desk. Barlow looked at those photos for a long time-the way Bryce figured time, anyway.
“All right,” Glen said finally. He closed the folder, slid it across the desk, and got up so quickly that he took Bryce by surprise. There was more that the deputy needed to say, but Barlow didn’t give him the chance. He slammed Bryce’s office door before the deputy could say another word, and a handful of seconds later he slammed the door to his busted-ass pickup hard enough to leave a shower of rust on the ground. Then he drove straight out of El Pasito, foot hard on the gas. Past the town’s lone bar… past the funeral home… past the gun shop…
Two miles into the desert, Glen Barlow laid rubber and pulled over.
The goddamn deputy was right about those pictures.
At the base of a dying yucca tree, Glen puked his guts dry.
J. J. Bryce filed the folders on the Kim Barlow case and shared the story of his run-in with her older brother with the sheriff. He sat around the office killing time, but he just couldn’t take it sitting there with the sunset slicing through the Venetian blinds and the edge of the desk marred by cigarette burns from the lazy-ass deputy who’d had it before him.
So he clocked out and got in his own pickup, a brand-new Ford which was a hell of a lot shinier than the one Glen Barlow drove. That didn’t make Bryce feel any better, though. He was still boiling, and there wasn’t much he could do about it at the moment-El Pasito only had one bar and Sheriff Randall didn’t like anyone who wore a badge drinking there.
So Bryce drove out of town, south, towards Guadalupe. He figured he’d swing by a Mexican grocery store he knew in Dos Gatos. The place was about thirty miles out of his way, but that’d give him some time to cool off before heading home. Besides, you could get pork carnitas at the grocery, already marinated and ready to go. Bryce figured he’d grab a sixer and some tortillas while he was at it. Later on, he’d drop those carnitas in the banged-up cast-iron skillet he used on the barbeque, watch the stars wink on in the sky while he downed a couple of brews, and the night would go down easy.
Or easier, anyway.
By the time the deputy edged his speedometer past seventy and got the A/C cranking just right, Glen Barlow had chugged half a warm Dr Pepper that had been playing tag with a bunch of burger wrappers on the floor of his truck. The good Dr didn’t do much for him besides wash the taste of puke out of his mouth. Still, that was a plus.
Glen drove south. Same road as Bryce, but in the opposite direction. He didn’t plan to be on the road long. There was a crossroad just ahead, a narrow unpaved lane jagging west through creosote, coyote brush, and amaranth.
Down that road was where Glen Barlow was headed, because there was other stuff he needed to know. Stuff a guy like Bryce wouldn’t tell him. But that was okay-Glen knew where he could find some answers. It was the same place he’d left a whole mess of questions when he cut out of town last December.
That thought chewed on him. He hung a left, pulled over at the side of the dirt road and took another swallow of warm Dr P. For the first time that day, he felt nervous. And that was strange, considering the cards he’d been dealt in the last few hours.
A yank on the handle and the truck door creaked open. Glen climbed out of the cab and stood there in the dry heat. He was dogtired after a full day behind the wheel, but he couldn’t relax. Still, he tried. He needed to catch his breath before going any further.
He closed his eyes for a minute. There were crickets out there somewhere… sawing a high, even whine that wouldn’t go away. Glen was so used to being on the rig, listening to the sea and the gulls and the equipment. It was weird listening to something different. But he wasn’t really listening, no matter how hard he tried. He was thinking. Remembering last Christmas Eve… remembering pulling to a stop right here, as a cold December moon shone above.
Right here in the same place that he was standing now. Glen churned the last gulp of soda in his mouth. He thought about that night and the nights that had come since then, and he thought about where those nights had taken him. Full circle. Right back to the place he’d begun.
He shook his head, glancing at his reflection in the banged-up driver’s door mirror.
Glen almost laughed at that. But he didn’t. Instead, he spit warm Dr P on the dirt road. Then he climbed in the truck, keyed the engine, and kicked up some roadbed, leaving that wet patch on the ground for the thirsty red earth to drink up.
Lisa Allen was still beautiful, of course. That hadn’t changed in the handful of months since Glen left town. But a whole lot had. Glen knew that coming through the door of the house they’d once shared.
No kiss for him tonight. Not even a hug. They sat in the kitchen, a couple of beers on the table. The back door was open behind Glen’s shoulder, and he could smell the herbs in the little patch of garden scrabbling along the side of the house. Sage, rosemary, thyme… probably a whole lot of other stuff out there that Lisa’s hippie parents had sung about back in the sixties when they built the adobe on a scrubby patch of Arizona notmuch. Of course, Glen didn’t say that, even though it was the kind of thing that would have made Lisa laugh back in the days when his coat hung in a closet down the hall.
Back then, things were different.
Those crickets were still out there somewhere, sawing that high, even whine. But Glen ignored them. Instead he listened to the words coming out of his own mouth, surer and steadier than he could have imagined. And he listened to Lisa’s answers, which were just as sure and just as steady.
“You saw those photos, Glen. Kale couldn’t have done that.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“The cops told you what they pieced together, didn’t they? Kim was out at Tres Manos… you know how she loved it out there. They found her rock-climbing gear. She was on that wall south of the third fist, and she must have had an accident. God knows how long she was out there alone-”
“Or maybe she wasn’t alone. And maybe it didn’t happen that way. Maybe someone just wanted it to look like it did.”
“Jesus, Glen. Did you listen to the cops at all?”
“Yeah. I listened to them tell me what made sense to them so they could slot a file into a cabinet pretty damn quick.”
“So what do you plan to do about it?”
“A lot of that depends on you. I only know what my gut tells me… and that’s that I need to get Kale Howard in a place where he’s going to do some straight talking. I want to hear what he has to say about this, and I want to look into his eyes when he says it.”
“You tried that before, Glen. If you remember, it didn’t work out so hot.”
“Yeah.” Glen stared at Lisa. “I remember.”
And Glen did remember. All of it. Images came at him like hard popping jabs. He and Kale had exchanged a couple of simple, unvarnished words. And then Kale Howard had thrown a punch that rocked Glen solid, and Glen’s hands were on the rangy bastard, handling him the way you handle a chicken leg when you’re real hungry and you just want to tear it apart at the joint. Which meant that Kale had exited the room through a plate-glass window before Glen even realized what he was doing.
“Look, Lisa. I only came here for one thing. You need to tell me where Kale is.”
Surprised, she raised an eyebrow. “Who’d you talk to over at the cop shop, anyway?”
“Some joker with a roll of nickels up his ass. Guy named Bryce.”
“And he didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Things changed after you cut out of town last December. Kale moved in with Kim.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not a chance.”
“And he’s still there? That’s what you’re telling me? He’s living in her house?”
“It’s his house, Glen.”
