'You're really angry, aren't you?' Betty asked as we climbed into the car. When I didn't answer, she said, 'I guess so.'
'Last straw, I guess,' I said and punched the Caddy hard back up the potholed road. I passed the van so fast that it rocked with the draft. Doris Fairchild shot us the finger.
'I don't think that's happened to me since junior high,' Betty said quietly.
I sighed, chuckled, then slowed down. 'And how long's it been since you've done it?'
Betty paused, then answered, 'I don't think I've ever done it.'
'Cathy said you were kind of stuffy.'
'Well, fuck her,' Betty said, then punched me on the shoulder.
'You gotta stop pounding on me, love. Remember my back.'
'Your back was all right last night.'
'I was faking it.'
We laughed all the way to a small country store at a crossroads. I stopped, used the pay telephone while Betty grabbed us some coffee and doughnuts.
'You call a tow truck?' Betty asked as we drove away.
'Actually, I called the Bastrop County sheriff's office,' I said. 'I don't know who's fucking with me, but I'm tired of it.'
'What'd he have to say?' Betty asked.
'Well, he didn't say thanks,' I said. 'At least now I know how the shooter followed Renfro and me to the golf course the other night. And that's probably also how the Lomax party knew to meet me back at the Lodge yesterday. But I still don't have the vaguest notion why the Lomax family or the county would want Sissy dead. Or me. Or Renfro.'
'Maybe it's his wife,' she suggested.
'If she wanted me dead, why did she send me after the McBride woman? I don't know. Hell, I saw her up close. She's way too young to be involved in the Duval shooting,' I said, 'and too rich to bother with dealing cocaine. Besides rich people don't bother killing people in public places. They just disappear them. It's not worth the trouble or the risk. Shit, love, I don't know. Where's the nearest big town in the other direction?'
'Probably San Marcos. Why?'
'I need to look a little different.'
After our purchases in San Marcos, we checked into a motel to prepare me for my visit to the Caldwell County courthouse in Lockhart. It took longer than it should have at the plat office because the old woman helping me was full of chatter. She had grown up when there was still a bit of town left in Stairtown. I was glad I had taken the time to buy a cheap suit and a theatrical quality fake beard and wig. She was bound to remember me.
So the sun was still high in the western sky, pale behind a thin haze, when we reached the turnoff to Stairtown between Lockhart and Luling. The sharp stink of sulfur and crude oil filled the air. I checked the county map again, then eased up a small, crooked country road. At first, it was just a pleasant rural drive – small farms, a church, a creek – but as the road rose up a shallow rise, we saw the first pump jacks of the small oil field with its maze of lease roads. It took a while, but finally I found a wide spot to park high enough to give me a view through the spotting scope of Homer Logan's lease.
The shack sat among abandoned oil field equipment – rusted tank batteries, draw-works engines that hadn't run in years, wooden pipe racks filled with tubing and rods, and a slush pit. Sissy Duval's BMW was parked beside the shack. Nothing moved behind the thin curtains, or on the surrounding land. I drove down to the turnoff, left the Caddy idling on the road while I checked the tire prints on the dirt track to the shack. The foreign treads of the Beemer had been in and out a few times. A larger tire, from a pickup or a van, had been in and out once.
'We're not going in?' Betty asked as I drove away.
'I'm going in alone,' I said. 'Later tonight. I gotta get some stuff first.'
'You're not going in there without me,' she said.
'You can either stay in the motel room,' I said, 'Or I'll lock you in the trunk.'
'You would, wouldn't you, you son of a bitch?'
'You ain't seen nothing yet.'
'I've seen enough,' she said, flaring. 'I'll just call a cab and follow you.'
'Listen to me. Please,' I said. She nodded slightly. 'The only thing that scene lacks is a flock of buzzards circling overhead,' I said. 'It's going to be hard enough for me to make sure that I don't leave any trace evidence. I don't have time to worry about you, too.'
This time she nodded as if she understood.
So I dropped her at the motel, rented another car for cash from a lot just down the block from the motel on the outskirts of San Marcos, bought dark blue coveralls, a large and a small flashlight, surgical gloves, an extra roll of duct tape, a roll of electric tape, and two pairs of huge socks.
At three A.M., dressed in coveralls, my running shoes covered by the socks, I crept out of the rented junker and slowly up the side of the dirt road by the thin flashlight beam. The shack was dark and silent, the door unlocked. I sat in the doorway, slipped the other pair of socks over the dusty ones, then began a careful search. Except for Sissy's traveling mess, the small cabin was empty. Sissy had found some cocaine. About half a quarter-ounce bindle remained among the clutter of cut straws, smudged glass surfaces, and glasses of unfinished vodka. Also, a hypo and some used works.
Then I searched outside among the machinery and empty tool sheds until I found the outline of a body mostly buried in an old slush pit, at the edge of the crumbling dirt bank. A light brown crust covered the darker mud below, and it was unmarked except for long scratches beyond the arms and two pieces of discarded water pipe, which I assumed they had used to hold the body down in the mud. I risked the big flashlight long enough to spot a stand of streaked hair waving above the sun-blackened neck. The lighter mud had been in the sun long enough to dry and crack. There didn't seem much point in checking the body. Whoever had killed her had killed her in broad daylight, gotten her toasted on the coke, and held her face in the mud until she stopped struggling.
I went back to the shack and spent another hour cleaning up the cocaine traces with a bottle of bleach I found under the sink. Then' I shoved the rest of the cocaine into my pocket, and the works into a trash bag that I carried away. Whatever happened, this wouldn't go down as an accidental overdose or a psychotic episode, so they would ' have to mount a full-scale investigation. Just in case I never found out what was going on, or if I got killed before I did.
The search of the Beemer didn't take long and only yielded a telephone number without an area code on a piece of paper crumpled around a hunk of chewing gum in the ashtray, which I shoved into the same pocket with the cocaine. I drove the Beemer into one of the empty sheds, then left.
Sissy Duval had lied to me and she probably was, as Cathy said, a frivolous woman, but she deserved a better death than this. Another chore on my tool belt.
Back in the motel room, I hesitated to tell Betty what had happened, but she quickly asked, 'She's dead, isn't she?'
'I think two guys came in a truck,' I said quietly, 'and knocked her out – probably in some way only a forensic pathologist can discover, if they're lucky – then filled her with coke, tossed her into the slush pit and held her face in the mud until she smothered. They'll probably write it off as just another cocaine accident.'
'Why? How? What for?' she stammered. 'Nobody knew we were looking for her. Except Cathy.'
'Don't start doubting your friends,' I said. 'But Sissy damn sure knew something somebody didn't want me to know,' I added calmly. 'Maybe about Mandy Rae. Maybe Enos Walker. Maybe something entirely different.'
'What now? We can't call the Sheriff's Department, can we?'
'They're going to have to figure it out without my help. Another day in the sun, maybe the buzzards will find her,' I said.
She wailed again, her teeth chattering as she hovered near shock. I wrapped her in all the blankets in the room, got a little Scotch down her throat, and held her until she stopped trembling, then started the long drift into an exhausted sleep.
'What now?' she muttered sleepily.
