“How about those two federal agents? Do you think they were innocent victims?”
“The two guys you capped? I’ve got news for you. They were PIs out of Houston, not feds. They didn’t have squat to do with burning up your shack and your Bible.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Tell that to their families.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry I wasted all that ammunition. There’s been a right smart jump in the price of bullets since the election of our new president.”
“You made a mistake coming back here, bub.”
“I address you by your title, Sheriff Holland. I’d appreciate your showing me the same level of respect.”
“In your way, you’re an intelligent man. But you’re also a narcissist. Like most narcissists, you’re probably a self-loathing failure whose mother wished she had thrown her son away and raised the afterbirth. All of your power is dependent on the Thompson you use to overwhelm your victims, some of whom were Thai girls hardly older than children. How’s that feel, Mr. Collins? You think authors such as Garland Roark or B. Traven would break bread with you?”
“I don’t make claims for myself or impose myself on others.”
“How about Noie Barnum? Does he know you’re a mass killer?”
“Who says I know such a person?”
“You were seen with him while robbing food and camping gear from other people. I hate to disillusion you about your criminal abilities, but you have a tendency to leave fecal prints on whatever you touch.”
“Noie is a decent man untainted by the enterprises you serve, Sheriff.”
“That could be, but you’re not a decent man, Mr. Collins. You bring misery and death into the lives of others and quote Scripture while you do it. I’m not a theologian, but if the Prince of Darkness has acolytes, I think you’ve made the cut.”
“You’re a damn liar.”
“No, sir, you’re the dissembler, but the only person you deceive is yourself. This time out, I’m going to burn your kite and expose you for the cheap titty-sucking fraud that you are.”
“You won’t talk to me that way.”
“I just did. Don’t call here again. You’re an embarrassment to talk with.” Hackberry eased the receiver back into the phone cradle. Maydeen appeared at the doorway and studied his face. “Get it?” he asked.
“Nope. He’s using some kind of relay system.”
“I was afraid of that. No matter. We’ll see him directly, one way or another.”
“I have a feeling you made sure of that,” she said.
He leaned back in his swivel chair and put his boots on the cusp of the wastebasket and stretched his arms. “You got to do something for kicks,” he said. “Can I buy you and Pam lunch?”
Anton Ling had just pushed her grocery cart around a pyramid of pork and beans when another shopper wheeled his cart straight out of the aisle and crashed into her basket so hard that her hands flew in the air as though they had received an electric shock. A bag of tomatoes she had just sacked spilled over the top of the basket and rolled across the floor.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Cody Daniels said.
“You did that on purpose,” she replied.
“No, ma’am, I certainly did not. I was looking for the Vi-ennas and soda crackers, and there you were.”
“The what?”
“Vi-enna sausages. They don’t have those in China?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“I have a diabetic condition. It causes my breath to smell like chemicals.” He grinned at her stupidly, his face dilated and shiny. “It’s colder than a well digger’s ass in here.”
“Why are you acting like this?”
“Here, I’ll pick up your ‘maters. Want to get a snack over at the Dog ‘n’ Shake? It’s on me.”
“Sir, you can hardly stand.”
“Drunk on the love of the Lord, is what I call it.”
“Don’t touch my tomatoes. Don’t touch anything in my basket. Just get away from me,” she said.
She picked up her tomatoes from the floor and replaced them in her cart and got in line at the cash register. But when she went into the parking lot, Cody Daniels was waiting by her pickup truck. “We’re both clergy, Miss Anton. We’ve got us a mutual problem, and we need to put our heads together and work out a solution.”
“I’m not a cleric, Reverend Daniels. I think you’re very confused and should go home.”
“Easy for you to say ‘should go home.’ Krill was at my house. Krill wants me to baptize some dead children he’s got buried out in the desert. He gave me the feeling you won’t do it, and so it’s getting put on me.”
“Of course I won’t do it.”
“So why should it fall on me?”
“I don’t know. Talk to Sheriff Holland.”
Cody Daniels swayed slightly, obviously trying to concentrate. “Sheriff Holland threatened me. I’m not one of his big fans.”
“Look at me.”
“Ma’am?”
“I said look at me.”
“What the hell you think I’m doing?”
“Why are you so angry at yourself and others?”
The sky was gray, and the wind was blowing in the parking lot, and pieces of newspaper were flapping and twisting through the air. Cody Daniels’s eyes seemed to search the sky as though he saw meaning in the wind and the clouds and the flying scraps of paper imprinted with tracks of car tires. “I’m not angry at anybody. I just want to go about my ministry. I want to be let alone.”
“No, you carry a terrible guilt with you, something you won’t tell anybody about. It’s what gives other people power over you, Reverend Daniels. It’s why you’re drunk. It’s why you’re blaming everybody else for your problems.”
“I was saved a long time ago. I don’t have to listen to anything you say.”
She dropped the tailgate on the back of her truck and loaded her groceries in the bed, hoping he would be gone when she turned around again. She closed the tailgate and latched it with the chain, her gaze focused on a blue-collar family getting in their automobile, the children trying to pull inside the stringed balloons they had gotten at a street carnival. Cody Daniels had not budged. “Let me get by, please,” she said.
“I could have dropped the dime on you any time I wanted and had you arrested,” he said.
“For what?”
“Smuggling wets, aiding and abetting dope mules, maybe hiding out a fellow name of Noie Barnum, a guy who might end up in the hands of Al Qaeda.”
She tried to walk around him, but he stepped in front of her. His breath made her wince. “I saw the man with the machine gun kill those two men down below your place,” he said. “It was Preacher Jack Collins.”
“So what?”
“If you ask me, not everything he’s done is all bad.”
“Say that again.”
“Nits make lice.”
“Excuse me, sir, but you’re disgusting.”
“Those Thai women didn’t have any business in this country. Just like those Mexicans you’re bringing in. Every one of them is a breeder, wanting to have their babies here so they can be U.S. citizens.”
Anton Ling’s eyes were burning, her jaw clenched. She held her gaze on him as though watching a zoo creature behind a pane of glass. He stepped back, a twitch in his face. “Why you staring at me like that?”
“It had to do with a woman, didn’t it?” she said.
“What?”
“You hurt a woman very badly. Maybe even killed her. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“You spread lies about me, I’ll come down there and-”
“You’ll what?”
