.'
'No. That won't happen,' said Weiss. 'Because then it's over. He knows that. Then I'm done and he's fucked. Like you said, I can do this; he can't. Like the way I found you, came here-that's what I can do. He can't. If he comes after you or your family, it's over and he's fucked. That's what protects you. He needs me.'
'It wouldn't have started at all if you hadn't come.'
'Tough shit,' said Weiss. 'I came. It started. Now it's on.'
'You bastard. You dumb bastard.' Weiss heard the other man swallow hard. That was all. Then the empty house was silent around them. It was silent and new and had a fresh, empty smell of wood and paint, and one day a family would come to live here. It seemed very sad to Weiss somehow. It weighed on him with all the rest. 'It doesn't matter,' Bremer said finally. Weiss saw his shoulders sag in the reflection. 'I don't know anything. I don't know where she is. I don't have any idea.'
'You lie to me and I can't help you,' said Weiss.
'I'm not lying. She called me that one time, that's all. You said she called from Paradise. That's more than I knew. I don't even know the name she goes by.'
'What about the motel?'
'What motel?'
'The room at the Super 8.'
'What…?' Bremer started-but then he must've realized what Weiss had done. 'Jesus Christ,' he said again, disgusted.
'What about it, Bremer? Is that where you meet her? Is that where you two get together when she comes? You must pay a lot for her to make the trip way out here. But, then, guys our age get stupid for her, isn't that what you said?'
Bremer shook his head. Weiss saw it in the glass doors. 'That's not her. That's not about her. The Super 8. That's something else.'
Weiss knew he was lying. And he could look at his face in the glass and he knew Bremer knew he knew. So all that high moral talk was bullshit in the end. All that squeaky-clean living. Making waffles for his kids, going to church. Every two months his favorite hooker came to town and he had her out at the old Super 8. That was Bremer.
'So-what, then?' said Weiss. 'She called you to say good-bye? Is that what you're telling me?'
Bremer only nodded.
'She called you to tell you she couldn't see you anymore.'
'That's right. Never again. She said she couldn't see me ever again.'
'And she warned you I might come. I might come or he might. That's why she couldn't tell you anything about where she was going.'
Bremer nodded again, swallowed again. 'That's why she said she could never come back. She didn't tell me anything else, just that, I swear.' Now he turned from the glass. He turned to face the detective. He let Weiss see the sneer straight on, never mind the reflection. 'Look at you. You bastard. Going after her. Bringing him with you. You're twice her age. You don't even know her. You've never even been with her. It's all just daydreams. You're gonna make her die for your daydreams.'
Weiss sneered back. 'What makes you any better? You'd do the same. And you're just as old as I am-you're older. What the hell makes your daydreams any better than mine?'
Bremer's hard face seemed to go out of focus. His blue eyes went soft, looked lost. He turned back to the glass door. He looked out at the brown desert running to the blue-and-white mountains, all of it growing dark as the sun westered down.
'That's not what it's like,' Bremer said softly.
'Yeah, yeah. The hell,' said Weiss.
'That's not what it's like,' said Bremer. 'I don't have any daydreams.'
Weiss was about to speak again, but he stopped cold. The truth came to him in that flashing way the truth had. Son of a bitch, he thought. He's not Julie's john. He's not her lover at all. He never knew how he knew these things, but he knew when he knew them and he knew this. Son of a bitch. He's Julie's father!
The two men's eyes met on the glass-the reflection, the ghost of their eyes met on the glass with the desert visible behind them. Finally, they understood each other.
'Now get the fuck out of here,' Bremer said.
16.
It was dark by the time Weiss reached the Super 8. The motel was the last place in town, the last lighted spot on the four-lane before the pavement vanished into the desert night. Against the darkness out there, the motel sign stood out bright yellow with the neon vacancy sizzling bright orange underneath. From the parking lot where Weiss sat, the sign's light washed out the stars.
The motel was a small single-story building, white, trim, well-kept. It was shaped like an L. The office and coffee shop made the base of the L, and the rooms extended along the edge of the parking lot in the L's arm. There were only five cars in the lot, six now with Weiss and his Taurus. There were lights on behind the white curtains in only three of the motel's rooms. The coffee shop was closed.
Weiss stood out of his Ford. A cold wind was rising. It blew in out of the darkness. He felt it on his face, and he heard the flag on the flagpole behind the motel snapping somewhere above him. A Tv was playing in one of the rooms. He could hear that too: danger music, as if someone was watching a cop show or something.
A truck rumbled past on the four-lane. When it was gone, Weiss heard the wind and the snapping flag and the music from the Tv and the vast silence of the desert that surrounded them.
He walked toward the office, his hands in his pockets, his big frame hunched and huddled against the cold. He wasn't sure what he expected to find here. Bremer had said the place had nothing to do with Julie, but he knew Bremer was lying, so that meant it did. He figured maybe this was where Julie stayed when she came to visit her father. He figured she was his daughter by some first wife, and she had to come in secret so she wouldn't be seen by his respectable second wife. Something like that. He had wanted to ask Bremer about it. He had wanted to ask Bremer a lot of things. Julie had called her father to say good-bye because she had to run for her life. She had called to warn him that Weiss might come and the killer might come with him. Had she said anything else? Had she dropped any clue to where she was going? Was there anything in her past that might help Weiss find her? The questions had come into Weiss's mouth as he stood with Bremer in the empty house. They had come into his mouth-and he had swallowed them down.
For some reason-maybe the second wife, maybe something else-Bremer's relationship to Julie was his great secret. That's what Weiss had understood when his eyes met the father's on the glass. It was his great secret, and if Weiss asked about it, he would balk, he would lie, and he would go on lying.
And then the Shadowman would come.
It was true what Weiss had said. He had a hold over the killer. He could stop looking for Julie and the killer would be lost. But that would only take him so far. If the specialist was convinced he might find her himself, he
